Iain McDonald, that was. He turned to Zane, his face shocked but set, and Zane said, “Wait for Eddie to tell us.” He motioned to the front for good measure, because other boys were standing up now, Gordon included. Standing up and looking back, so Zane motioned.Down,he tried to tell them.Stay down.
“Right,” Iain said, and sat down again, and Gordon did, too. At the front of the bus, Eddie Wallace, the new coach, was up, talking to the driver. It felt all wrong to stay here—the smell of hot metal was strong now; what had that smash done? And that lurch up into the air and back down again? But surely a fuel tank on a bus like this would be fortified against almost anything.
Eddie beckoning now, shouting. “Out of the bus.” An order. An order was good.
Backpack on. Moving up the aisle, trying to ignore that thebus was tilted at an angle that no bus on a roadway should be. They were off the road, then. Simple as that.
He’d been looking out the window, though. He knew they weren’t off the road.
Up the aisle. Down the steps.
Chaos.
Ahead of them, cars were scattered like ninepins. A couple of them on their sides, because the pavement had buckled and cracked. One car with its front wheels inside one of those cracks.
People out of the cars, milling around. Shock. Fear. A little boy crying, an older girl tugging at her mum’s hand where she sat, half in and half out of her car, her hand to her head. A woman limping, a man holding his arm.
Oh. The car behind them. Zane looked. The front entirely stoved in, and a billow of airbag. That was all he could see.
First things first.He moved with the other senior players to where the coaches stood. The wind had died down, and the sun was out.A good day for the match,he thought automatically, then realized. There wouldn’t be a match today. They were in a different mode now.
It felt like a film, but it wasn’t a film. It was reality.
Play what’s in front of you.
He was close enough now to hear what Eddie was saying. “No info yet.” He was practically yelling. “Anybody have info?”
“Cell towers down, maybe,” somebody said from behind Zane. Marko again.
Satellite,Zane thought. His phone got satellite signals when there was nothing else available. He pulled it out, looked at it.SOS Only,it said.
“Tsunami,” he said. He didn’t even know where that had come from.
“What?” Eddie asked. He’d been coaching Ireland the pasttwo years, and Australia before that. And he was from Auckland, where earthquakes didn’t happen much.
“Tsunami,” Zane said again. “We’re on the coast road, and we need to get to high ground. We need to get there now.” His mind clicking over now, out of its daze. “Need to get all these other people up there, too. We can’t drive in this mess, and it’s not safe down here. We’ll have to go straight up the hillside.” It was a bloody steep haul up the bank to the right, where the road had been cut out of the earth, but what choice was there?
“I’ll go look,” Marko said. “For the easiest way.”
“Right,” Zane said. “Go.” He was still acting skipper. For tonight, at least.
Eddie said, “Get the boys rounding people up, then. Get them out of those cars, too.”
“We don’t have much time,” Zane said. “We’ll do all we can in the next few minutes, and then we have to go up.”
“A warning, though,” Eddie said. “There’d be a warning on our phones if there was a danger.”
“No time for a warning,” Zane said, “even if it could get through. ‘Long or strong, get gone.’ That was long, and it was strong. We need to go up.”
Finally, they were climbing. A short distance, he’d realize later, but it seemed to take forever. Players were carrying kids, helping women up the steep slope. Zane had an older fella around the waist—the driver of the car behind him, he was, shaken and bruised and dazed—and was practically pushing him up the steep bank. Through the dense trees and bush with Marko ahead of him, trying to beat a path. Up and up and up, a few centimeters at a time. Their pace nearly a crawl.
We’re too low. Still too low.
Where were his kids? Nan had texted him that Skylar had taken them to Te Papa, and that they’d have dinner in the CBD before the match. His parents were either still on their way south or already at the house, ready to drive Nan andGeoffrey and Jade to the stadium. They’d driven from Napier, and the match was still a good two hours away, so they’d be … where?
But where were Skylar and the kids? Would she know to get high?
Of course she will. Of course shedoes.She knows exactly what to do. She’s a teacher. She’ll have had heaps of disaster training, and shedoeshave a cool head.
