Page 30 of Fighting Fate

“Hold your light there,” I tell her, spotting my headlamp under a body. Apologizing to the dead, I tug it loose and find my mask wrapped up in the straps. Cuffing off the dirt, I slip on the mask and test the headlamp. It still works. I put it over my head.

Dee goes back to shining her light toward the narrow gap leading up. “The dirt covering the bodies should help with the escaping toxins,” she says, coughing even though she has her mask on. Which makes me wonder how long the filters on these can last.

When we make our way to the slope leading up, she points her light at my leg. “You lied. You’re hurt.”

“One to talk,” I say, guiding my headlamp over her head. “You’re bleeding.”

She puts a hand up to her forehead and almost to herself says, “I’m usually much luckier than this.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, you’re the luckiest woman down here.”

She snorts at my dark humor. Together, we move out debris and rocks, crawling the slope to the upper chamber. My hands bite into stones as we work through the narrow passageway.

When I’d first slid down this part, it hadn’t seemed near this long.

The nerve-rattling cracks, pops, and squeals give off a muffled quality. Makes every inch seem like we’re working our way out of the gullet of a whale. Like we’ve been swallowed whole by the earth. Suppose we have.

“Sean.” Dee rolls back a heavy rock with a shove.

I pick it up and throw it behind me. “Good thing we weren’t in the front chamber,” I say as we come to the end. The beams in the back held, saving us. Here?

Dee shines her light, and we stare at the sloped wall of dirt that blocks the exit.

I flash my own light along it. Debris. Jars. Glass. Beams.

The chamber has partially collapsed, but it’s not as bad as it could’ve been. The heavy open door to the lower chamber caught and supported the shelf. Together the two hold up a great deal of the dirt and beams to our right. A tilted triangular ceiling. Best not to press on it.

I flash my light into dusty angles, trying to find a way out.

“There it is,” she says, and I startle, swinging my head and my light where she points.

She’s pointing at one of the beams from the ceiling. It’s cracked in half, one end of it held up by the steel door. It has black residue along it. “What?”

“That’s where the explosive was hidden. It must’ve been triggered by something down below. How did I miss it?”

“Ah, well, good to know,” I say, with enough sarcasm that she snorts in answer. “Want to help me sort a way out of this now?”

“Already have,” she says, directing her light into the area above where the blackened beam lies to a hole the size of a toddler’s head.

I inch over in a low crouch. “Can you move over a touch, so I can get closer?”

She squeezes to the side, allowing me to examine it. The hole goes deep. I stick my arm up it. Can’t reach the end, which means there’s less dirt above us than I thought. “Actually, I think youarelucky.”

“The luckiest woman down here,” she says, repeating my bad joke, “but not lucky enough to have carried the shovel down.”

I groan with the reminder as I grope around the hole. After a moment, I’m sure. “I can dig us out of here with the screwdriver in my pocket.”

“We have until the chemicals from the decaying bodies kill us or we run out of air. Perhaps three hours.”

No pressure. “Right, then. Let’s get started.”

“Careful, we need to buttress as we go,” she says. “Right now, a lot of this is held up by that heavy door. Digging out could cause a collapse.”

If it wasn’t a heartbreak down here with a side salad of despair, I might laugh at that. “When I was a child, my da, disreputable banker that he was, taught me to dig hidey-holes each time we moved.”

“I take it you moved a lot.”

“Let’s just say, if there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s dig.”

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