Moon Rocks, page 16
“You know how to run that lift?” Lucas said. Then added, “Besides, I know the mine…I’m familiar with the layout down there.”
“Fine,” Nick said, turning from Lucas to Slade. “It’s settled. All three of us are going.”
Slade gave Nick a nod. He was still in. But he wasn’t thrilled about Lucas joining them. It would make it that much harder to execute his plan.
As he was thinking about the explosives, an empty duffle bag landed at his feet and he heard Nick say, “Fill that with C-4, detonators, and three bottles of oxygen.”
Slade couldn’t believe his ears. Hell, he couldn’t believe his luck. The idiot just sealed his own fate. It was all he could do not to laugh out loud. Sometimes life just offered up little gifts on a silver platter.
Slade bent, lifted the duffle bag, and looked at Nick. Pretending not to care about the explosives, he said, “Why the C-4? Why lug explosives down there?”
“Because that thing down there might still be alive.”
Hopefully, Slade thought to himself and then moved to where their gear was stacked and began to fill the pack with explosives.
Great minds think alike.
Chapter 43
“Hand me that adjustable wrench,” Lucas said, pointing to the rusted tool. He was standing on a fifty-gallon drum that had been cut in half, his head craned over the top of the lift, checking to make sure the winch was in working order.
Nick handed the wrench to Lucas, then turned and watched as Kylie, Molly, and Ray disappeared up the shaft on their way to the mine entrance.
Good, he thought to himself as he saw the light from their helmets disappear. It wouldn’t be long until they were safe and sound.
“We’re good to go,” Lucas said, hopping off of the barrel. Then he motioned for Nick and Slade to enter the lift. “Gentlemen.”
Last in, Lucas slid the door shut with a metallic clang, then double-checked the lock to make sure it was securely latched.
“Son of a bitch,” Slade shouted, gripping the side of the cage as it swayed back and forth.
Lucas moved to a Honda generator that was sitting beneath a primitive control panel with an up and down lever. The generator was wired to two truck batteries that sent power to the electric winch. Long ago, the batteries had lost their ability to hold a charge, so the generator had to be running for the lift to operate.
Lucas straddled the generator, gripped the pull cord, and said, “Okay, let’s see if this baby wants to start.”
Horrified, Slade stared at the fraying wires that ran from the batteries up to the rusted control panel. He glanced at Nick and gave him a ‘what the hell are we doing on this death trap?’ look.
Lucas yanked the pull cord. The engine turned over, sputtered, and stopped. He tightened his grip on the cord, yanked once, twice, and then, on the third pull, the engine roared to life.
At the same time, a floodlight mounted on top of the lift flashed and flickered. As the engine settled into a steady hum, it glowed brightly, flooding the lift and shaft with light.
Lucas patted the top of the generator. He gripped the control lever, looked at Nick and Slade, and said, “Next stop—the basement.”
He pushed the lever down. A high-pitched whine filled the air. The lift tilted and jerked. Slade yelled involuntarily when the lift dropped and said, “Shit!” And then they began to steadily descend.
The lift wobbled again as a kinked bit of cable ran through the winch, then settled back into a steady descent. With the light on top, the rickety little cage looked like some sort of makeshift submersible—something Jules Verne might have dreamt up, Nick thought to himself—as it dropped through the open darkness.
Slade hung on with both hands, trying not to look down. “Christ, is this thing safe?”
“I won’t lie to you,” Lucas said, giving Nick a wink, “the thing’s a deathtrap.” Then he pushed the lever all the way down, causing them to drop even faster.
* * * *
Four hundred feet below, in a pitch dark corner of the cavern, the creature slotted its arm into a fault in the wall, ignoring the strip of flesh that dangled from its mouth—the remainder of Atwood’s leg—then twisted violently, causing its dislocated shoulder to drop back into place with a loud pop.
The creature flexed its arm but froze when it heard a sound: the high-pitched whine of an electric motor.
