Brown eyes opened before instantly closing against the sting of coal dust. Kat tried to move a hand to her face but found it trapped by something heavy. She thought she was on her stomach but was not entirely sure. Her hardhat was still on her head, askew, but her miner’s mask was missing.
The bomb! she remembered with a gasp. She struggled futilely to push herself off the ground to run. Icy fingers of anxiety closed around her heart as the terror of impending death tried to wrest control of her thoughts. Wait, Kat! The bomb’s already gone off. You’re still alive.
The aches and pains erupting through her body were testament to life. She again pulled at her hand and this time it moved. She wriggled it from under the avalanche atop her and gradually worked it free. Her fingers reached her eyes to rub the stinging away. Her face was damp. Blood? she wondered. She forced open her eyes and inspected her fingertips in the barest light coming from an unknown source. No, just tears.
She heard the crunch of gravel and a boot appeared near her face. It kicked up more dust, forcing her to cough. Gloved hands began to pull the weight of larger rocks off her. “Kat? Say something!”
The voice sounded faint, as if very far away. She was suddenly aware that her ears rang fiercely. “Here,” she said feebly while raising her free hand up.
A second pair of blackened gloves worked to free her. “I can’t believe you’re alive!” The voice sounded like Deke’s. “You saved my life, Kat!”
When enough rubble had been moved, two pairs of hands gently turned her over. Reece and Deke were coated in black. Only the whites of their eyes and a crimson line running from Deke’s nose betrayed any hint of humanity as both men knelt beside her. The tunnel was pitch black but for the twin beams of light from their headlamps.
“George… Shannon?” Kat croaked.
Reece shook his head sadly. “They didn’t get to the front of the grinder in time. That’s the only thing that saved us.” His rail-thin body rose from Kat and walked over the rock-strewn floor. The light from his headlamp cut a streak of white through the dust-choked air beyond the large machine. “I came to first,” he recounted. “Actually, I don’t think I ever lost consciousness. I huddled right behind the discs and was pretty well-shielded from the blast.” He turned to face Kat, his light blinding her. “Kat, I thought for sure you were dead. It slammed you so hard against the wall I thought it broke every bone in your body. You flopped only a meter from me before the ceiling started coming down.”
Kat sat up from the ground and assessed her condition. Her body throbbed in a hundred places and her eyes still stung. When she inhaled, she felt pain along the left side of her ribcage. Shallower breathing seemed to help. She probed her ribs through her coveralls. They were very tender but she didn’t feel the stabbing pain of a fracture. “I, I think I’m okay.” Her voice was regaining its strength. She reached up to Reece, who helped her from the ground. To her surprise, she could stand and bear her own weight. She removed her hardhat to inspect it and black hair flowed around her face distractingly. She had lost Shannon’s hair tie.
“I got knocked out,” Deke said, still kneeling. “One second, you were pulling me behind the grinder and the next, Reece was pulling rocks off me.” He looked up appreciatively. “You saved my life, Kat. I can’t thank you enough.”
Her hardhat was fractured. A crack started on the left side and ran halfway up the dome. The mask had been ripped clean from the front, leaving only a twisted hinge near the brim. The lamp was unlit and she dropped the hardhat to the ground.
“How did you know there was going to be a dust explosion, Kat?” Reece asked. He was looking up the spur again.
Kat recalled the terrifying moments of discovery. “It wasn’t from the dust. I saw a bomb underneath a conveyor section near the junction.”
“What?” both men exclaimed.
“Someone planted a bomb in our spur,” Kat repeated.
The laborers exchanged looks between them. “Are you sure?” Reece asked dubiously.
Kat nodded. “I know what I saw. Two sticks of that explosive they use to close the played out spurs. It had a timer attached to it. The count was thirty-two seconds. There was a small light that flashed red periodically. That’s what caught my attention.”
“You’ve just described a timed detonator,” Deke told her. He was pinching his nose, trying to stem the blood flow. “We use them on spurs that are too far in to reliably string a cord to.”
“That’s crazy,” Reece commented. “Who would want to try and kill us?”
“Try hell,” Deke responded with disgust. “They’ve probably succeeded. The blast might not have gotten us but we’re going to run out of oxygen long before anyone can reach us.” He gingerly sat back on his bottom and leaned against the grinder. After a deep sigh, he rested his head in his hands. “My leg is killing me.”
“I haven’t had time to check the tunnel,” Reece stated. “Why don’t you both stay here and I’ll see how far I can get?”
