White Fire p-13

by Douglas Preston

  Again, she could hear the snowmobile closing in behind her.

  Stuffing away the map, she gunned the engine, riding past the old buildings and heading for the far side of the bowl, where the slope climbed upward again. She was surprised to see fresh snowmobile tracks among the buildings, somewhat snowed over but clearly made earlier in the day.

  She reached the base of the road cut. This was going to be scary. But even as she contemplated the almost vertical wall above her, the sound of the pursuing snowmobile grew louder and she turned to see it coming over the rim of the cirque, not half a mile away.

  Revving the throttle, she started up the trail, keeping as much to the inside edge as she could, blasting through drifts and fins of snow. The first hairpin turn was so steep and narrow, it just about stopped her heart. As she crawled around it, decelerating sharply, she almost became stuck in a drift and her efforts to get loose sent snow cascading down in a plume, the snowmobile tipping. She gunned it hard, spewing snow, and just managed to get back on the track. She paused, breathing hard, terrified by the yawning white space below her. It occurred to her that the avalanche danger on this steep slope must be high. She could see her pursuer was now riding through the old mining complex, following in her tracks. He was close enough for her to see the rifle slung over his shoulder.

  She realized she had allowed herself to become cornered on the mountain. The road ended at the mine, and there was nothing but vertical cliffs above. And a killer below.

  She made it past another half a dozen terrifying turns, driving recklessly through the deep snow, not letting the machine stop and settle. She finally reached the entrance to the Christmas Mine, marked by a rickety trestle and a square opening of massive, rotten timbers. She pulled the snowmobile right up to the opening, tore off her helmet, pulled up the seat, and hauled out her backpack. As soon as the engine was off she could hear the roar of the other snowmobile, much closer.

  The door was set back into the tunnel about ten feet, which meant it was not drifted up with snow. The entrance had a rusted door set into a plate of riveted steel, deeply pitted by age, fixed with a heavy, ancient padlock.

  The engine sound got louder. Corrie began to panic. She stripped off her gloves, grabbed her lock-pick tools, and tried to insert a bump key, but it was immediately apparent the lock was frozen with rust and unpickable. Even as she fumbled around she could hear the approaching roar of the snowmobile.

  She grabbed the bolt cutters from her pack, but they were not heavy enough for the jaws to fit over the thick bar of the lock. They did, however, fit partway across the hasp. She jammed the jaws of the cutter over the hasp and drew down hard, the jaws closing with much effort. Taking the hammer, she gave the partially cut hasp a tremendous blow, then another, bending it enough for her to cut it the rest of the way through. Even so, everything was so solid with rust she had to pound the pieces with the hammer to shake them loose.

  She threw herself against the iron door but it hardly budged, letting out a great screech of protesting metal.

  The approaching snowmobile engine gave a sudden roar; she saw a flurry of snow; and then it appeared at the mouth of the mine, driven by a man in a black helmet and puffy snowsuit. He rose from the machine, undoing his helmet and unshipping his rifle at the same time.

  With an involuntary cry she threw herself against the door, almost dislocating her shoulder in the process, and with a loud scree it budged open just enough for her to squeeze through. Grabbing her backpack she rammed herself through the opening, then turned and threw herself back against the iron, thrusting the door shut again — just as there came a deafening boom from the rifle, with a round clanging off the door and ricocheting into the mine, sending up sparks as it splintered on the rocks behind her.

  A second push shut the door completely. Bracing against it, Corrie fumbled out her headlamp, pulled it on over her balaclava, and turned it on. A pair of rounds smacked into the door with a deafening noise, but it was made of thick iron and they left only dents. And now she felt a person slam into the door on the other side, pushing it open a few inches. Once more, she threw herself against it hard, slamming it shut again, and then she yanked the wrecking bar out of her pack and wedged it under the door edge, giving it a blow with a hammer, then another blow, until it held, even as she felt the man on the other side shouldering the door, trying to force it open.

