Bones: The Complete Apocalypse Saga (12 page)

“Not even close,” she replied. “But I figure if he can keep going like it’s nothing, who am I to complain?”

Sgt. Holt nodded over towards Bones, who was wandering around on the rocks, still shaken by the attack but for completely different reasons than the soldiers. While the smell of the Stage 4s blood was pretty bad, it wasn’t all-consuming. It was the hot breath of the cordite exhaled by a hundred smoking machine guns that had burned itself into Bones’s nose for the time being. Nothing messed with a cadaver dog’s nose like a smell of burning, and Bones was having a particularly hard time shaking it off. Thor seemed to be having similar problems as he padded alongside Bones, the two animals moving in tandem as if Bones’s actions back in the woods had well-established him as an alpha to be followed.

“That dog’s some kind of a survivor,” Sgt. Celek agreed. “If I’d been through everything he’d been through, I’d be curled up in a ball in a corner somewhere by now.”

“Good thing for us you’re not, then,” replied Sgt. Holt, attempting a joke. “But do you really think he can walk us out of here? I have no idea where we are and we’re completely without support. If there’s another attack like that last one, we’re not going to survive more than a few seconds.”

Sgt. Celek didn’t have a reply for this. He looked back over at Bones but saw that the shepherd was suddenly standing still, his snout pointed straight ahead like an arrow, finally smelling something different. As Sgt. Holt shot Sgt. Celek a worried look, Bones woofed but just enough to get his handler’s attention, then trotted ahead a few feet before stopping again, Thor close behind. Celek, fearing the worst, rose to join them.

“Bones? You got something, boy?” Celek asked, the other soldiers seeing what was happening and tensing. Hands reached for weapons that had only just cooled.

Bones, now with Celek at his side, stood still for another moment but then woofed a second time and moved forward, climbing across the rocks. Realizing that Bones didn’t appear to be intimidated so much as curious, Celek relaxed a little, nodded to the others and began following after Bones.

The group trailed Bones across the mostly treeless cliff side for a tenth of a mile before finally reaching the end of the rocks. Bones moved to the edge and looked straight down. Sgt. Celek, a few yards behind, indicated for the soldiers to fan out around the rocks in case something was waiting for them just under the lip but then joined Bones at the ledge.

“Oh, shit…,” Celek whispered.

After crossing all those rocks, they were now dead-ended, overlooking an expansive coal mining operation. Appearing like a low volcano in the middle of the forest, the mouth of the mine pit was easily half a mile across, the crater floor several hundred feet straight down. On the floor of the pit were two large yellow earthmovers as well as an angled conveyor belt that carried freshly mined coal many stories up into the air before launching it into a massive coal pile. There, two steam shovels waited to load it onto dump trucks. A zigzagging road led up the side of the pit, allowing trucks access from the base to a single road on the opposite side from where the soldiers stood. The road cut through the forest towards what Celek presumed must be a railroad spur that would then whisk the coal to civilization. The conveyor belt, empty of coal, was still chugging along, the electric whine of its heavy generator being the only sound emanating from the otherwise deserted-looking job site.

But everyone’s eyes were focused on one thing—the eight or nine mine shafts at the base of the black shale walls that descended deep into the earth. The same thought had occurred to everyone at once; this is where they all went, and this is where they were all hiding.

“We seeing any signs of life?” Sgt. Celek quietly asked the other survivors, referring to people or multipedes.

Everyone nervously scanned the operation, from a pair of double-wide trailers—one up top near the service road, one down at the base of the pit—that served as the mining outpost’s offices to the cabs of the large construction vehicles to the mouths of the mines themselves, but they didn’t see movement. There were some relieved sighs, but not many.

“Check this out,” said Sgt. Holt, waving Celek over after returning from a quick reconnoiter of the cliff’s edge. They hurried to her and she pointed down to a spot on the pit wall smeared with the now tell-tale blood substance they associated with the multipedes. “They’re down there.

Sgt. Celek leaned over the edge of the cliff and was able to pick out multiple blood smears running all the way down. Bones followed his nose over to the ledge, drawing in the familiar scent.

“What do you think, Bones?” he asked. Bones’s sniffing increased, followed by a snort.

