Rescued By The Single Dad

Patrick ignored the drone of the snow groomers and the constant thrumming of the snow-making machines and the music drifting into the night from the bar behind him—none of that was anything to do with him—as his thoughts drifted back to Charli. He would meet her for brunch. It felt odd to be organising a date but also exciting. After that he would return to Melbourne but at least he would have taken a step forward. A step towards a future. He and Ella couldn’t remain a pair for ever, he didn’t believe that was healthy. To move forward he had to get back into the dating game. But he wanted to do it on his terms. He wanted to wait until he felt a connection with someone. Charli was a promising start.

‘Hey, Pat, you calling it a night?’

Pat turned, his self-reflection interrupted by Connor Green, one of his colleagues, who was headed his way.

‘Yep.’ He waited to see if Connor had been sent to try to persuade him to return to the bar. He was out of luck if that was his mission. The team was close-knit and Pat had become good friends with his teammates over the years. They’d provided great support to him, but he wanted a clear head for tomorrow.

‘Me too,’ Connor replied.

A sudden gust of wind swirled around Pat as Connor spoke, startling him after the extraordinary stillness of the night. A noise similar to that of a jet engine roared behind them, its sound swallowing the background noise, and the ground shook beneath their feet. Pat looked up but the sky was just as dark as before. He could see nothing untoward but the rumble continued, the ground unsteady, testing their balance. He felt his heart rate accelerate as he turned around, his eyes glued to the mountain, searching for the source of the noise, his gut telling him it wasn’t a plane.

Was it an avalanche? Even though they’d spent hours on avalanche training he’d never heard, or seen, one. They were a rare occurrence in Australia.

His eyes scanned the slopes, glancing over the buildings as he looked towards the tree line. Ironbark Lodge sat highest on the mountain and he could see it silhouetted against the snow, its windows lit up against the night sky. He saw the lights waver and flicker as though candles illuminated the glass instead of electricity. And then the lights disappeared, leaving the lodge in darkness.

Pat looked down the mountain, expecting a complete power outage, but the other buildings remained bright. Movement in the corner of his eye drew his gaze up again.

He blinked.

Ironbark Lodge looked as if it was moving.

He must be more tired than he thought. He shook his head and rubbed one hand across his eyes before opening them again. He must be seeing things.

No. He wasn’t. The lodge was definitely moving.

‘Bloody hell!’ It took him a moment to process what he was looking at and meanwhile Ironbark Lodge continued to move. He watched on in horror and disbelief as the lodge slid down the side of the mountain.

Snowgum Chalet sat directly in its path.

He took off, sprinting along the icy paths, retracing his steps from moments before, running right into the path of the disaster.

CHAPTER TWO

‘AMY?’ CHARLI CALLED from the darkness of the bedroom.

She’d fallen asleep quickly with a smile on her lips as she’d thought about having brunch with Patrick but had been woken abruptly by the wind. ‘Amy, are you there? Can you hear that?’

The wind was loud. So loud it sounded like it was rushing through the apartment. At first, she’d thought the noise was the bathroom fan but as it continued to increase in volume she realised it wasn’t coming from the bathroom but was moving closer. It sounded like it was coming for her. She sat up just as a loud explosion split the air and her heart leapt as the unexpected sound shattered the night.

What was that? A gas cylinder exploding? A car backfiring?

The windows of the apartment rattled as she reached for the bedside lamp. The whole bed was shaking and it took her two attempts to find the switch. A backfiring car wouldn’t shake the bed.

But an avalanche might.

‘Amy?’ she called again, louder this time, as she finally turned on the light.

Was Amy home or was she still in the bar? Charli was about to get out of bed to look for her when the lights went out, engulfing her in darkness.

The noise hadn’t stopped, it had only intensified.

It was incredible. It sounded like a freight train, which was impossible as there was no train on the mountain. Her next thought was perhaps it was one of the snow-grooming machines. Had someone lost control? And then, cutting through the noise, she heard screams.

‘Amy?’

She leapt out of bed, stumbling in the darkness.

