The Ice House Read Online Free PDF Page A

house lift at one end, then explode outwards and up, debris showering into the sky. There was a massive crack echoing off the valley sides. He dropped to one knee and watched a coiling fireball burst upwards in a cloud of black smoke. In an instant it was subsiding into a high column of swirling dust. He could hear the noise of alarms going off, tiles and bricks raining over the hillside.
     

 
    5
    Rebecca still had the headphones in when she saw the flash, above the rocks right in front of her. She was about seventy metres from the house, at the curve in the road, with a steep wedge of land between herself and the drop down to their plot – the house itself was out of sight. She stopped immediately, then a split second later heard the bang, even above the noise of the music. She pulled the earphones out, let her school bag slip off her shoulder to the ground. Tiny bits of stone started to drop all around her. Some pieces struck her head. She could hear alarms, see smoke rising into the air.
    Without thinking, she started to run, coming round the bend to a cloud of dust, still billowing outwards. Her house was somewhere behind it. She had no idea what was happening but her first thought was that a car had come off the road and crashed down there – the Italian’s car, maybe, if he had one. In town she had once seen a car crashed into the wall of a building, on fire – there had been a lot of smoke. She kept running, going towards the smoke and dust, flapping her arms in front of her to clear it.
    She was about fifty metres down their driveway before she could see a corner of the house. There was a car buried in a wall that had collapsed there, it looked all white with dust, she couldn’t tell what kind of car it was. It wasn’t her mother’s, it might be her dad’s. But her dad couldn’t have crashed here, because he hadn’t passed her on the road, and he wouldn’t be here already – her mother had told her that he would come back at the normal time. The house alarm was going off, very loud, and something was on fire, crackling behind the broken front wall; she could smell the burning, really sharp in her nostrils, but she couldn’t see what it was. There was glass all over the road – her feet were crunching on it. The car alarm was shrieking too, on and off.
    A wind stirred the smoke and she saw more of the house, all of the roof caved in, bricks and tiles all over, and something that looked like tiny shreds of paper, floating through the air. The smoke was coming out of the hole where the roof had been. That was her house. She stood mouth open, staring at it.
    Now she saw the damage she thought it must have been a gas leak. What else could it be? They had two big, metal gas ­cylinders in the kitchen. She thought, I have to get to my bedroom, get my things out. She wasn’t running any more, just walking slowly, in a daze.
    She was about thirty metres from it, past the gateposts, in the yard where the cars were normally parked, when she heard someone shouting, and thought it must be someone inside the house. She kept going, feeling frightened, then realised it was coming from behind her – someone shouting out at her, telling her to stop.
    She turned to see a man coming down the hill towards her, running. He was carrying a backpack, and something long, shouting at her very loud. She had never seen him before. He was very tall, with blond hair and was wearing some kind of plastic suit or overall – a crinkly thing like she had seen the police wear at crime scenes on TV programmes, except his was black and the police suits were always white. There was a thing like a gas mask hanging around his neck. Still, she thought he must be police. He was running very fast, so he reached her before any other options could occur to her.
    ‘Stay there,’ he panted, in English, when he got beside her. ‘Don’t go further.’ He wasn’t looking at her, but over her, at the house. For a moment he was very out of breath.