The Black

by Neil Mosspark

  Dave didn’t know what the Black was and frankly had no guess as to how it got there. Like everyone else, he oscillated between government conspiracy theory and alien invasion. Neither seemed plausible ten years later as it sat there like a black lump. For all he knew it was solid all the way through, and no matter how far he dug, they would never break through.

  Still a kilometre from the dome’s wall, the car dove down the concrete ramp toward the entrance. It was wide enough to accommodate two-way traffic, but the worker buses had already departed the job site, which meant no one was getting paid today and no digging was happening.

  It took him a moment to adjust to the dark, and the lights of the car led the way. A few workers were here in their blue overalls and yellow hats, tending to the sump pumps that kept Lake Ontario from flooding the tunnel.

  One of his foremen eyed the car as it rolled to a stop. Dave could see the man mentally doing gymnastics, trying to concoct a reasonable explanation for why people had stopped work.

  Dave and Tony both stepped out of the black car and walked toward the foreman. Dave’s hand extended toward the nervous man. “Hey Mario, what’s going on?”

  “Sir, do you want the good or bad news first?” asked the short Italian.

  Dave shook his head and put on a firmer face. “I don’t like bad news, Mario. I like surprises less.”

  The short man nodded. “The cord was interrupted and just needs to be reset. Assuming we don’t have a slow burn that will go off, we should be able to get things rewired and extend the tunnel today.”

  “And the bad news?”

  The men walked toward the entrance of number 18. The ceiling sloped downward, and water rushed past their feet as the grade steepened.

  “They saw another ghost,” Mario stated, shrugging his thick shoulders.

  “There are no such things as ghosts,” Dave said. He picked the pace and looked over his shoulder to check that Tony was keeping up. “Mario, how much time until the safety time expires on the slow burn?”

  A check of the watch. “Another ten minutes.”

  “Get the guys together and I’ll talk to them. We need to get things rolling. We’re ahead of schedule, which means that we are going to get bonuses if we finish early.”

  Mario nodded and hustled off to collect the remaining members of the work crew.

  Dave walked to the temporary shack set up as a manager’s office and pulled open the door before stepping inside. The bright room was filled with Dave’s desk, and on the wall was the log. Checking it, Dave looked for any notes about the distance tunnelled.

  “Still on track,” he said, smiling weakly at Tony.

  “Not for long by the looks of it.” Tony shook his head.

  “Yeah. The UN mining groups are not necessarily well-educated. Some of the Italians think that this is the second coming and that Jesus is inside. I’ve had guys walk off before when the anomalies occur.”

  “The entire crew?” Tony asked, nodding toward the door.

  Mario popped his head in. “They’re here.”

  Dave put the log back on the wall and stepped outside into the dark underground tunnel. The unmoving cool air felt good against his skin.

  Five men stood in front of him with a mix of concern and apprehension.

  “Mario… This is it? These are all the guys left?”

  “Yes, sir. The rest say that they can’t work in the tunnels anymore.”

  “What about you guys?” Dave asked the group.

  Eyes looked at Mario.

  The short Italian man turned to his boss. “I told them that I would lay the charges from now on. They just have to prep them… It was the only way to keep them here. The other twenty left on the bus an hour ago.”

  “They coming back?” Dave asked.

  Mario’s face dropped as he shook his head. There was no eye contact.

  Tony walked toward the car and waved the two security men over. Dave watched as his friend held a conversation in secret. The security detail nodded, and a hand raised to an earpiece as the two men radioed their findings to whomever controlled them.

  Turning back to the problem at hand, Dave addressed the handful of men. “I know that there are some people concerned about the lights,” he stated, “I want you to know that they are not ‘ghosts’ or spirits or aliens. We have talked about this a few times before. These are just energy discharges from the Black. We are a half of a kilometre under it now, and—”

  Tony stepped in front of Dave and faced the men, raising his voice. “Thank you for your time. You can pick up your final paycheques at the pay office up top. Your services are no longer needed. Please move toward the bus, and we will drive you up above ground.”

  Dave’s jaw dropped. He waited for the crowd to revolt. The pay was exceptionally good, and losing a job was not something workers like these would accept easily, but there was no revolution. No anger or resentment crossed their faces, only exhausted appreciation at being allowed to leave.

  Even Mario turned and extended a hand to his now previous boss.

  Dumbfounded, Dave shook and watched the man who had scheduled his crews for the last two years walk away.

  “What the hell was that?” Dave turned to his friend, “What… the… hell?”

  “Sorry, Dave, we just don’t have time. We had been planning for this a while ago. You won’t be working with civilians anymore. We have a group of military engineers housed here on base. They get paid to take risks and follow orders.”

  “Am I fired too?” Dave’s jaw clenched after the words left his mouth.

  “No. No, not at all. You’re still the boss down here. We still need you. Seriously.”

  “How about you tell me what the hell is going on? You just fired our best crew… Our only crew.” Dave pointed at the men walking away.

  “Keep your voice down,” Tony said, putting his hands up. The skinny man looked over his shoulder at his security detail. They were just out of earshot and focused on their radios.

