Alpha Force: Fault Line

by Chris Ryan

  Calm down, he told himself. The ribcage had protected him.

  In his mind’s eye he conjured up a picture of a tyrannosaur skeleton. He’d learned its parts like a religious mantra when he was four. Most of the tyrannosaur’s mass was in its back end. The bones at the front were smaller and there were fewer of them. If he could work out which was the front end, there should be fewer bones – and that would be the end to start digging.

  He looked up. The ribcage was wide where he was, narrowing rapidly behind him like an understairs cupboard. So that meant he should dig the other way.

  He pushed against a bone. It fell with a clatter that echoed. That was good. Outside there was a big space. He pushed another. One by one, bone by bone, he dismantled his prison, slowly and methodically. Finally he emerged on his hands and knees.

  Now he was out he could hear things moving. It sounded like steadily sliding rubble. Was that the sound of people talking? And mobile phones? He looked round. Behind him the fallen dinosaur had made an impenetrable barrier, like a wall. Next to it, a funerary stone had fallen off the wall. It was still intact and formed the other part of the enclosure. All the time, debris was falling like light rain.

  In front of him was an office. Someone was in there. He held up the light stick and waggled it. ‘Hello?’

  A woman came out. She had short dark hair with dust frosted on top like icing sugar and smeared across her face like war paint.

  ‘Hi,’ he said. ‘I’m Hex.’

  ‘Susana. I was trying on my mobile but it’s gone down. Here, maybe you can make it work.’

  Hex took the mobile. Having something so normal in his hands was a huge relief. He tried the screen. ‘There’s no signal. Maybe the cells have gone down.’ He touched his belt pouch, where his palmtop was. He’d check the signal on that.

  Suddenly Susana lurched towards him. The floor was shaking again. The pile of dinosaur bones was trembling. Hex got down and curled into a ball again. There was a great bang like an explosion and they were falling, the sound of thunder in their ears.

  17 STARTING AGAIN

  Paulo grabbed Consuela and Rosa and held them in a huddle on the ground. Amber did the same with Gabriel and Vicente, a boy they’d just rescued. Pedro and Beatriz clung to each other. Rubble bounced around them like bullets. Then a roar came that seemed to split the very fabric of the building. The children were screaming. It was worse than the most terrifying clap of thunder and it went on and on.

  They could see nothing, didn’t dare to open their eyes. The thunder died but the shaking carried on. Paulo briefly thought he should try to relax and go with the movement instead of tensing against it, as though he was falling off a horse, but all reason was driven out of his head. It was horrible. He just wanted it to stop.

  Alex tried to cling onto something, but there was nothing. He felt himself falling. Li, up on the gallery, had a perfect view. The rubble began to push Alex into the pit like a bulldozer. Below, beside the stele, Señora Marquez was trying to run, but the ground kept moving under her feet like a treadmill.

  But then Li had problems of her own. There was a groaning like ripping steel. Masonry sprayed her, stinging her arms and face. The next moment all was still again. A bare girder had appeared in front of her like a spear. The tremor had shaken it out of the concrete roof.

  It fell towards her.

  There was rubble behind her and no room for her to get out of its way. She grabbed it as it went past, curling her arms and legs around it like a monkey. It took her down towards the ground, its sharp front edge moving like a javelin. It was heading for a wall. Should she jump off? Below was a pit of rubble – she’d probably hurt herself more landing in that than if she stayed on the girder. She bowed her head to protect it and caught the night vision goggles. She’d forgotten she was wearing them. What if they smashed, sending pieces of glass into her eyes?

  Too late to take them off now. She buried her head as flat as possible and closed her eyes.

  As Alex tumbled into the pit he saw the girder sliding past, Li riding it like a whale.

  Then he hit something. It was hard and it was metal. The clang reverberated through his skull like a great kettle drum. He bounced and scrabbled to get a grip. Both hands grappled and found a pipe. His injured fingers sang with pain but he was slipping. He closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and pulled for all he was worth, putting most of his weight on his good left arm. When he felt the pipe under his chest, supporting him, he stopped to catch his breath.

