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She was awash with nausea and faintness. The darkness, the pain, the fear were almost overwhelming and the temptation was to give in. She could just let go and sink into the darkness.
But that’d mean letting go of Toby. He was being so still. Why? She didn’t have room in her head to answer. He was breathing, his warm little body her one sure thing in this nightmare.
The sound from the car alarms was appalling. The screaming from far away reached a crescendo and then suddenly stopped, cut off.
There was nothing she could do. Her world was confined to dark and dust and pain—and Toby.
There was nothing else.
* * *
Even without the emergency code, Luc would have known there was trouble the moment he walked into the Specialist Disaster Response office. Mabel, the admin secretary, was staring at the screen and her fingers were flying over the keyboard. This was what she was trained for.
Mabel sensed rather than saw him arrive, and she didn’t take her eyes from the screen as she spoke.
‘Plane crash into shopping centre,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘Cargo plane. Pilot on board but hopefully no passengers. It’s smashed into the side of the Namborra Shopping Plaza. You know Namborra? Five hours’ drive inland, due west. It’s the commercial centre for a huge rural district. Hot day, air-conditioned shopping centre, Tuesday afternoon. There’s no word yet but guess is multiple casualties. It seems the undercover car park and a small section of the plaza itself have collapsed.’
‘What resources are on the ground?’ Luc asked.
‘There’s a small local hospital but anything serious gets airlifted here, so there are few resources. I’m bringing the team back, field hospital, the works, but it’ll take time to get them there. Luc, I’m trying to sequester med staff from the rest of the hospital but they’re not geared up like you are. The fire team’s already notified and the first responders will go with you. The chopper’s on the roof. Gina’s refuelling and ready to go. Resources will follow at need but I want you in the air ten minutes ago. Go!’
And ten seconds later he was gone.
CHAPTER TWO (#ufbf8bf6c-185a-5d27-9fad-bdd07504f820)
‘MESS’ DIDN’T BEGIN to describe what was beneath them.
From the air Namborra looked what it was, a small, almost-city situated in the middle of endless miles of wheat fields. There was a railway line and station, and a massive cluster of wheat silos. A group of commercial buildings formed the town centre, with a mammoth swimming pool and sports complex to the side. But Luc’s focus was on the largest building of all—a vast, sprawling undercover shopping plaza.
The scene of disaster.
The plane seemed to have skimmed across the rooftop, bringing part of the roof down and then smashing into the sports oval next door. That was some consolation, he thought, but not much. He couldn’t see the plane—what he saw was a smouldering mess.
And the plaza... There was a local fire engine on site, with men and women doing their best to quench a small fire smouldering a third of the way across the smashed roof. There were two police cars.
There were locals, visibly distressed even from where Luc gazed from the chopper, some venturing out onto the collapsed roof, others clustering around people on the ground. Some were simply clutching each other.
They circled first. Gina, the team’s pilot, knew the drill. Even though seconds counted, there was always the need to take an aerial assessment. Calculate risks.
‘Hard hats. Full gear. You know the drill,’ Kev, the burly chief of the SDR fire crew, barked. ‘Anyone going in under that mess, watch yourself.’ He was including Luc in his orders. SDR medics were supposed to stay on the sidelines and treat whoever was brought to them but it often didn’t work that way. In truth firefighters often ended up doing emergency first aid and the medics often ended up digging or abseiling or whatever. No one asked questions—in a crisis everyone did what they had to do.
‘Obey orders and keep your radios close,’ Kev ordered as the chopper landed. ‘Back-up’s on its way but it’ll take time. For now there’s just us. Okay, guys, let’s go.
* * *
Toby was recovering from the initial shock. Blessedly he didn’t seem hurt. One little hand wriggled free, up through the neck of her T-shirt. Tiny fingers touched her neck, reaching up to her cheek. She wiped the grit away as best she could. Toby was making sure it was her.
‘M-Mama...’
There were car alarms sounding all around her, a continuous screaming she couldn’t escape from, but she heard...or maybe she felt him speak. Toby had been calling her Mama for two months now and every time she heard it her heart turned over. Now, in the midst of noise and pain and fear...no, make that noise and pain and terror, it still had the capacity to ground her.
