Apocalypse (40 page)

Lopez looked at her watch. ‘Shit, we gotta go, right now.’

Katherine Abell stood up.

‘I don’t see why I should go anywhere. This is where I’m needed.’

‘No,’ Lopez shot back, ‘where you’re needed is back in court, because only one person on earth knows Joaquin Abell’s mind, and that person is you.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You’re going to end up in court whether you like it or not,’ Lopez snapped. ‘You can either be in the witness stand or you can be in the dock. Your call.’

‘I won’t turn against my own husband!’

‘Then why are you out here?’ Lopez challenged. ‘As far away from him as you can get?’

Katherine’s lawyerly cool seemed to have deserted her as she flustered.

‘IRIS is still a force for the good. Prosecuting it through the courts will do more harm than good to its charitable causes.’

‘There
are
no charitable causes!’ Lopez insisted. ‘IRIS is a fraud, Katherine, and Joaquin is a megalomaniac bent on creating disasters in order to generate debt in
entire countries. He knows that you’re here. Don’t you see? He’s trying to silence you too!’

‘I don’t believe it,’ Katherine gasped. ‘I won’t believe it.’

‘Is that a gamble you want to take?’ Bryson asked her. ‘Where are your kids?’

‘They’re at school in Miami, far from here,’ Katherine said. ‘This is ridiculous. Even if Joaquin were to target me, he would never harm our children!’

Lopez was about to argue further when a deep, shuddering noise rumbled across the mountains as though some careless god were dragging their heels across the earth. In an instant the walls of the
shack began swaying. Lopez reached out to steady herself.

‘It’s starting!’ she shouted. ‘Get out, now!’

Lopez staggered out of the hut toward the two scooters. The children were scattering toward their homes as frantic parents beckoned them inside.

The earth beneath Lopez’s boots vibrated as though giant celestial strings were quivering through the bedrock deep underground. Bryson got to the scooters first, kick-starting one for
Lopez in a cloud of blue smoke, before leaping onto his own and firing the engine. Lopez climbed onto the scooter as Katherine clambered onto the pillion seat behind her.

‘He knows I’m here!’ Katherine yelled above the noise of the engine. ‘He wouldn’t do this.’

Lopez kicked the scooter into gear. ‘He already has! Hang on!’

Lopez twisted the throttle wide open and the scooter surged away from the village. Flocks of birds vaulted from the trees in thick clouds of wings that streaked across the lumbering clouds
above, and Lopez could see millions of trembling leaves spilling droplets of moisture like a rain shower upon the track as she guided the scooter down the hillside as fast as she dared.

Bryson’s own scooter growled somewhere behind her, following her closely down the trail and shouting as they went.

‘Watch out for the trees!’

Lopez glanced to her left through the quivering blanket of ferns and leaves and saw the moisture-laden soil of the steep hills to her left tumbling and shifting, shaken loose as the quake gained
intensity. Rivulets of earth spilled out across the track in front of her and she swerved the motorbike around the larger chunks, as from the corner of her eye she saw thick, gnarled tree roots
burst from the earth like grasping skeletal hands.

‘The hillside’s coming apart!’ she yelled back to Bryson. ‘Stay on the outside!’

Lopez swerved the scooter further out toward the edge of the track, the plunging hillside vanishing to their right into a dense canopy of trees that she knew concealed a hundred-foot drop.

Katherine shouted out to her above the wailing noise of the engine.

‘We can’t stay on this bike when the quake really gets going!’

Lopez nodded, knowing only that they had to get off the hillside. The drenched soil and exposed flanks of the hills, eroded by years of deforestation and rain, could give way at any moment and
send millions of tons of watery mud cascading down on top of them.

Lopez kicked the motorbike up a gear, sweeping it through a long right-hand bend that followed the epic curve of the mountainside as they plunged beneath a shivering canopy of trees. Cold
droplets of water showered down upon them again, and Katherine’s grip on Lopez’s waist tightened as the scooter banked out almost to the edge of the drop. Lopez leaned into the turn as
the rear wheel skipped and span on the damp track. She twisted the handlebars to the left, counter-steering against the rear wheel’s grip, and letting it spin freely as she broadsided around
the rest of the turn and then opened the throttle wide, the bike coming upright as the track straightened out toward the lowlands a mile away.

