400 Minutes of Danger Read online

  ‘Hey!’ Daniel yelled. ‘Are you OK?’

  The man didn’t react. Blood trickled from his nose.

  28:15 Breathing heavily, Daniel reached for his phone to call emergency services, but he had left it in his pigeonhole upstairs.

  A siren started wailing. This whole area was monitored by cameras—someone must have seen what had happened. Hopefully the shopping centre’s security team had already called an ambulance.

  That didn’t mean they would get here in time, though. Daniel could smell petrol, and the truck was radiating heat. Neither he nor the driver was safe.

  Daniel tried to push the windscreen out of the frame so he could drag the driver out of the truck cab. But it was too solid. When he kicked the glass, he had expected it to shatter, but his foot just bounced off.

  26:50 He circled around to the underside of the truck. The heat was worse around here, but it was the only side he could climb. He stood on the inside of the driver’s side front wheel and stretched up to grab the one above. The rubber was still warm from the road, but at least it had stopped spinning. Daniel hauled himself up onto the passenger’s side of the cabin and reached for the door.

  25:30 Smash! Another brick splintered on the floor. Daniel looked up in time to see a crack grow along the mortar. Dust rained down on his head. The lights fizzled out, blanketing the loading dock in shadow.

  The truck crash had destabilised the loading dock. The ceiling was caving in. If one of those bricks hit him, he was dead.

  24:45 Wondering how his day had gone so wrong so quickly, Daniel climbed down into the truck’s cabin and closed the door above him. It smelled like air freshener and sweat. He put one foot on the gear stick, which wobbled but took his weight. He climbed down, using the passenger seat for handholds, and soon he was crouched on the inside of the driver’s door.

  Daniel wasn’t a doctor, but it didn’t look like the driver had broken anything, except possibly his nose. Once he recovered from the seizure, he would probably be OK—assuming Daniel could get him out of here before the ceiling collapsed on top of them.

  24:00 The seatbelt was stretched tight across the driver’s chest. Daniel fiddled around until he found the buckle and released it. The driver flopped down against the door.

  A brick hit the passenger window above Daniel’s head. The glass cracked but didn’t break. He doubted that he would be so lucky twice.

  23:30 Daniel tried to lift the driver, but he was too heavy. There was no way Daniel would be able to climb back up out of the cabin while carrying him. He popped open the glove compartment, looking for something he could use.

  A map, a GPS device and a notepad all tumbled onto his head. He ducked out of the way just in time to avoid a falling thermos. The metal lid chipped the driver’s window beneath Daniel’s feet, which gave him an idea.

  He picked up the flask and slammed it against the already splintered windscreen. The glass broke into two big chunks and popped out of the frame. Daniel crawled through the gap and heaved the unconscious driver out of the cabin.

  22:25 A huge chunk of the ceiling fell and smashed against the back of the truck. A wheel snapped off the axle and rolled away across the loading dock. The smell of petrol became thicker. The fumes were making Daniel dizzy. The heat was getting stronger. He couldn’t actually see any flames, but he was worried the fuel tank might explode.

  Daniel had thought he would be able to lift the driver onto his shoulders, but it was impossible. Even with the adrenaline flooding his system, the driver was too heavy.

  21:10 The ceiling was coming down all around them in huge blocks. The lifts and the stairwell were all the way over on the other side of the dock—too far. The back doors to all the shops were locked. There was nowhere to take shelter …

  Except maybe inside the crusher.

  Daniel stared at the steel walls and the massive door. They looked strong—the impact with the out-of-control truck had hardly left a dent—but would the crusher withstand all the falling concrete?

  20:20 He had to hope so. He was out of other options.

  19:15 Daniel grabbed the driver’s wrists and dragged him across the concrete floor to the crusher. He opened the gate and, with the last of his strength, lifted the man and pushed him through the gap. Then he scrambled up after the driver and landed on the soft bed of cardboard inside.

  Boom! The truck’s fuel tank exploded like a grenade. Daniel hauled the gate closed just in time—a cascade of flying bricks bounced off the steel, filling the crusher with dust and gravel. With a mighty crash, the last of the ceiling came down, leaving dents in the steel above Daniel’s head.