  He pounded furiously on the door, the bar sliding back just a little. It would hold only so long. She cast about. Broken rocks lay everywhere, along with old pieces of iron and ancient equipment.

  Wham! The man was now throwing himself against the door, jarring the wrecking bar loose.

  She hammered it back into place and began piling rocks and iron against the door. Down the tracks she could see an old ore cart, and with great difficulty she got it moving, levering it off the tracks so that it tipped over against the door. She rolled some larger rocks in place. Now the door would hold — at least for a while. She sagged against the rock wall, panting hard, trying to recover her breath and figure out what to do next.

  More shots were fired against the door, producing a series of deafening clangs in the enclosed space and causing her to jump. Grabbing her pack, she turned and retreated down the tunnel. For the first time she could see the space she was in. The air was cold, but not so cold as outside, and it smelled of mold and iron. The tunnel ran straight ahead through solid rock, supported every ten feet or so by heavy wooden timbers. A set of ore tracks led into darkness.

  She started down the tunnel at a jog. The sounds of the stalker trying to break in echoed down the passageway. Corrie came to a cross tunnel, turned in to it, and then, at a cul-de-sac, finally had to stop to rest. And think.

  She had bought some time, but eventually the man would manage to wedge open the door. The old map she had indicated that a section of the Christmas Mine connected to other, lower mines, forming a maze of tunnels and shafts — assuming they were all still passable. If she could reach them, find her way out…but what good would that do? The snow outside was several feet deep, impossible to walk through. There was only one way off the mountain — via snowmobile.

  And nobody knew she was up here. She hadn’t told anyone. My God, she thought, what a mess I’ve gotten myself into.

  At that moment she heard a shriek of metal, then another. She looked around the corner of the passage, back toward the distant door, and saw a wedge of light. Another screech and the wedge grew wider.

  The man was prying open the door. She made out a shoulder, a cruel-looking face — and an arm with a handgun.

  She ran as the shot was fired.

  57

  The shots came screaming past her, sparking off the stone floor of the main tunnel ahead, the ricocheting fragments whining away like bees. She ran in terror, leaping the old car rails, expecting any moment to feel a round slam into her back and knock her to the ground. The tunnel ended in another cross tunnel, a wall of rock. Another fusillade of shots came booming down the tunnel, smacking the timbers above her with a burst of splinters and dust, flashing against the rock face before her.

  She skidded around the corner and kept running. She desperately tried to remember the layout of tunnels she’d seen on the map, but her mind had shut down in panic. The shots had temporarily stopped after she turned the corner, and now she saw another, much narrower tunnel going off to the right, sloping steeply downward in a series of crude steps like a gigantic stone staircase. She flew down them, two steps at a time, to find herself in a lower tunnel, a trickle of water flowing along its bottom. It was warmer here, maybe even above freezing, and she was sweating in her bulky winter outfit.

  “You can’t escape,” came a yell from behind. “It’s all dead ends in here!”

  Bullshit, she told herself with a bravado she didn’t feel, I’ve got a map.

  Another pair of shots came, but they struck to the rear and she felt the spray of rock pepper her jacket. She looked around. Another tunnel branched off to th
e left — also headed downward at an even steeper angle, the steps slick with water, with a rotting rope strung along as a kind of banister.

  She took it, running at a reckless speed. Partway down she slipped and grasped frantically for the rope, which came apart like dust in her hands. She pitched forward, breaking her fall with her shoulder and rolling hard downhill, finally crashing into the bottom and sprawling on the wet stone. Her bulky winter clothes and woolen hat cushioned the fall — but not by much.

  She staggered to her feet, her limbs aching, a burning cut on her forehead. She was in a broad, low seam, barely five feet high, with pillars of rock holding up the ceiling. It extended in two dimensions as far as the beam of her headlamp could penetrate. She ran at a crouch, zigzagging past the pillars, briefly shining the light ahead to see where she was going, and then turning it off again and running onward into the dark. She did this two more times, and then on the third time, while the light was off, she took a sharp right angle, slowing down and moving as silently as she could.

