Chapter 15: Limited escape
"With only ten minutes, I estimate, to get clean away, I suppose I should incapacitate..." He broke his sentence when his target was nowhere in sight. "Where did X fifteen-zero-five disappear to?" Suddenly he felt a sharp cutting pain in his left thigh and he collapsed to the ground on to his left knee. He turned around to assess the wound inflicted upon him and noticed that it was a stab wound from a knife. In a split second, the knife revealed itself. It was a basic double bladed knife with a long chain attached to the end of it and Luna was spinning it by the chain with a determined look on her face, rather than blatant fear. "Ten minutes, huh? Then I guess we'd better get moving. Sunni, get them to the quick car." She sounded more forceful and confident than usual as she spoke. "But' it's not complete yet. It's a thirty second ride than it just drops off." I informed her. "Should it matter? You'll get blown up if you stay here. You'd have a better chance with the quick tunnels." She called back to me. "What about you?" I asked hoping that she wouldn't try and sacrifice herself to stall him. "We only have one operational quick car." I informed her. "Don't worry about me. I'm a pretty fast runner." She reassured me. With little options left to me, I worked to get both Rose and Eric inside the quick car. During this time, Isaac, could hear her plan and aimed the gun in his hand at Luna and fired twice. One bullet ricocheted off of some nearby rocks and the second grazed Luna's left arm.
Luna proved that she could back up her boasting by sprinting around and diverting Lavender's attention, causing him to waist his ammunition. She ran circles around him taunting him, "What's the matter 'daddy'? Can't walk anymore since I severed a vital tenant in your leg?" Isaac continued firing at her screaming wildly, "Damn you! Is this how you treat your creator?" It was a matter of minutes when I had gotten both Rose and Eric in the back seats of the quick car and said to both of them, "Hang on and duck your heads!" Then I decided to call to Luna to ensure that I never left her behind, "Luna, we're ready. Get on!" She turned her head for a mere second when Isaac fired the gun at her once more. This time the bullet struck her in the left kidney and she was flung to the ground. I gasped in fear and panic, thinking that my distraction had killed her until she slowly picked herself up. Both Eric and Rose used bits of their clothing to stop the bleeding of their own wounds and I figured that I had only minutes to grab her and get away.
Still determined to have me, Isaac used his hands and his good leg to crawl toward us, his sinister smile ever present. Panting heavily, Luna picked herself to her feet and swung her chain once more. The pain in her side felt like it was burning in flames, but she withstood it as much as she could. She knife on the chain she spun faster and faster until she flung the entire thing at him, releasing even the chain as the weapon flew at its target. The knife traveled through the air until I lodged itself in the right shoulder of Isaac Lavender. The wound was deep enough to limit the use of the damaged arm and he collapsed onto his face. I raced to grab Luna by the right paw and hurried back to the quick car. I placed her in the seat with Rose realizing that she could treat the wound and released the brake the moment I hopped into the front seat. The quick car sped off in a hurry, faster than it had ever traveled before and we had vanished from Isaac's view seconds before a pair of flying machines released a couple of devices that looked somewhat like elongated containers. The moment the containers struck the ground near the tree there was a massive explosion from each. This caused the entire glen to collapse in on itself. The debris inevitably collapsed on top of Isaac and all we could hear was a loud thud after his frightened screams. The explosion's force detonated the power cell that was powering the house and that caused another explosion so massive that the quick tunnels behind us began collapsing completely as we raced away, destroying the tracks as the large chunks of debris fell.
The end of the track came at us in a hurry and the tunnels behind us continued to collapse. The only choice I had now was to launch the quick car off of the track and hope for the best. "Everybody hold on tight!" I shouted to inform my friends to brace themselves. The car launched off of the track and we flew through the air for some time. "Brace yourselves!" I yelled out seconds before the car struck ground. The moment it did, my head was thrashed forward and I cracked my skull against the edge of the front of the car, knocking me out cold. The car continued to slide against the stone ground of the tunnels for a good forty three feet before slamming its right side against a pile of debris in front of it.
The collapsing tunnels has ceased a good distance back, but we were still trapped in the tunnels, and with the ceiling about as fragile as a sheet of glass with a boulder on top of it, we had to be careful yet swift fleeing the area. Pieces of rock fell from the ceiling every once and awhile and the danger of having it collapse in on us grew ever more present. "What do we do now Sunni?" Eric whispered loudly so that he could be heard but not have the echo of his voice bring the tunnel down. When I didn't answer, he looked over at my collapsed body. Worried for my safety he used his good leg to lift himself up and out of the car. He did his best to use the edge of the car to help maintain his balance while making his way over to me. When he reached the front of the car, he noticed the wound on my forehead, just an inch and a half above my left eye, bleeding. I had my eyes closed and I wasn't moving, so he reached over and checked my pulse on my neck. When he felt the small thumping in my neck, he felt slightly relieved. "She's alive. Just unconscious." He whispered in the same tone and volume.
Some more pieces of the ceiling fell to the ground and the reality of the danger became ever more apparent. "We have to get somewhere safe and treat our wounds." Rose loudly whispered back to Eric. Rose decided on sifting through the debris to craft some makeshift crutches for both Luna and Eric, and even managed to locate a small pool of water nearby. "That means that there could be water near the surface." She deduced while soaking a bandage, made from the sleeve of her lab coat, to wrap around my head to help keep the swelling to a minimum. It hurt to use her right arm, but she forced herself to work through the pain and wrapped my head with the crude bandage. She then hoisted me upon her back and began leading the group carefully through the tunnel to find a safe place.