Liza came to with a great start of terror.
Dirt in her mouth.
She coughed, spat, expelled some of it, opened her eyes, saw only blackness and panicked.
Buried, entombed, helpless, finished.
So stupid.
She should have gotten upside quicker.
Should never have come down in the first place, should never have accepted that wicked man’s assignment. She should have stayed put with her grandfather and the rest of the village, stayed loyal to them rather than grasping at damned journalism, which she’d never even been any good at.
Though maybe it hadn’t been the story that had drawn her into this so much as Michael Rider, codename Isaiah, a man with a lousy past and no future.
And dark, sad, gentle eyes.
Not now, she told herself.
The silence was strangely heavy, like quilting shoved into her ear canals, inside her head.
Yet her mind was working.
Whatever had fallen on her, she was still breathing, so maybe …
She dared to see if she could move. Feet first, too afraid to try her arms or even her hands, in case … She shuddered, moved her right foot, met resistance, but she could move it, so she tried with her left – that one a little easier, space around it.
Liza took a shallow breath, afraid of choking on the dirt, and kicked with that foot, and a spray of dirt spattered back into her face, into her nostrils, and she blew out, cleared them, and small triumph washed through her because she could move her legs and, though she was becoming conscious of discomfort in her back, it didn’t feel worse than what one might expect after being knocked off one’s feet and half buried – and clearly it was infinitely better to be feeling some pain than not to be feeling anything.
‘I’m OK,’ she said, not hearing the words but feeling their vibration.
Gritting her teeth, she started over, found that both hands were working, and gave thanks. No injuries to either arm, so far as she could tell, and she freed her right hand, moved it up to her face, brushed filth off her lips, nose, eyes – but the darkness did not relent, and tears surfaced in a sob, and she let them come for a moment – then stopped because her left hand had made contact with something hard.
Reaper’s flashlight.
Not working, and despair overwhelmed her until she realized that even if its real purpose was screwed, she could still use it as a tool, dig with it if she had to.
She rested for a few seconds, trying to orient herself. Just before the blast, she’d reached the foot of the ladder, and she might have been blown some way from it, but since the tunnel itself didn’t seem to have totally collapsed, she rationalized that she could be no more than feet away from the exit.
New fear struck home.
What if this space was just an air pocket? One heard about people buried after earthquakes or avalanches who survived that way but had to wait hours or days to be found. And one read about bodies dug out, victims who’d clearly lived on for a while before succumbing to the inevitable.
Shut up, she told herself.
Find the ladder.
She shifted carefully, sat up, her heart pounding violently, afraid of colliding with an invisible pile of debris or wrecked wall.
Nothing there. Just space. Air.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
Thought she heard herself this time, and said it again, more loudly.
‘Thank you.’ Distant, muffled, but there, her hearing returning, and she considered yelling for help, but decided that would take too much strength – that in any case, logically, no one would hear her, not for a while anyway.
Find the ladder.
She tried the flashlight again, smacked it smartly. No light.
So be it.
She stretched out both arms, feeling around as a blind person might in unknown territory. Panic surged again and she pushed it away with a low growl of anger, reminded herself that given the circumstances she was in good shape and in a good position; farther back in the tunnel, she’d have stood much less of a chance.
She started to get up, struck something hard with her left shoulder, yelped, heard and felt more dirt descend in a shower, cried out in fright.
It stopped.
Thoughts of Michael slid into her mind, but she pushed them away.
Not now. Later.
Staying in a crouch, not daring to straighten up again, she felt around, hardly moving her feet, aiming to stay rooted where she’d fallen, still believing she had to be at least in the proximity of the ladder and the exit.
She felt something hard and cold to her left, and it wasn’t rubble, it was a real, solid wall, still standing, and with a rush of hope, she extended her arms straight ahead.
Nothing there.
Concentrate.
She needed to remember if there had been wall to her right when they’d come down the ladder and turned left, but she couldn’t because both times her descent had been at gunpoint, and she hadn’t looked to the right, because it had all just been dark, and all that had mattered then had been staying with the Whirlwind flashlights.
‘Come on,’ she told herself, extended her arms again and circled around to her right.
Nothing.
She took a step forward, did the same exercise again.
The flashlight in her right hand struck something solid.
Optimism surged and she took another step forward, but her right knee collided with the hard object and she stumbled, tried to catch herself, but fell, dropping the flashlight.
She swore, tried to find it, failed, then wondered suddenly if the camera had a flash.
And realized for the first time that it was gone – the camera had gone, had probably fallen with her at the time of the explosion, so no hope of finding it now.
The gizmo was still on her back, though, so, if Nemesis had been truthful, the recordings were probably secure.
Tears welled again, but she wiped her eyes roughly with her parka’s sleeve, stayed where she’d landed, on her backside, and told herself to find out what she’d just walked into.
A mound of debris, it seemed, as she located it and poked at it with both hands; no more than two feet high, therefore easy enough to climb over.
She leaned forward, reached past it and touched something with her middle finger.
Hard. Different.
Metal maybe.
She touched it again.
Metal, for sure.
She tried to stay calm, but her breathing was quickening, and she groped at the metal thing and knew it was what she’d hoped for.
A rung.
‘Thank you,’ she said again, leaned farther in, felt around six inches or so higher, found the next rung, grasped it, felt the weakness of sheer relief, but did not let go.
Last time she’d surrendered to exhaustion, the world had blown up.
Reaper igniting his backpack, taking himself and Michael—
Shut up, she told herself again.
Keeping firm hold of the second rung, she stood up and clambered slowly and carefully over the rubble, caught her left shin on something sharp enough to rip her leggings, barely noticed and definitely didn’t care.
Two hands on the ladder now.
She looked up, saw nothing, felt dizzy.
Waited a moment, took a breath.
‘Here goes nothing,’ she said softly.
And climbed.