Inescapable Collision

  Inescapable Collision  by Richard Canhan
                                             
‘My name is Jones, Austin Jones. I’m a team leader of twelve men located in the Northern Region of Western Queensland on a gold mining expedition. We are over two kilometres underground and we’ve just been buried alive.’
Austin Jones repeated his statement over and over again into the antique looking telephone on the wall in the emergency station two kilometres underground, the response was a loud and eerie silence.
An Australian Red Kangaroo rests in the red dust under the sparse shade of a gnarled tree to escape the oppressive heat of the Australian Outback. His massive ears constantly rotated like a satellite dish as if to seek signs of danger; he sensed that all was not right and he raised his massive body up onto his hind legs in anticipation to flee. He bounds swiftly away on his hind legs after sensing a danger he has never known before. The ground moved where the roo had recently laid, it shook ever so slightly but the vibration was enough to raise the dust in the power fine earth. A Black Cockatoo takes flight and screeches a noisily departure as it seeks a safe haven.
18 July 2010 was a hot and hazy Sunday in the Australian outback mining town of Fitzgerald but the rumble from deep within the Fitzgerald Gold Mine sounded out a warning of a change.
It would last a mere five to seven seconds, and cause dust and small rocks that had accumulated over the years to shower down on the dozen or so miners who worked in the mine on that Sunday in the North-East coastal region of Queensland.
They worked two kilometres below ground and more than two kilometres away from the nearest exit when a series of earthquakes that would measure up to 9.7 on the Richter scale and leave the mine in ruins.                      The following quake would last twelve seconds and strike eight minutes after the first, although this time it would register a greater alert from the inhabitants of the mine as large rocks and debris rained on them in the tunnel’s mineshaft.                        The final quake would strike fifteen minutes later and trap the miners below ground. It will send one man on a race against time to avert a devastating disaster that had the capacity to change the planet’s destiny forever; only his success could possibly save the world from its self.  If he were to survive that was.
At the age of 25 Austin Jones, although he was the youngest Mining Engineer many of the old miners had met, he was well respected for his knowledge of mining by many of the life timers that had passed through the mine. He was an experienced mining engineer and noted environmental scholar, and he registered an alarm with the second tremor.
Austin checked his watch the moment he felt the beginning of the second tremor. ‘Eight minutes,’ he said aloud to himself. ‘That’s not right,’ and with his unmistakable Australian accent he ordered an immediate evacuation.
‘Everybody out…Now!’ he shouted, and he got no arguments.
Austin was born in the Australian Outback in 1985, near the town of Longreach in Queensland and was the son of world-renowned archaeologists Grace and Arthur Jones, who believed Austin would gain more from life for his education when he travelled with them for his early years. He saw very little of the inside of a conventional classroom when he was young, his home schooling usually consisted of whatever geological site or mine his parents happened to work in at the time.
His senior years were very different as he studied at Harvard where he graduated in 2008 with honours as a Bachelor of Mining Engineering, and Environmental Management.
Austin was a regular visitor to the Fitzgerald Gold Mine and met up with his parents there after his graduation and then shortly after his parents went off on another wild expedition in South America, he stayed on and became the youngest Mining Engineer to work at the Fitzgerald Gold Mine.
At a height of just over 195 cm and with short sandy hair, Austin stood over many of his colleagues at the mine; he was in his mid twenties and displayed the true characteristics of an outdoorsman and was strong as an ox. At times he was like a caged tiger with endless energy and his deep set dark eyes gave him an air of self-confidence without the well to do attitude. Despite the age difference he was well liked and respected by the mostly migrant miners, they nicknamed him Aussie, which most of the miners pronounced with an “O” like Ossie, he was one of only a few Australians who worked at the mine. They now looked to him for guidance.
The power fluctuated and the underground lighting blinked on and off and visibility was reduced to just a few metres and even that was hazy as the dust swirled in the light beams from the miner’s helmets, which cast eerie shadows around them. They made their way to their Mine Underground Vehicles, better known as an MUV, similar in size to an American Hummer and carried up to four miners with their equipment. They had four of them parked in the main access tunnel 200 metre away.                      With the power not operating at its peak the thick dust was slow to be extracted by the ventilation shafts. Despite the dust, the super powerful lighting on the MUV’s lit up the dark and dusty shafts, and they roared uphill through the multitude of tunnels at breakneck speed. Their destination was the vertical shafts located at the shallowest section of the mine more than 2 kilometres away, and about 450 metres below ground level.
