The Pompeii Disaster Read online

  David looked at Luke. Luke flashed him a wink and put his helmet on.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “If they want a show, we’ll give ’em a show.”

  David put his helmet on. Both boys were handed identical shields and long swords.

  “May the better man win,” said Fred the Red as the gate was raised once again.

  The guy with the megaphone quickly made an announcement.

  “Citizens of Pompeii! And now . . . a special treat. The victors Oceanus and Hilarius will face each other in battle. A battle . . . to the death!”

  A huge roar greeted Luke and David as they walked through the gate again.

  “Oceanus! Oceanus! Oceanus!”

  “Hilarius! Hilarius! Hilarius!”

  The boys took a bow. The gate closed behind them.

  “What do we do now?” David whispered as they walked slowly out to the middle of the arena. “What’s the plan?”

  “The plan is we fake it,” Luke whispered back, “just like they do in pro wrestling. I beat you up for two minutes. Then you beat me up for two minutes. We fight to a draw, and they crown us. Then we figure out how to ditch this place before we run out of time.”

  A hush fell over the crowd as the boys faced off against one another in the middle of the arena. They circled each other cautiously, and then Luke suddenly charged at David, swinging his sword wildly. David retreated as he fended off Luke’s weak blows with his shield.

  “Good!” Luke said as he swung the sword low and David jumped over it. “You’re really selling it!”

  His back almost against the wall, David then went on the attack. The sword felt good in his hand, so much better than that silly trident he had to use against the tiger. He was slashing it around the way he’d seen fencers do it in the movies, almost hitting Luke a few times by accident. Neither boy actually wanted to hurt the other one. They just wanted to put on a good show.

  “Booooooo!”

  The crowd wasn’t buying it. People started throwing stuff into the arena. These were sophisticated fans. They had been to enough competitions to know when a gladiator was trying his hardest and when he was just going through the motions.

  Booooor-ring!

  Luke and David stopped and turned around. Four big guards with spears had come out. They were marching toward the boys.

  “Fight, slaves!” one of them instructed.

  “We are fighting!” Luke replied.

  “Fight with enthusiasm,” the guard said. “Your friendship is admirable. But the citizens demand your blood. And your blood will be spilled . . . one way or another.”

  The guards surrounded the boys and raised their spears.

  “Kill them both!” chanted the crowd. “Kill them both!”

  “So, what’s Plan B?” David asked Luke.

  While Luke was desperately trying to come up with another plan, the guards backed away. Somebody else had come out of the gate. It was the guy dressed as Mercury, the Roman god of war. He was carrying his red-hot poker.

  “Oh no,” said Luke. “Not this guy again.”

  “Are you going to fight?” Mercury asked when he reached the middle of the arena. “Or will you continue this little dance? What’s it gonna be, boys? Yes or no?”

  Mercury thrust the glowing poker so it was just inches from Luke’s face.

  Luke backed away. He looked at the guards surrounding him with spears, and then at the angry crowd. There was no way out. The timer was clicking down. He had run out of options. There was no Plan B. His optimism was gone. His shoulders sagged. He sighed.

  “I think it’s all over for us, David,” he said sadly. “It’s finished.”

  “What’s it gonna be?” asked Mercury.

  “We will fight,” Luke replied. “For real.”

  “You have made a wise decision,” said one of the guards.

  The timer counted down: 17 minutes.

  “So that’s it?” David asked, incredulous. “That’s your Plan B? We fight for real, until one of us is dead?”

  “Look,” Luke told his friend. “There’s no way outta here. The mountain’s gonna blow any minute and we’re gonna die anyway. So we might as well go out in a blaze of glory, right? I know you’ve wondered which one of us would win in a fight. So have I. Well, let’s find out.”

  David was stunned. He didn’t know if he would be capable of hurting Luke, who had become his best friend in the time they had been together. But he had learned something from Luke—there was one weapon that was incredibly powerful against any opponent—the element of surprise.

