Chapter 5

Aston looked at the devastation around him. As he sat in silence at the south edge of the marshalling yard, he could hear a faint voice, crying out for help. He jumped down and started following the sound of the faint voice. As drew closer to the area the service shops had been, he heard several more voices calling now. He couldn’t see anything, the ground was blasted flat. It was then he understood that the voice was coming from below ground. He yelled to them to hang on. He was going to go and get tools so he could start digging them out. Aston ran back to the wagon and pulled out a shovel, pick and mattock. He paused and grabbed the wheelbarrow parts as well to load dirt and debris to move it away from the spot he would be working on. He also grabbed most of his spare rope and a dozen wood pegs that he would use to hold the awning in place.

He could make out the outlines of the buildings and where the voices were coming from. I every case they was under the foundations. He pegged and roped each build and began digging where he could see a trapdoor once was. It took an hour of hard digging before he broke into the first chamber. The room was pitch-black. He could smell human waste as well. The occupant had lost control in their terror. He called out to anybody that was in the chambers below this building. He heard scuffling and soon a dirty hand appeared in the faint light from above. He grabbed it and pulled it towards him. The hand belonged to a girl, she shrieked in terror when he grabbed and pulled her to him. She fought him for a second then realized that somebody had dug her out. Without a word, he pulled her up and out of the hole he had dug. Once she was clear, she just lay in the afternoon light, gasping for air and crying.

“Girl, is there anybody else in the hole?” he asked her. At first, she ignored him. After he reached up and shook her to get her attention, she understood what he wanted to know. She shook her head in the negative. “Good. I need to start digging the next basement out. Can you help,” he asked her. She looked around, lost, not believing the destruction around her. She sank into herself, curled in a ball, and started to cry. Aston knew he didn’t have time to help her get over the shock, so he went to the next barked section and quickly found the debris-covered trapdoor. This one was intact and not filled with dirt and stone.

When he was able to pry it up, two girls and an injured man crawled out. “Thanks mister,” he said. He looked more closely at Aston and asked, “Didn’t you leave this morning?”

“Yes. I was about an hour out when the coal silo went up. I turned around to come back and help if I could.” Aston looked around, asked if they could help in rescuing the others that had been trapped underground. The man nodded and he had the girls move to the next building in line to begin digging out the trapdoor.

Aston moved one lot further down where he could hear a girl faintly crying for help. He counted the foundations and realized this had been the barbershop. He found the door to the cellar, but it was caved in with dirt, stone, and wood packed down into it. It had been open when the blast had occurred, that was the only reason he could come up with for the amount of debris pushed down into the opening. He began prying the material loose and soon was down to softer dirt. Now he had to be careful as the material of the foundation had broken and could fall in on him as he dug into the softer soil. He was able to make short work of the loose material with the shovel and soon had an opening to the basement. He immediately saw a dirt-smudged face looking up at him from the darkness. He smiled when he saw it was his favorite barber. Reaching down, he helped her out of the hole, being careful not to cause further injury to her. He could tell she was hurt from the cuts on her arms and face. A few seconds later, he helped another girl out of the hole. She was in worse shape by the way she was holding her left arm. “Anybody else in there,” he asked.

“No Aston, just the two of us.” She looked around at the devastation and asked, “What happened up here?” She winced when she jerked her arm by accident.

“The coal bin blew. They let the dust build-up and a spark set it off, at least that’s what I think happened.” Aston was already working on the floor of what used to be the laundry. He got that open and called out for any survivors. He heard a faint moan from deeper inside. He carefully lowered himself down and saw a boy trapped by a collapsed support. He was able to move it enough to get the boy loose and handed him up to the others.

The next foundation was the bathhouse. Water was seeping up from the broken pipes in the ground and he feared the basement was already being flooded. He dug in and quickly hit thick mud. When he broke through, scalding hot water sprayed up at him. He scrambled back as fast as he could but still took a few burns from the hot water. He fell back, holding his left cheek that had taken the brunt of the steaming waters spray. He managed to roll away from the hole as the water began to rise from the hole and run out across the ground towards the river.

Scrambling to his feet, he staggered over to the others he had rescued. The girls from the barbershop had seen what happened and helped him to his wagon. He opened the first-aid box and pulled out a jar that he knew had what would help him. It was a greenish colored burn cooling jell from a soft plant that could ease burns. He wiped it over the scalded parts of his face and hands. This helped him clear his head right away once the pain was reduced.

