The Becoming - a novella (2 page)

Karl crawled out
of Alpha Seven and back to his cart. He wondered how powerful the blast of
compressed air would have been had he not been standing a few feet inside a
ninety degree offshoot of the major mining artery. He grasped the side of the
heavy iron cart and pulled himself to his feet, peering in the direction of the
explosion.

A flickering
yellow glow in the distance seemed to indicate the explosion had occurred not
far from where Karl was standing, and that was bad. Smoke and gases would soon
be billowing through the tunnel, threatening his life.

Metal bulkheads
had been constructed at irregular intervals throughout every shaft, with the
intention of giving miners a shot at surviving the exact scenario now playing
out. Every man working the mines had been taught the same thing in the event of
an underground fire—make your way to a bulkhead between you and the fire as
soon as possible and secure it.

The theory was
that with miners on either side of the blaze closing their bulkheads, the
spread of the fire would be limited, accomplishing two things: a chance at
survival for as many workers as possible, and the limitation of the blaze to
one stretch of tunnel, making it easier to extinguish.

That was the
theory. Karl had never had occasion to test it, because he had never been
caught in a mine fire before. But he had no earthly idea what else to do, so he
fell back on his training. He sprinted toward the source of the explosion, trying
to recall how far away the nearest bulkhead might be and wondering whether he
had any chance of reaching it before the noxious smoke and gases made their way
through the tunnel and killed him.

He panted through
his open mouth as he ran. Was it his imagination or was it getting harder to
breathe? He wasn’t sure. He kept going. He rounded a gentle bend in the mine
shaft and on the other side the air felt hotter, stifling even. The hint of yellow
he had seen far off down the tunnel immediately following the explosion became
much brighter and more pronounced and he knew he was running out of time. He
was sweating profusely; the air was stagnant and smelled vaguely of chemicals.

And then he saw it.
The rusted iron frame of a bulkhead. His savior.

He ran to the
frame on the right side of the tunnel and reached up almost to the ceiling,
where a large hook had been threaded through a hole in the metal bulkhead. Karl
anchored the bulkhead door with his left hand while yanking on the hook with
his right. Nothing happened. The pieces appeared to have rusted together.

Karl wondered how
long it had been since anyone had tested the damned bulkhead doors and cursed
between panting breaths. He pulled again, and again nothing happened. He hurried
to the opposite side of the tunnel and tried that door. It lifted free of the
hook easily and swung down into the shaft, filling the left side of the tunnel
and accomplishing absolutely nothing unless Karl could lower the other door,
blocking the entire shaft.

He returned to the
right side of the tunnel. Karl Meyer had never been a religious man, but
suddenly it seemed critically important he pass along a message to God, just in
case He happened to be listening.
Get me out of this,
he thought.
Please,
get me out of this,
and he realized he had nothing else to say. He chuckled
bitterly and pulled on the rusted fixture and once again it didn’t budge.
Thanks,
he transmitted to God, who was clearly busy with other things, and
tittered.

The first tendrils
of black smoke began floating down the inside of the tunnel, up near the
ceiling; Karl could see them even in the insufficient lighting provided by the cheap
bastards running the Tonopah Mining Company. He tried to guess how much time he
had left and couldn’t. He opened his right hand as if to slap someone and
reached up and used his arm as a battering ram in a desperate attempt to loosen
the frozen bulkhead door. He smashed his hand into the door and felt his wrist
pop and screamed in fear and frustration and pain.

And he felt the
door move.

He steeled himself
against the pain he knew was coming and smacked the door again with his injured
arm, and this time it pulled free of the hook with a squeal of protest. Pain
exploded in his arm, zig-zagging from his wrist all the way to his elbow. Karl
ignored it. He lifted the door free of the hook with his good hand and lowered
it down across the tunnel where it swung snugly into place against its partner.

