by Emily Forbes
Car alarms were blaring and, over the top of all the noise, the village distress siren wailed. The noise of the disaster brought people out of the buildings. They poured out of the surrounding bars, restaurants and lodges before stopping in their tracks, staring in disbelief at the site that confronted them. A dark muddy scar bisected the snow-covered mountain and an enormous pile of rubble, which moments before had been two buildings, dominated the landscape. They stared, momentarily frozen, at the ruins of the buildings that had, God only knew, how many people inside.
Pat could hear screams and calls for help coming from underneath the rubble. He had no idea how people had survived this disaster but clearly they had. He desperately hoped Charli had been one of them but he couldn’t imagine how. Her apartment was—had been—on the ground floor. Unless she had somehow, miraculously, managed to escape, she was now buried under tonnes of concrete, bricks and steel. He fought back a wave of nausea as the dust cloud settled and he surveyed the scene. Everything had changed in an instant.
A few bystanders had already gathered their wits and were trying to move debris. There wasn’t any discussion or any system to the recovery attempt, people simply started at the area closest to them. They stood in the mud, pulling at bricks and window frames, blocks of concrete and pieces of broken furniture. They looked like scavengers sorting through a rubbish tip. Nothing in front of them resembled a building.
He had to help. He pulled his gloves from the pocket of his jacket and shoved his hands into them as his feet began moving, propelling him towards the devastation. Muddy water continued to flow down the hill, making conditions underfoot slippery and treacherous. He could smell diesel fuel and sewage and gas but he couldn’t stop. Charli’s life might depend on him.
‘Charli! Charli?’
For a split second he thought it was her voice he could hear. He turned around and saw a young woman flying down the path, her blonde hair streaming behind her.
Was it Charli?
She ran past Connor and Pat saw him grab at her. He held onto her, restraining her. Pat knew if he hadn’t caught her she would have kept running.
She beat at his chest with her fists. ‘Let me go. My sister is in there. I have to find her.’
His heart fell like a stone into his stomach, the last vestiges of hope shattered. It wasn’t Charli. It was her sister.
He left Connor to deal with her as he stepped cautiously onto a teetering slab of concrete before thinking better of it when it wobbled under his feet. He didn’t want to upset the balance. Who knew what lay beneath his feet.
He lay on his stomach and inched along the slab, listening to the cries for help and trying to work out where they were coming from. Sound bounced off the hard surfaces and off the mountain, distorting the voices and making it difficult to judge direction.
The darkness wasn’t helping matters either. He couldn’t see clearly, he couldn’t tell if there were gaps in the rubble, any way in or out. He couldn’t see survivors but he could hear them. He needed better light so he could tell where to start. He pulled his phone from his pocket, swiped the screen and pressed the flashlight icon but the light it gave off was pathetic.
‘I need some light over here. Does anyone have a torch?’ The lights of the village had been bright enough to see the buildings topple but they weren’t bright enough now. He needed stronger beams, much stronger. The headlights from a car or a snowplough.
‘Pat, what the hell are you doing? It’s not safe, man.’
He heard Connor’s voice from behind him. He turned his head. He could see dozens of people gathered in the semi-darkness, torches and phones causing multiple circles of light. ‘Pass me a torch.’
‘No. You need to come back. We need to assess the situation. It’s too dangerous.’
‘I can hear people. I need to see if I can reach them.’
‘And what if that slab gives way under you? We could lose you along with anyone trapped under there,’ Connor responded. ‘We need a plan.’
Pat ignored him. He knew Connor wouldn’t risk coming out after him. Two people on this teetering slab would be asking for trouble. Pat could stay out there safe in the knowledge that no one could drag him back. He knew he was taking a risk but what choice did he have? People were trapped. They needed his help.
‘Hello? Can you hear me?’ he called out.
‘Yes.’
‘I’m trapped.’
‘Help us.’ One, two, three different voices called back to him.
But none of them belonged to Charli.
He didn’t want to stop but he couldn’t ignore these cries for assistance. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘My wife. You have to help me. I can’t reach her.’
‘I’m stuck, my leg is caught. There’s water coming in. I can’t move. Help me, please, help me.’
There were only two replies to his question.
‘Who is there? Can you tell me your names?’
‘Simon.’ The voice was faint and Pat strained to listen. Where were the other voices? Where was the husband? His wife?
‘Pat, you need to follow protocol. It’s not safe,’ Connor called out, urging him to rethink his position.
Pat knew he was right. But knowing Connor was right wasn’t enough to get him to pull back. He could argue that this wasn’t a training drill or an official rescue. Not yet. He was effectively just a bystander, a good Samaritan, and his first instinct was to help. He would be careful. If he thought he was in danger, or there was a risk of causing further harm, he’d pull back.
‘Think about Ella,’ Connor called to him. ‘What happens to her if something happens to you?’
Pat hesitated, knowing Connor had won this round. He was being foolish, he wasn’t just risking his own safety, he was risking more than that, he was risking Ella’s life as she knew it. Ella was all he had left and he had to stay safe for her.