It snapped its head up, eyes glowing, searching, trying to pinpoint the sound, trying to see what it was.
* * * *
“Look,” Kylie yelled as she, Molly, and Ray exited the access shaft. “Light!” And then they were all racing toward the mine entrance.
Kylie grabbed Molly’s hand, and the two of them followed Ray as they skirted around a large ore car and followed the tracks toward the light.
“We’re almost there,” Ray shouted, motioning to the conveyor belt, which led right up to the exit, and then out to the mounds of salt beyond.
A minute later, they burst out of the mine and into the sunlight, shedding gear, hugging each other, and drinking in the beautiful Texas sunshine, all of them thankful to be alive.
Chapter 44
“I’m not going.” Slade stood in the lift that was now resting safely on the cavern floor. The generator had been killed and the floodlight remained on, but the light was already dimming as the charge trickled out of the batteries. “That thing is probably still alive, still out there…waiting for us. It’s not worth the risk. I’m staying here. Besides, the chances of Atwood being alive—of him having survived that fall—are zero.”
Slade stepped out of the lift and continued, “Listen, why not seal this area? Why not seal the mine? Why not take the C-4, set the charges, ride the lift up, seal the mine, and trap the creature down here?” There, Slade thought to himself, that should do it. That should give me time to execute my plan. And I’ve even given them an out, a chance to join me.
Nick scoffed and shook his head. “Why am I not surprised? Why did you even come down here in the first place?”
Well, it sure as hell wasn’t to scrape Atwood’s remains off the rocks, Slade thought. “I’m sorry, Walker, but I’m not going. I’m not going to wander out there in the dark and take the chance of being that thing’s next meal.”
Nick shook his head and removed the two-way radio from his side; Lucas had the other one. He should’ve guessed Slade would fold, that he’d end up being a liability.
“Fine,” Nick said, pushing the radio at Slade. “Stay here. You see anything, you give us a call. If we find Atwood, we’ll let you know.” Then he added, “Think you can handle that?”
Relieved, Slade took the radio and nodded yes.
* * * *
“Best guess—Major Atwood ended up somewhere around here,” Lucas said, playing his light around the chamber’s floor, expecting to see Atwood’s crumpled body at any second.
It had taken Nick and Lucas about ten minutes to work their way from the lift back to the hole beneath the Ballroom chamber’s floor. Those had been ten of the most terrifying minutes of Nick’s life. Around every turn, past every slide of rocks, Nick expected to be grabbed by a claw and sucked into the darkness. In fact, the whole way back to the chamber, Nick kept glancing at Lucas, just to make sure he was still there.
Lucas seemed less distracted. He was a rock, a man on a mission with a ‘let’s get this shit over with’ attitude. Nick figured it was probably due to the fact that he had a 12-gauge shotgun cemented in his hands.
Shoulder to shoulder, they continued forward, both of them noticing the sudden flow of air as they passed beneath the opening above. Rubble from the blast was everywhere, slowing their progress. Lucas held out a hand. He was about to guide Nick around a slide of salt, and then they both saw it at the same time.
A light. A helmet lamp.
Major Atwood’s helmet lamp.
From their angle, it looked like Atwood was lying on his back, the beam of his light pointing straight up.
“Major!” Nick shouted as he and Lucas rushed forward, both of them moving across the ragged surface as fast as they dared.
Twenty feet from Atwood, they slowed, confused by what they were seeing. Atwood’s helmet was there, but there was no sign of the major.
They continued forward until they were standing directly over the light. Nick’s stomach rolled when he realized what they’d found.
Atwood’s body was gone, but his head remained, still strapped in the helmet. He’d been decapitated, his neck severed cleanly just below the chinstrap.
Atwood’s eyes looked up, staring but not seeing. His jaw hung open, frozen in a terror-filled scream.
Nick knelt, and as he reached over to shut Atwood’s eyes, Lucas’s radio buzzed and popped, and then Slade’s screaming voice filled the cavern.
“Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ! It’s coming! It’s here, right now. The creature, it’s—”
They heard a crash and then the metallic sound of the lift’s door opening. And then Slade was screaming again. “Jesus Christ! No!” And then the radio went dead.
“Son of a bitch,” Lucas said, staring at the lifeless radio.
Nick and Lucas exchanged looks. Nick surged to his feet, slapped Lucas on the back, and said, “Let’s go!”
* * * *
Back in the lift, Slade bolted the door and fell over the generator. With his chest heaving like he’d just run a sprint, he hauled on the pull cord. A moment later, the engine roared to life. As he reached for the control panel, the cage rocked violently and Slade was body slammed into the wire mesh.
“Fuck me!” Clawing up from the floor, Slade reached the control panel, and using the palm of his hand, he jammed the lever up as high as it would go.
The generator slowed, and a moment after that, a high-pitched whine sounded and the cage tilted, jumped off the ground, and began to rise.
Two feet…four feet…and just as the lift passed eight feet, it was slammed sideways. The lift slowed. The generator bogged and then died completely, and the winch ground to a stop.
The cavern was plunged into silence.
Slade held his breath, pressing himself against the wire mesh. For a second, he allowed himself to think that he’d made it, that he’d escaped. Then a loud hissing sound filled the air. The door of the lift was ripped off, and as Slade felt his bowels let go, the last thing he saw was a set of razor set of teeth closing around his screaming face.
Chapter 45
Nick and Lucas rounded a corner, but slowed when they got a visual on the lift. Both of them surprised to see it swaying ten feet above the ground.
“Looks like Slade tried to make a run for it,” Lucas whispered, panning his head left and right, searching for any sign of the alien beast.
Nick cupped his hands around his mouth and called toward the lift, “Slade? Slade, are you there?”
There was nothing—just the pitch-black darkness beyond the reach of their helmet lamps and the sound of dripping water.
“Slade,” Nick called out again, but there was still no response.
He and Lucas exchanged looks. Nick shrugged and said, “Well?”
“Yeah, yeah…let’s do it,” Lucas said, poking the shotgun toward the lift. “Let’s see if we can find Slade and then get the hell out of here.”
With their heads on a swivel, they approached the lift, the beams of their flashlights raking cave walls and playing across the cavern floor. Twenty feet out, they saw that the lift’s door had been torn off its track and now hung from the bottom of the cage.
What the hell?
A few more feet, and then they saw an arm. Slade’s arm. It dangled from the side of the lift, fingers still laced through the wire mesh. The humerus was exposed, and a line of blood dripped from the arm’s ragged end.
Jesus.
“Bad call staying with the lift,” Lucas said, staring at the arm.
Nick gave a nod. “Yeah.” As he examined the damaged door, his eyes locked on something beneath the lift.
Blood-slick rock.
And beyond that, a glistening trail where Slade had been dragged away by the creature. Nick traced the trail of blood with the beam of his flashlight, following it until it disappeared around a calcite formation. “Jesus…Jesus Christ. I guess we should—”
“Slade’s gone,” Lucas said. “There’s nothing we can do for him now.”
“Right,” Nick said after a long pause. Actually, he’d already come to that conclusion; he just needed to hear someone else say it.
There was something else beneath the lift. Off to one side, lying on the ground, were four blocks of C-4. They must’ve been knocked out of the cage during the attack.
Nick followed the beam of his light over to the explosives, retrieved one of the bricks of C-4, and held it up for Lucas to see.
“Is there a way to seal this chamber?”
Chapter 46
Fifteen minutes later, Nick and Lucas were in the condemned side of the Clayton mine—the same area where Lucas and Willie had been working just a few days earlier.
The electric line that Lucas and Willie had plumbed in was still hot, and Lucas was able to get a string of lights bulbs going.
They flickered, flashed, and then shone brightly, the bare bulbs illuminating the smooth alabaster walls of salt and massive support columns.
