He caught hold of my shoulders and shook me. ‘Pull yourself together,’ he snapped. ‘If we don’t find a way round we’ve had it. That lava flow behind us will push its way through Santo Francisco. Then we’ll find ourselves driven into a smaller and smaller area. We’ll be slowly burned up. We got to find a way through.’
‘All right,’ I said.
‘That’s better.’ He turned to the others, still huddled on the cart. ‘You wait here. We’ll be back soon.’ They looked like refugees, a cartload of derelict humanity fleeing before the wreck of war. How many times had I see them — on the roads in France, in Germany, here in Italy? Only they weren’t fleeing from war. I glanced back again at the dim, smoking ruins of Santo Francisco and the mountain hanging over it, spilling death out of its sides, belching it into the sunless air, and I found myself thinking again of the end of Sodom and Gomorrah.
‘Come on,’ Hacket said.
Hilda smiled at me. ‘Good luck!’ she said.
I turned then with sudden, violent determination. I had to find a way through. There just had to be a way. Seeing her sitting there, calm and confident in me, the little bambino asleep in her arms, I felt there had to be a future. I couldn’t let her die up here in this world of utter desolation. If I had to tear a way through the lava with my bare hands I’d got to break a way through into the future for her and her father.
We went down towards the lava, found a track that ran to the left and started along it. Then Hacket stopped and I saw there was a man coming towards us. He wore no jacket and his shirt and trousers were burnt and torn. ‘You speak Italian, don’t you?’ Hacket said. ‘Find out whether there’s a way through.’
I limped forward. ‘Can we get through?’ I asked him.
The man stopped. He stood staring at me for a moment and then came running towards us. Something about the stockiness of his build and the square set of his ash-caked jaw seemed familiar. ‘It’s Farrell, isn’t it?’ he asked in English.
‘Yes, but—’ And then I knew who it was. ‘Reece!’