Chapter 01: Exit, Pursued By A Bee - Page 6

As she reached the crevice, she saw that so much loose earth and rocks had fallen into it she could scramble across, noting it was only a couple of feet deep. Derek grabbed her in a bear hug.

“Yes, Derek, but you’re hurting me.” She saw his face was wet, but she was uncertain whether he’d feared for her, himself, or both. Maybe she was being unkind, but for all the dangerous upheaval, she was more excited than afraid. So when Derek pulled at her to go back down to the car – the only one left in the car park – she resisted. Unable to yell coherently with the roaring around them, she pulled away from him and grabbed a spade he’d discarded. She didn’t need to hear Derek trying to shout rebukes over the growling terrain. His admonition telepathed across the disturbed air clear enough.

Reaching the shallow fissure, she plunged the spade in. Why did she have an urge to dig? Defying logic she dug more in the mix of soil, turf and limestone. Another minor upheaval, releasing earthy smells into the air, sent her onto her back. She saw Derek thrown to the floor too as he tried to reach her. Back on her feet, her ears aching from the roaring noise, she raised the shiny new spade and stabbed again at the chasm, which had opened a little more. Again it merely struck limestone rubble, jarring her arm. An urge compelled her to see if anything just beneath the thin soil was responsible for this phenomenon. Was it a result of logical analysis that this event couldn’t be related to seismic disturbance nor volcanic? No. Her logic circuits partly worked that out but a more ethereal need drove her on. A feeling, intuition; a culmination of the esprit of Avalon, her scientific and engineering training, along with bloody-minded curiosity forced her to lift the spade again.

“Come back down, Kal. For God’s sake,” yelled Derek, his voice wailing across the thundering noises.

Clang. The spade hit another rock sending sparks where quartzite and steel met. Her nostrils pinched with a smell of burnt sulphur bringing memories of when as a child she smashed a lump of white and grey quartzite laced with yellow sulphur. She dropped the spade, which slithered further into the crack out of reach. She rested her enviably flat stomach on the ground, feeling small stones through her shirt. Stretching, she grabbed the handle. A strange tingling sensation travelled up her arm to her head. Totally, unlike anything she’d experienced, and she’d been through throb hell: stinging nettles on this hill, purple-striped jellyfish at Long Beach, and the literal hair-raising moment when a shuttle simulator became a stimulator with an accidentally electrified hull. But none of these buzzed her brain. Not that her grey matter was frying, but it had tingled. She had the prescience and presence of mind to consider that her arm was slipping in and out of phase, but it could’ve been the increased vibration.