by Alex Irvine
He said nothing about this, concentrating on getting back down the sloping tunnel without slipping. A long tumble down the concrete could well be fatal, too. There were so many ways to die.
But they reached the level pad outside the door to the access tunnel without incident, and laid the wire through the doorway. Then they hauled the door shut and shot the bolts.
“Okay,” Malcolm said. “Time to see if it’ll work.”
36
In the mechanicals room, Ellie fidgeted with gear while Alexander ran through the tests his father had asked him to complete. It didn’t take him long. The control panel fuses were all intact, and its wiring was in surprisingly good shape. People who built dams apparently over-engineered things like that, since they knew the equipment had to operate in close proximity to water. After a few minutes, he set down his tools.
“I’m done,” he said. “As far as I can tell, everything’s okay. But we won’t really know until there’s water going through again.”
Ellie paused in the middle of going through one of the tool lockers. She was picking out supplies that met two criteria. First, she thought they would be useful, and second, they were light enough for the group to carry back across the logjam and to the trucks. It felt like busy work. She was frustrated, and irritated that the men had gone trooping off to handle explosives, leaving her here.
“We’ll see,” she said.
Alexander put his equipment away. He picked up a book out of habit—she had never seen a kid who spent every single waking moment reading when nobody was telling him specifically to do something else. Then he put it down again.
“I didn’t know you had a daughter,” he said out of the blue.
This caught her off guard.
“Yeah. I did,” was all she could think to say.
“What was her name?” Alexander asked.
“Sarah,” Ellie said.
She would have been twelve now, no doubt gangly and uncertain like Ellie herself had been at that age. At three, she was small for her age, a tiny bundle of bossy exuberance. She had already learned the alphabet. She could recognize her name when she saw it written down. Her favorite book was… well, there was a tie. She loved making Ellie read the tongue twisters in Fox in Socks, faster and faster, laughing when she stumbled. But she also loved to hear Goodnight Moon every night before bed.
Ellie had been reading Goodnight Moon when Sarah, nestled in her lap, sneezed blood all over the picture of the cow jumping over the moon.
A nosebleed, she’d told herself. Every kid gets them. But she knew it wasn’t true. She was a nurse, she’d heard colleagues talking about the unnamed epidemic, and she’d heard stories on the news that got everything wrong except the growing sense of public unease. In her own hospital, several people had died of what would come to be called the Simian Flu.
She’d done everything she could, but thirty-six hours later Sara was gone.
Ellie couldn’t tell Alexander any of that. Sarah was hers. She never talked to anybody about her, for fear of diluting her memory by sharing it. She knew it was stupid, knew that she was indulging in a coping mechanism that prevented her from completing her grieving process and moving on… But in a way she didn’t want to move on, because what kind of a person could really ever move on from losing a child?
“I’m really sorry,” Alexander said. Ellie looked back at him from the tool locker and smiled. What a terrific kid he was. Moody, introverted, scarred by growing up when and how he’d grown up… but he had a good heart, undamaged by everything he’d seen. And good hearts were in short supply these days.
“Yeah,” she said. “Well… I have you and your dad now.”
Alexander returned her smile. She thought maybe that was the first time she’d ever seen him really smile at her.
The moment passed, and he looked back at the open access tunnel hatch.
“You think they’re going to take a long time?” he asked. “Those batteries don’t last.” They could hear the men down there, muttering to each other, the words made indistinct by their echoing trip up the tunnel shaft. Ellie wanted to go see how they were doing, but it was pointless. All that would do was prolong the time it took them to finish the job.
“You know your dad,” Ellie said. “He’s going to get through this part of it as fast as he can, especially with…” She trailed off, but she could tell he knew what she’d been about to say. Especially with the apes watching. Both of them—all of them—wanted to get down out of the mountains, out of ape country, as soon as they could.
Although she thought Alexander might not feel that as strongly as the adults. She’d seen him and the orangutan, sizing each other up that morning.
Who knows, she thought. Maybe in ten years people and apes will all be living together. It was kids like Alexander who could make that happen.
37
When they had the penstock door sealed and bolted, Kemp checked the wires, moving them gently back and forth to see if he could tell whether they’d been broken when the door shut. “They seem okay,” he said, giving them a last tug. “But I guess there’s one way to find out for sure.”
The other three men pointed their flashlights in front of Kemp so he could see what he was doing. He unscrewed the end of his flashlight, exposing the battery terminals. He set the flashlight on the ground, terminals pointing up, and clipped the wires off the spool. He separated them and stripped about an inch of insulation off each. Then he looked up at Malcolm.
“You want to do the honors?” he asked.
“Doesn’t matter,” Malcolm said.
“Go ahead,” Carver said. “It was your idea.”
“Okay,” Malcolm said. He handed his flashlight to Kemp and knelt, taking the wires and holding one end in each hand. Some of the fear he’d felt in the penstock tunnel was still with him. You never knew exactly what would happen when you detonated an explosive charge. It might work exactly the way they’d planned, it might not go off at all, or the whole dam and powerhouse might come down on their heads.
Carver, Foster, and Kemp all stared at him, waiting. There was no turning back now, Malcolm thought.
