Cave Crawlers

by Alex Laybourne

  The End

  Read on for a free sample of Intulo: The Lost World

  1

  December 21, 2012 Van Gotts Ngomo Mine, South Africa –

  Frederick Means studied the crumbling rock in his hand for a moment through his magnifying lens, quietly muttering to himself. He replaced the lens in his shirt pocket and tossed the rock to the floor to join the many others that littered the mineshaft. Too many, he thought. He examined the walls and pried loose a stone with his fingers. It took little effort. The rock face was rotten, ready to collapse.

  A bead of sweat rolled into his eye. He took his handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped the sheen of perspiration from his forehead. A rivulet of sweat immediately ran from beneath his hardhat to replace it. He removed his hardhat, swiped the handkerchief across his thinning hair, and shoved it back down on his head, sighing in frustration when another drop stung his eye. It was a losing battle fighting sweat in the hot, humid tunnel deep beneath the ground.

  “Damn hot,” he complained to his companion, Paul Mbussa, a Zulu driller. The driller’s ebony skin glistened with sweat, but his broad smile revealed ivory teeth.

  “43 degrees Centigrade, baas,” he said.

  Frederick flinched at Mbussa’s use of the Afrikaans word for boss, a term he despised as being too reminiscent of the old days of apartheid. “Nothing ever bothers you, does it Paul?”

  The driller dropped his smile and glanced uneasily at the tunnel roof half a meter above his head. Tiny fractures were already visible in the freshly drilled roof. “Thirty-nine-hundred meters of bad rock like this does.”

  Frederick flinched, remembering why they were so deep in the new adit, a short side tunnel drilled perpendicular to the main ore-bearing rock. “Yes, it is much too friable. I can easily crumble it in my hand. I don’t need a pick to scale loose rock from the walls. It sloughs away on its own. I see lots of kimberlite, some limestone, and greenstone, but hardly any harder dolomitic rock. I told Verkhoen it would be too dangerous to tunnel here, but he ignored me. Even if the gold vein continues this deep, I doubt it would be profitable to extract it.”

  Using his iPad, he snapped several photos of the rock face as proof with which he could confront Klaus Verkhoen. The often-captious Van Gotts Mining Corporation CEO resented any challenge to his authority, treating them as personal attacks. He had a long memory and no qualms about using his considerable power for petty and often brutal reprisals.

  Mbussa hesitated, looked around to see no one was within earshot, and spoke quietly. “The younger Verkhoen is much like the father, Heinrich. He is ruthless and determined. More people will die here.”

  Frederick thought of the hundreds of miners, mostly poor blacks, who died each year from cave-ins, falls, lung disease, and machinery accidents, all for a shiny yellow substance for which men had fought and died for centuries. There had to be a point at which a human life was worth more than a few flakes of gold per ton of ore.

  “Not if I have anything to do with it,” he said. “I informed Verkhoen this morning that I would go directly to the Board if I must.” A surge of determination swept over him, like a righteous cause. He could do something about it.

  Mbussa frowned and shook his head slowly. “Verkhoen will not like that. He is a dangerous man. Not good to cross him, baas, or Duchamps.”

  Frederick thought of Henri Duchamps, Verkhoen’s Chief of Security, a cold, calculating, vile man willing to do anything to further his career – Verkhoen’s watchdog. Inside he cringed, but he laughed aloud to assure Mbussa he was not afraid. “All he can do is sack me. Eve has been begging me to quit and take a job back home in England.” He shook his head at the idea. “No. Engineering some grubby coal mine in Wales does not interest me in the slightest. South Africa is where the real geology begins.” He pointed to the walls of the shaft. “Why, some of this rock around us is as old as the Earth. The Kaapvaal Craton is a piece of the original continental crust 3.6 billion years old. There is some speculation the gold field itself was brought about by a meteorite impact.”

  Mbussa looked unconvinced. “Gold from the sky, baas?”

  Frederick nodded. “Possibly.”

