LITMIR.BIZ

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was recovering from the initial shock. Blessedly he didn’t seem hurt. One little hand wriggled free, up through the neck of her T-shirt. Tiny fingers touched her neck, reaching up to her cheek. She wiped the grit away as best she could. Toby was making sure it was her.

      ‘M-Mama...’

      There were car alarms sounding all around her, a continuous screaming she couldn’t escape from, but she heard...or maybe she felt him speak. Toby had been calling her Mama for two months now and every time she heard it her heart turned over. Now, in the midst of noise and pain and fear...no, make that noise and pain and terror, it still had the capacity to ground her.

      This little person was the centre of her universe and she wasn’t about to let a crushed leg and a shopping centre fallen down around her make her forget that.

      ‘It’s okay, Toby, love.’ Could he hear above the cacophony? She had to believe he could. Maybe like her, he could feel her voice. She fought to fumble her way into her bag, until her fingers closed on a scrappy, chewed rabbit.

      Robert Rabbit was incongruously purple, so garish that even Beth could usually make him out in dim light. She couldn’t make him out now—the darkness was absolute—but she felt his scrappy fur and he gave her inexplicable comfort.

      She’d be okay. They’d be okay.

      If only her head didn’t feel...fuzzy. If only the noise would stop and the waves of pain would recede.

      She pushed them away—the pain and the faintness—and focussed hard on Toby. And Robert. She put the scraggy rabbit into the little hand and tucked both hand and rabbit back down her T-shirt.

      There was one blessing in all this. Because she’d been delayed at childcare, one of the women had given Toby warm milk and changed him into his pyjamas. She’d intended to heat spaghetti at home. Toby would have eaten a few ‘worms’ and then he’d have crashed. He didn’t really need the spaghetti, though. He’d had a full day of childcare. It was dark, he was well fed and he was tired. With luck he’d sleep.

      ‘Heydee, heydee-ho, the great big elephant is so slow...’

      The simple child’s song was one she used to settle him in the middle of the night, rocking him, telling him all was well in his world, all was well in her world. She forced herself to croon it now.

      The car horns were blaring but he must be able to feel her singing. He was so close. A heartbeat...

      ‘He swings his trunk from side to side, as he takes the children for a ride...’

      Her throat was caked with dust but somehow she managed it. And she managed to rock, just a little, with both hands cradling Toby.

      ‘Heydee, heydee-ho...’ Oh, it hurt. Dear God... If she fainted. ‘Heydee...’

      And blessedly she felt him relax. This had been scary for a few moments but now...maybe it was no worse than being put into his own cot in his own room. He had his mama. He had his rabbit. He was...safe?

      If only she could believe that.

      Toby snuggled deeper as she held him and tried to take comfort in him. The shards of pain were growing stronger. The faintness was getting closer...

      Do not give in.

      ‘Heydee...’

      * * *

      He needed his team!

      There was a local paramedic team onsite, plus another from a small town twenty minutes’ drive away, but they didn’t have the skills, equipment or know-how to try and go underneath the mess. There seemed to be only one available local doctor. She was working flat out in the nearby hospital. That meant triage and immediate life-saving stuff was up to Luc.

      A café at the outer edge of the plaza had collapsed, with a group of senior citizens inside, and that’s where the firefighters centred their early rescue efforts. One dead, two injured. Luc was in there until the café was cleared, crawling under the rubble to set up intravenous IVs and pain relief.

      He was filthy. A scrape on his cheek was bleeding but as the last gentleman was pulled from the rubble he was already looking around for what needed doing next.

      There were still no-go areas, smouldering fires, a mass of collapsed tiles where the plaza proper started.

      Where to start...

      ‘We’re going into the car park.’ Kev had been supervising the final stages of freeing the senior cits and he was now staring out at the flattened roof of what had been the undercover parking lot. It was a mass of flattened sheets of corrugated iron and the remains of concrete pillars.

      ‘How the hell did that collapse?’ Luc muttered, awed.

      ‘Minimal strength pillars,’ Kev commented. ‘Concrete that looks like it’ll last for ever but turns to dust. The plane’s gone in across the top and they’ve come down like dominoes.’

      ‘Any idea how many under there?’

      ‘We hope not many.’ At Luc’s look of surprise he shrugged. ‘Tuesday’s not a busy shopping day. It’s too late for after-school shopping, too early for the place to be closing. Most were either in the plaza itself or had gone home. The locals pulled a couple out from the edges but there’s reports of a few missing. Don and Louise Penbroke, mah-jong players extraordinaire, had just left the café when it hit. Bill Mickle, a local greyhound racer. One of the local docs...’

      ‘A doctor...’ It shouldn’t make a difference. It didn’t, but still...

      ‘Young woman doctor, works at the clinic,’ Kev told him. ‘Just picked her kid up from childcare. Her driver was supposed to meet her at the entrance—he’s yelling to anyone who’ll listen that she’s trapped under there. So that’s four definites but possibly more. Hell, I wish we could get those car alarms off. To be stuck underneath with that racket...they won’t even hear us if we yell.’

      * * *

      Her world was spinning in tighter circles where only three things mattered. Taking one breath after another. That was important. Cradling Toby’s small warm body. If he wasn’t here, if she’d dropped him, if she couldn’t feel his deep, even breathing, she’d go mad. And the pain in her leg...

      But she would hold on. If she fainted she might drop Toby. He might crawl away. He was her one true thing and for now she was his.

      Dear God, help...

      Please...

      * * *

      The firefighters were lifting one piece of iron after another, working with infinite care, taking all the trouble in the world not to stand where people might be lying underneath, not to cause further falls, not to cause dust that might choke anyone trapped.

      They found Don and Louise Penbroke first. The third sheet of iron was raised and the elderly couple looked like the pictures Luc had seen of petrified corpses from Pompeii, totally still, totally covered, the only difference being they were covered in concrete dust and not ash.

      But as the first guy to reach them touched a debris-coated shoulder there was a ripple of movement. Still clutching each other, the couple managed to sit up. Louise had her face buried in Don’s chest and Don’s face was in Louise’s thick white hair.

      Within seconds Luc had their faces cleared. They still clutched each other, their eyes enormous.

      ‘Th-thank...’ Don tried to speak but Luc put his hand on his shoulder and shook his head. And smiled.

      ‘You two should thank each other. That’s the best way to survive I’ve seen. What hurts?’

      But amazingly little did. They’d been by the ramp leading up to the car park, protected by the concrete sides. They were both shocked but fine.

      One happy ending.

      A couple of the firies steered them out into

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