James Axler - Sunchild

And then, as suddenly as it had started, it ceased. Ryan stood silent and still, straining every nerve to detect any further movement. By the fading light, he could see Krysty, propped against the near wall of the shaft.

She caught his glance and briefly shook her head. With her razor-sharp mutie sense, she was the likeliest to detect any further danger in the depths of the earth.

Doc looked up, not yet daring to clamber to his feet.

“Safe?” he whispered. It seemed uncannily loud in the silence following the miniquake.

Ryan nodded, moving slowly to pick up the spluttering and dying flare, and moving with an infinite care back to where Krysty stood.

“Go back and check,” he said quietly. Krysty assented, and they both crept back to Jak, who was standing perfectly still, feeling for the slightest movement through the balls of his feet. As they approached, the albino looked at them, the flare illuminating his red eyes so that they glowed like coals.

“We move, not it adjust us,” he murmured, indicating that the resettled earth should be still for some time. The three of them went back to Doc, who was gingerly picking himself up and dusting himself down. Without a word, Doc fell in behind them and muttered an oath to himself when he saw that a wall of concrete, earth and rock cut them off from the others.

“Hope they behind, not in,” Jak said simply.

IT WAS PITCH-BLACK, and Mildred clung to the concrete floor, aware that she was at some crazy angle where her feet were above her head and her hands were pressing against the angle where the floor and wall now met.

The dust and dirt that filled the air clogged her nose and mouth. “John,” she spluttered through a mouthful of earth, “are you okay?”

“In one piece,” the Armorer replied quietly. “How about you?”

“Everything works and nothing hurts…much,” she replied with a smile no one could see. “Damned quake’s got me almost upside down, but other than that…”

“I’m coming forward,” J.B. replied. And then there was silence for a short while, broken only by the distant shuffle of earth on concrete. J.B.’s voice broke again. “I must be near you. Things seem to have died down, and it’s all pretty solid. There’s a ten-foot raise in front of me, but enough of a gap to get through.”

While Mildred tentatively picked her way around the steeply angled shaft until she was once again upright, she could hear J.B. ascend to the top of the platform and the scrape of his boots against the concrete as he felt his way down to floor level.

“Millie, where are you?” he whispered, only feet from her. She reached out to embrace him, and they silently thanked fate that each was, so far, okay. Finally, he said, “We need to get forward, find the others. Think we can risk a flare?”

“Uh-uh…too risky until we know how much air we’ve got. If we’re in a pocket, then the flare could use it too quickly.”

“Okay, let’s find out,” J.B. said simply, passing her and tentatively moving forward. He went only a few yards before reaching a wall of rock and earth.

“Shit, we’re cut off back here.”

“And no way of knowing how deep that wall of rock is,” Mildred added, almost to herself.

DEAN KNEW that he had been unconscious, but had no idea for how long. He only knew that his mouth tasted bitter, and his head was ringing as he raised it.

Slowly, allowing himself time to adjust to the crazy angle of the floor and for his balance to assert itself over the waves of nausea that washed past him as he sat upright, he took in his surroundings. There was no light, and he waited in silence for his eyes to adjust to the residual light.

But there was no residual light.

Dean fought back the sudden surprise and panic, and tried to think logically. He was still alive, and although the fall and subsequent unconsciousness had left his body aching, there was no damage that would impair him. On his hands and knees, moving slowly to keep any disturbance to a minimum, Dean explored the limits of his enclosed world. It was only a couple of yards each way around, and the roof was too low to enable him to stand straight when he attempted to rise to his feet.

The extent of his problem hit him squarely. He now knew he was cut off from all his companions, and what was more he had no way of knowing which direction was forward, which direction actually led to the unblocked passage or back to the redoubt, or even if there was a way out.

For a second, the black despair of loneliness threatened to engulf him, and hot salt tears pricked at the back of his eyes. If he managed to get out, was there any guarantee that he would find his father alive, or Krysty or Doc or…?

Cursing himself for being weak at a moment when he needed strength, the Cawdor blood began to tell. A steely resolve settled on Dean, and he shifted onto his knees, picking one end of the enclosure at which to begin his attempts to burrow out. Extending one arm upward, he felt once more the concrete passage support that was keeping the roof in place. His fingers feeling along gently, he could trace stress lines and fracture contours in the concrete where it had been twisted in the tunnel fall. In places he could reach into the column where the concrete had broken away and the cold metal of the steel reinforcing rod was bared.

A tentative push showed him that the roof support, such as 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.