Her apartment swayed. A bookshelf vomited its contents. The famous "Drop, Cover, and Hold On" poster from the district office—the one she’d tacked up for irony—fell off the wall.
Maya held up the PDF. "I saved the quiz!" she yelled.
Maya stared at the blinking cursor on her laptop screen. The file name was a masterpiece of all-caps panic: earthquake quiz pdf
Maya grabbed the damp, slightly crumpled pages. Twenty questions. Perfect.
She woke to a low rumble. Not thunder. Not a truck. It was the sound of the world groaning. The coffee mug on her desk did a little jitterbug, then tipped over. Her apartment swayed
She didn't remember hitting print. Maybe she had, in that drowsy moment before the shaking started. Her brain, it seemed, had better survival instincts than her conscious self.
Then, the power died. Silence.
She pressed the button. The ancient machine groaned louder than the aftershock. Paper jammed, un-jammed, and then, like a miracle, began to spit out pages. Question 1: What is the point inside the Earth where an earthquake starts?