by Alex Bratton
“You okay, Alvarez?” he asked.
“Just fine, no thanks to you,” she said snidely. “Next time, wait until I’m out of the way, huh?”
“What is it with that guy?” Lincoln asked, trying to redirect the conversation.
“Don’t know,” Nelson choked out as he began laughing.
Sighing, Carter shook his head. “This has been a great way to start our time here.”
“No kidding,” Lincoln said, rubbing his sore jaw.
Lincoln resisted all attempts for someone to look at his face, preferring to manage the injury on his own.
Leaving Schmidt behind after supper, the team took advantage of the camp’s turmoil to plan their nightly venture into the mineshaft.
“You still want to go?” Alvarez asked coolly.
“Now more than ever,” Lincoln mumbled through his swollen face.
Somewhere down the line of tents, Colonel Nash could be heard dressing down Halston. Good, Lincoln thought. He only regretted his smart mouth for a moment before remembering that Halston had started the whole thing. Apparently, the stress of being out here was affecting everyone’s good judgment, and it had only been a day.
Lincoln shook off his thoughts and focused on their task. Since the LED flashlights had died, Carter volunteered to create three or four torches. As long as Nash stayed out of the way, they could spend as long as they wanted exploring the tunnels.
“One problem, Lincoln,” Carter said. “Do you think you can find the entrance to the mine in the dark? Before we light the torches?”
“The moon’s almost full, and we have clear skies. I don’t think we’ll have any trouble finding our way.”
They walked by a fire as someone extinguished it. With the fires put out, the camp would be dark soon. Lincoln and Carter parted at their respective tents. To Lincoln’s dismay, Schmidt had relocated to outside his own open tent, directly across from Lincoln’s. He was engaged in spirited conversation with two other soldiers. At Schmidt’s nod, Lincoln cursed under his breath. He would have to get past the kid to leave camp. They doused the fire as Lincoln crawled into his tiny tent, pretending to be retiring early. The soldiers’ conversation drifted through the tent wall.
“…taller than a moose,” one of them said.
“I don’t think there are any moose in West Virginia, Bass,” Schmidt responded. “It was just a bear and a trick of the light through the trees. Tons of black bears around here.”
“I know what a bear looks like, Schmidt,” Bass said. “It was too tall for a black bear, and it stood on two legs. And it was the wrong color. More like gold.”
“A gold bear?” the third soldier asked.
“It wasn’t a bear!”
“Hey, Schmidt, maybe he saw Bigfoot.” The third soldier snickered.
“Bigfoot lives in the Rockies. It wasn’t him. And I think the appropriate name is Sasquatch.”
Schmidt and the second soldier guffawed.
When Schmidt stopped laughing, he said, “It was a bear standing on its hind legs. You probably startled it.”
That was enough for Lincoln. Tuning out the conversation, he pulled a blanket around his shoulders, watching the sky through the back mesh of the tent. Alvarez passed on her way to her own tent.
Mina hadn’t answered Lincoln’s email before his phone fried. If her plane had landed, she would have accessed her email by now and made her own arrangements to get out of Atlanta. He would check on her as soon as he found a working phone. Lincoln’s gut tightened anxiously. Hopefully, wherever Mina was, she hadn’t lost power, too.
Chapter Eight
The smoke thickened as Mina forced her muscles to work on autopilot, running like she had trained. Any moment, she expected to crash into the thing that had appeared in the haze that obscured the setting sun.
Her lungs contracted, rebelling against the smoke Mina had inhaled. As her chest spasmed, she doubled over, nearly planting face first into the grass. Catching herself on her hands, she crawled forward, desperate to place more distance between herself and the carnage behind.
When the top of Mina’s head hit metal, she jerked backward in shock. She had crawled headlong into a chain-link fence. Grasping the links, she sank to the ground, gasping for breath. The fence probably went on for miles, securing the runways. Mina didn’t have the energy right now to search for a gate, so she rested as the pain in her chest diminished.
