The Mute Girl

The sound rang again.

[Ding Ding Ding Dinnng Dinnng Dinnng Ding Ding Ding]

Arbee figured that it was probably another person making that noise, so he thought he should go and take a look. The noise was coming from one of the classrooms nearby him. From his memory, these were the Freshman classrooms. He was a Sophomore himself.

After walking into the classroom where the sound was coming from, he looked around and quickly found it's source. There in the left corner of the room was a girl trapped under a big piece of steel. One of the steel beams had fallen on her, and it seemed to be covering her legs in a way so that they were just trapped, and weren't actually hurt. Clearly, this girl was very lucky.

She was tapping the steel beam with a small piece of concrete, which was what was making the sound.

The girl, who had dirty blonde colored hair and pale white skin, had tears streaming down her face. In any other situation, she could simply be described as cute with her flushed out, rounded face, and her vivid red lips, but not here and now.

On the girl's face was a terrified expression, clearly worried that she was going to die just like that, trapped under the steel beam. She hadn't seemed to notice Arbee come in yet. Arbee yelled out to her, "Hey! Are you okay!"

The girl quickly turned around with an ecstatic expression on her face. One can only imagine how it must feel, having no hope to survive, and suddenly having a chance. A chance to live.

The girl didn't say anything to Arbee and instead signaled stuff with her hands. She pointed to her throat and then shook her head sideways(a no). Arbee was very confused as to what she was doing, but then after the girl repeated it again, and showed her mouth move with n sound coming out, he understood that the girl couldn't talk. He assumed she was mute. Arbee than attempted to signal back to her with his hands. But then she quickly pointed to him, and then to her ears and nodded her head up and down(a yes). He realized that he was being stupid, and that she was obviously not deaf since she had heard him earlier.

Afterward, the girl signaled to the steel beam, and attempted to move her legs, showing that she was trapped. Arbee stopped and thought for a few seconds, and then left the classroom, which made the girl extremely worried that he had abandoned her, and start crying again.

But 5 minutes later Arbee comes back with a small steel pipe, probably taken from some broken piping. He quickly wedged the pole underneath the steel beam that was trapping the girl and pushed down. Using this as a fulcrum it released the girl's legs from under the steel which she quickly moved out of the way.

Arbee's physique wasn't that bad, but the steel beam was quite heavy, and it took him all of his strength plus his adrenaline boost to move the steel beam up using the pipe. This caused Arbee to become very tired, so he sat down to calm himself down and regain some strength.

The girl at this point in time was very confused. She couldn't understand how the boy in front of her can be so calm looking. There are rooms of dead bodies all around them, and something clearly extremely horrific had happened, but his face was completely blank, besides showing a little exhaustion from lifting the steel beam. She figured he was either extremely brave or extremely stupid.

Both of them just sat there resting and thinking. They ended up staying there for almost 30 minutes in total. They were just contemplating about what exactly just happened and worried about what's to come.

As far as Arbee remembered, there has never been such an earthquake in history before. Once just for fun, he searched up the longest earthquake ever, and apparently, even the longest earthquake ever recorded was only 10 minutes long. In this series of earthquakes, the first one was already 15 min, and that's not even counting the rest of the smaller earthquakes. Clearly, the one that had happened right now was not a small deal. Another thing he was slightly worried about was of a tsunami. He had heard tsunamis happen a lot after earthquakes, and this was a very big earthquake, so it should be a pretty big tsunami. But he wasn't too worried because no matter how big the tsunami was, he doubted it would go over 1,000 km inland. In the end, Arbee just decided to go outside and see what the rest of the world is like. He sure wasn't going to achieve anything just sitting there.

While Arbee was thinking about the state of the world and how powerful the earthquakes were, the girl was thinking about her family. Unlike Arbee the girl wasn't an orphan and had both her parents, as well as a younger sister. If almost everyone in her school had someway the other died, there was bound to be similar results all around the city that they were in.

That cities name was Cornsingtown. It was located in the south-east part of Colorado, America. She was mostly worried about her little sister who was in middle school. Her parents both worked outdoors, as botanists, so there was no roof to fall on them. They were a lot safer. But looking at what had happened to her school, she could expect similar things at her sister's school, so her sister could be in a lot of danger.

After seeing Arbee get up, the girl got up too, prepared to follow this seemingly brave man. But a strange thing happened. The moment she got up she suddenly started feeling woozy. Her eyes started to close on her own. Her body collapsed and fell to the ground with a [thud]. Luckily she hit a piece of carpet that was left in the room by the teacher, and wasn't too injured. Normally a high school wouldn't happen to have a random carpet laying around, but the teacher for this classroom happened to bring this carpet in because he liked the feel of it under his feet when he's sitting at his desk. This girl really was quite a lucky person.

Arbee noticed her fall, and turned around to ask her what was wrong. But before he could say a word, he also started to feel woozy and collapsed as well. Arbee wasn't as lucky as her though and his head hit the steel beam that still lay there with a [clang]. Arbee could feel the pain in his head for a second before he completely passed out.