Of course he’s all right. He just can’t get through.She said, “Let’s get going, then. It’ll be good to move.”
“Let’s go where, exactly?” Finlay asked, as they headed to the stairs.
“I have a plan,” she said, although what she actually had was a series of plans. Call it Plans A through D. “Hold the same hands you held on the way up. Bigger kids look after the little ones, and George and Georgia, you come with me. Careful on the stairs, because there’ll be mud. Hold the handrails. Careful, now.” Floor by floor, keeping up the chat, trying to make it OK. And then the broken windows. The shards of glass. The slick of mud all the way down the many stairs from Level Two.
All the way from that landing where she’d urged the old man to hurry. Where she’d told him this was for his life. Fortheirlives.
Don’t think about that now. Think about it later.
In the entry, then. The glass doors and windows broken, the mud marring the shining stone floors. The darkness outside alien and inhospitable.
“Locker,” she said. “Straight ahead.” She’d stashed all their coats in one of the bigger lockers to save carrying them through the museum. They’d need them, because the night was July-cool, the breeze still stiff enough to make you shiver down here where the glass was gone.
Thank God for generators,she thought. Then they got there,and she realized her mistake, because however many buttons she pushed, the screens stayed dark. They worked on some sort of internet-based system, apparently, and whatever that was, it wasn’t available now.
“It’s cold, though,” George said when she explained.
“We’ll be in the car soon,” Scarlett said. “With the heater turned up. You’ll be warm then.” Still helpful. Very nearly adult, in fact. Scarlett, it seemed, had more of her dad in her than just the stroppy attitude.
“I’ll have to come back for our coats,” Skylar said, keeping it cheerful. “That’s a pity, but it can’t be helped. Let’s go find the car.”
Please, Zane,she thought.Let me hear from you. Because I’m not sure I can find the way back to the house in the dark, especially not without GPS.
Granddad? Maureen? Somebody will know the way, and I’ll be able to reach somebody. Surely.
You can’t count on anybody else. It’s down to you to do this, and you can. Plans A, B, C, and D. Starting right now.
Zane was still waiting. Waiting to hear from Eddie. Waiting to hear from his dad.
Waiting to hear from Skylar.
He was drinking another cup of tea, because it would do no good to get dehydrated, when his phone finally dinged.
Eddie.No joy with the bus. We’ll leg it back to the training centre. Meet outside your place in 10. Pass it along.
He hadn’t realized what he needed to do until this moment. Why not?
A word with Marko first, he decided. The other man had been sitting against a wall, his arms crossed and his gaze fixed broodingly on the distance. Worried, but keeping it tohimself. Zane told him, “Eddie says it’ll be Shank’s pony back to the center. Bus can’t get through.”
“Right,” Marko said, because no man here would have a problem with legging it twelve kilometers, in the dark or no. Torches on every cellphone to avoid any cracks in the roadway, after all. And there was no point in staying here overnight when there would be water and food and beds a couple of hours away. Or an hour away, if the roadway was intact enough for jogging. “I’d feel better, though,” Marko went on, “if I could reach my wife.”
“Yeh,” Zane said. “Same issue, bro. Give me five minutes to go have a chat, will you? And get the boys ready to go.”
Next door, Eddie said with a frown, “We’re just about to leave. What’s up? And before you ask, yeh, I talked to the owners about putting the others up overnight, the randos from the cars. Best thing for it.”
“I thought you would’ve,” Zane said. “But quite a few of the boys have whanau here in Wellington. The ones with the Hurricanes, and the ones whose families came for the match. They haven’t all been able to get through to them. It may be good to let anybody go who’s in that spot, so they can check for themselves. Most of the hotels are on the waterfront, and we’ve seen the state that’s in from the TV. Partners dealing with kids by themselves … not good. We won’t be going anywhere for at least a couple of days anyway, not until the airport opens again. A day for some of the boys to check that their families are safe and make arrangements shouldn’t set us back much.”
“Of course, I could decide to drive to Auckland instead for the match with Italy,” Eddie said, “if the planes aren’t flying. I’m ahead of you here, mate.”
“You’re right,” Zane said, keeping his impatience and worry in check with an effort. “But it’s got to be whanau first right now. Too much to ask of them otherwise.”
Eddie thought a minute, frowning into the distance. Zane waited, because that was all he could do. If Eddie said no, what then? The urgency was clawing at him now, but he was acting skipper. Which came first?
My kids come first. And Skylar’s. And Skylar. They come first.
“Right,” Eddie said at last. “I don’t much like it—dangerous, for one thing, because it’s a bloody dog’s breakfast out there—but I take your point. I’ll tell them.”
“I’ll be leaving myself,” Zane said. “My kids aren’t at home. They were in the CBD when it hit.”
