Days Like This (27 page)

‘Get on,’ Kieran shouted over the noise.

Lily hesitated.

‘Now!’

The ominous roar of the next wave finally convinced her. She leapt on behind him and clung on as he sped off, swerving in and around the huge wash of people that was pouring onto the streets and running for the Wall.

Lily and Kieran broke free of the mass of people and sped along, swerving and skidding; navigating around the rubble. Kieran struggled to keep the motorbike upright as the road bulged and shuddered beneath them. The people they passed looked terrified. Many covered their ears to try to block out the noise.

They were swept up in the surge of people scrambling away from the foreshore. Lily caught another glimpse of the Wall as the noise intensified and the earth shook. Kieran unexpectedly veered off in an odd direction, not straight for the Wall as he should have done. Lily was about to shout a question, but then she saw something that made her forget everything else. In the distance rose a fresh wall of water, far bigger again than the first or second waves. This one swirled and crashed between the trees and the houses, gathering a solid wedge of debris along with it. People trapped within this vicious washing machine were tumbled and flung around.

Kieran accelerated up a steep incline, away from the water with it’s gruesome cargo. They were travelling back towards the open sea and the exposed southern headland of the harbour. Lily hoped Kieran knew what he was doing.

‘Run!’ she screamed to the people flashing past. ‘
Run!
’ but the noise sucked away her voice. They knew what was coming because they fled with their bodies hunched over and their arms covering their heads. Twisting erratically, Kieran sped onwards, so fast that Lily’s head snapped back and forth. Water and mud, debris and sludge slicked the roads, making their progress perilous. On and up they went, with the noise closing in behind them.

Eventually the water slowed. The roar became a growl, petering to near silence.

Kieran pulled up and swung the bike around. Somehow they had managed to outrun the wave. But now it spat out broken bits of houses, trees, furniture and yet more bodies.

And it wasn’t over. A rumble, this time deeper and more menacing than the last, told them the waves were coming more frequently.

‘I think it’s going to keep getting worse,’ Kieran yelled, twisting the bike around and speeding off. Keeping now to the high road, he steered them back the way they’d come and then turned sharply left. Again, Lily could no longer see the Wall. She hoped Ingie had got Daniel over and the others were safe, too.

Masses of people ran towards the Wall. Some supported others; some clasped possessions, which slowed their progress. Some steered vehicles, many dangerously overloaded. Some of the vehicles battered through the gathering crowds, knocking people sideways or running them over.

There were hardly any children and the few Lily saw were alone, huddled on the road, dazed and pale in the unfamiliar outdoors. Lily wished she could help them.

The bike was buffeted by the traffic and Lily was almost dislodged every time it connected with someone or something. Tears streamed down Kieran’s face. Lily was sobbing, too. At last, the Wall loomed directly ahead, slick and gleaming.

Beneath it, people four or five deep reached and scrambled to get over, some hurling themselves over the heads of others. They threw rope and pieces of material towards the slanting top of the Wall, but mostly the ropes slid down again. With increasing desperation, for all everyone could hear was the roar of the next wave, people began to climb over one another. Some fell and were trampled or crushed. A few of the strongest managed to scramble onto the backs of others and vault towards the top of the Wall. One or two even reached the top, slithering over and disappearing.

Kieran sped along the road that ran parallel to the Wall. Occasionally he slowed, looking around before launching the bike forward again. People continued to pour out of the side streets and run headlong at the Wall, throwing themselves against the backs of those already there. Lily thought that these panicking people, jolted out of their gorgeous safe houses, no longer looked quite so smooth and sleek.

Finally Kieran screeched to a halt. Lily catapulted against his back.

‘Not so many people here,’ he yelled.

They leaped off the bike and Kieran dropped it. The new wave was closing in, a gigantic roar. Someone pounced on the bike and sped off in the direction Lily and Kieran had come from. Working quickly, Kieran unwound the rope and material from his waist, attached the hook to it’s end and threw the rope up at the Wall. His experience paid off as the rope caught immediately. He yanked to make sure it held. Then, expertly, he flung the material up so it lay across the top of the Wall and near the rope.