The vertical shaft had a caged elevating platform, better known as an EP and on a good day with full power an EP could extract them in less than fifteen minutes.                    They swerved and bounced through the debris strewn tunnel, dust and rocks still showered down by the quakes. It was mayhem in the vehicles and above the din of the vehicle noise and falling rocks the men were shouting out warnings of rocks on the roadway until a large rock fall blocked their path and they were forced to abandon their vehicles and continue on foot 200 metres short of the vertical shaft. Each of the MUV’s came to a sudden halt behind the previous vehicle and its occupants abandoned it where it stopped.
Unaware the first vehicle had come to a sudden stop the second and third vehicle had ploughed in the first vehicle side by side and struck a man that had got out of the first vehicle. The man was badly injured and would have to be carried the rest of the way. Austin’s strapping frame carried his weight of 95 kilos with ease, although he now carried an extra 25 kilos of emergency equipment as he stepped down from the last vehicle and ran to the forward vehicles
Over the noise of falling rocks Austin shouted at the men to keep moving as they were milling around as if unsure what to do next. ‘First man to reach the EP is to power up the emergency power supply, got it?’  He called out although he never heard an answer from the moving mass of men, but he hoped they’d remembered the emergency practise drills they’d all been through.  The twelve miners stretched out over the final 150 metres and Austin remained at the rear with the injured man and two others and urged them on to their only potential escape route. Whether he’d heard Austin or maybe it was the emergency training, it could have been pure survival instincts but the first man that reached the EP at the vertical shaft powered up the emergency power supply as rocks still rained down on them, the noise was horrendous. An EP was roughly large enough to fit two MUV’s side by side or twenty men with their equipment.                     
  The last 150 metres to the vertical shaft was slow and hard going and slowed even more by constant rock-falls that seemed to take forever to stop and injured many of them. The miners carried their injured mates and emergency equipment, and they knew it would take precious time to reach the EP and that time was about to run out.                      Once activated the emergency power supply on the EP was geared to travel upwards the full distance, wait two minutes and it would descend automatically after the process has been completed.            ‘Let’s go! The shafts completely blocked, I’m the last one,’ shouted a thin man with greying hair and a strong German accent, as he leapt into the EP.                    ‘I count only 7 of us, where are the rest of them?’ called a tattooed miner as he looked back along the darkened shaft.                    ‘No lights… I don’t see em,’ replied the German.                    ‘Are you sure there’s no-one else?’                    ‘If they’re alive they must be trapped and we ain’t got no time to dig em out, let’s go,’ shouted another.                        After they were all convinced nobody else followed, they hit the large flashing push button that read up. The EP slowly and silently rose from the mine’s floor with seven miners aboard, but it had travelled only a few metres when two more miners came into view, they saw the disappearing cage and shouted and cursed as the cage rose skyward and then disappeared through the ceiling. They all knew that on emergency power the EP would not stop its upward travel; it was a failsafe procedure in case the occupants blacked out. The men at the bottom would have to wait at least five minutes for it to return.                  ‘You Bastards! You could’ve waited for us,’ wailed one man almost whining in terror. A minute later another three miners arrived at the vertical shaft with two injured colleagues, the last man in was Austin.               
‘The bastards went without us,’ shouted the first man in despair. Austin gently set down the man he’d carried only to find he was no longer in need of medical attention, he silently swore to himself and tried to sound calm and stated. ‘They probably thought we were all trapped or dead,’ as he gazed up the vertical shaft as the EP disappeared.
Austin gave them time before he continued. ‘Anyone of us probably would have done the same if we’d got here first.’
Some of the miners panicked and went to look for an alternate escape route even though they knew there were none; others sought shelter in small side shafts further up the main shaft. Six minutes later they felt another deep rumble, although this one felt very deep.
‘Here comes the big one,’ Shouted Austin. ‘You’d better hang on to something,’
The final quake lasted nearly twenty seconds and struck with the velocity of a speeding freight train through a tunnel. Like a giant jackhammer, the tremendous force pounded the earth and the mine virtually imploded and collapsed in on itself and three of the five miners trapped at the base of the vertical shaft were killed instantly.
