Bel looked down. Smoke filled the streets like dark cotton wool. Here and there emergency lights twinkled in blue and orange.
The iron handrail was hot under her hands. Was that from the ambient summer temperature or something else? A few metres away there was a skylight in the roof. Bel went over and looked into it. The blue water of the pool was barely visible. The room below was filling with smoke of two colours, swirling together like tornado clouds on a satellite photo — black from the fire and white from the fumes given off by the reacting pool chemicals. She had got out just in time.
And she couldn’t stay up here.
She hurried along the gantry. There were other sky-lights, but she didn’t stop to look down into them. If she had, she would have noticed that the last one wasn’t positioned over the pool, but over a small room to one side. Five people lay in there, huddled together, their matching yellow T-shirts soaked in sweat.
Amy looked up as she saw a figure cross the skylight. She tried to call out but she was too weak. The fumes sapped her strength. Slowly she pulled herself over towards Timi. He was curled up as though asleep. The angry scowl was now replaced by a placid look. He had such a young face, Amy realized. He looked untroubled and innocent. She stroked his brow and he mumbled something. His eyelids fluttered but they didn’t open.
She looked up at the skylight again. It seemed to be getting darker. Joseph raised his head and looked at her. ‘I feel so sleepy, Ames …’
‘It’s all right, Joe,’ she told him. He smiled and closed his eyes, trusting in her. Just like when they were kids.
Amy felt so calm. She believed her soul would be reborn. Death was only the start of another opportunity. Or maybe it was the fumes that made her so resigned. She wasn’t sure, but she was grateful for it.
She had one stab of regret as the warm darkness folded its arms around her. The woman they had locked in the conference centre — Dr Kelland. Amy hoped she’d got out somehow before the fire …
Up on the roof, Bel didn’t have any idea how close she had come to crossing paths with the Oz Protectors again. Like her, they had gone into the pool to shelter. And like her, they had found it was a bad choice. In their case, a fatal choice.
Bel, running down the iron fire escape into the street, had made the right call. For now.
Chapter Sixteen
Ben had been to a hospital casualty unit once in his life, when he had twisted his ankle skateboarding. But the hospital in Coober Pedy was nothing like Accident and Emergency at Macclesfield General. As Ben waited for Kelly to come back from the triage nurse, he wouldn’t have been surprised if the Flintstones had walked in.
For a start, the hospital was ten metres underground and carved out of solid rock. Most of Coober Pedy’s buildings were like this, fashioned out of old opal mines. Of course, there were no windows, so the only light came from lamps mounted at intervals along the walls. Wooden partitions sectioned off the casualty waiting area from the examination rooms. The floor seemed normal enough — just cool green lino — but when Ben looked up at the ceiling, it was disorienting to just see rough-hewn rock like the inside of a cave. There were ventilation shafts in the ceiling, covered by cones of blue plastic like upturned lampshades. Every so often the plastic cones made a skittering sound, as pebbles fell down from the surface. But at least the temperature down here was pleasantly cool.
The waiting room was quite busy. Ben found that surprising as he had hardly seen anyone on the streets above. But even more peculiar was the appearance of these patients. There were no arms in slings, or plaster casts, or even makeshift bandages like Kelly’s. Instead, most of them were wearing dark glasses, or sitting with their hands shielding their eyes.
All of them were tanned but some looked chalky pale under their tan, as though they were about to be sick. One woman sitting near Ben was holding her head in her hands and rocking backwards and forwards, moaning. Another got up and rushed to the bathroom, banging through the door in her hurry. It seemed to Ben like they had arrived in the middle of some weird kind of epidemic.
Kelly came back, her hands encased in sterile plastic bags. She looked miserable as she sat down next to Ben. ‘They haven’t finished with me yet — they’ve given me some painkillers, and once those start to work they can finish dressing the wounds. Can you get me something to eat?’
Ben stood up. ‘Sure. What do you want?’
‘A sandwich. Anything. There’s a café in the art gallery just down the road. And see if you can get some fuel. We’ll never make it back to Adelaide on what we’ve got left.’
Ben followed the sign to the lift. The doors opened and a group of people got out — a woman in a wheel-chair, caked in outback dust, being pushed by a paramedic. A man followed behind, carrying a dark brown snake that he’d chopped in half. Blood dripped from the snake’s body onto the floor. At least that looked like a normal reason to visit a hospital, but Ben shuddered. He remembered the leaflet he’d been given with all the warnings about poisonous insects and spiders and reptiles. The man must have brought the snake in to identify the venom. It could be a harsh world out here in the Australian desert.
The lift rattled upwards. As Ben went out into the street, the heat hit him like a fist. He could see why everyone lived underground here. Out of habit, he tried to call Bel on his mobile, and Major Kurtis on Kelly’s, but he couldn’t even get a signal.
He put the phones away and looked for the art gallery. He spotted its blackboard on a shed, next to a sign warning people not to walk backwards because of unmarked shafts. The shed door was open. Ben went in and down a steep staircase, into another cool, twilit cave.
At the bottom of the stairs was a rack of postcards and a sign pointing to the café. It was at the other end of the art gallery. Striplights ran along the wall, inviting the visitor into small caves of treasures. Ben glimpsed opals, brightly coloured paintings and big black and white photographs. But he was intent on reaching the café. As he smelled the aroma of baked bread, he quickened his pace. He hadn’t realized until now how hungry he was.
A lady in a T-shirt and a green apron came out of a side room, sweeping up dust that had fallen from the ceiling. ‘Can I help you?’
‘Is the café open?’ Ben asked her.
‘No, but I can open it for you if you just want sandwiches.’
‘That would be great,’ said Ben.
She leaned the broom against the wall. ‘I’ll get the key. We’ve got cheese and ham — is that all right?’
‘Fine,’ said Ben. ‘And do you have any water?’
‘Sure. I’ll give you a shout when it’s ready. You carry on looking around.’
He wandered back down the passageway and into one of the caves. It was filled with large photographs of Coober Pedy when the mines were being created. He went into another alcove, where there was an image painted directly onto the rock. A sign said it was a reproduction of a piece of aboriginal dreamtime art about the formation of opals, in which a stone in the ground was filled with fire and the colours of the rainbow.
Fire. Ben wished he could find a radio with the news on. He wanted to know what was happening in Adelaide. He came out into the main gallery and saw a payphone. He went over to it, slotted some coins in and tried Bel’s number.
‘Lines are busy. Please try again later.’
He put the receiver down and spotted a newspaper on the shelf in the phone booth. Ben doubted whether the newspapers would have got an edition out in the short time since the fire had started, but still he unfolded it and scoured it eagerly.