People crowded around the ruins of the high-rise. Rescuers, soldiers, and neighbours climbed over broken concrete, furiously raking through the debris with shovels, pickaxes, and hands. Some just stood and stared. A weeping woman squatted and covered her face with her hands,

Suddenly, a scream.

One person put up their hand and everyone froze, holding their breath, as if playing a game. Then another scream, and everyone sprang back to life. A ring formed around the person with his hand up; several rescuers crouched by a wide concrete slab, peering underneath. One jumped up and rushed to the bulldozer, and then back to the ruins. The crowd passing down bits of debris redoubled their efforts, beating away with hammers and milling around the place where the slab lay. K. nudged the driver.

“Kolya, get ready. If they pull out somebody alive, you’ll need to drive like it’s your wife in labour back there.”

“Uh-huh,” the driver nodded. “No odds to me.”

“No, Kolya, you don’t get it. You need to visualise your foot flat on the accelerator, like it’s been glued into place. The foot you use for the brake? That one’s gone. Blown off. And you need to get to the hospital to have it seen to. Ok? Grumpy!” K. shouted into the radio. “Grumpy!”

“Stop yelling. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

“Found a live one? If you want them to stay alive, find me some ice and two wooden boards. Actually, you let me deal with the boards. You get the ice.”

“Ice?”

“Yes.”

“Fuck’s sake. Ice? Here? Now?”

Grumpy glanced around and ran to a small grocery store across the street. K. saw him banging on the door with his rifle butt and shouting.

A crane arrived. A hook was latched onto the slab. K. cannibalised two slats from a picket fence and decided they were narrow, but about the right length. He finally found a shorter one too. At that instant, the slab broke in half. Hands immediately went up in the air. “Stop! Stop!” Everyone shouted and rushed into a newly formed gap. The crane stopped lifting the slab. Two chunks of concrete were prised apart.

Water was poured onto the stones out of two-litre bottles to tamp down the flying dust. A fragment of the slab was again hooked onto the crane and dragged away. A shout. A whistle. K. swore and ran in their direction, tourniquets in hand, as people looked on motionlessly. A little boy was passed down from hand to hand. He had blond hair, he was about six years old, slim, covered in dust from head to toe. Dozens of hands reached out to lift him from the rubble. K. quickly examined the boy’s thin legs and fastened the tourniquets around the top of his thighs. The boy clasped his arms around a man’s broad neck. Pushing through the crowd, K. guided them to the ambulance. He took hold of the boy and gently placed him on a stretcher.