by J. F. Penn
"Mum! Dad!" Lucy called in desperation as she reached the gate. "Amber!"
She tried to keep herself from sobbing. She had to search for them.
They might be OK.
They had to be OK.
She picked her way through the rubble towards the back of the house, careful to avoid the deep holes that now peppered the yard. The air smelled of sewage and escaped gas and a pervasive salty damp where the ocean encroached into the human realm.
The back door of the house stood open, and Lucy felt a surge of hope. They had been taught since they were little to get under a doorframe. Maybe her family huddled inside.
She pushed the door open and stepped in, her eyes widening at what she saw.
3
Ben woke to agonized screams. For a moment, he couldn't tell whether he was dead or alive. The anguish and pain in those voices made him feel as though he were in his people’s underworld, deep within Rarohenga.
A sharp pain in his thigh forced his eyes open. He brushed the sand from his leg, where a deep gash oozed dark red blood. Ben winced, the saltwater searing the wound as he sat up. His dark hair was matted and stiff with salt. He blinked as blurry shapes ran past him on the shore, but as he rubbed his eyes, his vision began to clear.
The beach in front of him was littered with the wreckage of the storm. A few meters away, a man huddled over the body of a woman on the sand, surf churning around him. A splintered hunk of wood slid up the sand and nudged the corpse. The man moaned in despair, clutching her to his chest.
There were more bodies in the surf, angry water pushing and pulling them in a macabre dance of the dead. Ben wanted to go and pull them to shore, but there were so many. Shingles and pieces of what used to be homes stuck out of the sand, smashed into splinters on the hard-packed shoreline. An old Volkswagen was perched atop a fifteen-foot fishing boat that had capsized and now sank, buried slowly by the tide.
Ben clutched his leg and did his best to ignore the pain. His head pounded, but at least the blood had slowed to a trickle. He moved his hands over the rest of his body and felt no other pain. He had survived.
Lucy, he thought. Did she make it?
He couldn't even consider that she hadn't. She was a survivor.
Sirens wailed in the distance, followed by a series of short explosions. He had to move. He had to get to his father. Ben stood and took a step, wincing at the pain in his leg, but he stumbled on. He was in better shape than the corpses that bobbed in the surf.
He turned his back on the ocean and looked west. The mountains loomed in the distance beneath blackened clouds. Closer to him, smoke rose over the city, spires of black haze climbing into the sky.
Christchurch had been hit again.
Ben orientated himself to the surroundings. He was on a beach near Pigeon Bay, looking across the tip of Godley Beach State Park towards the city. The tidal wave had left behind a wall of debris, blocking the only road from Pigeon Bay to Diamond Harbor. He picked his way through the rubble and followed the road regardless. There was no other way back to the city.
Back to his father … and Lucy.
But Ben sensed something else, something more primitive – more powerful. He felt his grandfather call out. The man was in trouble. He needed Ben’s help. Soon.
Ben pushed away the pain and started to jog. The increased oxygen lifted the fog in his head. He couldn’t think about Lucy. They had been on the water with no identification, no phone, no money. Even if he had his phone, Ben doubted service would still be operational. After the last disaster, the lines had been swamped and it had been impossible to reach people.
He took a deep breath and pinched at the cramp now blossoming in his side. He needed water and, despite the destruction, his stomach rumbled.
I should go south, he thought. There's no way to get to Dad in Christchurch. Grandfather will know what to do.
He stopped and turned to face southwest, towards Tekapo. It would take days to reach his grandfather's place on foot. He needed a vehicle. If he got further away from the shoreline, there might be some areas untouched by the wave. Ben walked further into the maze of debris left behind.
He emerged from one street to see a couple huddled on the side of the road. They tended to a wounded child between them. The little boy wept in agony and, even from a distance, Ben could see his leg was twisted out of shape. Ben's years of first aid training at the boathouse would come in handy now. He jogged over to help.