  Silence fell.

  18:10 Daniel sneezed some grit out of his lungs and peered out through the mesh of the gate. There was so much dust and smoke in the air that he couldn’t see anything.

  The inside of the crusher was almost pitch black. The only illumination came from a small power light next to the door, which gave everything a dim red glow.

  ‘I think we’re OK.’ He let out a shaky breath.

  The driver didn’t respond. Daniel pressed two fingers to the man’s throat. A pulse. He was alive, but still unconscious. As Daniel’s ears adjusted to the silence he could hear him breathing.

  This made him wonder about the smoke. Every breath put more deadly toxins into their lungs. How long before someone came to put out the fire?

  17:40 Nothing else seemed to be falling from the ceiling. Maybe they could leave. Daniel tried to push the gate open, but it wouldn’t budge. The flying bricks had moved the bolt.

  With growing panic, Daniel rattled the gate like an angry chimp. It wouldn’t move at all.

  How much time would it take for someone to dig them out? At least fifteen minutes, surely. Maybe twenty, or thirty. Would they last that long?

  17:05 Daniel had to get help, and quickly. He felt his trousers for his phone—and then remembered that he still didn’t have it.

  ‘Uunnhh.’ A groan.

  ‘You’re awake,’ Daniel said. He touched the driver’s shoulder. ‘Are you OK?’

  16:30 The driver didn’t respond.

  ‘Don’t panic,’ Daniel told him. ‘I’m sure someone’s coming for us. We’ll be fine.’

  Another groan. But there was no change in the driver’s expression. He looked unconscious. The sound had come from somewhere else.

  16:10 Daniel remembered the scuffling he’d heard before the truck showed up. Maybe someone was in here, buried under the rubbish. ‘Hello?’ Daniel called.

  Silence.

  Daniel dug through the layers of cardboard. Dust tickled his nose and eyes. Scrunched up balls of paper bounced around him.

  15:45 And then he saw it, sticking out of the garbage—a finger.

  Daniel pushed some more rubbish aside. The finger was attached to a hand with a missing ring finger. The knuckle ended in a smooth stump. Daniel kept digging. Soon he had uncovered a body.

  15:15 The red glow from the power light was just bright enough for him to tell that the woman was tall, with slip-on shoes and a heavy overcoat. Her hair was grey, or perhaps blonde. She lay face down on the cardboard. Daniel took her hand. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked.

  She groaned again. Something stuck out of the back of her neck—a small metal cylinder with feathers sticking out the end. It looked to Daniel like a dart.

  Someone had shot this woman. Drugged her. Who was she? How had she ended up here?

  Daniel couldn’t roll her over with the poison dart in her neck. Very, very carefully, he plucked it out. It was surprisingly light—no heavier than a thick pencil. He stabbed it into a flattened box so there was no risk of pricking himself with it, and then rolled the woman over.

  14:40 ‘What happened?’ she whispered. Her voice was rough, as though she hadn’t spoken in a long time.

  ‘The ceiling fell down,’ Daniel said.

  ‘What ceiling? Where am I? Who are you?’

  Daniel ran his fingers through his hair, unsure where to
begin.

  Her last question was the easiest to answer. ‘I’m Daniel,’ he began. ‘We’re, uh … stuck. In a rubbish compactor. Under a shopping centre.’

  14:20 The woman sat up, and sniffed. ‘Is something burning?’

  ‘A truck. The driver had a fit and crashed it.’ Daniel gestured at the driver. ‘Lucky he did, otherwise I wouldn’t have found you.’

  ‘So, we’re trapped in a compactor filled with flammable materials, with a burning truck right outside the door. Correct?’

  13:55 Daniel nodded.

  The woman didn’t look frightened. Whoever she was, she was no stranger to dangerous situations.

  ‘We need to get that gate open,’ she said. ‘Is it stuck?’

  ‘Locked, I think.’ Daniel scrambled back over to the gate. ‘There’s a bolt.’

  ‘And you can’t reach it?’

  13:15 Daniel jammed his fingers through the bars. He could feel various metallic shapes, but none that moved. ‘I can’t quite—’

  Something beeped.

  He and the woman looked at each other.

