it hard to tell how much extra height he needed. Maybe Joseph or Ed would be able to reach up and open it if he gave them a piggyback, but even then how would he get out without help from outside?
James was only just below the surface and figured there was a decent chance he’d get a signal out from here. As he reached down into his shorts his heart sank. He’d totally forgotten about the radio and it had gone underwater when he’d stumbled off the ledge. Still, it had been designed to live inside a sweaty training shoe, so there was still a chance it was OK.
James put the unit up to his ear and switched it on. He couldn’t hear the usual static and the low battery indicator flickered when he pressed the transmit button.
Some days you just don’t get the breaks.
*
Lauren was overwhelmed: dripping with sweat as she held the gun, watching Rat face off Ernie and trying to keep the toddlers in their pushchairs while Ed asked awkward questions and Joseph screamed that he wasn’t going down the dark hole.
‘I’m of the blood, Ernie,’ Rat said firmly. ‘To save the Survivors, you must believe what I’m saying.’
The old man looked confused. ‘How can you get out from here?’
‘The sewage tank,’ Rat explained. ‘My father told me about it. We were trying to get over here when you caught us the first time.’
‘I was a plumber before I became an angel,’ Ernie nodded, deep in thought. ‘I’ve had to go down there and unblock it a couple of times. It’s pretty foul, but you can get out.’
‘I know,’ Rat said as Ernie dithered, trying to figure out what to believe. ‘My father told me to do this, Ernie. Look into your heart and ask God. Then you’ll know I’m telling the truth.’
The old man’s face suddenly lit up. ‘Yes,’ he shouted euphorically. ‘That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? Only me and two others have ever been down inside that tank. It’s no coincidence: the Lord sent me here to help you.’
Rat broke into a big smile. ‘Wow, Ernie, I didn’t know that. He must have done.’
Lauren couldn’t hear properly over the bawling kids, but she realised Rat had pulled off a miracle as she saw him step forwards and embrace Ernie.
‘My God,’ Ernie said, grinning like a man who’d discovered the meaning of life. ‘Thank you for choosing me, Lord. Thank you, Rathbone.’
‘Do you know how to get out of there, Ernie?’ Lauren asked as she pulled up the hatch. ‘My brother’s already down there somewhere.’
Ed seemed reassured by the presence of an adult, but Joseph was bawling as hard as ever. ‘Not going down that hole,’ he sobbed.
Ernie stood over the hatch and pulled it up a few centimetres. ‘You say James is already down there?’
Lauren nodded, ‘Yeah.’
Ernie looked mystified as he opened the hatch up. He reached behind one of the pipes running along the wall and flipped a partially obscured switch.
‘Why didn’t you turn the lights on?’
43. BOATS
Under different circumstances, mastering the controls of a thirty-metre twenty-thousand-horsepower catamaran might have been fun, but Dana was shattered and her foot was agony. She’d lost a lot of blood and as she sat in the captain’s chair watching the radar screen, she had to keep pinching herself to stay conscious.
Barry was in a bad way, still out cold. Nina came around, hurled some abuse and fought her ropes for a while, but Dana wasn’t in a sympathetic mood and aimed Barry’s gun at her.
‘Unless you want a hole in your head to match the one you put in my foot, I’d suggest you shut up.’
‘You’ve betrayed the Survivors, devil.’
Dana smiled. ‘You’re no more of a Survivor than I am.’
The sea was pitch dark, so all Dana could do was watch the radar screen and the GPS as the cat blasted through the water towards a liaison with an Australian coastguard vessel. It was a huge relief when she saw its searchlight flash across the twin bows. She cut the turbines and left the tricky business of coming alongside to the experts.
A coastguard officer pulled off a hair-raising stunt, leaping over the side of his ship and dropping several metres on to the slippery deck of the low-slung catamaran. Once he was aboard, Dana watched him scramble to his feet and secure a rope between the two vessels. After a trial run with a container of medical supplies, two more officers hooked themselves to a pulley