Untitled - natural disaster

The last rays of the setting sun were just disappearing below the horizon as a young man in Apartment 14a hurried through each of his rooms searching for his keys. A glint of metal caught his eye, and with a satisfied smile, he reached forward to grab them. A sudden tremor that seemed to come from all around him made his movement falter. He straightened up and glowered to himself. “That bloody man. He’ll come through that ceiling one day.”

With an annoyed huff, he snatched up his keys and swiftly left the apartment. The man in the apartment above him had lived there at least as long as Aaron had lived in his own; he was a morose old man whose short-temper was notorious among the other residents. Checking the time, and seeing 18:52 flash up on his phone screen, Aaron quickened his pace and took the steps down two at a time. Not even a minute later he had reached the sub-level more commonly known as the car-park.

As he passed through the door, he let his pace slow and made his way over to his car. He raised his hand slightly and pressed the button on his keys, with only the tiniest of delays the lights flashed just the once, but as he lifted his thumb away from the button it was as if he had pressed the trigger for an explosive. The ground rumbled beneath him and a deafening roar filled his ears.

He barely had time to process what he was doing before he dived for the car, slamming the door shut behind him as he got in. The pounding of his heart in his chest was almost unbearable and almost rivalled the sheer volume of the noise made by tectonic plates grinding together.

It was all over in less than sixty seconds.

Letting go of the breath he was very much aware of holding, he gingerly opened his eyes; the scene in front of him was barely different than what he had been seeing moments earlier – bar the odd piece of rubble. He pried his hand from the steering wheel, allowing his blood to flow back to his knuckles. He slowly got out of the car. It took him a few attempts to even open the door but once he had managed to coerce the paranoia that he would be squashed like a bug by a lump of concrete out of his mind, he finally did it. As his feet touched the ground he became very aware of the numerous car alarms blaring elsewhere in the car-park and somewhere in the distance there were screams and shouts gradually building in volume. Screams and shouts of some very scared people.