The noises weren’t just in his dreams. Somewhere in the house, he heard a grating, grinding noise, a sickening metallic crash, and more of JJ’s panicked screams.
He jumped out of bed and bolted for her room only to find the door standing wide open, but she wasn’t there. He spun around and ran down the hall, through the living room and into the kitchen, where he found her backing away from the door leading to the garage.
Scooping her up, he paused as he tried to process what, exactly, he was seeing in the garage. His pickup truck now rested nose-down in a large and growing hole that was swallowing it in slow-motion.
Synapses in his brain finally started firing. “Fuck!” He turned, snatching his phone and wallet off the counter with his free hand as he ran past, heading for the sliding glass doors off the living room, which led out to the backyard.
JJ was crying in his ear but he ran around the far end of the house and out to the sidewalk. There, one-handed and trembling, he dialed 911. He also got a better view of what, exactly, was going on.
“911, what is your emergency?”
“I…I…” He stared at the growing maw slowly devouring his driveway. “Sinkhole. There’s a sinkhole that just formed under our house. It’s…” He struggled not to burst into tears. “It’s swallowed my truck, and it’s taking our house.”
“Sir, is everyone out of the house?”
“Yeah.”
“Are you in a safe location?”
“We’re outside. My daughter and I.”
“All right, I’m dispatching help right now…”
Since he was standing out there in his boxer shorts, Hank wanted to try to grab something else to wear for himself and for JJ. Once he hung up with 911, he ran to their next-door neighbor on the safer end of the house, away from the sinkhole. He pounded on her door, screaming to wake her up, and shoved JJ at her when she opened the door. He’d met her and her husband, and they were an older couple, very nice.
“Sinkhole! Please hold her, I’ll be right back!”
JJ screamed at him not to leave her, trying to pull away from the neighbor and reach for him, but when the neighbor stepped out of her house and realized what was happening, she yelled for her husband.
Hank ran around to the backyard again, then inside through the sliders, which he’d left standing open, and down the hall to his bedroom. He grabbed shorts, a T-shirt, and started to grab shoes when an idea hit.
He yanked open his window, which looked onto the backyard. After punching the screen out, he started heaving boxes of his clothes through it. Once the cops arrived, they likely wouldn’t let him back into the house. He grabbed his laptop and charger and dumped it out there, too, managing to drop it on a box to cushion it.
Then he ran down to JJ’s room and did the same thing, grabbing armfuls of clothes, her school and gear bags, and tossed them out the open window.
But when he ran back toward the great room, to try to grab some of the boxes there, a sheriff’s deputy, who’d run in through the open sliders, caught up with him.
“Sir, you have to get out of here. Now. It’s not safe!”
“But I need to get—”
“Now!” He grabbed him by the arm and practically dragged him out of the house. From the garage he heard more crashes and metallic grinding. The deputy helped him move what he’d salvaged so far to the temporary safety of the neighbor’s porch. Finally, Hank took a sobbing JJ back from the neighbor and cradled her against him.
Another deputy was already stringing yellow caution tape around the front of their house. As a fireman walked up to him and started talking to him, Hank slid to the ground, his arms around JJ as they both cried.
* * * *
Maddox had been sound asleep after masturbating to his usual stable of fantasies about Hank when his phone rang and woke him up.
Hank’s custom tone.
He fumbled it, where it lay on his nightstand, before he answered it. “Hello?”
It sounded like Hank was crying, instantly driving sleep from Maddox’s brain while simultaneously making him think the worst. “Dox…I need you, I-I—”
“What’s wrong?”
Another man came on the line. “Hello?”
