Blowback

Seventeen

It might have lasted seconds or minutes; I was suspended in time, lost inside myself. Falling things pummeled my body, made me jerk and squirm in agony, and I kept waiting with a kind of wild fatalism for a heavy chunk of rock or wood to shatter my spine, my neck, the back of my skull. A slide of pebbly earth threatened to bury my head; I twisted fetally so I could keep my nose and mouth free, but they were already clogged with hot dust, the taste of it like cinders and mold. My lungs felt as though they had been set aflame.

The echoing, banging roar reached a crescendo, and then ebbed so rapidly into a vacuumlike stillness that I believed at first I had gone deaf. There was pressing weight the length of my body-but I could no longer feel the bite of assaulting objects. A thought took shape in my mind: It's over. Is it over?

All around me, the upheaval seemed to have ended; I could sense a restless settling. I moved my arms away and raised my head a little and opened my eyes. Gray-black, faintly mobile; a rivulet of earth that I could not see sifted down inches from my right cheek. I wanted to raise up, get up off my belly, but the feeling of fatalism was still with me; if I moved, it would start all over again, maybe it hadn't really stopped, there was still a rock or a timber ready to come crashing down on me A wash of pain in my chest cut through that. Then my ears popped and the false deafness vanished, and I could hear myself gasping; I realized like someone coming out of heavy sedation that there was no air where I was lying, there was only a stagnant graininess all but void of oxygen. Breathing was impossible-like trying to draw solid matter into my lungs.

Panic clawed at me again, forced me to struggle under the weight along my back and hips and legs, push up and turn into a sitting position with earth and rocks sliding off me- man rising up out of his own grave. My shoulder brushed against the splintered edge of a timber, and I jerked it away reflexively, hunching, and twisted over and around until I was on hands and knees. Blood hammered in my ears, there were flashes and shimmers of yellow-white behind my eyes and a sudden slow, spinning dizziness. I was close to blacking out; if I didn't get air I would suffocate. But the entrance was blocked, I knew it was blocked. Back into the shaft then. If I could gut to where Bascomb's body was, if that part of the tunnel had not caved in too, there would not be so much dust and the air would still have oxygen.

I started to crawl, but immediately a part of my mind said: No, get on your feet, get your head close to the ceiling; air's clearer, you might even be able to breathe a little up there. Half coughing, half retching, I pulled one foot under me and then shoved up, staggered forward a step and caught myself without touching anything around me. I stood swaying, and it was not quite so bad nearer the ceiling, all right. I forced my mouth open wide, craning my head back; my lungs heaved, dragged in a series of shallow breaths. The coughing slacked off and the giddiness eased-not much, just enough so that I could make my body work with some control.

The tunnel floor was strewn with debris, but it didn't seem as bad going backward as it must have been the other way. I located one of the cart rails with my foot, because I had to keep myself at the center of the shaft; I did not dare touch either of the walls. Then I moved forward a step at a time along the rail, stop and go, hands probing in front of me in the clotted dark. My legs had a liquidy weakness at the knees, there was a thin pain in the left one every time I put weight on it. Five steps, ten-and my forehead banged into a hanging ceiling support that I had missed with my hands. I stumbled, toppled to one knee and then broke the fall skiddingly with both palms. Above me the timber made a groaning noise that built into a low rumbling. Earth fluttered down, then a piece of rock that narrowly missed my head as I scuttled forward and kept on scuttling until I butted up against a mound of rubble.

The timber did not fall and the shaft grew still again.

I crawled over the mound, bumped into something round and metallic that my fingertips told me was a wheel on the broken ore cart, and detoured around that. When I relocated the track, I stood up again so I could lift my head above that stifling pall of dust.

It was another ten steps before the congealing graininess began to thin out; the floor around and between the rails seemed clear of debris. I moved with a little more speed, felt the track begin to curve to the left and knew I was coming into the turn where Bascomb's body lay. The jellied feeling in my knees was so strong now it forced me down into a sitting position on one rail, legs out at an angle and head thrown back. The air here was foul and oppressive, smoky, but at least I could breathe it, it was like pure oxygen after the forward section of the tunnel.

Pretty soon the last of the dizziness went away, and some of the fire in my chest with it; my mind began to function more or less normally. I was aware of a dozen separate aches, of a stickiness on my left forearm that had to be blood from a gash or smaller cut. Fear tugged at me. Suppose the entrance was so badly blocked I could not dig my way out? Nobody knew I was in here except the man who had caused the cave-in, the man who had killed Terzian and Bascomb-and how many hours of breathable air could there be? A dozen? Less than that?

I fought down another surge of panic, got a tight hold on myself. One thing at a time, one minute at a time. Let the dust settle, that was the first priority. Then go back up there and check out the extent of the blockage and start digging, it might all just be loose rock and earth and timbers Check it out how? I thought.

