Liberty

CHAPTER TWELVE

Forty minutes later, Dane and Bones were still underground. They had rushed back to where Bones originally fell through the roof, but Dane’s attempt to get out that way had met with gunfire as well. They were in a stalemate, with the Sons not willing to risk a shooting gallery coming down, and Dane and Bones unable to reach the surface.

“Maybe there’s another way out.” Dane paced back and forth down the hallway.

“Like a secret passageway? I thought I was the crazy one. I say we just shoot our way out.”

“Well we have to do something. I have a bad feeling about this.”

“I figure if they had grenades or any kind of explosives, we’d know already.”

“Sure, but they have other options. Create some sort of blaze with a big pile of spruce branches, toss it down here, then keep adding fuel to it so quickly we can’t put it out. Or find a nearby gravel pit or rock quarry and liberate something of theirs. Hell, they could even make a bomb out of fertilizer. Wouldn’t take much to make our position untenable.”

The words were barely out of his mouth when something clattered down the stairs. A glimpse of a sparking wick told him their time had run out. He considered sprinting to it and chopping off the wick before it went off. But it was thirty feet away and that kind of reckless action usually only paid off in action movies.

Bones yelled, “Run!”

One advantage of Dane’s shorter stature was that he could accelerate more quickly than Bones. He made the door to the room with the chest just in front of his friend, sprinting towards the opposite door. Before he could get through it, a hand on his shoulder jerked him to a stop.

“Don’t go any further.”

For a moment, Dane’s adrenaline got the better of him and he turned with raised fists. Then he cursed himself for not thinking of what Bones already had. The wick had been attached to sticks of dynamite, probably the best explosive the Sons could come up with on short notice. Almost certainly they’d be throwing more down the hole where Bones had first fallen in. He looked at Bones.

“Duck and cover?”

“No choice, man.”

They both got to their knees and covered their heads with their hands. A few seconds later, loud pops assaulted their ears, followed by rumbling. The earth shook and the sound changed to that of stones crashing against each other.

Stones popped out of the walls in the room, and Dane heard Bones curse. He wanted to look up, but he knew that would just put him at more risk.

Then heat and light assaulted his brain and everything else fell away.

The sound of chiseling shook Dane awake. He opened his eyes and realized that he was lying sideways with his cheek pressed into the dirt. When he moved his head, a flash of pain moved through his neck. He tried again more slowly and was able to rotate his whole body enough to see Bones kneeling a few feet away, his arm rising and falling in time with the chiseling sound. Bones had taken off his jacket, and Dane could see blood from the shoulder wound oozing through the t-shirt.

“What are you doing?”

Bones whirled and Dane could have sworn he saw an expression of concern. “Dude, you’re awake!”

“Awake? What exactly happened?”

“The room we were in collapsed from the explosion. A few seconds after it ended, the door back towards where I fell in was still clear, but before I could get there, they blew that end too. You got hit on the head with a rock I guess.”

Dane looked around, trying to get his bearings. “How long was I out?”

“Over an hour. Maybe closer to two, I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Because you’re trying to dig us out. So are you trying to get us out towards the steps or towards where we fell in?”

“Neither. Those doors are blocked by huge piles of rubble. But in that same corner where we took cover, I found a hollow space exposed by the collapse. That’s what you’re looking at right now in fact.”

Dane realized that instead of the six feet of clearance they had enjoyed earlier, this space was barely tall enough to sit up in. He gestured to where Bones had been working. “So you’re trying to get us back in?”

“Nope. I was for a little while, but it seemed like it might take a lot of hours. So I switched to that cave-in over there, which is where the hollow space ended. I’ve only been at it a few minutes, and I think it’ll only take a few minutes more to break through.”

“Break through? How do you know there’s space on the other side?”

“Ancient Indian secret. Trust me, a few more minutes and you’ll be amazed.”

Dane pushed himself onto his knees, the neck pain now merely annoying instead of debilitating. He felt some bruises on his legs and back, but aside from that he seemed to have avoided major injury. “I’ll give you a hand.”

Bones met his stare for a second before nodding. “Well you’ve obviously got a hard head, but I’d recommend grabbing a sharp stone and digging with that instead.”

Working together, they cleared a space in short order. Bones was right, and it continued as a tunnel on the other side. It seemed like something natural as opposed to the structure that the Sons had just collapsed on them. The rock and dirt was uneven, with the top dipping as low as two feet and rising as high as five as they went.

“It’s amazing that this tunnel has stayed intact, Bones.”

Bones picked up a baseball-sized stone and rapped it in a few places on the ceiling, wall and floor. Instead of the thud of dirt, most of the strikes elicited the echo of stone on stone. “This was hollowed out by water. Probably a while ago given how dry this dirt is. But basically this is a tunnel through rock.”

“I’ll bet whoever built that cellar knew about this tunnel first. Which means—”

“There may be another exit.”

Bones finished Dane’s sentence. “Which is good, because with the amount of time it would take to get out through the collapsed cellar, I might wind up having to go all Donner Party on you.”

Dane considered a comeback, but decided to save his breath. The movement was slow going due to the changes in tunnel height, but their training had prepared them well for this sort of exercise. They switched places a couple of times, until Dane in the lead stopped and put his hand back behind him.

“Hold up. Something’s not right.”

“You mean the smell?”

Dane hadn’t quite nailed it down until Bones said it. “Yeah. Some kind of animal.”

“Probably rats. The lights should scare them.”

“I dunno, that doesn’t smell like rats. It seems… bigger.”

“Man, how can something smell bigger? It’s my turn to lead anyway. If I see any elephants, you’ll be the second to know.”

A few seconds later, two things happened: First, Dane spotted a tunnel branching off to the right, heading down at a steep angle.

The second thing was Bones’ face appearing next to his, accompanied by a hand over Dane’s mouth. Bones put a finger next to his lips and waited for Dane to nod in agreement. Then he moved his light with what seemed to Dane ridiculous care. When the light settled in the direction they had been heading, Dane understood.

Nestled in a hollow lay three slumbering bears.