Dark static a novel, p.33
Dark Static: A Novel, page 33
The three reached the short steel bridge that crossed Jawbone Falls. The spillway was bare rock smoothed by millennia of moving water, glistening in the rising moonlight. Unsurprisingly, considering the dearth of snow the season had seen, there was little runoff. Jawbone Falls ran at a trickle, no more than a lichen-tangled drainage chute Ethan spent several minutes peering over the side at the black depths of the lake below. He shivered. Rocky stirred impatiently, whining now and then at his feet. They continued on in expectant silence.
Beyond the park and the falls and the bridge was the mine, hidden in the forest and the night. Even with the clearing mist, fog still clung to the boughs and boles of the dark pines in tendrils of ectoplasmic luminescence energized by the light of their twin torches. The heavy-duty flashlights pierced the forest dark, but the air remained dense with moisture, scattering the beams in wide halos, so that they had to keep them pointed low in order not to blind themselves with the backsplash.
"Joey's a big guy," Ethan said as they hiked and the dog sniffed the needled floor. "I can't imagine Steve dragging his unconscious body this far."
"Maybe he used a cart," Mina said.
Ethan almost dismissed the idea out of hand. But then he thought about the catering van. It was likely Steve had several heavy-capacity carts on hand for his employees to take delivery-truck loads at the restaurant. It wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that he had somehow rendered Joey unconscious before strapping him to a hand truck and moving him to the mine. But then again, the ground here was bumpy, uneven, slippery. Even a large dolly with oversized rubber wheels would be difficult to drag through drifts of pine needles.
"Maybe someone helped him?" Ethan suggested.
"Unlikely," Mina said. "Unless the guy had access to the sort of unskilled labor that doesn't mind kidnapping people and stuffing them in mine shafts."
"What if he used another Querent?"
"They don't work together. Not consciously."
"Never?" Ethan asked.
Mina fell silent.
"Maybe whoever's here was working with Steve," Ethan said. "The two of them could have moved Joey here. Tamsin too."
Mina didn't look convinced. "Lock is all about control, scripting. Two Querents working in tandem for the same goal is not his style, kid. You're barking up the wrong tree."
"So because you've never seen it, that means it's impossible?" Ethan said.
Mina waved her flashlight at the bare cliff rock, searching. "Not impossible, just unlikely."
"How unlikely?"
Mina shrugged. "As in no precedent. Zero. Never done before. So why change now?"
"Because maybe something's changed. What if Lock is testing a new theory? What if he doesn't care about any of this free will crap and just wants to see people running around aimlessly in despair?"
"Despair, yes. Aimlessly, no. Lock's not going to change. He's calculating, precise, and he doesn't take frivolous chances. The word meticulous was invented for Judea Lock."
"You're saying he doesn't derive sick pleasure from this sadistic game?" Ethan said heatedly.
"I'm not saying that," Mina replied coolly. "Behind the calculation is intent, purpose. Lock's purpose is sheer spite and hate for humanity. He pitties no one and nothing. No amount of suffering is too much if it's in the name of his grand cause. But he has a cause, even if only he understands it."
Ethan sighed. They came to a stop in a small clearing. The pines here had been clear cut by the mining company a century or more ago. Only rotten stumps remained. Ahead, on the cliff face, was the timber-framed entrance to the mine.
"Coal mine," Ethan said. "They dried up around here in the thirties." He shined the flashlight into the adit portal. A few feet in was a metal fence. The simple chain link had been cut and peeled back to create an opening.
"The mine was fenced off a few years ago," Ethan said. "I think there were some wood beams or something across the entrance before, but those were decades old, rotten. Kids would come up here, mess around. Then the state park slapped up the fence."
A red metal sign pinned to the upper portion of the fence read: DANGER: RISK OF DEATH FROM FALLING ROCK! POISON GAS RISK. DO NOT ENTER!
Rocky whined.
"We're going to need your nose in there," Ethan said. He knelt and held the dog's head. "Are you ready, boy? There's no shame in being afraid."