  Instead of squaring off like two fighters usually do, David quickly swung his sword as hard as he could at Luke’s head before Luke could put his shield up.

  Instinctively, Luke ducked, with David’s sword passing less than an inch from his nose.

  The crowd roared in appreciation. Now they had a show to watch.

  Luke reeled backward and fell to the dirt. When his right hand hit the ground, he lost the grip on his sword. It slid a few feet away. David pounced like a cat, taking a big roundhouse swing at Luke. Luke ducked and spun out of the way, moving quite fast for a big boy. Of course, you’d move pretty fast too if somebody was swinging a razor-sharp sword at you.

  “Nice try!” Luke said as he grabbed his sword again and jumped up off the ground. “But too slow.”

  Now it was Luke’s turn, using his weight and strength advantage to drive David backward, shoving him roughly with his shield. David staggered, but then righted himself.

  “You’re not playing around, are you?” Luke asked as he slashed at David with his sword. David blocked it, making a loud metal clang. “Well, neither am I.”

  While the boys were flailing away at each other, few people in the crowd noticed that all the birds had disappeared from the sky. A few dogs were barking and sniffing the air curiously. Animals have senses that pick up signals we can’t receive. There was an eerie silence, a stillness in the air. The ground had begun to vibrate.

  And then, Mount Vesuvius erupted.

  BOOM!

  CHAPTER 19

  RUN FOR YOUR LIFE

  IT WAS AN INDESCRIBABLE DOUBLE CRACK OF sound, a thunderous explosion unlike any noise David or Luke had ever heard before. It was unlike any noise anybody had ever heard before, or since. The energy released when Mount Vesuvius erupted, historians say, was a hundred thousand times the force of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima to end World War II. That’s how loud the blast was.

  Luke and David dropped their swords and shields immediately so they could cover their ears and protect their eardrums from being ripped to shreds. Everyone in the amphitheater did the same. All heads turned toward the north, where the sound was coming from. It was impossible to see Mount Vesuvius from the inside of the amphitheater, so it was unclear what was going on. The only people there who knew exactly what had happened were Luke and David.

  “Ahhhhhhhhhh!”

  “It’s happening!”

  It wasn’t just one quick blast, like a typical explosion. It was a long, continuous roar that went on and on. Keep in mind, the people of Pompeii had never been to a Star Wars film. They’d never heard a bomb go off. They’d never seen a car explode in the movies. This was something completely different for them.

  Just a moment earlier, every man, woman, and child in the crowd had been riveted by the spectacle of Oceanus and Hilarius fighting to the death. But a moment after the blast, not a single one of those people cared about the gladiators.

  “What’s happening?” everyone was asking.

  “The gods must be furious!” was the general response.

  In these ancient times, anything that happened, for good or for bad, was believed to be caused by the gods. If the people pleased the gods, they would be rewarded. If they displeased the gods, they would be punished. That was what they believed. So when they heard the explosion, they figured somebody must have done something really bad.

  But whatever they had done to displease the
gods, there was nothing they could do about it now. The place went into full-scale panic mode.

  Guards dropped their swords and abandoned their posts. Food vendors dropped what they were selling. Children started crying. The caged animals were squawking and bucking. Old people, young people, men and women started running for the exits. All the slaves were suddenly free men and women.

  “It is the end of the world!” somebody screamed.

  Luke and David looked around for a moment at the commotion. This was just the opposite of what they had experienced on the Titanic, where it had taken two hours for the ship to sink. The panic had built very gradually. But Vesuvius was sudden and dramatic. Everybody knew right away that something was terribly wrong.

  Fred the Red was nowhere to be seen. He had already made a run for it, heading out of the city. The other guards were gone too. The timer counted down. They had fourteen minutes to get to the meeting spot.

  “Let’s go!” Luke shouted to David over the roar of noise. “This is our chance!”

  The boys helped each other scale the arena wall and climb into the stands. From there, they scrambled past some old men wearing togas and pushed their way to the exit.

