Shawn and Gus leaned on their respective pickaxes, breathing a bit heavily as they examined the wall before them. "Dude, this didn't go as well as I planned," Shawn commented after a few moments.
The two friends had swung the pickaxes for a few minutes at the place where Shawn had spotted the water, but the rock wall didn't give way after being hit repeatedly with the sharp tools. There were nicks in the wall where small dirt had fallen, but the hard rock behind it hardly seemed fazed.
Gus dropped his pickaxe in response to that and sat on the box Shawn had been on earlier. "This is so not cool," he sighed.
"Oh come on," Shawn said, searching the part of the mine shaft they were trapped in, "it's not so bad. It's nice and cozy here, don't you think?"
"Yeah, sounds just like a coffin."
"Dude are you kidding me? Coffin's are not cozy at all. Believe me. Although they can look nice."
Gus rolled his eyes, leaning back on the wall behind him. His back was hurting from the fall, his head and neck were hurting from the hit Stinky Pete had given him, and his arms ached from using the pickaxe. Really, he just wanted out. He opened his eyes, not remembering quite when he closed them, and let his gaze drift across the enclosure.
A way out didn't just jump out at him. The rockslide in front of them was most likely too thick to try anything with, and the rock wall behind them was apparently too hard to break through. Their cell phones would definitely be no help - if they couldn't get signal above ground here, how would they get it underground? Gus looked up as he heard a soft frustrated sound from Shawn.
The pseudo-psychic really looked like he was trying to find a way out; like he was using every ounce of his observation talents to discover a crack he had missed before in the rock wall, or even some hidden entrance. The sounds he made as he scoured the area didn't raise Gus's hopes.
"You don't think if we moved a rock clockwise it would open a door, do you?" Shawn asked. Gus frowned slightly at the slight, slight tinge of despair in his friend's voice.
"I'd go for anything about now," Gus answered. He didn't miss the mumbled "So would I," agreement from Shawn.
---
Minutes passed from those last pieces of dialogue. Gus continued to sit on the box, and Shawn was still staring at the rockslide before them. Neither of them had moved much after Shawn stopped searching the enclosure they were trapped in, but both of them knew that nobody knew where they were. Shawn hadn't even called Lassiter with the lead Gus and he were following.
"Alright!" Shawn exclaimed, making Gus jump a bit. "We've gotta do something, or else nobody will know we're here."
"Well duh," Gus muttered. But silently, he hoped that since Shawn was talking now, he had come up with a plan.
"We're going through the rockslide."
So not the words Gus wanted to hear.
"Shawn, that's crazy. How could we get through that?"
In answer, Shawn pointed toward the top. "That's our best bet."
Gus eyed the rockslide warily. "If that's our best bet, then I say our chances suck."
"Oh come on, what were those words you said earlier? 'Get busy living or get busy dying?' Well we're gonna get busy living. The dying option sounds lame."
Gus walked up to the rockslide, standing next to where Shawn was in front of the obstacle. "This is crazy. Suicidal."
Shawn was quiet for a few moments before explaining the faint logic in his hopeful thinking. "Even if we can't get a hole through to the other side, there's a chance that we can make enough rocks fall down at once to cause enough noise to attract some attention."
"Or kill ourselves in the process?"
"Well," Shawn started, knowing this plan was sounding crazier with every word he spoke, "if we're on the sides and only work at the middle with the pickaxes, it shouldn't be...so bad."
"...So bad," Gus repeated.
"Best I can come up with, since there's no drill back here," Shawn said, shrugging his shoulders. "Plus, we need to do something before we run out of air. I think we might die without air, unless you really are a cyborg," he finished, looking hopefully at Gus.
Gus gave Shawn an exasperated look. "Do you really think that?"
Shawn sighed. "Another fantasy of mine."
Gus rolled his eyes. "Man, you and your fantasies. Fine, let's see if this plan gets us out or kills us faster."
---
The sound of pickaxes lightly striking the rocks at the top of the rockslide echoed throughout the small enclosure. They used the pickaxes so they could reach farther into the middle and be as far away as they could from the middle; they struck the rocks lightly so that nothing too unexpected could happen. Shawn and Gus had decided to also put on a mask to cover their mouths from the dust that would come when the rocks fall. The masks were crudely made out of the leg of Shawn's pants, which were carefully cut with the pickaxe. Small bits of rock were already falling, and some of the bigger rocks behind those were starting to slowly crumble.
Both friends were breathing heavily; the oxygen was starting to run thin.
"When we get out of this," Gus panted in-between breaths, "I'm not moving for a whole day."
"We'll get some pineapple smoothies and just relax," Shawn agreed.
"I don't even want to go get those. Maybe we can just ask your dad to bring them."
Shawn scoffed. "Don't count on that."
Shawn and Gus knew that the light conversation was cutting at their oxygen supply, but they were both glad to have each other there to have some company. Talking seemed to pass the time just a bit faster, which helped them both.
Then, another batch of small rocks fell, and the two blinked in surprise at what they saw. The top of the rockslide must not have been as thick as the bottom, because they could faintly see the rock entrance beyond the small hole they had made.
"Dude, see!" Shawn whispered. "The plan's working!"
Gus wasn't as excited yet, but he did look a bit more hopeful than before. "We're not going to fit through that, Shawn. We have to work on widening this hole."
But with the grin Shawn was giving him, Gus couldn't help but roll his eyes once more even as his hopes went up a bit more. This impossible, against-all-odds plan of theirs was actually going okay.
Of course, that's always the first thought that triggers disaster.
As Shawn tapped at the rocks slightly above him, to his right - since the middle was gone - the rocks shifted just a bit too much, and more fell down than Shawn expected. He dropped his pickaxe as he brought his now free arm to block his head, but once baseball-sized rock bounced just above his arm, landing smack on top of his head. Gus shouted his friend's name as he watched Shawn lose his hold and tumble down the small rockslide, landing limply at the bottom.