Never by K. D. Mcentire

center of her forehead with the heel of her hand. Wendy could see that her sister had slammed her head into top of the glove compartment during the worst of the quake. One side of the compartment had cracked and was leaking old napkins and straws, the curled and yellowed edge of the insurance paperwork barely poking through. “It didn't feel like it…normally does. It felt like…like it was coming from the west. Like a wave, rolling only one way.”
    “Chel's right,” Wendy agreed, peering out the window. Lights flickered, illuminating the buckled pavement in strobing shadows. “I've been in some biggies and that one was…weird. Different.”
    “What's the radio say?” Chel asked, spinning the radio dial. All was music, even the station normally reserved for emergency broadcasts. “How big do you think it was? Four? Four point five?”
    “The dial's gonna catch on fire if you don't give it a rest, Chel. Let the world have a sec for people to get up to speed,” Wendy said, forcing herself to stop chewing her lower lip nervously. “I bet everyone who's awake is still picking their butts up off the floor. It's New Years, most of them are probably too drunk to realize it's actually the world spinning around them.”
    “So…are we headed into the city then?” Jon said, gesturing for Chel to keep an eye out on the road as he carefully maneuvered the car around. He pointed ahead to where part of the highway was broken and buckled. “We can't go that way. There's the exit but it's blocked off with debris. Thank heavens this car is built like a boat. We're going to have to go around the mess up ahead through the breakdown lane and over some of the torn up sections.”
    “That could shred the tires,” Chel warned. “Dad'll be ticked off.”
    Jon shrugged. “Or we can wait for the city to get around to this stretch of road.”
    Wendy shook her head. “No. Take the breakdown lane and see if you can get all the way to the end of the exit. The next road is a main street so we should be able to pick up on an unbroken stretch at the next entrance.”
    “That breakdown lane is damn near coated in broken glass,” Chel muttered, biting the side of her thumb and scowling. “I can even see rebar! Can you make it? Safely?”
    “He'll have to,” Wendy said. “That earthquake came from the north. The Council is west. So we go west, rebar or no rebar. Jon? Hit it.”
    They could make out the dim shape of Angel Island amid the thick mists pouring across the bay. Eddie leaned over and prodded Wendy in the shoulder. Wendy, too tired to respond, dozed against Piotr's neck, his arm slung behind her and holding her lolling head steady. Eddie stretched to poke Wendy again, when a bump on the Bay Bridge woke her. Blearily she looked at her best friend and yawned.
    “What's up, Eds?” she murmured, uncaring for once that he was witness to whatever-it-was she had going on with Piotr. “You okay?”
    “Me?” he asked, directing her attention out the window. “I'm fine. I was just wondering…do you see that?”
    Wendy blinked and rubbed her eyes. The black, heavy clouds in the distance did not change shape or move. The purple-red flashes of light glowed steadily at the center of the cloudbank, the edges lined with blinding white glimmering Light.
    “Yep,” Wendy said, forcing herself to take a deep, calming breath before she hyperventilated. Every single nerve in her not-quite-a-body was singing in a high, terrified pitch. “I do.”
    “Holy…what is that thing?” Chel hissed, rolling down thewindow and craning her head into the chilly wind to get a better look.
    Gut rolling, Wendy couldn't tear her eyes away. It had to be her imagination, but it looked like there were shapes, shadows, moving amid the clouds. It was like something plucked straight out of her nightmares…or dreamscapes.
    “I believe that that is a crack in the sky,” Wendy murmured, remembering the door in the sand, the ruined-beautiful face of her