Kat recovered her hardhat and thumped the lamp. Remarkably, it came to life. “I’ll go with you,” she said while placing it on her head. It fit loosely because of the crack but stayed mostly in place.
The pair made careful progress up Spur Twenty-nine. The height of the tunnel had been cut in half by the flood of debris on the ground. Many of the conveyor sections were now twisted pieces of art. The rest had been crushed flat. When Kat rounded the slight bend, climbing over the rubble on her hands and knees, she could see the tunnel draw tighter and tighter to the ceiling. Reece and Kat approached the spur’s new end on their stomachs, crawling over and through the rubble for the last twenty meters. She pressed her hand to the collapsed scree blocking their way.
She looked back to Reece. “How close to the main tunnel do you think we are?” Kat asked. Sweat dripped off her face.
Reece blew out loudly before answering. “Maybe another twenty, thirty meters.”
Kat flinched as she inhaled deeply and called out, “Hello? Help!” She felt Reece’s hand shaking her boot.
“Save your breath, Kat. They know where we were when the ceiling dropped. Once they give the All Clear to reenter the mine, they won’t rest until they’ve broken through,” he stated.
“How long until they can come back down into the mine?”
Reece rubbed a thin hand over his pointed, blackened chin. “Depends on the safety guys but they won’t signal All Clear until they’re absolutely sure. At least a few hours, probably longer. They’re doing roll call right now, trying to figure out who’s missing and what happened.” He returned his hand to Kat’s boot and promised, “They won’t give up on digging us out though.”
“Even if they think we’re dead?”
“Even if they think we’re dead,” he confirmed. “Which we probably will be.”
Kat pushed at the boulders in front of her. She stopped and began to pick at them, placing the smaller rocks behind her. “Can we dig ourselves out?”
“I’m sorry, Kat,” Reece answered sadly. “Not by hand. You can get the small ones but there’ll be rocks that weigh hundreds, maybe thousands of kilos blocking our way.”
She cocked her head at an awkward angle to shine her beam of light at a narrow gap through the collapsed tunnel. “But it looks like there’s another opening just ahead,” she protested.
“There probably is but I can promise you that one will be blocked too. And so will the one after that and so on.”
Kat stubbornly pulled more stones from the wall as dust from the ceiling settled down over her. “But I can almost squeeze to the next cavity.”
Reece sighed and looked at her with hollow eyes. “If it makes you feel better, you can try. Just don’t bring more of the ceiling down on yourself.” He stared uncertainly at the roof before pushing himself backwards. “I’m gonna go back and check on Deke.”
Kat spent the next ten minutes clearing enough room around a large boulder in front of her to force her body past the impasse. The ceiling tore at her coveralls and she felt the bite of sharp fragments lash against the fabric to her skin but she urged herself forward. When she broke free, her body slid down the rubble to the larger space beyond the bottleneck. The new opening gave her more room as the gap between the tunnel floor and ceiling expanded to over a meter and a half. She painfully crawled her way forward and toward the left corner of the tunnel. There, a large boulder had come to rest, acting as a support that she could pull herself around.
After clearing her way to the next gap, she rested for several minutes. The air was thick, hazy and hotter than normal. Every bit of her seemed drenched with a grimy film of coal dust and sweat. She looked miserably at her confines with the narrow beam of her light. I did die and this is Hell, she told herself. I’ll spend eternity crawling in this spur, alone.
She pressed forward. Soon she was back to sliding on her stomach. She scuttled forward another five meters before being forced to a stop. The ceiling pressed down hard on her back and she panicked when she realized she was stuck. She couldn’t even lift her head to look behind her. She opened her mouth to scream for help but her instincts closed her jaw. If I start screaming, I will never stop. She shifted her weight forward with no success. It felt like someone was holding onto the back of her coveralls. She spent several minutes working her right hand down her body to reach behind her. Something sharp gouged her hand and she jerked instinctively away. Tentatively, she felt for it again. That’s got to be a conveyor frame. She blindly followed the warped metal with her hand until she touched a suspender from her coveralls. A surge of relief flooded into her as she realized her clothing had merely snagged on the frame. She freed herself and began to dig again at the wall in front of her for several more minutes. Less than a meter ahead, her headlamp promised another small, open pocket amid the collapse. It took ten more minutes alternating hard digging with backtracking to the last boulder support with armfuls of rubble to clear enough room for her to claw through to the next gap.
