The Power of Five Oblivion (29 page)

Even so, they kept moving. It was early evening but there were still masses of people in the streets, taking up every inch of space. The crowds refused to get out of the way. They moved like syrup, reluctantly separating, then sliding back together again. Giovanni had his suitcase up against his chest, using it like a battering ram. Pedro glanced to one side and saw several men in black uniform, hacking and stabbing with their truncheons, beating a path towards them. Giovanni shouted and they took another turning. The wrong turning. There was a wall straight ahead of them, too high to climb, with no way around. They had come to a dead end.

And they had been seen! The soldiers knew where they were. Pedro came to a breathless halt, the sweat dripping off his forehead, running down beneath his arms. He wondered if Scott had sent the soldiers here and knew in his heart that there was no other way that they could have been found so quickly. Perhaps it still wasn’t too late. Perhaps Pedro could appeal to him … on his knees if he had to. A word from Scott and the family that had helped him would be spared. But Pedro knew it wouldn’t happen. He wished that he had never come to Italy. He should never have left Peru.

The first soldier appeared right in front of him. He had already unbuckled his revolver and now he raised it, aiming at Giovanni. One boy was to be captured, the other to be killed. He knew which was which.

Pedro closed his eyes.

The ground began to shake. It was so sudden, so violent that it was as if the whole world had been seized in a giant hand and thrown down like a tennis ball. All the lines broke up; the edges of the walls, the doors, the windows, the streets. At the same time there was an explosion like nothing Pedro had ever heard before. It was impossibly loud. And it wasn’t stopping. It just went on and on, echoing through the city, tearing through the sky, hammering at the buildings as if determined to bring them down. The shaking was becoming more violent by the second. Pedro felt like his eyeballs were being pulled out of his skull. He was twisting and spinning, out of control. He could no longer feel the ground beneath his feet. Then, in an instant, the sky turned from black to red and Pedro finally understood.

Scott had warned him.

The volcano was erupting.

The soldier had gone. Maybe he had turned and run. Maybe he had fallen. But none of the men from the Castel Nuovo was going to have any interest in the boys. Not now. Pedro looked up and saw a blaze of brilliant red cutting across the sky like an enormous firework. There was a hideous rumbling and more explosions. Balls of flame appeared above the rooftops like falling comets, except that these were soaring upwards, fired into the darkness. At the far end of the alley – it was where they had come from just moments before – a five-storey building with flats and a shop underneath began to tear itself apart, one brick at a time. One after another the windows shattered. Then the whole thing collapsed sideways and came shuddering down, great chunks of wall and shards of glass smashing into the crowds of people who were still below. More flames sprang out of the ground. The whole sky was on fire. The noise was deafening. Thousands of people were screaming but Pedro couldn’t hear them.

Where was Giovanni? Pedro staggered around in a circle and found him, his suitcase gone, his arms hanging limp by his side. For a second the two of them were close together and Giovanni shouted something, but Pedro couldn’t understand him. It didn’t matter. There was only one place they could go.

The harbour.

Vesuvius was already spitting poisonous gases, ash and pumice into the air. A column of smoke had risen up, fifteen kilometres high, the top of it branching out so that it resembled a massive palm tree. Pedro glanced at it and remembered it at once. It was the same tree that he had seen in the dreamworld, the same size and colour. A river of lava, burning at nine hundred degrees Celsius, was edging forward, flowing slowly but inexorably towards the city. Everything it touched disintegrated. Trees vanished as if they were matchsticks, flaming up as they were caught in the conflagration. The earthquake could be felt eight hundred kilometres away. The sky was on fire. And this was just the beginning. Worse was to come.

Pedro and Giovanni were right in the middle of it. Together they set off, staggering, running, fighting their way through the screaming crowds, trying to reach the sea.

The Boeing 747 had already taxied to the end of the runway when the eruption began. Scott was sitting with his seatbelt fastened, his face pressed against the window.

“You should look out, Jonas,” he said. “It’s quite a view.”

“We should have left an hour ago,” Jonas rasped.

“I’m glad we didn’t. This is something I wouldn’t want to miss.”

