True to his agreement with Flyairth, Jamie was ready for departure early the next morning. Before anyone else was up for morning silflay, Flyairth, Captain Broom, Rosebud and Hannah came to escort him out and bid him goodbye. Hastily gathering up his meagre belongings and taking Snitter by his lead, he followed his friends to the exit. As soon as they reached the boundaries, the rabbits paused, as Jamie walked away. Turning to look at his friends one last time, he said, "I promise you when I return I'll have the vaccine for you. You just try and hang on as long as possible."
"Don't make promises you can't keep young one," said Flyairth with a sad smile, "Frith be with you!" Rosebud was holding back too many tears of sadness to say farewell, while Hannah tried in vain to comfort her. Only Captain Broom stood formally and expressionless, yet he too, couldn't help but feel a twinge of sadness at Jamie's departure. The boy gave them a final wave and was gone, into the woods and out of sight. The rabbits paused for a few minutes until Jamie's footsteps faded away before turning and making their way back to the warren. But not all of them.
Leaving her aunt and Captain Broom to go up ahead, Rosebud turned to her carer mouse, "Hannah, I want you to do me a favour; I want you to go with him." The mouse looked as if she had been slapped in the face.
"What! And what about my duty towards you? You need constant care…""And you deserve your freedom," Rosebud insisted, "We still haven't repaid our debt to Jamie; what better than a travelling companion to watch over him on our behalf? And don't tell me you aren't the least curious to see his strange world up close?"
"Rosebud, I…" Hannah stammered, caught in a conflict of emotions. On one hand, she felt selfish at the thought of abandoning Rosebud who needed constant care; leaving her would make her already difficult life even worse, with no one to guide her around. On the other hand, Hannah secretly regarded life at Thinial as monotonous and hollow as Rosebud did, so the opportunity for such an adventure, to do something more with her life, was irresistible. "Do you mean it?" Rosebud nodded.
"No point watching your life go by over a hopeless case," she said, "You have done your duty towards me and more; it's time you took control of your life. Don't worry about Aunt Flyairth; I'll explain to her and I am sure she'll understand. Well, off you go then!" Giving her friend a last farewell nuzzle, Hannah turned and followed Jamie's trail, not daring to look back in case she changed her mind. Rosebud listened to her friend's footsteps fade in the distance, calling, "Make sure you bring him back to us! Frithaes rusamitha!"
Meanwhile, Jamie and Snitter were heading upstream, towards where Jamie remembered seeing that mysterious crash site from his glider. As he paused to consult the button compass on his Swiss Army knife, he heard Snitter suddenly start to bark excitedly. Looking around, expecting trouble, he was surprised as he saw a familiar mouse come running out of the bushes, calling to him, "Jamie, wait for me!"
"Hannah? What the heck are you doing here?" he gasped, rushing over to greet her. Taking her up into his hands, to protect her from Snitter's excited nuzzling, he patted her between the ears, delighted to see her, "Did Rosebud sent you?" She nodded, not uttering a word. Jamie didn't dare inquire any further; although overjoyed of her decision to go with him, he knew that it must have been a hard decision on her part to leave her friend behind, to accompany him on his journey. Instead, he placed her on his shoulder, "Come on then, let's go."
Although the crash site was less than four miles northwest of Thinial, the trek through the forest took all morning. After several hours of slowly wading their way through endless, jungle-like vegetation, they finally came to a small clearing. As Jamie had feared, everything man-made had disappeared as if it had never existed; every road, service pylon, the town of Newbury, the people, everything had vanished without a trace. So it came as quite a shock to him when he spotted the first trace of human activity he had seen in the past two days at the foot of a tree: a grave.
For an instant, Jamie was petrified. There was no doubt about it; the rectangular-shaped patch of freshly dug earth at the foot of the tree, testified to the final resting place of a human being. Glancing at the overhead tree, which served as a tombstone for the unknown person, he noticed something shiny hanging on a chain where the name of the deceased was supposed to be engraved. He picked up a military dog tag, bearing the name of the dead man tucked beneath the ground:
CORPORAL JOHN HARRISON
AIR MEDIC OF HER MAJESTY'S ROYAL AIR CORPS
GREENHAM ROYAL AIR FORCE BASE, NEWBURY
RAF-218
"Blimey, it's Mr Harrison, the medic from Dad's chopper!" Jamie gasped, recognising the name, as well as the identification number of the chopper. For the first time in days, he had finally found the first trace of his father. The fact that someone had taken the time to bury Harrison, as well as the many fading footprints on the ground around the grave, confirmed that there had to be some survivors out there, hopefully including his father.
