LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘All of them,’ she snapped. ‘A school bus has been crushed by logs a few miles north of Karington on the coast road. The bus is threatening to slide off the cliff. This guy will give you details but we need every service now, including cranes to secure the bus. I want ambulances, medics, police, heavy machinery to stop the bus from sliding. There may be kids trapped on the bus. Get out the army if you must, but get help for us now.’

      She’d done something at least, which was almost amazing in itself. Her body didn’t feel as if it belonged to her.

      But she had to go on. She handed the phone back to the dazed bus driver and instructed her legs to walk forward a bit further. To the bus.

      That meant she had to pass the guy on the ground treating the little girl. The doctor.

      He didn’t look up. She looked down and saw what he was doing.

      So much blood.

      He needed help. To apply pressure and clamp arteries himself…he needed someone else.

      But the bus could slide.

      He was searching, desperately searching, for blood vessels. Priorities. Too many children.

      She didn’t stop. She couldn’t. Triage. If there were still kids on the bus and it slid…

      She couldn’t let herself be deflected.

      She’d reached the guy with the bloodied face now—the middle-aged man in a suit. Maybe a schoolteacher? There was blood streaming from a gash on his forehead and she stooped to see, hauling her jacket off to form a pad as she knelt.

      ‘You were on the bus?’ she asked, pushing the pad hard over his face. ‘Lie down flat.’ She pushed him down and started pressing. ‘Is everyone off?’

      He groaned. ‘There’s still a couple…I think. I’m not sure but there were a couple of children I couldn’t reach. Before…before…’

      He wavered. He was suffering from blood loss as well as shock, Emma thought, and he was close to sliding into unconsciousness.

      ‘Stay still,’ she told him again, propelling him backwards so he was lying flat. She pushed hard on the pad but she was already looking around to find someone who could take over. It was an ugly gash, deep and ragged, but she had to move on.

      The two drivers were useless. Which left only the kids.

      He’d have to do this himself.

      She guided his hands up to the makeshift pad. ‘Push down on this and don’t let go,’ she told him. ‘Push hard.’

      It was the best she could do. She straightened—and there was a child beside her. A little girl, who only reached her shoulder. Skinny. Pig tails. Really thick glasses.

      About twelve.

      ‘What do you want us to do?’ the girl said, matter-of-factly, and Emma could have kissed her. The bus driver and the lorry driver were worse than useless. The teacher was too badly injured to help. She had to use this child.

      ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.

      ‘Katy.’

      ‘Katy, you’re doing great,’ Emma told her. ‘I need a leader and you’re it. Can you organise the big kids to check the little ones? Tell everyone that they need to cuddle anyone who’s hurt. Gently. Lay anyone down who needs to lie down and tell other kids to stay with them. Organise everyone into pairs so that everyone has someone who’s looking after them. If I find anyone else on the bus, can I send them out to you?’

      ‘Sure. Me and Marty will look after them,’ Katy said. ‘Do you want someone to push down on Mr Jeffries’s pad?’

      If there had been a medal to hand, Emma would have pinned it on her right then.

      ‘Yes,’ she told her.

      ‘I’ll call Chrissy Martin to look after Mr Jeffries while I look after the others,’ Katy said. ‘She reckons she’s going to be a doctor and she doesn’t get sick when anyone bleeds.’

      ‘Are all the kids out of the bus?’ Please…

      ‘There’s two still left,’ Katy told her, and Emma forgot about medals. ‘Kyle Connor and Suzy Larkin. I was just coming to look for them.’ She looked dubiously at the bus. ‘You reckon it’s safe to go back inside?’

      ‘I’ll look for you,’ Emma told her, staring with her at the bus with a sinking heart. ‘You have work to do.’

      So did she.

      Someone had to climb into the bus.

      Kyle and Suzy. Two children. Two children on the bus.

      There was sea under the bus. Thirty feet down. What was stopping the bus from sliding into the sea?

      Nothing.

      She looked back at the rest of the adults to see if there was anyone who could possibly help her.

      Not the doctor. If he left what he was doing…well, he couldn’t.

      The other adults? One sick, one too stunned to be any use at all, one injured.

      Not a snowball’s chance in a wildfire of any help from this lot.

      She couldn’t ask the kids.

      Which left her.

      She gulped.

      ‘Don’t slide,’ she told the bus. Stupidly. Inconsequentially. ‘Don’t you dare slide. I haven’t come all this way to get squashed.’

      Squashed wasn’t a good thought and she couldn’t afford to think it. If she hesitated any more she wouldn’t do it. There was no choice.

      Two kids.

      She reached up, grabbed the top of the window-frame and hauled herself up and inside the bus.

      She was met by chaos.

      A bus, lying on its side at a thirty or forty degree angle on the side edge of a cliff wasn’t the most organised place to be at the best of times. And this one had been crushed by rolling logs.

      There was shattered glass, twisted metal and seats, satchels spilling schoolbooks…

      How had so many kids got out of here alive? Emma asked herself as she tried to get her bearings.

      The frame was still almost intact. That’d be why. There’d be cuts from the broken glass but not much impact damage.

      What else might have caused major trauma?

      There were a couple of logs that had smashed right inside.

      Maybe they’d missed everyone.

      Yeah, right.

      But maybe they had. She couldn’t hear anything.

      ‘Is anyone in here?’ she called, trying not to sound as terrified as she felt.

      Nothing.

      Maybe Katy had been mistaken. Please.

      She bit her lip—then slid her way slowly down, gingerly, horribly conscious of the fact that the bus was precariously balanced thirty feet above the sea. But there was nothing she could do about that little nightmare. She couldn’t think about it.

      She did think about it.

      No matter. She couldn’t let it matter. She worked slowly down the rows of seats, searching, searching…

      Thank God she was wearing sensible clothes. Her oversized jeans and windcheater and her sneakers protected her from the worst of the broken glass. If she’d been in summer dress and sandals she’d be have been cut to ribbons.

      Where were they?

      Katy had said there were two kids. Katy looked the sort of kid who’d miss nothing.

      And

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