Badwater

38

Walter shined his flashlight. “That’s worth a closer look.”

We stood at the open gate. His beam had caught a bull quartz vein, creamy and white, deep in the throat of the tunnel. Where the tunnel took a turn, a streak of silver intruded the white.

“Look all you want from here,” Oliver said. “Soliano says you don’t go in.”

Walter waved his flashlight. “I believe he meant, don’t go exploring. I don’t believe he’d say, don’t nip in there and collect a critical mineral sample.”

I said, “I’m willing to stipulate that’s a telluride.”

“You’ll stipulate? When the answer’s fifty yards away?”

I said, “We don’t have a gas detector.”

Walter shifted his beam to illuminate a shaft that cut through the ceiling like a stovepipe. “It’s ventilated.”

“I don’t care if it’s air-conditioned,” Oliver snapped, “you don’t go in.”

“Mr. Oliver,” Walter said, “my feet hurt. I’ve been running around all morning. So you’ll understand that I want to sample that vein, and if there is any justice to be had we will ID this place and turn it over to Scotty so he can clean up the damnable mess and we can go back to the Inn and soak our feet.”

“Amen,” Dearing said, lifting the toes of his boots.

Walter opened his pack and retrieved his headlamp.

I sighed and got out my own headlamp.

Oliver stiffened. “Hold on just a goddamn minute.” His obsidian face turned rock-hard. “Why am I here? I’m here because you’re looking for the mess. You go in there, I’ve gotta go too.”

Walter shook his head. “I’ll just nip in and out.”

“I’ve seen guys like you. They make it personal.”

Walter fitted his headband.

“You’re not the goddamn bad guy,” Oliver said. “You got nothing to do with the mess.”

Walter considered. “Strictly speaking, I do.”

“The hell’s that mean?”

I fitted my headband. It means Walter makes it personal. It means he’s Walter. I said, “He consumes power. Nuclear’s part of the nation’s power grid.”

Oliver just shook his head. He told Dearing, “Take the watch and call Soliano.” He switched on the flashlight built into the forward grip of his submachinegun. He shoved around Walter to take the lead. “So you wanna live in the Stone Age?”

No we don’t, I thought. They didn’t have French press coffeemakers and scanning electron microscopes in the Stone Age.

Or Geiger counters. I took it out, just in case. We’d brought it along because Scotty told us to monitor outside every mine and if the count rose above background to get the hell away. We hadn’t expected to be going into a mine, which was why we hadn’t brought hazmat suits. And even if we’d wanted to bring that heavy equipment we’d have needed a couple of RERTs to schlep it, and RERT was tied down at the Inn.

Well, we’ll just nip in and out.

We entered the tunnel, abandoning day for night. At first the rain-gray light seeped along with us but within a few yards it yielded to the dark. We traveled on three thin beams. My hair stirred as we passed the ventilation shaft. As we penetrated deeper into the tunnel, I glanced back. The entrance seemed to have shrunk, like the mine was shutting down for the day. Closing time, everybody home to soak their feet. I turned to peer ahead. Maybe half a minute to the bend, couple minutes to sample, then another couple to get the hell out. That Clementine song started up in my head. In a cavern, in a canyon.

“Here we are,” Walter said.

Oliver pointed his light and his ammo uptunnel while Walter inspected the silver-flecked vein and I sampled a stretch of thin ground soil. I did not take the time to search for grains of sylvanite in the decomposed quartz. I did think mechanics. Chickie comes in here with wet boots and wet soil plugging the waffle soles. She is a walking glue stick.

Walter peered over my shoulder. “Well?”

“Maybe.”

“Good.”

“We’ll see.”

“Outside.”

“I think…”

“Shut up,” Oliver snapped. “Listen.”

We listened. I could hear nothing but my breathing. Walter’s and Oliver’s breathing. And then, a thudding. Thud thud thud thud. Silence. Thud thud thud thud. Rhythmic. It was not the sound of somebody walking. Nobody walks like that. It came from around the bend. Deeper within the tunnel. Thud thud thud thud.

“Out,” Oliver hissed, “now.”

We tried to move on cat feet so as not to telegraph our position but then we just gave in and ran. Oliver followed, covering us, and I would have to say they don’t pay him enough.

I thought, running, heart pounding, it had sounded like some kind of machine with some moving part that caught every so often on something it shouldn’t — thud thud thud thud — and then it worked itself free until it caught again, but if there was a machine running somewhere in this mine, that said there was somebody who started it, only why didn’t he hear the thuds and come fix it?

Walter reached the entrance first and stopped short, blocking me.

Not, however, before I saw what he had tried to stop me from seeing.

First I saw the feet, the boots toes-up, and then I moved and saw the rest of Dearing. He had come just inside the mouth of the tunnel. Maybe he’d tried to get free. His arms splayed, like he’d been startled. His head tipped, sunburned nose in the air. Mouth open to argue. Chin jutting. The cut was neat, wide and deep, splitting the band of white muscle. Blood still ran, leaking at the corners. The soil beneath his neck was saturated with red leachate.

I fell to my knees and held my head.

I saw Oliver’s boots, rooted.

When I looked again, I saw the satellite phone. Dearing must have begun to unpack it from its protective case, to make the call to Soliano. The caved-in sat phone lay against the gate post. A grapefruit-sized rock lay nearby.

Dearing’s submachine gun was missing.

Oliver said, voice thick, “Bro.”