Wildfire by Chris Ryan

Author:Chris Ryan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Action, Suspense, Adventure, Azizex666
ISBN: 9781409098256
Publisher: Red Fox
Published: 2006-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

In Adelaide, the streets were full of boiling smoke. The police and ambulances were busy dealing with casualties; the fire brigade had their hands full trying to deal with the fires. The army had organized mass evacuations, but so many people slipped through the net – the ones who hadn’t got out fast enough, or were stuck somewhere that was inaccessible.

Those people were now trying to get to safety by themselves.

Some made good decisions, others didn’t. It was impossible to tell which option would be more dangerous until you tried it. Whether you survived was more down to luck than judgement. Choices had to be made in a split second. Do you open this door or that door? Do you run down this road or that road? Every choice was a toss of the coin. Heads you win, tails you lose.

Victoria and Troy had so far made the right decisions. They fled from the golf course, not knowing where they were going. They came out onto a road they’d never seen before, lined with burning houses. The sky was dark and full of strange smells. Halfway down the road Victoria noticed some white gates on fire and realized she knew the street very well: she’d cycled up it every day for the past five months and fantasized about living in the big house behind those gates.

They reached the end of the road and chose to turn right. They didn’t know it, but they’d won another coin toss. If they’d gone the other way, they would have been under the burning telegraph pole as it collapsed across the street.

When they reached the corner shop, they had to stop running – there was too much smoke and they couldn’t breathe.

Ahead of them, a car exploded, vaporizing into a ball of mangled steel and burning petrol.

That was another coin toss won. If they had continued running, they would have been caught in the blast.

They darted down an alleyway and came out in a small precinct on the edge of the shopping area. For the first time, they saw some other people: a vet in green overalls and latex gloves; a decorator with smears of yellow and white paint on his clothes; a postman in his navy-blue uniform; a jockey from the racetrack, still in crash helmet and goggles, his candy-striped silks and breeches streaked with soot. Victoria and Troy felt reassured to see people who had come from the same part of town. The vet and the jockey felt the same when they saw Victoria and Troy in their golf shoes, eye shields and single gloves. To have got this far from the golf course and racetrack, they must have made good choices. Everybody hoped that luck was contagious – there was bound to be safety in numbers.

The group pressed on together towards the centre of town. Surely the fire wouldn’t follow them there. Surely concrete and brick buildings would give them more shelter than the woods and grass on the outskirts.

As

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.