Shortly after they were able to stand, the tunnel widened and began to receive broad tributaries from the left. The air became less oppressively heavy.
'Thar,' Lewis whispered, pointing down one such tunnel. 'Thet's one a the ways we brung the barrels in. Hauled 'em on dollies, we did.'
'Who does it now?' Matt asked.
'Beats me. Per all Ah know, they done stopped.'
'I don't think so… Wait. Do you smell that?'
'Ah do. The cave wer after ain't too far ahead.'
The odor was of chemicals — sweet, pungent, and slightly nauseating. Gasoline, toluene — Matt tried to pin it down, but couldn't with certainty. Gotcha! he thought. The frustrating years of trying to show the public what sort of morality was running Belinda Coal and Coke were about to bear fruit. In addition to the chemical smell, the sound of rushing water was again echoing off the damp stone walls. To their left, just beyond where Lewis was standing, Matt could make out a small river, bursting through a wide rent in the rock. His flashlight beam reflected off the dark water and lit the open space beyond. Overhead, the ceiling sloped upward. The organic odor was now intense. Whatever sorts of chemicals were up ahead certainly weren't well contained.
'Lewis,' he whispered, 'is this it?'
'Rot thar,' Lewis said, waving his light ahead, then cutting it off.
For nearly a minute, the two men stood together in the darkness. The sound of the rushing river filled the cavern, which Matt now sensed was quite vast.
'Go easy, an' move right,' Lewis ordered. 'No more light 'til wer sure we got no compny.'
'I can see them, Lewis,' Matt said excitedly. 'I can see the barrels!'
Looming ahead, filling only a fraction of the chamber, were two huge pyramids of oil drums, twenty feet across at the base and ten feet high. A third stack was just taking shape. Beyond the barrels, almost 180 degrees from the tunnel through which they had entered, was another, wider access, probably coming from the mine. A pale film of light, filtering in from somewhere deep in that tunnel, was what was backlighting the barrels.
They remained pressed against the chamber wall, still some distance from the barrels. Lewis switched on his flash, which was considerably more powerful than Matt's, and handed it over. The sight in front of them brought a knot of anger and sadness to Matt's chest. Many of the oil drums appeared to be in decent shape, but some of them were corroded. Several of those — six or seven that he could see from where they stood — had emptied onto the stone floor. Not ten yards behind the stacks, a broad stream was rippling through the cavern, headed in the general direction of the mine. It was impossible to believe the toxins weren't passing through major work areas, and from there into the environment.
'Son of a bitch,' he murmured. 'We'd best move quickly, Lewis, I have no idea what these fumes are doing to our lungs or brains.'
'Ain't nothin' that kin mess my brain up more'n it already is,' Lewis replied, punctuating the remark with a raspy laugh.
Matt slipped off his backpack, knelt down, and opened it. He removed his camera and took a half a dozen flash shots. Then he extracted a plastic bag with specimen collection bottles in it and took several tentative steps toward the barrels. He was about six feet away from them when floodlights mounted high on the walls snapped on, illuminating most of the cavern with midday brightness.
Matt caught a glimpse of gas masks and zip-up coveralls hanging from a rack nearby. Instinctively he dropped onto the damp floor just as two security men entered from the other tunnel. Their exact words were lost in the echoes of churning water, but he could tell they were laughing and joking. One of them keyed a security check box mounted on the rock wall.
Quickly, Matt scrambled on all fours toward Lewis, who was pressed back against the wall in a pocket of shadow.
'Hurry!' Lewis whispered urgently.
Moving as quickly as he dared, Matt was just a few feet from the shadows when one of the guards spotted him.
'Shit, Tommy, look! Over there!'
Matt could see the man drawing his gun.
'Run!' Lewis cried, already racing toward the tunnel.
Matt followed.
'Do you think we should just tell them who we are and that we don't want any trouble?' he asked as they ran.
'They ain't intrested in nothin' but makin' sure we don't leave this cave alive,' Lewis answered. 'Truss me on thet.'
At that instant, gunfire erupted from behind them, and bullets ricocheted off the rocks.
'Jesus!' Matt cried, hunching down.
He had left his backpack and camera behind, but by sheer providence still held on to Lewis's flashlight. He passed the light to Lewis and, following the beam, they plunged into the gloom of the passageway.
Initially, Lewis moved with surprising speed and agility. Quickly, though, his age and years of smoking took hold. By the time they reached the first narrowing of the tunnel, he was gasping. Matt knew he could have moved much faster alone, but even if he had known the tunnels, there was no way he would have left the man behind. He cursed himself for impetuously putting them in such a spot. He could have waited, maybe tried to go to the authorities with the mysterious note.
More gunshots. It seemed to Matt that there was no way they were going to outrun their pursuers, but Lewis had other ideas. They made a sharp right-hand turn, then dropped down into a series of back-scraping crawls that Matt didn't remember from the trip in. The pounding in his chest and tightness in his throat intensified as it always did when he was in a confined space. He forced himself to keep crawling ahead. Suddenly, he was thinking about his father. What had it been like for him those last seconds after the cave-in? Did he have time to be afraid? Would he have been afraid even if he did? Did the explosion kill him instantly, or was it the crush of rock?
Bullets continued to ping off the rock walls and crack into the stone beneath them. Then abruptly, the shooting stopped.
'This way!' Lewis called back, cutting his light. 'They cain't see us no more. Thas why they's stopped shootin'.'
He broke into a spasm of coughing, but hesitated only a few seconds and pushed on.
'You know where we are?' Matt asked.
'Les put it this way. Ah know whar Ah am.'
He laughed moistly and again began coughing.
'Lewis, are you okay?' Matt asked.
The older man didn't answer. Instead, he dropped to his belly and wriggled through a ragged ten-foot-long crevice not more than a foot and a half high and two feet wide. He was grunting loudly but moving ahead gamely. Matt closed his eyes and followed along the narrow passage, fearing that at any moment he was going to pass out, throw up, or simply get stuck and go insane. Two feet of extra headroom at the end of the crevice brought him the same sort of relief as the cessation of a dentist's drilling.
After what seemed like an eternity on their hands and knees or bellies, the ceiling sloped upward. The air began to taste fresher. Lewis rose to his feet rather shakily and his head and shoulders disappeared into the ceiling. Matt crawled over to him, tilted his head back, and felt a fine rain on his face. About eight feet past Lewis's shoulders, up a narrow chute, he could see the lighter shade of blackness that was the sky.
'Kin ya climb out thet?' Lewis asked, whispering again.
'If I don't get stuck, I believe I can.'
'Kin ya boos me up?'
'I think so. I'm going to put my head between your legs and stand up. Just don't punch me for getting fresh.'
Lewis missed Matt's tepid humor because he was coughing again.
'Ya sure 'bout this?' he asked when he had caught his breath. 'Ah ain't no flyweight, ya know.'
'If it means getting out of here, I could lift an elephant. Just rest your hands on the top of my head, and as soon as you can grab someplace to pull yourself up, go ahead. Once I'm standing, I'll push your feet up. Ready?