  Alex felt a massive impact as Li crashed into the front wall. He clung tight to his perch, concrete showering over him. Li tried to melt into the girder. Rubble pounded her shoulders and back as the girder lanced through the wall like a sword.

  It stopped, nearly flinging her off. The first thing she noticed was the cold air. She looked up: the point of the girder had embedded itself in the ground. She was outside, on the front lawn. And the night vision goggles were still functioning. They were certainly getting a workout tonight.

  Someone was shining a torch at her. It dazzled her through the goggles and she switched them off. The figure came to help her down. She saw that it was a man with a spanner in his hand; his arm was soaking wet.

  ‘Are you all right?’ A woman stood behind him, looking at Li nervously.

  Li rolled off the girder like an acrobat and landed on her feet. ‘Yeah. Who are you?’

  ‘We live just up the road. We got out of our house. We wanted to help. We just turned off the stopcock on this water main. It’s flooded the road.’

  It seemed the quake was over. The ground was still. But what a scene of devastation. Li put the goggles on again to see more detail. The roof of the museum had caved in on one side. The front wall was shattered where she had come through it on the girder. Further along there were big cracks. On the ground outside, the cracks carried on through the paving slabs, as though a vein had been drawn down the building and onto the ground. Water seeped from an open manhole cover where the man had turned the supply off.

  ‘That was quite an entrance you made,’ said the man. ‘Or should I say exit. I’m Jose, by the way. And this is my wife Imelda.’ Imelda nodded. She was carrying a sledgehammer.

  ‘Li.’

  ‘We were on our way down the road. I didn’t think there would be anybody in there.’

  ‘There are loads of us in there,’ said Li. ‘We need help.’

  She walked up to the hole in the wall and slipped through.

  Inside the building, she heard the cries again. That animal, panicked sound, like the aftermath of the first quake all over again. No one could trust the ground they walked on any more.

  For a moment she felt like joining in but she forced her mind to focus. She grabbed the torch from Jose’s hand and shone it into the pit. ‘Alex, are you all right down there?’

  ‘Yes. Fine.’ His voice was hushed. She could hear he was shaken.

  She put the night vision goggles up to her eyes for a moment. Alex wasn’t much better off than before. He was stuck on a duct from the air conditioning equipment, still at least two metres off the ground. ‘Stay where you are, Alex,’ she called. ‘Don’t try to go anywhere. Señora Marquez, are you all right?’

  The teacher was huddled in a ball among the broken masonry, protecting her head with her arms. She had a fresh coating of dust but aside from that seemed intact. ‘I – I think so,’ she said shakily. She glanced behind her into the gloom. ‘I think I can hear something back there.’

  ‘We’ll send some people down,’ said Li. ‘Just hold tight. Don’t go off in there by yourself.’

  ‘Don’t worry, honey, I’m not going anywhere,’ came the tart reply.

  Li took the goggles off again and turned to Jose and Imelda. They were staring towards the screaming, their faces shocked. ‘I think they need our help in there,’ said Li. She was about to lead them to the axe room when something made her check first, something on the brink of her hearing. She stopped dead still for a moment
, listening.

  Then she heard a very familiar voice.

  ‘Say “yes” when I call your name. Beatriz?’

  ‘Yes,’ called a voice.

  It was Paulo. He was doing a roll-call of the children.

  Li let out a huge sigh. For a moment, all the horror was forgotten.

  Paulo went through a list of names and ended with: ‘Amber?’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ said Amber in her characteristic drawl. ‘Don’t get drunk on power.’

  Li strolled through to the other room. ‘Hey, guys,’ she said. ‘I’ve got a torch, a sledgehammer, night vision goggles and some extra pairs of hands.’

  Then she nearly dropped the lot as Paulo grabbed her in a bear hug.

  Amber grinned at her. ‘What took you so long?’

  ‘I was just finding the way out.’ She looked around at the room. It was well lit because of the light sticks, but the ceiling and stone artefacts had been reduced to piles of rubble. Broken glass and stone axes littered the floor. Several children sat wide-eyed, looking at the new arrivals, their pyjamas and hair covered in grime. ‘This looks bad.’

