Outback Exodus Read Online Free Page A

to bark and I decide that I have to expose myself to whoever is outside and find out what is going on. I quietly open the flap up and step out into the cool night air. Glancing left and right trying to detect movement in the darkness.
    Over to the left I see five people walking towards our tent and they are carrying bundles in their arms. I can make out the figures of three men and two women and the bundles carried by four of the adults are small children wrapped in blankets and the other young male is carrying food and water for them. My eyes blink once or twice and then I recognise one of the figures as my friend Krystal, her partner Raymond, and their children Steve, Sandy and Thomas. With them are Paul and Sandra with little David and Carol. Friends, good friends and they have survived. My heart overflows and tears are running down my face as I run to help them with the children and hug and hold my friends. We are a bigger band now, but we are together and stronger for it.
    Krystal and I nursed together many years ago and she was up at the hospital and had heard that there was a retired nurse from John Creek arrived with others today and took a chance on it being me. Raymond and Rhys are old friends who went to school together and although their lives had taken different tracks had always kept in touch. Krystal’s friends Paul and Sandra and their children had also survived the earthquake as both families had been camping down at the lake near Smithtown and had been sheltered by canvas, had they been at home it is doubtful that anyone would have survived as both houses were totally destroyed and one had been consumed by the fire that had raged through the western quarter of the town.
    Our band of adults now consists of two nurses, a shop keeper, Raymond who is a mechanic, Paul is an engineer and Sandra is a designer of beautiful clothes. The children, eight in all now, range in age from 14 year old Thomas down to tiny six month old Caren. Out of the darkness Raymond’s dog, Jet, appears and a great amount of tail sniffing and wagging starts among the dogs. A reunion is soon underway and stories of survival are swapped and questions asked and answered as we find out what has happened to other friends, family and people in the business community. The fate of many of our friends is uncertain, but then we expected that from the damage we have seen and we sadly conclude that many of our friends just did not make it out of their homes as the earthquake struck.
    We shuffle around the children in the ten t and settle them for the night. The adults huddle outside the tent and the talking and comparing of experiences continues. We tell of the earthquake and the fear that we felt, the aftermath and our first impressions of the devastation. Then the tears come to us all as we talk about the searches we made through the rubble of our towns and the lost friends and family and the loss of our lives as we knew them. This night is for sharing our sorrows, talking through our grief and for building bonds within our group. Those bonds will be strong, lifelong and will carry us into the uncertain future that is now such a part of our world.

Chapter 10
     
    As we talk the stars and moon wheel across the sky and the first streaks of daylight appear on the horizon. A new day begins amongst the devastation wreaked by the earthquake and what it will bring is a mystery and one that will be solved in the coming hours. We sit on the hill top and watch as the first rays of the rising sun pick out the rubble piles that were once homes and shops; we watch the dust rising along the sunbeams. Smoke still hovers in parts of the town, less now as the fire has consumed most of the combustible materials and smoulders in small areas. Starving pets wander in and out of the wreckage of homes looking for the families who have always fed them and not understanding where they have gone or why. The sight of all of this silences the conversation and we just sit