Another scream pierced the air, spurring her to grapple along the fence, clinging to the wire for support until she reached more concrete.
Ahead, an old rusted truck sat with the motor running. Mina could barely believe her luck, and she stumbled to the door. Scrambling inside, she closed the door on the smoke that drifted in with her. Taking a few breaths of cleaner air, she looked around for a sign that someone was using the vehicle, but she didn’t see anyone at the buildings nearby.
Terrified of wasting time, Mina put the truck in gear and eased it forward. She pulled onto the grass, thinking to follow the fence line until she could escape. The truck’s tires spun in the soft earth, and Mina gave it more gas. It lurched forward, jostling her already bruised body.
She glanced in the rear-view mirror, and her heart almost stopped. A man in a mechanic’s uniform was running after the truck, waving his arms. Mina slowed until she saw the gun in one hand. Afraid, she pressed her foot to the gas, spinning the tires again.
Despite Mina’s fear, she felt guilty. Had the man left the truck running for himself? If so, she had taken away his escape route.
A woman burst out of the haze behind the mechanic, running straight for him and knocking him down. Mina gasped, wondering why she had attacked him. Then she realized that the woman was attempting to wrestle the gun from his hand.
Paralyzed with fear, Mina watched the woman try to strangle the man. He found an opening, pointed the weapon at the woman, and fired into her ribs. She jerked back, clutching her side.
Mina hit the gas, spinning the tires as the truck slid around, digging itself into the soggy topsoil.
The mechanic pushed the woman off of him and stood, looking at the truck. From the rear-view mirror, Mina saw him raise the pistol and fire. She ducked as the window behind her shattered. Shards of glass hit the back of her head and right shoulder.
The mechanic ran toward the truck, and Mina hit the gas again. The engine revved as the truck spun around in the soup. Panicking, Mina watched in horror as the man reached the truck bed, pointing his gun at the driver’s side. He slowed, suddenly cautious with his hand on the tailgate. She ducked low to watch him from the side mirror. Apparently satisfied Mina wasn’t going to shoot back, he had just taken a step toward the door when the fence near him bent as if a train had run into it. In one fell swoop, a bipedal creature covered in dark markings crashed through the chain link and scooped him up in its claws. The back end of the truck bounced as the alien hit it, dislodging it from the muck.
Turning away in terror, Mina spun the wheel, and the truck finally found purchase. The vehicle roared through the grass and then she heard more gunshots followed by a long, terrible scream.
The moon rose over the mountains, and Lincoln observed the silhouettes of the other tents in the surrounding trees. They wouldn’t have any trouble finding the mine tonight.
He zipped up his jacket and checked his pockets, feeling an odd shape in one of them. Carter’s sketchbook. He’d accidentally held onto it. Surprised Carter hadn’t asked for it back already, Lincoln reminded himself to return it when they left for the mine. He couldn’t think of much else he needed, so he stepped out of his tent and ran straight into Schmidt.
“Sorry, sir. Everything okay?” Schmidt asked.
Lincoln suspected Nash had ripped Schmidt to pieces for losing Lincoln the first time, and the corporal wasn’t about to let it happen again. Lincoln felt sorry for the young man but only slightly.
“Schmidt, I have to pee.”
“Are you armed?”
“Yes. I’ll be
fine.”
“How’s that jaw? Looks pretty bad.”
“It’s fine,” Lincoln lied.
Actually, it hurt like a dentist had pulled a tooth without anesthetic. That must have been the loose tooth. He’d tasted blood off and on since Halston had hit him.
Lincoln took off toward the latrine and, once he was out of Schmidt’s line of sight, ducked into the trees, making sure he went in deep enough to avoid prying eyes. He waited while the others slowly joined him, trying not to feel guilty about ditching Schmidt again. If everything went according to plan, the team would return to camp before sunrise. No one need know they had left.
Carter was the first to arrive, stinking like gasoline.
Lincoln waved his hand in front of his face. “Did you take a bath in it?”
