by Andrew Dorn
Was it yesterday we build this thing? It seemed so long ago. Funny how nerve-racking events compress time.
“Look!” Arturo said, with a look of alarm. “The seals!”
They were torn apart.
Maneuvering his way between the panels, Gerry stared at the damage. The plastisteel had fissured, ripped up like it was no more than paper. He had never seen anything like it.
“Listen!” Anna said, a finger up in the air.
Gerry identified the sound at once: a high-pitched screech from an overheating electrical motor.
“They must be coming up!”
There was a loud bang, followed by the sharp smell of a mechanical overload.
“Shit! That came from the motor!” Gerry exclaimed, with a glance at Arturo. The two of them got on their knees and peered into the darkened pit. Gerry realized with stupefaction the cab was practically in reach, immobilized 3 meters below surface.
“Hello down there,” he called, holding his hands like a megaphone in front of his mouth.
“Gerry, is that you?” Simon hollered back.
“Yes, it is!” he grinned at the others. “I’m with Anna and Arturo. We’re right above you!”
“Can you get us out? We’re stuck in here.”
“We’re on it. Don’t move, we’ll get you out.”
Inside the elevator cab, Simon glanced up at the narrow escape hatch built into the cab’s roof.
“We need to get up on top of this elevator.” Simon said to Emmeline. “Since you are way slimmer than me, I’ll hoist you up.”
Emmeline nodded in acknowledgement. “Nice of you to notice my figure.”
Simon turned a splendid shade of crimson as he stood alongside her.
“Huh... I, uh,” he stuttered.
“I’m ready,” she said, letting him off the hook.
Simon knotted his fingers together and knees bent, readied himself. Emmeline hopped with her right foot into his outstretched arms. He hoisted her up in one smooth motion, watching out for her safety. She elbowed the escape hatch out of the way then lifted herself onto the cab’s outer structure.
“Emmeline, grab hold of this!” Gerry said, using a long piece of slotted strut channel as rescue equipment.
Emmeline grabbed it, her hands clamping around the aluminum bar.
“Got it!” She said, facing up into the shadows.
Gerry and Arturo tugged on the strut, grunting in unison. In a matter of minutes, Emmeline was pulled out of the cab and brought back up to the relative safety of the adit.
“Thank you.”
“My pleasure.”
“Huh, guys? Are you still up there?”
Simon looked up, waiting for something to happen. He had attempted to jump and grab hold of the opening but couldn’t manage it.
“Watch out below!”
He watched as a lengthy piece of extruded aluminum, with a leather belt tied at the end, snaked its way inside the top hatch.
“Can you reach it?”
“Yes!”
He slipped his right foot into the leather belt then began to shimmy up the pole. He heard a loud screeching noise as if two barrels filled with metal bits were being banged together. The cab jerked sideways and Simon was thrown against the wall. The cab’s brakes wailed in agony and he realized the elevator was about to give in to the laws of gravity... and careen down the hole. He had no time left. With his survival instinct screaming for him to act, he climbed up the pole again, arms and legs straining with effort.
“Come on, you can do it!”
He glanced upwards and saw Gerry holding onto the pole. He noticed he was lying down on his stomach and that two pair of arms were keeping him down, securing him from plunging to his death.
“Out of breath... give me a second.”
There was a loud groan from underneath the cab. It sounded to his ears like a city bus being dropped into a shredder. The cab shuddered once then jerked downward and before he knew what was going on, it began to plummet. Simon thrusted his hand out and Gerry grabbed hold of it. The cab dropped out of sight, disappearing down the shaft. A heartbeat later, there was a roar of noise and the entire shaft reverberated like a gong.
“Blimey!” Gerry said, eyes wide. “Guys! Need help!”
There was a rush of hands over Simon’s body and at last he was dragged to safety.
“Thank you all,” he said. “That was too close for comfort.”
He saw Anna step forward.
His heart sunk. “Anna, I’m so sorry. There was nothing we could do. Your dad, Frank, he, uh, fell and...”
“I know, Emmeline told me.”
He didn’t know what to do or say. He had never been good at dealing with bad news. Even when Victoria had passed, he had felt like a stranger to those who came to console him. It was a defense mechanism, his counselor had said, months after the service. Grief made him more resilient, hardier, but also somewhat asocial. He was shunning people away, afraid of losing them... the way he had lost Victoria.
“We should get out of here,” Emmeline said with a brief glance at Anna.
“Great idea,” Simon replied.
They worked their way outside, walking in silence, each aware of Frank’s fate, of the upsetting way in which he had been lost. Simon never had a co-worker, nor a friend, left behind. It was sad, tragic and unnecessary.
They came up to the entrance of the administration building. From outside, the structure appeared to still be structurally sound.
“Has anyone seen Rutledge?” Simon asked, turning to the others.
“I haven’t seen her since the power failure,” Anna answered. “Maybe she’s still trapped inside, in Security.”
“We better go in and make sure,” Simon said. “She’s the only one unaccounted for, right?”
“That’s correct,” Anna replied. “Nurse Mahoney and Sterling Farrow are in Bangor and the rest of the crew, as you guys know, have been off-premises for a week now.”