Suddenly, he was snapped out of his thoughts by a new sound coming from above; the sound of an aircraft engine! Sure enough, looking up at the patch of sky through the trees, he saw a small plane fly overhead, heading towards the south. Even from ground level, Jamie could tell it was no other than Johnson's Cessna. In an instant, he was running to and fro, waving his arms, desperately trying to draw attention.
"Help! Down here! Hallo!"
Reaching into his survival kit, he took out the distress flare. Before he could use it however, the plane was gone from sight, the sound of the engine fading away in the background. Jamie sighed in disappointment; with the plane flying away from his location, he could never hope to attract attention now, not even if he set the whole forest ablaze. He swore, remembering the glider's ELT he had left behind on the glider; if he had only thought of taking it with him, he could have signalled for help with it… However, the sight of that plane had boosted his confidence that there were indeed other people out there. They continued on their way.
It was mid-afternoon when they finally came to a meadow, where they decided to rest and eat. While Hannah looked around for her favourite acorns, Jamie found plenty of blackberries growing on some nearby bushes to eat, as well as a couple of apples he had kept from Thinial, cramped in his pockets. Snitter was having the biggest problem finding nourishment as he walked around miserably, scavenging for anything edible.
Suddenly, as Jamie walked behind a tree to go to the bathroom, he noticed something that made his heart jump: another grave marker! Just like Harrison's, it was another shallow grave at the foot of the tree, the name of the deceased carved onto the bark.
"'Julio Andre'…" Jamie read aloud, "Bloody hell, it's the pilot who worked for Ken's dad at the flight club! The one who was flying Johnson's plane!" Nearby, he also found the remains of a campfire, as well as recent tyre tracks on the ground, from where the plane had originally landed and then taken off. Following the tracks, he came to a waterhole on the edge of the clearing, where he found some sort of improvised ramp fashioned out of timber, lying flattened in the water. Beside it also lay a discarded block-and-tackle, fashioned out of a steel cable and some other mechanical components, testifying to a recent salvage operation. Examining the crude block-and-tackle, he suddenly recognised the origin of the components.
"This is from the winch from Dad's chopper," Jamie thought, piecing everything together, "So someone fashioned this pulley using components from the chopper, to salvage the plane and escape. But then, where is the rest of the chopper?"
His mind instantly sprang back to the plane he had seen from the woods. If the pilot was dead and buried, then who was flying it? Was it Johnson? Was it his father? His thoughts were cut short when Snitter reappeared with Hannah riding on his back. Jamie instantly noticed that the dog was carrying something in its mouth, something other than food…
Jamie frowned as he retrieved a strip of charred, shredded leather from the dog's mouth. Glancing at the coloured side, he recognised it as torn lining from an aircraft seat. The trail for finding his father seemed to be becoming clearer by the minute. He turned to Hannah, "Where did you find this?"
"In a clearing, behind those trees," she explained, "There are lots of these things lying scattered all over the place. You better came and take a look." Following Hannah and Snitter through the trees, they came to another clearing, revealing a scene of total destruction. He had finally reached the crash site he had seen from his glider.
The trees on the edge of the clearing where Jamie stood were all broken and mangled at their tops, almost as if some giant blade had chopped away at them. Looking at the foot of a tree, he found a twisted sheet of black metal, which he recognised as part of a shattered rotor blade. Nearby also lay a larger fragment, which he recognised as the severed tail of the chopper, its rotor blades all mangled, yet the identification number remained clearly stamped on the yellow metal. It seemed that the chopper had been flying too low, causing the tail and rotor blades to be torn off when they grazed the treetops, resulting in a crash.
The clearing was littered with scattered debris from the crashed chopper: chunks of fuselage, fragments of shattered fairings, parts of rotor blades, engine components, as well as a large collection of objects from the chopper's onboard equipment, which had been thrown overboard on impact; harnesses, bolts, scraps of paper, parts of tools, among other bits of junk. Running the length of the field was a trail ploughed into the ground, undoubtedly caused by the chopper, when the fuselage had cartwheeled across the plain.
Staring at the far end of the clearing where the trail led, Jamie saw where the chopper had come to rest; the surrounding trees were incinerated and collapsed, as if they had been exposed to a massive fireball, which had been the chopper exploding. The fire of course had long since gone out but the strong smell of burning in the air, as well as the ashes still blowing in the breeze told Jamie it was very recent. Even from where he stood he could see the blown-up fuselage lying amidst the collapsed trees, burnt beyond recognition. As he approached the wreck, he found an interesting surprise.
