“You!” Adam pointed a shaking finger at Ewan. “You were the one who suggested the ghost tours. I knew it!”
“You know nothing.” Ewan snarled at the cowering Adam. “Only greed. You saw that gold and you practically pissed your pants. You’re the same as your great, great grandfather. Greedy for the riches from the mine, whatever the cost. All you had to do was say you’re sorry. But you didn’t, did you? You didn’t.”
“But Ifan! David! They’re dead and they had nothing to do with whatever the hell this is all about.” Jay couldn’t stop himself. The two men had been his friends since junior school. And now they were dead.
“Wrong, Jay. Wrong. Their ancestors were blasters. It was their explosives that brought the roof down. They followed Hughes’ orders. Their families are cursed, just as his is.” Ewan pointed a finger at Adam.
Jay recoiled.
Ewan’s finger had taken on a strange alabaster cast. The skin seemed loose and translucent, blue veins pulsing just below the surface. The tip of his finger peeled back to reveal the distal phalange bone poking through.
Jay looked up. Ewan’s eyes were milky white. His skull was visible just below paper-thin white skin. He leaned forward, his teeth bared. “Do as my da says, Jay. It’s his turn to rest, and my turn to take his place as King of the Coblynau. And so it will be for generations to come. Now go. Go, and never come back.”
Ewan stepped away from Jay, threw back his head, and let out an ear-shattering screech. The swarm of Coblynau responded.
Jay had seen enough. He yelled at the others. “Run!”
They didn’t need telling twice. Matt and Louise skittered past the King of the Coblynau and on up the tunnel. Alex was a step behind them. Jay shot past the alabaster man, flinching as he ducked underneath the upstretched arm that held the swaying miner’s lamp.
Beyond the standing man was a second light source.
Daylight.
Pure. Welcoming. Safe.
They ran towards it, their feet slipping and sliding on the muddy ground.
A deep rumble from the depths of the mine indicated that once again, the ground was shifting.
The rumble was joined by a rising chorus of screeching. The Coblynau were singing the song of their people. A song of death. Of pain. Of loss. Of a curse that would blight the lives of families for hundreds of years to come.
An epitaph for men whose only crime was to scour beneath the crust of the earth, searching for black coal and shining gold. Men in the service of masters who cared for nothing except the profits of the men’s labors. Masters who drank port and ate quail while their impoverished, starving workers were crushed by cave-ins, slowly choked by black dust, or incinerated in an instant by mine gas.
It was little wonder that the song of the Coblynau was one of mourning and loss, not just anger and hatred.
Jay stumbled through the southern exit just in time. He turned to see the Coblynau, led by the old King and his son Ewan, swarming over the hunched body of Adam Hughes.
Another generation lost to the Pit of Ghosts. Four more souls destined to spend eternity in blackness, driven mad by the curse and the endless drip-drip-drip of water.
The final rock-fall sealed the southern exit behind tons of boulders. It would be years before anyone else ever found their way back into Morfa Mine. At least a generation. And then the cycle would begin again.
The rumbling stopped, and a final shower of small rocks cascaded down the face of the cave-in.
Matt, Louise, Alex and Jay all sat there, staring at the sealed entrance. Louise sobbed quietly while Matt rocked her gently in his arms.
Alex ran a shaking hand through his hair, turned, and promptly vomited the contents of his stomach on the wet grass.
Jay sat looking at the cave-in, tears running unhindered down his cheeks.
The silence was absolute. No birds sang. The universe paused briefly, acknowledging the sacrifice of the Morfa Colliery men.
Then the faintest of sounds could be heard.
Jay strained to listen.
Knock knock...
WHERE THE SUN DOES NOT SHINE
Paul Mannering
“Okay Lucy, over you go.” The treads of the eight-wheeled robot bit into the grey powder of the lunar dust. Lights and cameras mounted on the front tilted up, staring blindly into the clear, dark sky, before pitching forward and illuminating the crater slope. “Lucy has begun her descent into the crater.”