He looked at the gathered people and asked, “Is there a valve or something that can close the water off?”

The lone man replied, “There is, or more likely was one a few blocks over from the coal bin. I don’t see any buildings over that way now, except a few burning.”

“Well, if you’re up to a walk, head over that way and see if anything survived that can cut the flow. This place will be flooded by the hot water soon if it can’t be stopped.” Aston looked at the girls, “I guess you are all out of work for the time being.”

The girl that was his favorite from the barbershop spoke up, “Actually, we all work under contract for the city. As weird as it may seem, the city hired all of us to do what we did, so we will all just be re-assigned once things settle down.” All the girls smiled and nodded. “Now, we just have to find a new place to stay until then. This yard is done for a while.”

A few minutes later the man returned, “The valve house is gone. The flooding will be worse up that way. The holding cistern has cracked and may not hold up much longer.” He brushed some dirt on his shirt, smearing it worse than it already was. “The damage is bad Aston, Riversbend will not be sending caravans out anytime soon. In fact, we may be asking other cities for help in rebuilding.”

Aston decided he had to take a look at where the coal bin had been. Now there was only a large crater. He guessed it to be thirty feet deep and about seventy across. Several water pipes and a collapsed sewer tunnel could be made out in the side. The water from one pipe was steaming, the other was not so must have been a cold water line. All the buildings that had been around the bin were gone, blown completely apart, killing everybody in them. The whore house he had visited a few times was one of those. He decided he had seen enough and returned to his wagon where survivors had gathered. He told them what he had seen and then discussed what could be done to shut the water off.

As they talked, several city guards and dock workers walked up from the northern half of the city. The leader asked who was in charge, and how did they survive. “All of us except Aston here, we were in the basements getting material and supplies,” said the man. “Aston heard us and dug us out.”

Who are you, and what did you do,” he looked at Aston, “And how did you survive?”

“I’m Gavin Welton. I was in charge of the yard shops,” said the lone man.

“Aston Grey, I had already been on the road for a few miles when the blast happened. I turned around and came back to see what I could do to help,” said Aston

“That is all well and good, but how did you find them?” he asked.

“I could hear them calling for help. I realized they were underground, so I used the tools from my wagon and began digging out the basement doors.” Aston looked around the destroyed yard before going on. “These are the only ones I found. If anybody else was down there, they have been boiled alive by the water leaks by now.”

Now Gavin spoke up, “We have a bigger problem, the valves that control the hot and cold water for the southern half of the city have been destroyed, locking the mains open. The main hot water cistern has a crack in it and could fail at any time if a repair crew isn’t summoned to fix it very soon.”

The leader of the search party looked around and seemed to really see the destruction for the first time. “If that cistern fails, we could lose the rest of the southern half of the city to a boiling flood.” He looked in the direction that the failing water tank sat. “I don’t think we can get a crew down here in time to do any good. I need to have word sent to the main split up in the hills to have it cut off from there.” He pointed at one of his men who spun his horse, taking off at a full gallop.

A minute later, they all heard a loud cracking sound that was followed by the sound of rushing water. Aston spun and saw a steam cloud rolling in their general direction. “Everybody, run for higher ground!” he shouted. He ran to his wagon, threw the tools in the back to be dealt with later. The girls had followed him and climbed into the back, grabbing the sides to hold on.

Aston snapped the reins and shouted at the horses to go, they started out slow until he snapped the whip over their heads. These horses had been trained and knew if he had the whip out, it meant, run, run like hell. They took off to a full gallop. Aston knew they wouldn’t be able to go far or long at this pace, but he hoped they could get clear of the deadly flood. Aston was to busy to look back, but the girls were not.

What they saw would haunt them for the rest of their days. A wave of boiling water was rushing across the ground. It stirred up the dirt and rubble into a churning grinding slurry of mud. In it, they could see entire trees that had been blown over. They could also see bodies of horses, cattle, as well as bodies of people being washed down the slope to the river by the steaming flood. They passed an intersection and saw a wash of steaming water coming towards them from higher up. The wagon cleared the intersection and was able to continue, bouncing and rattling on the cobble roads. Aston held on as the horses had been turning to and fro to get around collapsed walls and caved in road sections. They cleared the worst of the blasted area around the coal bin and soon began seeing other survivors of the blast. They made it past the last of the fires and Aston reined in to rest his team.