Once through, she sat in the middle of the tiny chamber, trying to steady her breathing. The crawling was aggravating her ribs and her throat was on fire. It felt like she had swallowed half of the coal in the mine. As she rested, black pebbles dislodged ahead of her. She could hear a slight scraping before more pebbles pushed loose. The tiny stones rolled down the slope and in their place, a pair of red eyes looked at Kat.
“Hey,” she greeted in a half-whisper, smiling at the little creature.
The rat’s face poked through the hole and stared at her, seemingly content to commune with another survivor.
“You’re going the wrong way, Mr. Rat,” Kat said solemnly.
The rat’s head swiveled right to left, taking in the chamber. Without a squeak, it disappeared back into the hole and Kat could hear the scrabbling of its feet as it retreated back the way it came. Heartened by the sign of life, she began to work deliberately at the rat hole, clearing away small stones until running into larger rocks that refused to budge. She pushed herself forward, contorting her body to follow the meager path the rat had taken. It zigzagged for another half dozen meters and she expended great effort to widen the small channel through the debris. Meter by meter, she moved forward.
After another half hour, she was stymied again. The rocks were much more densely packed and much greater in size, offering no path forward. Kat peered through a tiny gap between large sections of fallen coal. Just beyond the largest boulder was a good-sized pocket of space. I’m so close. She placed her hands onto the enormous rock and tested it. There was no chance it would budge. I might as well be trying to push the grinder, she despaired. She gritted her teeth and pressed harder. If I can just get it to shift… She grunted with effort. “Come on,” she growled.
Kat pushed forward savagely, digging her boots into the scree behind her and launching herself at the rock. Her muscles were coiled springs but fighting against an immovable load. Sweat dripped into her eyes yet she pushed harder still, refusing to give up. The pressure from her struggle built exponentially inside her head as she shoved her very essence against the stubborn rock. “Come on!” she roared.
She shot forward through a large gap and tumbled down the loose debris on the other side. In a cloud of dust, she slid to a stop at the bottom of the slope, her chest heaving for clean air. She looked behind her to find the mammoth boulder was missing. It’s gone! she thought as she stared at the now clear channel where her impasse had been. Her ragged breathing was the only noise in the tunnel.
Mid-breath, Kat’s ears popped and the boulder reappeared exactly where it had been only a dozen seconds before. Goosebumps broke out over her arms. Just like the knives, she marveled. How did I do that? A more disturbing question prodded her and sent a chill to her core despite the intense heat inside the tunnel. What the hell am I?
You’re still trapped, she answered. And you’re alone. And if you want to be saved, you have to save yourself. She took several minutes to calm herself before twisting away from the impossible boulder to look up the spur. The floor of the current pocket quickly rose to the ceiling ahead of her. She crawled only a few meters before another coal wall blocked her path again. She looked through a small gap between two, large rocks and swore she saw light. Kat pressed her face into the fist-sized gap and strained to see more clearly. Pitch black. She growled and tore off her hardhat, dousing the lamp. Again, she peered desperately into the hole. Pitch black.
Just as her spirits were fading, her eye caught a tendril of dull light. She focused harder into the gloom. Her eyes adjusted to the new dark and the soft tendril of light became a column. One column became two… three… dozens.
Kat raked her fingers against the loose debris and pulled away handfuls of rock. Fifteen minutes later, she had scraped away enough of the channel floor to allow her to shimmy through the shattered passageway. Pulling herself out of the tight confines, she poured into a wide, partially-collapsed tunnel.
It was the main tunnel. The light flickering in the distance confirmed her location. Kat looked back at the constricted path she had clawed her way through. Reece and Deke will never hear me and I can’t get past that huge boulder anyway, she told herself. I need to get them help. She waded through the loose debris in the tunnel until the ground evened out. Then, she ran until she found the elevator cars. Using the last of her strength, she hung on the safety cage from inside one of the cars until it closed. As she engaged the elevator’s motor, she collapsed to the floor and closed her eyes.
“They could still be alive! I’m going right now!” A voice in the distance forced Kat’s head up. Did I black out? I’m still in the car but at the top.
Kat slid open the safety cage and stumbled the last meters to the mine’s entrance. She could hear an apoplectic Sadler Wess, screaming from beyond the bright, white light.
“Anyone who wants to volunteer and come with me, I’ll need your help!” he shouted passionately. “I’m not going to wait another minute when my people might still be alive!”
Kat brought a blackened hand up to shield her eyes from the blinding sun as she staggered from the mine. Blurry forms raced toward her.