With superhuman strength he pushed himself around so his feet were facing down the mountain. Mud sucked at him, threatening to suffocate him. Keep your head up.
Mud reached his chin. He could taste it on his lips.
Death by drowning in mud.
Terror consumed him as every survival instinct kicked in.
I’m here and I love you. Bec’s soft, determined voice called to him. Take a chance with me.
Visions of his parents flashed through his mind, their love for him vivid on their faces.
You’ve been blessed, Tom Bracken.
He caught sight of a coconut palm.
Do not die.
One chance. He had one chance if he could get to the tree. One chance if the tree was sturdy enough to withstand the mudflow.
You’ve woven a dream around a family you wanted to find.
He couldn’t die. He had real people who loved him.
The people who had made him the man he was. People he’d foolishly turned his back on in his quest.
He had Bec. He needed Bec. He wanted a chance with her.
He loved her.
By hell, he was going to live and tell her.
Using his arms and feet, he tried to move against the tide, praying the mud would carry him into the tree, not past it.
He lunged, wrapping his arms and legs around the trunk.
Mud cascaded over his head, seeping into his nose, his eyes, clogging his throat, forcing his body hard against the tree. The trunk moved underneath him, bowing over under his weight.
His chest burned.
His head started to spin, sparks of light flickered against the blackness of his mind.
Bec’s image came into his mind with three-dimensional clarity. Wearing her bikini, her body pressed against his, her smiling face laughing up at him, and her arms wrapped tightly around his waist. He could feel her, touch her and taste her.
Slowly her image faded.
His arms slipped.
A bright whiteness beckoned in the distance.
* * *
Bec held a torch while a doctor stitched Hin’s arm in the emergency department. He’d been injured by flying debris when the roof had ripped off the X-ray department.
Human injuries had been minor. Machine injury had been worse. The rain had flooded the room and the shiny new X-ray machine had taken a battering. As had the main power supply when it had been struck by lightning.
The staff at the hospital had immediately switched into emergency procedures. The hum of generators provided some power but for fine work, torches were needed.
The ambulance officer came through the door, wheeling in a young man with a broken leg.
Bec immediately looked beyond them for Tom.
No one was behind them. Anxiety skittered through her. ‘Hin, can you ask where Tom is, please?’
‘Sure.’ He spoke to the doctor.
The doctor spoke to the ambulance officer who replied and a nurse added something.
Frustration built in Bec. She wished she could understand.
‘He stayed to see another patient. We’re to pick him up on our way south,’ Hin explained, grimacing as another stitch went in. He gripped Bec’s hand. ‘Thank you for helping me.’
‘My pleasure. Now you have a story to impress the girls with when they see your scar.’
He grinned. ‘Good idea.’
Bec dressed Hin’s wound, apprehension swirling inside her at Tom’s absence. This is madness. Tom didn’t love her and she had to learn to separate her life from his. She had no need to be worried for him.
But she couldn’t shake the trepidation that clung to her.
Noise suddenly exploded around her. Doctors and nurses started to run around frantically, hauling equipment from cupboards, calling out instructions to each other.
‘Hin, what’s going on?’ She watched the colour drain from his face.
He reached out his hand, holding hers. ‘The rain has caused a mudslide at the village where Tom stayed.’
Mudslide! She breathed deeply, trying not to panic. ‘So he’s been in contact, requesting the ambulance? Requesting medical supplies?’
Hin shook his head slowly. ‘The village has been destroyed. We don’t know what is happening down there but we expect casualties.’
Casualties. She swayed as the meaning of Hin’s words rocked through her, sending the blood rushing from her face. Tom dead. He could not be dead. She tore herself out of Hin’s embrace. ‘I have to go there, I have to find him, I have to—’
‘The ambulance has left and Tom took the four-wheel-drive.’
‘Then get me another one, now!’ She didn’t recognise the screaming voice as her own. ‘If he’s alive he’ll be working to help the victims. He needs me. He needs us.’
Hin looked at her blankly, as if she were a crazy stranger.
Using every ounce of control she could muster, she spoke quietly and respectfully. ‘This is Tom, Hin. Please, get me a vehicle.’
Ten minutes later the first truckload of villagers arrived. Covered in mud, their eyes told their story—fear intermingling with grief. They were alive but part of them was dead, traumatised by seeing loved ones snatched away from them by a deluge of life-stealing mud.
Urgency played through her. She made Hin question every one of them but no one knew of the Bác s
‘I’m going on that truck to the village and I need you to come with me.’ Bec hauled Hin outside into the rain, clutching her medical kit. ‘I can help there and find Tom.’
* * *
An hour later Bec stood facing what had once been a village.
Desolation and destruction stared back at her.
She gagged.
Mud, trees and debris covered everything that had stood in its path in much the same way lava flowed from a volcano. A few people wandered around vaguely, shocked and confused. But mostly the village was eerily silent.
The survivors had been on the first truck.
She started to shake, her legs turning to rubber. Vietnam had claimed her son, interring him. He’d wanted to belong and now he was part of the country in a way no one could ever have imagined.
‘Tom.’ Her ragged voice echoed around her.
She started to walk forward, her chest heaving with great, racking sobs. She dragged her leg through the mud, welcoming the stabs of pain as the rest of her was numb with grief.
Ignoring Hin’s pleading warning that the area was unsafe, she started to walk up the hill alongside the mudflow’s distinct border. It looked like the photos she’d seen of areas after a natural disaster—trees cut off mid-trunk, trees stripped of all their foliage. Huts crushed flat as if they were cardboard cut-outs. No visible signs of life anywhere.
In the distance stood one lone coconut palm, its trunk marked with mud, indicating how high the flow had risen before falling away.
She