Dax Pruitt still half expected to die on this mountain, but he hoped he could taste one more breath of fresh air first, before it all ended.
He felt like he was suffocating. The air claustrophobic and warm and dark as a tomb, lit only by the weak flashlight Logger Fetridge carried ahead of him. The walls of the shaft seemed to close in around Pruitt, hugging him tight in some smothering death embrace, though sometimes when he reached his arms out, he found nothing beyond his fingertips but stale air. Other times the rock seemed to squeeze at him, intent on crushing the life out of him. And ahead, Fetridge staggered forward and didn’t slow down. There was nothing for Pruitt but to follow, lest he find himself alone in the black.
Fetridge breathed heavy and his walk was unsteady, and Pruitt suspected his friend had been shot at least once, or maybe more. Pruitt, for his part, was burned and felt broken; he’d been hit by a rock or shrapnel knocked loose by the blast, may well have fractured a rib.
Shot or not, though, Fetridge remained on his feet and kept moving. The poacher swore there was a second way out of this literal hellhole, another path broken through the skin of the earth, a secret escape they could find and be free.
Pruitt wasn’t sure he believed his friend, suspected Fetridge might have been addled by the concussive effect of the vicious, tight-quarter shoot-out they’d just survived—not to mention the explosion that had nearly killed them both, all of Fetridge’s cook supplies turned to heat and flame.
They’d sought cover in a secondary shaft dug off the main tunnel, watched the lawmen enter the cave, cautious, drew them in until there were four or five of them sitting plum, silhouetted in the daylight that filtered in from outside, off-balance and blinded as they peered into the darkness.
At Fetridge’s signal, Pruitt had opened fire, knocked two or three of the men to the ground before Fetridge hurled another Molotov cocktail and hollered at Pruitt to fall back.
So Pruitt fell back, following his friend through a labyrinth of rusted rail and rotting timber, past the chimney and the still-smoldering remains of the poacher’s lab, breathing fumes that were acrid and toxic and nearly overwhelming, choking and coughing and staggering as they passed.
They ran. Deeper and deeper into the earth until the voices of the lawmen faded behind them and there was no light but what Fetridge carried, no sound but their breathing and their boots in the rubble.
Ahead of Pruitt, Fetridge staggered onward, tripping on loose scree and larger cannonball rocks. Pruitt didn’t know how far they’d come, just that they’d taken a tunnel that Fetridge swore was the right one, and as the trail alternately dropped deeper underground or climbed higher, as it narrowed and widened, Pruitt tried not to think about the tons upon tons of rock above his head, about what little it would take to send it all crashing down atop him.
Fetridge stank of chemicals, and Pruitt knew he must smell fairly awful himself. The poacher was wheezing as he breathed, his feet slipping and his hands scrabbling at the walls to keep himself upright. Pruitt wondered if his friend would die in this cave, and where would that leave him but to die also. He wasn’t sure he could find his way out the way they’d come.
“Almost there,” Fetridge said, as though reading his thoughts. “Not too much longer to go now, old boy.”
The trail underneath Pruitt’s feet had started to climb again. The walls tapered in so narrow that he had to turn sideways to slip through, holding his rifle ahead of him and sucking in his belly—afraid for a terrifying instant that he’d wedge himself so tight he could never escape.
On the other side of the tunnel, Fetridge waited. He grinned at Pruitt as Pruitt squeezed through.
“Bet you’re glad we been on tight rations lately,” he said, and then he turned and continued down the tunnel before Pruitt could answer. Before he’d even fully freed himself.
Pruitt squeezed out of the narrows and hurried to follow. Tripped on a boulder and nearly fell flat, pushed himself up and kept going—and then he felt it: a coolness to the air that hadn’t been there before, seconds earlier. It wasn’t much, but it was noticeable in the oven-hot tunnel, and Fetridge’s pace seemed to quicken, and Pruitt’s behind him.
The air continued to cool and grew fresher, the smell of rain and the forest. Perhaps the tunnel grew lighter too, or maybe that was just Pruitt’s imagination. It didn’t matter. The end was near.
The end, as it was, was a small shallow cave, an overhang of rock so low it forced Pruitt and Fetridge to their knees to crawl beneath it, but Pruitt didn’t care; he could see again, more than the beam of Fetridge’s weak light, could hear birds in the trees and smell earth and life, and he emerged from the cave and stood tall and stretched, blinking in the sudden sunlight. And he felt, immediately, as though he’d been returned from the dead.
As though he’d died in that tunnel with those lawmen, walked this tortuous path and been given new life.
Beside him, Fetridge stood doubled over, clutching at a wound in his stomach that oozed black with blood. The poacher coughed and wiped his mouth and his hand came back bloody too, and Pruitt knew his friend was dying, but Fetridge didn’t seem to care.
“Told you we’d get out,” the poacher said, and he straightened himself using his rifle as a cane. Surveyed the forest and began to walk again.
The forest was overgrown and featureless, but there was a narrow trail leading away from the cave, leading down the natural declination of the land, though to where, Pruitt had no idea.
But Fetridge was following the trail and seemed confident in its direction, so Pruitt shouldered his rifle and followed. He didn’t look back at the cave as he walked; what had happened back there was no part of him now.