“Yeah, ever since we’ve hit that anomaly of yours,” Gerry said, glancing at Simon.
“Why is it my anomaly suddenly?” Simon objected. “It’s not my fault what took place down there.” He glanced at Anna. “It’s not my fault what happened to Frank.”
Emmeline took a step forward and gripped his arm at the elbow.
“We know, Simon. It’s nobody’s fault.” She stared at Gerry, then back to Simon. “Let’s go inside and make sure Rutledge is safe.”
Simon acknowledged, glancing at the others, and after a brief hesitation, entered the building.
“Do you reckon Rutledge is still here?” Simon said, turning to Anna.
“I don’t know.”
“It would be surprising, if you ask me,” Gerry said. “She didn’t strike me as someone who would stick around when the going gets rough.”
“Cobarde!” Arturo agreed.
“She’s chief of security, right?” Emmeline said, eyes blazing. “She should have looked out for you at the first sign of trouble, if only to make sure you were unhurt.”
“Yeah, well, perhaps she had more important stuff to do,” Gerry said, shaking his head. “I know Frank didn’t like her one bit. Right Anna?”
“Yeah, it’s true enough. But we should still search for her... my dad would have wanted that.”
Emmeline saw the determination burning in her eyes. She was assuredly Frank’s daughter.
“I recommend we split up and make a beeline for Security. Then once we know for sure she’s not in the building, we’ll regroup outside.”
Simon stared at the others. “It’s only a proposal, if you guys don’t like it...”
“No, it’s fine,” Gerry said, slapping Simon on the back. “Let’s get this over with.”
The tremor had displaced most of the furniture and debris littered the ground along the corridor’s length. Gerry and Arturo took the passageway leading straight to Security while Simon, Emmeline and Anna inspected the Admin and Operations offices.
T
hey worked their way in and out of the dozen or so offices, checking for signs of Rutledge.
But she was nowhere to be seen.
Ten minutes later, they found themselves facing Frank’s office. Gerry and Arturo had come back from Security empty-handed, with no clue to Rutledge’s whereabouts.
“I guess we’ve earned our pay check today,” Gerry said. “I invite you all to my humble habitat for a pint of beer, or beverage of your choice.”
“Just a second,” Anna said.
She pushed the door wide open to Frank’s office and went straight to his desk, cluttered with broken ceiling tiles, personal stuff and other paraphernalia. There was a long pregnant pause as she glanced at the battered desk. Wiping tears away, she picked a few items scattered here and there: a framed photograph, a Mont-Blanc pen, and an e-tablet which she stashed inside a tote bag retrieved from a nearby hook.
“Sorry,” she said to the others. “I couldn’t leave without this.”
She held up the photograph. The picture was a group shot of the crew on the first day of work, the day the mine opened for business. Frank was front and center, beaming at the camera, surrounded by his team of men and women. Gerry, Arturo and Simon were also in the picture, grinning at the camera. It was a picture Simon had looked at hundreds of times before but from this day on, it would be a reminder of all they had lived thru... and all they had lost.
“Huh, you guys feel that?” Gerry said, staring downward.
The floor shifted sideways without warning, sending everyone to the ground. Hideous cracking noises whirled about the corridor as it slid sideways, the walls buckling with tumultuous noise from the strain.
“We have to go!” Gerry yelled, bolting to his feet.
Simon took the lead and hurried towards the main hallway, the others right behind. He could see the front door ahead and thru the window, heavy gray clouds blanketing the sky.
In the deep layers of strata below, the seismic wave exploded upward in one long shattering burst, transforming the surrounding soil into a mushy mire of liquefied rocks and dirt.
Simon shoved open the front door and ran outside as fast as his legs permitted, looking over his shoulder to make sure the others were keeping pace. He noticed something enormous and white hanging in the sky, right above the tree line.
“Sweet Jesus!”
“That’s my ride,” Emmeline said, running past him.
Floating above, the Starwind loomed at the edge of the clearing, its white gleaming hull contrasting with the dark clouds.
“You came in that thing?” Simon asked, impressed.
He saw Emmeline turn to him, grinning from ear to ear.
“Look!”
Simon followed Gerry’s gaze out to the cluster of sheds, lined up alongside the central building. The buildings were disappearing from sight in a tremendous fracas of dust and noise, vanishing into the subterranean maw of a colossal sinkhole.
“My God, the building is caving in!” Emmeline said with disbelief. “As if the Earth is opening from below!”
“From below...” Simon said, turning to her.
Realization flashed between them.
The sludge!
There was a low rumble, accompanied by the thuds of large objects sliding down and they stared in disbelief as the chasm swallowed everything in sight.
16 Opportunity
“IMPRESSIVE ISN’T IT?”
Gwen Rutledge turned towards the voice.
Elijah33, Elijah Roy she corrected herself, was studying her reaction, like a lepidopterist pinning a new and prized butterfly to a display board.
“Yes.”
