The idiot quakes were so random – one house in a street could be almost undamaged and everything else unliveable. It looked like this time we were the lucky ones – at least we could live in ours.
I bent to start putting things back, but Blake stopped me. ‘First things first, Lyla. We’ll check on the neighbours. All this can wait. It’s not going anywhere.’
Oh. Yeah, of course. My brain seemed to have seized up. Not good, Lyla. Time to get with the program.
We divided Ireland Street between us. I’d do Natalie’s house next door. Next on my list was Mrs Malone, then the Prof. Then, oh joy, tucked in the curve of the cul-de-sac, was Matt Nagel’s place. A catalogue of Matt’s past sins was vivid in my memory – the way he’d hide to jump out at me on dark winter evenings, pelt me with rotten fruit in autumn, let down my bike tyres. All those things still made me spitting mad…I shook my head. Suck it up, Lyla. There were people in town risking their lives right now. I could take Mr Thinks-he’s-so-smart Nagel.
I jabbed at my phone yet again just in case I’d somehow missed a text from Dad.
‘Leave it, Lyla. You’ll flatten the battery.’
I’d forgotten. We had no electricity to charge phones. ‘Come on. If we’re going to do this we’d better get started.’
‘We need gumboots,’ Blake said.
We both stared down at our filthy legs. I shrugged. ‘No point.’
‘Enjoy wading through liquefaction and sewage, do you?’
I hated it when he came over all big-brother-ish, and I hated it more when he was right. I picked my way across the passage to the laundry. Chaos reigned. I had to excavate the boots from under a heap of clothes, washing powder, brooms and mops. The washing machine had again migrated across the floor, and the dryer hung askew on the wall. I grabbed our parents’ boots while I was at it.
I staggered back to the kitchen, laden with eight boots. Blake had retrieved a packet of wipes from the mess. He wasn’t as mucky as I was, but between us we used up the whole packet.
He said, ‘You realise we’ll need to resurrect the long-drop too.’
I screwed up my face. ‘Crap. The long-drop situation all over again.’ Also known as the trek out to the far corner of the backyard to answer calls of nature.
He patted my head. ‘Don’t worry, sis. It’s a man’s job.’
Usually, a statement like that would make me explode all over him – not this time. He was welcome to dig out the stinky hole.
We didn’t bother trying to wrestle the door shut when we left the house.
Natalie and the boys weren’t home, but they’d probably be able to live in their house – it looked in about the same state as ours from what I could see on the outside. The back door gaped open. Inside, there was the same old shambles we had. I retrieved the notepad she kept by the phone from the clutter on the floor and tore a page from it. Come to ours. Lyla.
I took the pen and notepad with me and waded towards the two houses at the end of the cul-de-sac. The ground was lower here and both places were swimming in liquefaction. All I could see of Mrs Malone’s garden was the tops of red flowers drooping into the gunk. It was going to break her heart. I waded up the path. It wasn’t easy – broken concrete tilted every which way. I hoped she wasn’t home and injured, or…If she was okay she’d be out with a shovel, swearing and digging. It wasn’t fair to wreck an eighty-two-year-old’s garden.
I was glad of my gummies as I tested each step to make sure I wasn’t going to fall neck-deep into a stinking sinkhole. The front wall of the house leant out at a crazy angle. I made my way round the back. The door was locked. I pounded on it. ‘Mrs Malone! Are you okay?’
No reply. Just as I was wondering whether it’d be a good idea to kick in a window and climb through it, a voice called from the house next door – the one equally drowning in foul stuff.
‘Don’t worry, Lyla. She’s at her grandson’s. I met them just now on my way home.’ There was a cackle of laughter. ‘She was spitting tacks.’
I slopped across to the fence. ‘What about you, Prof? You’ve got a bit of a situation too.’ Prof was old too – older than Mrs Malone, or so she reckoned.
‘As you see, I’m still alive.’ He frowned at the lake in his backyard. ‘I should have specialised in geology instead of mathematics. A geologist would have thought about the ground under his house.’
‘Go to ours. We’ll boil up water for tea when we’re done with checking on people.’
His eyes lit up. ‘I’ll be right there. Don’t worry about the Jaffrie or Chan places – I checked them just now.’
I handed him the pen and paper. ‘Can you leave notes? Tell them to come to ours. The quake hasn’t busted our place too badly except for the garage.’
I wished the Prof had had time to check on the Nagels’ place too. I dithered on the front steps – Matt might look like every girl’s dream with his blond hair and built body but he was so not my favourite fifteen-year-old male. Oh, just get it over with, Lyla Sherwin. I called out the usual, ‘Anyone home?’
I got a response – a groan and a string of swearing.
