Alpha Force: Fault Line Page 16

  There was no pulse.

  Her eyes were still half open, looking at him. But instead of darting around they were still. Dead still.

  He looked at his watch: 3.45 a.m. That was meant to be important, wasn’t it? Time of death? Someone might want to know what time she died.

  Now he was alone.

  22 THE RING

  Amber, Alex and Miguel came out of the fire door at the side of the building. They had sent Li, Paulo, Jose and the children on ahead while they searched the toilets. Both sets had survived, apart from flooding, but Jorges was not there. In the distance Miguel’s van looked inviting – interior light on; children sitting inside, wrapped in blankets. Outside, Imelda and Señora Marquez were standing next to a camping stove pouring out coffee or talking to parents. It almost looked like a normal social gathering – except for the wrecked museum visible in the torchlight.

  Amber was downcast. ‘Jorges must have gone somewhere else.’

  Alex tried to keep his voice positive. ‘We’ve found all the other kids. We’re going to find him too.’

  ‘He might be anywhere,’ said Miguel. ‘You’d be surprised what little nooks and crannies these kids can get into.’

  A figure came up to them. ‘Excuse me?’

  Amber saw Miguel’s hand tighten around the crow bar.

  ‘Have you seen my wife? She’s a teacher. Señora Zapata.’

  Miguel relaxed. Amber swallowed. The husband of the dead teacher. She put her hand on Alex’s good arm. ‘Give me five minutes. I’ll catch up with you guys.’

  Alex and Miguel became silhouettes as they carried on walking towards the van. Amber took Señor Zapata gently by the arm and slowed him down so they could have some privacy.

  The man was nervous. He started talking. ‘I’ve been walking for hours. Everywhere it’s the same. Destroyed.’

  Amber let him talk. It was as though he’d been storing up fears for hours and had to let them out.

  ‘But people keep being rescued. I met two men who were coming here too. They were looking for their children. We laughed and said, if we got out, our kids will have got out too. Children are tougher than men. Women are tougher than men.’

  Amber’s heart wrenched. It was like he was pleading with her not to tell him the news that he dreaded.

  But she had to. ‘I’m afraid she died,’ she said gently.

  He said nothing. Just stood as if unplugged.

  What else should she say? Should she let him ask the next question? She remembered what it was like when she was told that her parents had died. Her uncle had broken the news. She remembered that he had let her ask questions when she was ready. Don’t rush him, she thought. Let him be in charge.

  Finally he asked, ‘How did it happen?’

  What should she say? Your wife’s legs were crushed. We didn’t find her for hours. We decided moving her would kill her, but because we didn’t move her she died when the roof fell in. Amber felt miserably ashamed. They had all failed. No, get a grip, she told herself. He has a right to know what happened. Our guilt is nothing to do with it. Be as honest as possible.

  Amber swallowed hard. ‘She was trapped when a wall fell down. She wasn’t in any pain but we couldn’t get her out. Then the roof suddenly collapsed and it killed her instantly.’

  Señor Zapata was nodding, but he looked as if he couldn’t take it in. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  Why thank me? thought Amber. I don’t know if I did the right thing.

  ‘Were you with her?’ he said.

  Amber nodded. ‘Yes.’ She desperately wanted to say something comforting – she told me about you, she seemed so brave, the children went and kept her company. But Amber had hardly known the woman; anything she said seemed hollow.

  Then she had another thought. What if he asked to see the body? Should she take him into the dangerous building and show him his wife with her head smashed in? Show him how she’d spent her final few hours? Should she tell him a white lie to spare him that sight?

  Amber remembered something. At last. This was something she could do. She put her fingers in her pocket and brought out Señora Zapata’s wedding ring.

  Señor Zapata took it and looked at it in silence.

  It was as if the whole world was contained in that circle of gold.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said eventually, as if he’d only just remembered someone was there.

  He didn’t want anyone else around. He didn’t want to ask any more questions. Amber patted him on the shoulder and left him.

  As she walked away to join the others, her eyes were blurred with tears. She didn’t see the man who had been watching them.

