Jenny could hear the loud wheeze that came with each of her own breaths, but she nodded anyway. Yes, she’d be able to run. She had no other alternative.
Stone handed two lights to her and took the remaining three for himself, stacking them carefully in the crook of his left arm and then drawing the 1911 with his free hand.
“Okay, stay behind me,” he said.
He took off down the main tunnel once again. Jenny kept pace with him, jogging along behind his broad muscled back.
They made it five yards before the first man appeared out of the mouth of the tunnel.
As the man blinked, trying to force his eyes to adjust to the sudden burst of light, Stone shot him in the right knee. The man lost his grip upon his gun and it fell from his grasp, beating him to the floor. He joined it on the saltcrete a moment later, screaming in pain and clutching his injured leg.
Stone popped off three more rounds in quick succession, firing blindly into the darkness of the tunnel as they raced past.
Only a few seconds passed before the remaining men returned fire from the blackness. But by that time, it was too late. She and Stone had already made it past the tunnel, and the shots pinged harmlessly off of the salt walls at her back.
Jenny’s lungs were practically screaming in protest now, but she ran on, clutching the precious lights tightly to her chest. She felt the dangerous precipice of an asthma attack nearing, but she knew she couldn’t stop running. If she did, she’d be putting both herself and Stone in the line of fire.
Stone must have heard her ragged breathing, because he urged her on. “Just a few more steps, Baby, and then we can get you back into the oxygen mask. You can make it.”
Jenny had no air to form a reply, so she just ran after him, trying to concentrate on the cadence of their feet upon the saltcrete, hoping that it would help her ignore the pain in her lungs.
It took less than a minute of running to reach the tram.
When they did, Jenny knew that there was no time to swap the masks and turn on the lights. The men had to be right behind them, and they’d have the advantage this time.
Black spots were swimming in her vision and her lungs felt like they were on fire, but she kept her legs pumping, heading for the passenger seat of the tram.
“Drive,” Jenny gasped. “I’ll take care… of the lights.”
Stone took one look at her face, and his expression changed to shock. “Jenny!”
She shook her head, trying to clear the black spots from her vision. She felt her grip upon the lights slipping as her fingers lost feeling. A slight pop, more feeling than sound, went off behind her eyes, and she realized that she wasn’t going to make it the last few steps to the tram. She was going to pass out.
She blinked at Stone, slowing her pace, trying to thrust the lights out to him before it was too late, but she failed. Her vision exploded into nothingness and she felt her legs turn to rubber beneath her. She was falling, but she didn’t feel herself hit the ground.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Jenny awoke to a world of intense brightness. Lightly pressurized air pushed deeply into her nostrils, and she struggled not to cough. Even in her waking state, she knew that coughing would only hurt her already burning lungs.
She forced open her eyelids, blinking against the glare, and found Stone’s face hovering over her. Her eyes felt gritty and full of salt dust, and she blinked again, trying to bring him into focus, but there was a bright nimbus of white light in the way. She finally realized that he was holding her flashlight in his hand, shining its bright beam onto her face.
Her thoughts felt muddled, as hazy as the dusty air that hung like a thick blanket in the air.
“Don’t ever scare me like that again, Jenny,” Stone muttered, right before he gathered her in a hug and crushed her against his chest, the flashlight’s beam bobbing upon the far wall as he gripped her tightly.
The bulky oxygen mask pressed against her face, gouging into her cheeks as he held her firmly against his chest, but she didn’t complain. His solid, well-muscled chest felt like heaven to her. A safe haven. A circle of warmth and security in a world full of danger. He kissed her neck and stroked her hair, and she leaned into his embrace, enjoying the solace he offered.
“I started to think that you wouldn’t wake back up. You’ve been out for an hour and a half,” Stone said. He released her slowly, then handed her the flashlight. She sat up a little, realizing that she had been lying on the seat of the tram, and shined the flashlight’s beam around. It cut through the blackness, illuminating small circular patches of their surroundings.
