Approach of the Marauder

The noise grew louder.  Like a dentist taking the scenic route to your molars.  The basement walls and floor began to shake.  The ceiling and the floor above, such as it existed, started to join them.  Janyka and David both noticed that the rats were already gathering up their young by the scruff of their necks and heading out via the incoming sewage.  David looked at his sister and shook his head.  No way was he joining them.

Janyka staggered across the vibrating floor to the derelict doorway through which the two bankers had pushed their way.  But this, their only escape route, was where the whirring, cutting machinery was at its loudest, a vortex of plaster dust, stone and metal debris signalling the approach of the marauder.

'There might still be time.  Come on!' she yelled and grabbed David's wrist.  But David wrenched himself free, returning to pick up his pencils and paper.  The drawing of the angel fluttered to the floor.  Janyka  screamed in frustration, as he stopped to pick it up.  Even then, he didn't move.  Just stared at his picture.  That was when a staircase in the neighbouring hovel gave way, an adjoining wall and the spiralling tip of the marauder surged forward out of its own hurricane of dust.

Something flew out of the doorway over Janyka's head: a bird or a bat or a flying reptile.  It clung somehow to the wall opposite.  David watched Janyka's face, the skin stretched and red with screams of anger, but he could hear nothing for the rumbling of the machine yards only away.  He turned to stare at the creature gripping the exposed brickwork of the opposite wall.  Then the stone collapsed or disappeared.  It fell away to nothing.  They didn't wait for explanations.  They both scrambled out into the greyness of the day, covering their heads and faces, protecting them, not only from the stone chips and metal filings that filled the air, but also from the monitors that were everywhere.