Blasphemy

. .”

73

FORD CAME TO IN THE DARK, the air choked with dust and the stink of newly released coal gas. Covered with pulverized rock, he peered around, his ears ringing, his head splitting.

“Kate!” he called out.

Silence.

“Kate!”

Panic seized him. Pushing loose rock aside, he freed himself. Scrabbling to his hands and knees and running his hands through the rubble, he saw a gleam and uncovered his flashlight, still lit. As he shone it around, the beam revealed a body lying twenty feet down the tunnel, partly buried in rock. He scrambled over.

It was Hazelius. A trickle of blood came out of his nose. He felt for a pulse—strong.

“Gregory!” he whispered into the man’s ear. “Can you hear me?”

The head turned and the eyes opened—those astonishing azure eyes. Hazelius squinted in the light. “What . . . happened?” he croaked

“Explosion and cave-in.”

Comprehension dawned. “The others?”

“I don’t know. I was just catching up to you when it blew.”

“They ran every which way when the rocks started falling.” He glanced down. “My leg . . .”

Ford began clearing rubble from the lower half of Hazelius’s body. A large rock lay on his left leg. He grasped the edge of the rock and gently lifted it off. The leg underneath was slightly crooked.

“Help me up, Wyman.”

“I’m afraid your leg’s broken,” Ford said.

“No matter. We’ve got to keep moving.”

“But if it’s broken—”

“Help me up, damn you!”

Ford slung Hazelius’s arm around his neck and helped him to his feet. Hazelius staggered, clinging to him.

“If you support me, I can walk.”

Ford listened. In the rattled silence, he could hear distant voices and shouts. Incredibly enough, the mob was still in pursuit. Or perhaps they, too, just wanted out of the labyrinth.

Moving through the rubble, Ford supported Hazelius, one step after another. He dragged Hazelius over rockfalls, under gaping holes in the ceiling, through passages between tunnels which the explosion had opened up, past rooms which the blast had caved in. He could see no sign of the others.

“Kate?” Ford called into the darkness.

No answer.

Ford felt for his SIG. Eight rounds expended, five left.

“I’m getting a little dizzy,” Hazelius said.

Moving slowly, they came out of a narrow tunnel into a transverse shaft. Again Ford recognized nothing. The voices were getting louder now and eerily ubiquitous, as if all around them.

“I just never . . . expected . . . this.” Hazelius’s voice trailed off.

Ford wanted to call out for Kate again but he didn’t dare. There was so much dust, so many tunnels, and if she answered, the mob might find her.

Hazelius stumbled again, crying from pain, and Ford could barely hold him up. He sagged like a sack of cement. When Ford could drag him no farther, he crouched and struggled to hoist Hazelius over his shoulders. The tunnel was too tightly confined and the effort caused Hazelius too much pain.

Ford laid Hazelius down and felt his pulse—shallow and fast, with a clammy sweat breaking out on his forehead. He was going into shock.

“Gregory, can you hear me?”

The scientist groaned and turned his head. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I just can’t do it.”

“I’m going to look at your leg.”

Ford slit the pant-leg with the penknife. The compound fracture had forced the splintered thigh bone through the skin. If he carried Hazelius further, the splintered femur might sever the femoral artery.

Ford risked shining around a low beam from the Maglite. He could see no sign of the others, but below the tunnel floor, a shallow stope on the opposite wall a few dozen feet down—partially obscured by a rockfall— suggested concealment.

“We’re going to hide in there.”

He picked Hazelius under the arms and dragged him into the niche. Gathering more fallen rock, he built a low wall they could hide behind. The voices were getting closer.

Please God, let Kate make it.

Ford used up all the loose rocks in the vicinity. The wall was about two feet high, just enough to hide them if they lay down. Ford got behind it. He took off his jacket and balled it up, making a pillow for Hazelius’s head, and shut off the light.

“Thank you, Wyman,” Hazelius said.

They didn’t speak for a moment, and then Hazelius said, matter of factly, “They’re going to kill me, you know.”

“Not if I can help it.” Ford felt for his gun.

Hazelius’s hand touched his. “No. No killing. Aside from the fact that we’re hopelessly outnumbered, it would be wrong.”

“It’s not wrong if they’re going to kill you first.”

“We’re all one,” said Hazelius. “Killing them is like killing yourself.”

“Please don’t lay that religious shit on me now.”

Hazelius groaned, swallowed. “Wyman, I’m disappointed in you. Of all the team, you’re the only one who won’t accept the amazing thing that’s happened to us.”

“Stop talking and lie low.”

They crouched behind the rough wall of stones. The air smelled of dust and mildew. The voices approached, the footsteps and clinking of the mob now echoing down the stone corridors. After a moment, the dull glow of their torches invaded the dusty air. Ford could hardly breathe, he was so tense.

The mob was noisier, drawing nearer. Suddenly they were there. For a seeming eternity Eddy’s horde was slogging past, their flashlights and torches casting hellish orange shapes on the ceiling, their shadows distorted on the walls. The noise of the mob dimmed, receded, the flickering of the fires dying away. Darkness returned. Ford heard a long, painful sigh from Hazelius. “My God . . .”

Ford wondered for a crazy moment if Hazelius was praying.

“They think . . . I’m the Antichrist . . . .” He gave a low, strange laugh.

Ford rose and peered into the darkness. The sounds of the mob vanished and silence fell once again, broken here and there with the rattle of falling pebbles.

“Maybe I am the Antichrist . . .,” Hazelius wheezed. Ford wasn’t sure if it was pain or laughter. He’s starting to get delirious, he thought. He put that aside and considered what they should do. Air was moving through the tunnel and with it came the stench of burning coal, as well as an ominously low vibration, the sound of fire.

“We’ve got to get out.”

No answer from Hazelius.

He grasped Hazelius under the shoulders. “Come on. Try to keep moving. We can’t stay here. We’ve got to find the others and get to the hoist.”

A muffled explosion reverberated through the tunnels. The smell of coal smoke increased.

“And now they’re going to kill me . . . .” Again, the eerie laugh. Hoisting Hazelius over his back, gripping him by each arm, Ford dragged him through the tunnels.

“Ironic,” Hazelius mumbled. “To be martyred . . . Human beings are so foolish . . . so gullible . . . . But I didn’t think it through . . . just as stupid as they are . . . .”

Ford shone the light ahead. The tunnel opened into a large cavern.