  “Our village sangoma says our god, Unkulunkulu, fell from the sky into a great swamp. I believe the gold is a lure to entice men into his underground lair where his demon, Intulo, devours their souls.”

  Frederick blustered. “Superstitious claptrap. You should know better than to listen to a witchdoctor, Paul. You are an educated man. ”

  Mbussa looked chagrined. “Yes, I went to the white-taught schools, but inside I am still Zulu. The old legends are in my blood. Sometimes, when the earth moans and the rock speaks to me, I hear strange voices.”

  “It’s just the rock strata groaning under pressure, especially this rock.” As if punctuating his words, a chunk of rock fell from the roof and landed at their feet. “I think you had better gather the men. We should leave. The shaft will need additional shoring if Verkhoen insists on digging here.”

  He glanced at the stacks of fifty-meter-long nylon bags filled with viscous slurry of liquefied mine tailings lining both sides of the tunnel to support the roof. They were easier to use than hydraulic chocks and longer lasting than wooden pillars and beams; nevertheless, the bags were subject to the same laws of physics and gravity. Already, dewdrops of grey slurry coated the surface of several of the bags as the enormous pressure forced it through the tightly woven material.

  He shook his head sadly and sighed. “I don’t see how I can stop him.”

  Mbussa smiled and changed the subject. “Have you told your wife yet?”

  Frederick replaced his iPad in its carrying case slung from his waist, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a small black box. Opening it, he produced a gold ring and showed it to Mbussa. “Not yet.” Mbussa examined the ring, admiring its perfection. “Gold from this mine,” Frederick said. “I had it made in Johannesburg. There’s an inscription inside.”

  “What does it say?”

  He dropped the ring back in the box, pocketed it, and smiled. “That’s for her eyes only. It should make a nice Christmas gift.”

  Mbussa laughed. “She will love you forever.

  Frederick hoped so. Eve Means was his wife, a biologist working for the South African Department of Education, a menial job for someone with her credentials. She hated South Africa with its politics and lingering racial prejudices. He had hoped she would come to love the country as much as he did, but to no avail. For him, a mining engineer with degrees in both geology and engineering, South Africa was paradise, albeit lately paradise at a price.

  She was six years younger and much too beautiful for a man like him. When he had first met her vacationing in Brighton, he instantly fell in love. He courted her relentlessly like a teenage suitor, and in the end, she had accepted his proposal. She was his life.

  The ground jerked sharply beneath his feet, and the walls shuddered and groaned. A loud wail repeated farther down the tunnel. Frederick knew the sound had not issued from a human throat.

  “Intulo!” Mbussa cried out. His face was a mask of fear, as his eyes studied the tunnel.

  The ground began to tremble more violently. The walls crackled as shards of rock became stony shotgun pellets peppering the frightened miners. Dust motes caught in the beams of the lights careened through the air like glowing charged particles shot from a cyclotron. The lights strung along the wall did an epileptic jig; then, flickered and failed. Frederick switched on his helmet lamp, as a blinding cloud of dust swept down the tunnel. Rocks cascaded from the roof, bouncing off his hardhat. Rock slurry sprayed from the crushed bags, drenching him in thick mud. He felt Mbussa’s strong arms shielding him from falling rock as he and the burly driller crouched together. After a minute, the trembling stopped, but the choking dust remained.

  “Cave-in,” Frederick said, coughing savagely. “Probably from a small tremor. According to the seismograph, there have been clusters of small quakes over the
past few days.”

  Mbussa looked at him in the lamp’s diffuse glow, nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air. Slurry covered all but one of the reflector patches on his jumper. His helmet lamp played along the walls and down the narrow tunnel, now filled with rock and debris, blocking their escape. He shook his head. “I smell cordite. It was a blast.”

  Frederick looked at him in incredulous horror. “An explosion? Don’t be ridiculous. Who would …?” His legs weakened as realization hit him. “Verkhoen,” he groaned as the answer became obvious to him. “He wants to silence me, keep me from going to the Board. He can pretend to dig us out, wait until we’re dead, and start all over again. Bastard!” He worried about Eve. What hell would she go through, worrying about him?