“Had a bit of an accident,” Carter said. “I changed my clothes and wiped it off as best I could, but the smell still lingers.”
“Apparently.”
Alvarez and Nelson arrived, wrinkling their noses at the stench. Nelson carried his backpack, weighed down like it probably contained his damaged computer.
“Do you really need that?” Lincoln asked, nodding to the bag as they walked. “There’s nothing down in the mine to fix it.”
Nelson shifted the backpack on his shoulders. “Doesn’t seem right leaving it in camp.”
“You think someone will take it?” Lincoln winked at Alvarez, but she didn’t smile as she normally would. Maybe she didn’t see him. Or maybe she was still miffed at him for fighting with Halston.
“Maybe,” Nelson said, ignoring Lincoln’s poor attempt at humor. “It has all our work on it.”
“It doesn’t work,” Alvarez said. “What would they do with it?”
“It has a solid-state hard drive, and there’s nothing wrong with it,” Nelson said, his tone darkening. “You know as well as I that someone could remove it and put it into a working machine.”
Carter stumbled and sighed as he regained his footing. “Let’s watch where we’re going, huh? Instead of joking around.”
Lincoln clapped Nelson on the shoulder, causing Nelson to lurch forward a little. When they walked under a denser patch of trees, the night darkened considerably.
“Maybe this trip will do you some good,” Lincoln said. “You need to get out of the lab more often, Nelson.”
Nelson answered with a hand gesture that Lincoln couldn’t quite see.
It turned out Lincoln had been overly optimistic about their ability to navigate in the dark, and what should have been a fifteen-minute walk turned into at least an hour. After much tripping and stumbling through the trees, and profuse swearing from Nelson, the team reached the entrance to the mineshaft.
The low-seam mine offered little headroom, forcing Lincoln to duck as he stepped in. An oily smell filled their nostrils. Like the railroad outside, the original equipment had been removed.
Carter had wrapped sections of blanket around sturdy branches and soaked them in diesel fuel. They lit one of the torches with Carter’s lighter. Nelson carried three more.
“This way,” Lincoln said, taking the torch. He began to lead them through the labyrinth of wooden beams and piles of brown rock, their boots disturbing the dust covering the floor.
“This place looks like it could cave in at any moment,” Carter said as he looked at the sagging timbers above them. He paused to light a cigarette.
“Another reason why we don’t need extra people in here,” Lincoln replied. He coughed and waved away the smoke. “Don’t you want to make those things last as long as possible?”
“Why? Either way, I’m going to run out, I think. Might as well get it over with instead of drawing it out. I need to quit anyway.”
“Still,” Alvarez said, “I don’t want to die an early death.” She pointed to a pile of coal gleaming off to the left and then looked at the torch in Lincoln’s hand. “Will it ignite, do you think?”
Carter looked at the coal and took one more puff before stubbing out the cigarette on his shoe and putting it back in his pocket. “Odd, isn’t it? Leaving the coal like that. Wonder why?”
“Maybe they left in a hurry,” Nelson said quietly.
Since no one had a response, the group continued on. The shaft sloped downward quickly. A few times, Lincoln consulted the map to make sure they made the correct turns. Finally, they reached a point where the rock shaft ended in ten wide, shallow steps cut directly into the mountain. Lincoln took the first step without hesitation. He knew where he was now.
“Lincoln.” Alvarez’s voice bounced off the walls. “Stop for a minute.”
“What is it?”
She grabbed Lincoln’s torch and held it out in front of her, examining the steps in the flickering light. “Let me see your shoes.”
“Take them off?”
She shook her head. “No, just let me see the treads.”
Lincoln raised his foot behind him, grabbing ahold of it while Alvarez peered at the sole.
“Are these the shoes you wore in earlier today?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Then, someone else has been here.”
The stairway grew quiet as everyone looked to where she was pointing—at a large boot print on the stairs ahead of them, heading down.
Carter lit another torch and held it out. “She’s right. Different tread.”
“Are there any coming back up?” Nelson asked.