The interior of the plane had been converted into a single room that ran almost half its length and it was absurdly luxurious. There were leather sofas, a dining-room table, an open-plan kitchen, a gym, a cinema screen, a bar and even an entertainment area with computer consoles and miniature football. Two doors led to full-sized bedrooms and there were also en suite bathrooms with sunken baths, showers and saunas. Scott had read about Russian billionaires who had planes like this, complete with gold taps and caviar in the fridge, but he had never dreamt he would fly in one. He had been excited from the moment he had climbed on board.

Jonas Mortlake was not in such a good mood. He was sitting in an armchair, his face pale, thinking how much pleasure it would give him to murder Scott. Of course, the chairman wouldn’t allow it. These children had to be kept alive. But circumstances had changed. The world was ending anyway and, as the chairman had told him in New York, there was little chance that he would survive. Maybe, just maybe, he would disobey orders and take matters into his own hands.

Those hands were currently resting on the table in front of him. Jonas hadn’t had time to get his little finger bandaged before they left for the airport, so he had wrapped it in a silk scarf. He had swallowed two paracetamol and was sipping a large whisky to deaden the pain. Scott hadn’t referred to the incident again. It was as if he had forgotten it. But Jonas would never forget. One way or another, he would have his revenge.

There was another explosion outside and the whole plane shook, the metal joints straining against each other. All the windows were burning red. Scott, sitting opposite him next to a window, let out an exultant whoop, but Jonas scowled. Couldn’t the boy see the danger they were in? They had to fly through this mess. If particles of soot or molten glass got sucked into the turbines, the plane would fall out of the sky. Why, why, why hadn’t they left earlier? Jonas had been completely in control when he had left for Naples but now he felt he had lost everything.

The pilot had finished his on-board checks and dimmed the cabin lights. Not that there was any need to. It was just habit. Nor did he have to wait for permission to fly. This was the only plane leaving Naples Airport. After today, Naples Airport would no longer exist. Jonas heard the engines being revved and a moment later they were shooting down the runway, the whole fuselage trembling, the wheels bumping over the potholes. There was a moment when he wondered if they would get off the ground. The smoke and the flames seemed to be everywhere, closing in on them from all sides. Was it his imagination or had the temperature risen inside the cabin? They were being cooked alive! His breath caught in his throat and he reached out with his good hand and held onto the edge of his seat. Without knowing it, he had closed his eyes. He was squeezing the whisky glass so hard he was sure it would crack.

But then they were up. He felt the wheels retract and leant back in his chair as they slanted up into the sky. There were two more huge explosions. The plane was almost torn apart, thrown madly from side to side, the walls creaking. Some of the compartments had been thrown open. Books and DVDs tumbled to the ground.

“Did you see that?” Scott howled.

Jonas opened his eyes. Everything was black and red. Clouds of ash folded in on them like giant fists. The whole sky was blazing. Jonas moaned softly. He wanted to scream.

But they didn’t crash. Ninety seconds later they had risen above the swirling smoke, the clouds spinning in circles … the hideous eye of the storm. The worst of the eruption was already behind them. Looking ahead, he could see patches of sky that were almost clear. Jonas stared out of the window and imagined the city he had just left behind. He wondered how many people would die tonight. Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? Somehow it didn’t matter when you got to numbers like that. You stopped thinking about them as human beings. With enough zeroes on the end, they just became ants.

The pilot turned the plane in a gentle arc. The cabin lights came back on again. The Boeing 747 began its journey south.

Black smoke, like oil, was oozing out of the crater, spreading outwards, swallowing up the light. Ash was pouring down, as thick as snow. It was as if the air was being sucked away, but what little remained stank of sulphur. And still the flames were spreading. The city was on fire. The sun had disappeared and the whole world had turned red.

Somehow Pedro and Giovanni had made it to the harbour, pushing their way through the crowds of people who had lost any semblance of sanity, screaming and running in every direction, fighting with each other, staggering blindly from street corner to street corner. Some had given up, falling to their knees on the pavements, praying for salvation while others stampeded over them. Children, separated from their parents, ran around in hopeless circles. Babies had been left, abandoned in prams.