The noise was deafening now. Windows shattered and she heard glass hit the floor. Timbers were cracking and metal twisted and screeched, hurting her ears. She could hear bricks falling and over it all the noise of the wind and the screams continued.

Instinctively she threw her hands over her head as she took another step forward before her legs gave way beneath her. She didn’t realise that it wasn’t her legs but the floor that had disappeared from under her, and then there was nothing.

No light. No sound and only very slight vibrations. The wind had stopped as suddenly as it had begun and the room was no longer shaking violently, but she still couldn’t see and, much worse, she still couldn’t hear a sound. Even the screams had been silenced.

‘Amy?’

She coughed as she inhaled a mouthful of dust and it stuck on her tongue.

‘Are you there?’

There was only silence. Had Amy come home? Was she there?

Charli had no idea. It was awfully quiet.

Deathly quiet.

The room had stopped shaking and was now resting quietly in the dark. But the sudden silence wasn’t peaceful or calming, it was frightening. What had happened?

The air was frigid. The temperature had dropped and the floor beneath her legs was cold and damp. The bedroom was carpeted but the carpet was now flooded and icy water swirled around her. She could feel it and it chilled her to the bone, but she had no idea where it had come from.

‘Hello. Is anyone there?’ she yelled, choking on the thick dust that seemed to be hanging in the air.

She tried to stand up but smacked her head on something hard before she could fully straighten her knees. She swore out loud and rubbed her forehead above her left eye. A lump was already forming from the collision. She crouched down and reached up with one hand. She felt concrete under her fingers. Was that the ceiling? Why was it so low?

She squatted on the floor as she tried to figure out what had happened. Had the ceiling collapsed? God, she hoped not. Amy’s apartment was on the ground floor of a four-storey building.

What had happened? It was impossible to tell. The darkness made it impossible to get her bearings, impossible to work out what had happened and what was going on.

She reached out carefully, not knowing what she might find.

There was nothing in front of her so she crawled towards the door, or to where she thought the door was. Her hands were immersed in the freezing cold water and her fingers were going numb. She was dressed only in a T-shirt and knickers, clothes that were warm enough to sleep in while the central heating worked, but it offered no protection in her current situation.

She stretched her hands out and shuffled forward on her knees. There was an overpowering smell of diesel fumes and overflowing toilets. She didn’t want to know what she was crawling through.

Something sharp grazed her calf but she pressed on, hands outstretched in front of her.

It felt like she’d gone no further than a few feet before she ran into a wall. She was sure the door had to be there somewhere. She moved sideways, still calling Amy’s name, as she felt for a gap, her fingers searching for the door frame. She cried out as something pierced her palm, slicing into the flesh beneath her right thumb. The wound throbbed and she could feel blood running down to her elbow. She ignored the warm blood as she felt more frantically for the doorway but there was no gap. Instead she found herself wedged into a corner.

She was confused, disoriented but she continued to inch her way around the room.

She kept her hands outstretched, fearful of hitting her head again in the darkness. She breathed in the putrid, frigid air as she crawled through the darkness.

Her hands met more cold concrete. It was rough under her fingers, the smooth walls obliterated, leaving what felt like a pile of rubble. The ceiling pressed down on her head, making her feel claustrophobic. She fought back a wave of panic. Where was she? Nothing was familiar.

‘Amy? Are you here?’ She was sobbing now, crying salty tears that ran down her cheeks and mingled with the dust that caked her mouth.

She forced herself to keep moving. She couldn’t stay still. She had to find a way out of there before she froze to death.

She moved a few more feet and her fingers made contact with smooth metal. Was that the bed frame? Had she done a full circle? The bed had a high metal bed head. She traced the frame. The poles were bent, the frame leaning in towards the centre of the bed. She reached up and felt the ceiling. Somehow the metal bed head was supporting the ceiling. A concrete ceiling that should be five feet above her head, not several inches.

How had the bed not collapsed completely?

She was lucky she hadn’t been crushed, she thought, before she had a more terrifying realisation. But what about Amy? Where was her sister? What might have happened to her?

‘Amy?’ she whispered. Scared now of what she might not hear. Listening in hope for her sister’s voice.

Still nothing.

