Chapter 29
PLAN B
That had been a bad aftershock, but the kids had barely cried out.
Georgia, cuddled between Duncan and George, looked to have fallen asleep.
Forrest still sat beside Scarlett, blank and uncomprehending.
Finlay was sitting with Olive, talking quietly.
Discussing their book series, which was as good a way to pass the time as any.
They seemed to have decided that it had all been very exciting, but now it was over.
Scarlett, though … Scarlett’s quiet was more like “frozen.”
“Listen,” Skylar said loudly, once the shaking had died down all the way. “There’s news. Scarlett and Duncan? Your dad’s OK. I’ve heard from him. He’s OK.”
Scarlett’s face lost the frozen look between one breath and the next. Her face crumpled, and she began to cry. Duncan saw it and said, “What? What’s wrong?” Looking startled. Looking worried.
Finlay, though, got up, crouched before Scarlett, took her hands, and said, “It’s good news. It’s OK. He’s very strong. It was scary, that’s all. But he’s OK.”
Scarlett nodded, but kept crying. Skylar pushed tissues into her hand—thank goodness for a Year One teacher’s eternal preparedness—and said, “It’s fine to cry. You’re relieved. You’re right to be relieved.”
Georgia woke up, not surprisingly, and the other kids explained. Georgia looked confused, as if her dad’s safety had never been in doubt. Which it hadn’t been, not to her.
Georgia didn’t remember losing a parent.
The head staff person again, then. The director? Assistant director? Manager in charge? Didn’t matter. She said, “It’s time to move you all out. If you don’t know where to go, walk north, toward the Beehive. The Parliament buildings. There’s sure to be an evacuation center to the north.”
“You can’t just kick us out, though.” That was one of the tourists Skylar had rounded up, a round-faced, middle-aged woman. “Not with no more help than that!”
“I told you,” the director/manager/whoever said. “We don’t have enough drinking water. Or blankets, either, and it’ll be getting cold. We need to get home ourselves, so we’ll escort you downstairs and out of the building.”
“There’ll be mud,” Skylar said. “On the stairs. There’s sure to be, at least between Levels 1 and 2. The water came in there. We need volunteers to escort people who need a hand.”
“Yes, of course,” the director said. “Help each other down the stairs, and take care outside, too.”
“Take care?” the round-faced woman said. “That’s the best you can do? How about some … some emergency response? Some help?”
The director said, “There are problems all over the city.” She didn’t say “deaths and injuries and people trapped under rubble,” but she didn’t have to. “First responders have their hands full. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to make your own way.”
“I’ll be making a complaint,” a man said.
Another one Skylar had brought in. Some people had no sense of proportion.
“You have a duty of care here, and you’re being negligent.
” He had to be a lawyer, and American? Canadian?
Somebody who thought officialdom would always be there to help.
Somebody who hadn’t been born in a rugged island nation where the help came from your neighbors, because the official rescuers were too few and too far away.
The director didn’t even respond to that. A buzz of activity, and people were struggling to their feet, gathering belongings. And still no word from Zane. Not since before that strongest aftershock. Was he all right?
Of course he’s all right. He just can’t get through. She said, “Let’s get going, then. It’ll be good to move.”
“Let’s go where, exactly?” Finlay asked, as they headed to the stairs.
“I have a plan,” she said, although what she actually had was a series of plans.
Call it Plans A through D. “Hold the same hands you held on the way up. Bigger kids look after the little ones, and George and Georgia, you come with me. Careful on the stairs, because there’ll be mud.
Hold the handrails. Careful, now.” Floor by floor, keeping up the chat, trying to make it OK.
And then the broken windows. The shards of glass.
The slick of mud all the way down the many stairs from Level Two.
All the way from that landing where she’d urged the old man to hurry. Where she’d told him this was for his life. For their lives.
Don’t think about that now. Think about it later.
In the entry, then. The glass doors and windows broken, the mud marring the shining stone floors. The darkness outside alien and inhospitable.
“Locker,” she said. “Straight ahead.” She’d stashed all their coats in one of the bigger lockers to save carrying them through the museum. They’d need them, because the night was July-cool, the breeze still stiff enough to make you shiver down here where the glass was gone.
Thank God for generators, she thought. Then they got there, and she realized her mistake, because however many buttons she pushed, the screens stayed dark. They worked on some sort of internet-based system, apparently, and whatever that was, it wasn’t available now.
“It’s cold, though,” George said when she explained.
“We’ll be in the car soon,” Scarlett said. “With the heater turned up. You’ll be warm then.” Still helpful. Very nearly adult, in fact. Scarlett, it seemed, had more of her dad in her than just the stroppy attitude.
“I’ll have to come back for our coats,” Skylar said, keeping it cheerful. “That’s a pity, but it can’t be helped. Let’s go find the car.”
Please, Zane, she thought. Let me hear from you. Because I’m not sure I can find the way back to the house in the dark, especially not without GPS.
Granddad? Maureen? Somebody will know the way, and I’ll be able to reach somebody. Surely.
You can’t count on anybody else. It’s down to you to do this, and you can. Plans A, B, C, and D. Starting right now.
Zane was still waiting. Waiting to hear from Eddie. Waiting to hear from his dad.
Waiting to hear from Skylar.
He was drinking another cup of tea, because it would do no good to get dehydrated, when his phone finally dinged.
Eddie. No joy with the bus. We’ll leg it back to the training centre. Meet outside your place in 10. Pass it along.
He hadn’t realized what he needed to do until this moment. Why not?
A word with Marko first, he decided. The other man had been sitting against a wall, his arms crossed and his gaze fixed broodingly on the distance. Worried, but keeping it to himself. Zane told him, “Eddie says it’ll be Shank’s pony back to the center. Bus can’t get through.”
