by John Darnton
A half hour later, Jude thought he heard something like a distant groan. Tizzie was behind him, filling up the carton, and she reached over and put her hand on his back. At that split second the tunnel trembled and debris began crashing down, at first in thin streams and then in a flood. It poured down around all sides of the table and formed piles that hugged the walls and enlarged and spread toward the center. They instinctively ducked at the noise of the earth landing upon the metal inches above their heads. Jude grabbed the flashlight in one hand and clenched Tizzie's hand with the other. Everything about them shook, at first in small tremors and then a sustained, violent trembling. They froze and held their breath and waited helplessly.
Jude felt suspended. His mind was racing, but he wasn't thinking thoughts. He wasn't trying to think of something to do or planning an escape, because there wasn't any hope of that. He wasn't thinking about whether he was hurt or whether he was breathing. He was simply hunkered down, waiting in a half crouch, like an animal at the moment of supreme danger. Simply waiting vigilantly, poised to act, while the decision of life and death was being made elsewhere.
Clouds of dust filled their small subterranean hole. But at least the noise had stopped—the din of the earth coming at them from all sides, slamming down from above and inundating the walls so that it seemed to be pushing up from below. The noise had stopped and that meant, at least for now, that it was over. For the moment, they would remain alive.
Tizzie was the first to speak, and her tone—a frightened whisper, as if she were afraid that any sound could trigger yet another cave-in—said it all.
"Look," she said. "Behind us. We're trapped."
Jude shined his flashlight in back of her. There, instead of the tunnel extending under the second table, which had been their precious lifeline back to the chamber, was a solid wall of earth. It had crushed the table, a twisted edge of bright metal protruding at the bottom. The pile of dirt and rocks ran the full height of the passage and extended God knew how far beyond that. It was impassable. Their fate was sealed, as surely as was the space wherein they were now confined, not much bigger than a coffin.
The dust was settling; there wasn't enough air in the fetid enclosure to keep it aloft. Jude tried to form his thoughts, but was in too much shock to come up with any kind of a plan. And none was called for—their plight was elemental. They were trapped and they had to dig their way out or die. And they had to go forward rather than backward. That's all there was to it. From now on, survival was not a question of strategy but of endurance and luck—that and oxygen.
He picked up the ax handle and Tizzie picked up the knife, and together, squeezed side by side, they slashed and poked at the wall ahead. They no longer worried about causing more cave-ins. This was not a time for caution: they were in a race for their lives. They scooped the dirt out and thrust it behind them, working feverishly, each one trying to outdo the other, sweating, panting, piling the earth up behind.
Jude hit something with the ax handle, something hard. He cleared the dirt away with his hands, above and below. And then realized what it was.
"It's the beam," he cried. "Remember. You had to crawl under it to get here. Maybe we can do the same thing to get out."
"Unless the cave-in covered it, too."
"If it did, we've had it."
Now he dug under the beam, and the dirt was so loose he could reach through and pull it out by the armful. He thrust his hand in as far as he could and felt around—there was nothing but space, emptiness. He shined the flashlight; the beam did not hit anything. He put his face to the hole, and it seemed to him that it was easier to breathe. He widened the entrance to the passage and motioned to Tizzie.
"You first."
"No, after you."
He lay on his stomach and moved ahead, poking his head into the hole, wriggling his hips and digging in his feet for traction. Soon he had snaked his way deep inside the fissure. He felt the cold earth beneath him and the wood above him pressing down. It was much tighter than it had been on the way in. He found it impossible to fully expand his lungs. That damnable panic was taking hold of him again; he imagined the crevasse turning narrower and narrower until finally he got stuck. And just then he realized he could no longer move ahead—something was stopping him. He strained to pull ahead and felt a miniscule shower of dirt fall upon his face. He stopped. There was a snag: his belt was caught on a piece of timber above. He backed up several inches, exhaled, tightened his stomach muscles and slipped his right hand under his belly. Laboriously, he unbuckled it, and bit by bit pulled it out through the loops. Then he pressed his belly flat into the rock and tried slithering ahead. He moved an inch, then another. He made it—he was free! Another few minutes and he was out of the slender chasm and standing up in the passage on the other side of the cave-in.
He knelt to shine the light back inside, and the beam reflected off the top of Tizzie's head. She was already on her way, and he could hear her straining and grunting as she tried to fit her body into the narrow breach. The space looked so small, he couldn't believe he had just writhed his way through it; had it not been for the prospect of an agonizing death, he never would have attempted it.
Now he cheered her on, whispering encouragement.
"You're almost there, just keep coming."
Soon, her head was showing. She stretched out her arms and he pulled them, pulled them so hard that she popped right out. He hugged her and she squeezed him back, mightily. He held her at arm's length and looked into her eyes.
"I don't know about you, but I can't wait to get the hell out of here."
So saying, he led the way.