I had not been able to see anything earlier and I could not see anything now except blackness. Unless the dust had helped to obscure light, the entrance was completely closed off. How would I know where to dig, what to watch out for? The flashlight was gone, probably buried, and even if I could find it in the dark it had to be damaged and useless. I had no matches-and wasn't that a goddamn nice piece of irony for you? If I had not given up smoking, if I did not have a lesion on one lung, I would have had a pocketful of matches, I would have had the one thing now that I needed desperately.

And then I thought: Bascomb. Christ, Bascomb.

Convulsively, I pushed off the rail and went forward on all fours until I came up next to the body. The smell of it flared my nostrils, made me gag again. I reached out, touched it, felt an arm mushy soft and yielding and jerked my hand up across the front of his shirt, groping for the pocket.

It was empty.

I brought the hand down and fumbled at one trouser pocket, dug inside it; keys and coins, nothing else. I leaned forward, touched the second pocket-and there was something rectangular in there, crinkling sound, cigarette package? I dragged it out with shaking fingers. Cigarette package, yes, Bascomb had been a smoker.

Tucked inside the cellophane wrapping was a booklet of paper matches.

I fished it free, opened the cover. Three-quarters full. I held it tightly in clenched fingers, slid around away from the corpse and crawled back through the turn and sat down on the rail again. Sweat streamed on my body, slick and gritty like oil mixed with dirt. A sudden spasm of coughing left me panting; I tried not to think of what that dust was doing to my lungs, to the lesion that might already be malignant.

How long before the dust settled?

Ten minutes? Fifteen?

I held my left wrist up to my ear and listened to my watch and heard it ticking; somehow it had escaped damage in the cave-in. When I looked at the luminescent hands I saw that they read twelve-fifteen. I put the arm behind me, to keep from staring at the watch, and tried to make myself concentrate on the things I knew that would identify the son of a bitch who had murdered Terzian and Bascomb and sealed me in here. Bascomb's sketch, the wrench, the bloody towels, the Daghestan carpet-all of those things, yes, but how did they fit together? Other things too, dancing out of reach. Round and round, round and round, but none of them quite joining with each other to make a whole or part of a whole…

I had to give it up finally. The tension was too intense, the edge of panic too close to the surface of feeling; learning the name of the man would not matter at all unless I got out of here. I looked at the watch then, and nine minutes had passed. I used a forefinger to clean grit out of my nostrils, wiped away sweat, made an effort to work up saliva to rid my mouth of dust and dryness.

Another three minutes gone.

I stood and stared into the blackness, trying to tell if the air along the shaft was any less clogged with powder, trying to make out a ray or glimmer of light. There was nothing but dark up there, but if I could trust my senses the air did not seem to be as dusty, as abrasive in my throat and lungs.

I could not wait any longer, I had reached the limit of passive endurance. I started to walk along the rail, willing myself to go slowly and cautiously, and when I came up to the mound of rubble beyond the ore cart I opened the matchbook and struck the first match. The flare of light half blinded me; I had to look away and then back before I was able to see anything. In the eerie flickering glow, the walls and ceiling had a pocked look where the rock had given way; most of the support timbers were still holding. Five feet ahead I could just make out the hanging timber I had run into during my retreat.

When the heat of the match flame touched my fingertips, I shook it out and went ahead five paces, ducked down and walked another couple of steps until I was certain I had gone beyond the suspended beam. Then I lit a second match. The amount of rubble was greater now, and the holes in the tunnel walls looked larger, the wood latticework less stable. Sections of wood jutted up from the floor at odd angles, like broken bones. Another half-dozen steps. Match. Half-dozen steps. Match. The poisonous clouds of dust had finally dissipated, but the air was still thick, stifling; I began to have trouble breathing again. Six paces. Match. And I was back near the place where I had lain-I could see marks on the floor and among the debris.

But I still could not see any sign of daylight ahead.

Eight feet farther on, the jumble of rock and wood and earth rose as high as three and four feet across the width of the tunnel. I held another match up over my head so I could judge the condition of the ceiling. Still intact, not too deeply pitted, half the supports holding in place; most of the rubble seemed to have come from the walls. But I had no way of telling yet how bad it would be near the entrance. I leaned down into one of the mounds and started to inch my way along, pulling larger rocks and lengths of wood aside gingerly with both hands-aware all the while of the danger of new slides, of upsetting the balance of the mass around me and getting myself buried as a result. Every yard or so I stopped to check my position and the configuration of debris by matchlight. I could hear myself wheezing in a kind of constant counterpoint to the rattling of rocks, the small sounds of movement; I was soaked with sweat. Panic stayed close to the surface, and now I had a growing sense of claustrophobia. The urge to scream was strong inside me: tension, fear and tension.

I'm going to get out, I thought. I'm not going to die in here, not in here, I'm going to get out.

The mounds became steadily larger, more tightly packed, and the hollows between them grew shallower. Inevitably, after ten or fifteen or twenty minutes, I reached the end of the line-a solid blockage sloping upward from floor to ceiling.