“Here…here…here…and here,” Lucas said, pointing at each spot as he paced off a forty-foot section of the mine’s wall. “The plan is to drill set holes every ten feet and then fill each hole with a block of C-4.”
Nick nodded and glanced over his shoulder, like he’d been doing every couple of minutes since they’d arrived. “Let’s do it. Let’s do this thing and go.”
Lucas retraced his steps back over to Nick and lifted an electric drill he’d positioned earlier. He placed it against the wall, squeezed the trigger, and buried the three-foot bit in one fluid movement. He widened the hole by working the drill up and down, then drew it out and handed it to Nick.
“We need three more like that. While you finish the holes, I’m going to wire up the column behind us. If we drop the wall and the column at the same time, we’ll bring the whole damn ceiling down. Nothing is going to get out of here.”
“What are we waiting for?” Nick muscled the drill down the wall, slammed the bit into the salt, and ran it into the wall, just like Lucas had done.
“All right, then.” Lucas smiled and collected the remaining C-4 and made his way over to the support column.
Nick widened the hole and removed the drill. He moved to the next spot, ran the drill up to the chuck, and, as the taste of salt bloomed in his mouth and dust dulled his helmet lamp, he heard Lucas scream, “Run!”
The sound of a shotgun blast rang in his ears.
Still clutching the drill, Nick cranked his head around just in time to see the shotgun cartwheel out and Lucas’s bowels spill onto the floor as his front opened like a Ziploc bag.
The creature towered over Lucas. Its claws flashed again. A second after that, Lucas’s head lolled, and he sank to the ground.
Holy God.
The creature was moving again, coming directly toward him, its eyes locked onto him.
Jesus Christ!
As Nick debated which way to run, the drill began to vibrate wildly in his hands.
Then his shirt was suddenly wet. And then the drill exploded out of the bore hole, ejected by a powerful jet of brine water. The handle slammed into his gut, taking him off his feet and throwing him onto his back.
Nick stared up at the blasting column of water, the roar in his ears like a jet taking off.
What the hell?
Right behind him, right through the roaring water, he thought he heard—no, he knew he heard—racing footsteps.
Then, like some Jacuzzi from hell, water began jetting from the other bore holes. Above the blasting water, Nick saw the wall fracture, and then he watched as a crack in the shape of a giant frown raced across the salt.
Son of a bitch, I’m going to drown. And as that thought flooded in, a shadow loomed over him.
Something flashed at the corner of his eye.
The crack above him widened into a fissure.
A hand fell toward him; a raptor’s claw about to seize its prey.
All at once, the jetting water stopped. It was as if someone had thrown a switch. The mine was plunged into silence.
A ripping, tearing sound filled his ears. Directly above him, the wall began to distort and then warp outwards, like a thousand serpents were writhing just beneath its surface.
Just as he was about to run, the wall exploded, and a house-sized chunk of salt swept over Nick and slammed into the creature. A hideous, otherworldly scream filled the air as the beast was carried across the chamber and pinned to the far wall.
Nick raised his head and then slammed it back down as another chunk of wall was blasted free, warping past him like the hull of a giant ship.
He realized he’d been holding his breath—he’d forgotten to breathe. He gulped a mouthful of air, filling his lungs, and as he exhaled, the floor beneath him rolled, and the cavern began to shake.
He heard a loud bang and a horrible rumbling sound.
Something else was coming.
Heart in his throat, Nick surged to his feet and ran for his life.
Twenty feet. Forty feet. When he was sixty feet from the wall, an avalanche of oil swept through the opening and into the chamber.
Surging. Flooding. Swirling. 250 million barrels of sweet crude crashed into the mine like a tidal wave, sending an unstoppable flood of oil sheeting across the floor.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s underground reservoir had been breached.
Sulfurous fumes filled Nick’s mouth and choked his lungs as oil splashed beneath his pounding boots.
Twisting, turning, and ducking, he blasted through the darkness, abandoning all caution, desperate to beat the oil and reach his only chance of escape: the lift.
