"I hope you also had considered this to be the worst case scenario before you blew the gears just now, Bill!" I said to Billy as I arrived at the first floor of the dam.
"I already had!" He responded to me, with a louder tone than mine. "It is just that I did not expect the collapse to be so instant!!"
I forced myself to rush faster in order to break down the door that we used to enter the dam earlier, so that both Billy and Jessica would not have to spend any time in opening it again. I was a little surprised to realize how rusted the door must have been to collapse by only one kick from me. When the door broke down, both Billy and Jessica rushed outside almost immediately after that before I followed them again, and making me the last person in the row.
I turned back to see that not only the second floor of the dam to then had a considerably large hole in the middle, but it also had a large burst of water pouring out from it, resulting in some sort of a waterfall. If I were to assume that the aliens could no longer fly once their wings got wet, and considering the height from the hole to the bottom of the river below, all of the aliens must have been dead by then, which I was completely sure the very thing that all three of us were hoping for.
"Yeah, well at least those aliens are now all dead because of the fall!" I said to the two of them as I kept running away from the dam.
"I would rather not see anything behind me right now, Travis!" Billy responded to me as he was running, indicating that he did not want to make himself more frightened that he already was.
'kragghkk krgkk'
I heard what seemed to be a wall cracking sound right from behind me. I turned back again, and realized that all of a sudden there was already several cracks formed on the concrete walls of the dam, indicating that the blast from earlier did not only destroy the middle part of the dam, but instead the whole structure of the dam. I was brought to an instant distraught by the realization that we would literally had to run away from what could be possibly mega river tsunami.
"You have to be kidding me…!" I said to myself as I still desperately made as much as a distance possible from the dam.
"What?! What now?!" Jessica responded to me.
"Faster!!" I shouted to both of them, "Run faster!! It is going to-" before a very loud noise forced me to cut off my words.
'KRAGGHHH BRAGKKHH'
By the time I turned my head towards what had happened to the dam, there was already a couple of a massive holes there, with most parts of the dam had then completely gone. That was not the most frightening thing however. It was the sight of a giant wall of water that was definitely chasing us very swiftly, with the height of at least twenty five feet and not slowing down any little.
"Oh, God… No!!" Jessica screamed as she turned her head and still running after she realized what had just happened to the dam.
In an instant, I was at lost for words. We ran as fast as our lungs could make us, but no matter how faster we seemed to run, the rushing giant body of water behind us just sounded like it was still getting closer even quicker than before. Getting cornered by a dozen of aliens was surely a dire situation, but getting chased by an accelerating tsunami? We might be as good as dead once the water reached us, which was apparently imminent to us.
"Wait!! There! On the left and above!! I see a cave entrance!!" Jessica suddenly shouted, pointing her finger towards what seemed to be a hole on the higher grounds.
"It is too far!! We cannot-" I responded to her, with a louder tone since the tsunami that was still chasing us was also followed by a rumbling sound, and the ground around us was shaking as well.
"We still can make it there!! Trust me!!" Jessica said to me, literally insisting us to follow her to the cave.
Since I had no other option for the current desperate moment, I decided to give in to her insistence. Apparently, Billy also had the exact same thoughts as I did since he immediately turned and rushed towards the cave entrance.
As if we just had not enough problems yet, the soils of which we were stepping on as the ground in reaching for the cave entrance turned out to be extremely slippery. Billy was the first one who recognized it as he was the first person to begin hiking up the rather steep surface and it was not until several steps before he slipped and nearly fell and slid down had he not grabbed on to one of the tree branches on his left side.
"Duh, anjir!" He said, "Harus banget apa kita mati hari ini?!" swearing in a seriously disturbed tone and contemplating as if we really had to die that day.
"Ayo! Ayo, cepet!" Jessica responded from right behind him telling him to hike more quickly, and pushing him gently upwards as she also began to hike up.
I started to hike by grabbing on the tree branches on my left side, similar on how Billy did it right after he slipped. The rumbling noise from the direction of the dam indeed was getting louder and louder with each passing seconds, but I forced myself to stay calm and focus on hiking up the slippery and steep ground to get to the cave entrance.
As we continued on hiking with in considerably quick pace, I noticed that the distance between the cave and the ground below might be on the range of twenty to twenty four feet, which was supposedly still shorter compared to the possible height of the tsunami behind us. Nevertheless, I suppose it was indeed at least a tiny bit better inside the cave, rather than keep on running until an unknown more amount of time.
