Inside the cave, it was entirely black. Ray couldn't see the others nor his Hands in front of his eyes. And even looking back the entrance was not to be seen.
'Weird...no matter how dark it is inside here, I should be able to look outside.'
After a while of careful treading forward, he felt a presence right next to him.
"Are you sure it's safe in here? What if the cave collapses?"
Sarah murmured in a trembling voice.
He didn't know if she had confused him with Josh but answered her nonetheless.
"It should be fine; it looked solid from the outside. Still, we shouldn't go in too deep. Let's just re-"
Yet before Ray could finish his sentence, he felt a vibration and small pieces stone falling onto him, making him immediately swallow his words.
"....Did you feel that just now?"
And apparently, he wasn't the only one paying attention to it, as Max asked carefully.
But instead of an answer what he got was a second, noticeably stronger, vibration.
'This is bad...We have to get out of here!'
"RUN TO THE ENTRANCE!!!"
Overcome by panic and fear Ray shouted, even though not all of them had already registered what was going on.
Still, hearing his fear-stricken scream and the third vibration, the others also started, almost instinctively, running towards the entrance.
'When did this damn passage get so long!?'
While running Ray thought back to how slow they walked inside the cave. They definitely couldn't have come far, but now running back the distance seemed endless. Even after minutes of running they still didn't reach the end. All of five of them were already bathing in sweat, completely drained, with only their survival instinct driving them on.
But as the saying goes 'If it's a blessing it's not a curse, and if it's a curse it's unavoidable'.
Eventually, the vibrations got so strong, that regular walking became impossible, nothing to say of running. Rocks fell from the ceiling all around them, threatened a painful death. Unfortunately, in this darkness, it was impossible to determine where they would fall down.
'Damn it! At this rate, we'll be crushed under the rocks before we can reach anywhere near the entrance!'
Wracking his brain, Ray tried to come up with a solution and almost screamed the only thing he could think of.
"GET TO THE WALL AND CLUSTER TOGETHER!!"
Nobody had any strength left to think at this point and just did what he said. As it was too dark to see anything and the shaking too strong to orientate oneself they separated. Sarah, Max, and Ray tried to go for the left wall and Josh and Lisa for the right. But as they were crawling to the respective walls an especially strong shaking occurred throwing them around, left to lie on the floor, unconscious.
...
After an unknown amount of time, Ray woke slowly up.
His whole body was hurting, and he could feel the rubble on top of him.
Trying to get up he was relieved, as he wasn't squashed under some boulder or buried in soil. Looking around, he realized that his surroundings got a lot brighter. Though not to the extent of being illuminated, he could at least see his own miserable state. The others also came to themselves one after another and luckily no one was hurt badly, except a broken rip maybe.
"Is everyone alright?" Ray asked, though only to somehow calm himself down. He knew that he had to remain calm, especially in such a situation.
Getting up from the ground groaning, Josh grumbled, "I just almost died, how am I supposed to be alri-"
Halfway through his sentence, Josh's eyes went round. His mouth opened up, but no words would come out. Trembling he pointed behind Ray with his finger, stuttering, "T-T-The Pas-Passage! It's blocked!"
At once, still on the ground or not, the whole group looked behind them and saw massive boulders blocking the entire passage in that direction. Immediately despair clouded their faces. Not only were they caught in an earthquake, but the only way back was also sealed.
'At least there is still another way out.'
The only saving grace in Ray's mind right now was the fact that there was still a chance, that the other way would also lead to the surface. Even if he didn't know how long it would take, it was the only chance at survival.
His group, on the other hand, wasn't as optimistic. Josh still stood with his finger up, as if frozen. Sarah was sitting on the ground her face twitching in a weird way, Max was clutching his hair mumbling something inaudible and Lisa, who Ray expected to have the weakest mental fortitude, was...smiling. She didn't look remotely disturbed, as if this situation was just an everyday occurrence. Noticing Ray's gaze, Lisa didn't dodge at all and stared right back, still smiling from ear to ear.
Not wanting to bother with her strange quirks right now, Ray clapped his hands to get the groups attention and spoke in a confident voice to reassure them, "Guy's we can't stay here since we don't know when these earthquakes are gonna come back."
Finally putting his finger down and awakening from his trance, Josh challenged Ray, "Even if you say that the passage is blocked. We can't go back!"
"That's why we're going to walk in the other direction. As far as I can see it's almost clear of rubble, so we should be able to get out that way."
"You say that so easily, but what if it just leads us further down this damn hole! There's no way I'm risking that!"
'This idiot. Just look at the situation before you talk.' Slowly getting annoyed by Josh's rebukes, Ray frowned. 'Still, I can't get angry right now, or we will never get out of here.'
"Josh, if you have a better suggestion just say so, but standing here around is not an option or do you want us to die in this cave?!"
Hearing this, Josh's face went red. Even in such a situation, humans don't act too differently from their fundamentals.
"Okay everyone, stand up. We don't have much time, let's hurry."
Taking this as a signal, Sarah and Max stood up, following Ray deeper into the cave. Lisa took one last glance at the closed off passage, eventually going after them. Seemingly left behind Josh slightly panicked, but noticing he's all alone with only darkness around him, he went into a short run to catch up.
Trudging the cave wall along, Ray felt extremely tired. Not only because of the traumatizing earthquake he just went through, but also because the events, of the whole day, didn't seem to make any sense. The never-ending trail, the enormous cliff nobody noticed and now that mysterious earthquake. It felt like something was forcing them to where they are now, not even stopping when they are in danger. Still, he had to keep going. Forced or not, just remaining on the spot, waiting for death wasn't something he wanted even to imagine.
Thinking this far Ray suddenly felt air brush against his hair. The surroundings also got brighter the further he walked, seeming to indicate the end of the tunnel.
'Already? We've just walked for under 5 minutes and at a slow pace at that.'
Although he was happy with finally getting out of the cave, he couldn't help but feel discomfort at this reoccurring theme of inexplicable events. Listening, he could hear the others cheering behind him, not even questioning the bizarre build of the cave.
But even Ray could not hide his joy at being able to breath fresh air again.
Stepping outside the cave, Ray closed his eyes and stretched, taking in the warmth of the sun and the unique smell of the mountains. Max was already on his knees thanking God, and Sarah broke into tears the moment she stepped outside.
When Ray opened his eyes again, he saw Lisa, who appeared to be dozing off at the edge of the overhang they were standing on.
At that moment he noticed something weird. Looking around he could see that the altitude they were at now was a lot higher than when they walked into the cave, even though at no point was the tunnel they walked through slanted upwards.
Being slightly at a loss Ray strolled next to Lisa, but when he looked up into the horizon, all he could see was a vast, seemingly never-ending forest.