Having crunched over broken glass as they’d passed several small shops, the team entered a food court. The smell of partially cooked and abandoned meals made a welcome change from the stench of dust, but the eerily empty space, overturned chairs and half-eaten meals on the tables turned the scene into a potential set for a horror movie.
Jessica noted a partially demolished hamburger, barely recognisable through the thick layer of dust. A holder on a nearby countertop held empty ice-cream cones, the contents long since melted and mixed into the surrounding layer of dust. Had children been waiting for an adult to pass the treats within reach? Jessica swallowed a painful lump in her throat at the thought. How often had she taken an ice cream from just such a holder in order to pass it into Ricky’s eager hands? The food court was left well behind by the time she managed to rein in her thoughts.
Why had they come to the mall so early? Jessica had arranged to meet her mother and Ricky here but not until 5 p.m. when she could be sure her last day on the course was over. Had Ricky been so excited by the promise of the visit to the toy shop he had driven her mother to distraction with the wait? Jessica had had no premonition of personal disaster as they had travelled to this scene. She had been more concerned that she was included in an emergency rescue team whose skills might be required for a lengthy incident, much longer than she would feel happy leaving her mother to cope with Ricky for.
Even when her phone call to the motel unit had been unanswered, Jessica hadn’t worried unduly. Her empathy during the initial briefing when she’d heard of parents panicking about their missing children had been no more than automatic, and there had been no time for personal worries once her team had entered the scene for their first active duty. The experience had been so far out of Jessica’s normal realm it should have been overwhelming, but she had astonished herself by coping with everything. Picking her way through the rubble of partially destroyed shops. Dealing with the extrication and treatment of the two survivors they had found. Even coping with the bodies being removed from near the tunnel that led to the basement car park. Coping until she had recognised one of the victims, that was.
Her own mother.
The woman who had raised her entirely unaided. Who had provided for and protected her as the only focus of her life. And who had been there for her when history had repeated itself and Jessica had found herself pregnant and abandoned.
The shock of recognition had been overwhelming. Jessica had never fainted in her life but she’d come within a whisker of losing consciousness at that instant. The incentive to overcome the shock had been all that had kept her upright as others had taken her mother away, but it had been enough to keep her on the front line until the area had been officially deemed clear. No more victims had been trapped when that section had collapsed.
So where was her son?
Had they been going towards or away from the car park? And why? Jessica knew the answer to that. Ricky was never happier than when he could indulge his passion for cars by looking at the real thing. Why hadn’t they chosen the outside car park to wander in? And what had happened during the collapse or the seconds leading up to it? Had Ricky been small and fast enough to run clear as the roof caved in? Had he found a space in a nearby shop to hide or was he beyond or beneath the tunnel, which was still totally inaccessible—a solid barrier to the car park that would need a bulldozer or crane to clear. A barrier that was now well away from where Jessica was. She wanted to turn and run. To try and find a path that would lead her closer to where she thought Ricky could be.
‘Jess? Are you OK?’
‘Sure.’ Grateful for the block to the threatened emotional tidal wave, Jessica gave Joe a grimly determined smile.
‘Watch yourself while we’re climbing. Keep three points of contact with the rubble at all times.’
Jessica nodded. She had been too close to losing her grip just then. So close she hadn’t noticed her team was about to start searching a mound of rubble that blocked the end of the mall leading away from the food court.
‘Position yourselves one metre apart,’ Tony directed. ‘We’re hoping to get past this quickly but we’ll do a line and hail search as we cross.’
Heavy machinery within the vicinity had been shut down. Jessica tested a length of timber protruding from the pile in front of her and then used it as an anchor so that she could lean as close to the debris as possible. She waited her turn, listening as others in the line made their calls.
‘Rescue team above. Can you hear me?’
The silence was punctuated by the sound of someone firing up an air hammer and the shouts of someone else curtailing the noisy activity. Bryan had to repeat his call and then wait for a new period of quiet to listen for a possible response.
‘Nothing heard,’ he reported.
June was the next in line. ‘Rescue team above. Can you hear me?’
There was another short silence. ‘Nothing heard.’
Jessica’s turn came and went with the same result and then they moved forward and up. Joe’s foot slipped as he pushed himself higher. Glass shattered and something metallic dislodged itself with a clang.
‘You OK?’
‘Yeah.’ Joe steadied himself and Jessica could see the edges of a smile around the mask. ‘You?’
Jessica simply nodded. The chain of calls had started again.
‘Rescue team above. Can you hear me?’
When Jessica moved again, her gloved hand caught what appeared to be a piece of fabric.
‘Oh, God,’ she muttered. Was this clothing from a buried victim? Joe’s head turned sharply.
‘Pull on it,’ he advised.
Jessica pulled and the empty sleeve of a garment appeared amidst a shower of dust.
‘There’s part of a clothing store in here,’ Joe nodded. ‘Bits of fabric are sticking out all over the place. I think there have been a few false alarms.’
The next move took the team over the top of the relatively small mound of debris. As they completed the unsuccessful line and hail search a radio message from Tony prompted a new wave of noise as machinery started up again. New teams of rescue workers went into action. A wire bucket brigade would remove the small pieces of rubble from the mound until they could be absolutely certain any victims had been located. Then a bobcat would probably move in to clear another area of floor space.
They had to stop and wait now as Tony checked with the engineers and safety officers who had been scouting the area beyond the mound, looking for any signs of secondary collapse and testing the atmosphere for pockets of gas which would make the area too dangerous for the USAR team to enter. There seemed to be some question of how safe it was to continue, judging by the length of time the briefing was taking.
Jessica looked around, using her headlamp as a torch and trying to make her own assessment of the collapse patterns she saw nearby. Internal walls had fallen in one shop but the ceiling was still there. She could see the cracks in the slab of concrete that presumably had had the weight of a second-storey shop on it and was now without much of its support from below. The internal walls had fallen towards each other, giving a cantilevered collapse pattern. The possibility of voids large enough to contain survivors was high but the danger from that ceiling was also high. Was that what Tony and the others were trying to weigh up?
Apparently it was. An even longer wait allowed timber to be brought in to provide more support for the ceiling. Jessica watched, trying to stay focused and not allowing her thoughts to turn inwards, but it was difficult. She felt more than tired. An edge of sheer exhaustion was trying to move in and she found herself hoping they might be getting near the end of their shift. Trying to estimate the length of time they had been in here was not easy but she figured it had to be somewhere between one and three hours.
The