As the quake finally subsided, the power relay tower on the surface buckled and fell which filled what was left of the mine with a deafening silence and in complete darkness. The Fitzgerald Gold Mine was one of the older deep goldmines and was unlike the newer open cut mines that scarred the countryside. It produced good quality gold but over the last 25 years the gold proved hard to extract. One of Austin’s tasks at the mine was to find the seams to drill and he’d worked at the hundred and ten-year-old mine for about two years and became very familiar with region.                            The earthquake and the remoteness of the mine and its surrounding township caused it to be more isolated than ever. The sirens blared in the town and at the mine, but both were severely damaged and many people injured or killed, it left few to respond to the emergency.
The dust began to settle at the base of the vertical shaft when a voice penetrated the silence. ‘Anyone else still alive?’ It was Austin. It was responded to by a cough and splutter from not too far away.                      ‘Yes…that you Aussie? It’s me…Rick Parker,’ Rick Parker had stood very near to Austin who, as the last quake hit dived into the vacant space left by the departed EP.                        Richard Parker was born in England and moved to Australia when he was young. He was aged in his mid thirties and although single Austin knew he had a 2 year-old daughter who lived with her mother in Sydney, he was what Austin regarded as a close mate.
‘Anyone else?’ called Austin. At which this time came no reply. ‘Looks like it’s just you and me Rick, hang on buddy, I’m on my way over to you,’
He adjusted his helmet light that had been knocked off during the fall. His light came on and he could see the mineshaft had collapsed to about a metre in height in places, less in others. Water trickled in from somewhere, and he suddenly felt trapped.                      The sound of Rick’s voice reminded him he wasn’t alone and guided Austin to him, he couldn’t see him at first he was just a face in the debris, his normally jet-black hair and face was coated in a fine dust, and he was almost completely buried with only his face and the top of his head exposed. It was slow moving as any movement caused the dust to swirl in Austin’s light, but it was the movement of the whites of Rick’s brown eyes that caught his attention. ‘Let’s get you out of there mate,’ said Austin. But again the slightest movement caused the powder fine dusk to swirl in the light beam and choke them both. Austin placed his emergency mask on and sucked the fresh oxygen into his lungs and then shared the mask with Rick until he located his own mask.                    ‘I can’t feel my legs,’ called Rick between gasps on the oxygen mask.                    ‘Try and stay still mate, I’ll see what I can do,’  it took Austin over an hour but eventually he dug around Rick and found one of his legs was trapped under a massive boulder that had once been part of the roof of the shaft.
He dug out what he could and managed to relieve some of the pressure but he knew if help didn’t arrive soon it would be too late for Rick. He knew that with a full emergency medical team, he could save the life of his mate, but not alone.                    Austin took a deep breath. ‘I won’t lie to you Rick…It’s not good, one of your legs is trapped under a section of the roof and I can’t get it out,’ Austin pointed with his helmet-lamp to the airshaft set in the wall. ‘See that airshaft? If they don’t come down soon I’ll climb it and bring down the cavalry. Okay?’ All he could do now was to try and make Rick more comfortable; he dropped his voice to a whisper.  ‘I’ll try and find some supplies,’                  ‘Don’t leave me alone in the dark,’ Replied Rick, his hoarse voice now barely a whisper. Austin swallowed hard as he retrieved a lamp from a half crushed helmet in the debris, its light now illuminated the tiny area they were in. ‘I’ll be back soon,’                  Within a few minutes Austin returned with supplies of fresh water, food and more oxygen. ‘You’re a good man Aussie, thanks,’                  ‘That’s all I could carry, it’ll only take me five minutes to get more,’ Austin looked at his watch as he spoke and noticed it had been smashed, probably in the rock fall.                  ‘Sure, but don’t be too long eh,’ whispered Rick.                  Austin discarded his broken watch and before he left he looked into his mate’s normally bright brown eyes and noticed they looked a slate-grey and somewhat scared ‘You’ll be right mate, I’ll be back soon.’ he assured him.
                Austin made his way back along the darkened shaft that had quickly turned into a mud bath from the water that leaked into the shaft. He again reached the supply room without a problem and he stuffed whatever he could fit into his pockets and when he was stocked up on more supplies he headed back towards Rick. On his way back an aftershock trembled and rocked throughout the shaft and sent dirt and dust down on Austin, after he extracted himself from his near burial he continued his return trip to Rick but he found the roof had now totally collapsed and prevented him from getting back at all and the potential escape route of the shaft now lay buried.
Austin spent what he thought was hours as he tried to dig his way through the rubble but it was useless, and for all he knew Rick may have been buried alive in the aftershock where he laid in the rubble.
