THE FARM!

Chapter 20

The blaze of sheer white light was both blinding and welcoming as Emily emerged from the relative darkness, her brain still reeling in horror at the events she had witnessed in the cavern below.
Pip gave her a final push out through the great rent in the side of the chasm. They were both breathless and utterly spent after the arduous climb up through the rocky chambers of the interior. They lay back savouring every great lungful of cool air, oblivious to their surroundings; just grateful to be alive and free.
As their sweat soaked bodies cooled and dried in the fresh morning breeze, their breathing became easier as they became more aware of their surroundings and the grassy knoll onto which they had emerged. At the same time however, Emily became conscious of the nagging pain from her ripped knees, elbows and fingers, a pain she had become oblivious to in the long torturous climb with the possibility of capture or death hanging over them at every moment.
Pip, being an adept climber, had emerged relatively unscathed. However, Emily having been pushed and shoved upwards for most of the climb was fairly badly cut up. It was only now as her body relaxed and her endorphins retreated that she really began to feel the full measure of the damage done to her body.
Looking immediately behind the chasm from which they had just emerged, Pip realised that the mountain continued for some distance above them. They had exited at what could best be described as a cleft from which it was possible to see both across the plateau in one direction and the mountainous terrain down to the distant sea in the other. A perfect observation point Pip reasoned.
As the early morning sun rose higher and began to permeate its warmth through their bodies, Pip became aware of Emily's discomfort and gazed at the ragged crimson gashes on her legs and arms. One or two were streaked with flows of blood as he determined to try and improve her situation.
However, gazing at the crumpled mass of filthy blood stained cloth that had so recently been his designer T-shirt, he realised that this was going to be something of a challenge.
Fortunately there was water close by in the form of a small trickle of what appeared to be early morning dew dripping down from higher ground in what could hardly qualify as a stream or even rivulet, but nonetheless, enough for his purposes.
Stripping down to his Y-fronts Pip tore at the legs of his jeans with some savagery until only enough cloth remained for the purpose of modesty. He put on the remains of the ragged, now knee length garment.
Washing the cloth in the water and with Emily flinching with pain he washed and dressed the worst of the wounds as best he could, tying the make-shift bandages tightly so as to staunch the flow of blood.
'Do you think I will be scarred for life,' Emily asked half jokingly?
"Well if you are, Pip replied reassuringly, "let us make certain they are the scars we remember as the day we survived and the day we saved your family." At which he learned forward kissing her full on the lips and this time it was clearly a kiss of passion as well as of love.
Emily's arms embraced the naked flesh of his torso as they held each other in a full and loving embrace, their mouths locking together, their tongues delving deeply in a replay of the passion that they had only for the first time consummated the night before. The night that they had believed to be their last and their only chance of love. But their daring had proved them wrong and they now knew that there was everything to fight for and that they still had some small chance of saving the others if they acted decisively.
When Emily finally opened her eyes, she looked out across the barren plateau and noticed far off on the other side a vaporous trail of low lying cloud streaming through the ragged teeth of the mountainous rim, down onto the plateau floor and whisking up as it did so, a dirty cloud of dust.
"Looks like a storm building," she whispered quietly to Pip.
Pip glanced around and looked in the direction that she pointed and for a few moments stared in silence.
"What's that," he replied, pointing to a streak of dust rising with a comet-like tail slightly ahead of the main mass of cloud. Whether it was moving or not, he could not determine from the head-on angle at which he was observing it.
As they waited arm in arm, with the blood from Emily's wounds soaking through the improvised bandages that Pip had so carefully tied, it became apparent that this was a vehicle attempting to out-run the storm and clearly headed straight in their direction.