Celek and the other MPs walked back to the surviving Rangers.

“They’re down there, people,” Sgt. Celek reported. “Maybe all of them. Doing what, well, that’s anyone’s guess.”

“How many is ‘all of them’?” one of the Rangers asked.

“Thousands? Tens of thousands?”

This piece of information caused a few stomachs to leap into throats. The surviving soldiers looked around at each other nervously, knowing how close they must be to a potentially devastating enemy.

“So, what do we do about it?” asked Romeo, turning up the volume on his radio to reveal it still echoed with nothing but static. “Can’t really call in an air strike, can we?”

“With the rate these things are mutating, by the time an air strike got out here, there’s no telling if they’d even accomplish that much anyway,” replied Sgt. Celek. “We have to come around to the fact that we may be the only thing standing between these monsters and everybody else on the Eastern seaboard. I’m afraid we’re going to have to go down there and check it out.”

“And do what?” asked Sgt. Moore, incredulously. “Start the world’s shortest firefight?”

“It’s a mine. Where there’s a mine, there’s blasting equipment,” Sgt. Celek countered, indicating a shed at the base of the pit alongside the office trailer. “If they’re in there, we can send explosives down the shafts, blow them remotely and sink this thing with all of them inside. That should buy the air force enough time to come in and mop up. They’ll just have to follow the smoke.”

“Doesn’t sound like a plan with much of an exit strategy,” another Ranger said. “What happens when they see the ‘remote’ explosives coming down the shafts and decide to see who sent them? How fast you think we can climb out of there when we’re surrounded?”

Sgt. Celek shrugged. “I thought you guys got up in the morning looking for some noble mission to sacrifice yourselves on. Well, this is it, and here you are.”

A couple of the Rangers chuckled but then, to a man, gathered their gear to head down into the pit.

“All right, then,” said Sgt. Celek.

Bones had been inching closer to what appeared to be a narrow service/emergency trail cut down the side of the pit accessible only by workers, no trucks, and Celek moved over alongside him. Bones looked up at him and Celek nodded, giving Bones permission to start down the cliff-face trail, pausing only a couple of times on the way to let the soldiers catch up.

When they got to the base of the pit, the soldiers eyed the dark shafts nervously, but after nothing emerged for the first few minutes, they relaxed a little and double-timed it over to the explosives shed. The mine had been running when whatever Stage had descended laid waste to their workers, made evident by blood spatter on the tools and machinery that hadn’t been visible from the cliff face, so the blast shed was unlocked and open, as if just waiting to be drained of its dynamite. Celek, Holt, and a couple of the Rangers began walking crates of the stuff out into the pit as Romeo pored over the track controls to determine how to send flat-bed carts down the various shafts remote but found most of the control board in pieces.

While this was happening, Bones and Thor, followed by Sgt. Moore, walked the pit’s perimeter. Whenever Bones stopped cold and his nose rose from the ground and began sniffing the air, Moore couldn’t help but tense his trigger fingers around the trigger guard of his machine gun. Inevitably, Bones would sink his nose back down, and Sgt. Moore could once again relax.

“You keep doing that, you’re going to give me a heart attack, dog,” Moore said, shaking his head.

But moments later, Bones did it again, stopping and sniffing the air but not so much of the pit, more a nearby mine shaft. Thor moved in next to Bones and started doing the same, both dogs becoming increasingly alarmed as they inhaled whatever was coming from deep within the mine.

“Thor, what is it?” asked Moore, hurrying over to join the dogs. As he stood in the mouth of the mine shaft, the sunlight only afforded the sergeant a view a couple dozen feet inside. But it hardly mattered as, even with the pervading darkness, Sgt. Moore could suddenly
hear
what the dogs were getting so anxious about.

Back at the explosives shed, Romeo was shaking his head over the track controls.

“What is it?” asked Sgt. Celek.

“All the electrical’s been shorted or torn out,” Romeo complained. “We’re not going to get a one of these down into those shafts from up here.”

Celek stared back at Romeo, realizing what was implicit about this statement. Romeo returned the grim stare and was about to continue when he was interrupted by a frantic cry.

