Free Emergency Echo by George Ivanoff Page B

past him in a flash of pink and disappeared around the corner.
    Dawson sighed. This was silly. Why was he scared? It was just a dumb game of hide and seek or chasey or whatever it was.
    Then again, it might have something todo with the fact that he was creeping around an almost deserted ghost town – a real live ghost town. Or should that be a real dead ghost town , he wondered.
    â€˜Yo, kids!’ he heard Dad’s voice echo around the bricks. ‘Front and centre.’
    Dawson picked himself up and dusted off his grimy blue shorts and t-shirt. He clambered up the pile of bricks and looked for signs of his siblings.
    Nothing. They were better at games than he was.
    Dawson yelped as he slipped down the bricks, landing hard at the bottom. He sighed again. Why had he agreed to play?
    He got up and walked through the dilapidated building, along the neat little path out the front and past the sign saying‘Exchange Hotel’. Low ropes strung between short wooden posts marked out the boundaries of the building.
    Dawson looked back at the partially collapsed hotel. The sun was going down behind it, shining through the glassless windows, empty doorways and crumbling brickwork, making it glow. It almost looked beautiful … in a weird sort of way.
    â€˜Kids!’
    Dad was at the end of the main road, at the crossroads on the edge of Farina, the small abandoned town that they were visiting. As usual, Dad wore blue jeans and a white t-shirt. He always wore jeans, even if he was going out to a fancy dinner. Mum would wear a nice dress and Dad would wear a shirt, tie and suit jacket – withdaggy blue jeans. Not a good look. Dawson thought jeans were a silly thing to wear on their holiday, given the heat.
    â€˜Coming!’ He waved to Dad and started walking. To his left he could see his little sister, Emma, spring out from the building next to the hotel and race to Dad, skipping over debris.
    Glancing the other way, he saw his older sister, Samantha, climbing out of a rusted old car shell.
    How did she get all the way up there?
    He shook his head. She must have climbed through the car’s window to get inside. He had looked at the automobile when they’d first arrived and its doors were rusted shut. There were lots of sharp edges on it. She could have cut herself. Not forthe first time, he marvelled at her reckless behaviour.
    â€˜What happened, son?’ asked Dad, pointing to Dawson’s knee, where a small trickle of blood was already drying.
    â€˜I scared him,’ said Emma, proudly. ‘And he fell over.’
    â€˜No, you didn’t,’ protested Dawson. ‘I was just startled, that’s all.’
    â€˜I scared you,’ repeated Emma, grinning broadly.
    â€˜Ha,’ Samantha mocked as she jogged over. ‘Is poor little Dawsy-Wawsy spooked by the ghost town?’
    â€˜Hey,’ interrupted Dad, ‘enough of that! I thought I told you guys to be careful. It’s so easy to get hurt in amongst all the rubble and broken building bits.’
    Dawson smiled. Broken building bits. Alliteration. Ever since he’d learned the term at school, he’d noticed how often Dad used it, stringing together words starting with the same letter. ‘Vile voluminous vomit.’ Those had been Dad’s most used words when Emma had gastro a few months ago. He glanced at Samantha. She looked back, trying to keep a straight face. And then they both burst out laughing. It was an ongoing joke between them.
    â€˜Oi,’ said Dad. ‘This is no laughing matter. If you get hurt, there’s no doctor around. All we’ve got is a first-aid kit.’ His hands were on his hips now as he slipped into full-on Dad Mode. ‘And if you get seriously injured, what then? Do you see a hospital nearby? Huh?’
    The kids looked blankly at each other and then back to Dad.
    â€˜No! Of course not,’ continued Dad. ‘We’d need to find some way of