Karl latched the
doors together and dropped to one knee to catch his breath. He was shaking from
pain and exertion and, he knew, terror. He closed his eyes and counted to one
hundred and gradually his breathing returned to something approaching normal.
The tunnel had grown noticeably darker with the bulkhead doors blocking the
light from the mine fire, but when he opened his eyes, the first thing Karl
noticed was a sliver of yellow leaking through each side of the shaft around
the outside of the iron frame. Either the frame had bowed inward over the decades
or the walls of the mine shaft had slowly crumbled away.

Karl didn’t know
which was the case and didn’t care. The fact of the matter was if light could
penetrate the bulkhead, so could poisonous gases. The temperature inside the
tunnel had dropped with the big metal doors closed, but he noticed the chemical
odor had not disappeared. Not entirely. Karl squinted upward and could make out
the shadowy impression of black smoke tendrils still hovering just below the
ceiling like tiny storm clouds.

He needed to move
deeper into the mine to escape the toxic fumes. The longer the fire burned out
of control—and he had no way of knowing how serious it was and thus how long it
might burn—the more dangerous it would be to stay here at the bulkhead. He
turned and began picking his way back toward his mine car. His plan was to
retrace his steps to the junction of the main tunnel and Alpha Seven, where he
had been standing when the explosion occurred, and then continue past it,
moving deeper into the earth. Eventually he would meet up with other trapped
miners working the two-to-midnight shift. They could gather together and share
warmth and light while awaiting rescue.

He was surprised
the electric lamps Tonopah Mining had strung along the main tunnel continued to
burn. They flickered constantly and failed on a regular basis, so the fact that
he still had light by which to navigate the tunnels under these conditions was
at least something to be thankful for.

Karl crunched
slowly along the hard-packed dirt floor of the deserted tunnel. He hadn’t
realized until just now how far he ran right after the explosion. At the time
it had felt like a few seconds, but Karl figured he must have sprinted for at
least a minute before finding and closing the bulkhead doors. He took his time
now, walking slowly, cradling his injured arm. There was no reason to hurry;
rescue certainly wouldn’t come for hours, maybe not for days. The timing all
depended upon how badly the fire was burning and how much damage had occurred.

It would be nice
to have some company to wait with, though. Maybe someone would be able to
fashion a crude sling for his arm, which throbbed steadily and had begun to
swell, turning an ominous shade of purple. Karl finally reached his empty
mining car and walked straight past it. He glanced down into the darkness of Alpha
Seven and shuddered, thinking about the bizarre incident with the two rocks
just before the explosion. What the hell had that been all about?

He picked up his
pace. He wanted some company and he wanted to get past Alpha Seven.

***

Karl leaned
against the closed bulkhead door and sighed. He hadn’t had to walk very far
beyond his mining cart before encountering the next bulkhead frame. It was a
testament to just how frazzled he felt that it hadn’t occurred to him the door
would be closed. Undoubtedly the men working beyond this door had heard the
explosion just as he did and had rushed to close the bulkhead closest to them,
just as he had.

He wondered how
many miners were sitting on the other side of the thick door and cursed his
luck. What were the odds he would be the
only
man working in the length
of tunnel between two bulkhead frames at the time of the explosion? He began
wandering back toward his cart for no particular reason, walking without any
real destination in mind. He supposed he would grab his cart and walk it back
here, as far from the fire and the potentially deadly fumes as possible.

And that was when
the lights went out.

Karl froze in his
tracks.
Dammit,
he thought.
Just when you think things can’t get any
worse.
Losing the lights was normally no big deal; it happened practically
every day with the cheap wiring and flimsy incandescent bulbs purchased in bulk
by the Tonopah Mining Company. Every worker carried a miner’s light clipped to
his belt for exactly this possibility, and Karl unclipped his from his belt. He
prepared to light it.

Then he thought
about the explosion, and the fire burning somewhere on the other side of the
closed bulkhead doors in the main shaft. The miner’s light consisted of a
hand-held canister burning an open flame fed by compressed gas.

Gas.

An open flame.

An improperly
sealed bulkhead frame with potentially deadly flammable gases seeping through.