So Matt Nagel was still alive. ‘Okay! I’m coming in.’
The front door was locked, or maybe stuck – didn’t matter anyway, not with its glass panel cracked to glory. I booted it till it shattered.
I scrambled over everything on the hall floor, following the sound of his voice, then came to a dead stop in the lounge doorway. I could only see half of Matt’s body. His left side from shoulder down to foot lay squashed under what used to be the outside wall. It looked like some of the upper storey was on him as well.
He groaned, then muttered, ‘You took your time.’
I jumped across the rubbish on the floor, my mind spinning. How could I get him free? I wouldn’t be able to lift that stuff. ‘I’ll get Blake. We need two of us.’
He grabbed my ankle with his right hand. ‘No! Just get me out of here.’
I heard his desperation, but still I hesitated – there was so much rubble, and it looked heavy.
‘Please, Lyla.’
It was the please that clinched it. Matt Nagel had never before used that word around me. I began hauling chunks of timber and plaster from the load pinning him down, working carefully. It was like playing Jenga or pick-up-sticks, except the price of losing was unthinkable.
His face was screwed up with pain and every now and then he’d give a sort of grunt.
The top layer of rubbish wasn’t too heavy, but it had been hiding the heavy beam that had crashed down on him and crushed a little table that somehow seemed to be taking some of the weight – lucky for him. I tugged at the beam. Couldn’t budge it. ‘I’ll have to get Blake.’
Matt’s eyes shot open. ‘Use a lever.’
Give me a lever and I’ll move the world. Somebody had said that or something like it a millennia or two ago. I dragged a wooden dining chair across the floor, bumping it over the rubbish. Sliding the back under the beam, I jammed a chunk of wood under it to act as a pivot, then stood on the legs. The beam lifted slightly.
It wasn’t enough – there still wasn’t a gap between Matt and the beam – but he was wriggling and grimacing, and after long, shaking minutes the top half of him was free.
His leg was still stuck. Even with all my weight on the chair the beam only shifted a fraction. ‘It won’t lift any higher. Can you sit up? It might change the angle or something.’
Matt was groaning, the building was groaning and it felt like the chair was going to crack.
Hurry.
It seemed to take ages for him to sit up. I wanted to lean over to help, but everything felt too precarious and I was terrified that even a small movement would crash the beam back on to his shin and foot.
Finally he was upright. He put his right hand under his left knee and with a mix of wriggling and tugging got his leg out from under the crushing weight then slumped forward, his good arm around his good knee.
I stepped off the chair and stood for a moment, hands over my face while I tried to stop shaking. So close – if that beam had fallen just a few centimetres further in…
The shape under the towels in the city surfaced in my mind. I shut it down. Matt’s okay. Concentrate on that. ‘Water?’
‘Kitchen. Under sink.’
Same old quake mess in their kitchen, plus the dishwasher had come open and sicked everything up across the floor. The china was the sort that shatters like glass. I found the emergency water supply and the plastic beaker beside it.
Matt had scooted away from the crumbled wall and was leaning against a chair cradling his left arm when I came back. I looked at the wreckage of the room rather than at the tear tracks down his face. ‘Your mum’s not going to be happy.’ The whole wall was practically gone and a good section of the top storey was lying splayed out on the back lawn.
He grunted, which I took to mean that I’d just uttered the understatement of the century.
‘Let’s get out of here.’ I was acutely aware of the rocking, rolling floor and the creaking of timber.
Matt held out his right hand. I hauled on it and helped him stand, but when he tried to put weight on his left foot he almost fell back down. His mother wasn’t going to be happy with his injuries, either. If she could wrap him in bubble wrap forever, she’d do it.
We managed to get outside the house, although he nearly crushed me to death when I had to take his weight.
‘I’m getting Blake.’ I didn’t give Matt time to object – too bad if he didn’t like it.
Even with Blake’s help, it was a mission to get Matt across to our place. He was heavy, and with Blake being taller than me, I got most of the weight. We made a seat with our hands to carry him over the liquefaction. He objected. ‘A bit of sludge isn’t going to hurt me.’
‘It’ll hurt us because you’ll stink,’ I said.
‘And Lyla’s used up all the wipes,’ my brother said. ‘Quit arguing and obey instructions.’
Wow! That worked. Still, it seemed ages before we could dump him on the sofa back at ours.
Prof was there, busy with a broom and rubbish bag clearing the kitchen mess. He dropped everything after one glance at Matt. ‘Let’s take a look at those injuries, young man. Lyla, can you find scissors? We’ll need to cut those jeans off.’