Bryson accelerated past them on their left as he powered out of the same corner, his motorbike quicker with only one person aboard. Lopez followed him as he leaned the bike toward the dizzying
drop on the right-hand side of the track, the forest canopy whipping past as they screamed down the hillside. Lopez’s shirt was drenched with water, her hair thick and heavy with moisture,
but already she could feel the heat of the sun again and see ahead the vast floodplain of Puerto Plata bathed in sunlight, distant windows flickering like beacons in the haze.

Katherine yelled at her and pointed at the distant town.

‘It’s coming! Stop the bikes!’

Lopez squinted through the moisture dripping from her eyelids, and saw that something had changed in the town’s harbour ahead. It took her brain a moment to register what it was, as a wave
of fear sluiced through her.

The tide had receded more than a mile out from where it should have been, as though dragged by some unseen force way out in the deep ocean.

A deafening crack burst the air around Lopez as though a gunshot had been fired beside her head, and in an instant she saw a spray of woodchips burst from the foliage as a tree plunged out of
the forest ahead, thick branches rushing down toward the track.

‘Stop the bike!’ Katherine shouted.

Lopez kicked the scooter down a gear and snapped the throttle fully open. The scooter raced toward the ever-closing gap as the thick branches caught amidst the canopy above them, the heavy trunk
quivering as it twisted and shook its way down toward the track.

Bryson ducked down on his bike as he shot past beneath the swaying palm fronds, and Lopez shouted out as she leaned forward and lay flat against the tank.

‘Get down!’

Katherine lurched forward and Lopez felt the lawyer’s head thump against her back as they plunged beneath the falling tree, damp leaves and fronds slapping across them as the scooter raced
beneath the plunging trunk and out the other side. The vehicle weaved and kicked as Lopez struggled to keep it upright as they shot out into clear air.

Lopez closed the throttle to give the scooter a chance to steady itself, and that was when she heard the noise, a deep and loud rumbling like the roar of a thousand boulders tumbling down upon
them. Ahead, she saw Bryson’s motorbike suddenly kick to one side and then the former soldier leapt from his saddle and hit the track hard, rolling as he did so and covering his head. The
earth ruptured beneath his scooter, buckling upward in jagged mounds pierced by thick tree roots, as the earthquake split the track in two. Bryson vanished from sight as the road disappeared in a
chaotic explosion of dirt and debris.

Lopez shouted over her shoulder. ‘Jump!’

In an instant the track beneath her shifted violently and threw the motorbike to one side. The tires lost their grip as all balance was ripped from Lopez’s hands and they toppled toward
the dusty surface of the track racing past beneath them.

Lopez hurled herself clear of the saddle, her arms out before her as she crashed down. The breath was smashed from her lungs as she rolled across the dusty earth with her arms wrapped around her
head, the roaring still in her ears as the motorbike span past her on its side, the metal engine scraping across the rugged terrain.

She came to a stop and peered through eyes filled with damp grit. The ground beneath her was trembling with rolling seismic waves that caused the forests to sway and ripples to tear through the
earth beneath her, splitting chunks off the track that spilled away into the ravine below.

‘Nicola!’

Lopez whirled in time to see Katherine Abell on her knees in the dirt and the grime, balanced precariously upon a tilting slab of earth that rolled away from the track toward the plunging abyss
below.

Lopez hauled herself to her feet and staggered across, reached out for Katherine’s hand and grabbed it as the ground beneath her feet slid away. Katherine screamed and held on to
Lopez’s hand in terror as the track disappeared. Lopez’s stomach lurched as she felt herself fall, saw the ground break up into a million spinning chunks of earth that plummeted away
from her, and she reached out blindly with her free hand.

Her palm touched on a thick tree root exposed by the collapsing hillside. She gripped it without thought, and dense fibers sliced into her skin. The sharp pain receded as though dulled by the
roar of the rending earth around her. Her hand slid down the root for almost a foot before she stopped to hang from its tip whilst Katherine Abell dangled below her. Lopez looked down and saw the
top of the forest canopy some twenty feet beneath them, chunks of earth falling away from the hillside to batter the palm fronds.