“Guys!” Celek and the others turned as Sgt. Moore, Bones, and Thor came galloping back over to them, completely out of breath. “Something’s down there, maybe people! You can hear them from that shaft in the northwest corner.”

“Why people?” Sgt. Celek asked, surprised.

“You can hear machinery,” Sgt. Moore replied. “Whatever’s making that noise is a hell of a lot bigger than any of those multipedes or multi-worms or whatever. The ground’s getting chewed up down there. Rocks, boulders, you name it. Maybe some people survived underground and just didn’t get the memo about what’s been going on topside.”

Nobody thought this sounded all that plausible, but no other answer made itself readily available.

“Well, it might not matter,” Sgt. Celek began. “Corporal Romeo was just explaining to me that the flat cars can’t be sent down there remotely, so we’re going to have to split up into two-man teams and escort them down into the shafts ourselves anyway.”

This was met with incredulity. Celek continued.

“If there
is
somebody down there, we’d have to at least try to get word to them before the whole place goes up anyway,” he suggested. “Since this was my idea, I’ll lead the car that’s going down that shaft.”

Though a couple of Rangers suggested this had even less of an exit strategy than the first plan, acceptance of the inevitable came relatively quickly and the soldiers moved to finish loading the flat cars with the last remaining explosives, now enough to blow the top of nearby Blue Knob Mountain if need be. Romeo then gave everyone a quick lesson in the application of blasting caps and the use of civilian trigger detonators as the six mobile bombs were lined up and readied for departure in front of their respective shafts.

“I’m coming with you, if that’s all right.” Sgt. Holt nodded at Sgt. Celek. “You and Bones are still a package deal, right?”

“I’m game if he is,” replied Celek, glancing over at Bones.

The shepherd didn’t look back, if he had even heard his name. Ever since he’d returned from the northwest mine shaft with Thor and Sgt. Moore, he’d stared at its black maw, as if hypnotized by the scent of the dark machinery that lay below.

I
t was established that each team would trigger their explosives precisely ten minutes after their descent into the mines, as it was felt that communication would be impossible once they were “under.” After a grim round of “good lucks” and a synchronizing of watches, the six teams of two descended into their assigned mine shafts, Thor riding shotgun with Sgt. Moore and Cpl. Romeo, Holt with Celek and Bones, and the other four platforms divided up amongst the surviving Rangers.

By now, Bones was tired but more importantly, thirsty and a little hungry. Sgt. Celek had given him some water, but his canteen had been practically dry when he poured what little liquid remained into the cap to offer it to the shepherd. Once they were in the mine, Bones located a few rivulets of water snaking down the inner walls of the shaft and lapped at them in passing, but had to keep breaking away to keep up with his two human companions and the flat car they were manually wheeling down the long, iron track. Celek’s hand stayed firmly on the brake as he and Holt pushed from behind, though gravity did much of the work. They were illuminated only by a dim tinted light at the tip of a metal pole attached to the side of the car, which cast everything in the shaft in an eerie green glow.

Bones’s nose was beginning to recover from the cordite, and he inhaled the scent of cool rocks, the sweat of workmen, the oiled wheels of the mine cars and coal dust, which didn’t so much have a smell as it did work its way into Bones’s nostrils and lungs, making it increasingly difficult to breathe. Bones was able to continue drawing in new smells, however, and kept his nose ahead, constantly on the hunt for the now-familiar scent of the multipedes.

Confirming Sgt. Moore’s claim, as soon as the trio had gone five steps into the shaft, they could hear the distant sound of breaking rocks and moving earth. The only thing was, as they got even a little closer to the source, it was obvious to both Celek and Holt that the noise wasn’t coming from anything remotely man-made.

“Way too big to be a machine,” whispered Sgt. Holt as they descended deeper and deeper into the mine shaft, a sign they passed reporting that they were passing the point of “200 Feet.” “But no way those are multipedes.”

Sgt. Celek silently agreed.

Though he was still sniffing around for water sources, Bones’s ears were also picking up the sound from below as it increased in volume. It wasn’t long before all kinds of new smells began reaching his nose and he moved ahead of the two MPs.

“Look at Bones,” Sgt. Holt whispered, hand reaching for the manual brake.