barrels, stretching upward twenty feet or more, the unpleasant, sickly sweet odor, the protective gear hanging along one rock wall — all seemed unchanged from the way he and Lewis had seen it a few days ago. Using his flashlight, he motioned Carabetta to move closer and led him, then Nikki, around the perimeter.
'Okay,' Matt said, 'let's take some pictures and get some samples.'
'Rutledge,' Carabetta exclaimed, pointing past the barrels, 'what's that lying over there?'
Matt never got the chance to answer. With a deafening roar, brilliant light, and a force unlike anything he had ever experienced, the two entrances to the cavern simultaneously exploded. Instantly, the entire space filled with acrid smoke and choking dust. Boulders the size of automobiles and all manner of rock hurled through the air. Flung sideways, Matt was slammed viciously against the wall. He collapsed onto the floor as dust filled his lungs. Rocks rained down upon him. A basketball-sized boulder thudded against his back. Other chunks buried his legs and pelted his arms with enough force to shatter bone.
In just moments, the explosions were over. The pitch-black cave was filled with suffocating silt and the smell of chemicals freshly released from their drums. Matt lay there, his face half-buried in rubble. The only way he could get enough breathable air in was to force his mouth and nose against the shoulder of his shirt. His ears were ringing mercilessly, and he sensed that his nose was bleeding. Then, through the darkness, he thought he heard whimpering.
'Nikki?' he tried calling out, but his dirt-covered vocal cords barely made a croak.
He coughed, then spat, then coughed again until it seemed like some of the grit cleared from his throat. He also noted that the pain in his back was bad, but not incapacitating. Probably nothing but bruises there. He rubbed his hand across his nose. It wasn't broken, but it was definitely bleeding — how much was hard to tell. Quickly, he tested his arms, which seemed intact, and his legs, which were totally buried beneath many pounds of stone.
'Nikki?' he called out again.
'Matt?'
He thought he heard her voice, faint and strained, from somewhere to his left, but he wasn't certain. His damaged eardrums muffled the sound, but the lack of intense pain made him believe that, while the membranes and ear bones were swollen and bruised, neither drum had been torn. It had to have been Nikki's voice.
He pulled his shirt up over his mouth and nose, making breathing much easier. With great effort, he managed to roll over enough to begin moving debris off his legs.
'Nikki?' he tried once more.
This time there was no answer.
The backs of his hands were raw, and he felt battered all over, but stone by stone he was able to free up his legs. It seemed logical that the people who had blown up the cave had counted on the roof collapsing and sealing the whole deal instantaneously. Clearly, since he wasn't permanently pancaked under a few dozen tons of rock, that hadn't happened. He pulled his legs free and flexed them. Aches, but none of the pain that would have indicated a broken bone. Given what he had just been through, he was as intact as he had any right to be.
'Nikki?… Hal?… Anybody?'
The sound barely echoed. There was no way to tell how much of the cave — how much air — was left. He rolled onto his hands and knees and crawled over the sharp stones toward where he sensed Nikki's voice had come from. He hadn't moved more than a few feet when he hit against a body. It was a woman, lying facedown, covered with dust and debris. Her hair was much longer than Nikki's, and her body, clothed in jeans and a T-shirt, was very slight — not much more than a hundred pounds. A girl, he thought, not a woman. He checked for a pulse at the carotid artery in her neck and found one easily. At that moment, the girl took a breath.
'What in the hell?' he muttered. 'Can you hear me?' he said into her ear. No response.
Gently, careful to stabilize her neck as best he could, he turned her over. Reaching through the absolute darkness he brushed her hair and some of the dust off her face.
'Oh, God,' he moaned the moment he touched the hard, neurofibroma nodules scattered over her face and scalp. 'Oh, God, no.'
CHAPTER 31
The darkness in the cave was total, oppressive, and, for Matt, claustrophobic as well. The fumes were pungent, though not caustic in the way that chlorine fumes were — at least not yet. He sat for a time, composing himself, breathing through his shirt, with the unconscious girl resting beside him. Clearly, Armand Stevenson and his confederates had chosen to bury the human evidence of their transgressions along with their accusers. How many others like this girl were in the cave? Matt wondered.
His ears were continuing to buzz unpleasantly, but from what he could tell, the bleeding from his nose had subsided. Every few seconds another chunk of rock dropped from someplace in the cavern. The roof hadn't caved in but clearly it was unstable. For a time, Matt knelt there, listening to the rattle of falling rock, unable to shake the image of the delayed collapse of the World Trade Center towers. He was finally able to orient himself by focusing on the churning and splashing of the river, which ran behind where the chemicals had been stacked. The continuous white noise of the moving water echoed through the midnight blackness, and had a strangely calming effect.
'Nikki?' he called out. 'Hal?' From somewhere to his right, he was sure he heard a man groaning. 'Fred?'
He brushed some more dust and shards of stone from the girl's face and hair. Her narrow face seemed intact, although there was no doubt she was badly disfigured. Poor baby. Clavicles, chest wall, arms, hands, abdomen, pelvis, legs. From what little he could tell, she had sustained no major injuries.
'Nikki?' he called again. 'Anyone?'
For a few seconds there was only the sound of the river, then, 'Matt?… Matt, it's me.'
This response was definitely not his imagination. Nikki's voice, weak but composed, came from his left, some distance away.
'Nikki, it's Matt, are you hurt?'
'I… I hear you, but I can't make out your words. My ears…'
'I know,' Matt said, speaking slower, louder, and more distinctly, 'mine, too. I asked if you were hurt.'
'I… I don't think badly. My ears are messed up. They won't stop ringing. I got hit on the head pretty hard, too. I don't think I was knocked out, but I'm a little dizzy.'
A second concussion, Matt thought. The word was often thrown around casually, especially in the ER, where head injuries weren't considered serious by most unless there was a period of unconsciousness, X rays showing a fractured skull, or a CT scan demonstrating a hemorrhage or brain contusion. But he had seen many lives ruined and families torn apart by post-concussion syndromes, sometimes with as little trauma as a minor fall or fender-bender. He pushed himself up from the stone floor. His back and legs throbbed, and the backs of his hands were stinging, but the discomfort was tolerable — especially now that he knew Nikki had survived.
'Nikki, can you stand?'
'I think so.'
'Walk?'
'Let me see… Yes, yes, I can walk.'
'Wait!' he cried out suddenly. 'Don't move! Do you have any idea where your flashlight is?'
'Pardon?'
'Your flashlight.'
'I… I was holding it when the blast went off. There's so much rubble. I have no idea where it might be. I'll look around and — '
Her words dissolved into a fit of coughing.
'Pull your shirt over your mouth to breathe. It helps. Nikki, just stay where you are and keep talking. I'm going to walk toward your voice. We'll look for the light together.'
Matt guessed she was twenty-five or thirty feet away. Shuffling through boulders, arms extended like Frankenstein's monster, he inched his way through the blackness, guided by Nikki's recitation of a country song he knew well.
'Silver threads and golden needles cannot mend this heart of mine…'
Matt twice dropped to all fours to negotiate piles of rock.