There was one final surprise, another cave-in that blocked their exit through the main tunnel. But Tizzie said she knew a detour, and she turned down a small passageway to the right. It sloped downward and seemed to be curving away from the direction in which they wanted to go. Jude was not certain that they should continue, and he said that to Tizzie.
"Trust me," she replied. "It's amazing—there are a lot of things I don't recall about my childhood, but these caves, I find I can remember almost every turn. They're imprinted on my brain."
The passage led to a small chamber. Its ceiling slanted downward at the far end, almost to the floor.
"Do you remember this place?" asked Tizzie.
"No. Should I?"
"Not really. But I do. We used to come here, too, I think."
"Right now, I'm more interested in getting out of here than anything else."
She led him to the rear, where the ceiling almost met the floor, and he saw that there was a space several feet high. They crawled through it and found themselves on the ledge of an adjoining chamber. They climbed down a rock face, jumped over a crevice and finally came to another tunnel, this time leading back toward the front of the mine.
In another ten minutes, they were standing outside, in the late afternoon sunshine.
"God, that feels good," said Tizzie, gazing upward.
"I have to say, I didn't think we were going to make it."
"And you believe that someone caused the cave-in?"
"I think it's a distinct possibility."
"If that's the case, then they must have overheard us. They know everything."
"Maybe."
Less than half an hour later, Jude thought he found proof. They had climbed up from the open pit to the narrow drive where he had parked his car.
It was not there.
He walked over to the edge of the escarpment and looked down into the valley. The signs were there to read: a deep gash on the red earth twenty feet straight down, brown indentations where rocks had been knocked out, some gashes in the trees farther down. His eyes followed the trail until they reached the bottom, where he saw, deep in the valley, a mangle of glass and steel.
"It could have been them, or it could have been anybody," said Tizzie. "Some antisocial types who want to keep out visitors."
Jude thought of the motorcyclists. He glanced up
at the shack where their huge machines had been parked. They were gone.
They walked a mile down the road, back toward Jerome, to get Tizzie's car, parked beside the road on a turnoff. She pulled the keys out of her pocket, unlocked it, put their flashlights in the trunk and started the ignition. The sound of the engine made his heart soar.
They bypassed Jerome and instead took 89A toward Prescott across Mingus Mountain. A strong wind swept across the bald summit. It was chilly with pockets of old, dirty snow tucked into the shadows of rocks and hills and wafer-thin coatings of ice over mud puddles in the shoulder. There was an elevation sign (7,743 feet), a wooden ranger's station and a tree-trunk barricade over a gravel road, but not a soul in sight. The few pine trees were scraggly and bent over from the wind.
Going down the other side of the slope, the car kept gaining in acceleration, so much so that Tizzie lowered the gear and even then had to pump the brake from time to time. They fishtailed around the curves and felt the change in pressure in their ears, a clogged ringing.
They passed a sign facing the opposite direction, and Jude looked through the rear window to read it: JEROME.
Ten minutes later, they came to a pass that was scooped out of the mountains, and in it was a cluster of buildings. The structures were all of unpainted wood, leaning against each other like tombstones, with wooden porches and boardwalks. An empty riverbed, the banks eroded from flash floods, ran through it. There was no name that they could see.
One of the buildings was a roadhouse, and they decided to stop. They both wanted a drink. Half a dozen other vehicles were parked out front, pickup trucks and jeeps.
Tizzie looked down at their clothing, thick with dirt. "God, we're a mess," she said. "I've got a sweater I can put on, in the backseat. You're just going to have to do the best you can, I guess."
Inside, a fire was raging in a stone fireplace that took up one whole wall, casting a flickering glow. What looked to be elk antlers were hung over it, slanting to one side. Oddly, cut-off neckties were hanging from the ceiling.
Four men at the bar, separated by empty stools, looked up when they walked in but did not say hello or seem to find anything odd about their appearance. Tizzie was the only woman in the place, except for a waitress with frizzy hair and a short black skirt.
They found a booth and took turns washing up in the bathroom and brushing their clothes as best they could. When Tizzie emerged, her face scrubbed, two of the men stared at her. The waitress took their order: two beers.
Tizzie took small sips, but Jude drank half the mug in one gulp, set it down and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"You know," he said, "there's a web site for Jerome. It's called W, which stands for double you. Get it?"
"I got it. What's on it?"
"It seems to be an ongoing discussion group about the horrors of old age.
One guy in particular, Methuselah, he struck me as smart and plugged-in."
"Do you think he was a member of the group?"
"Well, he was certainly extoling the virtues of life extension—almost preaching."
"That doesn't surprise me. Face it, we're dealing with fanatics."
"Yeah. But they're also paranoid. That underground chamber we saw is like something the government would have constructed in the cold war to keep secrets from the Russians."
"So?"
"So, why would you go to such lengths to keep something secret and at the same time turn around and start a web site? It doesn't fit."
"Maybe they were engaging in public relations. You know, get the issue talked about, begin to raise consciousness, put their views across."
"Toward what end?"