“Fine,” Nick said, turning from Lucas to Slade. “It’s settled. All three of us are going.”
Slade gave Nick a nod. He was still in. But he wasn’t thrilled about Lucas joining them. It would make it that much harder to execute his plan.
As he was thinking about the explosives, an empty duffle bag landed at his feet and he heard Nick say, “Fill that with C-4, detonators, and three bottles of oxygen.”
Slade couldn’t believe his ears. Hell, he couldn’t believe his luck. The idiot just sealed his own fate. It was all he could do not to laugh out loud. Sometimes life just offered up little gifts on a silver platter.
Slade bent, lifted the duffle bag, and looked at Nick. Pretending not to care about the explosives, he said, “Why the C-4? Why lug explosives down there?”
“Because that thing down there might still be alive.”
Hopefully, Slade thought to himself and then moved to where their gear was stacked and began to fill the pack with explosives.
Great minds think alike.
Chapter 43
“Hand me that adjustable wrench,” Lucas said, pointing to the rusted tool. He was standing on a fifty-gallon drum that had been cut in half, his head craned over the top of the lift, checking to make sure the winch was in working order.
Nick handed the wrench to Lucas, then turned and watched as Kylie, Molly, and Ray disappeared up the shaft on their way to the mine entrance.
Good, he thought to himself as he saw the light from their helmets disappear. It wouldn’t be long until they were safe and sound.
“We’re good to go,” Lucas said, hopping off of the barrel. Then he motioned for Nick and Slade to enter the lift. “Gentlemen.”
Last in, Lucas slid the door shut with a metallic clang, then double-checked the lock to make sure it was securely latched.
“Son of a bitch,” Slade shouted, gripping the side of the cage as it swayed back and forth.
Lucas moved to a Honda generator that was sitting beneath a primitive control panel with an up and down lever. The generator was wired to two truck batteries that sent power to the electric winch. Long ago, the batteries had lost their ability to hold a charge, so the generator had to be running for the lift to operate.
Lucas straddled the generator, gripped the pull cord, and said, “Okay, let’s see if this baby wants to start.”
Horrified, Slade stared at the fraying wires that ran from the batteries up to the rusted control panel. He glanced at Nick and gave him a ‘what the hell are we doing on this death trap?’ look.
Lucas yanked the pull cord. The engine turned over, sputtered, and stopped. He tightened his grip on the cord, yanked once, twice, and then, on the third pull, the engine roared to life.
At the same time, a floodlight mounted on top of the lift flashed and flickered. As the engine settled into a steady hum, it glowed brightly, flooding the lift and shaft with light.
Lucas patted the top of the generator. He gripped the control lever, looked at Nick and Slade, and said, “Next stop—the basement.”
He pushed the lever down. A high-pitched whine filled the air. The lift tilted and jerked. Slade yelled involuntarily when the lift dropped and said, “Shit!” And then they began to steadily descend.
The lift wobbled again as a kinked bit of cable ran through the winch, then settled back into a steady descent. With the light on top, the rickety little cage looked like some sort of makeshift submersible—something Jules Verne might have dreamt up, Nick thought to himself—as it dropped through the open darkness.
Slade hung on with both hands, trying not to look down. “Christ, is this thing safe?”
“I won’t lie to you,” Lucas said, giving Nick a wink, “the thing’s a deathtrap.” Then he pushed the lever all the way down, causing them to drop even faster.
* * * *
Four hundred feet below, in a pitch dark corner of the cavern, the creature slotted its arm into a fault in the wall, ignoring the strip of flesh that dangled from its mouth—the remainder of Atwood’s leg—then twisted violently, causing its dislocated shoulder to drop back into place with a loud pop.
The creature flexed its arm but froze when it heard a sound: the high-pitched whine of an electric motor.
It snapped its head up, eyes glowing, searching, trying to pinpoint the sound, trying to see what it was.
