The War of Immensities (3 page)

Eventually, he
had to clamber up onto the body, where he discovered that the door
handle had been melted. He had a screwdriver hanging from his belt
and levered in a place where the door had buckled, and finally
wrenched it open.

He manoeuvred
around and peered in, grabbed his torch and directed the beam
inside. There was an almighty tangle of seats and people. Five
people he guessed, twisted and bloodied. He pulled off his glove
and reached for the nearest flesh he could see, the arm of an
over-weight woman of fifty or more. The coldness was that special
kind he knew only too well.

He was obliged
to stretch further in, knowing there was no hope. The warmer air
inside the mangled cabin was escaping. A fog was settling in there.
His own breath, coming in blasts of whiteness, was enough to
obscure his view. Then he realised—it wasn’t just his own breath.
There were other puffs of whiteness appearing momentarily. Rogan
reared back and looked toward the hovering helicopter.

“Jesus, Wayne!
Drum up some help! There’s people alive in here!”

Only with the
coming of daylight, more than twelve hours after the eruption, did
the various rescue teams begin to penetrate the main area of
devastation. The fifty or so rescue workers who had already arrived
on the scene were divided into teams of a dozen and equipped with
whatever was to hand.

A group of
firemen wearing heat-proof suits and with breathing equipment were
attempting to make their way up the ridge to the Ruapehu Chateau
where they knew the greater number of victims in the quadrant of
destruction would be found. At one kilometre from the epicentre,
there was over a metre of ash in low places, forcing them onto
higher ground.

Soon, they
passed beyond the newly created edge of the forest—even there the
trees were stripped of their leaves and twisted and laden with ash.
Ahead, the logs lay in a weirdly orderly fashion, as if felled by
human hands. As far as they could see, the rows of denuded trunks
carpeted the earth, and they could make their way forward only by
traversing the logs like lumberjacks.

On the low
ridge ahead, they should have been able to see the chateau but
there was no trace of it, not even the chimneys that usually stood
after fires. Beyond that, the smoke pall from the crater still
ascended skyward even though there had been no more eruptions. The
firemen, led by Del Shannon, worked their way up until they came to
the bottom of the ski-slope that led directly to the chateau, but
there the logs ran out and they were faced with snow and ash drifts
metres thick. That might have been the end of their attempt, had
not Jerker Teasdale spotted a strange shape away to their
right.

“What’s that?”
he asked in puzzlement.

It was a curved
metal shape about two metres long with four short feet sticking
upward, like a dead cow chopped off just below the shoulders.
Shannon laughed.

“It’s a
bathtub. Lou had them old type ones installed right through the
chateau. Cost him a bloody fortune.”

Because they
didn’t want to think where Lou might be now, they made their way
across to the object. Anyway, they needed to go sideways to see if
they could find some way of climbing closer to the chateau. At
least that was how Shannon justified it in his mind.

The bath, its
enamel belly painted duck-egg blue, had obviously tobogganed all
the way down the ski-slope to this point, over-turning at the end
of its run and the ash was heavy enough to slip away from most of
its surface.

“Maybe there’s
someone in it,” Jerker laughed. “Let’s turn it over.”

Shannon
surveyed the scene—there wasn’t really time for this nonsense.

“We’ll keep
moving this way. Maybe we can make our way up along the ridge over
there.”

But the
irrepressible Jerker and two cronies were heaving on the short
steel legs of the bath and tilting it.

The smooth dark
brown arm flopped through the opening.

They all
stared.

“Shit, don’t
drop it!” Shannon ordered.

Barely
recovering themselves, Jerker and the others heaved the bath clear.
The men stood around, spellbound by what they saw. Andromeda
Starlight’s flesh contrasted stunningly with the area of white snow
where the bath had prevented the ash from falling.

“Shit,” Jerker
gasped. “She’s burned to a crisp.”

“No she ain’t,
you fucking dickhead,” Shannon snapped. “She already was black.
Don’t you know a darkie when yer see one?”

