Page 2 of Retribution

Emergency services are here, firefighters are in and out of the building, but the cops won’t allow us anywhere near it.

When the explosion happened, the three of us ran inside the club from the alley as fast as we could, trying desperately to get to her. Blake said she had been in the lab when he came upstairs. But there was so much smoke, thick and choking. We couldn’t see anything. Mav and I couldn’t even get past the bar. Blake made it to the cellar door, and that’s where the firefighters found him, unconscious. He woke up for a minute and fought with the ambulance crew, trying to get back inside, but passed out again while he was struggling to get off the gurney.

We don’t know how bad it is. The firefighters are stillin there. The ambulance with Blake goes past a second later, taking him to the hospital. The siren turns on and I cringe at the sound, hoping my friend is going to be okay.

‘I can’t find anybody else in there,’ I hear one of the guys say to another as they come out. He takes off his helmet, and I see the wizened, dirty face of a seasoned firefighter underneath. ‘We searched everywhere we could.’

‘She’s in there,’ I yell adamantly from the sidelines. ‘I know she is! In the basement!’

They glance at each other, their faces grim.

‘Look,’ the other one says almost gently, ‘we can’t get down there. The steps are destroyed. Half the ceiling is caved in. I’m sorry, but it’s too dangerous.’

‘Jesus,’ I mutter, my mind scarcely able to comprehend that an hour ago everything wasnormal, that we just had the best Christmas I’ve ever had.

I pull my hand through my grit-covered hair.

‘This can’t be happening.’

‘The tunnels,’ Mav mutters quietly from behind me, the first words he’s spoken. He sounds as out of it as I am. ‘We might be able to get in that way. She might have…’

I turn back to look at the shellshocked face of my friend.

‘Stay here,’ I tell him.

He starts to protest.

‘In case they find her,’ I say, my heart twisting horribly. ‘One of us should be here.’

He gives me a reluctant, jerky nod and goes back to staring at the smoking shell of the club with a vacant look in his eye.

The truck is still in the alley, hemmed in by fire trucks, so I take off on foot down the darkening street.

I run down the next road and then along the river, into the Docklands where there are barely any streetlamps that work. I don’t know how much time goes by. Minutes, I guess, but it seems like hours. Even running as fast as I can, each moment is like an eternity. I just need her to beokay.

I get to the first opening I know of that leads into the passages, taking the dingy cement steps down into a dilapidated warehouse and putting on my phone’s flashlight as I go deep into the black. Fuck, it wasn’t long ago that we were showing Daisy these tunnels.

They’d be fresh in her mind. She could have gotten out before the roof caved in. She has to have.

I listen but only hear the far-away sounds of water.

‘Daisy?’ I yell.

Nothing.

I start up the old brick tunnel, seeing rats scurrying away as I traverse the subterranean corridors as quickly as I can. Mud squelches under my soles and wet seeps into my shoes.

I ignore it, focusing on the brick tunnels winding before me. At the fork, I take the one that leads toward the club, hoping the river isn’t flowing high because it runs very close in places.

As I get nearer, I find newly fallen bricks and rubble and my stomach rolls. What if there’s been a cave-in down here, too? She could be trapped.

‘Daisy?’

The sound of my own voice echoing back to me is all I hear, that and my own harsh breathing, the thudding of my heart.

‘Don’t be dead,’ I whisper. ‘Please, don’t be dead.’

I keep going, hoping to God that I’ll be able to pass through as I see more and more detritus from the force of the blast the closer I get to ground zero.