Code 61

THIRTY-TWO

Thursday, October 12, 2000

05:28

We pulled the lever on the electrical box, and the mechanism immediately started to rumble and grind. Not too loud, though. Great.

The cab took about a minute to crawl its way to the top, and when I saw it I wasn't so damned sure it was a good idea to get into the rickety thing. It was old, rusty, riveted iron bands holding old, rotting wood together. Top, sides, and floor. No door. To give you some idea about the cramped quarters, once we were jammed in, Byng was able to easily reach out and reverse the lever on the junction box. That started us rumbling and grinding toward the bottom of the shaft. There was no light in the thing, either. That was just as well, as we were going to have to dark-adapt as quickly as we could. But I could almost feel damp limestone running by about six inches from my face. I guess you just don't appreciate elevator doors until you don't have them.

It was noticeably cold when we ground to a halt at the bottom of the shaft. Cold, but not as damp as I'd expected. That was a plus.

But it damned sure was dark. There was a faint glimmer of yellowish light, though, off to the right. One point for Toby.

Byng put his hand over his flashlight, and just opened a small crack between his fingers to let a thin beam play over the wall nearest us. His hand glowed red over the lens. Spooky. He found a companion junction box, and pulled the lever down. The elevator car started its labored climb back to the top.

We moved toward the faint yellow light. The surface underfoot was silica sand, packed down into a pretty smooth surface by lots and lots of traffic. Silica sand is about as fine as table salt, or finer. It packs well, and doesn't impede movement the way beach sand would. It's quiet to walk on, too.

We'd gone about thirty feet, slowly, when the motor stopped, the elevator having reached the top. It was the first opportunity we'd had to actually listen for any sounds in the mine, and the faint strains of some music reached us.

“Music,” said Byng.

“Umm,” I said. “From where?” We couldn't really tell. “Close one eye,” I said to him. “I'm turning on a flashlight.”

I followed my own advice, which would enable me to have one eye that had begun to adapt to the dark while I used the other one to follow the beam around our area.

It helped get our bearings, and it also gave us some sense of the size of the place.

We were standing in a chamber about thirty feet high, by about sixty feet square. There was an enormous pillar just to our left, that seemed the same size as our chamber. Past it, my light reflected off the far wall of an adjacent chamber and pillar. That was about 180 feet, and it appeared to just keep going on and on, although the light was damned faint that far off.

Ahead of us was a similar arrangement, and to our right, the pillar-chamber sequence seemed to continue for as far as the beam would reach.

“Big place,” I said, quietly.

“Goes for several miles,” whispered Byng, “north and south. Only about three chambers deep, though. Maybe four, I hear. In places.”

We were in an older part, for sure. The walls and ceiling were covered with little troughs and gouges, made by hand-wielded picks.

I put my hand over the light, letting a small beam escape. I found that, while I could see fairly well out of the eye I'd closed, the red-yellow afterglow in the other eye was very bothersome. Not such a good idea, after all. The darkness was just too complete.

It was still very quiet, and I was beginning to wonder if the elevator had broken, leaving Borman and Sally stuck on top. Even as I was wondering about it, the electric motor started up.

“Sally and Borman,” said Byng.

The four of us assembled, and I came up with a plan. I decided to move toward the light, and see what we found.

“Quite a plan,” whispered Byng, his amusement evident in his voice.

“This isn't exactly D-Day,” I said.

“What's that smell?” whispered Byng.

“What smell?” I really didn't smell anything out of the ordinary at all.

“Reminds me of an Italian restaurant,” said Byng.

“Ah,” I said softly. “That's Sally.”

“What?”

“I've got some fuckin' garlic,” she hissed. “All right?”

Byng cleared his throat. “Yeah. Sure.”

We moved toward the light, and the symphonic music got increasingly louder as we went. The lighted chamber turned out to be at right angles to the right of the one directly ahead of us. Maybe I just hadn't understood what Toby meant.

We crept along one of the enormous pillars, attempting to stay in the dark as long as we could. We paused, squatting or kneeling down, at the entrance to the lighted chamber.

Two overhead fluorescent units, of the type you'd find in a home workshop, suspended about twenty feet off the floor, lighted that entire chamber. The light was dim, but not as bad as it could have been, given the vast area they were lighting. It was certainly good enough to let us see the furnishings.

Along the walls were large, predominantly reddish, Oriental-style carpets, hanging from lengths of iron pipe that were wired into rings about fifteen feet off the floor. The hangings were around all three sides of the chamber that were visible to us, and it looked to me as if they were hung across the entrances to other chambers on all three sides.

The floor was covered with new wooden planking that peaked out from under more carpeting that covered most of the floor area of the chamber. The ceiling was formed from transparent plastic drop cloth that was suspended from the iron pipe that supported the wall hangings.

“Lot of carpet, there,” said Sally.

There certainly was. Lots of planking, too.

On the floor were several overstuffed chairs, in two clusters, between which was set a long dining table complete with chairs and a large china cabinet that stood against a wall. The chamber was divided by an enormous breakfront, a good thirty feet long and about eight feet high. Hanging carpets at each end made it an effective wall, splitting the chamber in two.

“That's where that went,” murmured Byng.

“What?”

“That long thing. That was in that hotel, the Larabee, that was torn down about ten years ago.”

Ah. Sure. It had been behind the hotel bar, loaded with liquor bottles and glasses. I'd seen it at more than one fight call.

“That sure as hell didn't come down that little elevator,” said Borman.

Good point. That implied fairly easy access to the main entrance.

“I thought Toby said it was beautiful,” said Byng.

“Well,” I whispered, “it was dark, and he was probably stoned.”

The main point, though, was that there was nobody home. At least, not in this half of the chamber. The music was louder in here, as well. Almost too loud.

“Where is he?” asked Sally, underscoring the point.

“Best bet,” I said, very quietly, “is the other half of the chamber.”

It looked as though there were two logical paths to whatever lay behind that looming old breakfront, one around each end.

“Two around the left, two the right,” I said. “Be fast, but don't make any noise.”

“Be vewy, vewy quiet,” said Sally. “We are hunting wampires.”

We all smiled at that. It helped.

Byng and I went right, Sally and Borman left. We crossed the chamber by moving as close as possible to the walls, skirting the furnishings in the middle. Byng and I reached our end of the breakfront first.

Gun in hand, I took a deep breath, gently moved the edge of the hanging carpet aside, and stepped through.