Whole sections of the city had disappeared in flames and darkness. Vesuvius was shooting at it, like some monstrous fairground game, firing huge fireballs that plummeted down, one after another. The Castel Nuovo itself had been hit. One of the towers was wrecked and the rest of the building was on fire, flames spitting out of the windows. Further to the north, the Duomo, the main cathedral of Naples, which had stood over the city since the thirteenth century, had almost gone. More than a thousand people, believing even now that God would protect them from the volcano, had taken refuge inside moments before it had been hit by one of the blazing missiles. They were pouring out again, surrounded by smoke and broken stone.

The harbour was a nightmare of fire and smoke, of choking gases and water that was already being whipped into a frenzy. Most of the boats that could sail had already left, and had so many people crowded onto the decks that they could barely stay afloat. There were people fighting on the quays, flailing and screaming at each other, or standing there with hands outstretched, begging for a passage out. But the boat owners were forcing them back. They were on the decks, lashing out with boathooks and oars while the other crew members struggled with ropes and sails, trying to get out into open water before it was too late. As Pedro skidded to a halt, gasping for breath in the poisonous atmosphere, he felt another huge shockwave travel under his feet and had to cling to Giovanni for support. The two boys watched in disbelief as the entire quay, a giant slab of cement, suddenly tilted as if trying to set sail itself. If they had been any closer, they would have been killed. As it was, dozens of people were thrown into the foaming sea. They had no chance. There were ships all around them, rising up and crashing down. Many of them were crushed. The rest must have drowned.

Giovanni looked around him, his hair being whipped by the wind, his eyes filled with panic. “Angelo…” He shouted out a sentence but most of it was lost in the din.

Pedro wondered if they should have come here. At least half the city seemed to have had the same idea. A lot of the boats had already gone. For an insane moment he was reminded of a funfair he had once seen in Lima. He had only been about nine or ten years old and he had been fascinated by the dodgem cars, so many of them packed into such a tight space. The harbour looked the same … only without the lights and music. It was a hellish scene of destruction as the huge vessels smashed into each other, the water black and frenzied below.

“There!” Giovanni pointed and shouted out.

Miraculously, his uncle’s boat was still there, waiting for them. Perhaps it had been overlooked by the rest of the crowd because it was so small and looked so fragile; a seven-metre fishing boat with two sails and a single cabin. It was called
Medusa
, the name painted in gold letters on blue. There were three men on board. Two of them were desperately clinging to the ropes that kept them moored to the quay. The third, a dark, bearded man, soaked to the skin, was searching for them.

“Angelo!” Giovanni called.

The man didn’t hear but saw them a moment later as they ran forward, following the edge of the quay. Suddenly there were fewer people around them. Pedro leapt over a jagged crack in the concrete. It hadn’t been there seconds before. The entire harbour was breaking up, the pieces tumbling into the sea. The air was thicker than ever. Every breath was an effort. His throat and lungs felt scalded.

The boat was heaving around as if it were a living animal and Pedro wondered how it could possibly sail out of here. The wind was too strong, coming at them in short, vicious punches. The sails were writhing, trying to tear themselves free of the masts. But as he clambered aboard, allowing Angelo to haul him off the quay with Giovanni right behind him, he heard a metallic cough and a rattle and knew that incredibly, the
Medusa
still had a working engine and that somehow the men had saved enough fuel for this journey.

They were instantly away, a void opening up between them and the harbour’s edge. Pedro lost his footing and sprawled on the deck. As he looked back, he saw a man and two women leap towards them, hoping to reach the last sailing boat to leave. But they were already too far away. All three of them fell into the black, churning water. Pedro didn’t see any of them come back up.

There was a roar like the end of the world, like the universe splitting in two. A twisting column of flame blasted out of the top of Vesuvius, rising straight up into the sky. As the
Medusa
fought its way out of the harbour, blazing balls of lava rained down, hitting the water all around them, and suddenly they were surrounded by a dense forest of steam. Pedro saw a bigger sailing ship about twenty metres away. It was impossible to say how many people were on board. Every inch of the deck was crowded. But as he watched, it was hit by one of the lava balls, exploding instantly into flames and sinking even as it burned. Two other boats had been trying to get out of the way and crashed into each other, their masts and sails becoming hopelessly entangled. More people, tiny figures, fell into the water. It was all madness. Everything was being destroyed.