  “Tony, you’re one of my best friends, but this secret shit is starting to get old. Something’s up, and I don’t like it.”

  “Dave… Something is going on. Its big,” Tony whispered. “I’m working my bosses to let you in on it, but you have to be patient.”

  The suits looked up at the whispering and moved inward.

  Tony’s voice resumed to normal. “Trust me.”

  “Famous last words,” Dave stated. He turned away from his friend and collected a roll of det cord and another timer from a nearby set of crates.

  Tony stood nervously watching him with an apologetic look.

  “Tony, get your goons clear of the tunnel. Tell the foreman at the entrance that we are blasting and that I’m the only one down here… That is if you haven’t fired him too.”

  Dave turned walking into the dark end of the tunnel, lit only by a path of glow sticks hanging from the walls. He tried to make sense of it as he double-checked the gear he was carrying. Taking a deep breath, he let go of the anger that had been building. Making a mistake with explosives because his mind was somewhere else was not something he could repeat.

  The tunnel was smooth, with the occasional rough spot where the poured concrete of the floor was punctured by the sharp contour of the stone underneath. The passage was wide enough to drive a car through, and the thought had crossed his mind to try to shield the electronics of a skid steer car and try to use it to excavate faster. He knew better, though. The circuits would always fry, and nothing worked very well near the Black, even less in the tunnel they had punched under and presumably through it.

  He walked in silence for what seemed like forever, passing the occasional weak glow stick or rocky outcropping.

  His eyes inspected the expensive copper netting that had been erected on the walls and overhead. The mortar that had been slapped up was holding, and an occasional spot sagged, but it was still effective in dispersing the field.

  Dave continued to walk down the length, snapping
an occasional glow stick to replace those that were dead on the wall. Today he was doing the job a crew of twenty should have been doing.

  His eyes caught a space of darkness where the explosion from the det cord had disrupted a number of glow sticks. Snapping the remainder in his pocket, he traced a path along the wall.

  Finding the end of the cord, he bent down to inspect it. The end had been cut cleanly. The energy discharges through the shield were getting worse, and from time to time would phase through and remove material. The smell of ozone was still fresh, but the cord was not slow-burning and was not primed with the timer he held in his hand.

  Taking a deep breath, he continuing down the tunnel toward the end face, where he knew the main pocket of explosives and shaped charges were installed. Soon the wall of stone blocked his way. Checking over the connections, he was pleased at how effectively the crew had linked them. Each hand-chipped hole was packed with just enough to powder the stone another few feet before it would be manually cleared. His grandfather would be pleased that such ancient techniques in mining were still in use.

  Tracing his path back with the glow sticks, he found the end. He pulled a small air horn from his pocket and let loose five long blasts down the tunnel.

  Dave pressed the pencil thick detonation cord into the bottom of the mechanical timer. His calm hand pulled the safety pin and rotated the timer to give him fifteen minutes to walk out of the tunnel.

  He stood and yelled down the empty length of the tunnel, “Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole! Fire in the hole!”

  His free hand released the button on the top, beginning the timer. It ticked away, gently vibrating as the spring inside slowly unwound.

  Standing calmly, he dusted off his knees and began walking quickly back down the long tunnel. He was already out of the blast radius but had no intention of feeling through the dark and inhaling dust on his trip out.

  Fifteen minutes later, he stood in the parking lot and looked down the tunnel. His hand-wound watch ticked down the remaining minutes as he tried to keep his attention on the task at hand.

  At the far end of the tunnel, detonation cord ignited down its half-kilometre length in a microsecond and raced to the stone wall packed with explosives. Each hand-drilled hole filled with a shaped charge compressed the stone into rubble, sending a plume of dirt and debris away from the face.

  A wave of pressure surged toward Dave. Made gentle by the distance, it passed around him. He listened to the echo of the blast dissipate and watched the dust pour down the hall like thick fog.

  Satisfied, he turned and began the walk toward the parking lot, where he knew most of the unused work trucks were parked. His heavy work boots kicked stones as he walked.

  “Whatever you’re up to better be worth it,” he muttered.

  Chapter 2

  Dave leaned back into the aging chair in the doctor’s waiting room. He could see the equally ancient receptionist cracking jokes with a patient as he was leaving. Dave couldn’t help but crack a smile as he overheard the punch line.

  Scanning through the magazines, he tried to find something recent. On the cover of Wired was an image of his friend Tony in a suit standing in front of a group of dirty miners while he stood in one of his crisp suits. He didn’t recognize any of the faces and suspected that they were probably all stand-ins for the photo shoot. The black soot was not from the mine, and most of these men were Caucasian. A common misconception, as the UN had mandated that each country was to contribute workers for the tunnels. Most of the crews were multinational, an ante from their country to buy in and gain a piece of the mysterious dome.