It was true enough. The hole was damn impressive and so massive, it bordered on unbelievable. That everyone save poor Frank Curtis had made it out had been a miracle... which she had watched from a safe distance away. When the initial tremor hit, Gwen had abandoned her post, rushing outside to where the UV was parked and had gunned the engine until she had considered it safe, way out along the outer perimeter of the mine, among the great pines flanking the forest. She had thought nothing of leaving Patterson, Vazquez and Anna Curtis to fend for themselves. It was their own fault they hadn’t pulled out. They should have thought of their own safety first instead of trying to help the others.
They were lucky to be alive.
The hole had swallowed everything. From the garage, where the pickups had been parked, to the admin building and therefore her security office, all of it had found itself at the bottom of the hole in a matter of seconds.
It was a nightmare. One she would never have thought possible, at least not on this scale. It was as if the Earth had deemed the mine a nuisance and had decided to ram it downward as deep as it could. It was an altogether novel way to think about what can only be characterized as an act of God... unless it wasn’t. And if it wasn’t, then Elijah had been right all along.
She had found him standing where she least expected it: alongside the Gould boulder, at the East fence.
He was taller than what the SComm photograph had led her to believe. He had a rather ugly scar and longish, neglected hair but it was the eyes that were his standout feature: dark, penetrating and to her surprise, chilling. There was an ominous glint in his gaze, as if he was fighting to contain the rage building within him, ready to explode. It made her nervous, but she decided to ignore her instinct, the one insisting she stay away from this man.
He had come, he explained, to examine the proof she possessed about the mystery at the bottom of the mine.
But it wasn’t necessary anymore.
He was convinced their preordained future was starting right now... and as soon as she heard those words, she knew it to be true.
The future was their’s.
“Do you think, now, that whatever you witnessed at the bottom of the mine, the strange light show you talked about, is not a force to reckon with?”
Gwen shrugged. She had no idea what to think.
“I suppose,” she said, fidgeting under his stare.
“You suppose?” Roy said, his scar turning a deeper shade of crimson. “No, Gwen. There is no guessing anymore. Whatever you saw in the video is responsible for this.” His arm swept the width of the enormous hole at their feet.
“There is a mystery here. And do you know what it can provide us?” He clenched his jaw. “Well, do you?”
Gwen hesitated, unsure on what to say.
“Opportunity!” Roy hissed, as if reprimanding a child.
“There is a power down there. A power intended for all of us who never had a chance in life, for all of us pre-ordained to a life of misery.”
He paced along the rim of the hours old crater, crossbow in hand.
“We are gonna grab that power, Gwen. It’s our’s to use and to control.”
Roy continued pacing as he spoke of his plan.
“I need you to continue mingling with the others down there,” he indicated the habitat modules, visible on the embankment bordering the far side of the hole. “I need you to find out what you can about what lies beneath, about the hidden power.”
Gwen nodded, grasping what he was expecting of her. Roy wanted her to be a spy, capable of gathering intelligence without suspicion, a spy who would do as she was told, a spy who would harbor no doubts about the mission itself. She felt her heartbeat speed up. She had waited all her life, it seemed, for such a mission.
This was the moment... right?
Roy pivoted away from the edge of the sinkhole and strode to where Gwen stood, waiting with anticipation. He gripped her by the shoulders, sinking his gaze into her shifting eyes.
“Go now, Gwen. We will meet again tomorrow evening, same place.”
She beamed at him then climbed into the Polaris. She gave a short salute with her left hand, waiting for an acknowledgment from Roy. When she understood none was forthcoming, she let her arm fall to the side, floored the accelerator and sped away.
Roy watched her leave with a satisfied grin. Rutledge was an even bet
ter catch than what he had hoped for. She was perfect for what he needed to do.
He walked back to the small pitch tent he had put up the night before. It was concealed among a row of enormous boulders, almost invisible in the darkness. The tent’s opening faced the hole while the back end was positioned against a towering slab of rock, making it difficult for someone to sneak in unannounced; and with the alarm system he had strung up, a string attached to a grenade, he felt secured. Besides, the mining crew was too busy picking up the pieces to come and screw up his plans. The National Guard, however, could be a problem, but he figured he still had plenty of time before they showed up.
He now knew what needed to be done.
There was a power at the bottom of the hole, a power he had to retrieve, at all costs. At last, he was on the cusp of perhaps the greatest lever of change ever available to a single man. He had prepared for it, always knew the moment would come.
The moment.
It would redefine who he was, and what destiny awaited him.
And here it was.
It was significant that it was taking place in his backyard. But then again, it wasn’t surprising either. Forces greater than what the world had seen for millennia were at play. The time had come for him to make the one change which would remodel the world permanently. He could sense it in his bones, in the way the flux of events circled around him, even in his soul.
With a last look at the sinkhole, he zipped open his tent and went inside.
Tomorrow will be doomsday for the old, corrupted world.
A final day for most, a new beginning for the chosen few.
The sun had been up for just a few minutes but Simon was up and about in his habitat, already doped with coffee and ready to face the day. The pain in his lower back was a reminder he wasn’t a twenty-year old anymore but at least the rest of his body was in working order.
His head, however, was another story. He felt drained, as if he hadn’t slept a wink for a whole month. And it wasn’t simply because Emmeline had kissed him goodnight. A peck on the cheek... That’s all it had been.
