Escape
* * *
Somehow they made it out. Somehow the Robot, whose eyes required neither light nor clarity in the air to see, guided them through the dark and the dust, and the noise, back the way they had come, rushing out from beneath the large slab of rock into the sunlight. His eyes running with tears that were part dust and part fear and part something more, John felt himself pulled by the Robot's mechanical hand, felt himself collapse to the quivering ground, felt arms suddenly around him and heard a voice he knew.
Maureen.
"John?"
A rumble, then, as his eyes fought to see. And there, close nearby, was Will, and was the Robot, and was Don, wearing a jet pack. And there, not so far, was the cave entrance, trembling in the massive quake, suddenly vomiting a cloud of dust and rock as the last air was forced from it, roaring as though alive.
John watched this.
And he watched, as a last insult, the slab itself give way, collapsing with a shattering, sickening crunch to the earth below it, erasing all evidence that there had ever been a cave there at all.
Then it became still as the tremor subsided.
* * *
Somehow they made it out. Somehow the Robot, whose eyes required neither light nor clarity in the air to see, guided them through the dark and the dust, and the noise, back the way they had come, rushing out from beneath the large slab of rock into the sunlight. His eyes running with tears that were part dust and part fear and part something more, John felt himself pulled by the Robot's mechanical hand, felt himself collapse to the quivering ground, felt arms suddenly around him and heard a voice he knew.
Maureen.
"John?"
A rumble, then, as his eyes fought to see. And there, close nearby, was Will, and was the Robot, and was Don, wearing a jet pack. And there, not so far, was the cave entrance, trembling in the massive quake, suddenly vomiting a cloud of dust and rock as the last air was forced from it, roaring as though alive.
John watched this.
And he watched, as a last insult, the slab itself give way, collapsing with a shattering, sickening crunch to the earth below it, erasing all evidence that there had ever been a cave there at all.
Then it became still as the tremor subsided.