“Never seen one
in a bath before,” Jerker blubbered. “But I always wanted ta.”

The men
chuckled, not so much at Jerker’s sadistic humour as from an
hysteria to which none of them would have wanted to admit. They
were all possessed by a paralysis, the vision before them seemed to
have arrested them completely.

“Well, don’t
just stand there gawking,” Shannon snapped at them. But he was
still standing and gawking himself.

It was finally
left to Jerker to reach and delicately touch her, seeking vital
signs. He pulled his hand back as if bitten.

“Fuckin’ hell,”
he breathed. “I got a pulse.”

“Chopper coming
in!”

The orderly
appeared only momentarily at the door, and Felicity Campbell’s
senses were not up to identifying him. She was moving before she
was thinking. Her body seemed to know the right way to weave around
the clutter of ICU beds in the room such that she did not trip on
cables nor upset consoles. Instincts carried her out into the
corridor and into the lift before she really knew she was
there.

She switched to
the service lift on Level N, running with that shuffling, oriental
gait of legs too tired to fully raise her feet off the floor.
Earlier, she remembered instructing an orderly to mop up the blood
splattered all the way along here—it had not been done. The
helicopters kept coming and there was no time, not even for basic
hygiene, not to mention safety.

As the lift
doors breathed open to the rooftop, she was surprised by the bright
light that savaged her eyes. At first, she thought it was the
landing lights of the helicopter—only vaguely did she realise it
was daylight. Throughout the night, she had done this more than a
dozen times, and still they came. The hospital was filled beyond
capacity, but the helicopters kept coming and coming.

Desperately,
she strove to pull her exhausted brain into order. She ploughed out
into the chill of morning before she realised she had gone too far.
It was totally exposed up here on the roof of the clinical services
tower, and the view was stunning for those who had time to look.
The stiff wind off Wellington Harbour—blue and serene beyond the
city skyline—grabbed her and shook her. She had passed the
nominated examination point in the rooftop hut where the waiting
medical teams could shelter from the constant wind; where she had
idiotically observed the blood but seemed to have forgotten why it
was there.

The helicopter
was still way up in the air, on approach to the pad. Felicity
Campbell pressed her inner pause button and halted in the middle of
the tower roof. A herd of orderlies came by her like a rugby team,
racing to meet the helicopter. Felicity gulped the air and it
refreshed her and got her brain going again.

The helicopter
wobbled down onto the pad, and the crewman jumped into the pack of
waiting orderlies and they had the first patient on a trolley and
rolling toward her with blinding speed. Felicity backed off into
the hut, where another collection of nurses and orderlies were
gathering to heed her orders.

All through the
night, the helicopters kept coming and coming and Felicity had met
them all. She had placed herself at the first line of assault and
now carried a knowledge of the overall situation at Wellington
Hospital that was so complex and fluid that it could not be passed
on to anyone else. She was here to stay until the last helicopter
came.

The chatter of
the rotors had come to haunt her, and as she heard each approaching
helicopter, she abandoned whatever she was doing and raced upward
to the helipad. As each victim was rolled in and the paramedics
gabbled out what was known of their condition, Felicity made hasty
assessments and barked sharp destinations to the orderlies.

“This one
straight to theatre 64... Run her up to ward 29... Okay, get him
into radiology... Can’t do anything here without a cat scan—stick
him in the queue.”

With each
instruction, her picture of the chaos within the hospital expanded.
They were under extreme pressure at every level, but the staff, she
had observed, remained calm. Just do the work in front of you and
treat it like a normal day, had been the general instruction.
Felicity had been on her feet for twenty hours and there was no end
in sight.

The galloping
mob propelling the trolley drew to a halt beside her and she lifted
the cover. They had to shout above the wind and chatter of the
rotors. “What have we got?”

“Female, black,
unidentified, comatose, all vital signs, no apparent injuries.”

Felicity gazed
down at the face of Andromeda Starlight and saw an incongruous
picture of absolute calm. The woman might have been sleeping
peacefully. If so it was the first peace Felicity had seen for many
hours.