“Christ. Would you look at this fucking mess?” Private Howard asked.
“No, because unlike some assholes, I have a real job to do,” Corporal Pierce snapped in reply. Her focus never wavered from monitors that showed her everything LUSE saw through its cameras.
“Howard, have you found any survivors?” Sergeant Block sounded calm over the comms channel.
“Uhh, negative, Sarge. I’m still in the control room with Pierce. This place is fucked up.” Howard picked up a twisted metal girder and casually tossed it aside.
“Pierce, how’s your grid search?” Block asked.
Pierce sighed in her pressure suit and responded to the voice in her ear. “Lunar Utility Survey and Exploration unit is conducting the first sweep, Sarge. The facility has depressurized in several places. No sign of corpses yet.”
“No survivors either?” Block replied.
“Not yet,” Pierce said, her hands hovering over the drive controls for the robotic unit.
“We’re on our way back to your position,” Block advised. “ETA, five minutes.”
“Roger that, Sarge.” Pierce brought the robot to a halt and swiveled the cameras, scanning her view over the featureless floor of the lunar crater.
“Hey Pierce,” Howard said over the comms. “I said, hey Pierce.”
“What?” She twisted in her seat, the lightly armored suit she was wearing moving with her.
“I found someone.” Howard grinned at her from across the room, his face turning skeletal in the halogen lights on Pierce’s helmet.
“Alive?” she asked.
Howard lifted a torn piece of meat and exposed bone that might have once been a human arm. “Possibly.”
“Christ.” Pierce turned back to her equipment. A shadow moved out of the ring of LUSE’s lights. “Whoa,” the corporal muttered.
Pierce moved the joystick and panned the camera through a ninety-degree arc. “Lucy, turn right fifteen degrees.” She waited while the robot responded to the voice command. The wheels on LUSE’s right side clicked into reverse while the left side rolled forward.
The camera showed a sharp deviation of shadow. Less than ten meters away, a gaping hole in the crater floor came into view.
“Lucy, hold position,” Pierce instructed. She checked the other sensors; nothing indicated a meteorite strike or subterranean gas explosion.
Bringing the camera feed up on a second screen, she rolled back the recording to the few seconds when Howard had her attention. The shadow appeared in the bottom right of the screen. A dark shape that vanished into the darker shadow of the crater wall. Pierce took a few stills and went back to the live feed.
“Lucy, move forward to the edge of that hole.” The wheeled robot moved forward, navigating over the rocks until it perched against the sudden drop off. Laser measurements said the machine was at the lip of a shaft with a diameter of nearly three meters, and the walls were marked with a spiral pattern like drill marks.
“Sarge, I think I have a drill site,” Pierce reported.
“We’re outside the door,” Block replied. “Howard, open the airlock.”
Howard crunched his way to the room’s only exit. Pulling on it, Pierce could hear him grunting with strain.
“Mi casa, su casa,” he said as three more members of the Black Light Security team entered the room.
Sergeant Block started issuing orders. “Gordy, get a link to the satellite. Korbin, see if you can put a tent up in here.”
The troops moved without question. Howard stepped forward, holding up the
severed limb like a piece of road kill.
“And what the hell is that?” Block asked him.
“Casualty, Sarge,” Howard replied with no trace of guile.
“Where’s the rest?”
“Missing, Sarge.”
“Well, when you find a piece that can tell us exactly what happened here, you bring it to me. Until then, get that shit out of my face.”
Block moved across the room, his armored boots crunching Perspex rubble underfoot. “What have we got, Pierce?”
“Drill site. Lucy’s prepping a probe.”
“Show me.”
Pierce tilted the screen towards Block. He watched as Pierce relayed instructions to the unit. A cylinder popped out into the open space of the shaft, and then as the weak lunar gravity caught hold, it dropped out of view. The cable spooling out behind the probe relayed sensor data back to the LUSE unit.
“How deep is this?” Block asked.
“One twenty meters,” Pierce replied.
“Where’s the equipment?”