  The flashlight beam of her pursuer lanced through the darkness behind her, wobbling as he ran, probing this way and that. She moved behind a pillar and pressed herself against it, waiting. He was now off course and heading past her. In a moment she could see him slow down and look around, a pistol in his right hand. Clearly, he realized he had lost her.

  She slipped from behind the pillar and went back the way they had come, then veered off into a new passage, creeping ahead in the dark, not daring to turn on the headlight but rather feeling her way with her hands. She blinked, wiped her eyes — blood was running freely from the cut on her forehead. After a while she saw a flicker of light behind her and realized he, too, had turned around and was coming back. She hurried faster now, pulling the headlamp off her head and holding it down low, just flicking the beam on for a second to see ahead so she could move faster.

  Bad move: a pair of shots boomed out and then she heard him running, his light beam flashing around, illuminating her. Another shot. But the idiot was firing while running, which only worked on TV, and she took the opportunity to sprint like mad.

  She almost didn’t see it in time — a vertical shaft yawning directly ahead. She stopped so fast that she slid on her side like a base runner. Even so, one leg went over the edge. She scrambled and clawed her way back from the gaping chasm with an involuntary yelp of fear. An iron catwalk crossed the chasm, but it looked rotten as hell. An iron ladder went down into the blackness — also corroded.

  It was either one or the other.

  She chose the ladder, grasped the rung, and swung around, her foot finding a rung below, then another. The thing groaned and shook under her weight. A stale draft of still-warmer air came up from below. No going back now: she started down as fast as she could, the entire ladder shuddering and swaying. There was a loud snapping sound, then a second, as bolts holding the ladder to the stone broke free, and the ladder jerked violently down. She clung to it, tensing for a horrible, fatal fall — but with a screech of metal it came to an uneasy stop.

  A light shone down from above, along with the gleam of a gun. Grabbing the edges of the ladder with her gloves, and taking her feet from the rungs and pressing them against the vertical sides of the ladder, she slid down — faster, faster, the rust coming off in a stream, until she hit the bottom hard, tumbling away, just as the shots came, gouging holes into the stone floor where she had just been.

  Damn, she’d done something to her ankle.

  Did he have the guts to descend the precarious ladder? Right at its base was a pile of rotting canvas and a stack of old planking. Limping over, she half dragged, half hauled the canvas underneath the ladder. The material was dry as dust and practically falling apart in her hands. The ladder was shaking now, groaning — her pursuer was descending.

  Which meant he wouldn’t be able to fire his weapon.

  She shoved the heap of canvas against the base of the ladder and piled on the planks, pulled out her lighter, and lit the makeshift pyre. It was so desiccated, it went up like a bomb.

  “Burn in hell!” she screamed as she dragged herself down the tunnel, trying to ignore the pain in her ankle. God, it felt like it was broken. Limping, the pain excruciating, she continued along another tunnel and then another, taking turns at random, now completely lost. Clearly, though, she was well out of the Christmas Mine and deep into the labyrinths of the Sally Goodin or one of the other, lower mines that honeycombed the mountain. She could hear sounds from behind, which seemed to indicate her pursuer had somehow gotten past the fire, or perhaps he’d just waited until it burned out.

  Ahead, her headlight disclosed a cave-in, a bunch of jagged boulders strewn about on the floor of the tunnel, with some crossed beams lying atop. A narrow path, however, could be seen twisting through the rubble. Cold air streamed down from above. She climbed painfully over the piles of rock and broken timbers, then looked up. A crack disclosed a piece of dark, gray sky — but that was all. There was no way out, no way to reach it.