  Not that it mattered much. It had been a few weeks ago that Tony fired all of the crews, and the military had swept in, happy to fill the role. Dave was pleasantly surprised when the mixed group of Canadian and American engineers had been quick studies. Their past exposure to explosives actually improved the safety. It was just that they didn’t know anything about mining and tunnelling. Most of Dave’s time was now spent checking the hastily erected ground supports that stopped the roof from collapsing in on the soldiers.

  True to his word, Tony had kept him on as the head mining engineer but had failed to produced the miraculous insight he had promised earlier. Dave didn’t mind it. The more that his friend stayed out of the way, the faster they dug, and the farther they got under the dome.

  Dave realized he hadn’t seen this article.

  Flipping through, he found the article and began to scan the highlights. An aerial picture of the anomaly caught his eye, and he noted that it was one of the earlier flyover photos. He could tell because in the early days there were still cars on the street in downtown Toronto. The busses ran, and people tried to go about their daily lives, but as time went on, the city slowly became a ghost town. Businesses closed their doors and moved away to areas where they could attract investors. With the loss of the business district, the restaurants and bars soon followed, and with very few people actually living in the area, the rest of the shops followed.

  The last of the population had been offered relocation, and while there were a few holdouts, most took the money and the services to get them settled somewhere else. Even the homeless had been moved. With the influx of cash, nearby cities were swollen with new people, and finding a place to live was almost impossible.

  “Mr. Thompson?” asked a nurse, popping her head out the door to the treatment area.

  Dave tossed the magazine onto the coffee table and stood to follow. “Good morning.”

  The nurse smiled politely and held the door for him before pointing to a small room across the hall. “He will be with you in a moment.”

  “He on time today?” Dave asked. “I sat here for an hour last time.”

  She shrugged and smiled politely.

  Shaking his head, he stepped into the room. These doctors’ appointments every four months were more of a hassle than anything else. Everyone was worried about radiation and strange energy. Dave knew that the real danger was the explosives or a roof collapse. Sometimes death stared you right in the face.

  He had been on as a junior member during the collapse of tunnel 2. So green that when the tunnel imploded and everyone was running out of the mouth, he tried to get inside to help people. Now he knew about secondary collapses and the chain reaction that could be set off. He had seen first hand how the Black had blocked off tunnels 6 and 8.

  No, he thought, the danger wasn’t going to sneak up on him in his old age. It would drop from the ceiling and crush him flat. Some greenhorn would forget to check the angle of a strut, maybe set a timer too short, or one of the static discharges would set off the det cord early.

  Standing in the room, he inspected the odd posters of internal organs and cartoon-like dissections of lungs.

  His phone buzzed, and he silenced the irritation with a button press. He mildly wondered if there was trouble clearing the crushed stone from yesterday. He guiltily checked the phone; the screen showed his brother’s number.

  He popped the phone back in his pocket. Scott the Rock star would have to wait. A moment later there was a small buzz indicating there was a voice message.

  Scott never left messages. Dave considered digging into his pocket to listen when the door erupted open. “Good morning Mr.—” The doctor checked the chart in his hand, “Thompson.”

  “Morning,” the miner replied.

  They both knew the routine, the dance of questions and concerns that working underground might have consequences to his lungs, or absorption rates of radiation from either the dome or the natural rock. The only organ Dave was in risk of damaging was his liver. Again, he would have to explain his propensity for a new addiction to cigars. At least he could inform the doc that the glass or two of Scotch he used to consume each night was in remission. His stomach just couldn’t take the harshness anymore.

  After a quick blood draw and a few basic tests, the doctor signed his form, allowing him to continue working at the tunnel. A total of five mi
nutes had elapsed in a blur, leaving Dave feeling much like a discarded item.

  “Healthy as usual! See you in six months,” the doctor chirped over his shoulder as he bolted from the room, allowing Dave to finish buttoning his shirt.

  The miner could only shake his head. At least he didn’t have cancer, like his father had. He’d watched his father slowly fade away due to the lung tumour. Dave could remember how small his father’s hands felt when he sat next to his bed.

  Chills rolled down his spine as he realized how alone he felt now. His fingers finished the last button as he pushed the memory from his mind. Stepping out the door and back to the waiting room, he was happy to be clear of the sterile environment.

  His phone buzzed again, and he checked it again. Scott. Why was he calling again?

  “Mr. Thompson?” the receptionist prompted.

  Dave shoved the phone back in his pocket. “Sorry. I need to book another four-month check up.”

  She handed him a card with a date and time on it, and he thanked her before walking out of the office.

  In the hallway he pulled out the phone, catching as it stopped ringing silently.

  A few taps of the touch screen, and he was calling Scott back while standing at the elevator.

  “Dave,” came Scott’s voice, quiet and careful.

  “What’s up, rock star.”

  “Don’t call me that.”

  “Its true, though, isn’t it? You calling to tell me how many girls you—”

  “Dave… Sue’s dead…”

  Dave watched the elevator open, revealing people inside, standing watching him. The occupants’ confused expressions turned to frustration as he stood statue-still.

  “You still there, Dave?” his brother asked.

  Their sister was dead. His stomach dropped as the elevator door slid closed.