  One of the miners who had been farther down the tunnel ran up to them, his lamp bobbing in the dark like a cork on the water. His mud-covered face was a mask of fear.

  “It was an explosion. The whole shaft has collapsed,” he exclaimed before coughing violently from the rock dust. Frederick waited impatiently for him to stop. “The tunnel is filled for fifty meters or more with rock. They will never get through.”

  The man was near panic. Frederick knew he could not let the man’s fear infect them all. It was up to him to quell his own fear and take charge.

  “Quiet!” he shouted and waited for their muttering to die out. “Listen. They will dig us out, but we must conserve our air.” The shaft was short and held little air in reserve. Rescue would come too late. He dredged his mind to recall blueprints of the area. “There is a second tunnel crossing directly beneath this one on 137 Level. The company sealed it because of water seepage. We must drill a small hole into the shaft to test the air for methane and carbon dioxide. If the air is good, it will help keep us breathing for several more days, more than sufficient time for a Proto-Team to reach us.”

  The rescue teams were trained and equipped to deal with emergencies, but Frederick knew it took time to organize a team and transport them through the kilometers of mineshafts. More time would be lost while they determined a course of action. Every cave-in was different. Proto-Teams had been lost by moving too quickly.

  He didn’t need to tell them that if the lower shaft was completely flooded, as it had been when the engineers had sealed it, they risked flooding their own shaft as well. They would drown as had the two miners caught in the flood two years earlier. Even considering the risks, it was their only chance for survival. A Proto-Team couldn’t rescue them until they first removed the tons of debris sealing them in.

  The portable generator powering the air compressor for the jackleg drills was distant enough from the collapse to avoid damage. Its small gasoline engine would foul their air quickly, but in addition to running the compressor, the light stand it powered would beat back the solid wall of darkness, providing a degree of comfort to the frightened miners.

  Mbussa insisted on manning the drill himself. Frederick prayed he had picked the correct spot for Mbussa to drill. He had nothing to go by but his memory. Drilling a few centimeters either direction, they would miss it. The broad-shouldered driller handled the heavy pneumatic drill with ease, keeping the bit driving into the floor as it chewed through the rock. The other miners stood in a semicircle around Mbussa, watching the drill bit slowly disappear into the rock and the pool of slurry accumulating on the floor. Without the flow of cooler air from the ventilator fans, the tunnel was heating rapidly. The heat could kill them before the lack of air.

  Frederick’s heart skipped a beat, as the drill broke through the ceiling of the shaft below twenty minutes later. The ankle-deep slurry drained through the hole. He pulled out his portable sniffer to check the air quality. Every eye was glued to the three LED readouts on the device as they flickered; then, steadied on the percentages for oxygen, carbon dioxide, and methane. The air was stale but breathable – no methane.

  “The air is good,” he told them. The relief on their faces told him the effort was worth it.

  The entire time they drilled, the tunnel had moaned and groaned, and rocks had continued to shower them periodically. The explosion had weakened the already delicate rock stratum. Frederick was greatly concerned the entire shaft might collapse at any moment.

  Sensing Frederick’s concern, Mbussa grabbed a pick. “The rock below us is less than a meter thick. I say we break through in case this ceiling lets go.”

  Frederick nodded and stood back, as Mbussa and another miner with bulging biceps the size of Frederick’s thighs took turns pounding the rock floor with their heavy picks. When they tired, the other two miners took over. Less than an hour later, a large slab of rock broke away and fell into the shaft below. Frederick heard no splash, which was more good news.

  Mbussa looked up and smiled. “We’re through.” He leaned over and shined his light in the hole. “Funny smell, but dry. I’ll go down first.” He sat on the edge of the hole and allowed two other miners to hold his arms and lower him through the hole. A few minutes later, he looked back up through the hole, shining his light upwards. “It’s not flooded.”

