"This is just oxygen in case there's poisonous gas ahead. Can you breathe?"
She nodded her eyes full of questions. I repeated the process for myself and then slid onto the bike and fired it up. It came to life with a throaty purr and I gestured to Anna to get onto the crotch rocket behind me. She slid on and her arms came around me tightly.
Her words were muffled, "Where are we going?"
I flicked the headlights on, "Through that old lava tube." I said loud enough for her to hear.
"What!" She screeched, as I opened the throttle up wide and we shot forward, as her scream trailed out behind us.
This was wild! I'd only done this once before and I hadn't really cared much about living at the time so the risk hadn't registered, but now it did! I wanted to very much keep on living as well as keep Anna alive and I had to rescue Kevin.
The old lava tube twisted and turned and got narrower then wider. It went up and down and at times we were horizontal on the sidewalls as we went around sharp turns. The walls of the tube were smooth, which they had to be for this to be possible. If they had been just the least bit rough the sharpness of the lava would have sliced the tires off the bike within minutes or even possibly seconds.
The other hazard was that in the typical dormant lava tube there could be sections where the walls could be paper thin and equally fragile. I just hoped we were going fast enough to skip over such patches of wall thinness and not break through. Otherwise it would be lights out.
It was hard to breathe, but that wasn't because of any lack of oxygen. Rather it was a direct result of Anna's tightly clasped death grip around me. This really was crazy, I had to admit, as I felt the air turn warm. Perhaps this had been a mistake, but we would likely have died anyway if we had stayed back there in the dark little hole under the kitchen.
We began the climb upwards and I felt relief flow through me. We were headed up towards the rim. A couple of minutes later we roared out into the sunlight on the outward ring of the caldera. I looked out over the basin of the volcano to where my house was now just a pile of burning embers being watched over by six hovering black vultures intent on ensuring the kill. Off in the distance headed for the sea I saw the chopper that carried Kevin.