To her surprise, the beam of light fell upon the metal gate of a lift - a much smaller version of the one that had brought them down into the museum. The tram was parked a few yards away from it.
“You found it?” she asked unnecessarily, her mind still muzzy from unconsciousness.
“Yes, but we’ve got a couple of problems,” Stone said, sounding serious.
Jenny’s heart caught on a note of fear, and she immediately thought the worst. Had the others made it?
She quickly twisted around, shining the flashlight into the cars at the rear of the tram. Three UV lights brightened the darkness there. Their glowing pools of light directed onto the faces of the others.
Gilbert and Debbie shared one light between them, as did Cheryl and Paul. In the rear car, Alice had one light all to herself. All of them appeared to be unconscious. At least, she hoped they were only unconscious.
“They’re not dead, are they?” Jenny asked.
Stone shook his head. “No.”
“I broke the other two lights when I passed out?” Jenny asked.
“Yes,” Stone said, “But that’s not the problem.”
“Then what is?” Jenny had a feeling that she didn’t really want to hear his answer.
“This lift requires an operator’s key too. And, even if we can jerry-rig it to work without the key, it only holds four people. Plus, we’re almost out of oxygen,” Stone told her.
She turned the flashlight’s beam to shine upon his face. He was wearing the other oxygen mask.
Stone gestured toward his friends with one hand, “That’s why they’re unconscious. Not enough oxygen.”
Jenny’s heart stuttered in fear. Unconsciousness occurred right before death in situation of oxygen deprivation.
“We’ve got to get them out of here. Now!” Jenny struggled fully upright and climbed off the tram’s seat.
“There’s more,” Stone said as he helped her out of the tram. “Our oxygen tanks are almost empty too. We can swap them among the seven of us for a few minutes more, but that’s it.”
Cold dread pooled in Jenny’s stomach. “And the lift only holds four people?”
Stone reached over to turn on the tram’s headlights, and they illuminated a placard on the wall. He pointed to it.
“That says the lift is rated for five hundred pounds. That translates to four small people. It should hold you, Debbie, Cheryl and Alice with no problem.”
Jenny immediately realized what he was saying.
“No, Stone! I’m not leaving you down here with no oxygen.”
“Baby, it’s the only way. If you take both tanks, and swap them out between the four of you on the way up, you’ll all make it to the surface alive,” Stone’s voice was firm in the darkness.
“No, Stone,” Jenny said again, and this time her voice trembled with emotion. “That’s not happening.”
“We don’t have time to argue, Jenny. It’s the best solution. I’m not letting you die down here.”
Jenny shook her head, not caring if he could see the motion in the gloom or not. “And I’m not leaving without you. Besides, the point is moot anyway, because the lift doesn’t work without the key.”
“I’m hoping that I can fix that fairly quickly,” Stone said. “I need you to give each of the others a turn with your oxygen tank. Two minutes each.”
He turned and made his way to the sm
all lift, not giving her time to argue.
Jenny staggered over to Debbie, her balance still off from being unconscious for so long. She peeled off the mask and then strapped it onto the woman’s face, placing the oxygen cylinder at Debbie’s feet. She pulled her phone from her pocket and set the timer app for two minutes, then she quickly made her way to Stone’s side.
The lift was tiny compared to its larger counterpoint at the museum entrance. Stone’s muscled shoulders took up a good amount of the space inside as he hunched over the lift’s panel, fiddling with the key mechanism.
Jenny watched him for a moment, silently, then decided that she wouldn’t be able to help much with the panel. She stepped back out of the lift and used the flashlight to illuminate the small cavern.
She moved the beam back and forth across the far wall, and the light showed her a series of lockers. They were metal, and small, with slide-up handles on their front. Employee lockers. Rows and rows of them. And entire wall of them. They were stacked four high, and Jenny couldn’t imagine how anyone could put the top ones to good use, since they were fairly high up on the cavern wall, almost out of reach for a person of even above average height.