  ‘We’d just got it under control,’ said Paulo. ‘Now it’s chaos again. We’d cleared a good amount of rubble and freed all those kids and now the quake has rearranged it all.’

  ‘Come and bring those goggles in here, Li,’ said Amber. She led the way to the dinosaur gallery while Paulo gathered the children to introduce them to Imelda and Jose. ‘We haven’t looked in there yet – there was no noise so we concentrated on looking where there was.’

  Li followed Amber into the room and put the goggles on. It was very different from the last time she’d looked at it. She couldn’t believe the devastation. The dinosaur had gone completely. Where it had stood, arching over the space, was a pile of rubble, like a wall after a demolition. The steel cables that had supported its head had left huge chunks where they’d pulled out of the wall. Half the wall to the jade gallery had gone too, leaving a ragged, round hole like a rough archway. Li walked forward cautiously and then stopped.

  The floor rocked under her foot. It was like treading on the edge of a cliff.

  Amber saw Li’s foot wobble. Then Li performed an incredible move. First she put all her weight on her back foot, then she sprang backwards like a ninja. When she whipped off the goggles, she was breathing hard.

  ‘Jeez, I saw that,’ said Amber. ‘It moved.’

  ‘The floor’s gone,’ gasped Li. ‘If anyone steps on it they’ll go through. Don’t let any of the kids come in here. I can’t see anything that looks like a person. Here – you have a go.’

  Amber raised the goggles to her eyes. She saw nothing but varying shades of stone.

  Li was breathing a little more easily now. ‘Señora Marquez says she thinks she can hear people down in the basement. I think that’s where we need to look next.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Amber. They went back into the axe room.

  Paulo had pulled Jose and Imelda to one side to brief them. ‘When you find someone, can one of you take over and check them out? We’re trying not to let the children see anything upsetting.’

  The two newcomers nodded.

  ‘And keep them away from that corner,’ he added quietly, looking towards the dead teacher. ‘There’s a body.’ They nodded again and went to start work.

  Li beckoned Paulo over. ‘Right, guys, how many are still missing?’

  ‘There were eleven children in the party,’ said Amber, ‘and we’ve found six.’

  Paulo suddenly had a thought. ‘No, there are more than eleven. Felipe said he was bringing his kids in.’

  ‘Oh Lord,’ said Li. ‘Did he say how many?’

  Imelda had overheard their conversation. ‘Felipe Gomez, the curator? He’s got two children – Ana and Jorges. I used to know his wife.’

  ‘Thanks, Imelda,’ said Paulo. He turned back to the two girls and continued in a low voice. ‘There were three teachers too. I remember them from earlier. The man’s dead, Señora Marquez is in the lobby, so there’s still one to find.’

  Li looked around. ‘Where’s Hex?’

  Amber looked down resolutely at the goggles. ‘We haven’t seen him yet,’ she said. Then she seemed to realize what she was looking at. ‘If someone was lying dead in that room, would it have showed through these?’

  Paulo and Li thought for a moment. Behind them the regular chink as axes pulled away concrete began again as Jose organized the children to look for survivors. It was Paulo who replied. ‘I think so. It takes a few hours for a body to lose its heat. You’d definitely have seen if there was anyone there that we could get to.’

  ‘I’ll go and search the basement,’ said Li.

  She was the obvious choice. Her climbing skills were better than anyone else’s and her tiny size meant she could squeeze into spaces that tall, willowy Amber couldn’t get into.

  Amber handed her the goggles. ‘I’ll stay here – Paulo, you go with Li in case someone needs medical help. If we have a medical emergency here I can holler for you.’

  ‘And,’ said Li, ‘we’ll get Alex out. It’s time he did some work, broken fingers or not.’

  ‘Hang on,’ said Paulo. ‘Just getting supplies.’ He pulled a bergen away from the wall, brushed the dust off it and opened the top.

  ‘Whose is that?’ said Li, incredulous.

  ‘Can’t you guess?’ said Amber.

