I was out in the outskirts, tunneling, when it rumbled. Ground as steady as ours leaves you forgetting what it's like to have unsteady footing. The tremor was like a low growl, deep and rising in intensity. It hit me that the whole place was coming down, but I had nowhere to run. Everywhere shakes and rumbles, debris echoing off the walls and floors. Smaller bits bounced off me,bruising me through the leather. Larger pieces cut into the ground where they fell, spraying my suit with shrapnel.
Slowly the vast expanse of the web of tunnels closed in, cutting off this particular pocket from the world. I closed my eyes, hands over my head. There was a procedure for cave-ins. Keep your head safe and make yourself a smaller target. I drew into myself, driven in by the crash of stone on stone. Darkness, and when I open my eyes, still darkness. Reaching blind I found my lamp. The rumbling fades into the shadows and crevices of the room. I can barely make out which way is back towards the city, the broken area around me alien and foreign. It takes me two tries to close my trembling hand around the drill, moving forwards to the rubble before returning to re-position the lantern.
This is what I do, I dig. A collapsed tunnel is fixable. Some parts of it are even still standing, but most of it collapsed or cracked open fissures. The batteries in the drill and lamp will last up to a week, so I shouldn't run out of those. The meager snacks stuck in my pack won't last me that long if I'm digging out. Speed is a priority. The tunnels sometimes collapse behind me, aftershocks running through the area. A sip of water, a bite of bread, more digging.
It takes me through half the water and one whole roll before I get back to the populated area of the city. Some of the tunnels held up better than others, some are flooded with water, some are sealed shut in an almost complete collapse. Other handiwork like my tunneling litters the area. People who got back faster than I did. The city is dark, small lights like stars shining out in the darkness where lanterns guide a safe path through the transformed ruins. No quiet chatter through the halls. Echos bounce oddly, frightening my lonely figure.
The way to the Moon Chamber has been cleared. Passing by my apartment, little remains of the wall. Most of it has broken down, carved stone decorations flooding into the street. Nothing important was in my room, but broken furniture and ripped cloth poke from the wreckage reminding me of the countless others who had lives there. Off in a shadow thrown by a massive ceiling brace, failed in its occupation, a hand sticks out of the mess. At first I see it as a doll, white as porcelain. The small red splotches all up and down its length to where it disappears into the rocks tell the story. At the foot of the pile, the slowly expanding circle of red affirms it. I couldn't recognize the hand from that alone, but like the others who must have seen it, seen the blood, heard no cries, I didn't have the strength to uncover the face. Bravery in the face of such horror is beyond most of us.
I continue on. More so than the first day, the silence inspired by the scene in the chamber is incredible. Where the dome had once been almost spherical, dotted only by a few craters, it now had holes. Somewhere up there large gashes breached the walls between the chamber and the various rooms that were positioned around it. The sky would just be dark if not for intermittent flickering of the lights here. Down on the floor of the chamber huge stone monoliths sat where they fell, gruesome markers like the one outside. Then screams. Pain, terror, loss, disbelief. We are shattered. Deep through the center of the chamber, a rift yawns, one large piece of stone trapped in its jaws. It could easily fit the whole of our civilization, now just remnants left after it all.
The weeks to come are filled with burial. The deep rift in the Moon Chamber has been hollowed out into alcoves of a mausoleum. I dig and carve. Three hundred names in total, all inscribed on the rock held in the rift's mouth. It is hollow to me, but other take strength from it. Some avoid looking at it entirely, retreating from our Moon Chamber. A Split-Moon Chamber. Some of the others tried to fill in the holes in the ceiling, but they show up as ugly sores to me as I look up to an unfamiliar sky. The chamber itself disquiets me. There is no laughter there anymore. No friendly smiles. All that remains of it is solemnity and death. Little point exists in expanding the tunnels for a long while now, yet I wander the outskirts at a loss. There was community here, an optimism to succeed in this unknown wilderness. Now there exists only grief and sadness. If we gained a new sky that day twelve years ago, it came falling down on us.
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