CHAPTER THREE

      CHARLI WOKE WITH a start. Something wet dripped from the ceiling, hitting her forehead.

      She frowned, perplexed, and lifted her hand to wipe the moisture from her skin. She winced as her fingers brushed across her hairline. There was a large bump over her left eye and her skin felt tacky. And then she remembered where she was and what had happened.

      She was freezing and her hand was throbbing. She’d torn a strip of fabric off the bedsheet and wrapped it around the base of her right thumb to stem the bleeding, but she hadn’t been able to see how bad the wound was and her fingers were too cold to be able to give her any sensory feedback but she thought it had stopped bleeding.

      The room was still pitch black, giving her no clue as to the time. She hadn’t meant to fall asleep. She was thirsty and freezing and worried. She’d never treated anyone with hypothermia but she knew it was a real danger. She was curled in a ball on the bed, nestled into the small gap between the collapsed roof and the crushed bedhead. The quilt covered her but it was doing little to keep her warm.

      Moisture continued to drip onto her head. She cupped her hands and let it gather in her palms. She lifted her hands to her face, wrinkling her nose in disappointment and disgust as she smelt the tainted water. It was undrinkable.

      She tucked her hands under her armpits in a vain attempt to increase her body heat and lay in the dark, straining her ears to hear signs of life from anywhere around her. Was Amy in the apartment too? Had she fallen asleep and not heard Amy come home? Maybe her sister was there somewhere. Maybe she’d been knocked unconscious?

      ‘Amy?’ she whispered into the dark. In hope. Just in case, by some miracle, her sister was there.

      Was that the sound of someone breathing?

      Her heart rate spiked and she waited, listening carefully, before realising it was her own breathing she could hear, loud in the silence.

      But then, in the distance, she heard another noise. A voice. People calling out, talking to each other. There were other people here, she wasn’t alone!

      ‘Hello? Can you hear me? Hello?’

      There was no reply, the voices simply continued in the distance. They didn’t stop or change or show any sign that they had heard her. No one replied to her and the words were indistinct. She knew they weren’t close.

      Her voice was hoarse, her throat parched and sore. No one was going to hear her. She needed to make more noise. But how?

      She sat up slowly, uncurling herself like a fern frond, and hesitantly felt for the floor with her cold, bare feet. Her toes were tiny blocks of ice, she had some sensation in the two biggest toes but nothing in the rest. How many hours had she been trapped here?

      She should have stayed in the bar with Patrick. She should have had another lemonade. She couldn’t remember now why it had been so necessary, so important that she get to bed. Maybe just a few more minutes’ conversation would have delayed things enough so that she wouldn’t have been in the apartment. But it was too late for those regrets now, she was in the apartment and she was alone.

      She couldn’t lie on the bed and wait to be found. She needed to make it happen. She needed to do something. Anything.

      The carpet was sodden but no longer under water. She crawled across the damp, muddy floor as she felt around cautiously in the dark, searching for something she could use to create noise. Her hand throbbed where she had cut her palm but she ignored that. There were more important things to worry about. Her eyes hadn’t become accustomed to the blackness, which she knew meant there was no light coming in. Did that mean there was also no fresh air? Would she suffocate before she was found?

      Her thoughts lent urgency to her search. There were people out there, out beyond this tomb she was imprisoned in, and she needed them to find her. She couldn’t contemplate dying in here. Someone would find her. She had to believe that. She wasn’t ready to die. Not yet. She needed to alert people to her existence.

      Lost in her thoughts, it took her a moment to realise her fingers had closed around a slender object. A pole of some sort. It was cold to the touch, metal, not wood. It felt like a ski pole but she knew there weren’t any in the room. It could be a piece of the bed, the rail from the wardrobe, part of the bedside lamp. She didn’t know what it was or how it came to be lying on the floor. It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that it would make more noise than she was capable of by yelling.

      She crawled back to the bed. She could still hear noises from above but the voices were being drowned out by mechanical sounds now. She could feel her anxiety increasing with every passing second. What were they doing with those machines? What if they were bulldozers? What if they pushed more debris down on top of her? Her breaths came in short, rapid bursts as panic set in. She had to make some noise. They had to find her. Her panic gave strength to her cold, lethargic muscles and she hit the pole against the metal frame with as much energy as she could muster.

      Her arm tired easily but she forced herself to continue.

      One minute, two, she wasn’t sure.

      Lactic acid burned in her muscles and she stopped briefly, giving her arms a chance to rest. Her ears were ringing but she listened for noises from above. Something, anything, to let her know she’d been heard.

      ‘Hello? Can anyone hear me?’ she called, but her voice sounded faint even to her ears.

      She heard a whistle, one long blast, that echoed around the mountain.

      When it ceased, so had all the noise. Everything was silent.

      What did it mean? Was it a warning whistle? Was there danger? Why was it so quiet?

      She waited, the pole heavy in her hand. Where was everyone? Where had they gone?

      Her heart beat furiously in her chest. She breathed deeply, trying to quell the rising panic that threatened to overwhelm her, but all she got was a lungful of stale, putrid air. The smell was vile and made her feel nauseous.

      She let the pole fall from her fingertips.

      What was coming her way now? More water? More mud?

      Death?

      She didn’t know how much more she could take. Her reserves were running low. She was exhausted, thirsty, hungry, sore, filthy and alone. Maybe it was easier just to let go.

      She put her head down and cried and the tears gathered in the corner of her mouth. Ignoring the knowledge that her skin was covered in dust and who knew what else, she licked the tears from her lips. They were the only moisture she could get.

      What would she do when her tears dried up?

      She lay on the damp mattress in the dark and imagined dying alone. Buried here on the wrong side of the world.

      * * *

      Pat was exhausted. Since the landslide he’d slept for a total of eight out of the past thirty hours. He’d taken his assigned breaks but no more and, like all the search and rescue personnel, he was surviving on coffee and adrenalin.

      Sixteen people had been listed as missing. In the past thirty hours, nine bodies had been recovered but not one survivor had been among them.

      And Charli was still missing.

      He had to believe that was good news. There was still hope. Though he knew that the more time that passed the lower her chances of survival were, he wasn’t going to give up. He’d made a silent promise to Charli that he wouldn’t stop until he found her. It wasn’t in his nature to give in and he refused to, even though hope was fading rapidly. There