"Sooner or later, they're going to have to go public. You can't have people living to one hundred and forty years without other people knowing about it. Maybe they wanted to clear the way."
She had a point, but it didn't strike Jude as convincing. He felt once again how little they knew about the Lab—how it operated and what its objectives were.
"You know, I was thinking while I was washing up—you said you thought this guy Henry was going to ask you to spy on me."
"Yes."
"I think you should tell him you will."
She looked at him, confused.
"You've got to get close to them. You've got to get them to trust you. It's the only way we'll ever learn what they're up to."
"Jude, you can't be serious."
But she knew he was. And she also knew, without stopping to analyze it, that he was right.
"You want me to be a double agent?"
"Not really. 'Cause, according to you, you were never a spy to begin with."
She reached across the table. "Jude, I don't blame you for being suspicious. But I wish I could convince you—we're on the same side."
"You, me and Skyler."
"Yes."
"Against them."
"Yes. Against them."
"Well—infiltrating the Lab would certainly be convincing."
When they left, the men on the bar stools did not look up. Outside, it was already getting dark.
Driving down the mountain, Jude became aware of headlights behind him. He noticed them because they came up so quickly, seemingly from nowhere—bright lights shining through the rearview mirror right into his eyes.
He pointed them out to Tizzie, who told him about the lights that had seemed to trail them back from Mr. Lucky's the other night.
"I can't say if it's the same ones," she said.
"Just don't call it a coincidence. There are too many coincidences happening around here."
Jude stepped on the gas, and the car behind did the same, keeping pace. He took a curve dangerously fast, sliding almost to the shoulder. The car behind fell back for a while, and then on a straightaway caught up again.
"Could it be somebody from the roadhouse?" she asked. "That was a pretty ugly group of guys back there. Did you see how they were staring at us?"
"I don't know. But I don't want to find out."
He pushed the pedal almost to the floor. The car was on a downgrade, so it leapt ahead. Below the steering wheel, he could see the needle on the speedometer rising steadily, but he didn't want to take his eyes off the road to read it. He looked in the mirror: the lights were trailing now, but not as far back as he would have expected. It definitely seemed to be on their tail.
Tizzie tightened her seat belt. The car was weaving across the road now, and on the hairpin turns, the wheels skidded to one side so that it came close to the guardrail. Once Tizzie looked down and saw the valley far below, the scattered lights gleaming in the twilight. She looked over at Jude, clutching the wheel so tightly that his knuckles turned white, staring ahead. He gave it more gas.
Finally, they pulled ahead of the car behind them. Swerving down the snaking road, they gained so much ground that its lights were always at least one turn behind, no longer lighting up the rear window. At last, they reached the foothills on the outskirts of the valley, and the road straightened out before them, an unbroken ribbon of highway. Off to the right, a sign flashed by.
Jude suddenly doused the headlights, careering ahead in almost total darkness.
"What're you doing?" exclaimed Tizzie.
"Hold on," was all he said.
He suddenly swerved the car to the right. Tizzie felt it hit a flat stretch, then rise in a single stomach-dropping motion as if they were swinging on a loop-the-loop, the weight and momentum alone carrying them forward and up. Looking ahead, she saw the stars descend across the windshield, and she tightened and waited for the crash. Time moved slowly. Then she heard gravel kicking up on the undercarriage, and gradually, by force of gravity and friction, she felt the vehicle slowing down like a carnival ride coming to rest. Finally, it stopped.
Jude turned off the engine, opened the window and listened.
"We're on a runaway truck turnoff," he said. "I think we lost them."
And they had. They waited a few minutes at the top o
f the man-made mound, stepping outside to collect their nerves in the twilight. Jude smoked a cigarette, and together they watched the last rays of the sun expire in the west and the stars turn even brighter.
As Jude drove back to Camp Verde, his thoughts were unsettling. His first impulse was to keep them to himself, but then he reflected that he and Tizzie both had been doing too much of that lately; he was still feeling a glow from her confessional honesty in the mine shaft.
He stepped on the gas.
"Tizzie, something occurs to me. We have to face the fact that it's not likely that this was just a bunch of guys out to have a little fun by forcing us off the road."
"I know, I've been having the same thought."
"Which means that it was probably connected to the cave-in and my car going off the cliff."
"I'd say the odds of that are pretty good. And that means that they have decided to eliminate us. In which case that feeling you had—that somehow you've been spared by them for some unknown reason—is no longer valid. That's if it ever was, which I doubt."
She braced her hands against the dashboard and turned to him angrily.
"Jude, for God's sake, slow down. We don't want to crash."
He was going close to eighty—on an unfamiliar road at night.
"We're in a hurry," he said.
"Why?"
"What I was about to say was: if they're after us, they've followed us up here. And if they've followed us up here, they know where we're staying. And that means Skyler's in danger."
Twenty minutes later, they pulled into the Best Western parking lot and swung around the back. Before the car stopped, they spotted the door of Skyler's room, open and swinging slightly in the breeze. Tizzie gasped.