The air hung heavy with dust from the blast, so thick in parts that the light from the LED whited out the passage, like car headlamps shining into dense fog. The assailant I’d shot in the stomach lay lifeless on the ground, torn by shrapnel. I looked ahead.

No lights; no lasers – at least none that I could see.

I listened as hard as I could, but above the gunshot-whine in my ears nothing registered. I moved towards the shredded body. A piece of brick fell beside me, narrowly missing my shoulder. And then another. And another. I covered my head and dodged, looking up as I skirted first a handful and then a rush of rubble from above. The grenade had weakened further the already unsound tunnel.

‘Cave-in!’ I yelled. ‘Run!’ And then in French, ‘Cours!’

Clothes steaming, I rushed forward, rifle in my right hand, and gripped the young man by the scruff of the neck as he clambered to his feet. I pushed him, screaming at him to move, as the sickening rumble-roar of tumbling masonry thundered around us. He staggered, slipped, but did not fall. Propelled as much by terror as by me, he lit off down the tunnel, both of us sprinting to outpace the brick and limestone avalanche that lapped at our boot heels. Ten metres. Twenty. A small boulder struck me between the shoulder blades. And then a larger one, which sent me sprawling. I let go of the young man and found my feet, pushing myself off the walls, dodging the limestone downpour. Dust billowed in front of us. The air thickened. The light on the rifle barrel barely lit the way. Thirty metres. I ploughed on. Massive slabs of ceiling rock shattered with terrific crashes only inches behind me. In the torchlight I saw the roof ahead open in a sickening, black crack.

And then the young man, sprinting despite his awkward boots, dived left mid-stride … and vanished. It was as if he’d ducked behind an invisible wall and slipped out of the rubble-strewn tunnel. The LED beam found only a featureless void where he’d disappeared.

You can’t outrun the Reaper.

Fuck it.

I shouldered left into the black hole that had swallowed the young man and found myself falling, spinning in infinity. I thrust my arm out into nothing. Saw only the crazy arc of the white rifle light whirling around me. The roar of the cave-in muted. The dust dissipated. And I hit the ground hard, landing straight on top of the disappearing man.