As he reached the roadside, he noticed a group of teenagers gathered together, loitering and watching the scene. Then the air shifted around them.
Thin, black smoke curled up from the ground. It wound around the legs of the group like a semi-transparent, fast-growing vine. Tendrils crawled up their bodies to their heads and then billowed out. With every breath, the boys inhaled the darkness.
What the hell?
They turned as one to face Ben, expressions blank, dark eyes shadowed as curls of smoke clung to their skin. They took a step towards him, cutting off his path to the injured child.
A woman stumbled from a house across the street. The boys turned in unison at the sound and a tall, lanky boy, their leader, approached her in two long strides. He grabbed the woman by the arm, holding her while the others formed a circle around them both. The woman screamed and tried to pull away but the boys closed ranks, grasping hands reaching for her clothes.
Ben ran towards them, leaping over rocks and other debris.
"Hey, leave her alone," he shouted.
The tall, lanky boy turned at Ben's approach and pulled a knife from his belt, hefting its weight.
"She's ours. Go find your own."
"Get away from her," Ben said with a step forward. "She's not for you."
The boy's eyes rolled back in his head. Ben could have sworn he saw the black smoke inside them. A deep laugh rumbled from him, a voice that couldn't possibly belong to this body.
The circle of boys all turned to face Ben. The woman seized her opportunity and bolted from inside the circle, running off down the road. They ignored her, focused on Ben now. They drew their weapons – knives, pipes, cricket bats and rocks.
Ben took a step back, his eyes fixed on the boys. He had one chance to run. If he fell, they would be on him.
He saw the lanky boy's eyes narrow, his hand clenched on the knife handle.
Ben turned and ran. The boys roared as one, their footsteps thunderous on the cracked pavement as they dashed after him. Ben darted down a side road, zigzagging where he could.
But he was tiring.
The boys whooped at the thrill of the chase, the primal sound of hunters closing in on their prey.
Ben ducked down another street and into a park. There was a children's playground in the middle, a little wooden house and a sandpit covered in overgrown vines behind it.
He ran and hid himself quickly just as the boys emerged from the side road.
"Come out, come out, wherever you are," one of them sang in a falsetto.
Ben held his breath as the footsteps approached.
"He must be in there," one voice said.
The sound of a baseball bat thudding into wood broke the air as the boys attacked the little house.
"It's empty, you idiot," another voice said. "He must have run down the other way. Let's go. There's plenty more fun to be had today."
Their footsteps grew quieter. Ben let out his breath softly. He waited a few more minutes to be sure they were gone, then shook himself free from the sandpit. He pulled the vines off his arms, brushing his full-sleeve tattoos clean of the dirty sand.
Time to get out of here.
He headed out of the park and into a residential area. It was quiet; he supposed the residents had evacuated already. The place certainly felt abandoned. There were a couple of cars left on the street, deliberately parked as opposed to being dropped there by the gigantic wave. His father had taught him more than a few practical tricks, and it didn't take long to get one of them started.
>
He drove towards the city first, thoughts of Lucy and his father swirling in his mind. But at a fork in the road towards Christchurch, a pile of rubble dumped by the ocean blocked his way. He considered his options. There was only one that he could see: the road south was clear. The road towards Tekapo and Grandfather. The old man would know what to do and Ben still felt drawn there somehow.
He looked to the horizon, where a swirling mass of black clouds descended upon the land. The thick, inky blackness rolled across the sky. He thought he could see a misshapen face in the smoke, one with eyes of pitch and fangs of ash. A bolt of lightning shot through the black and the face dissipated.
Hurry, Ben.
His grandfather's voice. He had to go. His father would be fine and Lucy … Ben pushed aside his dark thoughts.
He drove southwest as night fell. The smoke mingled with the encroaching darkness, and the tiny bulbs in the car's headlights could not cut through it all. As Ben wove his way, he thought of the black smoke that had seemed to possess the gang. How long would it be before all-out anarchy gripped his beloved island?
