Fault Line (13 page)
Authors: Chris Ryan
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General, #Juvenile Nonfiction, #Science & Nature, #Environmental Conservation & Protection
Amber shook her head again and went back to bed-making. After handing them out to the children, Felipe had also supplied them with glow sticks – plastic rods containing fluorescent chemicals. Amber activated them by breaking the capsule inside and laid them on the floor between the sleeping bags. The sticks would glow like torches for eight hours.
‘Lights out in one minute,’ called Felipe from the next room. ‘Then you’re on your own.’
‘Glow sticks on, everyone,’ called the voice of a teacher. ‘If you need to get up in the night you can’t put all the lights on. Hide them in your sleeping bags until you need them.’
‘Can’t we see the animatronic dinosaur?’ pleaded a voice.
‘I told you, Jorges,’ said Felipe. ‘It’s still in the workshop.’
‘But you said—’
‘It’ll be ready some time next week, Jorges, I promise.’
Amber grinned. ‘Sounds like that must be one of Felipe’s kids.’
Hex, Paulo and Alex were looking at each other with wide eyes. ‘Animatronic dinosaur?’ they said, as one.
Li poked Paulo. ‘Maybe if we’re still here in a week you can see it too.’
13 B
UMP IN THE
N
IGHT
UMP IN THE
N
IGHT
The lights were out. The children were settling down in the axe gallery. In the dinosaur room next door, Alpha Force sat on their sleeping bags, around the starfish of green light sticks.
‘You know,’ sighed Amber, ‘I was really tired when we got here, but now I can’t sleep. Anyone coming for a wander?’
Hex rummaged in his bergen and brought out the night vision goggles. ‘Give these another spin.’
‘I’ll come,’ said Li.
Amber put on the goggles and adjusted them to fit her head. When she looked through them the glow sticks in the centre of the room disappeared completely.
Hex, looking up at her, pulled a face. ‘I saw that,’ said Amber.
‘Just testing. You look like a biceratops.’
‘Biceratops?’ echoed Alex.
Hex grinned. ‘Well, if triceratops means horrible three-horned face . . .’
The others laughed.
Amber snatched off the goggles. ‘Come on, Li, let’s leave these philistines to sleep while we go and look at fascinating old things.’
The girls picked their way through to the next gallery. Li carried a green light stick. It illuminated just a few metres in front of them. The first thing they saw was a statue of a reclining figure holding a bowl on its stomach, with its face turned towards them. As the eerie green light glanced off its headdress and eyes it looked quite real, its expression strangely forlorn.
‘It’s a chacmool,’ said Li.
‘What’s that?’ said Amber.
‘I don’t know, that’s just what it says here.’
Amber carried the night vision goggles but didn’t bother to put them on. There were cabinets around the walls. She wandered up to them idly. They contained pieces of jade, laid out in neat rows. In the half light they looked like blobs of black glass. Further along there were hoops and amulets and necklaces.
Li fell into step beside her. ‘What’s up?’
Amber shrugged. ‘It’s silly.’
‘Your uncle?’
‘Yep.’
‘I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill, Amber. He must know the kind of things we’ve done—’
‘But we’ve always been under cover before. We covered our tracks. Now we’re going to be on national TV as ninja temple warriors.’
‘He might not see the programme.’
‘Of course he will.’ Amber trailed her fingers idly along a row of cabinets. She looked in but hardly noticed what was in them. ‘He’s connected with the museum – they’ll have told him to watch the news. And everything else. And who wouldn’t watch their relatives on TV? Especially him – he’s always trying to find out what I really get up to.’ She sighed. ‘I just couldn’t stand it if he pulled the plug on Alpha Force. Or if he even threatened to.’
Li didn’t know what to say. She gazed into a cabinet, collecting her thoughts. Then she spotted something. ‘Hey, Amber. Look at this.’
Amber came over.
‘Look at that label.’
Under a pair of jade ear hoops and a ring was a plate that said:
BY KIND PERMISSION OF MR T. AND MRS J. MIDDLETON
.
BY KIND PERMISSION OF MR T. AND MRS J. MIDDLETON
.
Amber looked at it. For a moment she couldn’t speak.
‘Amber?’ said Li gently. ‘Are you all right?’
Amber shook herself. ‘I suppose my parents must have found some stuff while on one of their missions. And donated it here.’
‘Just like us,’ said Li quietly. ‘History repeating.’
Amber’s thoughts were a whirl. No wonder her uncle was able to pull strings so quickly. He’d pulled those same ones before. He’d known exactly how to get helicopters here too. Had he done the same for her parents? What had they been doing while they were here? Apprehending tomb robbers was a bit lightweight for them – did John Middleton imagine his intrepid niece had been fighting bandits, drug barons and all the other potential dangers the area had to offer? He’d surely fear the worst. But most of all, seeing the label made her feel quite strange. Amber hadn’t known her parents very well. Moments like this were like suddenly being given an undiscovered snapshot of their lives.
Li put her arm on Amber’s shoulder. ‘It’s nice. It’s what we wanted, wasn’t it? To carry on their work. We’ll keep doing that somehow.’ She looked further along the cabinet. ‘I wonder if there are any more?’
Amber could feel tears pricking her eyes. She felt wrung out like a rag. She didn’t want to cry, so she put the night vision goggles on to hide her eyes. All the shadows disappeared. The room instantly spread out, became green. She could see into every corner. It was all in shades of pale greeny grey. All the stonework looked hazy, as though seen through netting. She turned. Her heart jumped into her mouth.
Beside the chacmool was a glowing figure, reclining in the same position. It had wild white curly hair and it held its hands in the shape of a bowl. It grinned and the inside of its mouth showed white like a furnace.
