She sat next to him as he flipped to the first book in the New Testament and began scouring the pages until he found the 22nd chapter. She didn't miss the slight fingershake as he located the 14th verse.
"Matthew 22:14," he read aloud, "For many are...
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The floor began to shake, so slowly that at first I didn't notice it. Reed and I closed our books as the entire tunnel began shaking harder. Small pieces of the ceiling fell, bringing clouds of dust in what little light we got.
"We should go," he suggested.
But where?
The shaking only got more violent. Taylor scrambled up, shielding her head. I looked back and forth between where we'd been, and where we'd been headed. Neither were great choices – I had no idea where we were.
Reed tucked the book under his arm and gripped his oil lamp tightly. "I know the way back to my room."
A loud crack rang out and a pretty good-size chunk of the ceiling fell to the floor and shattered right next to where I'd just been standing. I coughed, looking up to make sure nothing else was trying to flatten me. It didn't look promising. "Okay, let's go."
We followed Reed through the tunnel, my body trembling as much as the walls and floor around us. A sharp chip fell and caught my shoulder. I sucked in a breath but kept going. I'd rather make it out alive with scrapes and bruises than be crushed by a big slab.
I hope Star's okay.
Reed's memory was a lot better than mine, and our tunnels before this had mostly just been in one direction. These were different. There were twists and turns. And he was fast despite carrying a heavy book and a lamp. I was terrified that I'd drop the dumb thing and leave us with less light, but even more terrified of the collapsing and shaking going on around us. My heart wasn't keeping up very well either, my breath coming out in irregularly short painful bursts.
Please let us make it soon. I can't go much farther.
My prayer must have worked because Reed slowed down. "This is it."
I would have missed the door if he hadn't said anything. In the dark, the tunnel just looked like a never-ending tunnel. But as he passed through the threshold of an opening his lamp illuminated the entrance to the room. I closed the door behind me on instinct, hoping to shut out the chunks that were falling from the ceiling.
Part of me thought the room would magically stop shaking as soon as we shut the door, but it didn't. It wasn't as violent as the hallway had been, though. Reed brushed debris from his hair and set down his lamp. "We should be safer here."
"We're not safe here, we're not safe anywhere," Taylor cried miserably, retreating to the corner.
"It looks just like our room."
They had the same three pallets, shoved out of the way. They even had a hole in the same spot where we'd dug the slab out of the ground to find the book. I rubbed at the spot over my heart, hoping to massage away the low burning that had started not that long ago.
I kept looking around the space, basically playing a 'spot the difference' game based on the memory of the room we'd woken up in. Nothing was different, really. Not unless you counted the cracks that had been made from the shaking.
