Shadows (43 page)

“Tom!” Weller shouted. “Tom, wait! You don’t know where—” He paid no attention. He kept on, swimming through the shivering snow, and then he saw a bat bullet skyward just a few feet to his right. Dropping the Uzi, he fell to his knees, clicked on his light. The ground lurched again, and he swayed and then began sweeping the snow with his arms in wide arcs, looking for the opening.
Come on, come on, come on, I just . . .

Another jolt, and he heard something new: the bang of rock against rock. Then he saw it. The opening was a dark slash in the skin of the snow, only two, maybe three feet wide, and as long.

He fell onto his belly. The earth was bucking, but he pushed at the snow, clearing it away so he could see. He heard Weller and Luke still shouting at him, closer now, but he didn’t look around. From below came the rumble of a distant thunder and the grind of rock. Another bat whirred past.

This had to be part of the mine, too: a forgotten shaft, a sidetunnel. Maybe, long ago, an old escape route.

The enemy was down there. But so were people.

The odds were a billion to one, but there was only one person on earth he knew with a whistle.

“Ellie?” Tom cupped his hands and bellowed.
“Ellie?”

First, there had been a fine snow spilling like white sand. Not a lot, but enough that some sifted into her hair.

Then, incredibly, a scent of musk and sweet smoke and spice that tugged her heart.

And, finally, a voice. Distant. So small.

But she made out the one word.

Ellie.

“Oh God.” For a second, she just hung there. Her heart stuttered and then banged to life.

It’s him. It’s
him
! He’s alive. He’s the only one who knows. That’s his scent. It’s him. It has to be. It’s—

“Tom!” she shrieked. “Tom! It’s
Alex,
it’s—”

Alex?
He went absolutely still with shock.
She’s here?

Her voice came again, and although he could barely hear her, knew she was very far away and out of reach, her words—his name—exploded against and in him with the force of an atom bomb. Beneath, the earth was shuddering, and so was he, all over, and then he was screaming down to her: “Alex, Alex! It’s me, it’s Tom! Where are you, Alex?
Where—
”

“What’s happening?” Luke dropped beside him, and then Tom felt the boy’s hands on his arms, trying to tug him back. “God, Tom, be careful! You’re going to fall in!”

He paid no attention. “Alex!” he bawled. “How far down are you? Can you see me? Can you see my light?”

“Who’s Alex?” Luke said.

“Quiet.”
There was a very long pause, and he felt like he would burst, but he shoved a knuckle into his mouth and waited. He heard Weller thrash his way over but didn’t look around.
He said she was in Rule, but she’s here, she’s—

“Far.” Her voice was like those silver bubbles that had boiled from his lungs to break into empty air and they were the last of his life, and he was drowning. “Can’t . . . see . . . you.”

But I hear you, I hear you, oh God, I hear you.
“Hang on! I’ve got rope! I’m coming for you! Can you climb? Can you—” He broke off as Weller grabbed his right arm and twisted him around.

“You can’t,” Weller grated. “Tom, she’s got to be a couple hundred feet down. We got twenty feet of rope and that’s it! She’s too far, and we don’t have
time
!”

“No, give me the goddamned rope!” Tom shouted. “You and Luke go, but I’m staying!”

“To do what? You think you can help her?”

“We came together; we leave together!” Luke cried. “I’m not going without you, Tom! I’m staying!”

“You hear that? You’re gonna kill this boy.” Weller was right in his face. “You want to be responsible for that? You want his blood?”

“Don’t put that on me!” Tom shouted. “No one’s telling you to stay! Both of you just
go
!”

“Then you might as well put a bullet in your brain for all the good you’ll do that girl! This whole rise is gonna go! Even if it doesn’t, those Chuckies aren’t going to stop, and they’ll
be
here!”

“Then I’ll
kill
them!” Tom roared. His face was wet, but he didn’t care. One more second and he would murder this old man. He twisted away with a curse. “You said she was in Rule, you said she was in
Rule
!”

“I don’t
know
about that!” Weller shouted. There was a high crack that was not a bullet but the sound of wood shattering, and then Luke was screaming something about trees breaking and Weller was shouting: “You hear that, you hear that? You’re gonna kill this boy and yourself for
nothing
!”

