Fault Line (17 page)
Authors: Chris Ryan
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Action & Adventure, #General, #Juvenile Nonfiction, #Science & Nature, #Environmental Conservation & Protection
Then she nearly dropped the lot as Paulo grabbed her in a bear hug.
Amber grinned at her. ‘What took you so long?’
‘I was just finding the way out.’ She looked around at the room. It was well lit because of the light sticks, but the ceiling and stone artefacts had been reduced to piles of rubble. Broken glass and stone axes littered the floor. Several children sat wide-eyed, looking at the new arrivals, their pyjamas and hair covered in grime. ‘This looks bad.’
‘We’d just got it under control,’ said Paulo. ‘Now it’s chaos again. We’d cleared a good amount of rubble and freed all those kids and now the quake has rearranged it all.’
‘Come and bring those goggles in here, Li,’ said Amber. She led the way to the dinosaur gallery while Paulo gathered the children to introduce them to Imelda and Jose. ‘We haven’t looked in there yet – there was no noise so we concentrated on looking where there was.’
Li followed Amber into the room and put the goggles on. It was very different from the last time she’d looked at it. She couldn’t believe the devastation. The dinosaur had gone completely. Where it had stood, arching over the space, was a pile of rubble, like a wall after a demolition. The steel cables that had supported its head had left huge chunks where they’d pulled out of the wall. Half the wall to the jade gallery had gone too, leaving a ragged, round hole like a rough archway. Li walked forward cautiously and then stopped.
The floor rocked under her foot. It was like treading on the edge of a cliff.
Amber saw Li’s foot wobble. Then Li performed an incredible move. First she put all her weight on her back foot, then she sprang backwards like a ninja. When she whipped off the goggles, she was breathing hard.
‘Jeez, I saw that,’ said Amber. ‘It moved.’
‘The floor’s gone,’ gasped Li. ‘If anyone steps on it they’ll go through. Don’t let any of the kids come in here. I can’t see anything that looks like a person. Here – you have a go.’
Amber raised the goggles to her eyes. She saw nothing but varying shades of stone.
Li was breathing a little more easily now. ‘Señora Marquez says she thinks she can hear people down in the basement. I think that’s where we need to look next.’
‘Yeah,’ said Amber. They went back into the axe room.
Paulo had pulled Jose and Imelda to one side to brief them. ‘When you find someone, can one of you take over and check them out? We’re trying not to let the children see anything upsetting.’
The two newcomers nodded.
‘And keep them away from that corner,’ he added quietly, looking towards the dead teacher. ‘There’s a body.’ They nodded again and went to start work.
Li beckoned Paulo over. ‘Right, guys, how many are still missing?’
‘There were eleven children in the party,’ said Amber, ‘and we’ve found six.’
Paulo suddenly had a thought. ‘No, there are more than eleven. Felipe said he was bringing his kids in.’
‘Oh Lord,’ said Li. ‘Did he say how many?’
Imelda had overheard their conversation. ‘Felipe Gomez, the curator? He’s got two children – Ana and Jorges. I used to know his wife.’
‘Thanks, Imelda,’ said Paulo. He turned back to the two girls and continued in a low voice. ‘There were three teachers too. I remember them from earlier. The man’s dead, Señora Marquez is in the lobby, so there’s still one to find.’
Li looked around. ‘Where’s Hex?’
Amber looked down resolutely at the goggles. ‘We haven’t seen him yet,’ she said. Then she seemed to realize what she was looking at. ‘If someone was lying dead in that room, would it have showed through these?’
Paulo and Li thought for a moment. Behind them the regular chink as axes pulled away concrete began again as Jose organized the children to look for survivors. It was Paulo who replied. ‘I think so. It takes a few hours for a body to lose its heat. You’d definitely have seen if there was anyone there that we could get to.’
‘I’ll go and search the basement,’ said Li.
She was the obvious choice. Her climbing skills were better than anyone else’s and her tiny size meant she could squeeze into spaces that tall, willowy Amber couldn’t get into.