  Hex moved the light stick away from the body. Not that there was much room in the hole, but he didn’t want to see it. He put the light stick into a little crevice. At eye level? No, that dazzled him and made the hole seem smaller. He wiggled it into another cranny. That was better. He was side on to it now. And he could turn away from the body so he didn’t have to look at it.

  He heard a creak. Something was moving.

  Was that someone coming to rescue him?

  ‘Hello?’ he called. Then he listened hard. So hard he could hear his own nervous system sing.

  It didn’t come again.

  Were the bones shifting? Had they been making this noise before or was this new? Were they about to come crashing down and claim this space occupied by two soft bodies?

  Nothing happened. The sound didn’t come again. It must have been one of those creaks, like you get in a house as it settles. There was just the gentle scraping of sand, trickling down, down, down between the bones.

  They were like fossils in a rock wall, sandwiched between concrete and these fossilized dinosaur bones. One day they’d be found, fossils in fossils. No one would know that he’d been the last one to die. In the general scale of fossil time, millions of years, that was irrelevant. He looked at his watch again. Barely fifteen minutes since Susana had died. Fifteen minutes since he’d heard another voice. And already it seemed an age.

  He turned on his palmtop. There was still no signal; a blank box where normally he would expect to see how many satellites could see him, how strong the signal was, how many e-mails he’d got. He tried not to look at the box. Its blankness said, No one can see you. You are alone.

  He brought up a text editor. Having his fingers on the keys was good. For just a moment it made these looming walls disappear.

  What would he write?

  His fingers were ahead of his brain. He found he’d had already typed the first line. He read it out loud. That helped. That made it like really talking.

  ‘Dear Amber.’

  Amber caught up with the others at Miguel’s van. Li gave her a bagel. ‘From Imelda. All the power was off in their house so she brought the contents of her fridge along.’

  The last thing Amber felt like was eating, but she knew she should. Automatically she took a bite and chewed. Her stomach seemed to turn somersaults of delight, but eating seemed like it was part of another world. The old world. Before the quake.

  Alex brought coffees and handed one to Paulo and one to Amber. ‘We’ll have to go back in and do a proper search for Jorges and Hex.’

  Li, beside him, nodded. ‘We should get all the light sticks we can, all the torches we can, all the tools.’

  ‘I’ll see if I can get any of the children to part with their light sticks,’ said Paulo, going towards the van.

  ‘By the way, Felipe’s here,’ said Li. ‘He walked across town. He said it was bedlam. Looting, collapsed buildings.’

  ‘I’m worried about these looters,’ said Amber. ‘Do you think Jorges is in any danger from them?’

  ‘Shouldn’t think so,’ said Alex. ‘They’re not interested in hurting people. They just want things they can sell.’

  Far off, they heard the call of sirens. It had barely stopped all night.

  ‘Hex must be wondering where we’ve got to,’ said Li.

  ‘I wonder what
’s happened to him?’

  ‘Lazy lout,’ said Amber. ‘He’s probably playing games on his palmtop in a nice quiet spot somewhere.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Alex. ‘When it runs out of batteries we’ll see him quickly enough.’

  They saw Paulo coming back, illuminated like a floodlit statue by an armful of light sticks. He put them on the ground in a big glowing pile. ‘These should make things a bit easier,’ he said.

  Li looked at him severely. ‘I don’t believe you stole the children’s light sticks. How the fabric of society breaks down at a time like this.’

  Alex was looking into the distance. ‘Who’s that? Is it Señor Zapata?’ He pointed. Near the trees, a figure was wandering into the night.

  ‘That’s not him,’ said Amber. ‘I don’t know who that is.’

  As they watched, the man started running. He disappeared into a darkened area. Then they heard blows. The unmistakable sound of somebody being attacked.

  Amber, Paulo, Li and Alex gave chase.

  Alex’s torch picked out Señor Zapata, sitting on the ground, dazed. The other man had attacked him and was running away.

  The others raced past, pursuing the attacker, as Alex stopped beside Señor Zapata and helped him to his feet. ‘Are you all right?’