Jenny left Stone’s side and walked over to the stacked lockers, the flashlight’s beam bouncing with every step she took. Her legs felt like lead weights and her lungs strained for oxygen, but she managed to make it to the lockers without tripping, which she considered quite an accomplishment given the circumstances.
On the wall beside the lockers was a small metal electrical box. Inside, it held three toggle switches. They looked old-fashioned and out-dated, with slim metal switches centered inside small circular metal domes that were fastened to a thick metal plate underneath. They looked industrial, too. And fairly important.
Jenny reached forward and flipped one on, hoping that perhaps one of them might miraculously be the override for the lift.
Immediately, a bank of track lighting flared to life overhead. Jenny quickly flipped the other switches and light bloomed brightly in the small cavern, lighting up the dimness with a sharp blaze like the noon sun, just as the timer app on her phone began to buzz. Debbie’s time with the oxygen mask was up.
Jenny silenced the alarm and shoved the flashlight into her back pocket, surprised when she had to maneuver it into the denim beside the stun baton that she’d stuck in that pocket earlier. She’d forgotten about the stun baton.
She hurried back to Debbie’s side, removing the mask quickly and then strapping it onto Gilbert’s face in a rush. She set her timer again and then checked the tank’s gauge. Ten minutes of oxygen left.
Jenny’s heart galloped with fear. Ten minutes of precious, life-giving air left. And there wasn’t enough oxygen in the stagnant air of the cavern to survive for more than twenty minutes without the mask. If they didn’t find a way out soon, it wasn’t going to matter anymore.
She hurried back over to search the lockers, hoping that she’d get lucky and find the key inside one of them. Or, perhaps something useful that would help them jerry-rig the lift.
She searched frantically, going from one to the next as fast as she could, jerking open the metal lockers and pawing through the random contents inside without regard for the contents or for her unprotected hands, but she found nothing useful.
Her timer app buzzed again in her pocket, and she growled with frustration. Eight minutes of oxygen left in her tank, and no key yet!
She whirled quickly, heading back to the tram, but her foot caught on a large shape lying on the floor and she tripped. With her balance still impaired from unconsciousness, she pitched forward onto the ground, landing painfully on her side on the hard saltcrete. The flashlight clattered away, freed from her pocket by the violence of her landing, rattling noisily in the sepulchral silence of the cavern. It landed behind her, the beam now on, spinning wildly until it finally came to a stop, the beam of light now spotlighting the dark shape resting two feet beside her on the saltcrete.
A dead man’s face stared back at her. Eyes wide open and already filmed white with death. Darkly clotted streaks of dried blood stretched across his face, some of it still wet in the thick tracks that led from his mouth and nose. Blood crusted along a crosshatching of dark, fresh-looking tattoos that ran from temple to jaw line on the left side of his face. More blood pooled at his check where it rested against the saltcrete floor.
Jenny felt a scream form in her throat, but there wasn’t enough air in her lungs to bring it forth. Instead, she shuddered and then crawled slowly to her feet, bones aching, horror stabbing at her thoughts.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Cheryl’s skin was sallow and clammy, beginning to show signs of the lesions that had peppered the skin of the guards as they lay upon their cots in the dining cavern. The older woman’s upper lip was coated with tiny beads of sickly sweat and her breathing was shallow and almost nonexistent as Jenny strapped the mask over the Cheryl’s face.
“C’mon, Cheryl, hang on just a little bit longer,” Jenny urged as the woman drew in a small breath of oxygen-rich air from the mask.
Cheryl coughed weakly. Jenny own breath caught in her throat in fear. If Cheryl had another coughing fit, Jenny was sure that the woman wouldn’t survive. There was no more Albuterol in the inhaler to stop a coughing episode, and the woman looked too weak to survive even two or three minutes of coughing on her own.