  ‘Yes, folks, it’s Alex’s amazing indestructible bergen,’ said Paulo. He pulled out a water bottle, green nylon poncho and dry kit, then fastened the top again. ‘And once we get Alex we’ll have antiseptic too from his survival kit.’

  ‘Ow,’ said Amber. She bent and rolled up her trouser leg hurriedly. ‘Get me some while you’re at it.’

  Paulo, kneeling on the floor, tried to get a look at her leg. ‘I thought the wait-a-while infection had gone.’

  ‘It has. But the bite hasn’t. Every now and again it really hurts. As though I’ve caught it on something.’

  Paulo went back to Alex’s bergen. ‘I can’t see anything. It’ll probably go down soon.’ He laid the items he was taking on the poncho and tied it into a bundle, then stood up.

  Li fixed the night vision goggles on. ‘Let’s go.’ She followed his broad back out of the room.

  Amber saw Jose and Imelda moving the kids away from a pile of rubble and beckoning her over. She knew what that meant. They’d found another survivor. Or a body.

  18 TRAPPED

  Hex had had a dream. He was falling. There was thunder, like boulders raining into a big steel bin. There was screaming, like seagulls rising in the air. He was in a cage with curved bars arching over him while a hurricane hurled bones at him like skittles. One of them hit the cage and it turned into spun sugar and shattered.

  Maybe the dream had lasted only an instant. Suddenly his eyes were open, clogged with dust. He blinked hard. He breathed and then coughed.

  There was a green glowing stick poking out of the ground. A bewitching light in the murk. It was the only thing he could see. He grabbed it.

  A voice gasped. A frightened, female sound, like a gulp and a scream.

  ‘Hello?’ said Hex. His voice took a couple of goes to work, like a car that hasn’t been started for a while.

  He pulled the light stick out of the ground. He blinked again and moved. He was in a small space. He tried to turn round, but his bruised bones banged against hard stone. Everywhere there was hard stone. Against his shoulders, his knees, his feet, his head.

  Where was he? Panic began to rise in his throat. His hands felt around. He felt like he had been locked in a small box of hard stone and squashed down until they could put the lid on. Everywhere, his fingers met sharp pieces of stone. Strange shapes loomed out of the green darkness. He remembered the dinosaur.

  A hand reached out and grabbed at him. He flinched and jumped.

  A pair of eyes blinked back at him. They were above him, looking down.

  ‘Susana?’ The name just came
to him. Of course. It was the girl from the office. Short hair, pretty face.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I think it must have been another quake. Or an aftershock.’

  ‘Shh. Can you hear that?’

  They listened. There was the usual hiss of moving pulverized concrete, like a rain of sand. There was a bigger sound, of a lump of masonry smashing. And there was a moan, far off, like the cry of an animal in the night.

  ‘Hello?’ called Hex loudly.

  There was no answer. There was no echo. It was a very small space.

  ‘Are you OK?’ said Susana. She looked like a rag doll that had been squashed into a shelf in a cave wall. Was that how he looked? Was he really in a space that small?

  Hex felt like he had gone ten rounds with a heavyweight boxer. Every surface was bruised. He was acutely aware of every knobble on his frame: his elbows, his vertebrae. He shifted position and winced. But it all seemed to work. ‘Bit bruised,’ he said.

  ‘Me too. My tummy hurts,’ she said. ‘Where are we?’

  He tried to get a mental fix on where they were. There was nothing but dinosaur bones around him, as though he had been thrown into a pit along with them all. How heavy were they? He remembered the noise, the great rumble like a landslide. Had they gone through the floor? How many bones were there in a tyrannosaur? Probably enough to make it very heavy.

  He felt like he couldn’t breathe – his lungs had shrivelled to raisins. He needed air. He was stuck in a pit, buried by dinosaur bones.

  Li stood on the edge of the pit, night vision goggles on, Alex’s abseil harness over her shoulder like a handbag. She held onto the fire hose. Paulo tested it: the big red drum still seemed firmly attached to the wall. ‘It’s solid. Go.’

  She jumped off the edge and wrapped her legs around the hose. Paulo paid the hose out from the wall while Li descended.