A little further on, Lake Tekapo glowed like a plate of silver in front of him, the water rippled by an unseen wind. Ben scanned the horizon until he identified his grandfather's house ahead by the outline of the roof. The chimney still jutted from the top. That, at least, was a good sign.
His grandfather's home had always been a refuge, especially when his father's drunken violence had run on for days. He used to escape here and carve wood next to his grandfather before fishing on the lake together in the quiet of dusk.
But now it was too quiet. An eerie silence hung over the lake. Not even the insects made a sound.
The wind picked up, and on the gust came the odor of decaying flesh. The sky shifted, the clouds bleeding red. Shadows like claws crawled down from the hills. Ben shivered as an ominous feeling crept over him.
He drove quickly to his grandfather's house and parked outside. He got out of the car, slamming the door hard. The sharp noise echoed in the still air, but there was no other sound. Ben walked up the front steps towards the door, each foot putting pressure on the wooden stairs and cracking in the quiet.
The porch swing rocked back and forth in the breeze, creaking slightly. The chair where the old man spent countless evenings staring at the lake sat empty. Broken bottles lay strewn across the porch and his grandfather's fishing poles lay tangled in the corner as if tossed there by a giant.
Ben's hand shook as he reached for the doorknob. His fingers touched the cold brass. He slowly turned the knob until the door popped open a few centimeters. It was as dark inside as it was out. Then, he caught a whiff of tobacco from inside the house.
"Grandfather?" he called.
There was no reply.
Not a single sound. He pushed the door fully open as shadows lengthened around him.
"Grandfather? Are you here?"
BBC World News
Thousands are reported dead as a series of earthquakes rocked New Zealand this afternoon. At 3.11pm, the first earthquake occurred 4 km off the coast of Christchurch at a shallow depth. Measuring 7.3 on the Richter scale, it drove a tsunami towards the coast, devastating the coastal community. There was no warning of the quake.
This was followed by several more earthquakes near Te Anau and another at Dunedin, impacting much of the area south of Queenstown and Moeraki. Aftershocks have continued to rock the South Island, causing extensive damage to buildings and infrastructure. Pictures from smart phones and videos recorded locally show scenes of destruction and disturbing images of dead bodies, drowned or crushed by falling buildings. Communications are down and a state of emergency has been declared in the country. Australia is sending aid and medical staff to assist the New Zealand government at this difficult time.
The New Zealand Earthquake Commission (EQC) has advised people to stay in their homes and follow the guidelines of safety in earthquake areas.
Vulcanologist Michael Brown, currently situated in Sydney, Australia, issued a statement explaining the events.
"New Zealand is on the Pacific Rim of Fire, a geologically active zone with several thousand earthquakes a year. Most aren't even noticed but we have seen big quakes before so this is not entirely unusual. In 1931, 256 people died in Hawkes Bay and in 2011, 185 people lost their lives in the Christchurch quake. New Zealand has survived these disasters before and it will do so again."
4
Lucy looked around. The kitchen had somehow survived intact, braced by thick walls that held it up even as the rest of the house had fallen around it. The oak table was laid for their family dinner. Glasses lay on their sides, plates broken on the floor. There were pans in the sink, ready to be washed. It looked almost normal.
"Mum," Lucy called. "Dad … Amber."
A peal of bells began to ring outside, a warning from the local church. Sirens pierced the air, and there were screams in the distance.
But there was no sound in the house.
Lucy walked through the kitchen towards the sitting room where the Campion family would gather to watch films together. They all loved action movies, even Amber, who pretended she was too cool but would always sneak in as the credits rolled. The room was the center of the house, where they would sit to watch the ocean beyond; where her parents would have their afternoon tea.
Something creaked and then thudded to the floor next door. Lucy started forward, running to the entrance of the sitting room.
It was a ruin.