  She continued picking her way through the rubble and came at last to a flat area on the far side. Suddenly, she heard a buzzing noise. She stopped, shone her light ahead, then gave a little cry and shrank back. Nestled among the fallen boulders, blocking the way, was a huge, ropy mass of hibernating rattlesnakes. They were half asleep in the cold air, but the twisted clump still moved in a kind of horrible slow motion, pulsing, rotating, almost like a single entity. Some were awake enough to be rattling in warning.

  She shone the light around and saw that other rattlers were coiled up into the various small spaces between the rocks. They were everywhere — seemingly hundreds of them. Even — she realized with a sickening sensation — behind her.

  Suddenly the boom of the gun sounded, and she felt one hand jerk in response to an impact. Instinctively, she leapt over the mass of snakes, scrambling among the boulders, the pain in her ankle even more excruciating. Another shot followed, then another, and she took refuge behind a large boulder — right next to a fat, sleeping rattler. There were some stones nearby — this was an opportunity she couldn’t pass up. She picked up a heavy stone in her right hand — something was wrong with her left hand but she’d worry about that later — and jumped onto the large boulder, letting the rock fly with great violence at the main mass of snakes.

  The rock smacked into the bolus of reptiles, and the reaction was immediate and terrifying — an eruption of buzzing that filled the tunnel with a sound like a thousand bees, accompanied by an explosive writhing of movement. The lazy mass of snakes suddenly turned into a whirlwind, coiling, striking, sliding off in all directions — several coming straight at her.

  She scrambled backward. Another shot struck the rocks around her, ricocheting about, and she fell in between two boulders. The buzzing filled the cave like a vast humming dynamo. She got up and ran, dragging her injured ankle. Half a dozen snakes struck at her and she jumped away. Two got hung up by their fangs on the thick fabric of her snow pants. With a scream she whacked them off, fairly dancing among the striking snakes, as another pair of shots whined among the rocks. A few moments later she was beyond the furious mass, limping away, until she could stand it no longer and finally collapsed in pain. She lay there, gasping, the tears running down her face. Her ankle was certainly broken. And then there was her hand: even in the dark she could see that her glove was soaked with warm liquid. She removed it gingerly, held her hand up to the light, and was amazed by what she saw: her pinkie finger was dangling by a mere thread of skin, blood welling out.

  “Fuck!”

  She shook off the useless finger, almost passing out from a combination of dizziness and disgust. Unwrapping her scarf, she cut a strip of it off with a knife and wrapped it around her hand and the stump of the finger, tightening it to stem the flow of blood.

  My finger. Jesus. In a dream, almost in shock from disbelief, she pulled the glove back over the wadded scarf as best she could to hold it in place. As she did so, she heard a shout from
behind, then a scream, and the wild firing of the gun. But this time the shots were not directed at her. A rattling noise filled the tunnel with an unholy sound of reptilian fury. More shots and yells.

  She had to keep going — eventually he would get through the snakes, unless by great good luck he was bitten. She hauled herself to her feet, fighting the dizziness and, now, a growing nausea. Christ, she needed a crutch, but there was nothing at hand. Limping badly, she continued along the tunnel, which descended steadily for some distance, passing several crosscuts. In time she came to a small side alcove, blocked up with rocks that formed a makeshift wall, now half collapsed. A place to hide? She dragged herself to it, pulled out some more stones, and looked in.

  The beam of light fell upon a horde of rats, which erupted in excitement and went scurrying every which way with a chorus of squeals — exposing the remains of several bodies.

  She stared with something like stupefaction. There were four in all, laid out in a row of skeletons — or rather, partial mummies, as they still had dried flesh on their bones, rotten clothes, old boots, and hair. Their dried-up heads were tilted back, their jaws wide open as if screaming, exposing mummified mouths full of black, rotten teeth.

  As she crawled in to look more closely, she could see all the signs. They had been shot — she could see numerous holes in their skulls, many other bones broken by what looked like bullet impacts. A firing-squad attack far in excess of what would have been necessary to kill them — a display of violent, homicidal fury.