The dog smacked its lips and rocked on its legs, pawing at the ground, as if to say, "I'm as ready as I'll ever be, human.”
Mina crossed her gun hand over the top of her flashlight hand to steady her aim. "I'll take point."
"No," Ethan said. "Rocky will have to go ahead. His nose will lead."
"Good way to get lead poisoning," Mina said.
Ethan smiled. "Whoever's in there has the advantage. They'll just as likely shoot you."
"So we'll go side-by-side," Mina suggested.
"Think there's room? Ethan asked.
"My hips aren't that wide," Mina said and stared at the opening. The adit was a gaping maw into solid rock that had been chipped, drilled and blasted over a hundred years ago. There was no telling how big the mine was, how deep, how treacherous. "Only one way to find out," she said.
They entered the mine.
The flashlights bloomed into twin suns within the confines of the adit. What they saw was a cave, hacked from raw stone, glimmering with minerals, streaked with copper and turquoise. Cool air pressed against their faces, invisible fingers caressing, as if the ghosts of ancient miners were racing past them and fleeing into the night.
"This is like being in one of my games," Ethan whispered. "Exploring, discovering, unveiling an inner truth. I never thought I'd be living it out like this."
"Do your games have happy endings?" Mina whispered back as they walked along the stone-strewn floor, their shoes on the gravel and debris amplified and echoing with every step.
"Not generally," Ethan said. "They're open ended. Self-interpreted stories. The player takes away their own meaning."
Mina clucked her tongue. "Time was stories had narrative, plot, meaning."
"My games have narrative," Ethan protested mildly. "I just ask the player to do some of the work."
"All of the work," Mina countered.
"Some of the work," Ethan hissed.
"It's lazy storytelling. And it's what's wrong with most modern media, if not all of it. No one takes a stand anymore. It's all about grey spaces and moral ambiguity, about saying nothing at all in the vain hope of not offending anyone. Well, guess what, it sucks."
"Well, I don't recall asking for your opinion," Ethan said, ducking his head as they passed under a partially-collapsed wooden beam.
"I don't require permission to give my opinion," Mina said. "Really, you don't need people like me to overthrow the West by undermining society, your bedwetting college professors and self-serving politicians and interpretive narrative media is doing that as well as any terrorist organization could."
Ethan fell silent. He wanted to argue, but something about Mina's words rang a bell of truth within him. He found it hard not to steal glimpses of her as she walked slightly ahead and to his left. The backdraft continuously drew her scent to him: the floral fragrance of her hair, a mild perfume, and a darker, warmer aroma that made his gut tighten. He tripped on a rock and caught his hand on the wall to steady himself, slicing his palm on the jagged stone. Ethan sucked at the blood.
Mina lowered the gun, turned to him. "Stay alert."
"Yeah," Ethan said.
Mina shook her head in exasperation, holstering the pistol and placing the flashlight on the floor. She took his hand in hers and opened it. The lacerations were raw looking, but not deep. "Just some skin," she said, folding his hand back into a fist and pushing it away.
Ethan stood there for a moment while Rocky panted and waited patiently for him to move. Why was he letting himself get so distracted now, at the worst possible moment? He bit his lip, shook his head at his own stupidity, and followed Mina, who already continued along the shaft, gun drawn, flashlight pointed directly ahead.
As they walked they passed offshoots that branched from the main shaft. These were stopes, areas where coal or ore had been pulled from the rock, leaving behind a cavity. Some of the stopes were large, others had collapsed or had been backfilled. Each time they considered turning from the main adit, Rocky insisted they continue on. They decided to listen to the dog.
The floor widened. The remains of steel tracks appeared underfoot, while metal conduit, rusted piping and cables ran overhead, partially collapsed in places, so that the three had to crawl around them single file. And still Rocky tugged at his leash, leading them deeper, with growing impatience.
"How many levels?" Ethan wondered aloud.
"No telling," Mina whispered.
They passed a rise that disappeared up into darkness. A wooden ladder was propped against the stone face. Rocky paused and sniffed at the ladder for several moments while Ethan shined his light up at the hole. He saw only more rock. Eventually Rocky decided to move on.
