Free Exodus Code by John Barrowman, Carole E. Barrowman Page A

shirt pocket and, yanking Jack’s arm, dragged him out of the temple.
    Above the terraced fields, the two men watched as the top blew off the mountain in an explosion of noxious gas, smoke and flaming rock.
    ‘Jesus, did you see that?’ asked Renso, pushing Jack ahead of him out into the clearing.
    ‘I wonder what happened to al the other women who were here earlier?’
    Jack asked, while they were zigzagging across the clearing, their hands covering their heads as the mountain spewed pieces of itself at them.
    A tree whipped from the ground near them, its massive roots tearing from the ground in front of Renso, catching his feet and sending him splaying across the dirt. As Jack scrambled to help Renso, they watched in awe as the ground beneath the temple swel ed up as if air was being pumped underneath it. A mound of earth lifted the structure higher and higher. The ground roared, then the mound ruptured, swal owing the entire stone structure into the earth.
    ‘Jesus,’ said Jack, pul ing Renso to his feet as they made for the canyon pass at the other side of the clearing, their only way to reach the bottom of the mountain.
    Renso could hear Jack laughing a few steps behind him.
    ‘What’s so bloody funny?’
    ‘That.’ Jack pointed to the smoking basin where the temple had been. A fissure as wide as a trench was pushing out from the swal owed temple and reaching along the ground towards them. Breathless, Jack watched the fissure circle the pueblo vil age shaking it to its foundations, the adobe huts, the nearby olive trees, the fire pits folding into the ground. And then it shot directly towards Jack and Renso.
    ‘That… that fissure is chasing us,’ said Jack.
    ‘Jack, you are certifiable,’ said Renso, breathless and sceptical.
    Leaping over trees being torn from their moorings, ducking from rock projectiles flying off the temple, the two men charged across the clearing to the jungle. Al around them what was left of the vil age was fil ing quickly with the smoke and fumes from the volcano that was oozing lava.
    ‘I think the mountain is trying to stop us,’ shouted Jack, knocking Renso out of the way of a fal ing tree.
    Gagging from the smel and the smoke, the widening maw chasing closer and closer, Renso yel ed back at Jack, ‘I think it may succeed.’
    Every hut and tree the fissure snaked beneath was sucked into it, chewed up, and then dragged along, crushed and crumbled in its wake. Jack’s lungs were aching, his bare legs tattooed with cuts and burns from the flying ash and hot coals spewing from the mountain. He knew that they had to get to the canyon through the jungle but he was afraid that it was going to be impossible to navigate in the fading moonlight.
    With no idea where they were heading, side by side Jack and Renso crashed into the thick jungle, ducking, dodging, weaving through the thick foliage as it slapped and slugged and assaulted them.
    Jack paused to get his bearings. Wiping blood from a cut above his eye, the fault line crashed into the jungle behind them, its progress marked in the crushed and col apsing trees as if an invisible monster was stepping on them.
    Renso stopped and stood at Jack’s side, the fissure charging closer and closer.
    Jack smiled at Renso, grabbing his face and kissing him hard on the lips.
    ‘It’s been a pleasure in so many ways, amigo. Now run. I know this sounds crazy, and I know I’m stoned out of my mind, but I think the mountain only wants me.’
    ‘But… I’m not going to leave you to die. Not when I just found you again.’
    ‘Trust me. I’m not going to die. Now run. Run!
    Renso looked into Jack’s blue eyes and saw something that made him realise he’d never real y known this man. But even back in the trenches, he’d been able to trust Jack’s word. Renso turned and he ran, knowing in his heart it was the last time he would ever see Jack Harkness.
    Jack watched until Renso was out of his sight, then he took one, two, three steps