Fault Line (16 page)
Authors: Chris Ryan
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General, #Juvenile Nonfiction, #Science & Nature, #Environmental Conservation & Protection
Where was the skylight? She was sure she remembered a skylight. Oh no. The pile of rubble was a section of the roof. So no more skylight.
It was then that she registered that the goggles still worked. Well, when they got back to civilization she would thank the manufacturer from the bottom of her heart. She obviously felt a hell of a lot better than those poor people moaning in the dark.
She remembered there were stairs. She got out from under her shell and went to look. One wall of the cafeteria was glass bricks. It had collapsed into the staircase. At first it looked surreal, like the crystal gardens she had made in junior school. Cautiously, she put a finger on a jagged edge. It was knife sharp. It would go straight through her jungle boots.
Then she’d heard the others. As she’d leaned over the balcony, talking to Alex and Amber, she thought about jumping. But it was too far, especially with the collapsed floor.
She remembered seeing a fire hose coiled up on the wall. If it was still there maybe she could use that to climb down. She went to look for it.
Paulo was using an ancient axe to dig out another child. He had a new helper, Consuela, a pretty seven-year-old who was pulling at a lump of concrete with fierce concentration.
Amber delivered her news. ‘We’ve found Li. She’s got the night vision goggles.’
Paulo’s entire face flooded with relief, his handsome features ethereal in the ghostly green light. It was such a change that Amber realized he’d been fearing the worst. It confirmed her own fears – if someone wasn’t found they really could be . . .
Paulo understood like a mind reader. ‘Hex will be out soon,’ he said, as though it was simply a matter of time. He put his dusty hand out, patted her leg and left a big white print on her thigh.
Amber swiped at him playfully with her light sticks. ‘Don’t you wipe your hands on me, cowboy.’ But his easy Latino confidence made her feel everything would be all right.
The kids were working hard. Axes chipped on stone and concrete. It was like being in a mine. Phones were still ringing, buried under the rubble.
Pedro and Beatriz were talking on their phones. Although Beatriz had been freed, she wasn’t allowed to join in with the rescue – Paulo decided her wound was too deep and the thin scab of clotted blood might split if she moved too much. So she and Pedro kept each other company.
Pedro finished his call. Amber pounced on him. ‘Did you get through to someone?’
‘I got my dad. He’s OK.’
‘Did he say how bad it was anywhere else?’
‘It’s bad,’ said Pedro. ‘We live in Hutson Street and the house next door has gone.’
Amber got out the mobile she’d found. Did Hex have his mobile? She might as well try. She dialled and—
Suddenly, as one, the ringing sounds stopped.
Beatriz took her phone away from her ear and shook it. ‘It’s gone dead. I was talking to my mum.’
The hands on the axes were stilled. ‘Why have the phones stopped?’ said Gabriel.
Everyone looked at each other. Just as they’d made another link with normal life, it had been cut.
Damn, thought Amber. I should have phoned Hex earlier.
Paulo spoke. His voice sounded ominous. ‘The cells must have gone down.’
A skitter of debris started to fall, like wind picking up. Was it an aftershock? Was that why the cells had gone down?
Hex woke suddenly. He opened his eyes and immediately he was dazzled by a bar of bright green, like an alien craft landing. He put his hands up in front of his eyes and tried to push the thing away. It clattered and bounced.
A light stick.
OK, that wasn’t so bad. He picked it up.
He tried to sit up and banged his head on something hard. Could this day get any better?
Then he remembered. That dinosaur head angling towards him, its wide mouth like a shark’s. He’d rolled away and scrunched into a ball. Something must have hit him on the head. His mouth tasted of cement.
He was under something – what? He turned his head, carefully this time, holding out the light stick. It was hoops of stone, like archways. He was under the ribcage of the dinosaur – it was as if it had swallowed him. Around him was the fallen skeleton. Hex had a moment of panic. It was all around him, no way out.
Calm down, he told himself. The ribcage had protected him.
In his mind’s eye he conjured up a picture of a tyrannosaur skeleton. He’d learned its parts like a religious mantra when he was four. Most of the tyrannosaur’s mass was in its back end. The bones at the front were smaller and there were fewer of them. If he could work out which was the front end, there should be fewer bones – and that would be the end to start digging.
He looked up. The ribcage was wide where he was, narrowing rapidly behind him like an understairs cupboard. So that meant he should dig the other way.
He pushed against a bone. It fell with a clatter that echoed. That was good. Outside there was a big space. He pushed another. One by one, bone by bone, he dismantled his prison, slowly and methodically. Finally he emerged on his hands and knees.
Now he was out he could hear things moving. It sounded like steadily sliding rubble. Was that the sound of people talking? And mobile phones? He looked round. Behind him the fallen dinosaur had made an impenetrable barrier, like a wall. Next to it, a funerary stone had fallen off the wall. It was still intact and formed the other part of the enclosure. All the time, debris was falling like light rain.
In front of him was an office. Someone was in there. He held up the light stick and waggled it. ‘Hello?’
A woman came out. She had short dark hair with dust frosted on top like icing sugar and smeared across her face like war paint.
‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m Hex.’
‘Susana. I was trying on my mobile but it’s gone down. Here, maybe you can make it work.’
Hex took the mobile. Having something so normal in his hands was a huge relief. He tried the screen. ‘There’s no signal. Maybe the cells have gone down.’ He touched his belt pouch, where his palmtop was. He’d check the signal on that.
Suddenly Susana lurched towards him. The floor was shaking again. The pile of dinosaur bones was trembling. Hex got down and curled into a ball again. There was a great bang like an explosion and they were falling, the sound of thunder in their ears.