Surrounding the incinerated remains of the chopper was a network of deep trenches; the ground had collapsed from the shock of the impact, exposing, what seemed to have been, a maze of tunnels beneath the forest floor. In an instant, Jamie realised that the chopper had annihilated another warren, similar to Thinial, in the crash. At that moment, a new smell reached his nostrils: the smell of dead flesh. The smell instantly chilled him to the bones; maybe his father's remains were somewhere under that wreckage? Suddenly, Hannah's voice caught him off-guard.
"Jamie, over here!"
Hurrying over to her, she saw her pointing at a pair of crosses, fashioned out of bits of piping from the wreckage, standing erect close by. Snitter was sniffing at the pile of earth beneath the crosses, as if picking up a familiar scent beneath the soil. Jamie felt his insides coil up as he recognised two more graves. Shakily, he walked up to read the dog tags hanging from the crosses, expecting to see his father's name. But, to his utmost relief, that was not to be the case.
"Pilot Richard Smith and Air Mechanic Lance Stacy," he read aloud, "That leaves Dad as the only one who could have buried them. So, he is still alive! But where did he go?" Looking around for any further clues, he found a couple of empty fire extinguishers on the edge of the ruins, testifying to an attempt to control the fire caused by the explosion. Remembering the plane he had seen earlier, he finally pieced everything together.
Johnson must have found Dad; after putting out the fire and burying the dead, they used the Cessna to get out of here. I came here expecting to find him stranded while he is already on his way home with the rest of the survivors! So that's where I have to get to right away! His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by Snitter's furious barking. The dog had wondered off and was barking at something amidst the ruins of the collapsed warren. His first thought was that it just pure excitement, until he heard Hannah's terrified cries.
"Frith of Inle! Jamie, come here!" Stumbling over piles of debris and ashes, he hurried along a trench, which had once been a burrow, until he came to a landslide blocking the entrance to a burrow; Snitter was clawing and sniffing furiously at the rubble while Hannah stood petrified with shock at something. Before Jamie could even ask what was the matter, he heard it: Voices! Desperate voices, muffled by the barrier of debris, could be heard from behind the cave-in. With cold dread, Jamie's attention instantly shifted to the realisation that there was someone trapped in there, buried alive.
"Val! On veth nahl anisth! Pli lay hlaf thli? Naylfa-rah Hleengar? Thlayli? Threarah?"
Although Jamie couldn't understand what they were saying, what few words he had picked up from Hannah and Rosebud being insufficient, he knew whoever was trapped down there was in big trouble. Pressing his ear against the cave-in, he called, "Hallo? Can you hear me?" The voices on the other side instantly intensified with excitement, yet Jamie could still make out nothing understandable. Then, he suddenly heard a stern voice bark something in Lapine, silencing the others, before answering in English.
"Hallo, up there? I can hear you! Who is it? Are you outskirter or Owsla? Why are you speaking in Hedgerow?" The voice sounded surprisingly calm and commanding, reminding Jamie of someone with strong military discipline, like his father. Delighted at having established contact and determined to help, Jamie answered back.
"I am a h…" he stammered, catching himself in the nick of time, as he realised that he was talking to more of those giant rabbits, which he knew by now, would unquestionably see him as a threat. "I…I am a stranger, passing through. I have come to help you…" Although fortunately the rabbit behind the cave-in seemed to buy it, Jamie's hesitation in answering apparently hadn't gone amiss.
"I am Lieutenant Ash of the Sandleford Owsla. What is your name stranger?" he called back with a tone of suspicion in his voice, causing Jamie to hesitate again. His name would definitely sound nothing like a rabbit's name; although the truth would inevitably come out soon or later if he ever got them out of there, he knew he needed their trust and cooperation if he was to get them out of that death trap alive. Turning frantically to Hannah, he whispered, "Help me think up a rabbit's name I can use. Hurry!"
"S…Sunflower! That's it!" they both cried in unison as Jamie turned back to the blocked tunnel entrance where Lieutenant Ash and his companions were trapped, "My name is Sunflower."
"All right Sunflower, this isn't the time for further introductions. Are there any more rabbits with you to help us dig? We have been struggling to clear this run for days now, before our air runs out…" But Jamie, who knew something more about being trapped in a closed, unventilated space, interrupted.
