The Underdwelling

12

Gasping and clawing out, Boyd came awake from a dream where he was crushed beneath a mountain of solid rock.

“Easy now,” a voice said.

Breathing fast, he found that he was laying on his back, his leg from the knee down numb and rubbery feeling. He could see the glow of the lanterns, but they were dimming fast. He blinked his eyes and tried to speak, but all that came out was a groaning sound.

“He’s coming around,” Breed said.

“Take it easy,” Jurgens told him. “One of those goddamn trees caught your leg. We got it off you, but you got a nasty compound fracture, son. Don’t try and move.”

But, of course, Boyd did and right away the pain kicked in. It felt like somebody was driving a spike into his shin. He let out a little muted scream and settled back down again.

“Take it easy now,” Jurgens told him. “You’re going to be fine. We’ll get you out of here.”

Maki let out a high little laugh. “No shit, Jurgens? And how do you plan on doing that? How do you plan on getting us out of this fucking tomb? Huh?” He just shook his head. “Let me be the first to clue you in on something, Boyd. We’re trapped down here. We’re trapped in this fucking cavern—”

“Shut the hell up,” Breed told him.

“—and we can’t get out. We get to sit around and twiddle our fucking thumbs while our lights go out and the air goes bad. How’s that for kicks, Boyd? How’s that for company incentive?”

“Swear to God,” Breed said, “you don’t pipe down, I’ll kick the living shit out of you right now.”

“We’ll be fine,” Jurgens said. “Even now they’ll be digging to get us out.”

They were all sitting around him in a little circle by lantern light and Boyd looked from face to face to face. None of them looked particularly hopeful. Jurgens told him that the cave-in had sealed the stope leading out of the cavern. But that was no real reason for concern, because the cavern was huge and it would no doubt take weeks and weeks to use up all the oxygen in there. And long before that, they’d be dug out. Boyd listened and didn’t honestly believe a word of it. Maybe if it was just the stope that had caved-in and the tunnel leading to it and even the spider hole from the drift above… maybe then, they’d actually get dug out. But what if it was more than that? What if it was Level #8 above? What then? Then getting to the cavern would take months maybe.

The only good thing, he supposed, was that Jurgens had called up to the drift with his walkie-talkie every fifteen minutes. He had told the men above about the stope they found and the cavern it led to. That was something and under the circumstances, it would have to be enough.

After a time, Boyd said, “How about those sounds?”

“We haven’t heard anything else,” McNair said.

Maki laughed again and it was a bad sort of laughter, the sort that echoed from a mind on the verge of a nervous breakdown. No one had ever doubted who the weak link in their chain was. But then again they had not imagined a scenario like this that would put it to the test.

“Nope, not a thing,” Maki said. “But I been feeling things.”

“That’s enough,” Jurgens told him.

But Maki’s days of kissing the guy’s ass were long gone. “Well, who we kidding here, Jurgens? You know there’s something out there same as I do. We all feel it out there, we just can’t see it. But it’s there and you all goddamn well know it. Something’s out there. Something’s watching us. And whatever in the fuck it is, we’re trapped down here with it—”

But that’s as far as he got in his little paranoid monologue because Breed’s fist smashed into his face and dropped him like a dead tree.

Breed was one of the mellowest guys you’d want to meet. Boyd had known him only a matter of hours, but that much was apparent. But all this was too much… even for him. Maki wouldn’t quit running his mouth and this is where it had gotten him.

“You think we need to listen to your shit, Maki?” Breed was saying, on his feet and advancing on the downed man. “You think we need that? You think we ain’t got enough fucking problems right now?”

Maki opened his mouth to say something else and Breed went right at him. No one tried to intervene. Maybe, on some subconscious level, they were glad it was finally happening. Maki tried to rise, his mouth full of blood, and Breed let him. He let him find his feet and then he really gave it to him. A flurry of lefts and rights that knocked his head this way and that. Any one of them would have put him down if it hadn’t been for the blow that followed it, righting him again. Maki’s nose rained blood and his left eye was nearly closed and his lip was split wide open.