* * * *
“Look,” Kylie yelled as she, Molly, and Ray exited the access shaft. “Light!” And then they were all racing toward the mine entrance.
Kylie grabbed Molly’s hand, and the two of them followed Ray as they skirted around a large ore car and followed the tracks toward the light.
“We’re almost there,” Ray shouted, motioning to the conveyor belt, which led right up to the exit, and then out to the mounds of salt beyond.
A minute later, they burst out of the mine and into the sunlight, shedding gear, hugging each other, and drinking in the beautiful Texas sunshine, all of them thankful to be alive.
Chapter 44
“I’m not going.” Slade stood in the lift that was now resting safely on the cavern floor. The generator had been killed and the floodlight remained on, but the light was already dimming as the charge trickled out of the batteries. “That thing is probably still alive, still out there…waiting for us. It’s not worth the risk. I’m staying here. Besides, the chances of Atwood being alive—of him having survived that fall—are zero.”
Slade stepped out of the lift and continued, “Listen, why not seal this area? Why not seal the mine? Why not take the C-4, set the charges, ride the lift up, seal the mine, and trap the creature down here?” There, Slade thought to himself, that should do it. That should give me time to execute my plan. And I’ve even given them an out, a chance to join me.
Nick scoffed and shook his head. “Why am I not surprised? Why did you even come down here in the first place?”
Well, it sure as hell wasn’t to scrape Atwood’s remains off the rocks, Slade thought. “I’m sorry, Walker, but I’m not going. I’m not going to wander out there in the dark and take the chance of being that thing’s next meal.”
Nick shook his head and removed the two-way radio from his side; Lucas had the other one. He should’ve guessed Slade would fold, that he’d end up being a liability.
“Fine,” Nick said, pushing the radio at Slade. “Stay here. You see anything, you give us a call. If we find Atwood, we’ll let you know.” Then he added, “Think you can handle that?”
Relieved, Slade took the radio and nodded yes.
* * * *
“Best guess—Major Atwood ended up somewhere around here,” Lucas said, playing his light around the chamber’s floor, expecting to see Atwood’s crumpled body at any second.
It had taken Nick and Lucas about ten minutes to work their way from the lift back to the hole beneath the Ballroom chamber’s floor. Those had been ten of the most terrifying minutes of Nick’s life. Around every turn, past every slide of rocks, Nick expected to be grabbed by a claw and sucked into the darkness. In fact, the whole way back to the chamber, Nick kept glancing at Lucas, just to make sure he was still there.
Lucas seemed less distracted. He was a rock, a man on a mission with a ‘let’s get this shit over with’ attitude. Nick figured it was probably due to the fact that he had a 12-gauge shotgun cemented in his hands.
Shoulder to shoulder, they continued forward, both of them noticing the sudden flow of air as they passed beneath the opening above. Rubble from the blast was everywhere, slowing their progress. Lucas held out a hand. He was about to guide Nick around a slide of salt, and then they both saw it at the same time.
A light. A helmet lamp.
Major Atwood’s helmet lamp.
From their angle, it looked like Atwood was lying on his back, the beam of his light pointing straight up.
“Major!” Nick shouted as he and Lucas rushed forward, both of them moving across the ragged surface as fast as they dared.
Twenty feet from Atwood, they slowed, confused by what they were seeing. Atwood’s helmet was there, but there was no sign of the major.
They continued forward until they were standing directly over the light. Nick’s stomach rolled when he realized what they’d found.
Atwood’s body was gone, but his head remained, still strapped in the helmet. He’d been decapitated, his neck severed cleanly just below the chinstrap.
Atwood’s eyes looked up, staring but not seeing. His jaw hung open, frozen in a terror-filled scream.
Nick knelt, and as he reached over to shut Atwood’s eyes, Lucas’s radio buzzed and popped, and then Slade’s screaming voice filled the cavern.