“Right,” Marko said, because no man here would have a problem with legging it twelve kilometers, in the dark or no.
Torches on every cellphone to avoid any cracks in the roadway, after all.
And there was no point in staying here overnight when there would be water and food and beds a couple of hours away.
Or an hour away, if the roadway was intact enough for jogging.
“I’d feel better, though,” Marko went on, “if I could reach my wife.”
“Yeh,” Zane said. “Same issue, bro. Give me five minutes to go have a chat, will you? And get the boys ready to go.”
Next door, Eddie said with a frown, “We’re just about to leave. What’s up? And before you ask, yeh, I talked to the owners about putting the others up overnight, the randos from the cars. Best thing for it.”
“I thought you would’ve,” Zane said. “But quite a few of the boys have whanau here in Wellington. The ones with the Hurricanes, and the ones whose families came for the match. They haven’t all been able to get through to them.
It may be good to let anybody go who’s in that spot, so they can check for themselves.
Most of the hotels are on the waterfront, and we’ve seen the state that’s in from the TV.
Partners dealing with kids by themselves …
not good. We won’t be going anywhere for at least a couple of days anyway, not until the airport opens again.
A day for some of the boys to check that their families are safe and make arrangements shouldn’t set us back much. ”
“Of course, I could decide to drive to Auckland instead for the match with Italy,” Eddie said, “if the planes aren’t flying. I’m ahead of you here, mate.”
“You’re right,” Zane said, keeping his impatience and worry in check with an effort. “But it’s got to be whanau first right now. Too much to ask of them otherwise.”
Eddie thought a minute, frowning into the distance. Zane waited, because that was all he could do. If Eddie said no, what then? The urgency was clawing at him now, but he was acting skipper. Which came first?
My kids come first. And Skylar’s. And Skylar. They come first.
“Right,” Eddie said at last. “I don’t much like it—dangerous, for one thing, because it’s a bloody dog’s breakfast out there—but I take your point. I’ll tell them.”
“I’ll be leaving myself,” Zane said. “My kids aren’t at home. They were in the CBD when it hit.”
Eddie’s eyes sharpened. “You heard from them?”
“Once. From the woman caring for them today. She’s got three kids of her own. Stuck down there with six kids, eh.” He tried to keep his voice level. “Tell us when to get ourselves back to the training center, and we’ll be there.”
“Tomorrow night,” Eddie said. “Or if the roads aren’t passable and you have to leg it … call it Monday morning at ten. Absolute latest.”
“Monday at ten,” Zane repeated. “Got it.”
He should’ve done this an hour ago, but never mind, he was doing it now. He didn’t know where Skylar and the kids were, but that didn’t matter. He was going to find them.
Somehow.
It was cold out. Too cold for seven kids with no jackets.
No streetlights, and no traffic lights. A few cars creeping along the street, and the pavements covered with mud and debris.
The faint and sometimes louder noise of sirens coming from all directions.
A red glow to the west that had to be fire.
All of it too eerie, too broken. A disaster film.
“A few streets, that’s all,” Skylar told the kids. “Then we’ll be at the garage. We’ll cross the street here, at the corner.” No light at all, and there were those cars, but what choice did she have?
She switched on the torch on her phone, which was dangerously low on battery, waited until there was nobody coming from the right, then said, making her voice brisk. “Hurry, now. We’ll run.” Halfway across, on a safety island, and they’d made it.
Right. Right. Breathe.
She looked left and waited for four cars to pass, one after the other. More lights in the distance, but there would always be somebody, and they’d be creeping. No choice, not in this.
“Now,” she shouted, aiming her torch at the oncoming lights. “Go!”
She was on their left, between them and any car, waving them across as they hurried, slowed by the slippery mud. But the headlights were coming too fast. Too fast.
Too late to go back. “Run!” she shouted. “Run!” She put out her arm as if that would stop the car, as if it would help, and waved the phone wildly. A terrible screech of brakes, and she thought, No. No. Please. No.
Duncan slipped and fell.
The car came barreling on, braking all the way. The others were at the curb, and she had Duncan under the arms, pulling him to his feet. Two meters from the curb, and the car …
It stopped a bare meter away with a jolt, a man shouting, “What the hell? Look where you’re going!”
She wanted to shout back. She wanted to rage. She didn’t have the voice for it. It had been taken by the fear, but it didn’t matter. They were safe. Again. They were safe again, and they could stay safe. She could keep them safe.
“Right,” she said, setting a grateful foot on the curb and doing her best to steady her voice. “That was close, but that’s the worst. Over one street now, then down another one. Nearly there, and we’ll be nice and warm. Nice and warm and safe.”
If they had to, they’d sleep in the car.
There; that was a plan. But surely that wouldn’t be necessary.
Even if she couldn’t find the house, she could find an evacuation center.
Or even ring doorbells. Nobody would turn away a woman with seven kids, not in New Zealand, not after a disaster like this. Not possible.
New Plan C. Even better than her original one, which had been, yes, sleeping in the car.
A broken-up shape in the torchlight. The parking garage, that would be, the dark patches the spaces between floors. Well, of course it was here. She’d known it would be here. Parking garages didn’t move.
There was something odd about it, though. Something lumpy. They moved closer, and she saw what it was. Some of the concrete had crumbled, and huge, jagged blocks lay across the entrance. She thought there might be something wrong inside, too, but she couldn’t see.
A fire engine went by, siren blaring. She wanted to ask somebody if they’d checked whether anyone had been trapped in the garage, but there was nobody to ask. There’d be so many victims, and how long would it take the emergency services to check everywhere?
“Right,” she said aloud. “Right. No car. On to Plan B. We’re going to walk.”