She looked back
at the harried face of the paramedic, a young man, splattered with
blood, pallid with exhaustion. The helicopter had carried this one
victim alone, and now waited impatiently to return. Bewildered
orderlies hung about the helipad, unable to believe there weren’t
three or four more casualties as had been the case on every other
helicopter throughout the night.

“What were her
circumstances?” she asked, returning her attention to the patient,
as if she doubted there was nothing to look for.

“Not sure.
There was some yarn that she was in a bath which protected her from
everything.”

“Exposure?”

“About twelve
hours. But she was apparently sheltered throughout. No frostbite.
The ash kept the bathtub warm. No burns. No contusions that I could
find.”

“Okay,”
Felicity breathed, and turned her attention to the orderlies.
“Comatose. Down to CT. Start with a scan for head injuries.
Go.”

The orderlies
whisked the trolley away, and the paramedic was striding back
toward his impatient helicopter. Felicity had to run to keep up
with him. She did not want to allow her body nor mind to rest until
she was sure the initial chaos was passed.

“How’s it
looking up there?”

The paramedic
paused, realising her anxiety, and why. Theirs had been one of the
first helicopters on the scene—this was their sixth or seventh
trip—he had lost count.

“Hard to say.
The damage is so widespread—casualties keep seeping in everywhere.
But it has slowed down this morning.”

“So the
pressure might be off.”

“I’d get some
rest now, if I were you. They haven’t reached the chateau yet—it’s
too hot up there. They don’t expect to get in there until tomorrow.
There’s still forty people known to be missing, at least.”

“Surely there
won’t be anyone left alive at this stage?”

“Who knows?
There’s been several miraculous survivals that we know of. That
woman would have been dead for sure if the bath hadn’t shielded
her. There was a helicopter that melted in midair but three people
survived the crash. Who knows what lies ahead? But I think it might
slow down for a few hours now.”

“Thanks,”
Felicity smiled.

He ran to the
helicopter and Felicity walked back, ignoring the downdraft of the
rotors, stripping off the rubber gloves as she rode down to Level N
and crossed to the public lifts. Sure, time to rest.

All they’d done
so far was get the patients in the door. Their treatment had hardly
begun. Still, she did need something... Coffee. One quick coffee
and then a complete tour of the hospital, to update her mental
picture of the madness that reigned in there.

Still, it was
odd that the black woman was so deeply comatose and yet exhibited
no injuries at all...

Glen Palenski
strolled in and dumped his backpack in the middle of the floor
where, Jami knew from long experience, it would remain until she
told him to move it. He put on a big grin and struck a macho
pose.

“The cavalry
has arrived.”

“Too late as
usual,” Jami replied languidly. It had been only two days since she
left him in Auckland, but it seemed like years ago. In any case,
her days of offering him excited welcomes were long past.

“So, you
actually eyeballed it,” he said, beginning to move around the room,
checking the monitors.

All was calm,
there was nothing for him to see, the three volcanoes had been
quiet since yesterday morning. But she didn’t bother to tell him
that.

“I did indeed.
One of the privileged few.”

“One of the
very few indeed that did so and survived. Not many vulcans can
claim that.”

“The image
shall remain burned indelibly on my corneas forever. You took your
goddamned time getting here.”

“Rough
journey,” he said with a shrug. “It’s as if all Kiwiland has been
laid waste by the event.”

“I bet you were
being laid all right.”

“Now, now,
Jami. One eruption in the vicinity is enough for this season.”

In fact she was
happy to see him, if only because it gave her someone to talk to.
In the two days since the eruption, she had become the unnominated
head of a considerable team with an astonishingly international
flavour.

First two
Geologists came over from Christchurch; one was Maori and the other
Samoan and she quickly sent them out with replacement sensors and
charts indicating where they should be placed. Then two team
members arrived from Rotorua—an Englishman with a Scots accent and
a Frenchman who was Algerian, and finally a pair from Macquarie Uni
in Sydney who declared themselves Australian when they were plainly
Cambodian.