it was, was firm enough for the moment. Firm enough for him to start disturbing the earth and rock, moving it away from the pile that had formed at one end of the enclosure.
It had never occurred to Dean that any kind of earthmoving work depended so much on being able to see what he was doing. As he moved the loose earth around clumps of rock, he found himself cursing repeatedly as shifting rocks crushed his fingers, and every time he made some small headway into the rockpile he felt other loose rocks tumble in to fill it—rocks he would have shored up if he could see them.
He had no idea how deep the fall went; it was something that he couldn’t even think about. It could have fallen all the way to the top of the shaft, in which case he would run out of air long before he had the chance to make any progress. But there was nothing else he could do. So he concentrated on the matter at hand.
SWEAT RAN in rivulets down Mildred’s face and neck. She could feel it down her back, gathering in a cold pool in the hollow at the base of her spine. She had stripped down to her undershirt, her clothes bundled beside her in the angle where wall met floor. She felt as though she had been shifting rock and dirt for all her life, and still she seemed to be making no headway. The atmosphere was already fetid and rank, and she was glad for the small flow of cleaner air coming through the gap where J.B. had climbed from his part of the fall.
Loose earth gathered at her feet, while large rocks were passed back to the Armorer, who disposed of them at the back of the enclave, piling them carefully. He would have liked to heft some of the smaller ones over the gap and into the space behind, but couldn’t risk one loose rock landing in such a way as to trigger a minor slide.
They worked in silence, to preserve air and energy, and because they had to concentrate intently on the task at hand. Neither wanted to think about the possibility of the rocks building up behind them before they broke through, and their making for themselves an even smaller, tighter prison.
J.B.’s head was filled with random thoughts of the past, or early days traveling with the Trader, of meeting Ryan and of the friends they had lost along the way. Now to be lost himself? He dismissed that as he took another rock from Mildred.
Mildred was remembering when she was a girl, scared of the dark and locked in the basement at her father’s Baptist church. She had only been there an hour after the door had closed behind her while she was exploring. How old was she then, about six? It had been so boring and so cold until she was discovered. She could do with that cold now, and someone like her father to just come along and open a door that would let them out.
BY THE LIGHT of the flare, it was easier for Ryan and Jak to remove rocks and brush falling dirt out of the way. Krysty and Doc took the rocks as they were removed from the earth fall, piling them at the sides of the shaft so that they still left a clear path.
With light and more air, Jak and Ryan were working at speed, forming the beginnings of a tunnel. Jak used the flatter slabs of rock to shore up the two-foot-high tunnel, enough for a crawl space if little else. They were working on limited time for themselves as much as anyone who was left on the other side of the landslide: there could be another miniquake at any time, triggered by their activity in the shaft.
Jak suddenly froze. “Stop,” he hissed. “Listen.”
Ryan also froze, straining every fiber of his being to pick up whatever Jak had heard. The albino’s face was rapt, his eyes narrowed, his teeth biting into his bottom lip with an intense concentration that was beginning to draw blood.
Krysty and Doc exchanged a look, both standing expectantly, feeling useless at that moment.
It was there again: Jak briefly looked at Ryan and nodded once, then again, in time to the noise.
A smile flickered at the corners of Ryan’s dust-caked lips. Faintly, so faint that it was almost impossible to hear, came the rhythmic scraping sound of rock being moved.
“Still alive,” Jak stated baldly, “and trying to get through.”
DEAN FELT exhausted, and was on the verge of giving up. Not with frustration, but simply because it seemed to have been going on forever. Deprived of all other sense, there was just the darkness, the heat, the stench and the rocks. He felt as though he were moving automatically, not even knowing what he was doing or why.
He moved another slab of rock, which jammed against one that was sticking out of the mass at an angle. The stones grated on each other, and Dean pulled at them, powdering small fragments that he breathed in with the increasingly bad air, feeling it scour his nasal passages and bite into his throat. Even to cough was too much effort, and he choked down the bile that the reflex of coughing brought up. He maneuvered the stone from side to side, trying to lever it clear.
The blackness was becoming all-encompassing. It wasn’t just lack of light. It was lack of sound, lack of feeling, lack of everything.
Dean began to slide once more into unconsciousness.
“STOPPED…get moving,” Jak said, snapping back into action with renewed energy. His sinewy limbs twisted around rocks, digging out earth with his bare hands to grip the rocks and pull them loose, but still making sure that he shored up the small tunnel as he went along.
Ryan didn’t waste time on a reply, but joined the wiry albino in his task. Ryan’s hands were larger, his arms thicker, but he worked just as determinedly to loosen the rocks and tunnel deeper.
Behind them, Krysty and Doc cleared the rocks and dirt that they left in their wake as their progress increased rapidly. No one spoke, but they all knew that the cessation of the noise was a bad sign. It could only mean that whoever was digging had either reached the point of exhaustion or had become unconscious.
And either option was bad.
MILDRED WAS LIKE a machine. She could no longer think about what she was doing, just act purely on instinct. And instinct was telling her that what she had to do to survive was keep digging out those rocks and dirt, keep shoring up that space she was making, keep passing it back to J.B.
The Armorer was also acting like an automaton. His spectacles—useless in such a situation—were secure in his pocket for when he would need them. His fedora was jammed on the back of his head, his close-cropped hair underneath wet with sweat. His clothes stuck to him with a paste of perspiration and dust that would have felt uncomfortable if he had been able to spare the attention to focus on this. But there was no part of him that could afford to focus on anything other than collecting and disposing of rocks.
Mildred kept burrowing until something jolted her out of the routine she had established. Something that took a moment to register.
She was picking at loose soil, and a warm draft came through that dirt. Then she was picking at nothing….
“John, we’re through. It’s empty….” Her voice was nothing more than a pained croak, but in the silence it was enough to penetrate the Armorer’s consciousness.
“Millie, keep going…got to get there,” he returned, suddenly aware of how dry and cracked his own throat seemed.
Jolted back to a form of consciousness, Mildred redoubled her efforts and had soon made a hole large enough for herself to crawl through. She had a bad feeling as soon as she was through, and coughed at the poor air in the new enclave. She crawled a few feet farther to allow J.B. to follow, pushing her clothes and their blasters before him.
“It’s too hot. Must be a hollow in the slide,” she whispered. Grasping before her, she felt a leg in the darkness. “Oh, sweet God,” she wailed, continuing to feel up the leg until she came to the torso, “Dean?”
“Is he alive?” J.B. managed to husk.
Mildred could feel his chest rise and fall in shallow breath. She nodded, then managed to croak “Yes” when she realized that J.B. couldn’t see her.
But how could they go on? What lay in front of them?
“FASTER,” Jak murmured, his mouth set in a thin, determined line.
“Not too fast—bring it