‘Come on, quickly,’ he said to Lily, leaping up at the rope and hauling himself hand-over-hand. Lily followed, practically flying up in her haste. Already others, seeing this means of escape, were converging.

‘Leave the rope, let them come. Once you’re over, run,’ he said over his shoulder.

They hit the ground on the far side of the Wall with a thud then sprang up, sprinting across the bleak, rubble-littered expanse, all injuries forgotten. As before, the part of the landscape closest to the Wall was desolate, buildings, roads, everything smashed. Thanks to the tsunami, the elite suburbs inside the Wall now looked almost as ruined as the landscape beyond it.

Because they ran with their backs to the Wall, they didn’t at first see the fourth wall of water rising above it, it’s colossal translucence a solid block. Lily glanced around in time to see the wave smash the Wall as if it were made of sand. The great wash raced in, silencing the voices of all those now held in by a Wall that had once held others out. The water dislodged the chunks of Wall, scooping them up to join the rest of the flotsam. When it hit Kieran and Lily, the wave tossed them in the air like matchsticks, tumbling them over and over. Lily found something solid and clung to it, but it was near useless. They were helpless, drowning yet again. Lily’s head hit something hard. After that, she remembered nothing.

Lily shook her head, unable to clear her ears which were blocked with water. The wave had deposited her high on the unstable parapet of a partially demolished building. Two walls at right angles supported the parapet and it was on this precarious outcrop that she was balanced. Kieran was nowhere to be seen.

She drifted in and out of consciousness, the world around her hazy. She remembered Kieran steering the bike to the Wall, both of them scrambling over it. Lily hated to think that he might not have survived. The very last thing she remembered was the huge wave sweeping her away. She thought about everything that had happened. Alice was more than likely dead. She had failed to rescue her sister. And Greta, with the extent of her injuries and the savagery of the water, had surely perished, too.

Lily’s throat burned from the saltwater. She looked back towards the city enclave. The Wall was gone. Lily remembered seeing the wave smash into the Wall before she lost consciousness, but it had been such a solid structure, Lily found it’s almost total destruction hard to comprehend. All that remained of the gleaming white Wall were mud-coated blocks and chunks littering the landscape.

Lily seemed to be a long way from where the Wall used to stand; she must have been carried at least a kilometre inland, perhaps more. She squinted towards the city that had once hugged the harbour. It was a wasteland. The waves hadn’t smashed some buildings and spared others. There was nothing left at all, but mud and rubble. Lily knew her survival was nothing short of a miracle and she was thankful. But what about Kieran, Alice, Greta and all the others? Was it possible that anybody remaining around the waterfront had survived those last waves?

Gingerly, Lily moved to the edge of the parapet and, in doing so, destabilised the entire structure. It tipped her off and she crashed down painfully among loose wet bricks and muddy debris. Her right side stung with pain. She hoped nothing was broken. Breathing caused a stabbing pain in her chest and blood poured from a slash on her thigh, but she quickly forgot her injuries because now she was hearing something far more awful – the groans of seriously injured and dying people. Lily was overwhelmed by the bodies. There were hundreds of them, maybe thousands. They were blackened with mud and barely recognisable, lying so peacefully now the water had finally gone. Underneath the sounds of shattered people, the air was empty of the Earth’s tension. The waves had come and washed the pressure of the world away. The air felt different and Lily didn’t think there would be any more waves for the moment.

Lily tried to focus on her immediate surrounds. A few trees remained; muddy, leaf-stripped skeletons in a slick black landscape of bodies and slimy lumps that might have been bodies. Again she thought how incredible it was that anyone at all had survived; incredible that she had.

