Burning Water

Chapter One Lupe sobbed harshly, her voice muffled, as if smothered by the darkness all about her. She clawed at the rubble that hemmed her in; her finger-ends were surely raw and bloody, but she couldn't see them, and she was too hysterical to feel much pain. All she felt was panic, the panic of a trapped animal---for she was trapped helplessly beneath tons of rubble, rubble that, less than an hour ago, had been the twenty-story hotel in downtown Mexico City where Lupe worked as a maid. Today was September 19, 1985. Mexico City had just experienced one of the worst earthquakes in its history. Ironically enough, it was also Lupe's birthday. Less than an hour ago she'd been happy. It had not much mattered that she'd had to work on her birthday; she had known that she was lucky to have this job at all. Less than an hour ago, she had descended the stairs to the cellar storeroom singing. It would only have been a few more hours, and then she'd have been off, free for the evening. There was going to be a party, cake---and handsome Joachim, who worked as a bellman, had promised to come. She had a new dress, red and soft, like rose petals, and Joachim liked red. One of the tourists had already given her a tip for bringing extra towels. And there had been a full, unopened bottle of wine left behind after the party in room 1242. She'd hidden it in her locker, for her party. It was going to be a good day, with a better evening to come. The ashtrays she'd come seeking were kept in boxes next to the stairs; cheap little metal things that the tourists were always taking. Somebody had overfilled the particular box she reached for and several of them had fallen out and rolled under the staircase. She'd had to wedge herself under the staircase to reach them. She hadn't minded; the cellar was well lit, and she was small enough to fit beneath the staircase easily. That was what had saved her. For with no warning, the floor began to buck and tremble like a wild horse; the lights sparked and went out. She screamed, or thought she did---she couldn't hear her own voice in the shrieking of tortured metal and concrete. She'd been flung backward and against the wall, and hit her head, seen multicolored flashes of light, then nothing. When next she could think, she was hemmed in on all sides by concrete and debris; trapped in the dark---a darkness so absolute that there was nothing she could compare it to. The reinforced staircase had protected her; kept her from dying beneath the crumbling hotel. She knew at once what had happened; Mexico City had suffered earthquakes before. But she had never been caught inside a building by one; never known anyone who had been buried alive like this. Lupe had survived the quake. Now as she stared into the darkness, she realized slowly that she faced death in another, more painful form: suffocation, starvation, thirst--- Madre de Dios, she prayed wildly, I'm only seventeen! I have always been good---I can't die--- The air in her tiny, sheltered pocket was already growing stale. She panted in fear, and the air seemed to grow thicker and fouler with each breath. The sound of her breathing was a rasping in her own ears, for the silence was as absolute as the darkness. She rested her forehead on the wall in front of her, feeling her chest constrict and ache. How long before the air became unbreathable? That fear was enough to make her tremble in every limb. But worse than the rock that hemmed her in, worse than the thickening air, worse than any of it was the terrible, menacing darkness all around her. Lupe was afraid of the dark; she had been afraid of the dark for as long as she could remember. It was a vague fear she couldn't even define, just a feeling that thLackey, Mercedes is the author of 'Burning Water' with ISBN 9780812524857 and ISBN 0812524853.