The Shaking

Chapter One

The Shaking.

by John Curzon.

Copyright

©2016 by John Curzon. All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or in any means - by electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise - without the permission of the author.

John Curzon asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this book.

Disclaimer

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organisations, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

...or just hard luck.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my father.

Thanks

Grateful thanks are due to Rachael, who has helped greatly during the writing of this novel as an encouraging critic and someone to bounce ideas off.

The Shaking.

Chapter One

The event was long overdue. The pressure building within the earth's crust below the area gradually increased as time too long to measure in fleeting human lifetimes passed, drawing inexorably closer to a critical threshold. One day it would be too much to contain and the pent-up energy which had accumulated over the millennia would be released. This was an inescapable fact of geology: The question was not If it would occur, but When, and how bad would it be when it happened?

The clever mammals who had recently come to dominate the planet they lived on might have predicted what was to come with their artificially enhanced superpowers, but when they looked deeper below their world's surface their limited knowledge and handicapped perceptions prevented them from detecting what was in plain sight. The majority of them believed - quite understandably and for a number of good reasons - that this area was only the site of a insignificant intraplate fault. They considered the risk of anything catastrophic occurring here was negligible, there being scant evidence of anything disastrous having taken place in the past and so no reason to fear a future calamity. The eternally restless earth may feebly shrug and shudder from time to time, but here such rare events were barely noticeable to the average person, and in the very worst case would cause only minor damage and few casualties.

And so reassured there was no cause for concern the majority of scientists and people continued to insouciantly labour under their delusions. Meanwhile, far beneath their feet, the enormous stresses continued to build; until one late August a few years hence...

Monday. 19.39. Bromley Common.

"Rusty!... Rusty!... Rusty!" That bloody dog! It was always running off whenever it got the chance! Ryan Buckland called Rusty's name again, but there was no sign of the rough haired russet and white Jack Russell cross, nor any answering bark.

If it had been up to him the dog would've gone to the RSPCA for rehoming, but his partner Michelle had insisted on taking Rusty in when his former owner - her separated mother - had died of cancer a year ago. It was what she would have wanted... So the Buckland family had ended up stuck with the mutt, and typically Ryan ended up taking Rusty for his daily exercise on the common when Buckland's work as a delivery driver allowed him to.