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every step a treacherous business. He paused to wipe his brow and to survey the scene below.
Rayley had managed to get Adelaide out of the group and the two now sat apart from the others, in
chairs that he must have hastily pulled inside the folds of a supply tent. They were positioned in a
literal tete-e-tete, their foreheads nearly touching as they strained towards each other.
Hurry it up, Abrams, Trevor thought. Miss Hoffman shall be back from wherever she
has gone soon enough and then your interview with Adelaide will abruptly end.
And just with that thought, Trevor’s foot moved. It skidded from beneath him but he
managed to right himself, although the task required him to flap his arms in a ludicrous manner. But
just as he regained his footing, he slipped again and he realized, to his horror, that it was not that he
was slipping…The entire hill was in motion. He felt the vibration before he heard it, but then, in an
instant, a shout rose up from the people above him and Trevor saw one of the school girls sliding
toward him, bouncing through the rubble on her bum and shrieking at a volume that could awaken the
dead.
They were caught in a rockslide.
He reached for the schoolgirl to slow her descent – she looked rather like a child
sledding without a sled – and in the process once again lost his own footing. The two of them tumbled
inelegantly down the hill, Trevor struggling to shield the girl and absorb the worst of the jolts of the
descent. He was dimly aware that they were not the only ones in motion…at least a half dozen
people had been upended to some degree and were shouting and screaming as they skidded to a dusty
halt.
Then…a moment of silence. Trevor, lying flat on his back with the child clutched to his
chest, looked into the bright blue sky and risked an exhalation. Had it stopped? Were they safe?
A second wave of shrieking, more insistent than the first, answered those hopeful
questions in the negative. Trevor cautiously craned his neck and looked up the hill.
The rocks were no longer sliding, this he could see. The people who had been carried
with them were perched in their various positions along the dusty slope. But a new challenge was
upon them in the form of a wasp nest which had evidently been unearthed in the slide. A swarm of
creatures poured out, swirling in the reddish dust before pausing to taste the flesh of a pair of orphans
who had come to rest near them.
Gently pushing the wailing girl aside, Trevor strained to see the rest of the scene.
People from the tents were streaming out to go to the aid of those caught in the rockslide, while a few
others were picking their way down from higher points on the hill. Tom had emerged from one of the
dining tents with a knife in one hand and a tablecloth in the other. The logic of these items became
apparent the moment he reached the girls who had been stung, for he slashed their clothing from them
with a few well placed turns of his knife, thus releasing the wasps which had been caught within their
pinafores. The winged tormenters flew free as he swiftly draped the tablecloth around both girls,
who were clinging together in their misery.
Rayley was suddenly looming over Trevor saying “Are you all right, man?”
Trevor nodded shakily, his eyes and mouth both so full of dust that he did not trust his
tongue to speak.
“I think so,” he finally managed. “See to the child.”
Rayley lifted the girl from Trevor’s chest and carried her down to the flat where, under
shouted orders from Tom, a bit of a field hospital was being established beneath the tent awnings.
Emma and Geraldine had evidently cleared one of the tables of its dishes and were beginning to aid
the victims as they were being carried or otherwise assisted down the hill. Trevor sat up and