“Yes, Gail,” Helen snarled, “but knowing about its imminent arrival could not make me stop it, could it? There is nothing we can do, but wait and hope for the best. Now quit being hysterical and keep your head down.”
Gradually, the quake grew worse and threatened to pull apart the massive structure under the force of its violence until the lights flickered their last. Darkness was no longer temporary.
“Don’t worry,” Burt’s reassurance came through the din, “I have a flashlight.”
“Me too, hang on,” Manfred chimed in.
Two beams of dusty white light emanated from where they were, illuminating the ensuing chaos around them. The workmen crept closer to Helen and Gail to huddle with them, all in the solace of the meager torch light.
“Oh, sweet Jesus, we’re going to die,” Gail squealed into her cupped hands.
“Listen,” Manfred said. “Something is peeling loose. Oh Christ, Gail is right. We are done for…”
“Would you stop that shit? I don't want you to seal our fate!” Helen screamed at him, but in fact, she had heard the peeling he spoke of clearly. It was the slow, impending collapse of an entire wall, which would no doubt bring down an entire slab of the roof with it.
The rumble stayed its course, unrelenting in its destruction, but on the bright side, it did not grow any worse. With the falling debris everywhere and the sparks shooting from tearing wall sockets, the four people ducked down and covered their mouths and noses. Even their hair became powdered and grey from the overwhelming dust fall. The precious light from the torches profited them nothing since they had to keep their eyes shut for fear of being blinded by the dirt particles and propelling concrete fragments.
All over central London, from Battersea clean across to the far ends of Enfield, electricity abandoned the city, and car alarms challenged the chaos of splitting earth and collapsing road signs. Gratefully, the quake was not strong enough to topple buildings, but it decimated smaller masonry and ruptured water pipes in several neighborhoods. In the British Museum the seismic nightmare was wreaking havoc on a devastating scale.
No part of the museum was spared. By the time the tremors subsided and eventually ceased, the damage was crippling. In the store room, the professor, her assistant, and the two workmen hunched together even as the rumble became milder, waiting for any dangerous after hocks that could surprise them.
Outside on Great Russell Street, sirens wailed like banshees, portending the devastation exacted by the rapid, but powerful quake. Helen and her colleagues finally dared to rise to their feet and remove their makeshift masks to breathe the clearing air.
“I am too scared to step out of here. I don’t want to see the damage to these priceless relics,” Helen lamented, dusting off her clothing.
“The power won’t be on for quite some time, I reckon,” Burt remarked. “We will have to see if we can get the generator running for the wiring that is still connected.”
“Yep. You never know, we could get lucky,” Manfred agreed. “Ladies, are you ready?”
The women nodded, and with Gail’s grasp still firmly in place on Helen’s arm, they started into the pitch darkness, trailing slightly behind the men who lit the way.
“Watch your step,” Burt warned as they crossed a crumbled pillar that obstructed their way with scattered rocks of cement.
“Oh my God,” Helen gasped as the torch beams fell on shattered vases, smashed statues and porcelain shards strewn underfoot from delicate antiquities now destroyed. “You know, there are things insurance cannot make up for. Unfortunately, I am in such a business where everything is unique and priceless. I tell you, my heart is broken. My heart is like these shattered urns.” Professor Helen Barry was not pretentious. Her eyes glinted with tears in the occasional flare of the flashlights as she surveyed the brisk and brutal end of so many precious calling cards from history. For some of the obliterated displays, she imagined the last voices from thousands of years ago, now stilled forever. Not a shred of evidence from forgotten centuries had survived to bear witness to what those eras had been like.
“Don’t cry, Professor,” Gail comforted Helen as she sobbed softly in the overwhelming darkness where all that was left active was the sound of their shuffling feet and the creaking threat of loose brickwork and severed steel beams.
“Move carefully, ladies,” Burt reminded them. “Watch your surroundings. We should keep in mind that the roof could still cave in on us.”
“How far still?” Gail asked.
Manfred took a look ahead into the dark stuffiness and reported, “Just a few more steps forward and then we turn left to get to the stairs. The generator is in the control room.”
“You can go, Manny,” Burt suggested. “I’ll wait up here with the professor and Gail. There is no need for them to have to go all the way there and back again, hey?”
Manfred nodded. “Too right, mate. I’ll be quick. Just make sure you all stay away from electrical wires or wall sockets, switches and things like that, alright?”
They all nodded and murmured, slowly scuffling toward the display chamber Helen most dreaded. However, she had no choice now. There was no time to be spooked when one had to survive the wrath of nature.
“Where are we?” Gail asked.
“Dr. Heidmann’s Greek Art exhibition room,” Helen answered. She pointed to the large crooked etching, designed to look like Greek lettering.
‘The Mythos Paradigm’
Gail’s wary eyes combed the ill-lit interior of the room for the grotesque sculptures that were impressive even in full light. Now they loomed from the darkness, obscured and deformed.
“Dr. Heidmann’s sculptures are ruined!” Gail exclaimed. “Look, Professor; the one is broken completely in half. He is going to be pissed.”
“Well, I sympathize, but we could do nothing to avoid it. Never mind the doctor. I am dreading Soula’s response about her pieces!” Helen bemoaned the imminent conversation she would have to have with the wealthy collector who had loaned her personal collection to Helen’s museum. “God, she is going to have a fit!”
“Most of her pieces are intact, Professor,” Burt mentioned, running his torch briskly over Soula’s relics.
“Lucky thing most of her sculptures are solid marble or bronze casts, otherwise the quake would have shattered them too,” Gail remarked.
“That is true. That is a relief,” Helen concurred with an audible tone of gratitude. “But look at this sculpture of Heidmann’s. It is completely destroyed. Even if we could somehow mend the torso and the legs, it would have lost all its value.”
Gail used her cell phone for light, scrutinizing the broken statue. “The thin marble exterior was too weak to support the limestone it consisted of…” she described smoothly at first, but she stopped in mid-sentence. She was sure the lack of light betrayed her eyes, but on closer inspection she was horrified to confirm what she hoped was a trick of the light on crumbled stone.
“Holy shit! This is impossible,” she gasped in shock. “Oh my God, Professor!”
“What is it?” Helen asked, reluctantly making her way to where Gail was examining the broken statue. Gail’s face was ashen and her lost eyes wide with dubiousness.
Burt rushed over to shine his flashlight on the fallen sculpture, illuminating the grey stone that encapsulated calcified internal organs so perfectly shaped and abundant that it could only be genuine. He caught his breath at the sight, “Look. Skeletal structure too.”
Gail hyperventilated at the ghastly discovery that her reason refused to process, no matter how she rationalized it. She looked up at Helen and voiced her disbelief.
“This is no statue, Professor. It was a man, an actual human being!”