Amber handed her the goggles. ‘I’ll stay here – Paulo, you go with Li in case someone needs medical help. If we have a medical emergency here I can holler for you.’
‘And,’ said Li, ‘we’ll get Alex out. It’s time he did some work, broken fingers or not.’
‘Hang on,’ said Paulo. ‘Just getting supplies.’ He pulled a bergen away from the wall, brushed the dust off it and opened the top.
‘Whose is that?’ said Li, incredulous.
‘Can’t you guess?’ said Amber.
‘Yes, folks, it’s Alex’s amazing indestructible bergen,’ said Paulo. He pulled out a water bottle, green nylon poncho and dry kit, then fastened the top again. ‘And once we get Alex we’ll have antiseptic too from his survival kit.’
‘Ow,’ said Amber. She bent and rolled up her trouser leg hurriedly. ‘Get me some while you’re at it.’
Paulo, kneeling on the floor, tried to get a look at her leg. ‘I thought the wait-a-while infection had gone.’
‘It has. But the bite hasn’t. Every now and again it really hurts. As though I’ve caught it on something.’
Paulo went back to Alex’s bergen. ‘I can’t see anything. It’ll probably go down soon.’ He laid the items he was taking on the poncho and tied it into a bundle, then stood up.
Li fixed the night vision goggles on. ‘Let’s go.’ She followed his broad back out of the room.
Amber saw Jose and Imelda moving the kids away from a pile of rubble and beckoning her over. She knew what that meant. They’d found another survivor. Or a body.
18 T
RAPPED
RAPPED
Hex had had a dream. He was falling. There was thunder, like boulders raining into a big steel bin. There was screaming, like seagulls rising in the air. He was in a cage with curved bars arching over him while a hurricane hurled bones at him like skittles. One of them hit the cage and it turned into spun sugar and shattered.
Maybe the dream had lasted only an instant. Suddenly his eyes were open, clogged with dust. He blinked hard. He breathed and then coughed.
There was a green glowing stick poking out of the ground. A bewitching light in the murk. It was the only thing he could see. He grabbed it.
A voice gasped. A frightened, female sound, like a gulp and a scream.
‘Hello?’ said Hex. His voice took a couple of goes to work, like a car that hasn’t been started for a while.
He pulled the light stick out of the ground. He blinked again and moved. He was in a small space. He tried to turn round, but his bruised bones banged against hard stone. Everywhere there was hard stone. Against his shoulders, his knees, his feet, his head.
Where was he? Panic began to rise in his throat. His hands felt around. He felt like he had been locked in a small box of hard stone and squashed down until they could put the lid on. Everywhere, his fingers met sharp pieces of stone. Strange shapes loomed out of the green darkness. He remembered the dinosaur.
A hand reached out and grabbed at him. He flinched and jumped.
A pair of eyes blinked back at him. They were above him, looking down.
‘Susana?’ The name just came to him. Of course. It was the girl from the office. Short hair, pretty face.
‘Hello?’
‘What happened?’
‘I think it must have been another quake. Or an aftershock.’
‘Shh. Can you hear that?’
They listened. There was the usual hiss of moving pulverized concrete, like a rain of sand. There was a bigger sound, of a lump of masonry smashing. And there was a moan, far off, like the cry of an animal in the night.
‘Hello?’ called Hex loudly.
There was no answer. There was no echo. It was a very small space.
‘Are you OK?’ said Susana. She looked like a rag doll that had been squashed into a shelf in a cave wall. Was that how he looked? Was he really in a space that small?
Hex felt like he had gone ten rounds with a heavyweight boxer. Every surface was bruised. He was acutely aware of every knobble on his frame: his elbows, his vertebrae. He shifted position and winced. But it all seemed to work. ‘Bit bruised,’ he said.
‘Me too. My tummy hurts,’ she said. ‘Where are we?’
He tried to get a mental fix on where they were. There was nothing but dinosaur bones around him, as though he had been thrown into a pit along with them all. How heavy were they? He remembered the noise, the great rumble like a landslide. Had they gone through the floor? How many bones were there in a tyrannosaur? Probably enough to make it very heavy.