  The man’s voice shook. ‘I didn’t know he was there. He took my wife’s ring.’

  Alex looked up. Three torches converged on the running man like cross-hairs on a target. ‘We’ll get it back, don’t you worry.’

  The man was a good runner, but Amber, Li and Paulo were trained to peak condition.

  Paulo was so close that his torch picked out the pattern on the man’s shirt. Ahead were trees – he was running into a wood. Amber, Li and Paulo hared in after him. Branches crashed underfoot.

  Li saw a chance. She leaped up, grabbed a branch and swung towards the fleeing man. Her legs caught him around the neck in a scissors action and a moment later he was on the ground. He struggled, but Li got on top of him and twisted his arm up behind his neck. He cried out and stopped struggling. Li smiled, kneeling on his back. ‘Yeah, you keep still and you’ll find it doesn’t hurt as much.’

  ‘He’s ready for you,’ Li told Amber and Paulo. Still holding the man, she pulled him upright into a kneeling position.

  Amber strolled up to him and put her hand out. ‘Give me the ring, scumbag.’

  The man spat at her. Li tightened her hold and his gesture ended in an agonized cry.

  ‘The ring,’ said Paulo.

  Amber was so tempted to kick the man. It would have been easy. A good boot in the solar plexus was just what he deserved for robbing a bereaved man.

  ‘Look in his pockets,’ said Paulo. He bent down and put his fingers into the man’s jeans pocket. The man gave him a murderous look but Li kept him obedient.

  Paulo pulled out the ring. ‘Thank you,’ he said graciously.

  Li got off the man’s back and gave another tweak. ‘On your feet. And don’t try anything.’

  The man got up. Paulo took his other arm and they began to walk him back to the others.

  Alex and Señor Zapata, accompanied by Miguel, met them at the edge of the wood.

  ‘There’s a police van over there,’ said Miguel. ‘They’re questioning Ana, Roberto and Toni about the looters they saw. I think they’ll be very interested in our friend here.’ He took the mugger by the arm; the man looked at him malevolently and Miguel clapped a pair of handcuffs on him. ‘Nice catch, by the way,’ he said. He turned his captive round and escorted him away.

  Amber gave the ring to Señor Zapata. ‘Be careful who sees this,’ she said.

  Señor Zapata nodded. ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly and started to walk slowly towards the lighted van.

  ‘He looks so lost,’ murmured Paulo.

  They all watched him for a long moment.

  The four friends walked back to where the light sticks still stood in a glowing pile.

  Alex handed them out. ‘Come on. Work to do. People to rescue.’

  ‘Hey,’ said Amber, ‘this isn’t a very good one. Are they all like this?’ The stick in her hands was no longer bright and luminous; its light was feeble.

  ‘This one’s a bit better,’ said Alex. He held his alongside Amber’s. It was brighter but not brilliant. As he compared the two Amber’s faded completely.

  ‘They only last eight hours,’ said Paulo quietly.

  ‘They must be running out.’

  ‘These are going too,’ said Li. In moments the sticks she was holding were useless dark tubes.

  They looked at the dulling sticks in silence. It seemed like a graphic warning.

  Alex remembered the TV interview; how they’d both stood at the edges of the group shot, trying to sneak out. He saw Hex’s mocking look as the camera zoomed in on Alex’s heroic injury.

  Paulo remembered Hex somehow managing to get a hammock to himself so that he and Alex were forced to share. He remembered him in the heli, absorbed in his palmtop, off in his own little world. He was such a private person. Always so protective of his space – both external and internal. Amigo, he said to himself, I hope you’re protecting yourself very well right now.

  Li remembered the last time she’d seen him, by the dinosaur. They thought they’d knocked it over. They were laughing with relief at the ridiculous idea of putting it back together. Then the world had changed.

  Amber tried to remember the last thing she’d said to Hex. She couldn’t. And suddenly she couldn’t picture his face either. Just looking down from the heli as they came into land in Belize City; the markings on the tarmac became a clearing in the jungle with a flaming H, where five friends danced, shouted and capered at the end of another mad expedition.