"No, listen carefully. You must stop digging right now or you'll only use up all your air faster. Pass the word to your friends to keep calm and try and take shallow breaths, while we try and…" But another unknown voice, hearing his apparently absurd instructions, interrupted.
"Stop digging you idiot hlessi? We can barely breath as it is and it's only getting worse! What, are you suggesting we just sit here like fools, and wait for the Black Rabbit to take us all?" Jamie was glad when Lieutenant Ash's stern voice cut off his interrupting companion's sarcastic remarks.
"Be quiet Nose-in-the-Air!" he barked, causing his companion to fall silent, yet the furious muttering in the background told Jamie whoever else was trapped down there shared Nose-in-the-Air's sentiments. Ash's voice shifted back to Jamie, "What is your plan Sunflower?"
The boy considered for a moment, feeling at a loss; although he had read plenty of emergency scenarios, he never actually had to deal with a real crisis, least of all on his own. But he had to try something fast, or else those rabbits trapped below would soon die of asphyxia. Doing some quick thinking, combining common sense with what little he knew about recovery procedures, he called back into the cave-in.
"We are going to try and shift some of this mess, to clear an exit for you. First, we need to find a way to get some fresh air down there for you to breathe while we dig." Picking up a sheet of metal from the chopper's shattered fuselage, he improvised a shovel and, with Hannah's help, attacked the cave-in. Unfortunately, he hadn't shoved more than half a dozen armfuls, when more earth trickled down, rendering his efforts futile. There was no way to clear a hole, to give the trapped rabbits some air, let alone get them out of their living tomb.
Looking around frantically, his eyes fell upon some fragments of hollow piping torn from the chopper's monorail lying amidst the chopper wreckage. Running up to them, he picked up the strongest and most intact pieces, along with some scrap wire and some other odds and ends to help him in the digging. Hurrying back to the collapsed burrow, they set to work.
With Hannah standing on a rock, holding open the survival guide for Jamie to read the instructions under Avalanches and Rescue, the closest scenario he could find, he got to work. Using a length of unbent piping, he forced it through the soft soil of the cave-in. After a few minutes of hard work, he felt a slight jolt, followed by a gasp from below ground, as the pipe penetrated the cave-in. Then, using a thin stick, he forced it down the pipe, clearing out the soil that was blocking it. Finally, he got a whiff of stale, damp air, thick with carbon dioxide, which came hissing out of the pipe.
"Does this help?" he called through the pipe. The sounds of Ash and his companions taking deep breaths of relief told him that he had done it; the pipe had created a 'snorkel' through the asphyxiating earth, providing a lifeline for those trapped below ground. Next came the hard part: the task of shifting the cave-in blocking the exit.
Jamie had realised by now that the cave-in consisted mostly of loose, crumbly earth, amidst a few scattered boulders and collapsed tree trunks. If he simply tried shifting the earth, more would come trickling down like sand in an hourglass, maybe even cause another cave-in that would crush Ash and the others trapped below. The only way around this would be to set up supports for an escape tunnel, which would have to tunnel in at least six feet deep. And the only materials he had for the job were the scraps of wreckage from the chopper.
With Ash and his companions now out of danger from suffocation, Jamie and Hannah got to work constructing a passage through the cave-in. Loose hull longerons were lashed together with strips of electrical wiring to form A-frames, while chunks of fuselage skin, which were hammered flat with stones, were used for planking. Jamie and Snitter laboured frantically, clearing out piles of earth and debris, while Hannah kept a watchful eye for any signs of another cave-in.
Work continued frantically for the next two hours; slowly a passage, enforced with charred chopper components, penetrated the cave-in. Dirty and sweaty, Jamie felt his hopes rise for those trapped in there. Then, with only a couple more feet left to go, they hit an obstacle; a collapsed tree trunk lying crosswise before them loomed into view as they cleared the soil around it. Jamie swore in exasperation; things weren't looking good after all.
"We need a lever to budge this thing," he said, picking up a spare pipe leftover from the supports. Wedging it between a stone jack and the log, he put all his weight against it, struggling to move it. But it was too heavy and the pipe was hollow, unable to withstand that pressure, causing it to bend. Tossing the now useless pipe away, Jamie turned to Hannah, "It's no use; we need to start over…"
At that moment, another sound caught them unawares; the sound of crumbling earth, followed by the panicked cries of the trapped rabbits, "There is earth pouring in! It's everywhere! Get us out of here!" With sickening dread, Jamie realised their digging had created a disturbance, causing the already unstable burrow to continue disintegrating. Now it was only a matter of minutes before that small underground air pocket filled up, suffocating Ash and his companions. And there was no way to get them out of there anymore…or was there?
