by Finn Bell
“Ok, seeing as we’re a tad beyond the police manual, I say as of now this is a democracy of two and majority vote rules. First choice: do we wait here or try to dig our way out?” I ask James, briefly looking back at the slip.
“It’s risky, even if we don’t use that explosive,” James says. “We’ve got no tools and nothing to prop and shore up the slip with. I don’t know a lot about mines but my grandfather told us stories and I’ve seen a few mines like this near Lawrence. It’s old and those supports look weak. That slip – the part that’s blocking the tunnel – I think that’s what’s holding up everything above it. If we try to dig through it more might come down on top of us. I think it depends how much of it is soil and how much of it is big rocks. It might be too heavy for us to move in any case. If there’s enough large rocks holding things up then maybe we can clear away soil and find a gap big enough to fit through, but I don’t know. And if it goes wrong it could all come down. I don’t want to stay in here but maybe it’s safer to wait for help.”
“Agreed. I don’t like it but I know help will come,” I say, thinking that I also don’t know if I can stand the pain for that long. It feels like it’s already starting to build as the adrenaline wears off.
“Second choice: what do we do about Remu? I don’t like the idea of sitting here waiting for him to come at us,” I say.
“I know. And we’ll have to turn off the light soon, ration ourselves,” James says, looking down at the lamp. “That will mean waiting here in the dark, but what else can we do? I know you shot him. Maybe he’s dead. You’re injured Nick, and I don’t know if I could shoot him. And he’s bigger than me, stronger.”
“Ok, first things first then,” I say, thinking I can’t put it off any longer. “You stand guard while I see about making my insides less woody.”
I shift position and use the light on my cell phone to look at the piece of wood sticking out of my side. It’s thick, about fist sized and the wound is low, in the soft tissue about halfway between my ribs and hip. Please god let it taper, I think. If something that size is inside me then I’m dead. I had intended to open my clothes to look at the wound first but now realise that of course it’s gone straight through all the layers, effectively pinning them to me, so that’s not an option. There’s dark blood staining a slick mess of mud all the way around it.
“Do you think it’s wise to pull it out? What if it hurts you more?” James says, briefly looking down at the wound before turning back and guarding the darkness again.
“I don’t know what’s best to be honest,” I say, although that’s a lie. Our first aid training would say to leave it in there while I wait for help. But our first aid training didn’t cover scenarios where you’re stuck in a mine for maybe half a day with a pissed-off gangster you’ve just shot, so I’m thinking maybe there’s some wiggle room. And I know I can’t stand up with this thing in me and I’ve got things to do.
“I’m going to be wildly optimistic and try to pull it out, ok James?” I say, to which James nods uncertainly.
“If I pass out or something goes wrong that’s ok. You take the guns and you take the lights. Help’s going to come. What you need to do if that happens is to leave me here and you move further back to the slip. Put as many things between you and Remu as you can. We good?” I ask.
“Yes,” James says tentatively, but when he looks back at me again he seems terrified.
“Eyes to the front,” I remind and he looks away again.
Ok, I think, it’s just like pulling off a band-aid, nothing to it. I carefully grip the wood with both hands. Once you start you just have to keep going. For a moment my treacherous brain flashes to a thought of Maria and I can’t help wondering if this is the last time I’ll get to think of her. Then I push the thought aside and get my trembling hands going.
My eyes snap shut and I start screaming the exact same moment I start pulling, things my body does entirely of its own volition. The pain is beyond anything I’ve ever felt and seems to instantly fill up my entire world. It feels like I’m pulling half a tree out of me but when I force my eyes open to look down I see that I’ve only managed to pull it less than a hand’s breadth. It takes all my will power to keep going, my scream rapidly fading into a silent, agonised exhalation.
Then there’s an abrupt change; the pain immediately falls away and I’m filled with blessed relief as it slips free of me. I tiredly hold up the dripping piece of wood in triumph, seeing that what punctured me was only a shard spearing out from the larger piece of wood in my grip, about as thick as my thumb, rapidly tapering to a sharp point, no longer than a few inches. That wasn’t so bad you big sissy, I think as I hear myself say, “Fuck you, you fucking fucker.”
That about captures the sentiment, I think.
Then pass out.
* * *
THE FOUR MEN IN THE DARK
When I come to James is again hovering over me, his voice insistent. “—you hear me. Are you ok? Nick? Nick?”
“I’m ok James. Take it easy,” I say tiredly. “Just resting my eyes for a bit.”
“You’ve been unconscious for minutes,” James says, sagging with relief.
“Well, that could have been worse,” I say, looking down at the wooden shard still clutched in my trembling hand. When I inspect the wound it looks small, out of proportion to how much pain it caused me. It’s coin sized and it’s not bleeding much now, just sort of oozing dark blood when I touch it.
My mind blank from the pain I just went through, I watch wordlessly as James makes a bandage for me out of his own trouser leg. He ends up having to use the sharp end of the bloody shard that came out of me to cut and tear the fabric. When he’s done, with his help I manage to get all the way to my feet. It hurts but I can stand. I can move. I feel like me again.
“Time to find Remu,” I say through gritted teeth.
