But what about Daniel? No matter how much she turned it over in her head, she just couldn’t decide. It was one thing to promise Tom. Daniel was a whole other story. She didn’t know him well enough, and he was his own person. She also might be wrong. They had been virtually inseparable for two weeks and Daniel was sick, yes, but he was still Daniel. So what if . . .

“Stop,” she murmured. “You want to think about something? Think about finding a weapon.”

Okay, there were rocks, but what else? This little side-tunnel had timber supports. There must be nails she could pry free. How to dig them out was a problem. She thought about that. Her fingers played over Ellie’s Mickey Mouse watch and then the buckle. There was that little prongy thingamajig. Not very long, but it might work. What she really needed was something strong, made of metal . . .

Wait. Her hand went to her neck, and then she reeled out her silver whistle on its chain. She fingered the mouthpiece. It wasn’t exactly sharp, but the slight curve would help, and the whistle was strong enough to—

Her thoughts choked off at the crunch of boots. The darkness in the main tunnel, dead ahead, grayed—and then grew brighter. She pulled bolt upright, eyes wide, her body quivering like a cornered bunny’s. Oh God, this was trouble. Her heart catapulted into her throat. She knew because she recognized his smell. He was alone, too. No Slash, no Spider. None of his usual crew along at all, because he wouldn’t want to share. If she’d had any lingering doubts about just what he had in mind, her vision chose that moment to go a little muzzy, like a movie doing one of those queer little dissolves between one scene and the next—as the monster in her head came alive and flexed and shifted. Because like recognizes like.

Leopard.

74

“Hold up,” Weller hissed. Hooking an arm through the ladder, he dug out another rock and let it fall into the yawning darkness below.

Tom counted off the seconds. This time, the splash came when he got to six. “About two hundred feet.”

“Yeah.” Weller’s beam cut across the concrete below. Twenty feet down, a grated metal platform and set of stairs leapt into view. The platform fed into a wide bore, and Tom saw a glint of metal track at the lip. In case there was any doubt, h l and 540 were stenciled above the bore in dull yellow spray-paint, indicating that the haul level was five hundred and forty feet from the surface. “This is where we get off.”

“I thought you said it didn’t access the mine until further down.”

“Guess I was mistaken. Been a while and the map’s rough.”

Terrific. “Weller, we have to make it almost two hundred feet deeper, then work our way west to get under that big rock room. Can we do that from here?”

“Think so. Only we got another problem.”

Tom didn’t like the sound of that either. As they’d gotten deeper, the shaft’s condition had worsened, with concrete chunked off and bolts so loose they rattled. The shaft wasn’t uniformly smooth; lengths of corroding iron, thick insulated wires, and pipes ran along the sides. The rotting hulk of the original hoist’s support structure jutted here and there in broken metal fangs. Dark heaps of what looked like rat droppings but which Weller said was bat guano pilled from the struts and around the metal collars that supported the pipes at regular intervals. The air had changed, too, growing a little warmer and so moist Tom felt its fingers drag over his face.

The air also smelled, and not just of stagnant water. The stink was more like a rank, intermittent, very faint exhalation, as if the mine had a terminal case of morning breath.

Luke’s light speared down from three rungs above Tom’s head. “What is that? It’s like . . . rotten eggs.”

“Hydrogen sulfide. Swamp gas.” Weller paused, and when he spoke again, Tom heard the first hint of worry. “I shoulda thought of this. All this bat shit—it’s the perfect food. We’re only getting a little whiff now and then, but the gas is heavier than air. The further down we go, the more concentrated it’ll get. Then again, maybe not. Might just be isolated pockets here and there.”

“Will it hurt us?” Tom asked.

“Gets too thick? Oh yeah. Kill ya like cyanide.”

Great. “What else?”

“It, ah, explodes. Like soda under pressure? Only it also catches fire real easy. If a chamber breaks open when those charges go . . .”

We’ll be flash-fried. Fireballs traveled fast, eating oxygen and crisping everything in their path. If they had to shoot, the muzzle flash might spark an explosion, too. Tom chewed at his lower lip. “Will we know it if we get into trouble with the gas?”

He could hear Weller thinking about it. “Eyes and nose should burn, and the smell will get worse, and then it’ll change, get almost sweet. Other than that, I don’t know.”

“Do we go back?” Luke said.

Another long pause. “Look, I can’t guarantee, but . . . Luke, you want out, there’s no shame in that.”

“No,” Luke said, a little unsteadily and too quickly. “I’ll be okay. Besides, if there are three of us, it’ll go faster.”