Not as much oxygen here, the air still clogged with particles of dust; the burning sensation was back in my chest, and the feeling of giddiness had returned to make my thoughts sluggish-but that helped to keep the panic at bay. I struck a new match and held it up. Most of the ceiling had collapsed here. Not even a chink of daylight showed through.

Think, remember. How far had I been from the entrance when the cave-in forced me off my feet? Less than ten yards maybe, and I had crawled another two or three. How far had I come from that place where I had lain? Difficult to judge, but it might have been as much as fifteen feet. That left… what? A minimum of five feet to the outside? Five feet of compressed earth and rock and all I had to dig with was my hands and as soon as I started to do that the rest of the ceiling might give way No. I'm going to get out of here.

I am going to get out of here.

I clenched the matchbook between my teeth and pulled myself up the slope on knees and hooked fingers. Earth slid away beneath me, a dislodged rock thumped down against my thigh and brought a stinging slash of pain. When one of my hands touched the edge of a timber, I anchored my body and managed to get a match free and flaming. Near the top, now, the ceiling was a foot over my head, scarred by a deep trough. The timber was edged at an angle into the trough, half-buried in the rubble, and on top of it was a huge oblong of broken limestone.

I eased away from there, laterally to my right, and used another match-not many left now, have to ration them. Just rock and earth here, no shattered supports within a three-foot radius of what looked to be the sealed juncture of ceiling and debris. Dig at this spot, then-hurry! Air running out, time running out…

I scraped at the earth, dug rocks loose and let them slide down past my body. Dust misted around me, and the dizziness got worse, and my thoughts seemed to break up into disjointed fragments; I could feel myself slipping back again into that timeless emptiness, conscious of little but the movement of my hands and the overwhelming need to get free.

Depression opening up, widening into a kind of tunnel-tunnel within a tunnel. Use a match. No air for a match. And my hands digging, digging, body wiggling forward, if the ceiling is going to collapse, let it be now or let me get out, shifting earth, rocks thumping, can't breathe, oh God please don't let me black out Light.

I heaved a rock out of the way and there was a blinding dusty ray of it two feet beyond my head.

The illusion of timelessness vanished in a flood of wild relief, each of my senses heightened, I heard myself begin whimpering like a child just starting to awaken from a nightmare. My hands tore at the earth in a kind of controlled frenzy, and the light grew larger, larger, I could smell clean air, I could breathe, and my head came out into the air and the light, I wedged my shoulders free, and then I lunged and scrabbled the rest of my body through the opening and down the outside wall of the slide, felt it shift and grumble under my skidding weight, and lost my balance and rolled over twice amid a clattering of rock and finally came up on my hands and knees at the edge of the slope.

Inside the mine there was a low-pitched rumbling; dust spewed out through the hole I had made, cut off again as the hole disappeared under a cascade of rock. The rumbling went on for ten seconds-and it was quiet again, I was wrapped in silence and heat and light and sweet fresh air.

A little awed, I thought: I did it, I got out.

I knelt there with the sun hot on my back, breath rasping in my throat. Then I pulled back on my knees, saw the torn and filthy fronts of my shirt and trousers, a thin cut on my left forearm matted with dirt and dried blood, the broken-nailed, bruised fingers on both hands. Reaction set in; tremors shook my body, left me weak and nauseated. The ordeal in the mine shaft seemed to recede in my memory, as if it were a surreal dream, as if it had happened only within the spaces in my mind.

What if he's still out here somewhere?

The thought came with alarming suddenness, cementing reality. I pulled my head around and pawed at the sweat blurring my eyes, got them focused on my surroundings. But there was nobody in sight; the flat and the crumbling outbuildings were still shrouded in heavy stillness, my car gleamed with bright reflections where I had parked it.

Gone, long gone.

Who, damn it? Who?

Anger seeped into me, a good sharp purging fury that enabled me to move, to function. I got to my feet, swaying, but I was going to be able to walk all right, I would not fall down again. I went down the slope, feeding on the rage, using it to pull my thoughts into logical patterns. The sunlight faded, disappeared altogether for a moment as I crossed the flat in a stumbling run; the clouds I had seen massing above the high peaks had started to flow westward.

I dragged the car door open, slid onto the sun-heated Naugahyde. And sat there fidgeting, going over it, going over it, while I stared sightlessly through the windshield. It began to come together, as I had known inside the mine it would-slowly at first and then rapidly, all of it clicking into place like bits of colored tile in a mosaic.

I knew who he was then.

Oh God yes, I Knew who he was.

The back of my neck prickled; urgency made me reach out immediately to twist the key in the ignition. Into The Pines to call Cloudman? No, it had to be the camp, I had to know if he was there now. And if he was, I had to get Harry to help me put him under citizen's arrest. Not because it had become a personal thing, I could not let myself think that way; because he had killed two men and almost made me number three, and he was capable of anything at any minute-any damned thing at all. There was just no time to waste taking myself out of it and letting the authorities handle him.

I jammed the gear lever into drive, not looking at myself in the rear-view mirror, because I did not want to see what I looked like just yet, and spun the car into a turn and took it bouncing down the wagon trail to the county road.