All was Lost

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

“Pass the salad, Caitlin” asked Mum as we began to dig in to our delicious picnic. We sat atop North Head, and as I passed the salad to Mum we watched the sun set above Rangitoto, its soft pinky glow stretching across the dimming sky. I sat contently with my family, my long red hair billowing over my shoulder as the evening breeze passed through. Tomorrow Gran would be returning to Singapore, where she lived, but tonight, everything was beautiful and calm. Suddenly the earth shook violently, and the salad jerked out of my hand, spilling all over Gran’s homemade shepherd pie.

My little sister, Mary, began to cry, her juice box dripping down her front. I looked frantically at my other sister, Lily, my terror reflected in her blue eyes. “W-w-w-what was that?’ Lily stammered, her eyes darting, looking for any reasonable explanation. My eyes scrolled the horizon, searching for the answer. Then they fell upon Rangitoto. It was issuing a large plume of smoke and gritty ash. I shuddered, knowing there was only one explanation for this strange phenomenon. I opened my mouth, the sweet taste of the picnic gone from my lips. I uttered one word. “Volcano.”

We stood frozen for a moment, our minds and bodies petrified by the possibilities and the sight of the huge cloud of ash that was beginning to cover the sun. Suddenly a second jolt from the earth brought us to our senses, and we began to panic. “Pack up the picnic” exclaimed Mum as she flew around our dinner, picking up plates and cutlery as she went. As Gran came out of her horrified trance, she began to violently shake her head. “No Lisa” she said to Mum as she struggled to her feet and began to pick up Mary, who at this point was balling her eyes out, “we have to get out of here, if we don’t move soon, we are going to drown under this ash”.

She was right. As we looked up, the thick cloud of ash was already beginning to descend.  Mum dropped her plates with a clatter, and switched to yelling at us to run to the house. Dad took Mary from Gran and began to run down the hill, his greying brown mop of hair speckled with ash, towards where our house was waiting at the bottom. I grabbed Lily’s hand, and we began to sprint after him.

As we ran down the hill, more earth tremors shook the ground. My feet twisted out from underneath me, and a white hot shot of pain went up my leg. Lily stopped and helped me up, but I kept on running, well limping. The hot ash was beginning to fall; covering my clothes and making me choke. As we reached the house I saw the top of Rangitoto, and I stopped in my tracks. The mountain seemed to have gained some cracks, and threads of red hot lava were beginning to trickle down the sides.

As I struggled through the front door, I saw my Mum running frantically round the house, picking up souvenirs and memorabilia as she went. Dad was digging around in the draw for the car keys, and Lily was searching for our cat, Athena, who seemed to have disappeared from her normal spot on the rug. In fact, she had been acting very strangely lately.

The gritty ash in my lungs made me thirsty, so I rushed to the tap. When I turned the knob, I was shocked to see that the water was a yellowish brown, and that the smell reminded me of the time we went to the hot springs in Rotorua. I noticed that Gran was staring at it, horrified. “Sulfur” she murmured. Suddenly, I heard a loud crashing sound.  As I watched from our window, Rangitoto began to spew up rocks and chunks of lava. Mary exploded into a fresh round of tears, salty and warm, slipping down her chubby cheeks. As a 3 year-old, she had no idea what was happening, apart from the fact that it was something unusual, and she didn’t like it.

Dad grabbed our emergency safety pack from in the shoe closet, and began to pull us out of the house and into the car, which was already covered in gritty, grey ash. He opened the door and pushed us frantically inside. Gran struggled inside, clutching Mary tightly to her chest. I had just struggled in when Dad slammed the door behind me, and then climbed into the car himself.

By now I was struggling to hold back tears. Mary was already crying, and Lily’s eyes were red and watery, but she would put that down to ash. For a 7 year-old, she was very brave. I felt a burning sensation on my arms, and I looked down to see that some of the hot ash had left red, shiny burns on my skin. Gran was coughing a lot, and I could only imagine what the ash was doing to her old lungs. It had all happened so fast, and all I knew was that it wasn’t normal.

 “D-d-d-dad?” I stammered. “Yes Caitlin” he muttered keeping his eyes on the road, which were rapidly filling up with ash, and the traffic of people that were also trying to escape the volcano. “Why did it happen so fast, without any warning?” I whispered, my voice hoarse and cracked from the ash that I had inhaled. Dad sighed deeply. I could see that he was struggling to keep all emotion off his face, for us, but he was failing dramatically. ”Sometimes” he sighed, “sometimes that does happen, without warning”.

He turned his head for a moment to look behind us. I looked too, and saw the glowing lava that was slowly creeping down the side of the volcano from long fissures in the rock. I was terrified for my family, my home, and my life. The feeling of having death so close and so possible truly made my skin crawl. Dad cut in again, his eyes brimming with sorrow, “but that is very, very rare, last time it happened was about 600 years ago”.

Suddenly, Lily screamed as a large reddish rock hit the road in front of the car, and Dad had to swerve joltingly to avoid it. I looked back quickly, and saw that it was smoking. A second rock hit the car in front of us, leaving a large dent in their roof. Mary was shocked out of her tears, and stared at the road in front of us, her little blue eyes twice their normal size. As we watched, more rocks hit the ground around us, hitting houses, cars and the running people that were trying to escape the volcano. By now tears were slipping down my cheeks. Some people were dead. Any hope of life left there on the pavement, cut short by a rock from above.

Suddenly I realized we weren’t moving. The traffic was still, though there was a lot of angry and desperate toots from the cars. Dad opened the car door, and ash momentarily billowed into the car before dad closed it. Through our rapidly moving windscreen wipers, I saw him; his eyes squinted to look through the thick cloud of ash. I saw his eyes widen in horror, and I wondered what was going on. I looked up to the sky, or what I could see of it through the swirling cloud of sickening ash. I wondered how whoever was up there could be so cruel as to do this to me, to my family. Dad burst through the door, his clothes and hair covered with grey ash. “Lisa” he said to my Mum, his eyes frantic, “We have a problem”