"Is there a chance Them are...helping Lock?" Ethan asked after several minutes of claustrophobic silence.
"Helping? How?"
"Don't know. Them must have some purpose."
"Everything has a purpose."
"So how do Them fit in with the grand scheme of things? Qumans and anti-qumans."
"Equalizers," Mina corrected.
"Maybe Lock has a way of communicating with Them. Maybe he controls Them?"
"No idea," Mina said.
"You've been doing this for how long? And you're telling me you know nothing about anything. Ridiculous."
"The purpose of life is not a mystery to be solved, Ethan."
"Frank Herbert. And that's bullshit. Everything is a mystery until you solve it."
"So you have experienced some good media."
"I refuse to believe that no one has tried to make contact with Them. That in all the years humans have known about this stuff no one has ever set up an experiment or tried to learn something about the higher dimensions and those that inhabit them."
"Maybe they have," Mina said, stepping over a length of fallen cable.
"If we could just talk to Them…"
Mina paused. She turned to Ethan. "What? Somehow we'll gain their mystical powers. Solve world hunger. Stop nuclear proliferation. Cure acne. Doesn't it occur to you that Them may just as well look upon us the way we look at plants or bugs or lichen or fungi? It's likely we're nothing to Them. Trust me, in all the years I've been doing this, Them have only observed. They are attracted to us like dust to static. We don't know why. We don't want to know why. As long as they can't hurt us, it's better we leave well enough alone."
"One of Them tried to talk to me," Ethan said. "I felt it. There was the desire for communication. It reached out to me."
Mina narrowed her eyes.
"That's never happened to you?"
"No."
"What does it mean?" Ethan asked.
Mina shrugged. "Nothing."
"Aren't you the least bit curious?"
"Not really."
"Christ, Mina, you can't be that closed minded!"
Mina blinked. "I've lived long enough to know that sticking my nose in where it doesn't belong only gets it cut off. Or worse, it gets the people you care about killed."
Ethan fell silent.
Rocky whined.
Something rattled ahead. It echoed along the shaft, raced behind them, came back and raced ahead again. Ethan thought of a cave in, stones coming down, crushing them in the darkness. But then the unmistakable sound of a raised voice followed the first sound.
Mina and Ethan ended their discussion. Instinctively, they lowered their flashlights.
Had someone seen their light? Heard their whispered conversation?
Another voice cried out. Older, sharp, angry. Ethan couldn't make out the words with all the reverb.
"We need to get closer," Ethan said. "Kill the flashlights."
Mina looked dubious but did what Ethan said. They were immediately plunged into pitch darkness. The air racing through the shaft seemed to grow frigid with the loss of light. Ethan shivered. His eyes adjusted to the dark as the spots of afterglow faded from his retinae. Within a minute of staring at nothing he realized they were not standing in absolute darkness after all. Ahead of them was an orange glow, flickering with variable intensity. It was barely enough to see the way ahead.
"Single file, behind me," Mina said.
Ethan didn't argue. Rocky's nose had led them true. He and the dog fell back to let Mina's gun take point. He saw her now only as a black shape moving steadily ahead.
At first Ethan worried about the noise their footsteps caused, but as they continued on in the near darkness he realized that whomever the voices belonged to were unconcerned about being overheard, and as such they were distracted, remaining unaware of their approach. Or so Ethan prayed.
In the soft light that reached them from somewhere ahead, Ethan felt as if the mine shaft was widening. The ceiling was now ten feet or more above his head, and there was room to stand almost four abreast. The voices were clearer now, too, more distinct. For a moment Ethan thought he recognized one of them.
"She ain't gonna remember nothin'," the older, sharper voice barked. "She ain't good for nothin' but chumming the lake, anyhow. What do you care about it?"
The second voice spoke up, younger, deeper. Ethan racked his brain trying to come up with where he'd heard that voice. Something about it sent a thrill of half-remembered fear through him. But a face would not come, and a name remained elusive.
"It's as simple as this—you touch the girl again and I will shoot your sorry ass, got it? Then we'll see who's chumming the lake."