She dragged herself upright and tried to walk, gritting her teeth against the pain. A few other people stumbled around her. Lily saw confusion and hopelessness on their faces. Many wandered aimlessly, groaning or crying out. Lily knelt down beside an injured woman. She had no water to offer and nothing for the woman’s injuries.

‘It’s all right, help will come,’ was all Lily could say. ‘I’ll tell them you’re here. Help will come. Just hold on.’

Every now and then, Lily stepped on someone accidentally and her foot slid across skin. Gagging, she forced herself to keep walking, stopping only to hold a person’s hand or to try and make people more comfortable. Eventually the numbers of bodies and injured people diminished and Lily began to recognise landmarks leading to the cave system. She didn’t want to look behind. The best thing she could do, the only thing, was to find help for the injured and suffering.

‘Where do we go?’ people cried out. Others limped near her, bewildered, sobbing, all heading away from the ruined city.

‘This way,’ she said to whoever was near, ‘follow me.’

Fixing her eyes on the line of blue-ridged hills rising in the distance, she placed one battered foot ahead of the next. They walked for hours in the heat. Often people lay down where they had stopped and would not be persuaded to get up. At last, Lily recognised some of the people from the cave community walking towards her. She waved her arms, pointing back to the city.

‘Hurry,’ Lily called. ‘They need help.’ People from the cave were streaming out across the landscape, carrying water, medical supplies and makeshift stretchers.

Lily was nearing the gully when she heard Rosemary calling out. ‘Thank goodness. I thought you were dead,’ Rosemary said.

‘Is Daniel here?’ Lily said at once. ‘And Ingie?’

‘Yes. They made it back safely,’ Rosemary said. ‘Ingie got Daniel over the Wall and away before the waves hit. She carried him in. She was exhausted. She’s a very brave girl.’

Lily sagged against Rosemary, who tried to smooth the mud off Lily’s face, pushing back her caked hair, dabbing clumsily at the streams of tears.

‘It’s okay, they’re safe,’ Rosemary repeated.

‘I’m sure Alice is dead, and Greta,’ Lily sobbed. ‘We had to leave them.’

‘I know,’ Rosemary said. ‘Kieran came in. He told me.’

Lily felt happiness surge through her. She’d been dreading more bad news.

‘Thank God he’s safe. Daniel, too. It’s such a relief.’ She scrubbed at her eyes and took a deep breath. ‘It was awful, Rosemary. I have to go back to the city. There are people who’re terribly injured. And so many dead.’

Rosemary carried a bag with medical supplies and another full of water bottles.

‘Have some of this,’ Rosemary said, handing Lily a bottle of water.

Lily gulped it.

‘Can you carry the rest?’ Rosemary handed her the bag.

‘Did Luca and Sal come in yet?’ Lily shouldered the water.

Rosemary shook her head.

‘Not yet.’ She paused. ‘Kieran told me they took the van and left you.’

‘Yes,’ Lily said.

‘Shall I look at your leg?’ Rosemary offered.

‘Later.’

‘Well, at least let me tie up that wound.’ Rosemary stopped Lily and lashed a clean piece of material around a large gash on her arm.

‘Did the cave survive?’ Lily said as they trudged on.

‘Thank heavens, yes.’ Rosemary drew in a deep breath. Her face was dark red from exertion and sun. ‘There were some rock falls and we lost quite a lot of the light globes, but it’s nothing that can’t be fixed. The water’s still running, which is a blessing. The quake could so easily have stopped the flow.’

They walked in silence. After a while Rosemary stopped.

‘We’re not thinking straight, Lily,’ she said. There’s no point going all the way back to the city. There are people arriving here who need us.’

She looked around, selecting a patch of shade in the lee of an overturned truck. She was right. A steady stream of people was passing. Some kept walking, others stopped, laying the injured alongside the truck. Many were barely alive. Aside from injuries suffered in the earthquake and the waves, in many cases the bracelets had severed the hands of teenagers and they had collapsed and bled to an agonising death under the blazing sun. Lily wondered who was activating the bracelets.