“Brace yourselves,” he said.
They all jammed themselves together against the wall across from the penstock door. Then Malcolm reached out and touched the exposed wire ends to the terminal nubs. A small spark arced in the darkness.
The sound of the explosion rolled down the penstock tunnel, reverberating through the tiny chamber at the bottom of the ladder. All four of them instinctively ducked and covered their heads. Malcolm wondered what the apes thought about it. He was going to have some explaining to do, the next time he saw Caesar, but what else was new?
As the initial boom echoed away, Malcolm heard Ellie call from the hatch.
“Is everyone okay?”
Kemp was closest to the ladder. He looked up and shouted.
“Yeah, we’re okay!”
Malcolm heard something.
“Shh! Quiet!” he said. They all listened. “You hear that?”
Everyone strained to hear, holding their breaths… and they all looked at each other as from the penstock tunnel came the unmistakable sound of rushing water. Malcolm grinned like an idiot.
“We’ve got water.” He reached out to shake Foster’s hand. “Just right,” he said.
“Hell, yeah,” Kemp said, exchanging a cramped high-five with Carver.
Malcolm leaned across Kemp to shout up the access tunnel.
“Ellie! We’ve got—”
He stopped as they heard another sound. It was a long groaning rumble. Dust and gravel fell from farther up the shaft. “Oh, shit,” Carver said. They all froze, then they all started for the ladder together, but it was too late. With a deafening rumble, the access tunnel collapsed around them.
Malcolm ducked and covered, crossing his arms over his head and hunching down to put his head between his knees. Bend over and kiss your ass goodbye, he thought. A piece of stone or concrete hit him
hard on the back, not too far from where the rock had dug into his shoulder blade when One-Eye had dragged him up to the ape village. He cried out, but every moment he was still able to feel pain was a good thing.
The noise of the cave-in subsided to the sporadic rattle of smaller rocks and the grind of something larger, shifting somewhere out of sight. Malcolm coughed and started to sit up. He couldn’t stand. Next to him, Kemp was coughing, too. Foster and Carver were silent. Malcolm saw one of the flashlights, partially buried in dirt and gravel. He dug it out and shone it around.
Let’s see how bad this is.
Bad, but not as bad as it could have been. The wall on the downstream side had fallen in, huge slabs of concrete toppling to choke off the tunnel and smaller pieces jumbling below them… and, presumably, above. He and Kemp and Foster were okay. Foster rubbed at the back of his head and his hand came away bloody, but he was swearing with enough vigor that Malcolm didn’t think he was badly hurt.
In an irony he would appreciate later—if he survived, he thought—the penstock door was clear. They could have gone right out that way if they hadn’t filled the tunnel with water. He kept swinging the flashlight beam around and at last saw Carver, pinned under a rectangular piece of concrete as big as he was. Malcolm couldn’t see his legs at all. Loose earth and small rocks cascaded around him as he struggled to free himself.
“Oh, crap,” he moaned.
He heard Ellie’s voice, very faintly, from above. He thought she was calling his name. Then he heard Alexander. He didn’t want to shout back at them in case the sound of more voices might dislodge more debris. They were one little shift from being crushed or buried alive. Malcolm joined Kemp and Foster at Carver’s side. Dust in the confined space gave the flashlight beam a ghostly quality, and also made it hard as hell to breathe. Carver coughed hard and rubbed dust out of his eyes.
“My legs, man, shit. I’m stuck.”
They could hear Ellie and Alexander shouting from the other side. It sounded like Ellie was screaming. Malcolm felt rising panic, and choked it off.
No. Panic would kill them.
He breathed deep, in through his nose to filter out as much of the dust as possible, and set the flashlight on the ground near Carver so its beam illuminated the rubble pinning the man’s lower body.
They got to work getting Carver loose. One of his legs was wedged under the other in a kind of figure-four. Malcolm got low to look more closely at which pieces of concrete were pinning him. He didn’t see much blood, which was good, and neither of Carver’s legs looked bent too much in the wrong direction.
“Okay,” he said. “We’ll clear the smaller stuff from around the bottom edge of the big piece. Then if it doesn’t shift too much, the three of us might be able to lift one edge of it enough for you to get your legs out.”
“Might, huh?” Carver said.
“No promises,” Malcolm said. “We have to be careful. The more we move debris, the more likely it is we’ll cause another collapse.”
“Thanks, Sunshine,” Carver said.
“I take my examples of good humor from you,” Malcolm said. Carver laughed unexpectedly. “Hang in there. We’ll get you out.”
“Then how are we going to get us out? We’re trapped,” Kemp said, rising panic adding an edge to his voice. He’d found a second flashlight and was shining it up at the point where the ladder disappeared into the cave-in. “We’re all gonna die down here.”
“Will you shut up?” Foster snapped.
“Hell I will,” Kemp shot back. “You did this. How much C-4 did you think we needed? Oh, enough to collapse the goddamn exit tunnel? You’re a genius!”
Malcolm had already started scooping smaller pieces of concrete from around the base of the slab pinning Carver. Then he stood up and turned toward them.