  In the Fullonica Stephani, Isabel and Julia were dipping some shirts into red dye under Stephen’s watchful eye when the volcano erupted.

  BOOM!

  “What in the Underworld is that?” Stephen shouted, covering his ears.

  “It’s Mount Vesuvius!” Isabel yelled at him. “It’s erupting!”

  In a flash, Stephen was out on the street. The guards in the fullery left their posts too. Nobody was watching the girls.

  “Let’s go!” Isabel shouted into Julia’s ear, the only way she could be heard over the noise.

  The girls dashed out to the street, which was filled with people, animals, and carts going every which way, crashing into each other. Isabel led the way to a street called Via della Fortuna. A bunch of people were standing on the corner there, staring off into the distance.

  “Look!” Isabel shouted, pointing at Vesuvius.

  The top of the mountain was gone. Above it, a black mushroom cloud was rising.

  Meanwhile, in Boston, Miss Z and Mrs. Vader were nervous and worried. They had not heard from the Flashback Four for a long time. They didn’t know that the TTT had been destroyed, so they had no idea what the kids were going through. Miss Z had made the very difficult decision to wait until the agreed-upon time—fifteen minutes after noon—to bring them back.

  If something had gone wrong and the Flashback Four weren’t at the meeting spot at twelve fifteen, they would be stuck in Pompeii for the rest of lives. Their very short lives. And Miss Z would be held responsible for their disappearance, of course.

  “Nine minutes left,” Mrs. Vader said, looking at her watch.

  “By now, they should have taken the picture of Mount Vesuvius,” said Miss Z. “They should be at the meeting spot for us to scoop them up.”

  “I’ll warm up the Board,” said Mrs. Vader.

  But the Flashback Four had not taken the picture of Vesuvius, and they were not at the meeting spot. They weren’t even together. The girls were standing at the corner of Via della Fortuna and Via del Foro, staring up at the sky with a few hundred other people. They all stared, transfixed, at a thick brown line that was shooting straight up from the top of Mount Vesuvius. It looked like the mountain was punching a hole in the sky.

  There’s no word in Latin for volcano. Most of the citizens of Pompeii didn’t even know that Vesuvius was a volcano. It hadn’t erupted in eight hundred years. But it didn’t take a genius to realize this was an “earthshaking” event.

  “The sleeping giant has awoken,” an old man said. “Pray for us.”

  Meanwhile, Luke and David were still eight blocks to the west, elbowing their way through the hordes of confused, frantic people trying to make a getaway. The streets were clogged and almost impassable. A horse reared, throwing off its rider and trampling a woman who had fallen down. Shrieking. Crying. Chaos. Most of the people had no idea what was going on.

  “Is it another earthquake?” an old woman asked. Only the adults of Pompeii remembered the quake in the year 62, which had just about reduced the town to rubble.

  “Five minutes,” Miss Z said in Boston, checking her watch. Let’s get ready.”

  The column of dark smoke and ash continued to shoot out of Mount Vesuvius and spread across the sky. It was already getting darker as the flying debris began to obscure the sun. If anyone had stopped and held a finger in the air, they would have been able to tell that the wind was blowing south, directly toward Pompeii.

  People were hurrying in all directions with boxes, bags, and trunks. It was a mass of confusion as everyone was fighting to grab their jewels and worldly possessions. Some were heading for the Bay of Naples a quarter of a mile away, where they might be able to escape on a boat.

  Shopkeepers rushed to carry their wares off the street and bring them inside. Looters grabbed what they could from stores. Children were separated from their parents and called out for them. Frightened dogs and other animals strained to break free of their leashes. Statues were knocked off their pedestals by wayward carts, shattering as they hit the ground. People were limping, crying, bleeding.

  For once, the rich and poor people of Pompeii were equal. It didn’t matter anymore how much money or how many possessions anyone owned. They had lived separate lives, but they were going to die together.

  “The gods are merciless!” somebody shouted.

