by Chris Ryan
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 SILENCE
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.
There were no sounds. Why were there no sounds?
She felt like her brain was in a loop. She had no sense of time – she could hardly remember anything from before the quake. She might have been here for ages: hours, days. Had she already woken up before and asked herself these questions?
And then she heard a scream. It sounded like a child.
Of course. There were children sleeping in the museum.
Suddenly the air was full of screams. It didn’t sound like pain. It was a strange, keening sound of pure animal fear. What’s happened? it seemed to say. Help!
People in trouble, thought Amber. The sound was like a reboot for her scrambled brain. At last I know what to do.
She got up on her hands and knees and felt around. Near the bottom of the slab was a hole. How big was it? She got down on her tummy, her legs squashed up under her by the wall. Actually, was that the wall? She couldn’t take anything for granted now.
She got one shoulder and an arm through. A moment of panic. What if she got stuck? No, think. The frieze couldn’t be very thick. There were people screaming, she had to get out. She remembered some piece of information – where it came from she didn’t know. If you could get your shoulders through a hole, the rest of you would follow. Perhaps it was from cave diving, that was it. She got the other shoulder through and her head emerged.
She blinked. The air was dusty, thick as soup. On the floor was a slender light stick, which glowed like a fat sausage. She dug her elbows into the ground and pulled herself forwards.
She was out.
Amber got to her feet, picked up the light stick and moved it around like a torch. The air was so thick, she could hardly see in front of her. It was like being in moorland mist. But she could see the devastation just in the sma
ll area immediately around her: a flat stone floor had become like the jumbled rocks at the bottom of a cliff.
And she could hear. Screaming, crying.
‘Hello?’ she called through the doorway into the other room.
A figure was already standing up, staggering around, crying. Amber tried calling back but her voice was drowned out by all the screams. It seemed to be coming from the walls, the floor, everywhere. This room was also heaped with rubble. One of the walls had fallen down, right onto the area where the kids had been lying. Around the room, piles of debris were moving, as though people were trying to crawl out of the ground.
Amber ran towards the figure, her feet crunching on broken glass from the display cabinets. It was a young boy in pyjamas, eyes wide, black hair frosted with dust. He stared at her.
Amber took hold of him firmly. ‘I’m Amber. Are you hurt?’
As she spoke she looked down. The boy had bare feet. How had he managed not to cut himself running around on all this broken glass? There was no blood in the footprints he’d left. He was panicking; trying to talk to her but looking around wildly as though his legs were still trying to run. The top and bottom halves of his body wanted to do different things: one half sought human contact, the other needed to keep running.
Amber seized him firmly. ‘What is your name?’
‘Gabriel.’
‘Have you got any shoes? You’ll cut yourself.’
Gabriel looked down and saw his feet. His face scrunched up as though he was about to cry. Amber realized he thought she was going to tell him off.
‘You stay here. Show me where they are.’
Gabriel pointed.
The screaming was all around her, coming from behind heaps of masonry. There must be kids and teachers buried in there. They didn’t seem to know she was there. Maybe they were crying out just so that they could hear other human noise.
Keep calm, Amber told herself. You can only do one thing at a time. Get this boy wearing shoes and then there are two of you to help people. Amber went to his sleeping bag and found a pair of trainers. ‘Here, catch.’ She tossed them to him and he put them on.
In the sleeping bag next to his, a girl was sitting up. Rubble was strewn across it but none of the pieces seemed very big. She saw Amber and her scream became a sob. ‘Help me.’
Amber knelt down. ‘Are you hurt?’
The girl shook her head.
Amber relaxed. The girl probably just needed comfort, so she hugged her. The girl sobbed a little more and then relaxed. Amber pulled away and wiggled her light stick. ‘Have you got one of these?’
The girl nodded. She brought it out of her sleeping bag. It was orange. It illuminated her haunted face like a Halloween lantern.
Amber smiled. ‘Good girl. What’s your name?’
‘Rosa.’
‘Hi, Rosa. I’m Amber. Now put your shoes on and come and help.’ Rosa stared at Amber. ‘Go on,’ she went on gently. The girl reached into her sleeping bag and brought out a pair of trainers.
Two survivors found already. Amber began to feel a little calmer, more able to cope. ‘OK, Gabriel, Rosa. How many people were here tonight? I saw three teachers – how many children are here?’
‘Eleven,’ said Gabriel.
‘And they were all in here?’
Rosa nodded. ‘Think so. There was someone screaming next to me.’
‘We’re going to go round and help people out. Everyone you come to, ask them if they’re hurt. If they’re not hurt, help them out. If they are or if you’re not sure, call me and I will come and look at them. Understood?’
They nodded.
Amber noticed a light switch on the wall next to Felipe’s office. She tried it. High up on the wall, a severed cable fizzed and threw sparks like fireworks, then died. Amber switched the light off again, then asked herself why she’d just done that.
‘Hey, guys,’ she called to the kids, ‘look for glow sticks first. We need as much light as possible, and that’s also where people are likely to be.’
Rosa and Gabriel started picking through debris from the collapsed wall.
