I slammed on the brakes and got out. The quake had passed, but the highway still rose and settled beneath my feet like ripples of gray water.
"Jesus Christ! What was that?" someone cried. I turned and saw a man approaching.
"Earthquake. A big one."
"No shit! I--"
"Shhh." I heard something: faint, high-pitched. The man and I approached the fallen roadway. The cry came from underneath.
We moved to where the road lay angled upward a few feet. Kneeling, I could just make out a crushed car deep under the fallen slab, its roof collapsed into the passenger compartment by the pile of debris atop it.
I started in. "Come on!"
The man looked at the precarious slab and shook his head. "Ain't no way, man." He walked away.
I crawled under the slab on my belly, coughing against the chalky taste of concrete dust. The sharp edges of the rubble cut through my jeans; blood trickled along my leg as I scrambled deeper into the gloom.
I reached the car, pressed my hand on its warm, wrinkled metal surface. I wouldn't have believed anyone could have survived inside, but the cry told me otherwise. I squeezed through a narrow crevice, managed to get my head to where the driver's side window had been.
The cry, weaker now, came from just in front of me. I blinked my eyes, trying to see through the dust-choked grayness before me.
A woman lay pinned, the steering wheel smashed into her midriff. Blood and intestine dripped onto the seat and floorboards. I choked back vomit.
She heard me and stopped keening. Grunting in pain, she managed to turn enough to look at me. "My . . . baby?" she gasped.
I squeezed closer to the car, peered behind her into the back seat. Only the red-stained edge of a carseat was visible beneath the great beam that had crushed her vehicle.
I faced the woman, her eyes graying, her voice weaker. "My . . . baby?"
I nodded. "You're baby's fine, Ma'am."
She smiled and closed her eyes.
I crawled back out the way I'd come, then collapsed onto the roadway, my back against a block of shattered cement, and wept.