  Hex watched as the light stick faded. First it dimmed, like a temporary glitch in mains power. But it didn’t come back on.

  His world shrank. The only thing he could see now was the screen of his palmtop. The space around him became bluish. Cold.

  How cold it had got. Of course. Susana’s body had stopped giving out heat. Hex shivered.

  There was no air. How long had he been breathing this same air? He put his hands to his throat. He felt like he was suffocating. Was that what would get him?

  He coughed, and then he couldn’t stop. There was so much dust. All that pulverized bone. All that sand trickling incessantly. Soon he would be breathing sand. The air would run out and he would drown in sand.

  Could he still smell things? He sniffed the air, his skin. Surely his sweat must smell. Nothing. His senses were being dulled, like the light stick. Shutting down.

  What was the last sense to go? Was it smell? No, it was hearing. Well, there was nothing to hear.

  He moved the screen of the palmtop around, trying to use it as a torch. Even that wouldn’t last for ever. The batteries would go. He knew every shadow so well by now. That bulge that was the remains of the T. rex’s humerus. That pale oval in the corner was Susana’s face. He should have turned it towards the wall so it couldn’t look at him. But he didn’t want to touch it now.

  He hadn’t written anything more for about five minutes now. He’d said all he wanted to say. All the palmtop was now was a torch. It showed how tiny the space was.

  He whispered, ‘I think I prefer the dark.’

  He turned the palmtop off.

  23 UNDERWORLD

  Amber, Paulo, Li and Alex had spread the plans on the bonnet of the van.

  ‘Where haven’t we searched yet?’ said Alex.

  A word on the plan suddenly leaped out at Paulo like a neon sign. WORKSHOP.

  Miguel brought Felipe over. They’d got two pickaxes as well as Miguel’s crowbar.

  ‘Felipe,’ said Paulo decisively. ‘We know where to look for Jorges.’

  ‘Oh yes?’ said Li.

  Felipe looked at him. His eyes were full of hope and anxiety. ‘Where?’

  ‘He’s gone to see the animatronic dinosaur in the workshop.’

  Felipe hit his for
ehead with the heel of his hand. ‘Of course! He was angling to see it last night.’

  Paulo gestured to him. ‘It’s your territory. Lead the way.’

  Alex had the night vision goggles and his belt pack. Paulo had the makeshift first-aid kit. Li and Amber had torches – as did Felipe and Miguel. They walked back into the building with purpose. This was a positive lead – someone else they could get out. Maybe at some point they’d get a lead for Hex.

  Felipe took them down the fire escape to the basement. When they reached the small office with the fallen ceiling, he gasped. ‘Ana was under that? It’s a miracle they got out alive.’

  Amber patted his arm. ‘They were clever. The safe burst open and Ana got them in for protection. Hopefully Jorges will be clever too.’

  Miguel was impressed. Amber instinctively understood they had to keep the man’s morale up.

  Felipe took them past another office and peered in. ‘It’s not too bad in there,’ he said. But it was empty, so he continued to the next one.

  A little further on he stopped. His torch flashed on a heap of rubble. It went from floor to ceiling, like a roughly built wall. ‘Jesus,’ he said in a low voice. ‘The workshop is just through there. The T. rex must have crashed through the floor. It weighs tonnes.’

  ‘We can’t get through there,’ said Li.

  ‘Alex, have you got the plans?’ said Miguel. ‘With all these little rooms we might be able to knock a way through.’

  Alex handed the plans over. Miguel tapped the map confidently. ‘This side wall is a plasterboard partition. We should try knocking it down and see if there’s a way in there.’

  Paulo had a pickaxe ready. ‘Where do you want the hole?’

  Miguel pointed. ‘About here, quite low down.’ Amber and Li trained the torches on the area.

  Paulo gripped the axe with both hands and swung. The point crashed into the wall. He hooked it out, leaving a ragged hole and a shower of dust. With the next blow he levered out a bigger piece.

  Felipe let out a great long worried breath. Li put a reassuring hand on his arm. She understood what he felt. He was afraid of what he might find.