Shortly after, Billy managed to reach the cave entrance, and Jessica was about to either, until some of the soil suddenly collapsed and forced her to hang on to the tree branch that she was holding. Unfortunately for me, the collapsed soil also pushed me back a few feet down and by the time I could stop myself from getting dragged even further, I returned to the point where I was perhaps five feet away from the cave entrance. When I looked towards the dam direction, the tsunami was already less than four feet away from us.
"Brace yourselves!!" I shouted to the two of them.
'SWOOOOSHH'
In almost an instant, I felt my whole body covered in a cold, and rushing waters that would definitely very easily drag me on its course. The current was so strong that I could not open my eyes to continue grabbing on the tree branches and reach for the cave entrance. However, since I had no other choice unless I want to drown myself slowly and painfully by sticking myself on that same position, I gambled myself and reaching out towards whatever nearest other tree branches that I could hold on to.
I grabbed the first branch, and then the second, third, and fourth. I immediately lost count due to the strong current that kept on forcing me to release my grip and surrender to its course. The worst part was that I did not take a longer deep breath before I held it just before the tsunami hit me earlier.
I began to lose hope as I started to feel out of breath, making me more impatient in reaching for any other thing that I could hold on to. I was even not sure if I was getting on to the higher grounds and nearing the cave or was getting to the lower grounds instead as I realized that I was holding on to what seemed to be a stone-like thing.
Suddenly, I felt like someone or something grabbed me by my left hand using theirs and was almost immediately dragged towards their direction. As I was nearly out of breath and stamina as well, I could not resist even in the slightest. When I came to, the person instead was bringing me up towards open air, and the first thing that I did was to take my deep breaths continuously, before realizing that I had been saved by the same person.
I opened my eyes, to see that I was in a much darker environment, still with many rather loud rumbling noises on its wall which was very similar to the ones I heard from the tsunami. The only light source was from what seemed to be a lighter, and a flashlight which had just been turned on as soon as I opened my eyes.
"Thank goodness you made it…" the person who held the lighter said, which was revealed to be Jessica once I took a closer look.
I turned to the other person, who was none other than Billy himself, to see that he was also completely soaked, and seemed to also be out of breath indicating that he was the one who rescued me earlier. Shortly after, he told me that by the time the tsunami hit us, the two of them rushed inside the cave and rushed towards the higher grounds since the water also breached a small part inside the cave.
Once they were sure that they were already in the safe zone, Billy decided to return to the cave entrance with his flashlight and leaving his firearms and backpack to Jessica. He dived back to the then sunken cave entrance, and turned on his flashlight, only to feel a serious pain in his eyes due to the strong current of the tsunami. However, he forced himself to proceed a little more and decided to wait for a little while, opening his eyes a tiny little bit for once in several seconds.
Then, not until a minute passed, his flashlight showed what seemed to be a figure of a hand holding tight to the cave entrance wall. It turned out that it was my left hand, and the stone-like thing that I was holding on earlier was in fact, a tiny part of the cave entrance. He then immediately grabbed my hand hard and swam back inside to the cave as he himself was also nearly out of breath.
"Jesus Christ… I owe you one, Bill…" I said to him, as I was still sitting down catching my breaths.
" And I owe you two an apology, for bringing harm and forcing ourselves to get trapped in this cave…" Billy said to me and Jessica as he looked a bit down.
"Bill… denger… Travis, listen to me…" Jessica responded to both our words by telling us to hear what she had to say.
Jessica told the two of us that when Billy had gone back to the entrance to look for me, she wandered for a while a little deeper into the cave. Based on the short time that she took, she figured out at least two things about the cave – that it possibly had another exit due to the slight wind that she felt, and that the cave most likely had a rather simple system, which would made us less possibly to get lost inside.
"Are you sure about it?" I asked her.
"I had travelled inside caves a couple of times before." she responded to me. "And I always paid attention to what the team leader did in order to figure out the rough mapping of the cave and to locate every possible exits."
"Well…" I replied to her before I paused and turned to Billy who raised both of his eyebrows to me, "good enough for us. Please lead the way, then…"
Jessica nodded, and immediately told us to stay close to each other and to not turn on any flashlights as she reminded us we had not known yet how far and deep the cave would go. Therefore it would be wise to save any sort of light sources usage unless it was needed. She then turned on her lighter, before Billy turned off his flashlight. As we began to walk deeper into the cave, I contacted Nest again in order to give them some sort of summary of what kind of chaos that we had just escaped from…