The driver stopped their SUV and Mas unlocked her seat belt. As she let it roll into its housing, she felt something odd. She didn’t know what it was exactly, but she clearly sensed that something was wrong. The SUV, the palace, her purse, and everything around her seemed just ever so slightly off, somehow. She couldn’t put her finger on what it was, but it was as if everything suddenly shifted.
And it had. Fifteen miles west and eight miles down, the earth moved under her feet. It was always moving; tectonic plates do that. But instead of its usual snail’s pace of a quarter-inch per year, the entire island and everything on it began to shift more than six feet to the west, all in one go.
A gut-churning rumble welled up from the bowels of the earth and the windows of the palace rattled in their frames. A massive chunk of plaster popped off the façade, and then another one. Weighing several tons apiece, they crashed to the pavement, throwing up a tremendous cloud of dust.
Mas grabbed her door handle and the back of the driver’s seat, fighting down a yelp of panic. The PNP troopers instinctively gripped their weapons and swallowed back their fear, but a monster was suddenly upon them and they couldn’t fight back. They crossed themselves for divine protection and piled out of the five vehicles, hanging onto their doors and gaping in wide-eyed astonishment at the wobbling façade of the palace directly in front of them. They were utterly petrified, but there was nowhere to flee and there was nothing to do but hang on and pray for deliverance.
The rumbling swelled and grew deeper as the entire mass of the island acted like a solid sub-woofer. The rocky substrata resonated with the muzzled rumbling of two tectonic plates grinding past each other. Force waves were propagating around the world through the earth’s crust, and radiating out of the Caribbean basin into the Atlantic Ocean and beyond.
The palace walls twisted as the Mercedes lurched and shuddered, its computerized suspension working overtime to counteract the weirdly shifting pavement below.
The rumbling mutated to a deep, continuous roar as terrified screams punctured the air and the first billows of dust began rolling in from the neighborhood. The street in front of the palace rippled as though it were floating on a choppy sea. As the undulation swept down the avenue, a row of buildings across the street slumped against each other like dominos and collapsed, burying panicked people on the crowded sidewalk and everyone still inside.
Mas leaned against her door and pushed her way out of the lurching SUV. She hung onto the open door with both hands as the pavement lurched beneath her feet, and she stared up at the palace, unable to move. She could clearly see inside, through the twenty enormous pairs of French doors that lined the first and second floors. The people on both floors were in a mad panic and scrambling for the exits, but it was too late. The second floor walls suddenly buckled and the entire roof pancaked down to the first floor, crushing everyone upstairs.
Mas, La Croix and their driver and bodyguards frantically scrambled away from their vehicle. As they did, the main dome over the grand staircase dropped through the second floor and came to a halt atop the first floor columns. The entire portico blew outwards from the impact, burying the front steps under a landslide of debris.
The two SUVs at the front of the caravan were instantly smothered, as well as the front half of the Mercedes that Mas had been sitting in just moments before. Within a few short seconds, the entire building had sunk into itself like a sad, deflated airship.
Everyone who had been in the front two PNP vehicles was buried alive. Their comrades could hear their screams of agony, echoed by more cries of panic and pain issuing from the collapsed palace, piteous voices that cut through the thick, choking clouds of pulverized plaster.
The entire city was dissolving around them. Wails of terror from three million mortal souls filled the dusty air, blending with an ungodly rumbling that shook the crowded hills and shantytowns for miles around.230,000 people lay dead or dying. The White House was gone, along with 250,000 residences, 30,000 commercial buildings, the National Assembly building, the Port-au-Prince Cathedral, and the main jail.
After thirty-five endless seconds, it was all over.