“Jesus Christ! Jesus Christ! It’s coming! It’s here, right now. The creature, it’s—”
They heard a crash and then the metallic sound of the lift’s door opening. And then Slade was screaming again. “Jesus Christ! No!” And then the radio went dead.
“Son of a bitch,” Lucas said, staring at the lifeless radio.
Nick and Lucas exchanged looks. Nick surged to his feet, slapped Lucas on the back, and said, “Let’s go!”
* * * *
Back in the lift, Slade bolted the door and fell over the generator. With his chest heaving like he’d just run a sprint, he hauled on the pull cord. A moment later, the engine roared to life. As he reached for the control panel, the cage rocked violently and Slade was body slammed into the wire mesh.
“Fuck me!” Clawing up from the floor, Slade reached the control panel, and using the palm of his hand, he jammed the lever up as high as it would go.
The generator slowed, and a moment after that, a high-pitched whine sounded and the cage tilted, jumped off the ground, and began to rise.
Two feet…four feet…and just as the lift passed eight feet, it was slammed sideways. The lift slowed. The generator bogged and then died completely, and the winch ground to a stop.
The cavern was plunged into silence.
Slade held his breath, pressing himself against the wire mesh. For a second, he allowed himself to think that he’d made it, that he’d escaped. Then a loud hissing sound filled the air. The door of the lift was ripped off, and as Slade felt his bowels let go, the last thing he saw was a set of razor set of teeth closing around his screaming face.
Chapter 45
Nick and Lucas rounded a corner, but slowed when they got a visual on the lift. Both of them surprised to see it swaying ten feet above the ground.
“Looks like Slade tried to make a run for it,” Lucas whispered, panning his head left and right, searching for any sign of the alien beast.
Nick cupped his hands around his mouth and called toward the lift, “Slade? Slade, are you there?”
There was nothing—just the pitch-black darkness beyond the reach of their helmet lamps and the sound of dripping water.
“Slade,” Nick called out again, but there was still no response.
He and Lucas exchanged looks. Nick shrugged and said, “Well?”
“Yeah, yeah…let’s do it,” Lucas said, poking the shotgun toward the lift. “Let’s see if we can find Slade and then get the hell out of here.”
With their heads on a swivel, they approached the lift, the beams of their flashlights raking cave walls and playing across the cavern floor. Twenty feet out, they saw that the lift’s door had been torn off its track and now hung from the bottom of the cage.
What the hell?
A few more feet, and then they saw an arm. Slade’s arm. It dangled from the side of the lift, fingers still laced through the wire mesh. The humerus was exposed, and a line of blood dripped from the arm’s ragged end.
Jesus.
“Bad call staying with the lift,” Lucas said, staring at the arm.
Nick gave a nod. “Yeah.” As he examined the damaged door, his eyes locked on something beneath the lift.
Blood-slick rock.
And beyond that, a glistening trail where Slade had been dragged away by the creature. Nick traced the trail of blood with the beam of his flashlight, following it until it disappeared around a calcite formation. “Jesus…Jesus Christ. I guess we should—”
“Slade’s gone,” Lucas said. “There’s nothing we can do for him now.”
“Right,” Nick said after a long pause. Actually, he’d already come to that conclusion; he just needed to hear someone else say it.
There was something else beneath the lift. Off to one side, lying on the ground, were four blocks of C-4. They must’ve been knocked out of the cage during the attack.
Nick followed the beam of his light over to the explosives, retrieved one of the bricks of C-4, and held it up for Lucas to see.
“Is there a way to seal this chamber?”
Chapter 46
Fifteen minutes later, Nick and Lucas were in the condemned side of the Clayton mine—the same area where Lucas and Willie had been working just a few days earlier.
The electric line that Lucas and Willie had plumbed in was still hot, and Lucas was able to get a string of lights bulbs going.
They flickered, flashed, and then shone brightly, the bare bulbs illuminating the smooth alabaster walls of salt and massive support columns.
“Here…here…here…and here,” Lucas said, pointing at each spot as he paced off a forty-foot section of the mine’s wall. “The plan is to drill set holes every ten feet and then fill each hole with a block of C-4.”