“Please,” he kept trying to say as Breed pummeled him. “Please… stop it… stop it… stop it…”

“Okay, I stopped,” Breed said and gave him a shot in the belly that put him back down.

By then Jurgens was on his feet. “Knock it off, Breed! Jesus, you’ll kill him.”

Breed just shook his head and sat back down, staring at Maki. Looking for a reason to really let loose on him. But Maki gave him none. He just squatted there, dazed and punchy, spitting out blood and making a whimpering sound under his breath like a dog that had just been whipped with a newspaper.

“We have to keep our heads here,” McNair finally said. “We can’t let this go on.”

“He’s right,” Jurgens said. “This is a bad spot, but they’re going to get us out. What we need is something constructive to do in the meantime.”

“Well, I’m open to suggestions,” Breed said.

They all were. But what, really, was there to do? What could possibly take their minds off the fix they were in or the possibility of the unpleasant deaths they might soon be facing?

But Jurgens had that covered. “Listen to me,” he said. “All of you. Now I know the drill. I know what’s going on up there right now. They’ve mobilized every possible resource to reach us. And they will, believe me, they will. But maybe we ought to think about helping out. We know the stope leading into this cavern caved-in, but we have no way of knowing the extent of it. There might just be a wall of rocks between us and freedom. I say we form up, go back there and get to work. What do you say?”

Breed stood up. “I’m for it. I can’t stand sitting around like this.”

“Okay, then. Maki? You stay here with Boyd. I’ll go with Dr. McNair and Breed, get them started, then I’ll come back. They’ll dig first for a couple hours, then we’ll take our turns.”

“I guess that leaves me out,” Boyd said.

That got a few weak chuckles, nothing more.

Maki had been sitting silently, nursing his wounds, but now he jumped up and swatted at the air. “Fuck was that?” he cried. “What the fuck was that?”

“What the hell’s he talking about?” Breed said.

McNair and Jurgens just watched him as he spun around in the lantern light, swatting at the air.

Jurgens said, “Calm down, Maki. Jesus, there’s nothing. You’re imagining things.”

Maki was breathing so hard it seemed he might hyperventilate. He kept brushing the back of his neck. “Something touched me.”

Boyd felt a chill go up his spine at that. He’d thought, right before Maki freaked out, that he’d heard a funny scraping on the rocks. But he didn’t dare say so.

Flashlight beams swung around, but there was only the dead trees and the rocks, nothing more.

“There’s nothing, Maki,” Jurgens said.

“There was, there was!” He licked his bloody lips and peered around suspiciously. “Something touched me. I don’t give a fuck whether you believe me or not, but something touched the back of my neck.”

“What?” Breed said.

“I don’t know… it felt… it felt like a stick or something.”

“Ain’t no sticks down here.”

Nobody was sure what to make of it. So nobody tried. They just started talking about digging their way out, leaving Maki to his imagination and Boyd to wondering.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes,” Jurgens said.

Then he, Breed, and McNair walked off, taking one of the lanterns with them. God only knew how long the batteries would last, so for the time being everyone was just using the lights on their helmets. Even those were dimming steadily, casting a surreal, weird glow and making everyone aware of how dark it was down there.

When the footfalls of the digging party vanished away, Boyd said, “Maki? You okay?”

“Sure, I’m fine,” he said. “I’m just fine. But I tell you what, Boyd, that fucking Breed is a dead man. He can’t do this and get away with it.”

“Worry about that later, after we get out of here,” Boyd told him.

But Maki just laughed. “Don’t kid yourself, Boyd, ain’t none of us getting out of here alive.”

“Stop it,” Boyd said. “Just stop that shit.”

“It touched me,” Maki said. “Whatever’s down here, Boyd, it touched the back of my neck.”

“Okay.”

“It’s got fingers.”

“Maki—”

“They feel like sticks… like pencils.”

Boyd just waited, saying nothing.