Breaking Creed (30 page)

She joined the man in the hallway and tried to close the door. When it didn’t seem to fit the frame, she opened it wide.

“See, that’s not a good sign,” Richard told her. “Doors and windows tend to stick right before. It’s bad, I’m telling you. We must leave.”

This time she pulled the door with such force it slammed.

Tate sat listening to the thump-thump of his heart. It was beating inside his head, and he put his hands over his chest to make sure his heart hadn’t moved. It wasn’t long after the doctors had left when he heard a loud crack. So loud it jolted him off the table.

It sounded like an artillery shell. Was that possible?

He crawled under the examination table, his body scrambling in twitches and jerks. Then he listened for more artillery shells. The room started to sway and tilt. Was it the drug? Had it screwed with his equilibrium? His ears popped and instead of the thumping of his heart, he now heard only a rumble.

He felt it, too. A vibration rattled the doctor’s instruments, shaking them off the tray. The floor tiles lifted and rolled beneath him, and Tate grabbed on to the examination table.

That’s when he saw the whitewashed walls crack and buckle. The walls were actually caving in, as if a bulldozer were on the other side shoving them in. Tate felt something coming down from the ceiling. He ducked his head back under the table. He watched, not sure whether to believe his eyes. It was raining dirt and gravel. He could smell the wet earth.

The rumble grew to a roar. Forget the bulldozer, a freight train was headed down on top of him. He covered his head with his arms and curled into a tight ball.

More crashes. Metal shrieked. Light fixtures exploded.

In the darkness Daniel Tate couldn’t see. The floor became a roller coaster. He clawed to hold on to the steel table, as the world around him shattered and roared and collapsed on top of him.

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