2042: The Great Cataclysm (39 page)

Karen busied herself telling the children stories. Alex had attended to those who had wounds and now that he had less to do, his gaze followed Karen’s movements, which did not fail to get Nick’s attention.
 
Good luck mat
e
. He thought
.
You had your chance and failed, it’s time for someone else, someone who can give her the love she deserve
s
. He surprised himself with those thoughts. He thought about Laura and days gone by, but she had hardly entered his mind since he had seen Karen again. He kept glancing at his watch ticking off the passing minutes.

True to his word, Dave called almost on the deadline. His voice was sombre, even and unemotional. ‘It’s on the way. Graham just radioed in, he’ll be overhead with it in a minute. Over.’

‘Graham? I thought he was in Brisbane. Over’

‘Yes, but when he heard of the situation here, he insisted in flying to Amberley to get the ransom. Over.’

‘I warned you Nick. There’d better not be any tricks, or she goes.’ Bobby sneered. He beckoned Jilly who shoved her gun under Nick’s chin while he grabbed Karen and pushed her toward the door. She looked back at Nick with terror written all over her face, and he felt his heart pounding as his eyes locked onto hers. She whimpered quietly as Bobby forced her onto the landing then up the stairs to the roof. Nick had never felt so helpless in his life
.
Oh God
,
he pleaded
.
Please don’t take her.

They watched breathlessly as Liberty approached rapidly, to hover like a giant wasp before them and a cheer went up from some of the hostages. Nick realised now how important Karen had become to him, how she had relit the strong desire he had when he first met her, she was the most exciting woman he had ever known and he panicked now her life was threatened. He had been given this chance only by suffering the loss of his brother. He had loved Laura but not with the intensity he felt for Karen, she was someone he would die for and he felt almost like he was on that roof alongside her. Somewhere, somehow, his spirit had become entwined with hers. He could feel her terror, her courage. He hung his head and felt the gun jab into his neck.

On the rooftop, Bobby held Karen’s wrist in a vice like grip, watching as the bag was lowered from the Veto, all the time threatening to throw her off. They bent against the downdraft from the Veto that threatened to hurl them both from the roof. ‘Pick it up! He ordered Karen. She lurched forward and grabbed the bag as he watched the Veto bounce and rock dangerously high above their heads.

Bobby looked at Karen and something about her defiant stand earned his respect. ‘Get downstairs!’ he growled, pushing her through the doorway. ‘Before I change my mind.’

She ran down the stairs stumbling, shivering, head full of pain, outwardly brave, dying inside. ‘I wish yo
u
ha
d
thrown me off!’  She screamed back to Bobby.

When she entered the lobby she ran to Nick who clutched her to him. He felt her heart beating so fast against his chest. He wanted to kiss her when he saw the warmth in her purple eyes. Could she be falling in love with me?  He thought. What was it that created an awakening of strong feelings for another human being? A sudden rush, a reddening of the skin, a tingling unexplained?  What was it that stunned the senses?
Everybody remained still, wondering what the looters would do next, new hope of rescue gleamed in their eyes.

Jilly snatched the blue duffle bag Graham had delivered to the roof. They whooped and hollered as their hungry hands skimmed greedily through the contents, their attention diverted from the hostages.

A loud scraping, grinding noise snapped everyone’s attention to the east and Nick opened a door to an apartment that was confining them to the lift foyer, in time for them to witness the nearby south-west tower begin to crumble and fall. They filed into the room and watched it disintegrating in a shroud of dust and spray and foam before their eyes. It tilted and slowly, agonisingly, slid down into the sea. A sixty metre pile of rubble was all that remained of the south-east tower. Great waves created mini tsunami radiating out in all directions from the ruins. The walkway connecting it to their building had snapped, flinging steel girders through the air like cannons, some crashing toward them, others spearing into the ocean below.