Remembering something that just might do the trick, Jamie jumped to his feet. Turning in the direction of the semi-complete passage, he called, "Try and hold out for five more minutes. Shift the falling earth towards the far end of the burrow but stay close to the cave-in. We'll have it unblocked in a moment!" Without a word of explanation to Hannah or Snitter, he turned and hurried back to the Cessna landing site.
Rushing over to the waterhole where Johnson's plane had originally crash-landed, he picked up the block-and-tackle someone had improvised from the chopper remains. Wrapping the heavy steel cable and pulley around his shoulder, he carried it back to the digging site. If this could get a stuck ton-and-a-half heavy aircraft out of the marsh, then it should work just as well with the collapsed tree trunk blocking the tunnel.
Not pausing for a breath, weary of the time quickly running out for those trapped underground, he secured the pulley to a nearby tree and extended the other end towards the cave-in. Securing the hooked end of the cable around the collapsed tree trunk, he grabbed hold of the other end and put all his strength against it. As he heaved, the trunk budged forward a few inches, causing the loose earth above it to come loose. The planking and supports instantly sprang into action, preventing the escape tunnel from caving-in; unfortunately, the burrow on the other side was another matter.
No sooner had the tree started moving, when they heard the terrified cries of the rabbits again; only this time it was followed by a deep rumbling sound as the burrow, finally losing its last ounce of integrity it had left, began collapsing in earnest. The panicked voices of Ash and the others were heard screaming, "Lord Frith, no! Hurry Sunflower! It's almost filled up! Please!" Jamie, Hannah and Snitter doubled their efforts.
Holding Snitter against his chest and with Hannah clinging onto his shoulder to add more counter-weight, Jamie grabbed hold of the pulley cable one more time and put all their weight against it. Finally, the collapsed tree came free and fell away, completing the final step in the digging process. With the cave-in finally cleared, Jamie, Hannah and Snitter caught a glimpse of a small, semi-collapsed burrow beyond, where several dirty and scared rabbits lay huddled together. But only for an instant.
No sooner had the cave-in cleared than the damaged burrow finally gave way. Almost as if fate intended these rabbits to perish anyway, the roof suddenly disintegrated and came crashing down in large amounts of loose earth and rock. In an instant, Ash and his companions were once again buried, this time completely, pinned beneath the debris of their demolished warren. But Jamie wasn't about to give up on them yet.
Discarding the pulley, the boy and his friends rushed back to the new cave-in. Fortunately, the supports for the escape tunnel had withstood the collapse, leaving only a few inches of loose earth between them and those buried. Realising he only had a few seconds before the rabbits suffocated, Jamie got down on his knees and attacked the earth with his makeshift shovel, Hannah and Snitter helping out.
"Help me you two! Faster, they can't breath under there!" he shouted to Hannah and Snitter, who pitched in to help best they could. Suddenly, a furry paw shot out of the earth, the trapped rabbit struggling to escape its entrapment. With Snitter tugging as hard as he could, Jamie cleared the earth around the head, exhuming the semi-suffocated rabbit; Ash's face, blank with shock as well from the effects of asphyxia, stared back at him. For an instant, Jamie feared the rabbit might be dead but then he saw he was still breathing.
While Snitter, on Hannah's instruction, dragged the semi-conscious rabbit away, Jamie continued digging. Soon, another furry body appeared, followed by another, then another, then another and then another. All in all, seven giant rabbits were pulled out of their living tomb in the nick of time. But no sooner had they pulled them out of the ruins, than Lieutenant Ash finally regained full consciousness and realised who - or rather what - his rescuer was. Jamie's eyes locked with those of the surprised Owsla rabbit's, bracing for the explosion. The time for yet another round of explanations had come.
Author's note: For those of you that are confused, Jamie found the ruins of Sandleford as Alan and co had left them. Ash and his group of survivors had been overlooked, leaving them to be found by Jamie. For those of you who remember character names, Ash was a minor character, briefly mentioned in the book, along with several others, which I kept for this story. The whole list is also on Wikipedia, should you wish to check it out. Also, the Cessna Jamie saw was being flown by Robbins after he had returned to Sandleford with Vervain, Avens and Mallow. Enjoy and please review!