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As she stood up to do so, she seemed to stumble and couldn’t find her feet; the ground seemed to rock and sway beneath her. George scrambled to leave the pool and get to her, his legs seeming to fail him also. A loud rumbling echoed around the clearing, and Anne noticed that all the forest noises seemed to have stopped. George reached her side, clutching her to him, crushing her lips with his as he hugged and kissed her. ‘I think we’re in the shit babe’ he said. Anne was almost as shocked by his profanity as the fact that her legs seemed to have failed her. ‘That was an earth tremor, or mini quake, I’m not really up on things tectonic or volcanic, but I kind of assumed extinct volcanoes don’t cause tremors. If this baby is about to waken, we need to get about a hundred miles away, and then watch it on CNN!’

They scrambled to get dressed, George trying to put both legs down the same side of his shorts as Anne was pulling the dress over her head, her underwear dropping into the water and almost shooting off down stream as another small tremor caused them to stumble. The ground settled once more and Anne was able to finish dressing, taking no account of the uncomfortableness of wearing wet underwear. There was another sudden movement in the ground causing them both to stumble, Anne almost falling into the stream.

There was another eerie silence followed by a tremendous shaking of the ground. Anne and George fell both letting go of the rope as it was snatched from their grasp. The trees about them shook, a rain of insects and small amphibians fell about them as the ground continued to tremor. “Don’t touch the frogs babe,” George shouted quickly, “I think some of them may cause sickness.”

As abruptly as it started the shaking stopped, and once more a calmness returned. The river even seemed slower to Anne. She looked up and screamed to George, “They’ve gone George, quick, the rope.” There was no sign of Nicole on the rope bridge and Raoule was missing from the platform. George stood, hauling on the rope, Anne pulling with him. The rope seemed to snag after a while, and tried to pull against them. They stopped pulling and Anne tied the rope off against the truck hitch, and ran to the rivers’ edge with George.