Connor hadn’t needed to come after him at all. He had won the battle of wills with a few well-chosen words.
‘Simon?’ Pat called out. ‘I’ll be back, I need to get help.’
‘Don’t leave me here.’
Simon’s voice called back to him, begging him not to go. One voice only. What had happened to the others? Had they lost consciousness? Or worse? Could they hear but not respond? Would Simon notice the silence?
Pat wanted to stay but he knew it was impossible to perform this rescue without equipment and help. ‘I promise I’ll be back.’
But he couldn’t promise he’d be back in time.
He closed his eyes and pictured Ella’s face and knew he had no option. It ripped him in two to leave but he had no choice.
He turned and began to inch his way off the slab. He had moved less than a foot when the ground wobbled and shifted and the concrete under him trembled and vibrated. His heart was in his throat as adrenalin surged through his body and he fought to keep his balance.
‘Reeves,’ Connor yelled at him. ‘Get back here!’
CHAPTER THREE
CHARLI WOKE WITH a start. Something wet dripped from the ceiling, hitting her forehead.
She frowned, perplexed, and lifted her hand to wipe the moisture from her skin. She winced as her fingers brushed across her hairline. There was a large bump over her left eye and her skin felt tacky. And then she remembered where she was and what had happened.
She was freezing and her hand was throbbing. She’d torn a strip of fabric off the bedsheet and wrapped it around the base of her right thumb to stem the bleeding, but she hadn’t been able to see how bad the wound was and her fingers were too cold to be able to give her any sensory feedback but she thought it had stopped bleeding.
The room was still pitch black, giving her no clue as to the time. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep. She was thirsty and freezing and worried. She’d never treated anyone with hypothermia but she knew it was a real
danger. She was curled in a ball on the bed, nestled into the small gap between the collapsed roof and the crushed bedhead. The quilt covered her but it was doing little to keep her warm.
Moisture continued to drip onto her head. She cupped her hands and let it gather in her palms. She lifted her hands to her face, wrinkling her nose in disappointment and disgust as she smelt the tainted water. It was undrinkable.
She tucked her hands under her armpits in a vain attempt to increase her body heat and lay in the dark, straining her ears to hear signs of life from anywhere around her. Was Amy in the apartment too? Had she fallen asleep and not heard Amy come home? Maybe her sister was there somewhere. Maybe she’d been knocked unconscious?
‘Amy?’ she whispered into the dark. In hope. Just in case, by some miracle, her sister was there.
Was that the sound of someone breathing?
Her heart rate spiked and she waited, listening carefully, before realising it was her own breathing she could hear, loud in the silence.
But then, in the distance, she heard another noise. A voice. People calling out, talking to each other. There were other people here, she wasn’t alone!
‘Hello? Can you hear me? Hello?’
There was no reply, the voices simply continued in the distance. They didn’t stop or change or show any sign that they had heard her. No one replied to her and the words were indistinct. She knew they weren’t close.
Her voice was hoarse, her throat parched and sore. No one was going to hear her. She needed to make more noise. But how?
She sat up slowly, uncurling herself like a fern frond, and hesitantly felt for the floor with her cold, bare feet. Her toes were tiny blocks of ice, she had some sensation in the two biggest toes but nothing in the rest. How many hours had she been trapped here?
She should have stayed in the bar with Patrick. She should have had another lemonade. She couldn’t remember now why it had been so necessary, so important that she get to bed. Maybe just a few more minutes’ conversation would have delayed things enough so that she wouldn’t have been in the apartment. But it was too late for those regrets now, she was in the apartment and she was alone.
She couldn’t lie on the bed and wait to be found. She needed to make it happen. She needed to do something. Anything.
The carpet was sodden but no longer under water. She crawled across the damp, muddy floor as she felt around cautiously in the dark, searching for something she could use to create noise. Her hand throbbed where she had cut her palm but she ignored that. There were more important things to worry about. Her eyes hadn’t become accustomed to the blackness, which she knew meant there was no light coming in. Did that mean there was also no fresh air? Would she suffocate before she was found?
Her thoughts lent urgency to her search. There were people out there, out beyond this tomb she was imprisoned in, and she needed them to find her. She couldn’t contemplate dying in here. Someone would find her. She had to believe that. She wasn’t ready to die. Not yet. She needed to alert people to her existence.
Lost in her thoughts, it took her a moment to realise her fingers had closed around a slender object. A pole of some sort. It was cold to the touch, metal, not wood. It felt like a ski pole but she knew there weren’t any in the room. It could be a piece of the bed, the rail from the wardrobe, part of the bedside lamp. She didn’t know what it was or how it came to be lying on the floor. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it would make more noise than she was capable of by yelling.