‘Shit! Let’s get the hell out of here!’ Bobby screamed. ‘Before this building goes down too.’  He gathered up the money and as they left Bobby grabbed a pale fragile-looking girl who had been cowering beside an older man near the door. ‘Just for insurance!’ He sneered at Nick. ‘We’ll let her go when we get to land.’

‘No. Take me instead.’ Nick said, believing Bobby would kill the girl.

‘Now why would I want to do that? No-one’s going to let an innocent girl die, but you? I think they’d shoot you in a minute. Jilly grab some ropes, chuck the rest into the sea.’ He ordered.

‘Please.’ An older man cried. ‘She’s my daughter. Don’t take her. Margaret!’ He called after her.

Nick knew they would kill the girl and his heart went out to her father but there was nothing he could do. He didn’t know how they planned to reach the speed boat and he really didn’t care. The others were safe.

For now.

Nick flicked the two-way radio. ‘Dave, they’ve gone!  We’re okay. They took another hostage, a young girl called Margaret. He said if you leave them alone they’ll release her once they get ashore.  They took all the ropes. Over.’

There was a brief pause before Dave answered and Nick sensed something odd in his voice. ‘Yeah, they’re no idiots, they’ll need the ropes to drop from the building to the speedboat, it’ll be very dangerous it’s quite a jump to the sea.’

Dave continued in a strange business like. ‘Nick, may I suggest you get all those people down to the bottom floor immediately. I’ll get Graham to drop some more ropes on the roof before he heads up to Brisbane.  Make some rope ladders, hurry!  That building could tumble anytime, the sea is systematically eroding the foundations. Out.’

‘Roger that Dave. Out’

Nick turned to Karen. ‘Graham’s coming back from Camp B with more ropes. I hope Bobby doesn’t get it into his head to come back and force Graham to let them board the Liberty.’

‘I don’t think that’s in their plans. Besides, Bobby saw how impossible it would be to get to it.’ Karen replied. ‘The wind up there’s so strong Graham could hardly hold the Veto still. There’s no way he could land. He’s risking his life up there.’

Nick looked around at the scared faces of the hostages. They would have to move fast. ‘Alex you come with me. We’ll get the ropes while Karen gets everyone organised.’

Karen’s face was white and her hands trembled. Nick gently touched her arm.’You okay?’ he asked.

She grabbed his wrist. ‘I’m just so frightened. Please hurry back.’

Nick though for a moment, then grabbed one end of a rope the looters had left and wound it around the steel handle of the exit door to the landing then tied it around his waist. He handed the loose end to Alex. ‘Here. Tie yourself on. Just in case.’ He grimaced. ‘It’s not long enough to reach past the next floor. Karen, hold onto the rope and when you feel it pull three times untie it and I’ll pull it up.’

Alex and Nick made their way up the stairs
to the rooftop treading carefully over the
cracked steps that were broken in places and pulled away from the wall, all the while wondering if the building would remain standing. More than once they were precariously close to the edge and in mortal danger of falling. Nick jiggled the rope back and tied it to each landing as they climbed.

Once on the roof they had no time to catch their breath before Graham arrived in the Veto, and the wind and downdraft from Liberty lashed them fiercely as they battled to catch the ropes and the sling Graham was sending down. Liberty was being buffeted every which way by the strong wind, any moment threatening to crash onto the roof. The noise of the wind and the jet thrusters was deafening and Nick felt his eardrums about to burst.

Graham signalled, and he jerked Liberty away from the roof creating a force that beat against their chests, almost knocking them to the ground. All hopes of rescuing any of the people with Liberty vanished. 

***

Nick put some of the hostages to work after hauling the bundles of rope down from the roof.

The looters had not returned to where the hostages were huddled together on the remains of ninth floor. Alex looked like death, his clothes were smeared with blood when he had attended some injured people, and his dark springy curls drooped around his face, yet he remained calm as he offered sympathy to Margaret’s father .