This little person was the centre of her universe and she wasn’t about to let a crushed leg and a shopping centre fallen down around her make her forget that.
‘It’s okay, Toby, love.’ Could he hear above the cacophony? She had to believe he could. Maybe like her, he could feel her voice. She fought to fumble her way into her bag, until her fingers closed on a scrappy, chewed rabbit.
Robert Rabbit was incongruously purple, so garish that even Beth could usually make him out in dim light. She couldn’t make him out now—the darkness was absolute—but she felt his scrappy fur and he gave her inexplicable comfort.
She’d be okay. They’d be okay.
If only her head didn’t feel...fuzzy. If only the noise would stop and the waves of pain would recede.
She pushed them away—the pain and the faintness—and focussed hard on Toby. And Robert. She put the scraggy rabbit into the little hand and tucked both hand and rabbit back down her T-shirt.
There was one blessing in all this. Because she’d been delayed at childcare, one of the women had given Toby warm milk and changed him into his pyjamas. She’d intended to heat spaghetti at home. Toby would have eaten a few ‘worms’ and then he’d have crashed. He didn’t really need the spaghetti, though. He’d had a full day of childcare. It was dark, he was well fed and he was tired. With luck he’d sleep.
‘Heydee, heydee-ho, the great big elephant is so slow...’
The simple child’s song was one she used to settle him in the middle of the night, rocking him, telling him all was well in his world, all was well in her world. She forced herself to croon it now.
The car horns were blaring but he must be able to feel her singing. He was so close. A heartbeat...
‘He swings his trunk from side to side, as he takes the children for a ride...’
Her throat was caked with dust but somehow she managed it. And she managed to rock, just a little, with both hands cradling Toby.
‘Heydee, heydee-ho...’ Oh, it hurt. Dear God... If she fainted. ‘Heydee...’
And blessedly she felt him relax. This had been scary for a few moments but now...maybe it was no worse than being put into his own cot in his own room. He had his mama. He had his rabbit. He was...safe?
If only she could believe that.
Toby snuggled deeper as she held him and tried to take comfort in him. The shards of pain were growing stronger. The faintness was getting closer...
Do not give in.
‘Heydee...’
* * *
He needed his team!
There was a local paramedic team onsite, plus another from a small town twenty minutes’ drive away, but they didn’t have the skills, equipment or know-how to try and go underneath the mess. There seemed to be only one available local doctor. She was working flat out in the nearby hospital. That meant triage and immediate life-saving stuff was up to Luc.
A café at the outer edge of the plaza had collapsed, with a group of senior citizens inside, and that’s where the firefighters centred their early rescue efforts. One dead, two injured. Luc was in there until the café was cleared, crawling under the rubble to set up intravenous IVs and pain relief.
He was filthy. A scrape on his cheek was bleeding but as the last gentleman was pulled from the rubble he was already looking around for what needed doing next.
There were still no-go areas, smouldering fires, a mass of collapsed tiles where the plaza proper started.
Where to start...
‘We’re going into the car park.’ Kev had been supervising the final stages of freeing the senior cits and he was now staring out at the flattened roof of what had been the undercover parking lot. It was a mass of flattened sheets of corrugated iron and the remains of concrete pillars.
‘How the hell did that collapse?’ Luc muttered, awed.
‘Minimal strength pillars,’ Kev commented. ‘Concrete that looks like it’ll last for ever but turns to dust. The plane’s gone in across the top and they’ve come down like dominoes.’
‘Any idea how many under there?’
‘We hope not many.’ At Luc’s look of surprise he shrugged. ‘Tuesday’s not a busy shopping day. It’s too late for after-school shopping, too early for the place to be closing. Most were either in the plaza itself or had gone home. The locals pulled a couple out from the edges but there’s reports of a few missing. Don and Louise Penbroke, mah-jong players extraordinaire, had just left the café when it hit. Bill Mickle, a local greyhound racer. One of the local docs...’
‘A doctor...’ It shouldn’t make a difference. It didn’t, but still...