“Sarge?” Pierce asked.
“The drilling rig? A prospector drill makes a hole about ten centimeters across. That’s not a prospector shaft.”
“No sign of equipment, Sarge.”
“What about tracks? Any marks to indicate that any mining operations were ongoing in that area?”
“No, Sarge. Not yet.”
“Then why are you in that crater, Pierce?”
“Lucy picked up a beacon signal.”
“Where is the beacon?”
“Well, I’m not sure. It should be in this crater, but there’s nothing here.”
“Except a damn big hole in the ground. If the beacon is in that hole, I want you to find it.”
“Sergeant,” Wong’s voice came over the comms channel.
“Go ahead, Wong.”
“I have found what appears to be the remains of multiple base personnel. State of the bodies suggests violent trauma.”
“Decom?” Block asked.
“Sergeant, the highest point in this facility is five meters below the lunar surface. The redundancy systems on all airlocks with access to the outside mean that the chances of a decompression event are nine hundred and forty-six thousand to one,” Wong said.
“Save the details for your written report, Wong. Tell me what you see.”
“Sergeant, I do not believe these people died of exposure to null-atmosphere. It appears they died from trauma and were possibly consumed pre-mortem.”
“You’re kidding?” Block asked.
Pierce stifled a grin. She could almost see Wong’s puzzled expression.
“Sergeant?” Wong asked. “I request permission to patch you in to my helmet cam.”
“Pierce, hook one of these monitors into Wong’s feed.”
The corporal’s hands swept across the monitor. The interface sensors in the suit’s fingertips interacted with the touch screen surface, translating touch into keystrokes.
“Okay Wong, your feed is on screen,” she reported.
They stared in silence as Wong’s vision swept over a room painted in blood. Corpses, torn and mutilated beyond recognition, lay in a tangled heap.
“Jesus...” Block muttered.
“Wong, how many are there?” Pierce asked.
“I’m not sure. I could start sorting through them. Counting heads would give an accurate determination. Provided that the number of bodies equals the number of—”
“Get started. If you find any identification on them, put it aside,” Block said.
Pierce disconnected the video feed from her screen.
“Weapons check,” Block announced. Pierce picked up the EM14 mag rifle from where she’d propped it against the bench. The electromagnetic charge showed a hundred per cent and green. The magazine of projectile slugs was full. Propelled by a relay of electro-magnets, an aerodynamic high caliber slug would leave the end of the barrel at twice the speed of sound. The armor-piercing shot could penetrate plate steel and concrete to a depth of eighteen inches.
Block listened as the team counted off, confirming their weapons were locked and loaded. “Stay frosty, people, this is not your daddy’s desert patrol.”
“Sergeant, please come to my position on level four, Section H. I have found a survivor,” Wong announced over the team comms channel.
“On my way. Pierce, bring the med-kit.”
“Sarge, the Lucy unit and the probe?”
“Will be there when we get back,” Block snapped. “Move out, Corporal!”
Pierce scowled. She set LUSE to autonomous control and stood up. The soft tug of lunar gravity made her feel like she was bouncing. Pierce scooped up her rifle and the med-kit that sat among crates of emergency supplies next to the console.
“Sometime today, Corporal!” Block barked.
She followed the sergeant into the emergency airlock that secured the room.
“Crazy shit huh, Sarge?” Pierce said to break the silence.
“Bunch of prospectors blow themselves up? That ain’t crazy shit. Sending us up here to check for survivors and sabotage. That’s some crazy shit.”
“Yeah, but think of the overtime.”
The airlock cycled through and they stepped into a gently curving corridor marked section F of the mining base.
“Keep your helmet on; there’s pressure, but you know the rules,” Block ordered.
“Roger,” Pierce replied. The lightweight but armored pressure suit kept out the smell. “You know Sarge, with the amount of casualties Wong reported, the air-con in this place must be pushing around a lot of airborne particulates.”
“Pa-tick-u-lates?” Block replied.
