David was sitting quietly in his office on April 16th, two days before the expected collapse of the Ross Ice Shelf in the Antarctic. He was busy ticking off the extensive list of things he and the community had agreed they should accomplish prior to the collapse; something he'd done a hundred times in the past few months. He knew Chloe was still in Sydney as well as his granddaughter Kim and some others. He hoped they would be back that day or no later than the morning of April seventeenth. Chloe had cut things fine all her life, and he wasn't particularly worried about her. He knew Kim was trying to complete a project and there was some discussion about a recalcitrant boyfriend. He phoned Patricia who told him not to worry.
A few minutes before midday he received a phone call from his youngest son, Jonathan, aged thirty-four, now a Brigadier in the Australian Army. A call which turned him absolutely cold. 'Dad, the Ice Shelf has just fallen into the sea. There will be an announcement on the ABC at noon. I had hoped to give you an hour or two's advance warning, but there is no choice but to issue a public notice.'
David was silent for a short minute.
'Dad, are you still there?'
'It's your mother,' he said in a desperate voice. 'She's still in Sydney. So is Kim. They were supposed to return today or tomorrow. Once there has been an announcement it will be too late. There will be pandemonium in the city and gridlock within hours.'
'Maybe Tanya could pick them up in the helicopter.'
'I will try.'
He quickly found Tanya and Mark. She immediately ran to find Patricia, telling her the news. 'If you can contact Kim, tell her to make for this address,' she handed Patricia a piece of paper with Chloe's Manly address. 'I will try to pick people up at Brookvale Oval at Manly.'
Patricia looked bewildered.
'Just get hold of her, it's the best hope she has. If we can contact Chloe, I might be able to pick them up together.'
Mark and David called an urgent assembly in the community hall.
David rang Chloe a half-dozen times in the few minutes he had before the gathering. He left several messages on voicemail telling her the news. They switched on the television set in the packed hall just as the news broadcast started.
There was the usual stuff, irritating David—a middle class welfare initiative, a grisly murder in Melbourne, a monetary scandal from a senior Government minister. The people in the audience moved restlessly wondering what was so important.
The fifth item on the news finally caught the full attention of the audience. David quickly pressed the record button on the TV.
'The Ross Ice Shelf in the Antarctic has detached itself from the mainland and collapsed into the sea.' There was a collective gasp from the audience as the news report included a summary on the Ice Shelf.
The Australian Prime Minister appeared on the screen and said, 'The Government is monitoring the situation together with a panel of experts here in Canberra. People will be advised what, if anything, they should do but I am advising calm. At the moment please do not take any action. There will be another address on this subject when we have something to report within the next few days.' The picture faded.
Pandemonium reigned for a few minutes, mostly from people who had family members and friends still outside The Settlement.
Tanya stood up, waiting for the room to quieten down. 'There are a few people who have not yet returned. Regardless of what the Government has said, Sydney will soon be in gridlock. The best chance anyone outside has of being rescued is to make their way to Brookvale Oval at Manly Beach. I will be leaving in a few minutes by helicopter. I will try to make a few trips. Please tell them to hurry. Manly Beach,' she repeated.
There was a flurry of conversation, but Tanya rushed out of the room, leaving others to field the anxious questions.
David requested people's attention and said, 'Please reassemble in two hours or so, when the gorge will be blown. I will have more words for you then.'
Tanya took off, having armed herself with a handgun and the defence force issue, short-barrelled automatic rifle. Dear God, I really hope I don't have to use any of these things, she thought.
An hour later she circled the oval and easily managed to land. Several people rushed towards the machine. At first she didn't recognise anyone and then three Settlement people emerged from the crowd, shoving their way to the front of the throng. Tanya waved the handgun and fired a shot into the air. The crowd backed off slightly so the three could climb aboard. She looked about in vain for signs of Chloe and possibly Kim.
'Anyone else there?' asked Tanya.
'Yes, but they are right at the back,' said a trembling girl.