‘Young woman doctor, works at the clinic,’ Kev told him. ‘Just picked her kid up from childcare. Her driver was supposed to meet her at the entrance—he’s yelling to anyone who’ll listen that she’s trapped under there. So that’s four definites but possibly more. Hell, I wish we could get those car alarms off. To be stuck underneath with that racket...they won’t even hear us if we yell.’
* * *
Her world was spinning in tighter circles where only three things mattered. Taking one breath after another. That was important. Cradling Toby’s small warm body. If he wasn’t here, if she’d dropped him, if she couldn’t feel his deep, even breathing, she’d go mad. And the pain in her leg...
But she would hold on. If she fainted she might drop Toby. He might crawl away. He was her one true thing and for now she was his.
Dear God, help...
Please...
* * *
The firefighters were lifting one piece of iron after another, working with infinite care, taking all the trouble in the world not to stand where people might be lying underneath, not to cause further falls, not to cause dust that might choke anyone trapped.
They found Don and Louise Penbroke first. The third sheet of iron was raised and the elderly couple looked like the pictures Luc had seen of petrified corpses from Pompeii, totally still, totally covered, the only difference being they were covered in concrete dust and not ash.
But as the first guy to reach them touched a debris-coated shoulder there was a ripple of movement. Still clutching each other, the couple managed to sit up. Louise had her face buried in Don’s chest and Don’s face was in Louise’s thick white hair.
Within seconds Luc had their faces cleared. They still clutched each other, their eyes enormous.
‘Th-thank...’ Don tried to speak but Luc put his hand on his shoulder and shook his head. And smiled.
‘You two should thank each other. That’s the best way to survive I’ve seen. What hurts?’
But amazingly little did. They’d been by the ramp leading up to the car park, protected by the concrete sides. They were both shocked but fine.
One happy ending.
A couple of the firies steered them out into the afternoon sunshine where they were greeted with tears and relief.
The firies—and Luc—worked methodically on.
There had to be some way to turn those damned car alarms off, Luc thought. There were fractions of time between the blaring but never enough to call and receive a warning.
At least batteries were starting to fail. The barrage of sound was lessening.
Another sheet came free.
Hell.
This guy hadn’t been so lucky. A sheet of iron had caught him. He’d have bled out almost instantly, Luc thought, and wondered how many others were to be found. They were waiting for proper machinery to search the crumpled part of the plaza itself. How many...?
And then...a cry?
The sound was from their left, heard between car sirens.
Kev demanded instant stillness. The sound had come from at least three sheets of iron across. If they went for it, they risked crushing others who lay between.
They waited for another break in the alarms. Kev ordered his team to spread out to give a better chance of pinpointing location.
‘Call if you can hear us?’ Kev yelled.
‘H-here.’
A woman’s voice. Faint.
A roofing sheet was pulled up, the rubble lifted with care but with urgency. It revealed nothing but crushed concrete. These pillars were rubbish.
Someone’s head would roll for these, Luc thought. They looked as if they’d been built with no more idea of safety standards than garden statuary.
He was heaving rubble too, now. By rights he should be out on the pavement, treating patients as they were brought to him, but with the local doctor working in the nearby hospital he’d decided the urgent need was here. If there was something major the paramedics would call him back.
All his focus was on that voice. That cry.
‘Stop,’ Kev called, and once again he signalled for them to stand back and locate.
And then... The voice called again, fainter.
This area held the worst of the crushed concrete. Sheets of roofing iron had fallen and concrete had crumpled and rolled on top. They were working from the sides of each sheet, determined not to put more weight on the slab.
‘Please...’ The sirens had ceased again for a fraction of a moment and the voice carried upward. She must be able to hear them. She was right...here?
Others had joined them now, hauling concrete away with care. Half a dozen men and women, four in emergency services uniforms, two burly locals, all desperate to help.
‘Reckon it’s the doc.’ One of the locals spoke above the noise. ‘Hell, it’s the doc. We gotta get—’
His words were cut off again by the car alarms, but the urgency only intensified.
And finally the last block of concrete was hauled clear. The sheet of iron was free to be shifted.
Willing hands caught the edges. Kev was there, taking in the risks, assessing to the last.
‘Lift,’ he said at last. ‘Count of three, straight up...’