Austin sat in the dark he felt bad about Rick. ‘I should have stayed with you,’ he shouted out in frustration. He wondered if Rick had survived the aftershock and thought that if he were still alive he’d experience a slow and lonely death. He convinced himself that he’d probably gone quickly as it was easier to bear than the latter. Austin had a fear of being alone in the dark and it now returned to him with a vengeance and sent a chill down his spine, he’d once gotten himself lost in a mine when he was young and it had taken days to find him, he didn’t like to admit it but it had scarred him for life. Austin now sat in the darkness and waited, not sure whether he waited for his turn to die or to be rescued, all he could hear was the water as it noisily trickled down the walls.
His thoughts turned to his parents and he wondered what his fate would be when he suddenly turned his lamp back on… ‘Water, where is it coming from? More importantly, where’s it going?’ He said aloud. He had no idea where it was from but he certainly could find out where it was going. The water trickled back down the shaft and away from where he was and past the supply room, it’s funny how I never noticed it before, he thought.                      With his spirits lifted a little, he dragged himself with renewed vigour through the tunnel that in places only stood 60 centre-metres high and in places was half filled with water, where he was forced to crawl along in the dark with his mouth to the highest point.
His light went out but he didn’t stop until the water level was down enough to stop and check it. He dried the batteries and the light came back on and he turned to look around and discovered he was face to face with the unseeing eyes of a dead miner from his group; he recognised the man and recoiled at the sight and vomited and struck his head on the low shaft.  He recovered quickly and stopped only to retrieve anything that he might need to survive a little longer, though he was disappointed to find the man wore no watch.
He found two more bodies and this time he was pleased to find at least one wore a wristwatch but it had no date indicator. He was unsure but he thought that about three days had passed since he went underground.                      Over the days that followed he thought he’d heard voices and the sound of machinery, only to find it must have been his imagination. He was exhausted and began to hallucinate.  He just followed the water flow; although he knew it was only going deeper into the mine and when he rested he’d turn his lamp off to conserve the batteries and the darkness would envelope him completely. Although he now had a wristwatch he began to lose track of day and night, was it midday or midnight he wondered. He slept often although as he didn’t check the time before he fell asleep he didn’t know whether it was for five minutes or five hours.
His oxygen supply began to get low so he to rationed that too, he’d breath in the stale air in the shaft, which added to his fatigue, which caused him to almost black out a number of times. At one point he awoke from a black out and found he must have taken a wrong turn in a tunnel and mindlessly crawled in another direction of the water flow as the ground was dry, he scolded himself as it took him precious time and energy to backtrack and find the water flow again.
A day or so later he started to note a change in the rock formation and in places the tunnel became narrower and higher and soon it rose to the point that he could stand upright, which was an effort after he’d crawled around for about five days, he stretched out to his full height of 195cm for the first time in a long time and it felt good. He ambled along in the semi-darkness and although it was always downwards but suddenly the tunnel got steeper and steeper, then all of a sudden he splashed waist deep in water, the shaft appeared to finish at a water filled section and he thought it was the end of the line.


He played the lamplight over the water and watched it as it slowly swirled before him; the thought of having to backtrack was just too much to bear when it dawned on him that the shaft may still be passable as the water swirled like water draining from a bath and the level never rose, it appeared to continue to flow, he’d have to swim under and find out. He strapped his last emergency oxygen cylinder to his waist and waded into the cold murky water, he felt with his legs for obstacles and for a sign that the passage continued. He readied himself for a swim and gulped in deep breaths of stale air and dived under the water and into the shaft.
Immediately he had to fight off the dark feelings of being trapped, he kicked with his powerful legs and searched for an escape with his hands and surged further and further while he fought off the dreaded blackout sensation as stars exploded in his head which threatened to cause him to black out. He knew he’d passed the point of no return and with his lungs at bursting point it was now or never when his head broke the surface of an air pocket trapped in a higher section of the tunnel, the air was stale but it was enough for him to recover.
He rested and then prepared himself again and went under and kicked in a last ditch effort to find another section in the shaft; he’d gone only a short distance this time when he broke the surface again into an open section of the shaft. He climbed up and out of the water and almost collapsed with fatigue, he had to rest he was exhausted after the swim and his lungs burned something fierce. He immediately fell into a deep sleep and thought he was in a dream and could hear the sound of surf as it broke on the shore. He awoke from his slumber and it was so dark he was unsure whether his eyes were open or closed and he thought he could hear what could only be explained as a waterfall in the distant, Austin moved in the direction of the sound of rushing water and after half an hour of feeling his way along the smooth walls of the shaft he found where the water emptied into a side chamber, by the sound of the rushing water it sounded like it dropped a long way down and Austin resolved to himself that he’d reached the end of the line of following the water flow.