  ‘What was that?’ she asked.

  No, no, no, Daniel thought.

  12:50 There was a humming from beneath their feet.

  ‘I think I just switched it on,’ he whispered.

  The rubbish started to slide around him. The conveyor belt under the cardboard was dragging it away from the door. Hydraulic pistons whined. Paper rustled.

  ‘Grab onto something!’ the woman yelled.

  12:20 Daniel gripped the gate and held on tight. The woman did the same.

  The crusher was divided into two halves. One half was where the rubbish was loaded in. The other half was where the rubbish was flattened, turned into bales and removed. As long as they stayed in the loading half, they would be fine.

  This would be easy if it was just the two of them. But the unconscious driver was being dragged away with the rubbish. A massive steel plate was waiting to squash him.

  12:00 Daniel let go of the door and waded into the moving river of rubbish. Just as the driver’s ankles entered the danger, Daniel grabbed his wrists and pulled. The man slid easily over the cardboard.

  But walking back towards the door was like walking uphill during a landslide. The rubbish kept slipping away under Daniel’s feet.

  11:25 ‘Help me!’ he yelled.

  The woman let go of the door with one hand and reached out for Daniel with the other. He stumbled towards her and just managed to grab on. She squeezed so hard the bones in his fingers hurt, but she pulled him close enough to the door that he could grab it. She was incredibly strong.

  ‘Thanks,’ he puffed.

  ‘How long until emergency services get here?’

  ‘I don’t know. An alarm went off.’

  10:50 They each held onto the door with one hand and the driver’s wrists with the other, sharing his weight as his legs dragged along the rubbish. But Daniel’s arms were already tiring, and it was getting harder to hold on. The last of the cardboard had been sucked into the compactor, exposing the conveyor belt beneath them.

  10:25 Nasty metal spikes lined the rubber, designed to make sure all the rubbish was sucked in. The spikes kept catching on the driver’s boots and trousers. Soon they would pull him into the compactor.

  ‘He’s too heavy,’ the woman yelled. ‘We need to shut down that conveyor belt.’

  Daniel pictured the control panel for the crusher. There was an emergency stop button—but it was slightly further away from the gate than the other controls. They wouldn’t be able to reach it.

  ‘The button is too far away,’ he cried.

  ‘Then we need to cut the power somehow.’

  Daniel looked around frantically. ‘I don’t see any wires. Do you have a phone?’

  10:05 ‘No, they must have taken it.’ The woman didn’t say who ‘they’ were. ‘What about him?’

  Daniel felt a surge of hope. He hadn’t thought to check the driver’s pockets. But the man’s legs were dragging along the conveyor belt—Daniel couldn’t reach his pockets while he was up here clinging to the door.

  ‘I’ll check,’ he said. ‘You hold him.’

  09:30 The woman gritted her teeth, taking the driver’s weight by herself. ‘I can give you thirty seconds,’ she grunted.

  Daniel dropped down onto the conveyor belt. Crawling along it in order to stay in the same place, he rummaged through the driver’s pockets. He found nothing but lint in one of them.

  ‘Hurry,’ the woman gasped.

  Daniel checked the opposite pocket. Yes!

  09:05 ‘I have his phone,’ he yelled.

  ‘I can’t hold him much longer,’ the woman said.

  Daniel grabbed the driver’s floppy wrist, sharing the weight. Instead of holding onto the door he jogged along the conveyor belt so he had one hand free to use the phone.

  If it was locked with a PIN he would be able to call emergency services, but no-one else. Fortunately, there was no PIN.

  ‘Who are you calling?’ the woman asked.

  08:20 Daniel dialled the number he had seen on the antiterrorism poster. ‘Shopping centre security,’ he said.

  The phone rang and rang. He guessed they were getting a lot of calls. Running along the belt while half carrying the driver in almost total blackness was exhausting—he couldn’t keep this up much longer.

  07:15 ‘Security,’ a voice said finally.

  ‘Three people are trapped in the crusher in the loading dock,’ Daniel yelled. ‘You have to shut it down. Quickly!’

  ‘Slow down,’ the man said. ‘I can cut the power from here. Do you know which crusher they’re in?’