Amber’s heart was hammering like an express train. She was about to shriek at it but it put a finger to its lips, materialized into Paulo, then pointed. Amber followed his finger. A couple of metres away from the chacmool was another glowing figure. This one had short tufts of hair – Hex. Paulo pointed again to the doorway. A floppy-fringed chacmool had arranged itself there. Alex.
Amber wanted to giggle but she stifled it. She took off the goggles. ‘Hey, Li, you should try these in here. They’re interesting.’
Li heard Amber’s voice wobble and thought she was trying to stop herself crying. She put the goggles on hurriedly to allow her a quiet moment and looked away. Then she saw the three glowing chacmools and got the shock of her life. She let out a strangled gasp.
Beside her, Amber was laughing. She tried to keep it quiet to avoid disturbing the kids two rooms away, and it came out like a high-pitched wheeze.
The boys got up and ran back into the other room. Amber and Li gave chase. Li had a perfect view of their glowing backsides. ‘You can run but you can’t hide,’ she muttered.
She rounded the corner and saw them crouching at the other end of the room near the feet of the dinosaur. They were trying to stay very still and quiet. It was funny how people behaved when they were trying to be invisible. To Li it was like broad daylight. Amber came out with her wheezy giggle and put her hand over her mouth – as if the giggle would give her away, not the fact that Li could see her as clear as day.
Li ran forwards, not even bothering to creep.
And hit something, hard. She hit it so hard, her head buzzed.
The others, crouching down, not only heard the impact, they felt it through the dinosaur’s skeleton. They got up and blundered backwards. Paulo shone his light stick around. Li looked dazed. She was frozen in horror, looking at the shaking, rattling creature. Every bone it had was trembling.
Had they knocked over the dinosaur?
Li asked herself how she could have been so idiotic. She’d run into it because it was virtually invisible next to the bright glow of warm flesh.
The shaking stopped. Slowly, they all breathed a sigh of relief.
Li slowly peeled the night goggles off and wiped her brow. ‘Phew, that was close. It didn’t show up next to you lot. I simply didn’t see it.’ She put her hand on it. It was solid, like a great big piece of furniture. Her shin throbbed; her arm and shoulder on the same side felt as if she’d been hit by a baseball bat. She must have run into it really hard. She giggled. ‘I’ve kicked a lot of people over in my time, but never a dinosaur.’
‘For a minute,’ said Paulo, ‘I had visions of us trying to put it all back together like one of those five-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzles.’
‘And having to finish it by morning so that no one knew,’ chuckled Amber.
‘I don’t think we’d be the museum’s heroes any more,’ said Alex. ‘We’d—’ He suddenly came to a stop.
The dinosaur was shaking again.
‘I didn’t touch it,’ said Li.
There was a crash in the next room – a sound of shattering glass. Something began to patter onto the hard stone floor.
Alex was sure his feet were trembling. He shone his stick down at them. They were moving – and so was the floor.
There was a metallic groan above them as the steel cable holding the upper part of the dinosaur gave a huge shake.
Alex screamed at the top of his lungs. ‘It’s a quake! Take cover!’
There was a terrible noise, like an avalanche. It came from deep in the ground, a rumble of power and menace that vibrated through their bones. Things smashed in the gallery next door as though they had been literally shaken to pieces.
Amber tried to run but the ground was moving. It was like being on a treadmill out of control. The floor heaved up like an ocean wave and threw her aside.
Paulo stumbled as he tried to stay on his feet. The last thing he heard was a great snapping sound. One of the cables holding up the dinosaur had broken. And then he was running. He didn’t know where. The ground kept trying to stop him, heaving under his feet, roaring at him.
The dinosaur bones were coming down like skittles. Alex dodged but the heaving ground tried to throw him back into their path. He had never been so terrified. He just thought, Run, run, run.
Li didn’t know whether the screaming was her or the children and teachers sleeping next door. She heard a noise like a whiplash. The rest of the steel cables supporting the dinosaur snapped and came singing towards her. As she ran she found she was climbing. She didn’t ask herself what it had been or where it was. She just climbed.
Hex wanted to hide, but there was nowhere to go. He ran into a solid wall and it throbbed with vibrations. It was like being a tiny insect in the power of some monster. He looked round. Amazingly he was still holding the light stick. He wished he wasn’t. The dinosaur skull was crashing towards him like a missile.
14 S
ILENCE
ILENCE
Eventually, the rumbling stopped. The sounds of breaking glass stopped. The ground became still and solid again.
Amber opened her eyes. It was dark.
It was silent.
Where was she? It was like waking up from a dream in a strange room and not knowing where you were.
She felt around her. She had no light.
Why was it so silent? Why could she not hear any human sounds at all?
Then she heard something: pebbles skittering like pouring sand.
She froze. An instinct told her she mustn’t move. Why? In case she started it again. Started what again?
And then she remembered.
The earthquake.
Panic took hold of her like a creature inside her fighting to get out. She almost screamed out there and then, but fought to keep it in. Where was everyone? She’d been with her friends, hadn’t she? Where were they?
Why was no one making any noise?
Get a grip, she told herself. Am I hurt? She wriggled her fingers. All there. Toes worked fine too. So nothing broken. She shifted position and felt the bruise on her hip bone. Probably where she was thrown to the ground. Yes, she remembered that. It hurt.
She sat up. Her head bumped against something solid.
So, she was under something. Something big.
She put her hands up cautiously, felt the extent of her prison. A stone slab of some sort. But it didn’t feel like stone. It felt warmer, like plaster. Then the layout of the room began to come back to her like a flash of film. There was a frieze in the corner. It had probably come off the wall and she was under it.
She’d have to push it off. But should she? Everything might start moving again. Now everything was still and she was safe. She mustn’t do anything that might make it unsafe again.
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