Then another sound joined the howling, hot wind; that of an outboard motor racing away from the building. Nick moved quickly where he could see the fleeing speedboat, his mind racing in tune with the wine of it’s motors, then an enormous ear splitting explosion roared above the other deafening noises. Instinctively Nick ducked then looked in time to see a huge flame, topped by a pall of thick black smoke billowing skyward from the surface of the water.

‘The speedboat!  Shit!’  Dave had wired it! He had no intention of letting them escape! Nick groaned as he thought of Margaret, the poor innocent girl they had taken hostage. Now he understood Dave’s reticence. He turned to see her father slither down the wall sobbing. He rubbed his forehead and ran his fingers though his hair but strangely felt a detachment
.
That poor man. So much tragedy...so much pain….

Nobody spoke, they had no more tears or words to describe the horrors they had faced, afraid of what was to come. Nick chose some of the stunned hostages and showed them how to make a rope ladder, hoping to snap them into action, hoping they could make a ladder long enough to reach the surface of the sea, because the sling Graham had dropped would be very dangerous, especially for the children. He planned to use both. They worked together silently tying the knots while he went down stairs to see what they were up against.

Nick moved carefully down the emergency stairs, sharply conscious of the need to tread very carefully, testing each section before placing his full weight on the stair. Jagged cracks crept down the outer walls beside him, which in places had been torn from the building and thrust into the sea. The fixed Navilon panels inserted in the exterior walls for natural light had shattered, exposing the stairs to the open air on every landing, allowing the wind to whistle and whine through the building. He rounded the corner onto the seventh floor and stopped sharply. The stairs before him fell away to a void seventeen metres below, where the angry sea swirled and pounded the forest of vertical steel girders that had been driven deep into rock to support the entire structure. Chunks of broken concrete and reinforcing clung to sections of the horizontal checkerboards of steel girders
that provided a base for each concrete floor.

He returned to the hostages and began checking all the knots in the ladder.

‘I need three volunteers to help me get the ladder downstairs.’

Three men immediately stepped forward.

‘It’s a bit tricky getting down there. What’s your name?’ Nick said to one of the men in his thirties who had so far not uttered a sound.

‘J….J..eff.’ He stuttered.  ‘Jeff. Sawtell.’

‘Right Jeff. You look like a strong bloke, you’ll be in the middle. Tie yourself to the railing on the next floor where you can, but before you do, test it’s stability, then pull the rope tight so the others can use it as a second safety hold.’ He turned to the others. ‘One of you do the same as Jeff, go right down to the last landing and tie on. The other will help me drag the ladder Okay?’

It took them over half an hour to get the ladder in place, where Nick secured it and dropped it down through the checkerboard of steel to the water, relieved to see it almost reach the thrashing sea surface. He and the third volunteer returned upstairs to ready the group for the descent.

Nick began tying the rope around each person. ‘I’ll go first and help each of you onto the ladder. Karen you’ll be second last. Alex you go down after Karen.’ After they were all tied safely together he surveyed their pale faces. ‘Now whatever you do I want you all to stay close to each other and hug the inside wall. Hold onto the rope and the railing as you go down and watch your feet. We’ll all be safe if we take our time. If one of you stumbles the other person behind you will break your fall, so you can’t fall far.’
 
I hop
e
, he thought silently
,
or we’ll all go with yo
u
.
‘Any questions?’ None came forward as h
is eyes roamed over each hostage imparting his outer confidence, hiding his internal trepidation. Nick’s leadership had come to the fore and he had succeeded in calming them somewhat, which in his mind was the most important thing. Panic causes mistakes and they couldn’t afford any.

He instructed everyone again to hug the interior walls, and they followed like timid sheep in single file, backs against the wall as the wind wailed around them.

Above the noise of the wind and roaring sea another frightening sound prevailed. The steel groaned and creaked, and the incessant wind whistled and howled through the grids, creating an eerie, ghostly sound that made the hairs on the back of Nick’s neck rise.