He felt like he couldn’t breathe – his lungs had shrivelled to raisins. He needed air. He was stuck in a pit, buried by dinosaur bones.
Li stood on the edge of the pit, night vision goggles on, Alex’s abseil harness over her shoulder like a handbag. She held onto the fire hose. Paulo tested it: the big red drum still seemed firmly attached to the wall. ‘It’s solid. Go.’
She jumped off the edge and wrapped her legs around the hose. Paulo paid the hose out from the wall while Li descended.
Alex was on a duct about halfway down the front wall. Debris had piled up on it so it looked like a shelf for storing broken concrete. Señora Marquez was at the bottom, sitting next to the stele.
Li attended to Alex first. He heard the sound of something swishing close to him in the dark. She landed lightly, hardly making a sound. He’d have known her anywhere. The nozzle of the hose clanged against the metal duct, making him jump.
‘What’s that?’
‘A fire hose.’
‘Lovely. I feel like a cat being rescued from a tree.’
Li put her hand out and he stood up carefully – the first time he’d dared get upright. He didn’t share Li’s head for heights and anyway, he didn’t have anything to hold onto – except her. Plus there was a pipe that ran down the middle – the one he’d clung to during the second quake. It was handy then but it might be easy to trip over now. ‘How are we going to get up?’
‘We’re not going up. We’re going down. Put this on.’ She shipped something off her shoulder. He felt webbing in his hands: his abseil harness.
Alex threaded himself into it awkwardly, protecting his damaged fingers. Li fastened it and threaded the end of the hose through. ‘Will that hose take both of us?’
‘I certainly hope so,’ said Li. ‘Ready?’
‘Yes.’
Li cupped her hands around her mouth. ‘Let us down, Paulo.’
Paulo paid out more of the hose. Alex started to descend, then Li hopped onto the rope above him. She looked down as they descended. Alex saw his own face as two tiny reflections in the night vision goggles.
Then they were down. Li hopped off the fire hose while he fumbled one-handed to get out of the abseil harness. It felt so good to feel his feet on solid ground again.
The two friends walked carefully over the uneven rubble to where the teacher was lying.
Alex put out his good hand for her to shake. ‘Señora Marquez, we meet at last.’
The teacher held the light stick up to him. She said sternly: ‘You’re much younger than I thought.’
Alex grinned. ‘So are you.’ Li heard and gave him a look. Through the night vision goggles it was a very severe look indeed. He didn’t blame her. The remark was smarmy in the extreme. However, he’d sensed teacherly disapproval in Señora Marquez’s voice. If he didn’t disarm it, she might decide she didn’t trust him to make decisions. Flattery seemed the best way.
Li remembered the goggles looked a bit scary and took them off. ‘Señora Marquez, do you have any injuries?’
‘No, I’m fine.’
Paulo called down from the lip of the chasm, ‘Señora Marquez, how did you get down there? Was anyone with you?’
She shook her head and called up, ‘I don’t know. I didn’t know where I was going. I just ran. How are the children? I keep hearing them up there.’
‘We’ve got quite a lot of them out already,’ said Paulo. ‘Our friends are searching for more.’
Li offered her the abseil harness. ‘We can get you up there. Then you can join them.’
‘No, I’ll stay and look for the other children with you,’ she said. ‘They’re my class.’
Alex stood up and they helped Señora Marquez to her feet. ‘Right. One light stick each, and we’ve got the night vision goggles.’ He found he was grinning like a loon. It felt so good to be doing something again, rather than being a victim.
‘Hang on,’ said Paulo. ‘I’m coming down.’
He’d barely got the words out when Amber’s distinctive tones rang through to them from the axe room: ‘Paulo! Quick!’
‘Guess I’ll see you guys in a bit,’ said Paulo, and sprinted to help her.
Amber was on her hands and knees. She was halfway under a large slab of concrete, a piece of ceiling as big as a billiard table. One corner of it was supported by a granite plinth. ‘Get in here,’ called Amber. ‘We need mouth to mouth.’
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