Blasphemy

enough to switch back on his light. He kept low, jogging, hoping to catch up with the group. But as he ran, he heard from behind a strange coughing sound. He paused. Isabella’s growl suddenly changed pitch; rising precipitously, higher and higher, it became an earshattering scream, a monstrous roar, growing louder, louder, a crescendo that shook the mountain. Ford, sensing what was coming, threw himself to the ground.

The roar turned into an earthquake, the ground convulsing. A massive boom followed, a wave of overpressure ripping through the mine, picking him up like a leaf and hurtling him into a coal pillar. As the great thunderclap rolled off into the caverns, a sucking wind swept back through the tunnels, screaming like a banshee. Ford huddled in the lee of the coal pillar, head down, as coal and rocks blew past.

Ford rolled, looked up. The tunnel ceiling was cracking, splitting, raining bits of coal and matrix. He leapt to his feet and tried to outrun the collapsing tunnel as it roared up at him from behind.

EDDY WAS THROWN TO THE GROUND by the force of the explosions. He lay facedown in a muddy pool, pebbles and grit raining down around him, the tunnels echoing and booming with thunderous crashes, near and far. Dust filled the air and he could hardly breathe. Everything seemed to collapse around him.

Minutes passed, and the thunderous cave-ins slowed to the occasional rumble. As the sounds died away, an uneasy silence ensued, the voice of Isabella no more. The machine was dead.

They had killed it.

Eddy sat up, coughed. A moment of fumbling around in the choking clouds of dust, and he found his flashlight, still shining in the murk. Others were rising, their lights like disembodied glowworms in the fog. The tunnel had caved in not twenty yards behind them, but they had survived.

“Praise the Lord!” said Eddy, coughing again.

“Praise the Lord!” a follower echoed.

Eddy took stock. Some of his soldiers had been injured by falling rocks. Blood streamed down their foreheads, their shoulders gashed. Others seemed unhurt. No one had been killed.

Eddy steadied himself against the rock wall, trying to breathe. He managed to straighten himself up and speak. “And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and earth were passed away.” He lifted both his hands, gun in one, flashlight in the other. “Warriors of God! The Beast is dead. But let us not forget the even more important task at hand.” He pointed into the drifting murk. “Out there, lurking in the dark, is the Antichrist. And his disciples. We have a battle to finish.” He looked around. “Rise up! The Beast is dead! Praise the Lord!”

His words gradually drove life into the shell-shocked group.

“Recover your weapons and flashlights. Stand with me.”

Those of the group who had dropped their weapons searched around, and in a few minutes all were standing, armed, and ready to continue. It was a miracle: the tunnel had caved in behind them where they had been only moments before. But the Lord had spared them.

He felt invincible. With the Lord at his side, who could strike him down? “They were ahead,” he said, “down that tunnel. It’s only partially collapsed. We can climb over that rubble. Let’s go.”

“In the name of Jesus Christ, let’s go!”

“Praise Jesus!”

Eddy led them forward, feeling his strength and confidence return. The ringing in his ears began to subside. They picked their way over a heap of broken rock that had fallen from the ceiling. Smaller rocks were still rattling out of the hole in the sagging, shattered roof, but it held. Visibility gradually improved as the murk settled.

They came to an open cavern, created by the cave-in of one side of the mine ceiling. A stream of fresh, clean air flowed down from the opening, clearing out the dust. A large tunnel yawned at the far end.

Eddy paused, wondering which way the Antichrist had gone. He signaled for the group to be quiet and turn off their lights. In the silence and the dark, he heard and saw nothing. He bowed his head. “Lord, show us the way.” He flicked on his light, at random, and saw which tunnel it was pointing down.

“We go this way,” he said. The group followed, their flashlights bobbing like glowing eyes in the murky dark.

72

BEGAY LAY IN THE TALL ALFALFA, stunned by the blast, as secondary waves of overpressure ripped across the valley and over the bluffs. Flattening the sage, the shockwaves uprooted pinon trees, flinging sand and gravel before them like multiple blasts of buckshot, the ground shuddering and concussing beneath him. He covered his face until the first waves had passed and then sat up. A huge fireball floated above the cliff top, a blazing sphere trailing a stem of smoke, dust, and debris. He averted his face from the searing heat.

He heard Willy Becenti’s muffled curses coming from the alfafa and then his head appeared, hair askew. “God damn!”

Across the field, other people slowly stood. The horses, which they had been rounding up to saddle, had panicked, rearing and kicking at their hobbles, bellowing with terror. Some had broken free and were tearing away across the alfalfa field.

Begay stood. The tipi had been blown down and the poles lay broken on the ground, the canvas shredded like confetti. The blast had knocked the old Nakai Rock Trading Post off its foundation. He squinted into the darkness and wondered where his horse, Winter, had run off to.

“What the hell was that?” Becenti asked, staring upward.

The giant ball of fire appeared to float high above the trees, looming above them, drifting and rolling as it collapsed into a deep reddish brown color.

On the mesa top above Isabella, Begay had seen hundreds, maybe even thousands, of people gathered. What had the blast done to them? He shuddered at the thought. A rumble came from belowground, and Begay could hear the distant rattle of gunfire.

Glancing around the field, Begay did a quick head count. Everyone was accounted for. “We got to get people the hell out of here,” he called to Maria Atcitty. “I don’t care if we’re short of horses. Double everyone up and head for the Midnight Trail.”

Somewhere just south of them, the earth growled and convulsed. At the far end of the valley, the alfalfa field buckled and sagged, a web of cracks appearing in the earth. Dust detonated into the air as a gaping sinkhole opened, the size of a football field, its edges collapsing into a cavernous darkness.

“The old mines are caving in,” said Becenti.

The ground shook again, and again. Clouds of dust coiled up, near and far. The reddish brown fireball drifted, dimming, dissipating gradually and breaking apart with lassitude.

Begay clutched Maria Atcitty’s shoulders. “You’re in charge. Grab what people and horses you can find and get them down the Midnight Trail.”

“What about you?”

“I’m going after the runaways.”

“Are you crazy?”

Begay shook his head. “One of them’s Winter. Don’t ask me to leave him.”

Maria Atcitty gave him a long look, then turned, yelling at everyone to leave their stuff and double up on the horses.

“You can’t do it alone,” Becenti said to Begay.

“You better go with the others.”

“No way.”

Begay grasped his shoulder. “Thanks.”

More subterranean rumbles shook the ground—now from the southern and eastern ends of the mesa—the same direction the horses had gone. Gazing across the moonlit landscape, he watched a dozen dust coils snake upward above the mesa.

Cave-ins. The old mines really were collapsing. Over toward Isabella the fires were spreading, rolling clouds of smoke boiling up in plumes, tinged burnt-orange from the fires below. The initial explosion had only been the beginning; now the entire mesa was igniting. The coal-seamed, methane-laced tunnels were venting their rage.

Maria Atcitty returned with her horse. “It’s like the end of the world out there.”

Begay shook his head. “Maybe it is.”

He dropped his voice and spoke the obscure Falling Star chant, “Anine bichaha’oh koshdee‘ .