‘We’d better get you to a doctor,’ said Ben.
Kelly looked down at the map. She had been leaning on it while the plane was throwing them around and now it was creased like a well-used cushion. She tried to smooth it down, having to use her elbows.
‘For sure. I just need to find somewhere we can land.’
Rikki stood at the window. She always liked to watch the racehorses from her tenth-storey apartment. That was why the block had appealed to her and her husband so much. Now the afternoon’s racing was part of her daily routine with her three-month-old son Josh. As usual, she fed him, changed him and walked around the living room with him on her hip, jogging him to sleep while she watched the 1.45 yearlings race.
But today she looked out of the window and got the shock of her life.
The stand was engulfed in a ball of flame. Black smoke boiled into the sky. The horses had started running before the gates had opened. They had dragged the entire structure out of the ground and were galloping caged inside it.
Right in their path were the people who had fled from the flames. They had no chance of getting away. The charging horses knocked them down like a monstrous war machine.
She couldn’t look any more and turned away. The baby picked up on her shock and started to cry.
Rikki had friends on the other side of the racecourse: Molly and Dan. Molly had a daughter the same age as Josh and usually tried to get her off to sleep by the 1.45 race. Could she see this too? Rikki sat down on the sofa, being careful to support Josh’s head properly, picked up the phone and pressed a speed dial.
While it was ringing, she glanced out of the window and got another shock. She couldn’t see the carnage on the racetrack any longer. Smoke obscured it all. The entire horizon seemed to be carpeted in black smoke and flickering orange flames. Blue lights flashed beneath the smoke as though travelling under black gauze.
As she waited for Molly to pick up the phone, another thought crossed her mind. Would the fire reach the flat? Surely not; it was ten storeys up.
But why hadn’t Molly answered yet?
Suddenly the line went dead.
The phone rang for a short time in Molly’s house, but she wasn’t able to reach it. She was trying desperately to open the window onto the balcony. Her baby, Emanuelle, was in a neoprene sling on her chest.
The security locks wouldn’t budge. Behind her, the sofa was on fire. The tapestry cushions and upholstery were nearly all consumed, and the bare frame was showing through the orange flames like a Terminator’s skeleton. Thick smoke poured from the foam interior. Outside the room the hall was a wreckage of burning rafters.
Molly had the key in the window lock, but it was stiff and she couldn’t turn it. Emanuelle was crying and coughing, her face scrunched and red. Hot smoke burned the inside of her lungs. It felt like she had sucked in boiling water. It must be even worse for her baby.
The key slipped out of Molly’s fingers. She gave a strangled sob of despair and fell to her knees. Once she was down on the floor, the smoke got even thicker. She coughed, but there was no oxygen, only the choking black smoke and the fumes from the sofa. She could hardly even see Emanuelle’s face barely inches away. She collapsed while the phone rang and rang.
The flames reached the phone cables, shrivelling them like burning hair. The ringing stopped and the LCD display in the phone station blistered in the heat.
By then the fire had spread to the building next door to Molly’s …
The pall of smoke drifted across the city. The botanical gardens, which Engine 33 had fought so hard to save, went up like a bonfire. Wanasri and her crew couldn’t save it now; they were tied up with other fires. Every fire engine in the city was out on a call, fighting flash blazes. They worked fast, but the fires travelled faster.
Once the fire had taken hold in the outskirts, it began to move towards the city centre.
In the main precinct the staff of the law courts were in the middle of an ordinary working day when they were alerted by the fire alarm. They filed down the stairs, some of them escorting bewildered clients. They assumed it was a false alarm or a fire drill — until they reached the street and saw the mushroom cloud of smoke against the sky.
The dentist’s practice next door was on fire. Firefighters were pumping water in through the upstairs windows; smoke and steam were pouring out. More firefighters ushered the solicitors away to the end of the street, where paramedics were holding a breathing mask over the face of a young woman. She had blood dripping out of her mouth and had obviously been in the middle of an extraction when the alarm sounded. The dentist and his nurse were trying to comfort her, their white coats spattered with her blood.
A woman in a fluorescent coat was evacuating another building. The people pouring out were bare-foot and wore loose, pyjama-like clothes. Some of them carried brightly coloured mats under their arms. They had been in the middle of a relaxing yoga class and looked as dazed as the dental patient to find themselves outside.
Not all the evacuations were so peaceful. In a pedestrianized street just a hundred metres away, the usual lunchtime crowds were enjoying a snack at the many cafés and bars, protected from the sun by fringed umbrellas. One minute they were discussing whether to go indoors because it had got windy. The next, they were enveloped in burning fabric as the umbrellas caught light.
The high buildings turned the precinct into a wind tunnel. As punters knocked over tables in their panic, a gale ripped through the burning awnings. Those who were still able to run were pursued down the streets by pieces of flaming fabric.
The promenade on the west side of town was a mass of people fleeing from the marinas, restaurants and hotels. They ran out onto the jetties, crowded into boats and pushed off into the bay. A pair of old women, their skin leathery from too much sun, were struggling with their boat. As one of them started the engine and the other tried to untie the mooring rope, three waiters wearing name badges from the nearby St Michael’s restaurant ran up and made for the rail. The woman at the helm screamed in fury and pointed a flare pistol at them, forcing the waiters to retreat to the quay. The second woman finally freed the boat and they set off, still keeping an eye on the waiters to make sure they didn’t try to climb aboard.
Soon the bay was bustling with flapping sails. The passengers in the boats looked back at the city in astonishment. Wherever they looked, from the hotels at the water’s edge to the hills away in the distance, were smoke and flames.
Chapter Eleven
At the conference centre, the public debate was scheduled to start in a few minutes.
The Oz Protectors were at the front of the queue. Timi, Amy and Joseph were first in through the doors, carrying their banner with the message: STOP SECRET US EXPERIMENTS. Timi had gone through a lot to be there. He was skipping classes at college and now he had lost his car. He felt pent-up and angry, looking to make somebody pay.
The two other members of the Adelaide branch were also cutting classes. Wez and his girlfriend Bo had been giving out leaflets in the centre of town since early that morning. They believed in their cause, and had ensured that a good crowd turned up. Soon that American major, colonel or whatever he was, would be answering some hard questions on live TV. The Australian public would be horrified when they learned what had been going on out in the desert.
Banners had to be left in the foyer. ‘Just toss it anywhere, chum,’ said a security guard. ‘Nobody’s going to pinch the bloomin’ thing, are they?’
Timi propped the banner next to one showing an Uncle Sam skull, then guided his companions through a side passageway. He had done casual jobs as a bouncer when rock concerts were held at the conference centre and knew the short cuts to the best seats.