Thick timber beams lay across the room, broken like straws. Dust rose from the one that had just fallen. Metal struts, exposed by the shearing of the house, poked out from a pile of bricks and dust and debris. The floor above had collapsed, opening the space to the sky. Storm clouds whirled high above.
Tears ran down Lucy's cheeks as she bent to pull a figurine from the rubble. A little ballerina. One of her mother's collection, born from a love of ballet that neither of her daughters had shared. For a moment, Lucy regretted the times she could have gone with her mother to the ballet. What if there would never be another chance?
She coughed. The air was thick with dust from the rubble pile, but she had to try and shift some of the debris.
Lucy pulled away the bigger pieces of fallen masonry first, leaning on her good leg, digging towards where her parents usually sat together on the sofa.
A cold certainty crept into her heart with every minute that passed, but she had to know for sure.
She dragged away the bricks, her hands bleeding with tiny cuts from the sharp plaster, nails snagging at her. She heaved away a final piece of timber, then stopped.
There they were.
Her mother lay crushed sideways, her neck bent at an unnatural angle by a heavy beam that had fallen from above. Her father's arms were wrapped around his wife, his body bent close to hers. His face was covered in dust. Tears of blood had run from his eyes and dried in the dirt. Even without medical training, Lucy would have known they were dead.
She fell to her knees in the rubble, letting grief pour from her in waves of tears. The whole city was broken, but her epicenter was here.
"Lucy … help." A thin, reedy call came from upstairs.
"Amber?"
Lucy got to her feet, wiping her eyes. Could her sister really be alive?
She climbed around the rubble and headed for the stairs. A few remained to the upper level, where half the house still stood. Lucy clambered up them.
"Amber! I'm coming," she called, pulling herself the last few feet and racing down what was left of the corridor to her sister's room.
Amber lay huddled under the bed, her blue eyes wide with fright.
"You came back." Amber's voice was soft.
Lucy lay down beside the bed. She took her sister's hands and rubbed her cold skin, suddenly aware of her own wet clothes and the ache in her bones, as well as her heart. Her leg still throbbed with pain.
There was another creak from downstairs, and a crunch as
something else fell onto the rubble pile. Lucy knew there were aftershocks coming – possibly hundreds more, as there had been after the 2011 quake.
"We have to get out of here," she said quietly. "The house isn't safe. We need to get to central Christchurch and join the evacuation there."
Amber shook her head.
"No, Mum and Dad said we'd be fine here. They're downstairs. We'll wait here for everything to be normal again. It's fine."
Lucy couldn't help the tears that welled in her eyes.
"No," Amber whispered, shaking her head as realization dawned. "No. No. Please."
Lucy held out her arms and Amber scrambled out from under the bed into her embrace. The sisters wept together, Lucy rocking them gently in shared grief.
But the minutes ticked by, the earth continued turning, and Lucy knew they couldn't stay here and survive. The roads were ruined; no emergency vehicles would make it out this far. They had to get to the central area and meet up with the emergency services there. The country had planned for this type of disaster. They would be OK there.
"It's only us now," Lucy whispered. "And we need to go. Mum and Dad would have wanted us to be safe."
Amber nodded, sitting up and wiping her eyes.
"We can't take too much," Lucy said, "but can you find your backpack while I get some dry clothes?"
Amber stood and took a deep breath. "I've got some chocolate round here somewhere, too."
Lucy smiled. "I could use some of that."
She walked carefully into the next room, acutely aware of the house shifting beneath them. Her parents' bedroom was almost completely intact, but Lucy's room across the hallway had disappeared, crushed into the floor below. Lucy dug into her mother's chest of drawers, pulling out underwear, a pair of jeans, a t-shirt and a warm fleece. They were similar sizes, her mother retaining a trim figure by walking the peninsula every day. Lucy brought the fleece to her nose and inhaled the scent of her mother's perfume. Memories flooded back and she recalled the warmth of an embrace she would never feel again.