James Axler - Sunchild

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 all down on us,” Ryan reminded him, feeling tightly enclosed in the dark tunnel. Jak was a couple of feet ahead, passing rocks down his body and packing the walls and ceiling. He was full length, and Ryan knew almost the whole length of his own body was in the tunnel. So they had to have burrowed through at least three yards of earth and rock.

“Nearly there,” Jak snapped back. “Earth loose…”

MILDRED HEARD the movement of the rocks and earth grow louder, and climbed over Dean to where the rock that had defeated him stood, jammed in the tunnel entrance he had made.

“Pull him back, John,” she whispered, and as the Armorer pulled Dean’s prone body back from under her, she began to work at the rock. The rocks and earth around it began to loosen as the opposite side of the rock moved. She used the way in which it had wedged to swing it around and shore up dirt that was beginning to fall from the roof of the small tunnel.

The earth fell away slowly from one side while she clawed at it from the other. A residual light from the other side of the tunnel, almost unbelievably bright in the total darkness she had been forced to work in, backlit the white hair and scarred pale features of Jak Lauren.

Mildred almost cried with joy to see him. The flicker of a smile even flitted briefly across the albino’s features. It was driven away as he remembered how precarious their position was at that moment.

“Quick, not last long,” he breathed.

Mildred nodded and began to enlarge the hole where the tunnels met. Soon it was large enough for Jak to crawl through.

“Come,” Mildred gasped, “Dean’s unconscious.”

As she backed out of the tunnel, Jak crawled through. He was completely blind in the total blackness, but felt Dean’s limp body, and slithered back into the tunnel, dragging the prone boy after him.

Ryan scrambled back out of the tunnel, having heard Mildred and realizing that he would be of better use at the tunnel mouth to help bring his son into the open shaft.

As Jak appeared, pulling the still unconscious Dean, Ryan suppressed the fear that his son was dead…but not enough for Krysty not to notice and shoot him a worried glance.

Mildred crawled through, drawing the cleaner air in great gulps through her tortured throat. J.B. brought up the rear, and lay gasping for breath as Mildred immediately checked Dean, ignoring her own condition.