New Title 1 by Dru Pagliassotti

ran toward the library. This close to finals—
    Cries arose from the rubble.
     
    He lost track of time as he and Jarret and the students and staff who hadn’t been trapped under the collapsing walls dug through piles of brick and shelving. One of the library staff members parked all of the information services carts in a line along the buckled sidewalk and turned on their headlights. They would provide illumination until their solar-powered batteries lost their charges.
    Thank heavens, Lindgren thought as he worked, that most of the students were earthquake-wise enough to have taken refuge under the reading tables and study desks. So far everyone was alive, although several would need medical treatment.
    “The emergency lines are all busy,” reported one of the library administrators, closing her phone. She sounded grim. “And campus security isn’t answering, either.”
    “Pastor!” Jarret shouted from the sidewalk. “Come here, quick!”
    Lindgren climbed over the skittering piles of bricks and joined the three students who stood in a huddle: Jarret, a girl he recognized from services, and a young man he didn’t know.
    “Go on, Ally, tell him,” Jarret urged.
    “It’s a monster,” she said, through chattering teeth. She wasn’t dressed for the cold, and from the way she leaned on her friend, Lindgren guessed she was injured. “Peter and I saw it come out of the ground, this giant snakelike thing, and it smashed a whole bunch of people right outside Gilbert Hall.”
    Sickened, Lindgren shrugged off his wool coat and draped it around her shoulders.
    “Take her to the chapel,” he directed Jarret. They had turned the nave into a makeshift hospital for the injured students they’d dug out from the rubble. The chapel’s tiny emergency cabinet was already running out of bandages and antiseptic.
    “But, what about—”
    “Go on. She’s freezing to death.”
    “You don’t believe me,” Ally said, shivering, “because nobody ever believes when they’re told about monsters, but it’s true, you can ask Peter.”
    “I will.” Lindgren touched her shoulder. “You go inside with Jarret and get warm, and say a prayer for us all.”
    She nodded. Jarret took her arm and helped her away.
    “It is true,” said the young man she’d called Peter. He wasn’t dressed much better than the girl, and his feet were bare and covered with dirt. “I know it sounds crazy, but it looked like a giant snake, and it came out of the ground, turned, and then went back in again, on top of a bunch of RAs and people.” His face was white. “I think they’re dead.”
    “Could it have been a loose pipe, or a burst of steam?” Lindgren asked, searching for some other explanation. “The earthquake has probably broken a number of underground pipes.”
    “No. It was scaly, and it had teeth. It was alive, not a piece of metal.”
    Lindgren breathed a prayer and nodded, putting a hand on the young man’s back. “All right. I’ll go take a look. Go inside, get warmed up, and see if you can borrow some shoes and a coat from one of the injured students. We need as many able-bodied searchers out here as we can get.”
    “Do you want me to show you?”
    “You were in Gilbert Hall? I know the way. Go on.” Lindgren gently pushed him forward, and Peter nodded.
    The pastor shivered, his suit jacket little defense against the cold and his fear. He walked over to the administrator with the phone.
    “There’s some trouble at Gilbert Hall,” he said. “I’m going to take a look.”
    “I’ll keep trying to raise someone on the phone,” she said, nodding. “Be careful, Pastor.”
    “You, too.” He flicked on his flashlight and began walking across Campus Park, praying that the two young students had been mistaken.
    Then he heard gunshots from north campus, and he changed course, breaking into a run.

XV

     
    Clancy was being tugged forward, out of his warm bed, and he protested, but his mouth was full of dirt. He coughed