“Yeah, Sarge. You know the tiny bits—”
“I know what the damn word means, Pierce. Now pay fucking attention. This is an unknown situation.”
“Amen, Sarge.” Pierce shifted her rifle to a ready position and together they moved down the narrow corridor.
“Shit hit the fan here, too,” Block commented as they stepped over torn wall panels and ducked under hanging cables.
“This is mining laser damage,” Pierce pointed to a burned streak along the wall.
“What the hell were they doing?” Block frowned through his helmet visor.
“Barbeque party? Maybe it got out of hand?” Pierce flashed a light into a room filled with supply crates. The floor panels had buckled upwards into bulging humps.
“Sarge, what’s below us in this section?”
“Ahh...nothing. Just rock. Wong, what’s the count so far?” Block asked over the comms.
“Twenty-three individuals, Sergeant. All American Water Corporation prospector personnel from their ID.”
“Which means eight unaccounted for.”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Wong replied.
They reached a door lit by a flashing red strobe warning that the atmospheric pressure beyond was dangerously low.
“Suit check,” Block said.
“All green,” Pierce replied. Together they twisted the manual handle of the metal door. The air around them hissed out into near vacuum as they pulled it open. Stepping through, Pierce turned back to close the door. “Fuck me!”
Block’s rifle snapped to his shoulder. “Report!”
“Dead man. Startled me.” Pierce took a breath and prized the frozen hand off the door handle. “Okay...door is sealed,” Pierce reported.
“Keep moving,” Block said.
Pierce walked with her rifle ready, scanning the damaged walls. In places entire sections had collapsed, spilling moon rock and dirt across the floor.
“We’re in section H. How far to you, Wong?” Pierce asked.
“Forty-seven meters,” Wong replied. “Follow the trail of destruction around to the right. I will keep an eye out for you.”
Pierce swept her view over the torn panels that lined the corridor. “Sarge, what the fuck happened here?”
“Shit went down,” Block said ominously. Pierce took it to mean he had
no idea either.
“Hold it,” Block commanded.
Pierce froze, sweeping her rifle in a surveillance arc across the darkness.
“Movement,” Block said in her ear. “Eleven o’clock. Something moved over there.”
Pierce moved to the wall, her rifle butt pressed tight against her shoulder. She eased the safety off and waited.
“Korbin, Howard, Gordy, advise your positions,” Block said over the squad channel.
“Still at home plate, Sarge,” Howard replied.
“I’m here too, Sarge. Working on getting the pressure tent up,” Korbin said.
“Gordy?” Block asked. “What’s your position?”
Howard came back on line. “She left right after you did, Sarge. You told her to go set up a satellite relay.”
“So why isn’t she responding?”
“You know what women are like, Sarge. Maybe she’s not talking to you?” Howard couldn’t keep the chuckle out of his tone.
“Stow that shit, Howard. Can you patch in to her helmet cam? Get eyes on Gordy and report.”
“With pleasure, Sarge. Howard out.”
“Goddamn amateur hour,” Block muttered.
Pierce kept up her scan of the grey dust that had drifted across the corridor.
“Feed’s dead,” Howard advised.
“Well go and get eyes on her. She might be in trouble,” Block said, clearly annoyed that he had to spell out basic support to a squad veteran like Howard. He waved Pierce forward to take point.
She crept forward, ducking under hanging tangles of cable and stepping over buckled plates.
“Wong?” Pierce activated her comms unit. “We’re closing on your position.”
“One moment, I will meet you in the corridor,” Wong replied.
Ten meters along the curving corridor, Wong stood with his rifle ready, the lamp on his helmet casting sparkling beams in the dust and ice flakes floating from the ceiling.
“It’s just us, Wong,” Block announced.
“Is Gordinski okay?” Wong asked.
“Howard is checking on her.” Pierce turned and looked back as far as the bend in the corridor, an uneasy feeling tightening the muscles at the base of her neck. Block marched towards them.
“Where’s the survivor?” he demanded.
Hellhole Page 17