Nick nodded and glanced over his shoulder, like he’d been doing every couple of minutes since they’d arrived. “Let’s do it. Let’s do this thing and go.”
Lucas retraced his steps back over to Nick and lifted an electric drill he’d positioned earlier. He placed it against the wall, squeezed the trigger, and buried the three-foot bit in one fluid movement. He widened the hole by working the drill up and down, then drew it out and handed it to Nick.
“We need three more like that. While you finish the holes, I’m going to wire up the column behind us. If we drop the wall and the column at the same time, we’ll bring the whole damn ceiling down. Nothing is going to get out of here.”
“What are we waiting for?” Nick muscled the drill down the wall, slammed the bit into the salt, and ran it into the wall, just like Lucas had done.
“All right, then.” Lucas smiled and collected the remaining C-4 and made his way over to the support column.
Nick widened the hole and removed the drill. He moved to the next spot, ran the drill up to the chuck, and, as the taste of salt bloomed in his mouth and dust dulled his helmet lamp, he heard Lucas scream, “Run!”
The sound of a shotgun blast rang in his ears.
Still clutching the drill, Nick cranked his head around just in time to see the shotgun cartwheel out and Lucas’s bowels spill onto the floor as his front opened like a Ziploc bag.
The creature towered over Lucas. Its claws flashed again. A second after that, Lucas’s head lolled, and he sank to the ground.
Holy God.
The creature was moving again, coming directly toward him, its eyes locked onto him.
Jesus Christ!
As Nick debated which way to run, the drill began to vibrate wildly in his hands.
Then his shirt was suddenly wet. And then the drill exploded out of the bore hole, ejected by a powerful jet of brine water. The handle slammed into his gut, taking him off his feet and throwing him onto his back.
Nick stared up at the blasting column of water, the roar in his ears like a jet taking off.
What the hell?
Right behind him, right through the roaring water, he thought he heard—no, he knew he heard—racing footsteps.
Then, like some Jacuzzi from hell, water began jetting from the other bore holes. Above the blasting water, Nick saw the wall fracture, and then he watched as a crack in the shape of a giant frown raced across the salt.
Son of a bitch, I’m going to drown. And as that thought flooded in, a shadow loomed over him.
Something flashed at the corner of his eye.
The crack above him widened into a fissure.
A hand fell toward him; a raptor’s claw about to seize its prey.
All at once, the jetting water stopped. It was as if someone had thrown a switch. The mine was plunged into silence.
A ripping, tearing sound filled his ears. Directly above him, the wall began to distort and then warp outwards, like a thousand serpents were writhing just beneath its surface.
Just as he was about to run, the wall exploded, and a house-sized chunk of salt swept over Nick and slammed into the creature. A hideous, otherworldly scream filled the air as the beast was carried across the chamber and pinned to the far wall.
Nick raised his head and then slammed it back down as another chunk of wall was blasted free, warping past him like the hull of a giant ship.
He realized he’d been holding his breath—he’d forgotten to breathe. He gulped a mouthful of air, filling his lungs, and as he exhaled, the floor beneath him rolled, and the cavern began to shake.
He heard a loud bang and a horrible rumbling sound.
Something else was coming.
Heart in his throat, Nick surged to his feet and ran for his life.
Twenty feet. Forty feet. When he was sixty feet from the wall, an avalanche of oil swept through the opening and into the chamber.
Surging. Flooding. Swirling. 250 million barrels of sweet crude crashed into the mine like a tidal wave, sending an unstoppable flood of oil sheeting across the floor.
The Strategic Petroleum Reserve’s underground reservoir had been breached.
Sulfurous fumes filled Nick’s mouth and choked his lungs as oil splashed beneath his pounding boots.
Twisting, turning, and ducking, he blasted through the darkness, abandoning all caution, desperate to beat the oil and reach his only chance of escape: the lift.