The pain in Lopez’s hand returned and began to spread and she felt the muscles in her arm seize up under the strain. A cascade of soil and stones spilled from the ruined track above,
pouring over Lopez’s head and shoulders and stinging her eyes with sand and grit. She looked down, trying to shout between teeth gritted with the effort of supporting both of their
bodies.

‘Climb up me, quickly! The rest of the track could go any moment!’

Katherine Abell looked up and then reached out with her own free hand and grabbed Lopez’s belt, hauling herself up and wrapping her arms around Lopez’s legs. Her green eyes were now
muddied with terror, as the world shook itself apart around them. The canopy below them swayed and shifted, the deafening roar of the quake punctuated by sharp cracks as trees were uprooted, their
mighty trunks snapping under the strain, to crash down through the forest.

Lopez grabbed Katherine’s shirt and hauled her upward, forcing the lawyer to climb further up until one of her hands could reach the dense tangle of roots from which Lopez dangled.

With a last desperate effort, Lopez pushed Katherine in the right direction and finally she grasped the roots and clambered up onto what remained of the track above them. Lopez span in mid-air
and grabbed the tree roots with both hands, a brief respite from the pain aching through her arm and shoulders. But now she was spent, and knew without a doubt that she did not have the strength
remaining to pull herself up from the ledge.

She heard Katherine call to her, but could not hear what she was saying above the deafening noise of the earthquake that still rolled across the hillside. The cascade of dirt falling around her
intensified, the shaking earth swinging her from the tree roots, and she knew that her precarious handhold was about to fail.

‘Katherine!’ she yelled. ‘Get away from the edge!’

A weakened voice called back to Lopez from above, but she couldn’t make out what it said. Lopez looked down at the forest canopy below and made her decision. There was no point in hanging
on any longer, and if she was lucky the forest might just break her fall enough for her to survive. Either way, if she waited much longer the hillside would make the decision for her, and there
wouldn’t be much of her left to climb out from under a hundred tons of mountain dirt.

She heard the sound of a motorbike engine starting up on the track above her, and guessed that Katherine was making a run for it. With her safe, Lopez could concentrate on saving her own skin.
She looked down.

All or nothing.
Do it.

Lopez took one hand off the tree roots, timing her swaying motion and using her free arm to spin herself outward, trying to aim for one of the denser-looking trees below, with thicker branches.
She was about to let go of the roots entirely when something slapped across her face.

Lopez blinked and saw the sleeve of a shirt dangling before her. She looked up, and Katherine waved down at her.

‘Grab hold!’

Lopez grabbed the shirt. As she did so she swung out over the ravine and noticed that the shirt was tied to another shirt, which was tied to what looked like one leg of a pair of jeans.

The sound of a motorbike engine revved above the terrifying din of the earthquake and Lopez was suddenly hauled upward. She managed to get one boot onto the hillside as she was dragged up onto
the damaged track, Bryson riding the motorbike bare-legged and with the other leg of his jeans tied to the frame.

Lopez stumbled onto the track and collapsed forward onto her knees, her exhausted arms dangling uselessly by her sides as she swayed with the churning ground. Katherine dropped down alongside
her and wrapped her arms around Lopez’s body, crouching down as the earthquake roared around them. Bryson let the bike fall over as he staggered back to Lopez’s side and dropped onto
one knee in front of her.

‘Are you okay?’ he shouted.

Lopez nodded, unexpectedly cold and shivering. ‘I’ll live.’

Bryson wrapped his arms around them both and waited for the quake to subside.

The roaring of torn earth receded after a few minutes, the swaying trees falling still around them. Lopez looked up and blinked away the grit scratching the surface of her eyes as she surveyed
the battered landscape.

Dozens of trees lay across the road, which itself was rent at regular intervals by gaping chasms where the earthquake had cleaved the land in two. Beyond, she could see columns of ugly gray
smoke rising from the densely packed buildings of Puerto Plata into the flawless blue sky. Sirens wailed from fire trucks and ambulances as they struggled to make their way through the carnage to
those areas most affected by the devastation.