  Daniel hadn’t known there was more than one. ‘I don’t know. Shut them all down. Hurry!’

  ‘Hold on.’

  ‘Hold on?!’

  06:40 But the man had already gone.

  Daniel tripped over a spike on the conveyor belt. He cried out as he fell and slammed down onto the rubber alongside the driver. They both trundled backwards into the more dangerous half of the crusher. The massive steel plate loomed over Daniel’s head.

  05:45 He tried to climb to his feet, but the sliding rubbish and the erratic movement of the conveyor belt made it impossible. Soon he was pressed against the back wall of the crusher, getting buried in garbage.

  ‘I’ve got you!’ The woman dropped down onto the belt and ran over to him. She grabbed him with one hand and the driver with the other—

  And then the conveyor belt stopped moving. The red light turned green.

  05:00 It was so sudden that the woman fell over, landing alongside Daniel on the stack of cardboard. For a wonderful moment he thought someone had successfully shut down the crusher.

  Then the steel plate started to descend on top of him.

  ‘No!’ Daniel screamed. He tried to dig his way out, but the rubbish was already compressing around him. It was like trying to crawl through setting concrete. He couldn’t see the woman any more, but he could hear her screaming.

  04:35 The hydraulics whined as the plate began to crush the rubbish and the three people buried amongst it. Daniel managed to push a hand out of the debris and grab one of the spikes on the conveyor belt, but he couldn’t haul himself out of the danger zone. The plate was too low and the rubbish was too tight around him. It was like being squeezed in a giant pair of pliers.

  That’s all that will be left of me, he realised. One hand, holding on a spike. The rest will be gone.

  04:00 His ribs creaked. The plate was forcing the air out of his lungs. He was getting dizzy.

  This was the end—

  And then the plate stopped descending. The green light went out.

  Daniel could hear voices. Not the woman—someone else. Someone in the loading dock.

  03:15 He tried to call out to them, but his voice emerged as a pitiful croak.

  ‘In here!’ the woman called. Daniel couldn’t turn his head to see her, but she sounded like she was near the gate. She mus
t have gotten out from under the plate. ‘We’re in here!’

  Daniel heard rubble shifting outside. Torchlight shone into the crusher.

  ‘Agent Reliot?’ a male voice called. ‘Is that you?’

  Daniel tried to speak, but he had no more air left. His mouth moved silently, like that of a fish.

  ‘About time,’ the woman said. ‘Quick—there’s a kid trapped under there.’

  02:35 ‘Let the fluid out of the hydraulics to release the pressure,’ the man told someone.

  There was a clank and hiss. The weight on Daniel’s back eased slightly. He took a gasp of air. His whole body ached.

  Slowly he turned his head. Two uniformed men stood by the crusher gate. One of them was cutting through the bolt with some kind of electric saw. The badges on their sleeves read SPII.

  ‘Who’s the kid?’ the other man asked.

  ‘He saved my life,’ the woman said.

  01:20 The man nodded slowly. ‘Hold tight,’ he told Daniel. ‘We’ll get you out.’

  Hold tight. Daniel tried to laugh, but he still couldn’t move.

  00:30 The bolt snapped. One of the men crawled into the crusher and started pulling compacted cardboard out from around Daniel. He felt the pressure around his ribs ease off.

  ‘How much do you know?’ he asked.

  Daniel was confused. ‘About what?’

  The man grinned, showing chipped teeth. ‘Excellent.’ He dragged Daniel out of the garbage. ‘We owe you a great debt. But in future, don’t climb into these things.’ He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘Didn’t you see the sign?’

  00:00 This time Daniel did laugh.

  KILL ALL HUMANS

  40:00 ‘Some day,’ Major Griff said, ‘wars will be fought entirely by machines.’

  ‘You’ll be out of a job,’ Tak Zobel said.

  His teacher, Mr McNulty, tried to silence him with a sharp look.

  39:40 Major Griff was a blue-eyed woman with a regal nose. She wore a bulky camouflage uniform and her hair was concealed under a matching cap. Her boots were as shiny as the medals on her lapel. Unlike everyone else Tak had seen on the army base, she was smiling—but the smile looked practised and a little patronising.