NaNo Day 17 - Start of Week Three!

It's a beautiful Monday morning with construction equipment drilling through my neighbor's roof at 7:30am! I'm also painfully aware that my windows are not soundproof. Even so, I laid in bed just to show the world that nothing can force me out of bed that early!

Two hours later, I felt more tired from listening to a jackhammer for so long. But nonetheless, I drug my weary bones out of bed to start the day. This time I was going to make a plan for Chapter 9! I will not pants my way through another one - the thought is just too scary. I figured out a nice arc for the whole chapter and made 10 bullet points of different scenes that should happen in order! Woot!

Writing in my normal pace and completing an awesome word sprint with my skype buddy (that really helped me too!), I came to a nice round number of  29,100 words today! Yay! 

....And I just noticed I delayed writing this post until 30 minutes before midnight. Alrighty then, another short post and a longer excerpt!

EXCERPT

Sleeping on the backside of wooden bookshelf is not good for your spine. If rolling left and right counted as a good night’s sleep, Jason did plenty of that. Every time he felt his eyelids drop, he sensed that same dark nightmare creep into his imagination. This time the suffocating darkness brought with it the faint sound of scraping metal. The sounds jingled together, then turned into a deep scratching sound as something dragged across the ground.  His mind snapped awake before he could guess what it meant.

At first he couldn’t tell if it was part of his dream or not, but when the bookshelf beneath him cracked and sent him rolling into pointy rocks, his bruised hip reassured him that this was real. So why was the ground still shaking under his knees?

He felt a heavy piece of drywall fall into his hair and his eyes were blasted with gray dust. A brown arm lifted Jason under his armpits and dragged him to his feet. A flash of black hair almost whipped him in the face and darted around the space. A deep boom echoed a distance away and the room shook again, this time with Jason bracing himself against the body behind him.

                “It’s the tremors!” his cousin yelled into his ear. “We need to get out of here before this place falls on top of us. Shiri, forget the sleeping mats and just go!” Isaac let go of Jason and pulled Shiri out of her frantic collection of personal items. Jarred awake, his instincts kicked in and Jason made a beeline for the shop door, opening it for the others to run through. “Go, go go!” Just as they cleared the doorway, the ground shook so hard that the shop imploded, sending a blast of debris in every direction.

The shockwave forced Jason to the ground, his hands curling around his head in defense. His muscles tightened against the next quake, but the impact sounded farther away. Then ground stopped shaking. The tremors had stopped as quickly as they had started. Confused, Jason kept his body flat and chanced a look around. Isaac and Shiri were nowhere to be seen.  

He panicked. Adrenaline pulled his legs up like a puppet and he cupped his hands around his mouth. “Shiri, where are you? Isaac! Are you guys okay?

                “Hey you don’t have to shout, we’re right here!”Isaac leapt up from behind wall of rubble. Shiri stood up next to him, hunched over and scanning the area like a frightened animal. Huh? Jason looked back and judged the distance from the shop door to Isaac’s position. “How the heck did you get over there so fast?”

                “I had to get Shiri to safety. This wall of rubble here looked like the most stable from the other debris,” Isaac said  with a matter-of-fact. “Why didn’t you follow us?”

Wow. His cousin’s quick thinking and even faster running skills made him sound quite heroic. Of course Jason would never admit that he was impressed. “I uh, hurt my leg when you woke me. So I couldn’t run as fast…” Yeah, that sounded lame.

                “Oh really, are you okay? If you start bleeding out here, it could get infected,” Isaac offered. Jason rolled his eyes, but was grateful for his cousin’s simple mind. Jason picked himself up from the gravel. The three met up and fear turned to shaky laughter as they got a good look at themselves.

“Haha Shiri, you look like an old lady,” Jason joked as he brushed gray soot out of her hair.

                “Hey! Well you smell like an old dog,” Shiri teased back.

Isaac cleared his throat and pressed between his cousins. “Now kids, don’t fight. After all I think Shiri looks beautiful no matter what she’s been through.” Isaac redirected his charming smile to Shiri. “Even if you were old and wrinkly, you would still be the girl for me.”

                “How sweet,” she responded in monotone.

                “Now that we’re all okay, the first thing we need to do is scout the area,” Isaac continued. “Once it’s secure, we can move out!” His stomach growled like a bear before he got much farther.

“Maybe breakfast should be first,” Shiri giggled.

                “And I’ll go check on the bike. You know, make sure it’s not destroyed and we’re stranded out here, “ Jason said.

The three of them walked in opposite directions to carry on their own tasks. Isaac scrambled to the top of the highest pile of rubble. When he knew Shiri was watching, he tried to do a cool jump maneuver onto a low-hanging tree branch. He missed and fell on his butt. Shiri snorted so hard she almost dropped the portable gas lighter from her pack.

Jason just shook his head at the scene.  He was so thankful for the shelter he built over the bike last night. The sturdy frame had collapsed over the vehicle, but had protected it from the falling debris. Nothing was damaged, and the energy cells were charge until eighty percent. They’d be ready to leave after breakfast.

                “Hey guys, there’s something you need to see!”Isaac yelled from his lookout point. “And…it’s kinda freaky!”

Isaac had successfully climbed into the tree and was standing on the lowest branch. His hand shielded his eyes from the sun, but he didn’t look happy.

Jason jogged right behind his sister toward rubble mountain. The three meter pile of cement blocks gave them an excellent viewpoint for the rest of the landscape. He just didn’t know what he was looking at: large craters of gray stone scarred the grasslands before them like a checkerboard. The deep pits still looked fresh; trees were cracking at their roots and falling in.

                “What are those? Did the tremors do that?” Isaac asked.

Shiri studied the strange landscape. Recognition lit up her eyes and she quickly asked, “Hey Jason. Is it just me or do those craters remind you of the sinkhole we saw at Hillversten?”

                “Yes, you’re right! That’s where I’ve seen them before,” Jason replied quickly. “Although there’s something strange about how those pits are arranged in pairs…”

                “Well they kinda look like huge footprints,” Isaac pointed out.

Jason went silent and double-checked the landscape. Sure enough it did have the look of a giant elephant rampaging through the fields. “That’s a…unique way to look at it,” he mused.