Pompeii

and he realised that the crimson light was silhouetting a town less than half a mile away. The vision brightened. He picked out city walls and watchtowers, the pillars of a roofless temple, a row of blasted, sightless windows – and people, the shadows of people, running in panic along the lines of the ramparts. The spectacle was sharp for only a little while, just long enough for him to recognise it as Pompeii, and then the glow behind it slowly faded, taking the city with it, back into the darkness.

Diluculum

    [06:00 hours]

'It is dangerous to assume that the worst is over after the initial explosive phase. Predicting an eruption's end is even more difficult than predicting its beginning.'
Encyclopaedia of Volcanoes

    He pulled off his helmet and used it as a bucket, digging the lip of the metal into the pumice and emptying it over his shoulder. Gradually as he worked he became aware of the pale white shapes of his arms. He stopped and raised them in wonder. Such a trivial matter, to be able to see one's hands, and yet he could have cried with relief. The morning was coming. A new day was struggling to be born. He was still alive.
    He finished digging, wrestled his legs loose and hauled himself up on to his feet. The freshly ignited crop of fires high up on Vesuvius had restored his sense of direction. Perhaps it was his imagination but he even thought he could see the shadow of the city. Vague in the darkness, the plain of pumice spread out around him, a ghostly, gently undulating landscape. He set off towards Pompeii, wading up to his knees again, sweating, thirsty, dirty, with the acrid stench of burning in his nose and throat. He assumed, by the nearness of the city walls, that he must be almost inside the port, in which case there ought to be a river somewhere. But the pumice had submerged the Sarnus into the desert of stones. Through the dust he had a vague impression of low walls on either side of him and as he stumbled forward he realised that these weren't fences but buildings, buried buildings, and that he was labouring along a street at roof level. The pumice must be seven or eight feet deep at least.
    Impossible to believe that people could have lived through such a bombardment. And yet they had. Not only had he seen them moving on the city's ramparts, he could see them now, emerging from holes in the ground, from beneath the tombs of their houses – individuals, couples supporting one another, whole familes, even a mother holding a baby. They stood around in the grainy brown half-light, brushing the dust from their clothes, gazing at the sky. Apart from an occasional scattering of missiles the fall of rock had ceased. But it would come again, Attilius was certain. There was a pattern. The greater the surge of burning air down the slopes of the mountain, the more energy it seemed to suck from the storm and the longer the lull before it started anew. There was no doubt, either, that the surges were growing in strength. The first appeared to have hit Herculaneum; the second to have travelled beyond it, out to sea; the third to have reached almost as far as Pompeii itself. The next might easily sweep across the entire town. He ploughed on.
    The harbour had entirely vanished. A few masts poking out of the sea of pumice, a broken sternpost and the shrouded outline of a hull were the only clues that it had ever existed. He could hear the sea, but it sounded a long way off. The shape of the coast had altered. Occasionally, the ground shook and then would come the distant crash of walls and timbers giving way, roofs collapsing. A ball of lightning fizzed across the landscape and struck the distant columns of the temple of Venus. A fire started. It became harder to make progress. He sensed that he was wading up a slope and he tried to visualise how the port had looked, the ramped roads leading up from the wharfs and quaysides to the city gates. Torches loomed out of the smoky air and passed him. He had expected to encounter crowds of survivors seizing the opportunity to escape from the town but the traffic was all the other way. People were going back into Pompeii. Why? To search for those they had lost, he supposed. To see what they could retrieve from their homes. To loot. He wanted to tell them to run for it while they had the chance but he hadn't the breath. A man pushed him out of the way and overtook him, jerking from side to side like a marionette as he scrambled through the drifts.
    Attilius reached