“I haven’t seen any. Keep an eye out.” Alvarez walked ahead of them now, holding her torch low. More of the same boot prints marked the stairs, all heading down, along with some of Lincoln’s own treads headed in both directions.
“Looks like someone’s still down there,” Carter said. He stopped walking. “What do we want to do?”
Lincoln put a hand on his gun. “This might be our only chance without Nash.”
“But shouldn’t we bring in the troops now?” Nelson asked, his voice shaking slightly.
“There might be troops down there,” Lincoln said. “For all we know, Nash sent someone down here, and the guy got lost.”
Carter frowned. “Maybe. Wouldn’t they have sent someone in after him?”
“I’m going down,” Lincoln said stubbornly. “Everyone still with me?”
They all nodded. Lincoln led the way to the bottom, his finger resting beside the trigger of his gun. They reached the bottom of the stairs and stepped into the concrete tunnel.
“Lincoln,” Nelson said from the back. “You misrepresented this tunnel. Didn’t tell us how creepy it was.” His voice echoed off the walls, mingling with the sound of dripping water.
In the flickering torchlight, the square passage looked more like an underground bunker than a mineshaft. The ceiling crumbled in places where water had forced through, leaving large puddles on the rough floors.
Again, Lincoln experienced the sensation of the walls closing in around him. He paused to take a few deep breaths.
“How long since anyone was actually here? Did Cummings tell you, Lincoln?” Alvarez asked.
“No.”
The team reached the end of the passageway and spent a minute examining the edge of the concrete and the beginning of the dark rock. The torchlight illuminated the space better than Lincoln’s flashlight had, and they saw clearly where the concrete tunnel opened into the top of the rock, leaving a two-foot drop-off into the drier area in front of the ARCHIE sign. The first time inside, Lincoln had thought the step was intentional, but now it looked more like an accident.
“Why would they build an ugly square tunnel into the corridors?” Alvarez asked. “If ARCHIE could do this fine stonework in the corridor, why not in the tunnels leading to it?”
“Maybe the corridor was already here,” Lincoln said, helping her light two more torches.
“Before the concrete tunnel? Who put it here?”
“Dunno.”
“Let’s make sure we ask Nash.”
“I get the impression he doesn’t know anything about it,”
Nelson volunteered as he picked at the metal sign.
“The round room is this way.” Lincoln turned to go down Corridor B when the sound of ringing metal echoed across the stone. Thinking Nelson had done something to the sign, Lincoln looked back at him, but Nelson stood immediately to his left. “Did you hear that?” he whispered.
Nelson nodded and swallowed.
Lincoln remembered the metal stairs in Corridor A and turned, taking a few steps in that direction. “Hello?” he called. “Who’s there?” He walked to the head of the steep stairs, gun ready, while Carter held the torch aloft.
A man in Army fatigues stood several steps down, Lieutenant Halston. He held up his hand and squinted against the sudden brightness. “Oh, thank God.” He sighed. “Got turned around. Thought no one would find me.”
Relieved and suspicious at the same time, Lincoln lowered his gun. Halston hopped awkwardly up the remaining stairs, and everyone took a step back to look at him. Once again, the man seemed to take up all the surrounding space. Beads of sweat ran down his face and neck despite the cool air flowing through the passage.
“What are you doing down here without a light?” Lincoln asked, his anger toward Halston still going strong.
Halston glared at him. “Colonel sent me down awhile ago.”
“In the dark? Power’s out all over camp, remember?” Lincoln asked. What was wrong with Halston? Why hadn’t he answered his question about the light?
A terrible chill ran through him as Lincoln remembered the few minutes of darkness he had experienced. What if I’d stayed in here a few more minutes and been lost in the dark? He suppressed an urge to shudder. “Nash told me he couldn’t send anyone in without the map. Why did he change his mind?”
“Don’t know. My orders were to have a look at the tunnels. I was the only other person to have seen the map. I wandered in this general direction for a while until I found the stairs.”