No, no, not for nothing.
For her.
She was calling him again, but her voice was so faint. He wasn’t sure now if what he heard was real or an echo. Or maybe he was trapped in some endless flashback from which he would never shake free, because there was now also dust and hot sun and gray rock and Jim’s voice:
Cut the wire, cut the wire and get out, just grab the kid, grab the kid and go, go, go!

“But, God,
please,
which
one
?” he shrieked. He was on his knees, in snow, on a dirt road, under a weird moon, beneath the blazing sun, and there were voices in his head and the pop and bang of weapons fire and the wail of men and women somewhere close and the voices of his friends—all dead now, all gone—and sweat that stung and tears that ate his eyes. “How do I
choose
?”

Because there was, in that road and on that day, not just one child with a bomb strapped around her tiny waist.

There was the boy, too.

“God, how do I
choose
?” he screamed again. He pressed the heels of his hands to his temples and squeezed.
Get out of my head, get out of my head, grab the kid, grab the kid, cut the wire, get out my head, get out get out get out!
“How can you
ask
that?”

“Tom!” Luke cried—but from another life, a different time. “Tom, please, come on!”

Oh God, Alex. Help me stay.
He leapt for that crack in the earth, a distant hope, and thrust his head and then his arms into the dark. He felt quaking rubble and snow that melted beneath the heat of his hands. The roar was tremendous, as if there was something alive down there, bellowing, opening wide, ready to swallow them both. “Alex, please, try,
try
! Climb, Alex, climb!”

“Tom, don’t!” He felt hands grappling for a handhold around his waist. “Leave it,” Weller bawled. “Leave it, Tom! We got to go!”

Got to go, cut the wire, cut the wire, grab the kid, go, go!
Kicking, cursing, he reached down the mouth of that tunnel as far as he could, straining so hard that his muscles shook and his joints screamed—and no matter what he did, it was still not enough. She was a voice in a vast emptiness so profound he might fall forever. But he had to try; he couldn’t stop. He had to reach her because they would touch, and then he would save her; he would pull her from this hell and into the light; they would save each other.
“Alex!”

“Trying.” Her voice, so tiny. “Too far . . . no time.” Then: “Run, Tom, run. Get out . . . get away before—”

“No!”
Tom bellowed. “Don’t give up, Alex, don’t you dare give up! I’m here, Alex, I’m right
here
!”

“No time. Tom, please,
go
. . .”

“They’re over the rise!” Behind, above, Luke was screaming: “They’re here, they’re here, they’re over the rise!” A
crack
and then two more, the bullets whizzing by in shrieks. “Tell me what to do!” Luke shouted, his voice notching higher with panic. “Somebody tell me what to do—do I shoot, do we fight, do we—”

Fight, Alex, fight; say my name again, say my name again, don’t leave me here, I’ll never get out.
“Alex!” His fists closed, but there was nothing to grab but the trembling dark. He tried squirming even further, but Weller was battened around his waist and he couldn’t move, only teeter on the brink: nightmare above, his fate below. “Alex,
Ale—
”

With no warning at all, the ground suddenly heaved and swelled and then came down with a slam that socked him in the gut, straight through to his spine. From the tunnel came a great gasp as the earth shifted, and then he heard a hiss, a sizzle, a ballooning whisper as the rocks under his hands moved and wallowed and gave way. They bounced ahead, hurtling down the chute. Suddenly off-balance, with nothing under his hands but air, he lurched forward and might have tumbled in after . . . and maybe that was, really, what he wanted.

But Weller’s grip was too strong. The old man hauled him back from the edge and wouldn’t let go, and Luke was screaming: “Tom,
please,
we got to get out; I can’t leave without you. Please!”

And I can’t leave her.
But no one would help him. He couldn’t save her. He would never reach her in time, and she knew that.
Save myself ? For what?
But if he stayed with her to the end, this boy would die and Weller, too—and all that would be on him.

“Help me!”
All his grief and rage burst from his chest in a loud, long, anguished wail: “God,
please
, help me! Not again, don’t ask me to
do
this again!”