The carpet was sodden and sludgy under her knees. Crawling through freezing mud and water in the dark wasn’t getting her anywhere. She needed to see. She needed light. She felt for the bedside table, reaching for her mobile phone that had been resting on top. She desperately needed the flashlight function, but her hand met empty air. There was no table and she could only assume her phone now lay submerged in the vile water that lapped at her thighs.

She moved around the other side of the bed, only to find herself in another dead end. There was no way around this. She was trapped in a windowless, flooded tomb.

How had she ended up here?

What had happened?

Had a snow groomer crashed into their apartment? What had happened to the apartments above?

She had no idea.

All she knew was that she was trapped, buried alive.

She wanted to scream but the air was still so cold and so thick with dust she didn’t want to breathe it in.

Stay calm. Think.

She wanted to be warm.

Crawling back to the bed, she curled into a ball and tucked her injured hand under her armpit in an attempt to stop the bleeding and to warm herself up. She tugged the quilt over her, it was cold but dry and although she still wasn’t warm at least she wasn’t sitting in that filthy water.

She closed her eyes as she tried to figure out what to do. She wanted to get out of there but had no idea how she would achieve that.

Amy would know.

She let her tears flow as she lay in the darkness.

She wanted her sister.

* * *

Pat only had one thought as he ran towards Snowgum Chalet.

Charli.

He had to warn her. Had to get her out.

He skidded to a stop and gulped a lungful of frigid air as he tried to comprehend what he was seeing.

Ironbark Lodge was sliding almost gracefully down the slope, seemingly with no great urgency, keeping pace with the eucalyptus trees that were falling alongside it. It left a dark smear of mud in its wake as it pushed the snow ahead like a gigantic snowplough. The bottom floors of the building were pushed out as it gathered momentum and the upper levels toppled backwards. The accompanying sound was an agonising, horrific cracking of timbers, an explosion of glass, a high-pitched shrieking of twisting metal and devastating human cries, but still the lodge continued to slide down the slope in front of him, heading straight for Snowgum Chalet. And Charli.

There was nothing he could do and he watched helplessly as the disaster unfolded before him until, with a sickening crash, the two lodges collided. Pat took a step forward, hopelessly, helplessly, as Snowgum Chalet collapsed like a deck of cards and the third and fourth stories crushed the floors below and sent a cloud of white concrete dust into the air.

Car alarms were blaring and, over the top of all the noise, the village distress siren wailed. The noise of the disaster brought people out of the buildings. They poured out of the surrounding bars, restaurants and lodges before stopping in their tracks, staring in disbelief at the site that confronted them. A dark muddy scar bisected the snow-covered mountain and an enormous pile of rubble, which moments before had been two buildings, dominated the landscape. They stared, momentarily frozen, at the ruins of the buildings that had, God only knew, how many people inside.

Pat could hear screams and calls for help coming from underneath the rubble. He had no idea how people had survived this disaster but clearly they had. He desperately hoped Charli had been one of them but he couldn’t imagine how. Her apartment was—had been—on the ground floor. Unless she had somehow, miraculously, managed to escape, she was now buried under tonnes of concrete, bricks and steel. He fought back a wave of nausea as the dust cloud settled and he surveyed the scene. Everything had changed in an instant.

A few bystanders had already gathered their wits and were trying to move debris. There wasn’t any discussion or any system to the recovery attempt, people simply started at the area closest to them. They stood in the mud, pulling at bricks and window frames, blocks of concrete and pieces of broken furniture. They looked like scavengers sorting through a rubbish tip. Nothing in front of them resembled a building.

He had to help. He pulled his gloves from the pocket of his jacket and shoved his hands into them as his feet began moving, propelling him towards the devastation. Muddy water continued to flow down the hill, making conditions underfoot slippery and treacherous. He could smell diesel fuel and sewage and gas but he couldn’t stop. Charli’s life might depend on him.

‘Charli! Charli?’

For a split second he thought it was her voice he could hear. He turned around and saw a young woman flying down the path, her blonde hair streaming behind her.

Was it Charli?

She ran past Connor and Pat saw him grab at her. He held onto her, restraining her. Pat knew if he hadn’t caught her she would have kept running.

