18 Twenty

Ali and his team arrived at Ben's garage at 8.35 pm; a day after they last made contact with Lucy. Luckily Seth saw the garage wall has a large map of Hawaii County, complete with the garage coordinate. He then informed of their location to the rescue team. With that coordinate, Ali managed to locate their bunker easier.

The landscape of the town has changed greatly, with landslides and the earth was cracked bringing damages to the town's structures. Magmas that are still smoking hot and fires make the rescue mission harder. They have to clear out the fallen rubbles, trees, and they have to put out fires along the way too. Worse of it all, they need to make lots of detour from the original route as the road was either blocked or collapsed, for most of their way from Homonu to Hilo.

Knock... knock... knock.

"Hello, is someone inside? My name is..." Ali knocked on the garage door. His word was swallowed down as he was startled as the garage door was opened abruptly from inside.

"Mom, Dad, they are here, we are saved now!!" Lucy grinned happily and she jumped in excitement. Suzy was cheering on the side too hugging one of the rescuer's legs.

Ali was stunned when she saw Lucy. 'No wonder this family was able to survive in this disaster after three days of being stranded.' They were wearing a military-grade respirators!

From the looks of the gear worn by this family of five, these gears must be provided to them by a high-rank army official. Their equipments were not something that a normal citizen can get their hands-on. It was a military-grade respirator gas mask that can even survive in the gas chambers!

"Oh, hi there..." Ali smiled and he sighed in relief while he looks at the girl in front of him. Her gas mask was even better than his team's are using.

A normal average people would have died suffocated if they were living outside for three days under these harsh conditions of thick ashes and smog. They are not an ordinary family; that was all Ali can infer about them right now.

"Calm down honey. I can see that they are here too. " Seth's face was calmed when he saw Ali and his team. Seth walked forward to the entrance of the garage, and he put his hand out to the man in front of him, shaking his hand.

"You must be Ali from the rescue team. Thank you for coming to rescue us. Thank you!" Seth shakes Ali's hand repeatedly as he was overwhelmed by the speed of the rescue team were dispatched to rescue them here.

"Well, are any of you guys injured anywhere? We have a paramedic here with us. He can provide some emergency treatment if needed. " Ali scanned the surroundings for signs of weak building structure when he was speaking to the family.

"No, it's okay. I am fine. These injuries were nothing. Thank you." Ben waved his hand frantically when one of the rescuers move forward to him to check his condition.

'He must be the paramedic that Ali has mentioned before.' Ben smiled at the paramedic.

Considering the disaster area was hit by a huge earthquake before the volcanic eruption, he needs to observe every shelter that he and his team went into to avoid any future mishaps. It will be foolish if they were here to rescue people, but were buried alive instead.

As a leader, he needs to ensure his team's safety, and he will not give out any command that will put his teams in danger. He will never endanger his team's lives, not under his command.

As Ali scanned his surroundings, he noticed that the garage looks simple on the outside, but if someone were to enter inside the garage, they will they noticed that the garage was built using a good quality reinforced concrete. This high-quality, thick walls of concrete structure normally can only be found in buildings that were used for defense against bombing or shelters for the army.

It is not an exaggeration to say that this building, probably can withstand an atomic bomb attack, let alone surviving a mere magnitude 7 earthquake.

A glance of the interior of the garage, the garage looks a bit odd with barrels of diesel, an old-looking generator, and various tubes of air shafts sticking out from its walls. It was nothing like a typical family garage. There was no car, but only an old rusty motorbike was parked inside.

Ali nodded his head in satisfaction. He waved his hand down towards his team. Looking at Ali's signal, his team proceeded to put down their gears and relax on the floor.

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Seth walked towards Ali when he saw Ali was approaching the trap door, that leads to the bunker. "Underneath this trapdoor is the tunnel that connects to the underground bunker. We managed to survive during these difficult times, thanks to that bunker. It was equipped with an air filter and has a good ventilation system."

Ali stared at Seth in surprise. "What about those? I can see that your family is doing fine here, even without our help." Ali pointed at the gas mask on Seth's face.

He was happy that there are still survivors out here in Hilo, but he still felt cheated as he and his team had rushed coming here without resting. They are worried that this family might not survive for long living in an abandoned bunker. He was worried that for every second that his team was late to come here, the family might die of suffocation. Lucy did not mention to Ali about the good air ventilation or the gas mask that they have in the bunker at all.

"Well, before the second volcano explosion, my brother and I managed to sneak into the house and we packed some foods and brought them to the bunker. We nearly died while transporting it. The fire from the forest was spreading too fast, and the quakes... toppled half of the house, luckily the kitchen was on separate roofing. We have a slight injury from the quake too..." Seth smiled sadly when he remembers how he and his brother managed to escape just in time.

"After we have safely returned to the garage, the house caught on fire." Seth's face was grim when he remembered the scary red sky that day.

Ali turned sideways and looked at Seth. A house? Yeah, he remembers he saw a burnt down house down the hill when he and his team arrived. So that was their house...

Ali looks at Seth in sympathy, "I'm sorry about your house."

"Well, I must tell you that the town of Hilo was destroyed. Our team rescued less than 20 survivors out there. They were able to escape the fire and smoke, but unfortunately, most of them were badly burned. We don't know if they can hold on. You guys here, are the luckiest one." Ali looked at the family of five who barely have any injuries on them.

"Less than 20 people? Is-is there someone name Amelia among the survivors? 29 years old mixed Asian girl." Jane walked nervously towards Ali.

"I am sorry ma'am. We did rescue a young woman, but she would be probably around 15 at most." Ali said apologetically at Jane. He is sure that the one that Jane looking for was not among the survivors. He remembers every people that they rescued, as this rescue mission was the least number of survivors that he ever encountered.

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