White Jade

Chapter Sixteen

Carter saw a dark object thrown into the tunnel and heard it clink against the rock floor and knew what it was. He jumped into the cart right on top of Selena, knocking her to the rusty floor, pressing her body under him.

The explosion blotted out thought. Shrapnel ricocheted off the sides of the cart. The entrance to the mine collapsed with a thunderous roar, shutting off the light.

Rumblings and falls deep within the mine faded away.

Total blackness.

Carter lay rigid, waiting for the ringing in his ears to stop.

She coughed. "You mind getting off me?"

He was pressing her down under him, the .45 still in his hand. He holstered it, climbed out of the cart in the dark.

"I can't see a damn thing." Selena coughed again.

"I can fix that."

Nick reached into his jacket pocket for the mini flash he always carried. He clicked it on.

Something crawled across the back of his hand.

A large, black spider.

He slapped it away, almost losing the flash. Something crunched under his foot.

He helped Selena out of the cart and tried not to think about spiders. She was covered with dirt and had scrapes on her face. Her silk designer blouse was ripped and stained with red dirt and rust, exposing most of her breast.

The entrance to the mine was blocked by tons of rock reaching to the ceiling. Thin streams of dirt trickled from the roof of the tunnel.

"We're not getting out that way," he said.

"The whole side of the hill must have come down."

He took out his phone. No signal.

"Is there another entrance?" He flicked the thin beam of the flash around the tunnel. Something moved at the edge of the light.

"I think so, but I don't know where it is. I saw a map of the mine once. There are three levels, with branches off the main tunnel and shafts hundreds of feet deep. Some parts are flooded, but I don't know where. A lot of tunnels were closed off when the mine began shutting down."

"We don't have much choice. You up for exploring?"

"You lead," she said.

The flash wasn't much. They followed the narrow beam along the rusted tracks, deeper into the mine, picking their way around rocks that had fallen from the roof. Nick lost sense of whether the tunnel was going straight or curving about. The air was stifling and hot and smelled of ancient water and older rock. The adrenaline rush was gone. He was tired and sore.

Thick wooden posts supported cracked beams holding up the roof of the tunnel. They looked weak and unstable. Webs hung from the corners where the beams and posts came together. Everywhere, spiders retreated from the light. There were pools of water on the floor and wet, dark stains on the walls, drips of water from the ceiling. The air was hot and still. Nick felt the tunnel walls closing in. He told himself it would be all right. All right. One thing at a time. He was sweating.

The tunnel split, one branch going right, the other straight ahead.

"Which way should we go?"

"Your guess is as good as mine. I never thought I'd need to know," said Selena.

"You think right, or straight ahead?"

"If the tunnel hasn't turned, the river must be somewhere to the right. I think the miners followed a vein toward the river. If they did, maybe it came out somewhere on the bank."

"Let's go right. If it did come out, it shouldn't be far."

They entered the right hand shaft. The tunnel supports were rotting and puddles of water lay everywhere. Something scurried away ahead.

"What was that?"

"I don't know. I didn't see anything."

"What's that squeaking sound?"

The passage curved and they came around the corner. Fifty feet ahead the tunnel ended in a fall of rock and a churning nest of swarming and squeaking rats. Hundreds of red eyes gleamed in the narrow light.

Carter froze. Selena gripped his arm, hard. The rats squirmed and wriggled, darting towards them and back again into the mass.

Neither said a word as they backed away. He felt Selena shudder. Back in the main shaft they passed a boarded passage on the left, then another on the right. They began to see more closed off entrances. A rat ran by his foot.

They came to the remains of a stable cut into the side of the tunnel, stalls still standing. A rope halter hung on a rusty nail.

"Why would they have a stable down here?"

It was the first thing Nick had said since the rats.

"For the mules. Mules hauled the carts."

Fifty feet past the stable the tunnel branched off in three directions. The tracks ended here in a decaying wooden triangle. The rusty head of a miner's pick lay in the dirt. Nick picked it up and put it in his jacket pocket.

"I don't like this," Selena said.

"Me neither." He shone the flashlight at the shaft on the right, then the others. There wasn't much difference between them. They all looked like highways to hell. He wet a finger and felt for a breath of air.

Nothing. Just a wet finger.

The flashlight beam was turning yellow. If they ran out of light they might never leave. He didn't like the idea of being in the dark with rats and spiders, but the batteries were fading.

"I'm going to turn off the light."

The blackness closed in. Nick remembered a cave in Afghanistan where he was almost buried alive, remembered his drunken father locking him in a dark closet, remembered a cellar in Colombia filled with the sewer odors of pain and death. He pushed the thoughts away, wished he had a drink or a cigarette or both.