Cheryl sucked in another breath of air slowly, but she didn’t cough again. With relief, Jenny set the timer app on her phone for three minutes, giving Cheryl an extra minute of oxygen in hopes that she’d recover slightly. Jenny decided that she herself would take only one minute worth of oxygen from the mask when it was her turn. Hopefully the extra minute would be enough to keep Cheryl alive.
With the timer set, Jenny returned to Stone’s side slowly, giving up on her search of the lockers. Dizziness made her stagger, and her legs felt as if they weighed a thousand pounds as she dragged herself over to the lift.
“Any progress?” she asked as she squeezed inside the lift next to him.
“None,” Stone said, voice tight with pent up frustration.
“I want you to know that I’m not leaving here without you. I’m not leaving you down here to die. We’ll go together or not at all,” Jenny told him, knowing that her own voice came out sounding strangled with emotion of another sort.
Stone sighed, the sound heavy with frustration. “Jenny, we can’t send Gilbert and the others up by themselves. This lift is much, much smaller than the main lift. It has far less power than the museum’s lift and it will take quite a bit more time to get to the surface. Someone will have to be inside the lift with them to swap the mask around. Otherwise, some of them might not be alive when the lift reaches the top. That means you’re going, and I’m staying.”
Jenny shook her head. As her mother used to say, only some hills were worth dying on, and this was one of those sorts of hills. “I won’t leave you behind. We’ll just have to overload the lift. Take everyone up at once.”
“That’s dangerous. The lift cables might break. Or, it might not have enough power to get all of us all of the way to the top, and we’d be stuck in the shaft.”
“And have you thought about what might be waiting for us on the surface? Perhaps the CDC will be up there, just waiting to shoot us all or send us right back down in the lift?. If that’s the case, I’m going to need your help when the lift gate opens at the top.”
“Hopefully that won’t happen. I’m betting that Dave will have done something after he received that message.” Stone said, fiddling at the key panel with nimble fingers.
“But it could happen. It could. And who knows if Dave received the message at all?” Jenny said.
“It could,” Stone agreed. “But it won’t.”
It was Jenny’s turn to sigh. “Stone, my life is not worth living without you. I’d rather stay down here and die than to face the rest of my life without you. I’m not going up this lift without you.”
“I got it!” Stone said, triumph in the tone of his voice.
Jenny’s phone timer app buzzed. Cheryl’s time with the oxygen was up.
There were now five minutes of oxygen left in the tank.
Jenny hurried over to the tram as fast as her shaky legs would carry her. Stone was close behind her.
When they reached Cheryl’s side, the woman was still breathing. Jenny was extremely grateful to see her chest rise and fall with each shallow breath. She liked the woman. Even if she hadn’t known her long, Jenny had been able to tell right away that the woman was all heart and compassion and old-fashioned charm.
“You take a turn on the mask for a while,” Stone said as he removed his mask. “I’ll swap with Paul.”
“But what about Alice? How long has it been since she’s had a turn?” Jenny asked.
“She was the last person who had a turn before you woke up. She should be good for another two minutes.”
Jenny nodded, “And how many minutes do you have left on your tank?”
Stone bent to check the gauge. “Three minutes.”
Jenny’s heart skipped a beat.
With both of their tanks combined, they had about a minute and eight seconds of oxygen left for each of them. She hoped it would be enough.
“We need to get them into the lift,” Stone said. “I’ll drive the tram up as close as I can to the lift so we don’t have to move them far.”
Jenny nodded.
They both ignored the silent question hanging in the stagnant air. Who was going and who was staying below?
Jenny stepped back as Stone started the tram and expertly maneuvered the unwieldy vehicle until it was right next to the lift’s entrance.
They moved Cheryl to the lift first, propping the elderly lady up in the back left corner of the lift. The poor woman’s eyelids didn’t even twitch as her body was moved.
Deep Down (Sam Stone Book 1) Page 14