“Both of you shut up!” he said sharply. “The more you shout, the more you breathe hard and thrash around, the faster we use our air.”
Foster and Kemp backed down from the edge of what would have been a stupid fight. They both looked at Malcolm, who took his chance to go on.
“We don’t know if any air is getting through from up there. We need to calm down and figure this out. Ellie and Alexander know we’re here. They’ll get us out.”
“They will, huh?” Carver said. “A woman and a teenage dork. Some rescue squad.”
“We could always just sit around and leave you pinned. How about that?” Malcolm offered.
“Hell, no.” Carver grimaced. “Get this rock off me, man. I can’t feel my foot anymore.”
Working together, they cleared the bottom edge of the big slab on his legs. Then Kemp got under it, right next to Carver, on his back with his feet pressed against the underside of it as if he was preparing for a set of leg presses. Malcolm and Foster squatted at the exposed edge, both gripping it near one corner. There was no way they could actually lift it off the floor, even without all the other debris on top of it. The only thing they could do was try to maximize their leverage by tipping one corner up a little, and hope that was enough for Carver to get out.
Every so often they heard Ellie call from the other side. Malcolm couldn’t stand it any more. He pressed his face up against the highest point of the cave-in and called out.
“We’re okay!” he shouted. “Can you get some help?”
He heard her say something, but couldn’t tell what it was.
“Anytime you’re ready,” Carver said, gritting his teeth in pain. Malcolm scrambled back over to rejoin Foster. “Okay,” Kemp said. “One, two, three.” He pushed. Malcolm and Foster pulled.
They heard a crumbling sound in the darkness and stopped.
“Whoa,” Malcolm said. “That’s what I was afraid of.” He turned and picked up the flashlight, searching the walls around them to see if he could detect the beginning of a secondary collapse. Not that it would do them any good to know it was coming, since there wasn’t a damn thing they could do about it.
He saw movement, at the upper reach of the space underneath the leaning slab of wall. Malcolm kept the beam there, motioning with his other hand for everyone to keep quiet… and still. More sounds came from the spot, and a head-sized piece of concrete fell to the floor.
“Oh, shit, here it comes,” Kemp said.
Another piece fell, followed by a cascade of gravel. Then a hand reached down into the beam of Malcolm’s flashlight, grasping the corner of a fallen block wedged against the wall slab. Malcolm’s heart stopped for a moment.
It was the hand of an ape.
“Malcolm?” Ellie called. He could hear her more clearly now, and now he could also hear the sounds of more aggressive digging. A narrow shaft of light speared down into the bottom of the tunnel, then disappeared again as something moved to block it.
He couldn’t believe what he was seeing. More ape hands appeared, lifting rubble away. The shaft of light broadened and three apes climbed down through the hole they had made. He recognized all of them. A chimp who was always near Caesar, a gorilla he’d last seen holding a club as thick as Malcolm’s leg… and another chimp, with a bare spot in the hair on its shoulder around the unmistakable circle of a bullet wound.
Amazed, he watched as the two chimps dropped to the floor and the gorilla swung itself under the angled wall slab to hang onto the ladder. Malcolm pointed the flashlight at the bullet wound and looked back at Carver.
See?
Carver saw. He looked from the chimp to Malcolm and then away, down at his pinned legs.
The two chimps joined the humans trying to lift the slab off Carver. After a couple of tries, they got it heaved up just enough that he could drag himself out. The whole time he refused to look at either of the chimps. The gorilla studied the situation, looking at the injured human, then up, thinking. Then it wedged itself up into the narrow angle between the toppled wall slab and the wall, gripping the ladder with one foot and bracing the other against the wall. With its back against the slab, it pushed, and slowly the slab tilted toward t
he vertical. More rubble fell around it onto the humans and apes below.
“Hey, be careful,” Carver grumbled.
The gorilla pressed until there was a two-foot gap between the wall slab and the ladder. The chimps scampered up and around it, disappearing.
“Malcolm, is everyone all right?” Ellie called.
“Carver’s leg is hurt,” he called back. “The rest of us are fine.”
“She knows how to do stitches, right?” Foster said. “I’m gonna need a few.”
“Yeah, she was a nurse,” Malcolm said. “Go on up.”
Foster climbed the ladder as far as he could without using the gorilla as a handhold. It looked down at him and nodded. He swallowed and grabbed a fistful of its fur, hauling himself up to reach the first rung beyond it and bracing his feet on its massive shoulder before climbing out of sight.
Kemp followed, doing the same and nodding back at the gorilla as he went by. Malcolm couldn’t help but marvel at the creature’s strength.
He got Carver’s arm over his shoulder and helped the man stand.
“You feeling that foot again?” he asked.
“Damn right I am,” Carver said. “How are we going to—?”
A rope dropped through the opening past the gorilla. “There’s your answer,” Malcolm said. He tied the rope around Carver’s chest, snug under his armpits, and walked Carver to the ladder. Using both hands and one foot, Carver worked his way up to the gorilla. The rope grew taut and as he tried to reach around the gorilla without touching it. Someone—presumably the two chimps—started pulling him up. He scraped against the concrete and swore.