17 S
TARTING
A
GAIN
TARTING
A
GAIN
Paulo grabbed Consuela and Rosa and held them in a huddle on the ground. Amber did the same with Gabriel and Vicente, a boy they’d just rescued. Pedro and Beatriz clung to each other. Rubble bounced around them like bullets. Then a roar came that seemed to split the very fabric of the building. The children were screaming. It was worse than the most terrifying clap of thunder and it went on and on.
They could see nothing, didn’t dare to open their eyes. The thunder died but the shaking carried on. Paulo briefly thought he should try to relax and go with the movement instead of tensing against it, as though he was falling off a horse, but all reason was driven out of his head. It was horrible. He just wanted it to stop.
Alex tried to cling onto something, but there was nothing. He felt himself falling. Li, up on the gallery, had a perfect view. The rubble began to push Alex into the pit like a bulldozer. Below, beside the stele, Señora Marquez was trying to run, but the ground kept moving under her feet like a treadmill.
But then Li had problems of her own. There was a groaning like ripping steel. Masonry sprayed her, stinging her arms and face. The next moment all was still again. A bare girder had appeared in front of her like a spear. The tremor had shaken it out of the concrete roof.
It fell towards her.
There was rubble behind her and no room for her to get out of its way. She grabbed it as it went past, curling her arms and legs around it like a monkey. It took her down towards the ground, its sharp front edge moving like a javelin. It was heading for a wall. Should she jump off? Below was a pit of rubble – she’d probably hurt herself more landing in that than if she stayed on the girder. She bowed her head to protect it and caught the night vision goggles. She’d forgotten she was wearing them. What if they smashed, sending pieces of glass into her eyes?
Too late to take them off now. She buried her head as flat as possible and closed her eyes.
As Alex tumbled into the pit he saw the girder sliding past, Li riding it like a whale.
Then he hit something. It was hard and it was metal. The clang reverberated through his skull like a great kettle drum. He bounced and scrabbled to get a grip. Both hands grappled and found a pipe. His injured fingers sang with pain but he was slipping. He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and pulled for all he was worth, putting most of his weight on his good left arm. When he felt the pipe under his chest, supporting him, he stopped to catch his breath.
Alex felt a massive impact as Li crashed into the front wall. He clung tight to his perch, concrete showering over him. Li tried to melt into the girder. Rubble pounded her shoulders and back as the girder lanced through the wall like a sword.
It stopped, nearly flinging her off. The first thing she noticed was the cold air. She looked up: the point of the girder had embedded itself in the ground. She was outside, on the front lawn. And the night vision goggles were still functioning. They were certainly getting a workout tonight.
Someone was shining a torch at her. It dazzled her through the goggles and she switched them off. The figure came to help her down. She saw that it was a man with a spanner in his hand; his arm was soaking wet.
‘Are you all right?’ A woman stood behind him, looking at Li nervously.
Li rolled off the girder like an acrobat and landed on her feet. ‘Yeah. Who are you?’
‘We live just up the road. We got out of our house. We wanted to help. We just turned off the stopcock on this water main. It’s flooded the road.’
It seemed the quake was over. The ground was still. But what a scene of devastation. Li put the goggles on again to see more detail. The roof of the museum had caved in on one side. The front wall was shattered where she had come through it on the girder. Further along there were big cracks. On the ground outside, the cracks carried on through the paving slabs, as though a vein had been drawn down the building and onto the ground. Water seeped from an open manhole cover where the man had turned the supply off.
‘That was quite an entrance you made,’ said the man. ‘Or should I say exit. I’m Jose, by the way. And this is my wife Imelda.’ Imelda nodded. She was carrying a sledgehammer.
‘Li.’
‘We were on our way down the road. I didn’t think there would be anybody in there.’
‘There are loads of us in there,’ said Li. ‘We need help.’
She walked up to the hole in the wall and slipped through.
Inside the building, she heard the cries again. That animal, panicked sound, like the aftermath of the first quake all over again. No one could trust the ground they walked on any more.
For a moment she felt like joining in but she forced her mind to focus. She grabbed the torch from Jose’s hand and shone it into the pit. ‘Alex, are you all right down there?’
‘Yes. Fine.’ His voice was hushed. She could hear he was shaken.
She put the night vision goggles up to her eyes for a moment. Alex wasn’t much better off than before. He was stuck on a duct from the air conditioning equipment, still at least two metres off the ground. ‘Stay where you are, Alex,’ she called. ‘Don’t try to go anywhere. Señora Marquez, are you all right?’
The teacher was huddled in a ball among the broken masonry, protecting her head with her arms. She had a fresh coating of dust but aside from that seemed intact. ‘I – I think so,’ she said shakily. She glanced behind her into the gloom. ‘I think I can hear something back there.’
‘We’ll send some people down,’ said Li. ‘Just hold tight. Don’t go off in there by yourself.’
‘Don’t worry, honey, I’m not going anywhere,’ came the tart reply.
Li took the goggles off again and turned to Jose and Imelda. They were staring towards the screaming, their faces shocked. ‘I think they need our help in there,’ said Li. She was about to lead them to the axe room when something made her check first, something on the brink of her hearing. She stopped dead still for a moment, listening.
Then she heard a very familiar voice.
‘Say “yes” when I call your name. Beatriz?’
‘Yes,’ called a voice.
It was Paulo. He was doing a roll-call of the children.
Li let out a huge sigh. For a moment, all the horror was forgotten.
Paulo went through a list of names and ended with: ‘Amber?’
‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Amber in her characteristic drawl. ‘Don’t get drunk on power.’
Li strolled through to the other room. ‘Hey, guys,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a torch, a sledgehammer, night vision goggles and some extra pairs of hands.’
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