  “They have decided to kill us all!”

  David and Luke ran through the streets like fullbacks, trying to make their way to the Porta Marina gate. But so were hundreds of others. The boys came to an intersection filled with people, horses, and goats.

  “Which way should we go?” David asked, looking around frantically.

  “Follow me!” Luke shouted.

  “Two minutes,” Miss Z said in Boston.

  The citizens of Pompeii realized that all the rock, ash, and debris shooting out of Mount Vesuvius was going to hit the ground eventually. Even in the year 79, people knew that what goes up must come down.

  In fact, pieces of pumice had already started falling from the sky. Pumice is a gray stone that has little holes in it, like a sponge. It’s so light that it floats in water. But it hurts when it lands on you. Some people took shelter in doorways. Others ran through the street holding pillows over their heads to protect themselves. Still others cowered in their homes, hoping the whole thing was going to blow over in a few minutes. Big mistake.

  “The city will be buried!” a bleeding man shouted as he ran through the street.

  Julia and Isabel managed to push and claw their way toward the Porta Marina gate.

  “This way!” Isabel shouted, pointing to the spot a few feet from the gate where they had arrived two hours earlier.

  Coming from the other direction, David and Luke were almost there too.

  “One minute,” Miss Z said in Boston.

  The Flashback Four dashed through the Porta Marina gate at almost at the same moment.

  “Luke!” shouted Julia.

  “Isabel!” shouted David.

  “Julia!” shouted Luke.

  “David!” shouted Isabel.

  Group hug.

  “Ugh, you two smell terrible!” David said. “Did you pee in your pants or something?”

  “Hey, you guys don’t smell so great yourselves,” said Julia.

  “You won’t believe what we’ve been through!” Isabel told the boys.

  “Oh, you won’t believe what we’ve been through,” Luke told the girls.

  David looked at the timer. It was flashing 1 minute.

  “We can talk about it later,” he shouted. “Let’s go. Over here.”

  The Flashback Four ran to the meeting spot. The only problem was that a teenage boy was standing there. He was looking off in the distance, trying to locate his friends.

  “Excuse me,�
� Isabel said politely. “We need to be at this spot.”

  The boy looked at her with disdain.

  “Who died and made you emperor?” he replied. “I’m standing here now.”

  Luke and David went up to the teenager. Without missing a beat, Luke punched him in the stomach and David smacked him over the head.

  “Beat it!” Luke said as the guy doubled over and staggered away.

  “Where did you guys learn to fight like that?” Julia asked as they took the boy’s place.

  “We’ll tell you later,” Luke said. “Gather around.”

  The Flashback Four squeezed together, their arms around each other.

  “Let’s hope Miss Z didn’t forget about us,” Isabel said as a piece of pumice landed on the ground in front of her. She closed her eyes in preparation for going back home.

  “Okay, let’s do it,” Miss Z said, sitting at her computer in Boston. “Cross your fingers.”

  She hit the ENTER key to activate the Board.

  The timer flashed 0 minutes.

  “Wait!” Luke said suddenly. “I forgot something!”

  “What!?” David shouted. “We’re out of time!”

  Luke reached into his pocket for the camera, which was still in one piece, miraculously, after all Luke had been through.

  “Oh yeah, the picture!” shouted David.

  Luke quickly pointed the camera at Mount Vesuvius. It was hard to hold it steady with all the confusion around them and pumice falling from the sky. But Luke managed to push the button and get off one shot.

  Right after he took the picture, Luke looked up and saw the teenager that he and David had just beaten up. He was running toward them, and he had four friends with him. They looked like a street gang. They had long sticks in their hands.

  The Board flashed five bands of color, which merged into one high-intensity strobe light that flickered a few feet off the Board like miniature bolts of lightning.

  “Over there!” the angry teenager said, pointing at the Flashback Four.

  “Are those the guys who punched you?” one of his gang asked.

  “Yeah, that’s them. The two boys.”

  They were only a few feet away.