Excerpt of The Disaster Relief Club by M. Saylor Billings

Jimmy Marsh's eyes stared up from the oil-changing pit. His mouth still bore the mirth he had felt just before his brainstem fractured at the spinal column. Warm blood oozed down his back onto the cold cement. Tucked into his pants, stuffed haphazardly under his shirt, was a thick manila envelope with the Dragon Emergency Management logo stamped on it.

Urgent streaks of yellow and white headlamps pierced the pitch black above his body. The approaching muffled thumps of steel-toed boots echoed through the abandoned airplane hangar. Commander Bill White used his flashlight to survey the damage to his makeshift command post, which consisted of a foldable card table, a foldable chair, a battery operated lantern, and a cardboard box that contained his paperwork.

Commander Bill White picked up the lantern, snapped it on, and snarled at the two smiling faces approaching him.

"Did ya' feel that?" Wyatt boomed, his youthful energy ricocheting around the abandoned military base hangar.

"So much for the drill, that's the real thing!" Charley added, watching the dust dance around in the light beams.

"Shut up - both of you. Go back to your stations and start packing up. We have to get out of here. You've got 10 minutes." Bill said in his Oklahoma drawl.

"My men are on it, Chief." Charley said.

"Yeah, you can hear it coming like thunder rumblings, but below you." Wyatt explained.

"If either one of you leave one scrap of evidence that we were here, I will kill you." Bill's thin lips trembled.

Wyatt tapped on Charley's arm and pulled him backwards, "Back in ten Commander."

Commander Bill righted the desk up and placed the lantern on top. The contents of his box - area maps, payroll sheets, forms and documents - had all spilled out across the floor. He shook his head in frustration. The one and only night he could be sure there would be no outside interference to run a mock earthquake drill inside his target area and there is an actual earthquake. He paced along the shadowy boundary of his lantern light and kicked an orange pylon that had scooted inside his outline into the oil-changing pit beyond. Muffled boots approached.

"Commander, I have my men packing up the last of the our radio equipment. We'll be ready to roll out in five minutes. Should I just have them all meet back at the off- site base?" Austin looked over his shoulder as Greg approached from behind him.

"Yeah, let's just all go - no. You take your men and equipment through the Warner tunnel, medical and haz-mat should take the South Bridge. And have flight office, incident command, and utility go with me around Oakland. We'll do a quick debriefing and then breakfast - I rented out the back room at Sunshine's."

"We're ready now Sir," Greg addressed the Commander and then turned to Austin. "Austin, I sent a couple of my men over to help pull that tent down for you," Greg began.

Austin ignored Greg. "Sir, I know we'll be doing a debriefing but you should know there was some interference on the radio's before we went silent."

Commander Bill squared his small shoulders to Austin, the lantern highlighting half his face. "What are you going to do about that Austin?"

"Run equipment tests, come back out here to the base, maybe, and do some run —throughs at night again."

"Yeah, ya' think? Maybe?" Bill shook his head, making the excess skin on his neck waggle. "Keep drilling. There will be no mistakes or hiccups in our outfit. Understand?"

"Sir, I do." Austin turned, leaving Greg facing Commander Bill.

"What do you want, ass wipe." It was a command not a question.

"I came to help you pack up Sir."

"I don't need your help. No one leaves before meeting back here and you can lead them in prayer before the exit."

"Sir. Yes sir."

Wyatt switched on his headlamp and looked around at the five men hanging around the white medical van. "Prayer with Commander before we leave. Hop to it." He said.

Groans and mumbling accompanied the moving bodies. Wyatt pulled Charley aside. "I'm beginning to think Jimmy may have been the lucky one."

"I don't think anyone who knows Jimmy would call him lucky."

Wyatt struck a serious tone with his childhood friend, "Look, after tonight, I'm just not sure this is the right place for either of us."

"You're just mad they made you cut your hair." Charley said as he pointed at Wyatt's fresh ‘high and tight' haircut.

"Charley, listen to me, man. Maybe Jimmy was right about this job."

Charley stopped his friend, "That's easy for you to say Wyatt. But for Jimmy and me, it's different. We're nurses. Where else are we going to make these kinds of bones? Look if you want to leave, then go."

"No, but let's hear Jimmy out. He's over at Stranglers - we'll talk to him. I don't think he's mad because he didn't get hired…" Wyatt's volume was growing.

Charley grabbed Wyatt's arm sharply. "Shh. Fine, just keep your voice down and walk - I don't want to be late for the prayer thing."

Agnes Strangler rocked her eighty-three year old body up and out of bed at 4:07 a.m. "Oh, that was a good one." She put on her housecoat and matching slippers. Reaching below her bed, she pulled out her oversized suede "fashion" bag that she had converted into her evacuation kit and drug it behind her as she opened her bedroom door and entered the hall.

"Jimmy?" She knocked on a bedroom door. Agnes Strangler's best friend had been Ruth Marsh, Jimmy's grandmother.