He continued on and only later did he realise the shaft was on an upwards incline and much later he thought heard the faint sound of waves on the shore, and strained to listen again, but it was gone.
His supply of food was down to a few soggy biscuits and the last oxygen canister almost read zero, his chest still ached terribly, but he was famished and ate all but one of the biscuits. He kept his newly acquired watch in his shirt pocket, as he didn’t feel comfortable with it on his wrist, he pulled it out for the fiftieth thousand time and the illuminated hands indicated it was 5 O’clock, and although he didn’t know whether that was day or night he didn’t really care. The fact that it worked acted like his talisman and gave him the strength to go on.
He thought he’d had another hallucination when he felt a slight breeze brush past his face and the sound of surf on the shore far away in his daydream, the breeze came again and he sat bolt upright, this was no dream. He took off the oxygen mask and dropped it when he realised it had expired long ago anyway, his other senses then picked up what he thought was the smell of seaweed. He strained his senses even more to pick up any smell or sound other than the water as it trickled along and finally, there it was again, very faintly but unmistakeably, the sound of surf on the shore.
Filled with a sense of excitement Austin moved towards the breeze, he went around a series of never ending twists and turns as the shaft seemed to snake its way through the earth. Austin continued on in the dark as his light finally failed, he knew if he kept the breeze on his face he had to be headed in the right direction.
In the darkness it was hard to determine if the shaft went straight or turned anymore so with his hands Austin felt his way along the wall when the shaft appeared to straighten up and the walls were smoother and suddenly it was straight as an arrow and something appeared to light up the shaft but way off in the distance.

In his excitement he walked on at a faster pace towards the light source, he was mesmerised by it and concentrated on the light as it became brighter and brighter, so much that in his haste he hadn’t noticed he’d come to the end of the tunnel and nearly stepped off the edge of the passage that suddenly dropped straight down four or five metres into a giant cavern. He scrambled to stop himself going over the edge and ended up on his stomach on the rim of the drop with his legs dangled over the edge and his hands clawing at the floor. Austin breathed a sigh of relief and swung his legs back up onto the rim and rolled onto his back almost exhausted.
The cavern was about 150 metres in diameter and was bathed in daylight in the middle by a shaft of sunlight from a portal set high up in the centre of the cavern’s domed upper limit. He sat up after his rest and then noticed there were at least fifty other tunnel entrances, similar to the one he sat on, and they were evenly spaced around the perimeter of the cavern. They lined the wall like empty sockets of an outer rim of a wagon wheel; all were about four to five metres above the cavern floor, which resembled a giant ancient arena. 
He climbed down the uneven wall onto the cavern’s floor with an uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach as he studied his surroundings; the cavern floor was layered in a fine dust that puffed up with each step. As he walked towards the light shaft in the centre he noticed the ceiling and walls were inlaid with huge carvings and paintings from an era long dead. The scenes ranged from ancient battles, animals, ocean going vessels of all types and people from all walks of life. There seemed no organization to the layouts and no sense to it all and nothing gave any clue as to what all the tunnel entrances represented, he reached the centre of the cavern and stepped into the light shaft and felt its warmth on his face and arms, it seemed to rejuvenate him a little.                      Austin stepped from the light and again looked at the entrances around the wall, he made his way back to the outer rim and walked around the arena, he tried to look up into each entrance as he past them.
He knew he didn’t have the strength or energy to climb up and explore each one and they all looked the same to him anyway, although he thought one appeared to give off a slight breeze, he searched for something to mark it, he picked up a rock and scratched a huge cross below the entrance and he continued on around the perimeter.
He passed the footprints his own boots had left in the fine dust where he left his tunnel and once he’d gone past the spot where he started he was satisfied that the one he marked with a cross was the one he was going to explore.                  With great effort he climbed the wall he had placed a cross on and stood on the ledge of the tunnel and was immediately rewarded with a fresh breeze as it blew through the tunnel, and with it came that same distant sound of waves on the shoreline. This puzzled him as he knew the nearest beach was over two hundred kilometres away from the mine, surely I hadn’t travelled that far underground he thought. The further he went away from the cavern the darker it got, but he also noticed the new tunnel’s walls were smooth as marble and the floor rose and fell, so that if flooded it would create air chambers like he’d found before, but after two hundred metres or so the walls and floor became rough and uneven. When the shaft straightened up, daylight could be seen in the far distance, there must be an exit he thought.