“Well, remember I said we have another problem? I wasn’t talking about the gas. Look down at the ladder.”

They all did, and in the bright ball of their combined light, Tom saw what Weller meant.

Decades of corrosion had done their damage. The ladder simply ended, broken off like the peg of a rotten tooth. Between the break and the platform, there was a gap easily twenty feet wide, and it wasn’t a straight drop either. The platform was secured in a bolted bracket to the concrete and stuck out in a tongue, ending ten feet to the left of the break.

“Oh boy,” Luke breathed.

“Way I see it,” Weller said, pulling off his coil of two-inch rope, “one of us shimmies down, then swings over and ties off for the other two.”

Tom glanced up at Luke. “When was the last time you hung around a jungle gym?”

“How does ‘so long ago I don’t remember’ sound?” Luke said. “I just hope I don’t piss myself.”

“Remind me to tell you about swinging across a gap of fifty feet, thirty feet off the ground.”

“They make you do that in the Army?”

“Oh yeah. Then the smart guys figured out how to make a rope bridge.” He looked down to see Weller already tying off rope to several rungs above his head. “I can go first.”

“Better let me.” Weller gave the rope a final tug, then furled the coil to which he’d tied off another, thinner rope. “One less old fart to worry about if I don’t make it.”

“What’s the other rope for?” Luke asked.

“Watch and learn, boy.” Wrapping his hands around the rope, Weller got a good footlock, trapping the rope under his right boot and looping it over his left before easing off the ladder. The rope let out a squeal as the knot tightened with the added weight, and the iron squalled. There was the bounce and ping of rock against rock and then a distant splash as the dislodged concrete found the water. “Don’t come down until I’m across.”

Don’t worry about that. Tom’s breath hung in his chest as Weller inched down, but the old man clearly knew what he was doing. Getting up or down a rope wasn’t about arm strength; the legs did most of the work. Five feet before his rope played out, Weller tucked so his feet were nearly at the level of his chest.

“What’s he doing?” Luke asked.

“Grabbing the other rope.” Tom watched as Weller made a one-handed snatch. Then, still hanging by his free hand, Weller used his weight as a pendulum, folding at the hips and bucking. The rope complained: cree-cree, CREE-cree . . . The rope’s swing widened, and then Weller was sweeping over the platform: once, twice. On the third swing, he let go. His arc was perfect; the second rope unspooled behind, and he landed on bent knees with a dull bong, fell to his knees, then staggered to his feet.

“No sweat,” he said, but he sounded winded. “Hang on.” Weller unreeled the second rope, walked backward, then tied off the end to a platform support.

“Whoa.” Luke made an impressed sound. “He made a bridge.”

“Use your hands and feet,” Weller said. His voice echoed in the shaft. “It’s got enough give for a good lock. Just don’t look down.”

Easier said than done. Tom was sweating by the time he was midway, hugging the rope to his chest, nearly bent at the waist, feet firmly locked around the rope. He did exactly the wrong thing then, thinking about the water below and the drop—and felt cold sweat lather his face. His arms trembled, and he thought, I’m going to slip, and then I’ll fall—

“Tom,” Weller said, sharply. “Keep moving! Come on!”

That snapped him back. “Right,” he breathed, swallowing back a ball of fear. He kept his eyes focused on the rope, tried not to think how much further he had to go. He heard Weller scuffing over metal, and then the old man was moving alongside, bracing him up as Tom dropped onto the platform. “Thanks,” he said, gulping back air that tasted, very faintly, of scrambled eggs. “I froze.”

Weller clapped a hand to Tom’s shoulder. “Everyone freezes once in a while.”

“Why are we going uphill?” Luke whispered as they moved in a single file through the tunnel. “Don’t we need to go down?”

“Opening’s actually a little lower than the level you’ll be working,” Weller muttered. “But it’s easier to move skips—these big metal buckets—down instead of up.”

“But we’ll still end up below the Chuckies, right?” Tom asked. The tunnel was much smaller and tighter than he’d imagined. He’d had visions of expansive, soaring ceilings; instead, a network of wires and hoses ran only three feet overhead. He felt the weight of all that rock and earth pressing down.

He noticed something else. They weren’t walking on dry earth but splashing through puddles on the tracked floor. The air was very moist, almost humid, and he could feel and hear the dull patter of water as the ceiling wept onto their heads and shoulders. We’re below the water table, but there must be enough air pressure to keep the water from rising any further. Or this might only be an isolated pocket and there was water all around them. Not a comforting thought. Break through the wrong wall and they’d be caught in a flash flood.