Matt lifted his right hand by way of reply. His eyes were screwed shut, his mouth much the same. I located the kitchen scissors and Prof snipped the jeans just below the knee. ‘Nasty graze on that shin,’ he said. The ankle was worse. It was swollen, grazed, gashed and bleeding.
Blake saw the blood and plopped to the floor, his face a pale shade of green.
‘I’m okay,’ Matt muttered.
He clearly wasn’t, and the big question was: just how not-okay was he? How were we supposed to deal with the Matt situation? If only Dad was home. Things were never so bad when he was there.
But I didn’t even know if my father was still alive.
I breathed in. Out. In again. Blake was useless with bloody injuries. Prof said, ‘We need to get you to a doctor, young man.’
Matt gave him a slight grin. ‘Think you can piggyback me, Prof? I’m okay.’
Prof frowned, but Matt was right – right about not being able to get to a doctor, that is, not right about the okay bit. I said, ‘Can you move your foot? Wriggle your toes?’
Matt opened his eyes enough to glare at me. ‘Shut it, Lyla. Nothing’s broken. I know what broken bones feel like. It’s just bruising, that’s all.’
Matt grumbled something about making a fuss but he didn’t object when Blake dumped a bag of still-frozen peas across his ankle. He didn’t say anything either when I used some of our precious water supply to clean his wounds. Prof raided Dad’s first-aid box for antiseptic ointment and bandages. We did all we could for our patient, but he didn’t seem very grateful. I gave him painkillers. That earned me a grunt.
Blake boiled water for tea on our emergency camp cooker. Prof helped me search the kitchen chaos for something to drink from. ‘Two plastic mugs!’ He waved them like they were trophies.
I flourished my own finds. ‘A soup bowl and a mug. China, both of them.’ I wished I could make Matt drink from the soup bowl, but that would be too mean seeing he could only use one hand. He’d have done it to me, though. Lucky for him I was so nice.
Blake handed him the china mug. ‘Your house is totally munted, mate.’
Matt nodded. ‘The olds are going to be pretty gutted when they see the damage. They went to Oamaru. Meant to be staying the night but they’re probably on their way back by now.’
‘You didn’t go to school today.’ I didn’t rub it in that if he had gone to school then he wouldn’t have been at home when the quake hit.
‘No point. No PE.’
The Prof brought his plastic mug of tea over and perched himself beside Matt on the sofa. I thought he was going to come out with a lecture about how subjects like English and Maths could help with a sports career, but no. ‘Let’s take a look at that shoulder, Matt. I’m not convinced that it’s just bad bruising. Crush injuries can be serious.’
‘It’s just bruising. Not even any blood.’ Man, he was snappy.
Prof got stern. ‘Off with that shirt, young man.’ ‘Yep,’ I said, ‘black and blue already.’ A slight exaggeration, but I could sure see where his skin was getting up a good rainbow of colours.
Prof helped Matt button his shirt. ‘It looks like you’ll live. But tell us if you notice any sharp pains or localised swelling.’
I longed for word from Dad, but there was still nothing on my phone. When the landline rang, I jumped for it, just beating Blake to pick it up. ‘Dad?’
It wasn’t Dad – of course it wouldn’t be. It was Matt’s mother. ‘Lyla, at last! I’ve been ringing and ringing everyone I can think of. Where’s Matthew? You’re at home so you must have seen him. Where is he? Why haven’t you called me? You must know I’d be worried sick.’
How come she thought I had her number? I didn’t even try to interrupt. Matt was welcome to her. Without saying anything, I unplugged the phone from the wall, took it into the lounge and plugged it into the jack. I let it ring twice. ‘Mrs Nagel? What happened? Hang on, I’ll get Matt for you.’
The cord wasn’t long enough to reach him. I put it on speaker and he leant sideways. ‘Cool it, Mum.’
He winced as she exploded. Blake, Prof and I all heard every word she shrieked at him. ‘Matthew! Darling, are you all right? I’ve been frantic! I thought you’d been killed.’
‘Chill, Mum. I’m fine. Not a scratch on me. Can’t say the same for the house, though…’
‘We’ll come and get you. We’ll leave right now. I knew in my bones we shouldn’t have left you alone today. Fiona and Jed say we can stay down here with them. Oamaru’s safe.’
Matt shut his eyes, took a huge breath and said, ‘Mum, put Dad on, will you?’
We heard a bit of a tussle at the other end, then Mr Nagel’s voice. ‘Matt? What’s the state of play?’
According to Matt’s side of the conversation, the house was a wreck (true) and he was fine except for twisting his ankle on a loose piece of concrete on his way home from school. ‘Stay in Oamaru, Dad. I can camp at the Sherwins’.’ He nodded at me to hang up the receiver and slumped back looking exhausted.