She beat at his chest with her fists. ‘Let me go. My sister is in there. I have to find her.’

His heart fell like a stone into his stomach, the last vestiges of hope shattered. It wasn’t Charli. It was her sister.

He left Connor to deal with her as he stepped cautiously onto a teetering slab of concrete before thinking better of it when it wobbled under his feet. He didn’t want to upset the balance. Who knew what lay beneath his feet.

He lay on his stomach and inched along the slab, listening to the cries for help and trying to work out where they were coming from. Sound bounced off the hard surfaces and off the mountain, distorting the voices and making it difficult to judge direction.

The darkness wasn’t helping matters either. He couldn’t see clearly, he couldn’t tell if there were gaps in the rubble, any way in or out. He couldn’t see survivors but he could hear them. He needed better light so he could tell where to start. He pulled his phone from his pocket, swiped the screen and pressed the flashlight icon but the light it gave off was pathetic.

‘I need some light over here. Does anyone have a torch?’ The lights of the village had been bright enough to see the buildings topple but they weren’t bright enough now. He needed stronger beams, much stronger. The headlights from a car or a snowplough.

‘Pat, what the hell are you doing? It’s not safe, man.’

He heard Connor’s voice from behind him. He turned his head. He could see dozens of people gathered in the semi-darkness, torches and phones causing multiple circles of light. ‘Pass me a torch.’

‘No. You need to come back. We need to assess the situation. It’s too dangerous.’

‘I can hear people. I need to see if I can reach them.’

‘And what if that slab gives way under you? We could lose you along with anyone trapped under there,’ Connor responded. ‘We need a plan.’

Pat ignored him. He knew Connor wouldn’t risk coming out after him. Two people on this teetering slab would be asking for trouble. Pat could stay out there safe in the knowledge that no one could drag him back. He knew he was taking a risk but what choice did he have? People were trapped. They needed his help.

‘Hello? Can you hear me?’ he called out.

‘Yes.’

‘I’m trapped.’

‘Help us.’ One, two, three different voices called back to him.

But none of them belonged to Charli.

He didn’t want to stop but he couldn’t ignore these cries for assistance. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘My wife. You have to help me. I can’t reach her.’

‘I’m stuck, my leg is caught. There’s water coming in. I can’t move. Help me, please, help me.’

There were only two replies to his question.

‘Who is there? Can you tell me your names?’

‘Simon.’ The voice was faint and Pat strained to listen. Where were the other voices? Where was the husband? His wife?

‘Pat, you need to follow protocol. It’s not safe,’ Connor called out, urging him to rethink his position.

Pat knew he was right. But knowing Connor was right wasn’t enough to get him to pull back. He could argue that this wasn’t a training drill or an official rescue. Not yet. He was effectively just a bystander, a good Samaritan, and his first instinct was to help. He would be careful. If he thought he was in danger, or there was a risk of causing further harm, he’d pull back.

‘Think about Ella,’ Connor called to him. ‘What happens to her if something happens to you?’

Pat hesitated, knowing Connor had won this round. He was being foolish, he wasn’t just risking his own safety, he was risking more than that, he was risking Ella’s life as she knew it. Ella was all he had left and he had to stay safe for her.

Connor hadn’t needed to come after him at all. He had won the battle of wills with a few well-chosen words.

‘Simon?’ Pat called out. ‘I’ll be back, I need to get help.’

‘Don’t leave me here.’

Simon’s voice called back to him, begging him not to go. One voice only. What had happened to the others? Had they lost consciousness? Or worse? Could they hear but not respond? Would Simon notice the silence?

Pat wanted to stay but he knew it was impossible to perform this rescue without equipment and help. ‘I promise I’ll be back.’

But he couldn’t promise he’d be back in time.

He closed his eyes and pictured Ella’s face and knew he had no option. It ripped him in two to leave but he had no choice.

He turned and began to inch his way off the slab. He had moved less than a foot when the ground wobbled and shifted and the concrete under him trembled and vibrated. His heart was in his throat as adrenalin surged through his body and he fought to keep his balance.

‘Reeves,’ Connor yelled at him. ‘Get back here!’

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.