Karl gripped his
miner’s light tightly, weighing the desire—the
need,
really—for blessed
light against the possibility of blowing himself to kingdom come. He thought
about Alpha Seven. About rocks flying out of the darkness. About the potential
for injury if he were to be struck in the head by one of them. And, of course,
about what he knew was the real question: Where in the hell had the rocks come
from? They hadn’t fallen from the ceiling and they certainly hadn’t launched
themselves
at his head.

The darkness was
complete, all-encompassing. Karl realized he was shaking, breathing heavily,
sweating like he had just run five miles. He felt the inky blackness closing in
around him, a thick blanket suffocating him with its mass. He couldn’t breathe.
He needed to see. Now. Risks be damned.

He lit a match
with shaking hands, wondering whether he would feel anything when the deadly
gases ignited around him, setting his body ablaze and burning him alive. The tip
of the match flared and when nothing happened, Karl was so relieved to still be
alive he almost forgot to set the tip against his miner’s light.

He turned the
thumb screw and heard the barely perceptible hiss of the pressurized gas and
relaxed—a bit—as the reassuring yellow glow of the lamp beat back the darkness.
Of course, the gas inside the canister would not last forever, and when it was
used up, the flame in the lamp would extinguish and Karl would then truly be
thrust into darkness, one which would be unrelenting until power was restored
to the electric lights inside the tunnels.

It was not a
comforting thought. But Karl pushed that uneasy feeling to the back of his
mind, at least for now. He could see again and even though he knew he would
eventually need to conserve the light, he wasn’t about to turn it off yet.

He looked around,
the mine shaft appearing somehow even more alien than usual. The light from his
miner’s lamp seemed puny and insubstantial against the encroaching darkness,
and the mine shaft—gloomy and dank even under normal circumstances—seemed
sinister, filled with evil intent. Shadows loomed, writhing just out of reach
of the guttering light.
Jesus, get ahold of yourself.

Karl tried to
remember what the hell he had been doing when the lights went out. The cart. He
had been going to retrieve his mining cart; that was it. Suddenly, it seemed
much less important than before. It wasn’t like he had a stash of supplies stored
inside the damned thing to help him get through the next few hours or days.

Plus, it was
sitting right at the junction of Alpha Seven.

Where the rocks
had come from.

Where it was supposedly
haunted.

And Karl Meyer
didn’t believe in ghosts. No sir, he most certainly did not. But rocks didn’t
fly through the air by themselves and they hadn’t been thrown by some idiot
miner playing a practical joke. No one would stay hidden in the darkness of
Alpha Seven after an explosion inside the mine. No one.

So he made the
decision to forget about the stupid cart, at least for now. He would retreat to
the bulkhead as far away from the fire—and from Alpha Seven—as possible. There
was a problem with his new plan, though, and the way Karl Meyer saw it, it was
a major problem, maybe a life-and-death problem. He could smell the metallic chemical
odor, the one he had first noticed as he struggled with the rusted bulkhead
door, and it was getting noticeably stronger. Clearly more potentially toxic
fumes and dangerous chemicals were seeping through the defective bulkhead doors.

Karl began to
doubt the wisdom of returning to the bulkhead at the far end of the tunnel. What
would be the point? If the gag-inducing poisonous fumes had already traveled this
far along the main tunnel, how long would it take them to arrive at the rear
bulkhead doors?

The answer, of
course, was not long at all; in fact they were probably already gathering back
there, invisible and deadly. The obvious solution would be to go pound on the
doors until the miners trapped on the other side opened them for just a moment
and let him in. But that was impossible. The doors had been designed to remain
locked once they had been closed. They could not be opened, no matter how much
the men might like to do so, until a management representative arrived with a
special key after the fire had been contained.

The air in the
shaft felt warmer, fetid, much like it had at the first bulkhead before Karl
had managed to close the doors. Breathing was becoming more difficult as the air
quality deteriorated. The urge to gag and cough threatened to overwhelm him. He
began to feel sick, lightheaded, like he might throw up at any moment.