We turn off the lamp and leave it behind us, along with the empty shotgun and the explosive. Using the stronger light of the flashlight on my phone as we move ahead, I take the lead with James following several paces behind. The tunnel leads steadily downward. I realise now that it descends all the way from the entrance; we’re not only moving into the hillside but deeper under it.
The walls are an untidy, undulating mess of curves, cavities and random holes where miners clearly dug in after gold. As we move along, the shifting shadows play tricks on my eye. I’m still unsteady but I’ve got my pistol aimed ahead. The light only penetrates a few paces ahead of us. Everything is wet and fat drops of freezing water drip on us intermittently as we move. There’s mud on the floor of the tunnel and messy dragging footsteps leading away ahead of us, along with spatters of blood every few steps.
James is right, I must have hit him. But there’s undoubtedly only the one set of tracks leading away from us. No one has been in here but Remu. At least we know he’s alone, although there may be a chance that he’s got more weapons or supplies further down the mine. Which makes another thought cross my mind.
“Could this mine have another exit, like that tunnel at your house?” I ask, pausing. It could mean another way out for us, but it could also mean that Remu has already escaped, or worse, that he’s got help and they’re heading back in to finish the job.
“I don’t think so. Gold seams don’t usually loop back around to the surface and that would have decided where the miners dug. My grandad showed us the tunnel under the house. Told us his father dug it out. Apparently the extra shaft was unusual and only possible because the seam of gold they were following ran shallow to the surface. We’re too deep underground here I’d say,” James says thoughtfully.
We go deeper still. It’s slow going, but eventually there’s a faint reflection ahead and I immediately pause, signalling for James to stay put before I advance alone. Slower now, finger poised on the trigger. At first I can’t make sense of what I’m seeing but then realisation dawns.
The tunnel doesn’t end here but our path does.
At the flat e
dge of the water I can still make out the tracks of Remu’s passage just under the surface. Faint swirls of pink where his blood has dissolved into the still, clear fluid. The tunnel is flooded, and as I pan the light ahead along the descending roof of the tunnel, I see the far edge of the water. Whatever lies beyond this point is completely under water.
And it’s rising. One of his foot prints is halfway into the water but both the exposed and submerged parts look equally clear. Meaning he didn’t step into water as that would have distorted the print. No, the water has risen, slowly enough to preserve the marks perfectly.
“It must be the snow,” James says as he comes up behind me and looks at the water ahead of us. “The rivers and streams around here would be enough to let most of the rain that falls flow away but snow and ice stays put. It can change the normal flows of water. And we’re below ground level. By how much this tunnel has descended I’d guess we’re pretty deep now. What do we do?”
“Nothing we can do,” I say, feeling the tension ease in my chest because I know now that we’ve done everything we can, we really can’t do more. “We can’t follow Remu into that. Even if the tunnel rises out of the water again ahead, we don’t know how far that would be. We could drown trying. And we can’t take the light under water so we’d be trying in the dark. I also don’t like the proposition of surfacing somewhere in the blackness just to have Remu cave our skulls in with a rock. It’s too risky. He’s trapped or drowned or both. But he’s beyond us now.”
I briefly picture him climbing out another exit but I dismiss it. James is right, we’re too deep. Part of me feels this case has already had more than its fair share of strange and unusual. No, I think, it’s done. Odds are this mine only goes down. And there’s too much blood leading this way and Remu’s footsteps are alone.
Coming here wasn’t part of some master plan, this was panic. Escaping from everything that went wrong for them in Lawrence. Retreating here to familiar ground, calling his ailing father for help; this wasn’t a plan it was just desperation. There’s no cache of weapons and supplies further down this mine. There’s just more blackness. This is where Remu planned to kill James and hide the body. It would have worked too, I realise. We would have never looked here, and if you caved in the entrance, it’s done. You can’t bury someone much darker or deeper than this. By blind, dumb luck we showed up just in time.
Goodbye Remu, I say to myself. Looks like you really are the one gangster who’s never going to be caught. I wish I knew why the hell any of this happened, but it looks like they’ll take the secret to their graves. Because that’s all of them, I muse, tired now as we make our slow way back up the tunnel.
The adrenalin is rapidly wearing off, each step feels heavier and my mind is starting to drift in a drowsy way, drunk on its own fatigue. Two brothers shot dead in Lawrence, Remu drowned somewhere in here and their father lying frozen out by the hut. Violent men dying badly. I flash back to the old black and white family picture Sam Black had clutched to his chest.
Why do we all do that? Smile for the camera? Pictures have promises in them, I realise. Young, smiling, happy faces, full of hope. Maybe we smile in pictures because we want to show that life is good and that we believe good things are still ahead of us. Only they weren’t, not for the Blacks. I wonder when it turned into a lie, that smile.
You must know, right? Feel it. People like them. Because while we all believe it equally when we start out in life, that’s not how it ends for everyone. Or even for most. And I think we all know this, that everyone’s not going to be ok. But still, something inside us tells us that’s not going to happen to me, no matter how bad things get. It just won’t. At first you’re young and you believe life is good and one day everything is going to turn out fine. You’re going to catch all the dreams you chase. That smile is just you, sincere. But as time passes and the mistakes and disappointments pile up, do you still believe that?