The crowd started to move towards the machine again, so Tanya leapt into the pilot's seat and gunned the engine. 'Shut the door, will you,' she yelled as they took off, narrowly avoiding the big Norfolk pines lining the beach. 'Fasten your seat belts.'
As the machine gained height and flew across Sydney's tree-lined North Shore, they could already see there were cars blocking all the main thoroughfares out of the city; most suburban streets were also jam packed.
'We were called from The Settlement and told to hurry to Manly. We took the Cat from Circular Quay. I think we were very lucky; hundreds were left standing on the Quay.'
She dropped the passengers, checked there was enough fuel for a return trip and was about to take off again when David appeared.
'Is this wise? They said you had a problem with the crowds at Manly.'
'We did, but I'll manage. I'm hoping Chloe and Kim might be there this time.' She accelerated away as David backed off.
The crowd was even larger on the next approach to the oval. Tanya flew the helicopter very low over the heads of the people, twice, scattering the crowd.
Hurriedly landing with a bump, she hoped any Settlement people had seen her and would run to the machine. She thought she had less than a minute to land, load any passengers and leave, otherwise she would be swamped and the helicopter would be grounded.
There was absolute chaos on the oval as people tried to rush the machine. Tanya opened the helicopter door and fired a burst from the automatic rifle over people's heads. The crowd hesitated and four Settlement people sprinted towards the machine. There was a shot from someone in the crowd, felling one of the runners who clutched at his chest. Two of the four by this time were scrambling into the machine and the wounded man was being half dragged and half carried towards the helicopter, by his companion.
'Here, hold them off with this,' she tossed the rifle to a girl she had trained with at The Academy.
Some shots were fired from both sides as Tanya ran over to the wounded man. Picking him up with a fireman's lift, she ran the few paces to the helicopter and tossed him into the machine, covering everything and everyone with blood.
'Try to fix him up,' she yelled unnecessarily.
Leaping into the pilot's seat, Tanya accelerated the engine. But as the helicopter started to rise there was a man clinging on to one of the runners. The passengers looked on anxiously as Tanya gained height slowly and then flew over the beach and the shallows. She managed to jerk the machine and it suddenly rose quickly as the man lost his grip and fell into the sea.
'Hope he can swim,' said Tanya looking out.
Instead of making for home she made the mistake of turning the helicopter around, looking for the dropped person. She pointed to a clothed figure swimming strongly.
'There,' she said, relieved.
Then the helicopter's Perspex window shattered and Tanya felt an excruciating pain in her left shoulder. With difficulty, she managed to fly the helicopter higher, directing it to the northwest. There was blood pouring from the wound. One of the passengers rushed over, having seen what had happened, ripping Tanya's shirt sleeve open and applying a tourniquet, and then bandages, to stem the flow of blood.
'Stop the blood if you can, I will manage to fly this thing with one hand,' said Tanya shakily. 'Some idiot shot me. How is our other patient?'
'Bad, very bad, but we are dealing with him. You just worry about getting us home.'
'Try not to move about too much,' directed Tanya, 'it makes it more difficult to fly.'
Sweating and fighting off bouts of dizziness the hour it took them to reach The Settlement seemed like an eternity to Tanya. She somehow clumsily landed the machine on the parade ground and switched the engine off.
Joe saw the bad landing and rushed over to the machine yelling, 'Stretcher, bring the stretcher and the doctor. They might be in trouble.'
The wounded man was rushed to the hospital as Joe crawled into the machine to find Tanya in a dead faint at the controls. 'She was shot in the shoulder as we left Manly and has lost a lot of blood, but I don't think the wound is life threatening,' Joe was told. There was blood in the cabin and all over the controls and pilot's seat.
David tried a number of times to phone London. On the tenth attempt, he made the connection. A very sleepy voice answered the phone, 'Oh, hi Dad,' said Evan, 'is this important? It's after one in the morning here'
'I'll be quick,' said David. 'The Ice Shelf fell into the sea a few hours ago. There is a fifteen metre tsunami heading this way at one hundred kilometres an hour.'