His answer came. In the next moment, the air shattered with
cracks
and the snaky hiss and suck of bullets. Cursing, Weller wrestled him to his feet, and then he was stumbling through snow and away from her, and Luke was still shrieking, and
he
was screaming her name over the hollow, stuttering
tatatatatatatats
of the Uzis as the distance between them spun out.

It was happening again. His choice was made. The wire was cut, and he was as damned and lost now as he had been on that day, when one child would die because he could not save them both.

Then, somehow, over and above all that, he thought he heard the high pipe of the whistle again. It couldn’t be, of course. It must be the sound of his mind going, a shriek that grew fainter and fainter until that one note disintegrated under an insane moon— and so, finally, did his heart.

But the ground kept on, heaving and shuddering, the snow shifting and cracking beneath their skis as they fled. Eventually, he knew even that would end: when the tired earth, like him, gave up.

He just did it sooner.

God, she hoped he listened. She thought he must have. She couldn’t hear him anymore, not over the clatter of rocks, the jackhammer rumble, and the suck and hiss of the black water fizzing below. There was that huge slam that had nearly knocked her right off the ladder, and then he’d stopped calling. His scent had torn apart and faded. So she thought he was gone. But there’d been gunfire, too. Had he been shot? Was he dead?

No, God, please, don’t let that happen. Keep him safe; make him go.
She didn’t want him to go. It was the last thing on earth she wished, because now she was truly alone, with only the monster for company: lurking in her head, waiting for her to make a mistake.

Oh no you don’t.
She willed herself on: one more step and then another and another.
Not yet.

It was on her, again. Maybe living always had been. She wasn’t Daniel. Hell, she wasn’t sure she was Alex anymore. All that mattered was Tom was alive and up there, somewhere, and
that
was worth hanging on to. They couldn’t touch, but he had reached her, whether he knew it or not—because hope was enough. Hope was all she had.

She would run to him.

So, run, Tom, run,
her mind chanted.
Run, Tom, pull me up, pull me up, run, run, run.
She kept the mantra up as she climbed the ladder that, somehow, hadn’t decided to die just yet either. She was going on a wing and a prayer, by feel and faith, that the next rung would be there and the one after that and on and on to a world she probably wouldn’t see again but would try for anyway because he was in it. Tom was alive and that was something to believe in that was as real in all this darkness as the wood under her hands and the stammer of the earth and the wild thrum of her heart.

She grabbed at the jumping, quivering ladder; felt the bite of wood in her flesh. Her hands were bloody; a rock, sharp as broken glass, had sliced her forehead on the way down, and now she was arming blood from her eyes every few seconds. Her left shoulder had gone from fire to a deadening cold numbness, and her clumsy fingers tingled with pins and needles. There was a weird hissing now that she knew was the sound of scree raining over the rocks. That sulfur smell was worse, too, and her head was beginning to go a little swimmy.

Don’t lose it, don’t give up.
If her eyes closed, they would never open again. She willed her legs to keep moving.
Keep going, go, go, run, Tom, run, ru—

Another
slam
, and she swayed. Her left boot slipped, and then she shrieked and threw herself forward, hooked on with both arms as the ladder lurched and bounced. From somewhere above, there was a sharp
bang
and then a crack. Something huge whirred past, and her mind just had time to squeak one word:
Big
.

There was an enormous
ker-SPLASH
. Water jumped, grabbed at her ankles, then slithered away with a hiss.

Felt that. Really close. Gonna get me.
Well, what if the water did? Maybe she could float. If it kept rising, maybe it would push right to the surface—because she
was
tired. The burst of elation that had fueled her was ebbing. Her head was swirly, and her lips had no feeling. The gas? Could be. Maybe that was why the water fizzed. Was it methane? No, no, that was . . .

“Coal mines.” She said it just so she could hear herself and know her brain was still working. Her mouth mangled the words. “Coal mines have methane. Other mines have . . .” Hell, she didn’t know.
Should’ve paid more attention in earth science.
Weary to the bone, she hugged the ladder. A splinter of wood nipped her cheek, tore into her already bloodied forehead. “Come on, Alex,” she mumbled. “Stay awake. Don’t pass out.”