The Exodus Quest

II

'Others are coming,' gasped Lily, clinging to the wall. 'Please tell me others are coming.'

'Yes,' Knox assured her. 'Others are coming.'

'Then where are they?'

'They'll be here as quick as they can,' he promised. 'There's one hell of a storm going on.'

'You're Knox, aren't you? Daniel Knox?' She nodded at Gaille. 'She said you'd come for us. She said you'd save us.' But then she looked around, realized he was in no position to save anyone, had to fight back the tears.

'It's okay,' he assured her. 'It's going to be okay. You've done really well.' He shone his torch around again, to change the atmosphere as much as anything, picking out the wooden planks and empty water bottles floating in the water, the sheer walls, the rim a good fifteen feet above their heads. He felt his pockets. He still had the scissors from the car. But even if he could gouge holds in the limestone, the shaft would have been far too high for him to climb out on his own, let alone with Gaille and Lily to worry about.

He adjusted Gaille in his arms. Her head lolled back, revealing an ugly gash in her scalp leaking watery blood. 'What happened?' he asked.

'Those planks were across the top,' sobbed Lily. 'They must have come crashing down. I was underwater, trying to dig through the wall.'

'Dig through the wall?'

Lily nodded vigorously, her hope rekindling. 'We found some talatat down there. We got one out, hoping we could give the water somewhere to drain off to. But then everything came crashing down. Stafford was… he was…'

Knox nodded. He needed to check this out. 'Can you hold Gaille a minute?' he asked.

'I can't,' wailed Lily. 'I'm sorry. I can't. I just can't.'

'Please. Just for a little while. You've got to try.'

She looked unhappy, but nodded all the same. He passed Gaille over, took out the scissors, gouged a deep groove in the wet limestone wall, slotted one end of a wooden plank in it, then lowered the other end like a drawbridge against the wall opposite until it had jammed at an angle. He swam across the shaft, hauled himself up onto the higher end, jumped up and down on it until it had wedged so tight that it was bowing in the middle. Lily was beginning to cry out with the strain. He took Gaille back from her, pulled her up onto the plank, laid her out on her back, then helped Lily up too, gave her his torch to hold. 'I need to go and check out that talatat wall,' he told her. 'I won't be long.'

He packed his lungs with air, dived for the foot of the shaft, felt blindly along the rocky debris until he found the hole where the brick had been. He attacked the softened plaster with the scissors, hacking it free. His lungs began to protest. He kicked for the surface, filled his lungs once more, returned back down, aware how little time he had should Khaled and his men come in after him.