  Frederick welcomed the good news. “Good. We’ll …”

  With a sound like a dying woman’s scream, the entire wall beside the generator collapsed, crushing the generator and sending half-ton boulders bouncing across the floor. The lights went out, leaving them with only their battery-operated helmet lamps. The roof began to shake, ready to collapse at any moment.

  “Down there,” Frederick called out over the rumbling. “Quickly!”

  Hands lowered him until his feet touched rock below. The others followed close behind him.

  “Away from the hole,” he yelled, as dirt and rocks rained down on them through the hole they had dug. He glanced up in time to see a section of the roof of the shaft above crumble. If they had remained where they were, it would have crushed all of them.

  The rumbling subsided within seconds, but the dust was slow to settle. Frederick wiped his eyes, making things worse with his filthy hand. He would have killed for a drink of water, but their water cooler lay buried beneath tons of rock. The tunnel stretched into darkness in both directions. To his left, he knew the tunnel ended abruptly when the miners had struck an underground aquifer of hot water, flooding the shaft. To his right, the company had installed a waterproof steel door to seal off the flooded shaft from the rest of the mine. He hoped the door was unlocked.

  He tried hard not to believe Verkhoen had ordered the explosion, sealing the new shaft and perhaps their fates as well. While the young CEO was ruthless, to wantonly kill five men simply to silence opposition was insane. Eve, a much shrewder judge of character than him, had warned him not to openly antagonize Verkhoen, but he had ignored her. He wished now he had heeded her advice. They had one chance. If Verkhoen did not guess they had entered the lower shaft, they could exit through the steel door and enter the main shaft system. Once out among the other miners, even Verkhoen would not dare attempt to harm him.

  He quickly explained to them what he and Mbussa had discussed concerning the possibility of Verkhoen’s complicity in the collapse. There were a few stunned faces, but most knew Duchamps well enough to believe him capable of such an act if ordered to do so.

  “We’ll continue down this tunnel to a point beyond the collapse and give them time to begin digging us out. Then we will leave through the old steel door. Once we reach the elevators, we’ll be safe.”

  They walked a hundred meters down the tunnel. Along the way, Frederick noticed the complete absence of the water signs he expected to see in a once-flooded tunnel. Examining the floor of the tunnel more carefully, to his shock, he determined it had never been flooded. “More of Verkhoen’s lies,” he grumbled. “What really did happen here?”

  They sat in total darkness for two hours to conserve their batteries and to allow the dust to settle. The air wasn’t stale, but it carried an unidentifiable odor that made Frederick’s stomach queasy. It reminded him of an abandoned animal den, but of no creature that he ha
d ever encountered. He put it down to nerves. Strangely, the tunnel was not as hot as the one above. That concerned him, but only as an inexplicable datum. It presented no immediate danger. In fact, the cooler temperature could prolong their lives.

  After a while, the unseen walls began to close in on him. As a mining engineer, he had thought himself immune to claustrophobia, but he had never been in the dark hemmed in by solid rock for hours on end. The darkness seemed to magnify his fears. Insane, horrific thoughts spawned by the blackness surrounding him found fertile soil at the edge of his conscience. He imagined he could feel the others’ fear slowly seeping into his mind. Only by concentrating on Eve and the ring in his pocket did he manage to stave off the subtle onset of madness.

  Finally, the muffled sounds of drilling reached them through the rock. The rescue attempt had begun. He switched on his iPad, using its flashlight function to scan the mud-caked faces around him. The stark contrast between their frightened faces and the smiles they offered him struck him as photo worthy. He snapped a photo for his album. Mbussa, exhausted by the digging, leaned back against the wall with his eyes closed.

  His habit of jotting down notes and stray thoughts on the iPad’s notebook was too ingrained to ignore. He wrote a brief summary of the cave-in, adding only the facts he could prove. Speculation and innuendo would only call his observations into question. His accusation against Verkhoen would be face-to-face. He added a quick note to Eve, just in case. He would erase it when he reached the surface. When he finished, he made sure the device backed up his data onto the memory stick and laid his iPad down beside him.

  “What did you mean when you said Intulo earlier?” he asked Mbussa.