Chapter 14

Amber climbed out of the basement and slowly got to her feet. There was an air of peacefulness about the place. There wasn't a sound except the hush of the last pieces of ash drifting forlornly to the ground. Purace was once again silent, only a small waft of steam now rose from her.

But the surrounding area was completely devastated. Amber stared, horrified at the destruction around her. She felt Paulo come up beside her. She looked up at him and saw his eyes widen as he took in the sight around them.

The town was gone. Blackened and flattened by the flow, nothing was left standing. Trees were reduced to small, none existent stumps in the earth, and the houses that once homed Purace's residents had been reduced to a mess of bricks, wood and unidentifiable rubble. There was nothing left.

Amber felt Paulo walk forwards beside her. He muttered something under his breath in astonishment as he stepped over the debris that had once been the house they had been hiding under. Amber couldn't draw her eyes away from the damage around her. Perhaps it wasn't just the fact that Purace was gone, but the sincerity and stillness that appeared to fill the town. Peacefulness filled with a horrified wail of upset. The fact that the town was gone was just…horrible. Amber had never seen anything like it.

"Amber!" Amber looked up to the sound of Paulo's voice. He was a little away from her, standing on where the road out of town used to be. "Amber" he said again, a little more quietly "We have things to do". The horrific realization of the situation they were in came thundering back to Amber. She looked up at Paulo and walked towards him.

"You're right" she said briskly "Let's find Alex".

Li pushed her way through the crowds, round to the back of the hospital. She couldn't help but feel incredibly lucky. The pyroclastic flow hadn't quite reached the hospital. Li supposed it hadn't been a particularly fast moving one. The windows at the front of the hospital had been blown out, and the small garden in front of the hospital was gone, but aside from that, the damage was pretty minimal.

And as much as she felt relief and happiness for herself and the others in the hospital, Li was still scared. Amber, Paulo and Alex were all still up near Purace. She just hoped they had been able to find shelter.

She finally managed to reach the back wing of the hospital where most of the patients were being kept. She weaved her way through the trolleys until, finally, she found Hex's. He grinned when he saw her.

"Pretty good eh?" he asked. Li offered a half-hearted smile in return and sat down on the foot of Hex's bed. Hex noticed her mood.

"Look Li, they'll be ok" he said, placing his hand on hers "They're all clever enough to have worked it out". Li shrugged in a general way and looked out the window across to the town. All that remained was a black ruined site. It didn't look nice.

Hex, still sensing her depleted mood looked across at her.

"I'll tell you what" he said "Why don't you help me do some research of my own?" Li looked back at him to see his palmtop open. She couldn't help smiling "What do you want to know?" Hex raised his eyebrows
"I want to find the idiot who locked me and Amber in that house. A volcano might have erupted, but it doesn't mean he's going to get away with it".

As they neared the base of Purace, it soon dawned on Paulo that the town was gone, and it was going to take a lot of restoration to get it back on its feet. Something that would probably never happen. It cost too much these days. These people were homeless, all their possessions were gone. They'd have to find another way to get along in life.

As he walked, Paulo felt his foot hit something. He looked down. Lying face down in the blackened earth was a body. They were clearly dead. Upon closer inspection Paulo found that it was a woman. A guilty flow of relief rushed through him. He suddenly felt terribly ashamed. This woman was dead, yet he was reassured that she was, because it wasn't his friend. It was horrifically wrong. Paulo didn't want to dwell on it. He pulled off his jacket and laid it over the woman. No one else should see this.

"Paulo!" Amber's desperate cry rang out across to him. Paulo looked up. Amber was stood several yards away, at the foot of the volcano. It was the research centre. But it was gone. Paulo hurried over towards Amber, dodging around rubble and past the remains of a destroyed car. Amber was stood in what seemed to be where the main room had stood, looking about her miserably.

"Keep looking" Paulo said quietly. Amber didn't reply but she turned around and started walking slowly through the foundations. Paulo turned the other way. The skeleton of a computer lay on the floor, and next to it, a rucksack. One Paulo recognized as Hex's. It was useless now.

A couple of desperate minutes passed as they both searched around what was left of the centre. Out of the corner of his eye, Paulo spotted Amber making her way towards the far end of the centre. There, two walls still stood in the corner, and part of the roof from which ash and dirt was still falling from. Paulo's gaze drifted up to Purace. It was quiet now, the tantrum was over. One burst of anger from the Earth had caused all this…

"Paulo!" Paulo's head whipped round at the sound of Amber's cry. It hadn't been a call for him to see something or go somewhere. It was a cry of desperation. Suddenly he was racing across the rooms to where she was crouched in the far corner. Then he reached her.

Paulo's eyes drifted from Amber's scared, wide-eyed face down to what lay next to her. It was Alex. He looked terrible. He was covered in the black dirt from the cloud and was lying still on the floor almost as if… Paulo refused to believe it. He pushed the thought out of his mind and crouched down next to Amber. He heard her breathing shakily as he reached out, his own hand trembling, and placed two fingers on Alex's neck.

Something thundered through him. Paulo looked up at Amber. Her eyes were wide and questioning. Paulo sighed before speaking.
"He is alive".