She crawled back to the bed. She could still hear noises from above but the voices were being drowned out by mechanical sounds now. She could feel her anxiety increasing with every passing second. What were they doing with those machines? What if they were bulldozers? What if they pushed more debris down on top of her? Her breaths came in short, rapid bursts as panic set in. She had to make some noise. They had to find her. Her panic gave strength to her cold, lethargic muscles and she hit the pole against the metal frame with as much energy as she could muster.
Her arm tired easily but she forced herself to continue.
One minute, two, she wasn’t sure.
Lactic acid burned in her muscles and she stopped briefly, giving her arms a chance to rest. Her ears were ringing but she listened for noises from above. Something, anything, to let her know she’d been heard.
‘Hello? Can anyone hear me?’ she called, but her voice sounded faint even to her ears.
She heard a whistle, one long blast, that echoed around the mountain.
When it ceased, so had all the noise. Everything was silent.
What did it mean? Was it a warning whistle? Was there danger? Why was it so quiet?
She waited, the pole heavy in her hand. Where was everyone? Where had they gone?
Her heart beat furiously in her chest. She breathed deeply, trying to quell the rising panic that threatened to overwhelm her, but all she got was a lungful of stale, putrid air. The smell was vile and made her feel nauseous.
She let the pole fall from her fingertips.
What was coming her way now? More water? More mud?
Death?
She didn’t know how much more she could take. Her reserves were running low. She was exhausted, thirsty, hungry, sore, filthy and alone. Maybe it was easier just to let go.
She put her head down and cried and the tears gathered in the corner of her mouth. Ignoring the knowledge that her skin was covered in dust and who knew what else, she licked the tears from her lips. They were the only moisture she could get.
What would she do when her tears dried up?
She lay on the damp mattress in the dark and imagined dying alone. Buried here on the wrong side of the world.
* * *
Pat was exhausted. Since the landslide he’d slept for a total of eight out of the past thirty hours. He’d taken his assigned breaks but no more and, like all the search and rescue personnel, he was surviving on coffee and adrenalin.
Sixteen people had been listed as missing. In the past thirty hours, nine bodies had been recovered but not one survivor had been among them.
And Charli was still missing.
He had to believe that was good news. There was still hope. Though he knew that the more time that passed the lower her chances of survival were, he wasn’t going to give up. He’d made a silent promise to Charli that he wouldn’t stop until he found her. It wasn’t in his nature to give in and he refused to, even though hope was fading rapidly. There were still seven people to be found and he wasn’t stopping until they’d all been accounted for.
Close to two thousand people were involved in the search and recovery effort but he’d made certain that he was assigned to the search zone that included the remains of Snowgum Chalet. The noise level on the mountain was high. Concrete drills and bobcats were the background noise to the sound of thousands of voices. At regular intervals a signal whistle blew and everyone downed tools and the mountain fell silent as they all held their collective breath and listened for any sound of survivors.
But the site remained eerily quiet. There was nothing at all to hear.
Even a concrete X-ray machine and thermal imaging equipment had so far failed to detect any trace of survivors.
Perhaps today their luck would turn.
At times he felt as though they were taking one step forward and two back. Between the fatigue and the lack of progress it was getting increasingly difficult to keep morale high. It was falling with every hour that passed but Pat knew that all it would take to lift everyone’s spirits would be to find just one survivor. Just one. But low temperatures and exposure to the elements, combined with potential injuries, meant they didn’t have a lot of time. Hypothermia, blood loss, fractures, organ damage—all of these could be fatal.
He tried to focus on the positives. There had been no further landslides and the skies remained clear. They didn’
t need snowfall to hamper their efforts.
He knew the negatives still outweighed the positives but despite the negative outcome of their efforts so far he refused to give in. Someone must have survived.
He swallowed the last mouthful of his breakfast before strapping himself into a harness in preparation for his stint working on the precariously steep slope. The mountain was wet, slippery and treacherous. His movements were slow and deliberate. It was imperative that he didn’t dislodge the earth or other debris beneath him as there was the risk of the rubble giving way and sending him, and others, plunging down the mountainside. The process was like a game of Jenga or pick-up sticks. Moving or even touching the wrong piece could cause other pieces to fall and the result could be disastrous.
* * *
He’d been working for several hours with just a short break when the Sunday morning chapel bells rang out over the mountain. They’d been advised that today’s service would give the volunteers, search-and-rescue crew and people who hadn’t been evacuated from the mountain an opportunity to say a prayer for the dead and the missing, and anyone who wished to could put down tools and attend.
The site gradually went quiet as equipment was abandoned, machines switched off and work ceased as people made their way to the chapel.
‘Did you want to come to the service?’ Connor asked from his position alongside Pat.
Pat shook his head. ‘You know I don’t believe in God.’ He’d given up on his tenuous belief two years ago when his prayers had gone unanswered. ‘I think my time is better spent here, searching, doing something more practical.’ He had a feeling something was about to happen. Something told him it was important to stay on site.
‘Fair enough. But you can’t search alone,’ Connor said as he carefully shifted another piece of concrete. ‘I’ll stay too.’