'… and I dare not drown my sorrow in the warm glow of your — Hey, I found it! I think it's okay.'
An instant later a beam of light filtered through the suspended silt, panning about until it locked on him. Seconds after that, they were together.
'Oh, baby,' Matt said as they held each other. 'I was so frightened you were hurt or — or worse. I can't believe they would do this to us.'
He took the light to check her. Blood was flowing from a gash not far from her healing gunshot wound. He pulled off one of his socks and used it to apply pressure to the cut.
'Are you okay?' she asked. 'There's a lot of blood on your face.'
'My nose has been bleeding but I don't think anything hit it. Probably the shock from the blast. No bones broken anyplace as far as I can tell. Weird as it sounds, we're lucky. I think they expected the ceiling of this vault to collapse. From the way the rocks keep dropping, it still may.'
Nikki swung the beam around the void. Because of the dust, visibility was limited.
'What about the others?' she asked.
'I don't know. But there's a girl over there — at least I think it's a girl and not a woman.'
'What?'
'She's unconscious. I bumped against her while I was crawling around. And guess what her face and scalp are covered with.'
'Neurofibromas. Matt, this is awful. Could you tell if she was badly hurt?'
'I don't think so, but she's unconscious. And I think I heard a man out there moaning as well.'
'Hal?'
'No idea. I'm worried sick about him. Wasn't he right behind you?'
'From what I remember, yes.'
'Well, that would put him someplace over there, not where the sounds came from. Hal? Hal, can you hear me?'
Nikki panned the flash along the wall. If Hal Sawyer had been standing behind her, he would have been virtually under the entrance from the tunnel, which was now an impenetrable pile of huge boulders and debris that extended up to the roof of the cavern.
'I don't see how he could have avoided being buried under that,' Matt said. 'Hal? Hal, it's Matt.'
Silence.
'Let's try to find him, Matt.'
They shuffled to the pile and moved a couple of rocks. Then they looked at each other and shrugged helplessly. If he was buried beneath this mass, there was nothing they would accomplish by digging except to exhaust themselves.
'He was such a good egg,' Matt said finally. 'Eccentric and quirky, but a real good guy just the same. He was so kind to Mom, and… and he loved me to pieces.'
'I know he did.'
'I just can't believe this. Hal? Dammit, Hal, answer me. It's Matt.'
She put her arms around him and pulled him tightly against her.
'Stevenson and those other bastards are going to pay for this,' he said.
Nikki was reluctant to point out the obvious — that at this moment, their chances of surviving to make anyone pay for anything seemed remote.
'Listen,' she said, 'let's get back to that girl.'
The dust seemed to be settling a bit, making the beam of light more effective. The girl was there, twenty or so feet away, lying on her back, still unconscious. She was eleven or twelve, with long, corn-silk hair. Her narrow, distorted face, possibly pretty at one time, was filthy and battered. Matt was checking her more thoroughly than he had initially been able to, when they heard a groan from off to their right. A man lay there, supine, semiconscious, buried from the waist down. His head was lolling from side to side, and every few seconds his arms flailed impotently at the jagged rocks that pinned him down.
'Oh, my God, look!' Nikki exclaimed.
Not ten feet away from the man lay the lower half of a body — men's work boots and overalls, protruding from under a huge pile of collapsed rock. And not far from him, lying faceup, only partially buried in rubble, was yet another man, minimally covered with debris, unconscious but clearly breathing. Nikki rushed to him, leaving Matt temporarily in darkness.
'Oh, no, Matt! Quick!' she cried, setting the light down to remove dirt and stones from the two. 'He's another one.'
Matt hurried over, took the flash, and knelt down. The man's silt-covered face was badly disfigured by neurofibromas. Probably in his twenties, he had a gash and a deep bruise on his throat where a rock had apparently hit. His respiration was labored and accompanied by stridor — the whooping noise produced when air is drawn in past a significant obstruction.
'Well?' Nikki asked.
'Hell, I don't know, except that it's a miracle any of us are alive. This cave was supposed to be a mass grave for all of us. We have at least one person dead and three — my uncle, Vinny, and Carabetta — missing. We have three people that we know of who are unconscious. That man thrashing around over there looks like he might be badly hurt, and this guy's breathing doesn't sound good.' Matt reached into the man's hip pocket, produced a thin billfold, and withdrew his driver's license. 'Colin Morrissey,' he read. 'Age twenty-two. From Wells.'
'Where's that?'
'Thirty miles south of here.'
'So now we have two with neurofibromas. Do you think there are more?'
'I wouldn't be surprised. I can't make much sense of this yet. But I do know one thing. We have a limited amount of air that's loaded with fumes that are probably toxic, and one meager source of light with batteries that could last an hour or a minute.'
'Not so good,' Nikki said.
'We need to find some more light. If your flashlight goes out before we come up with something, we're finished. We've got to find the one I had.'
'Think we should try and help that poor guy over there first?'
'Your call.'
'Let's see if we can free him up. He's more awake than the rest. After that we can decide whether to help the others or look for your light.'
'Okay. Once we're oriented, let's shut the flashlight off and move the rocks in the dark.'
The man, heavyset and balding, kept crying out as Nikki and Matt cleared the fallen rocks off of him. They both knew the potential for disaster from his situation. Pelvis, abdomen, groin, legs, spine, muscles — in addition to fractures and internal injuries, there was the possibility of sudden death, usually from the release of clots formed in injured legs.
By the time they had removed enough rubble to pull the man free, he was beginning to speak. His invective- laden babble was disjointed and garbled, but there was no mistaking his anger.
'Fuckin' double-crossers… you die, you die… Tracy… I love you, Tracy… can't move… bastards… fuckin' double-crossers…'
'Hey, calm down, fella,' Matt said. 'Easy does it. We're doctors. We're here to help you. Nikki, put the light on my face, maybe that'll help.'
Another minute passed as first Matt and then Nikki attempted to get through to the incoherent man. It was Nikki who succeeded. She held her hand under his head, and had Matt hold the light away so that it illuminated both her face and the victim's.
'My name is Dr. Solari,' she said kindly. 'Do you understand?'
'Doctor,' he murmured.
'Yes. What's your name?'
'Name… Sid,' he replied sluggishly, shaking his head as if to clear it.
'Sid, what happened? How did you end up here?'
'Double-crossed… bastards…'
Nikki lifted his head slightly and brushed some of the remaining dust from his face. He responded to her
