The Survivor Chronicles: Book 1, The Upheaval Read Free Page A

late tonight.”
     
    “Would you like me to keep dinner warm for you?”
     
    “Don’t bother. I’ll be having dinner with clients.” Or whatever new girl he was dating this week. He jutted his chin out. “You have to dust better; there was some on top of the bookshelf in my den this morning.”
     
    Mary Ellen clenched her teeth as she forced a tight smile to her mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said with a nod. “I’ll make sure to take care of that today.”
     
    “Good.” He turned away from her, whistling again as he grabbed the briefcase from inside the glass door. “You might also consider hitting the gym again. You’re putting on weight, you know.”
     
    No, she didn’t know. Other than pregnancy, she’d always been the same size six she’d been since she was fourteen. Not that she expected him to notice. She didn’t say any of this though; she simply nodded and continued to smile her irritating, phony smile at him.
     
    Six more years. Just six more. On days like today, it felt like an eternity.
     
    “Of course,” she placated, unwilling to give him the pleasure of seeing her upset by his words.
     
    She knew, without even having to look, that it was seven nineteen. It would be exactly seven twenty when he stepped outside that front door. It always was. She waited, listening as the door opened and closed behind him before she started her day. Walking into the kitchen she rinsed her coffee cup and placed it in the sink. The dishes could wait till later.
     
    She jogged upstairs, pulled out her workout clothes and quickly slipped them on. This was her favorite part of the day, the simple hour she had to herself to walk down the beach and savor in the beauty that the rest of the world had to offer. An hour in which she could remind herself that not everything was awful in life, and that there were good things out there, just waiting for her to discover.
     
    She was making her way back downstairs when she felt the first tremor, a small shaking. Rochelle’s fifth grade picture rattled beside her on the wall. She clasped the railing tighter as the photo continued to shake. It broke loose and plummeted onto the stairs. Mary Ellen jumped back as glass shattered around her feet.
     
    “What the…?”
     
    The question broke off as the world settled around her again. She’d felt a tremor last year, but not this much, and at the time she’d written it off as a passing train until she’d heard about it on the news. There was no denying this though. It was obvious that she’d just experienced some sort of earthquake. She’d heard of the New Madrid fault line, knew that it would affect them if an earthquake was large enough, but something about this just didn’t feel right.
     
    Not like she was an earthquake expert. She’d spent a summer, when she was eleven, visiting her aunt and uncle in San Francisco but she’d only experienced one small tremor while there, and her aunt had insisted that it had actually only been a passing trolley. As she got older Mary Ellen suspected her aunt was right, and that she had simply wanted it to be an earthquake so she would have something exciting to tell her friends about after the summer.
     
    But now? Well, now there was no denying what she had just felt.
     
    She waited breathlessly for a minute, but it seemed that the world had settled back into place and the small tremor had been an isolated incident. She stooped over and began to carefully gather the larger pieces of glass within her cupped hand. She had just placed the last piece into her palm when the world seemed to drop out from under her. She cried out as she was violently thrust to the side.
     
    She felt glass slice into her hand; blood flowed forth as her shoulder bounced into the wall and the shattered pieces scattered again. Instinctively, she put her hand out for balance but it was already too late. Slick from the blood, her hand slipped awkwardly and she was thrust forward as the world lurched once