The Power of Five Oblivion

sweat dripping off his forehead, running down beneath his arms. He wondered if Scott had sent the soldiers here and knew in his heart that there was no other way that they could have been found so quickly. Perhaps it still wasn’t too late. Perhaps Pedro could appeal to him … on his knees if he had to. A word from Scott and the family that had helped him would be spared. But Pedro knew it wouldn’t happen. He wished that he had never come to Italy. He should never have left Peru.
    The first soldier appeared right in front of him. He had already unbuckled his revolver and now he raised it, aiming at Giovanni. One boy was to be captured, the other to be killed. He knew which was which.
    Pedro closed his eyes.
    The ground began to shake. It was so sudden, so violent that it was as if the whole world had been seized in a giant hand and thrown down like a tennis ball. All the lines broke up; the edges of the walls, the doors, the windows, the streets. At the same time there was an explosion like nothing Pedro had ever heard before. It was impossibly loud. And it wasn’t stopping. It just went on and on, echoing through the city, tearing through the sky, hammering at the buildings as if determined to bring them down. The shaking was becoming more violent by the second. Pedro felt like his eyeballs were being pulled out of his skull. He was twisting and spinning, out of control. He could no longer feel the ground beneath his feet. Then, in an instant, the sky turned from black to red and Pedro finally understood.
    Scott had warned him.
    The volcano was erupting.
    The soldier had gone. Maybe he had turned and run. Maybe he had fallen. But none of the men from the Castel Nuovo was going to have any interest in the boys. Not now. Pedro looked up and saw a blaze of brilliant red cutting across the sky like an enormous firework. There was a hideous rumbling and more explosions. Balls of flame appeared above the rooftops like falling comets, except that these were soaring upwards, fired into the darkness. At the far end of the alley – it was where they had come from just moments before – a five-storey building with flats and a shop underneath began to tear itself apart, one brick at a time. One after another the windows shattered. Then the whole thing collapsed sideways and came shuddering down, great chunks of wall and shards of glass smashing into the crowds of people who were still below. More flames sprang out of the ground. The whole sky was on fire. The noise was deafening. Thousands of people were screaming but Pedro couldn’t hear them.
    Where was Giovanni? Pedro staggered around in a circle and found him, his suitcase gone, his arms hanging limp by his side. For a second the two of them were close together and Giovanni shouted something, but Pedro couldn’t understand him. It didn’t matter. There was only one place they could go.
    The harbour.
    Vesuvius was already spitting poisonous gases, ash and pumice into the air. A column of smoke had risen up, fifteen kilometres high, the top of it branching out so that it resembled a massive palm tree. Pedro glanced at it and remembered it at once. It was the same tree that he had seen in the dreamworld, the same size and colour. A river of lava, burning at nine hundred degrees Celsius, was edging forward, flowing slowly but inexorably towards the city. Everything it touched disintegrated. Trees vanished as if they were matchsticks, flaming up as they were caught in the conflagration. The earthquake could be felt eight hundred kilometres away. The sky was on fire. And this was just the beginning. Worse was to come.
    Pedro and Giovanni were right in the middle of it. Together they set off, staggering, running, fighting their way through the screaming crowds, trying to reach the sea.
    The Boeing 747 had already taxied to the end of the runway when the eruption began. Scott was sitting with his seatbelt fastened, his face pressed against the window.
    “You should look out, Jonas,” he said. “It’s quite a view.”
    “We should have left an hour ago,” Jonas rasped.
    “I’m glad we didn’t. This is something I wouldn’t want to miss.”
    The interior of the plane had been converted into a single room that ran almost half its length and it was absurdly luxurious. There were leather sofas, a dining-room table, an open-plan kitchen, a gym, a cinema screen, a bar and even an entertainment area with computer consoles and miniature football. Two doors led to