"You threatenin' me?" the older man said in outrage. "You wouldn't be here if not for me! She's my sweet bit, what I was promised."
"No one promised you squat, you lying dog," the younger man said, laughing darkly. "And if they did, then they were lying too."
"He promised me!" the older man screamed. "She's 'sposed be my sweet li'l bit."
The younger man laughed again. "You dirty old coot."
"What's it to ya? You're down here just the same as me, big man!"
"We are not the same."
"You think 'cause you're in that uniform you got power? You ain't got nothin'! Not down here. Not unless he says so!"
"Is that a fact?" the younger voice said icily.
Ethan and Mina and Rocky emerged into a cavernous opening. Mina quickly held her hand back to stop Ethan and ducked. The rail tracks ended abruptly several feet ahead. An old cart backstop dangled from the rails. Beyond were lights and shadow and a twelve foot drop to the floor.
Ethan lowered himself to his knees. Rocky whined almost imperceptibly at his side. His master was close, but the dog sensed they needed to remain quiet. He hung back as Mina and Ethan peered over the edge into the cavern, which was a massive stope, the product of removing thousands of tons of coal and ore from the space and leaving an unfilled void.
The sound of dripping water echoed. Ethan felt the air blast up at his face and into the shaft behind him.
Below, two men stood several feet apart. Several lanterns burned at intervals throughout the space, which was a mixture of jagged and smooth rock, dark and glittering, dry and damp. A large metal rail cart stood off its tracks near the center of the space. A black pit seemed to extend beyond that. Ethan saw what appeared to be a makeshift structure of wood and corrugated steel forming a lean-to near one face of the stope. Light spilled from inside.
"This is my place, my world down here!" one of the men said. The older man, Ethan realized. He was tall and gaunt and wearing filthy clothes, a beanie, old boots and fingerless gloves. His face was long, crooked. His jaw was covered in a matted grey beard. He pointed at the other man, and said, "I let you freaks down here 'cause I was supposed to get me some honest coochie meat. What's been promised me!"
"Old man, I am this close to throwing your sorry ass down that goddamn hole," the younger man said, pointing at the dark void in the floor beyond the mine cart. "Now you keep your filthy fingers off of her until I say otherwise."
The second man was also tall, but heavy with it. Ethan immediately recognized his clothes. It was a county sheriff's deputy uniform. His mind raced back to the night of the Change—as that was how he thought of it now. When he had dialed the cops using Jennifer's cell phone he'd been disconnected because the phone was out of power and needed charging. Minutes later a county sheriff's deputy had knocked on his door.
"This is my home, pig!" the old man said. "You freaks can't come down here and tell me what to do!"
"This is state property, jackass, you're not even allowed to be down here," the deputy spat.
"And you're no cop, are ya? You and that Mexican fella pretendin' to be police. Bah! I know you ain't no real cops. Real cops don't bring people into a mine and hold em prisoner. So you ain't got nothin' on me I ain't got on you! And I ain't gonna do a thing more to look after em unless I get what's mine!"
"You're getting paid," the deputy said.
The old bum pointed at a pile of rubble. "Money ain't worth nothin' to me down here! What, you think I need a wide screen? A jacuzzi? I was promised meat, damn it! Hot, coochie meat. I been waitin' for it! That's prime tail!"
"I'm making you a new promise, you kiddie raping shitheel," the deputy said, pulling his service weapon and pointing it at the bum. "Touch the girl again and you die."
The bum screamed in fury and rushed the deputy, who appeared surprised by the old man's direct attack. Perhaps the deputy wasn't able to click the safety off his weapon, perhaps he really didn't want to shoot the old man after all. He raised the weapon and side-stepped, allowing the bum to trip and fall.
"You want to die, old man?" the deputy asked.
The bum got to his feet. He snarled, more animal than man now. To Ethan's astonishment, the old man leaped at the deputy again.
This time the deputy put out his foot and pushed the bum back with the toe of his boot. The old man stumbled, lost balance, and fell backwards onto his butt.