A mobile phone was ringing. At first Amber didn’t hear it against the background of cries; she only gradually became aware of it. It seemed so normal, so everyday – as if she was in a café or travelling on a train, not stuck in the middle of a disaster. She listened. It wasn’t answered. That might be their first casualty.
Where was it coming from? She’d better get to it before the kids, just in case . . . In case what? Her thoughts trailed off and she didn’t finish the sentence in her head.
It was coming from her right. She put the light stick between her teeth and started pulling away lumps of masonry. They were heavy. She had to drag them off and then get out of the way as they crashed to the floor. She stopped after she’d removed a few and listened again. The phone had stopped. Amber pulled more lumps of concrete off. Now there was a hole in front of her. She had a bad feeling about this. She angled her head and carefully poked the light stick in.
There was a face. The mouth was open and clogged with dust. It fogged his glasses. It was the teacher. Amber leaned in further. She took the light stick from her mouth and shone it into the hole. The man’s open eyes stared up behind the frosted glass. Even the irises were frosted with dust. A large block of masonry lay across his throat. It must have crushed his chest and windpipe. He was dead.
A glow by the man’s left shoulder attracted Amber’s attention. His phone. Amber reached in and pulled it out. Its display was blinking. Missed call. She sat up. It felt wrong to take the property of a dead man but this was an emergency. And he could hardly have any more use for it.
Amber dialled the number for the emergency services. At least she could now let them know there were people trapped in the museum. It was unlikely anyone would think to look here otherwise.
It was engaged. Amber tried again. After a couple of goes it connected. Amber sat up, ready to talk, but it was only a message: ‘All lines to emergency services are busy, please try again later.’
Amber cut the connection. A moment ago she thought she’d have help. Now she was fighting a major battle alone again. They must be chock-a-block everywhere else going to hospitals, hotels, stations. She tried to call up the contacts book on the phone. Maybe she could call someone else, one of his friends. Anyone, to let the outside world know there were people in the museum needing help. But the display faded and died. The battery was dead. Amber put the phone back where she’d found it.
She wondered what to do about the body. Should she mark the position, tell the kids not to look in there?
Then she heard Gabriel calling to her.
Amber went back to see what he wanted. He was kneeling over a girl, who was lying flat on the floor. She was conscious but her right arm was pinned down by a large block of stone.
‘This is Beatriz,’ said Gabriel.
‘Does it hurt, Beatriz?’ asked Amber.
Beatriz nodded.
Amber looked at the girl and realized she didn’t know what to do. She had a vague idea that crush injuries weren’t straightforward and that you shouldn’t move anyone who’d been crushed. But what if the girl was bleeding under there? The light was so bad she couldn’t see and she just wasn’t used to dealing with casualties. Paulo was. That was who they needed.
For a while, Amber had been pushing certain thoughts aside, getting on with practical things. But now her subconscious rebelled and made her face them. You need Paulo, it said – and by the way, where are your friends?
Are they under rubble like that man?
Are you the only one who’s survived?
Rosa and Gabriel peered into a hole near her, breaking into her thoughts. They were doing a great job.
‘No one in here,’ chirped Gabriel.
‘Well of course there isn’t, silly, there’s no room.’
‘Hey, guys?’ called Amber.
The kids looked at her.
‘Keep chattering
like that. Do it everywhere you go. Your friends who are still buried will find it very comforting to hear you.’
They moved on to the next pile and Amber’s thoughts returned to the label in the jade room. Her parents had been here. They’d left behind a clue, to be found one day like a holy relic by the people carrying on their work. But now it seemed like an omen. Her parents weren’t alive any more. Lives change. Humans are fragile. What had become now of the next generation, Alpha Force?
15 LONE RESCUER
Amber watched as Rosa helped another classmate out. He got to his feet and took cautious steps. Amber interpreted his body language and could almost read his thought processes. Was the ground safe to walk on, or would it shake them like dice in a tumbler? Even after he’d got his courage back the boy limped. He was hurt. His injury didn’t look very bad but it might be better to let him rest.
Amber went to help him. ‘Hi there. What’s your name?’
‘Pedro,’ said the boy.
‘Pedro, I’ve got a very important job for you. Can you hobble over here? Lean on me. Sit down here,’ she instructed him. ‘I want you to stay with Beatriz here. She’s hurt her arm and she isn’t able to move right now. Can you look after her until help arrives?’
Pedro sat down. ‘OK,’ he nodded. He stared at Amber. All the others had done that too. Must be the shock, she thought.
There were fewer screams in the room now. Those who were still trapped could hear others moving about normally. But Amber kept hearing the occasional cry from other galleries.
‘Listen up,’ she called. ‘Pedro, Rosa, Gabriel – I need to go and see if there are people trapped in the other galleries. You stay here, carry on doing what you’re doing. Promise me you won’t move from this room. All right?’
They nodded.
Amber took two light sticks. She’d start with the entrance lobby, see whether they could get out. She heard another mobile phone start trilling, then another, but she couldn’t tell where they were. They weren’t answered.
She reached the wall and her light stick picked out an urn on a plinth. That was odd. Then she realized she’d gone completely the wrong way, towards the dinosaur gallery. Without any landmarks and with so much devastation she needed a compass to find her way about.