Catherine knew Sams was dead, had seen his tiny body in the horribly white coffin as they had closed the lid and hidden him forever from her sight. She knew that she had seen the coffin lowered into the gashed earth and knew that whatever was left of her baby lay there, unmoving, unbreathing, unable to love her or call to her.
She knew all of that.
She knew it, and knew that Sams could not possibly be inside the house…and knew that Willard had to find him, bring him out, rescue him and return him to her.
She sank to her knees and clutched feverishly at her older children. The pulled closer to her, trembling and crying in hope and terror and confusion and despair.
“Willard!” she screamed. Then: “No, Willard!” just as somewhere within the bowels of the house, beneath the remains of slab that had shattered and disintegrated under the force of the earthquake, a gas line ruptured, two bits of metal collided with sudden violence, struck a spark, and-even as the side wall of the house began crumbling and sloughing away, detached from the rest of the structure by the earthquake’s fury-sheets of fire erupted from every window, every doorway, every crack, and the house burst into flames.
From the Tamarind Valley Times, 30 August 2010:
TEMBLOR STRIKES VALLEY;
SEVERAL INJURED, ONE DEAD
The 4.5 quake that rumbled across Tamarind Valley yesterday left minor structural damage behind, although several injuries were reported and one death resulted.
Willard Huntley, 38, was killed when the gas line beneath his home burst, presumably as a result of the temblor, and exploded, destroying the house. He is survived by his wife, Catherine, and three children.
The Huntley home was the only one seriously damaged in the quake which, though mild according to the Richter scale, nevertheless continued for over a minute, causing pictures to fall from walls and items to tumble from shelves in stores across the Valley. Authorities are unsure why the Huntley home was so severely effected when others nearby were not. In one home not a block away, a single vase fell unbroken from a piano, the only result of the quake.
Tragically, the Huntleys were still recovering from the sudden death of their youngest child a month earlier. Samuel ‘Sams’ Huntley, 2? was found…