Selena clenched his hand. In the black silence he heard sounds. Too many sounds. Water dripped somewhere. There was a soft, constant noise of dribbles of earth falling from the roof. The tunnels creaked and he heard wood groaning. Something scuttled close by.

Talking was strange. The relentless dark sucked words away like velvet as soon as they were spoken.

"I don't think we should go further in. Those tunnels go deeper, and they're lower. We'd have to crawl. The tracks end here and that's not good. If these passages went through, the miners would have run the tracks all the way to get the ore."

"Nick, I'm scared. What if we can't get out?"

"We can't think like that."

"Yes, but what if we can't?"

"We'll get out."

"Maybe one of the side entrances we passed back there can take us out."

"Yeah, but which one?"

"If we open them up, something could give us a clue. Those boards they used, they don't look strong. We can break them down to get in."

"That's good thinking." He smelled her fear, a faint, sour, coppery smell. Or maybe it was him.

He turned on the light. It was weaker.

Back up the tunnel they came to a side shaft and Selena held the light while Nick pulled boards away. He tossed a rock through the opening waiting for the sound. There was a pause, then a splash, a long way below.

"You heard that?"

"Yes."

"I'm not up for a swim. Let's keep going."

The next two were the same, vertical death traps dropping hundreds of feet into the flooded lower levels of the mine. They came to the next entrance. Carter played the light around it.

"There's something written there," Selena said.

Chinese characters were scribed into the rock over the entrance.

"Can you read it?"

"Yes. It says, 'Dreams'."

"Dreams?"

"That's what it says."

"Why would someone write 'dreams' on a mine shaft wall?"

"How would I know?"

He kicked in the boards. They stepped through into a low tunnel and followed it bent over. The light dimmed. After what seemed a long time the passage opened into a large chamber. The air was better, the ceiling high enough to stand upright.

The room was about twenty feet square. Against one wall, three low rectangles of wood bore old mattresses, straw spilling out where the rats had gnawed on the rotted fabric. Across the room a broken stool lay on its side by a rough wooden table. On the table was the stub of a candle in a holder. Selena walked over and picked it up, just as the light died.

Nick felt the old fear, the childhood demons of nameless, hideous monsters lurking in places without light. He took a deep breath, calmed himself. They weren't dead yet.

"Now all we need is a light," said Selena.

"You have a match?"

"I don't smoke."

"Neither do I."

"Smoking can kill you."

They started laughing hysterically.

When they had calmed down he said, "Stay where you are."

He crossed the room with hands stretched out until he banged up against one of the beds. From the tattered mattress he gathered straw and fabric and fumbled his way back to Selena. On the floor he felt around until he found a rock

He made a little pile of bedding, took his knife and struck it against the rock. After a few tries he got a spark. He chipped at the rock, showering sparks down on the straw. It caught into bright flame.

She handed him the candle and he lit it. The room came back into view, the smoke from the fire rising upward.

"Look." Selena pointed upward.

The smoke disappeared into a hole in the ceiling.

"That's where the air is coming from."

"At least we won't suffocate. Be nice if it were bigger."

Carter looked around. "What is this place?"

"I think it was an opium den. No one except Chinese would have come in here. The miners couldn't have read the sign over the entrance and wouldn't have cared anyway."

"That makes sense. That's why the beds. And the sign makes sense, too. There might be a way out. I don't think there'd only be one exit to a place like this."

He walked slowly around the room. On the back wall was the outline of another entrance, walled up with stone, the mortar crumbling and old. Nick took the pick head he'd found and began chipping away. Soon there was a pile of dust on the floor. A rock came free, then another. He stuck his hand through the opening and touched empty space.

He kept chipping and pulling out rocks until the entrance was big enough to climb through. They looked at each other.

"It's another tunnel," he said.

"What if it's a dead end?"

"We don't have a choice. Only one way to find out."

This tunnel was narrow but it was in good shape. At one point it dipped through water that came to their knees. Nick wondered if he was about to step into a deep, deep hole, but the floor rose again and they were back on dry ground. The candle was almost gone when they came to another blocked entrance, this one walled up with brick.

"That's a change."

"The mortar looks old. Maybe I can kick it down." He handed her the candle.

He gave it a good kick. Another.

"Now I know how Bruce Lee must have felt," he said.

"Let me try," Selena said. "Better get out of the way."

Nick stood to the side. Selena closed her eyes, took a deep breath and became very still. She opened her eyes and backed away, then let out a wild yell and launched herself flying, feet first. The whole wall blew out into the room on the other side.

Squinting against light, he stepped through into someone's basement. Selena was getting to her feet. He reached down to help her up.

"How the hell did you do that?"

"Nick." She gestured with her head.

A burly man with a gray beard stood openmouthed across the room in pajamas, eyes wide, pointing a twelve gauge shotgun at them.

Carter raised his hands. "How's it going?" he said.