At some point, as the years wear you down and time runs out and that happy ending fails to show up, there has to come a point when you’re still smiling for the camera but you don’t really mean it, don’t really believe it anymore, right?
That’s when I notice my hands in the light from my phone. In between the mud and blood there’s the faint sheen of gold dust.
I’m touched by the colour now too, just like Sam was. Maybe that’s why we keep doing it, keep smiling, keep going. You have that first taste of happiness when you’re young and it’s enough, you can’t stop, you have to keep going no matter how long or how hard or how many times you fail. Because even as the years empty out of you, you still have the memory of that taste in your mouth and you know, blindly, that it’s all going to be worth it.
Because one day everything will be ok.
All of us.
Make believers to the end.
* * *
“Nick? Are you ok?” James asks from behind me, making me flinch as he puts his hand on my shoulder. I’d become so lost in thought that I had stopped walking, just standing and staring at the gold dust on my hands.
“Sorry, yes. Just a momentary brain fade,” I say as I head on again. But I’m starting to feel bad and I’m having trouble thinking straight. Too tired, I think. But a cruelly honest part of me doubts my excuses because while it’s not freezing in here it’s still wet and very cold, so why am I starting to feel hot? Bad and hot?
By the time we make it back to our spot near the slip, bad and hot is a distant, fond memory compared to how much worse I feel now. I’m starting to shake all over and there’s a gnawing ache in my joints. And it’s definitely hot in here. Can your hair actually hurt? On the bright side, in comparison my side doesn’t really hurt that much anymore.
“You don’t look good Nick. I’m going to check your wound,” James says as he helps lower me to the ground. He takes the cell phone from my limp fingers and opens up my clothes. The wound still hasn’t sealed and is seeping a mix of blood and a clear, oily fluid across a wide circle of red, raised skin.
“They say it won’t get better if you pick at it,” I say, trying to smile when I see the concern etched on James’ face.
“This looks bad. What if you’re bleeding internally? And your skin is hot. I think you’ve got a fever. Maybe we should risk digging now. I can do it. You can stay here out of the way and rest,” James says.
“Hey, I’m rescuing you remember, no switching,” I reply. “Besides, that slip isn’t going to be any safer just because I’ve got problems. And if you get caught under more soil who’s going to dig you out? Cause I’m not feeling so spry right now.”
“Nick, I can’t do nothing. I won’t just let you die,” James says forcefully.
“Even if you manage to dig your way out it’ll be full dark soon and we don’t know how heavy the snow is. It’s a long way back to the car and you don’t look in the best of health either. You could just as easily die out there. We don’t know how bad my situation is but we do know help is coming. Our best option is to wait. It’ll be a rough night but I bet you it’s warmer in here than out there. I can last the night,” I say.
“I don’t know, I—” James says, swaying tiredly as he looks from me to the slip and back. For a moment I think he’s going to start digging anyway. There’s honestly not a lot I could do to stop him, I feel so bad now I doubt I could even stand.
“Look, it’s been a shitty couple of days all round. Have you slept at all in the past 48 hours? Eaten? Had anything to drink?” I ask.
“No,” James says, hanging his head. Suddenly he seems smaller, more tired as his intentions subside.
“Neither of us is in any shape to go trekking through the snow right now. And I’d say we’re not in the best frame of mind to be making decisions either. Tell you what, I’ll set the alarm on my phone. We can both rest, just for an hour. We’ll see how I feel then and what we think is best. Deal? Nothing bad is going to happen in an hour,” I say.
“Ok, maybe you’re right,” James says.
It
ends up taking us another half an hour to prepare things. James insists on shifting mounds of drier dirt into a more comfortable place for me to lie down. Then he prepares a similar space for himself. Despite my protests he puts himself between me and the darkness. Then, under my instruction, he places several bigger rocks along the floor of the tunnel between us and the way down. Randomly spaced in odd groupings, right where a person would need to walk if they were coming up the tunnel towards us. A final barrier that will hopefully slow Remu down and force him to make some kind of noise to alert us if he did actually try to creep up on us in the dark. We discussed taking turns guarding each other but both admitted we’re too tired to trust ourselves to stay awake. And by how slowly James moved shifting those rocks, I doubt he’d even be able to stand for that long. Finally, each with a gun in the one hand and a source of light in the other, we settle back.
“You ready?” I ask.
“Yes,” James says. When I turn the light off, despite expecting it I’m still thrown by the impenetrable blackness that settles on us. It’s quiet too, only the odd, arrhythmic sound of dripping water punctuates the silence. I feel horrible and my body goes through bouts of shaking, but I’m thankful at least for the small pleasure of not moving for a bit. I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep as so many thoughts are tangled in my head. Things I need to think about, like Remu and what we’re going to do. And things I can’t bear to think about yet, like Maria or what’s happened to Tobe. By the sound of his breathing I think James is asleep within seconds. I don’t even have time to envy him before I’m gone too.
I’m stirred from a deep, dead sleep by James gently shaking my shoulder.