'Oh, shit,' said Evan now very much alert. 'Beryl and I have a plan to come home. We will try to call from time … ' the connection was then lost.
While Tanya was involved with her rescue mission, David had asked Mark to blow the gorge. All the charges had been laid within the past few days.
Mark, accompanied by ten others, drove to the entrance gate. The guards there were instructed to lay all twenty nail pads that had been procured for the purpose, along the road from the gate for a kilometre. They erected a sign at the kilometre mark.
EXTREME DANGER
BLASTING IN PROGRESS
DO NOT ENTER
'Hopefully that should stop anyone coming in,' said Mark.
'What about the people who haven't yet returned from Sydney?' asked an anxious member of the guard.
'My mother and Kim included,' answered Mark grimly. 'Sydney will be in gridlock within an hour. There is no chance that people will escape by road if they haven't already done so. Tanya is picking people up at Brookvale, if they can get there.'
Mark and his group withdrew down the gorge, back towards the village. He instructed everyone except himself and one other to return to the village in the vehicle. 'There'll be rock all over the road once we blow this place up,' he explained.
Going to a small, reinforced concrete hut, Mark spent twenty minutes making the correct connections. His companion was asked to check everything.
'There are about three hundred charges laid. We need to be sure they are all connected correctly and that the mountain will indeed drop into the gorge,' he said, almost to himself. 'Ready,' he said to his companion.
The man nodded nervously.
Mark pushed the plunger.
There was a brief silence. And then mayhem. A massive flash was followed by a series of enormous explosions. The rumble caused by falling rocks lasted for more than ten minutes and the whole area was then coated in a mantle of dust. Mark looked out of his bunker. A few pieces of rock had fallen nearby even though they were some way from the gorge. 'Nothing much more we can do here,' he muttered. It took them more than two hours to walk back to the community centre.
The centre was bursting at the seams, with everybody anxiously waiting. When the vehicle returned from the gorge David called for silence. 'As we all know, we planned to isolate ourselves by closing the gorge once the Ice Shelf collapsed. Mark is about to do just that.'
Even prepared, the whole community jumped out of their seats when they heard the massive blast down the valley and the continuous rumble that followed.
'This is the new reality,' said David, once everyone had settled down again. 'We are now isolated. No more trips to Sydney, no more outside visitors. It will be very difficult to leave and virtually impossible to return. It will obviously take time for all of us to become used to the situation. Aside from planned meetings, please raise any issues either with me directly or with the Bower family representative in your ward. This is very important. We need to have everything out on the table.'
'My son is still out there,' said a panicky female voice at the back of the hall. 'Are there going to be any more rescues in the helicopter?'
'I'm not sure how practical that is,' said David. 'Chloe and Kim have also not returned and Tanya was shot and wounded during the last rescue. I think we were very lucky the helicopter didn't crash. Also communications are becoming difficult. How would we know where to find people?'
The woman burst into tears.
As the meeting broke up, a dust-covered Mark marched in. There was some desultory clapping. David said quietly, 'Tanya is back, she's been hurt and is in the hospital.' Mark rushed out.
Tanya woke with an excruciating pain in her shoulder, and an anxious Mark looking on.
She smiled. 'Look at you. You look as if you've been down a mine or something.' He gave her a dusty kiss. 'I've just blown the gorge.'
A slight frown crossed her brow. 'This is what we've been waiting for all these years,' she said quietly. 'Heaven knows what life will be like now.' She hesitated. 'It's pretty ugly out there. Any sign of Kim and Chloe?'
Mark shook his head sadly. 'I had better see to the kids.'
With the help of painkillers, Tanya was up and about within a day.
'Did you see anything of Chloe and Kim?' David had asked Tanya.
Tanya shook her head. 'The crowds make it too dangerous to try any more rescues with the helicopter. Apart from this.' She gestured towards her injured shoulder.
'How is the other fellow?'
'He's battling, we'll see in a day or two.'