Groping on his knees in the darkness, he touched the edges of some kind of drop-off. It was a rectangular hole three or four feet wide. He remembered that Murray had pointed out narrow openings between the floors, runs for electric and water lines. Most were covered with steel plates. A few, like this one, had been left open.
A thought took shape.
Do it, he told himself. Don’t wait.
Keeping his back to the hole, Atkins turned on his headlamp and stood up. “Here I am, you bastard!”
Wren charged as soon as he saw him, gripping the pick with both hands like a baseball bat.
Atkins waited until Wren was almost upon him, then dropped to his knees and pushed up with his left forearm and shoulder as Wren stumbled over him. Falling through the opening, Wren managed to get his hands up and grab the edge of the hole. He hung there, his feet kicking at the sides of the narrow shaft, trying to get a toehold.
“Help me!” he screamed. “Please, for God’s sakes.”
Atkins hesitated, but knew he had no choice, not if he wanted to live with himself. He offered the struggling man his left hand.
Wren gripped it and started pulling himself up through the hole. He got his head over the edge, then part of a shoulder. Atkins reached down, trying to get the other arm when Wren, with a powerful thrust of his arms, suddenly pushed up and grabbed the shoulder strap of Atkins’ air tank.
Halfway out of the hole and holding onto the edge, propping himself there. Wren tried to yank Atkins down through the opening. His left arm pinned, Atkins could only swing with his injured right. He punched Wren in the face with no effect. Wren kept pulling him down in a steel grip.
Atkins felt himself starting to go when Wren suddenly let loose.
Atkins rolled over on his back and lay on the floor of the tunnel, trying to get his wind back, trying to suck air into his lungs. Elizabeth stood over him, clutching the pick. She’d hit Wren hard in the face with the wooden handle.
Blood pouring from his forehead, Wren managed to hold on to the edge of the hole. Screaming in rage, he started pulling himself up with both hands. Atkins tried to stand. His head was spinning. He got to his knees. Wren grabbed one of his legs.
Elizabeth swung again, catching Wren squarely in the head. The long handle of the pick made a dull crack when it hit his cheekbone.
Wren fell back through the hole. Atkins heard him slam against the floor of the tunnel below them. He looked over the edge. In the light from his headlamp, he saw that Wren had fallen about a hundred feet. His right leg was folded under him at a severe angle. He wasn’t moving.
“Are you all right?” Elizabeth asked.
“Where did you learn to swing like that?” Atkins said, standing up slowly, gripping the wall for balance.
“Girls’ Softball,” Elizabeth said, smiling.
The tunnel ahead of them was suddenly very bright. Someone was approaching with a powerful spotlight, playing it on the walls. It looked odd. The angle was all wrong. The light was low to the ground.
It was Neutron.
“FOLLOW the robot back to the skip shaft.”
The voice was Booker’s, amplified by a small speaker mounted on Neutron’s video camera.
Atkins and Elizabeth hurried after the robot as it rolled quickly down the tunnel. It made a turn, then another and came out at the entrance to the skip shaft, which glowed a dull yellow from the fires burning one level above them.
“This isn’t going to be easy,” Booker said over the radio. “You’ll have to get through the fire up on Level 10. Neutron’s going to lay down foam spray. Stay as close to him as you can. We’ll be fighting the flames from this end.”
They heard Murray’s voice. “Get your masks on. Button yourselves up real good. Don’t leave any exposed skin. Get the collars up around your throat. Your bunker gear will protect you from the fire. Try not to stand in one place too long coming up that shaft. Keep moving and trust that foam. It’ll knock the shit out of that fire. Good luck to you. Now let’s go!”
Before they followed the robot into the skip shaft, Atkins took Elizabeth in his arms. They stood there a few moments, holding each other.
“Let’s do this,” Atkins said.
“You’re on,” Elizabeth said, her eyes as clear as he’d ever seen them. “We can do whatever a robot can, right?”
They put on their air masks and tightened them, then picked up their fire extinguishers. They made sure all their skin was covered. It hurt like hell when the edge of the mask grazed his broken nose. He winced again as he looped the straps of the foam canister over his shoulders.
Neutron moved into the shaft and started up the incline, gripping the nozzles of the two foam packs it carried on its back.
Crouched over in the tight space, Atkins and Elizabeth stayed close to the robot. Flames were still shooting into the shaft up on Level 10, long darting waves of orange and white fire.
“Steady now,” said Booker, who was following their progress on his television monitor. “Get ready to turn on your extinguishers. Hold it—”
Shimmering waves of heat rolled toward them down the shaft.
“Do it!” Booker said.
Atkins and Elizabeth started spraying foam. So did Neutron, a wide, double jet that instantly knocked the flames back five feet.
They’d reached the tunnel entrance. Atkins saw nothing but a wall of fire. Every step forward seemed to take an eternity.
“When Neutron stops, move on around him,” Booker said. “He’ll buy you a few seconds of time. Get around fast.”
The robot halted, pivoted so it squarely faced the fire, and laid down a thick blanket of white foam that continued to push back the flames. As Elizabeth and Atkins slipped behind it, Atkins noticed that his foam canister was losing pressure. So was Elizabeth’s. Their face masks started to fog over and blister in the intense heat.
Atkins saw two dark figures looming a few yards ahead of them.
Murray and Booker.
They’d come down the shaft to meet them and were dousing the fire with more foam.
Murray motioned for them to hurry.
Atkins and Elizabeth kept climbing up the shaft. Elizabeth stumbled, and Atkins grabbed her around the waist and pulled her with him as he kept going up the steep slope, fighting for every inch. Murray and Booker followed them, moving backward a step at a time as they continued to throw spray on the fire.
When Atkins and Elizabeth reached the coal tunnel on Level 9, Weston was waiting for them.
“Where’s Wren?” he asked.
Atkins shook his head. “He didn’t make it.” That was all he was going to say. They’d have to deal with Weston and what Wren had told them later.
Murray and Booker soon joined them. Neutron rolled into the tunnel right behind them. The paint had blistered on the front of the robot. The sides of the football helmet had melted. The top had flattened out and turned black at the edges. Orange goo had puddled on the metal surface like candle wax. But the alloy steel was undamaged. He was still operational.
On Murray’s advice, they moved down the tunnel until they were a good two hundred feet from the entrance to the skip shaft. The smoke had diminished enough for them to take off their face masks. After checking the methane and CO levels with his gas meter, Murray left them there while he scouted ahead.
When he returned a few minutes later, he was smiling.
“I have a way out,” he said. “But it’s gonna be a bitch.”
NEAR KALER, KENTUCKY