The tunnel seamed endless although the light appeared to be brighter and brighter with each step, which made it hard to see where he placed his feet and in his haste he tripped many times on the uneven floor. The tunnel suddenly became slippery in places and there was a strong smell of seaweed.                        He now clearly heard waves crash on the shoreline, the sound echoed through the tunnel, Austin clutched his chest which ached like fury, but he was a little excited that his ordeal underground was nearly over.
He then saw blue sky and the ocean through the exit about twenty-five metres away. With caution he approached the exit and stopped short of going out into the sunlight, as it was so bright, even brighter than the arena, he had to let his eyes become accustomed to the outside light.
The seawater came into the tunnel entrance in little wavelets and splashed around his legs, when he felt his eyes were ready he stepped out into the sunlight knee deep in the sea. All of his senses came alive with the sights, smells and sounds of being above ground; he splashed himself to clean off some of the thick mud that had stuck to him.
He looked around and found he was at the base of a rocky outcrop with high hills around it and he judged by the debris six or seven metres above his head, the tunnel entrance went below water at high tide.
An hour later Austin stood about eight hundred metres above sea level on the high ground where he hoped to get his bearings and possibly see civilisation, but what he saw was disheartening. He could see the rocky outcrop where his tunnel was and observed that it was now engulfed by the high tide, he saw the coastline with its bright blue ocean with waves that crashed on the shore as it stretched for miles in both directions. He looked inland but it gave the appearance of a dessert, there was very little vegetation to be seen, it was a barren wasteland of rocks and sand with the odd gnarled dessert bush that defied the oppressive heat.                           
He began to feel the affect of the heat from the sun’s burning rays on his hatless head, his tousled dark hair was tangled and his clothes had just about deteriorated to rags due to the dampness and the constant crawling over sharp rocks in the tunnels, and they too offered little protection from the sun. His heavy mining boots were in a good condition although his feet ached.
With his acquired watch he pointed the twelve o’clock figure towards the sun and located north between the 12 and 2 figures and drew a direction arrow on the ground. He then rested till late afternoon in whatever shade he could find and ate the very last biscuit washed down with a capful of water.
Late in the afternoon when it was slightly cooler Austin left the sanctuary of the coastline and headed in a northern direction at an angle away from the coast, he’d pick a tree stump or rock formation in the distance and walk to it and then check his bearings again and repeat the process.
It was hard going and he’d covered about five kilometres when it got dark and he could no longer maintain his northerly direction, he sought refuge in the rocks. With the darkness came the bitterly cold wind, which chilled him to the bones, his rags for clothes offered even less protection from the cold. He found a niche in a gully and dug himself into a hole and covered himself with the still warm sand until daylight. He didn’t sleep much through the night, as he feared being buried alive by the sand that constantly shifted, but at least he was warm.                      Daylight came and with it came the realisation he hadn’t eaten for over a day, although he had a small reserve of water he’d need to eat soon. In the coolness of the morning, he continued on in his northern march, his chest still ached fiercely and his stomach cramped up from too little nourishment, his feet blistered within his boots, his rotten socks discarded log ago. By mid morning he found the dessert had broken into a lightly wooded forest and by early afternoon he headed down a valley that was studded with grasses and small trees, where he found berries on a bush which when tasted, didn’t seem bitter, so he ate a few more but limited it to a small handful. He filled the pockets that remained with berries and continued on. Halfway down the valley he stumbled and he felt he could go no further for the day when he lost his footing and fell headlong into a small ravine.
It rained in the valley late that night, but it was comparatively light compared to the downpour that had fallen on the high ground. Austin sat exhausted where he fell and held out his tongue to catch the light rain as it fell when he first heard a distant rumble from up the ravine. Thunder perhaps or another aftershock maybe, he thought. The strange sound he heard from up the valley caused him to sit up and strain his ears, it grew louder and louder, until finally it filled his ears and mind with a rush of confusion and it was only at the last second he jumped up when he realised that what he’d heard could only be…A flash flood!


He stood in the centre of the darkened ravine when the wall of water came around the bend illuminated by the half moon, His feet refused to move as is if frozen to the spot while his eyes bulged at the enormity of the water, that towered over him, it was now only twenty metres from him.