felt like she’d gone no further than a few feet before she ran into a wall. She was sure the door had to be there somewhere. She moved sideways, still calling Amy’s name, as she felt for a gap, her fingers searching for the door frame. She cried out as something pierced her palm, slicing into the flesh beneath her right thumb. The wound throbbed and she could feel blood running down to her elbow. She ignored the warm blood as she felt more frantically for the doorway but there was no gap. Instead she found herself wedged into a corner.
She was confused, disoriented but she continued to inch her way around the room.
She kept her hands outstretched, fearful of hitting her head again in the darkness. She breathed in the putrid, frigid air as she crawled through the darkness.
Her hands met more cold concrete. It was rough under her fingers, the smooth walls obliterated, leaving what felt like a pile of rubble. The ceiling pressed down on her head, making her feel claustrophobic. She fought back a wave of panic. Where was she? Nothing was familiar.
‘Amy? Are you here?’ She was sobbing now, crying salty tears that ran down her cheeks and mingled with the dust that caked her mouth.
She forced herself to keep moving. She couldn’t stay still. She had to find a way out of there before she froze to death.
She moved a few more feet and her fingers made contact with smooth metal. Was that the bed frame? Had she done a full circle? The bed had a high metal bed head. She traced the frame. The poles were bent, the frame leaning in towards the centre of the bed. She reached up and felt the ceiling. Somehow the metal bed head was supporting the ceiling. A concrete ceiling that should be five feet above her head, not several inches.
How had the bed not collapsed completely?
She was lucky she hadn’t been crushed, she thought, before she had a more terrifying realisation. But what about Amy? Where was her sister? What might have happened to her?
‘Amy?’ she whispered. Scared now of what she might not hear. Listening in hope for her sister’s voice.
Still nothing.
The carpet was sodden and sludgy under her knees. Crawling through freezing mud and water in the dark wasn’t getting her anywhere. She needed to see. She needed light. She felt for the bedside table, reaching for her mobile phone that had been resting on top. She desperately needed the flashlight function, but her hand met empty air. There was no table and she could only assume her phone now lay submerged in the vile water that lapped at her thighs.
She moved around the other side of the bed, only to find herself in another dead end. There was no way around this. She was trapped in a windowless, flooded tomb.
How had she ended up here?
What had happened?
Had a snow groomer crashed into their apartment? What had happened to the apartments above?
She had no idea.
All she knew was that she was trapped, buried alive.
She wanted to scream but the air was still so cold and so thick with dust she didn’t want to breathe it in.
Stay calm. Think.
She wanted to be warm.
Crawling back to the bed, she curled into a ball and tucked her injured hand under her armpit in an attempt to stop the bleeding and to warm herself up. She tugged the quilt over her, it was cold but dry and although she still wasn’t warm at least she wasn’t sitting in that filthy water.
She closed her eyes as she tried to figure out what to do. She wanted to get out of there but had no idea how she would achieve that.
Amy would know.
She let her tears flow as she lay in the darkness.
She wanted her sister.
* * *
Pat only had one thought as he ran towards Snowgum Chalet.
Charli.
He had to warn her. Had to get her out.
He skidded to a stop and gulped a lungful of frigid air as he tried to comprehend what he was seeing.
Ironbark Lodge was sliding almost gracefully down the slope, seemingly with no great urgency, keeping pace with the eucalyptus trees that were falling alongside it. It left a dark smear of mud in its wake as it pushed the snow ahead like a gigantic snowplough. The bottom floors of the building were pushed out as it gathered momentum and the upper levels toppled backwards. The accompanying sound was an agonising, horrific cracking of timbers, an explosion of glass, a high-pitched shrieking of twisting metal and devastating human cries, but still the lodge continued to slide down the slope in front of him, heading straight for Snowgum Chalet. And Charli.
There was nothing he could do and he watched helplessly as the disaster unfolded before him until, with a sickening crash, the two lodges collided. Pat took a step forward, hopelessly, helplessly, as Snowgum Chalet collapsed like a deck of cards and the third and fourth stories crushed the floors below and sent a cloud of white concrete dust into the air.
Car alarms were blaring and, over the top of all the noise, the village distress siren wailed. The noise of the disaster brought people out of the buildings. They poured out of the surrounding bars, restaurants and lodges before stopping in their tracks, staring in disbelief at the site that confronted them. A dark muddy scar bisected the snow-covered mountain and an enormous pile of rubble, which moments before had been two buildings, dominated the landscape. They stared, momentarily frozen, at the ruins of the buildings that had, God only knew, how many people inside.
Pat could hear screams and calls for help coming from underneath the rubble. He had no idea how people had survived this disaster but clearly they had. He desperately hoped Charli had been one of them but he couldn’t imagine how. Her apartment was—had been—on the ground floor. Unless she had somehow, miraculously, managed to escape, she was now buried under tonnes of concrete, bricks and steel. He fought back a wave of nausea as the dust cloud settled and he surveyed the scene. Everything had changed in an instant.
A few bystanders had already gathered their wits and were trying to move debris. There wasn’t any discussion or any system to the recovery attempt, people simply started at the area closest to them. They stood in the mud, pulling at bricks and window frames, blocks of concrete and pieces of broken furniture. They looked like scavengers sorting through a rubbish tip. Nothing in front of them resembled a building.
He had to help. He pulled his gloves from the pocket of his jacket and shoved his hands into them as his feet began moving, propelling him towards the devastation. Muddy water continued to flow down the hill, making conditions underfoot slippery and treacherous. He could smell diesel fuel and sewage and gas but he couldn’t stop. Charli’s life might depend on him.
‘Charli! Charli?’
For a split second he thought it was her voice he could hear. He turned around and saw a young woman flying down the path, her blonde hair streaming behind her.
Was it Charli?
She ran past Connor and Pat saw him grab at her. He held onto her, restraining her. Pat knew if he hadn’t caught her she would have kept
