Monsters: The Ashes Trilogy (2 page)

Alex fell, fast, into the dark, in a hail of splintered wood, a shower
of stone as the mine came down around her ears and water stormed
up the throat of her escape tunnel. She could smell the end, rushing
to meet her, the water so icy and metallic, a scent of snow and steel
laced with that queer, gassy fizz of rotten eggs. High above, so far
away, she saw the stars wink out. The exit where Tom had been only
minutes before now swarmed with viscous, oily shadows as the earth
folded and fell in on itself.

She’d taken physics. Terminal velocity was . . . well, they didn’t call
it
terminal
for nothing. Fall far enough and even an ant will shatter.
After a certain height, coming to a sudden stop, even in water, would
be like slamming a car into a brick wall. Sure, the car crumpled, but
everything else—passengers, seats, anything movable—had its own
momentum. People hurtled into one another or the seat or windshield, and then the brain, the heart, the lungs smashed against bone.
So, fall far enough onto
anything
and the impact wouldn’t just break
her; it would obliterate her.

She thought she was screaming but couldn’t hear herself over the
combined thunder of falling rock and churning water. Something
hard smacked the back of her head, not a rock but Leopard’s Uzi
still slung over her shoulders, the carry strap slicing her right armpit.
Leopard’s Glock 19 was a fist digging into the small of her back. For
the first time in her life, she wished all Glocks had safeties. She didn’t
think the weapon would discharge and blow a hole through her spine
or into her butt, but there was a first time for everything, like the end
of the world. Like falling to your death. On the other hand, a nice,
quick, lethal bullet—

And then, suddenly, that was it. In that very last second, she closed
her mouth, held her breath, thought about just maybe saving herself
for . . . well, for something. Someone. For Tom, maybe. No, no
maybe
about him at all. She hadn’t wanted Tom to leave, but she couldn’t let
him die in this place either—not for her. It was the last good thing she
could do. She so desperately wanted him to live that it hurt
—

Then, no more seconds. No more thoughts or memories. No
wishes or dreams or regrets. Nothing. End of the line.
She hit.
It wasn’t gentle.
Alex clobbered the water like a sledgehammer. A jag of agony
spiked her right ankle; the impact blasted into her hips. A cannonball of pain roared up her spine to detonate in her head. Her vision
blacked from the spinal shock. For a second, maybe two, she was out
cold, helpless as a puppet cut loose from its strings.
Ironically, the water that had just tried to kill her slapped her
awake for round two. Her mind came back in a scream as icy water
jetted up her nose, gushed into her mouth, tried to flood her lungs.
Having clamped down to keep her from drowning, her throat was a
knot. She couldn’t manage a single breath. Muscling through with
sheer will, she gulped one shrieking inhale before the water wrapped
steely fingers around her ankles and calves to pull her down, down,
down below the surface.
No!
A fist of red, burning panic punched her chest. Completely
underwater and totally in the dark, she thrashed with no sense of
where the surface was. Caught in a whirlpool created by competing
currents, she was spinning, whirling, tumbling. Her right shoulder
slammed stone, a stunning blow that sent electric tingles down to
her wrist and numbed her fingers. She tried swimming—
where’s up,
where’s up?
—but her movements were spastic, feeble. Her back was a
single, long shrill of pain. She wasn’t sure her legs were even working.
Nearly out of air. Got to do something.
Her throat bunched and
clenched, trying to force open her mouth for air that wasn’t there. A
solid steel band cinched down tighter and tighter around her chest,
squeezing,
squeezing
. Desperate for oxygen, her heart pounded fast
and then faster and faster and faster, a fist frantically banging her caging ribs:
Let me out, let me OUT, LET ME OUT!
A sudden lurch
.
Something had snagged. She felt a jolt between
her shoulder blades, and then a vicious cut as the Uzi’s strap sawed
her throat. Lifted by the current, her legs went nearly vertical. She
was still underwater—on the brink of drowning—but she wasn’t
spinning anymore, at least for the moment.
I’m caught.
The Uzi. The metal plate barrel must’ve jammed into
the rocks. If that was true, and the Uzi was locked tight and didn’t
move . . .
If I can get myself turned around, I’ll have something to hang
on to, get my head out of the water.
Straining against the current, she
hooked her left hand around the Uzi’s strap, still cutting into her
neck, and reached back with her right. All she grabbed was water.
She tried kicking herself closer.
Come on, come on, come on.
Her chest
was one bright blister. Her throat was doing that
urk-urk-urk
, battling
with her to give it up already, stop fighting, let go.
Please, God, help me.
Her fingers scraped rock, and then there was the Uzi, jammed in
a V-shaped cleft of stone above her head, not by an inch or two but
at least two feet. No way to get her head above water, not while she
was tangled up in the carry strap and on her back. She would have to
flip completely over. In order to do
that
, she would have to release the
death grip she had on that carry strap and trust that she was strong
enough to counter the pull of the current. That she could hang on
with only her right hand for those few seconds. Otherwise, she would
drown.
She tried to let go of the carry strap; she really did. But her left
hand, frozen in a rictus of panic, refused to obey. She couldn’t do
this. No way. She wasn’t strong enough. The water was going to
get her. One last second of blind fear and then she would have to

Then there came a voice, a phantom of memory, so small and
distant, barely audible over her terror:
Come on, honey, let go of the gun
or you’ll die. Jump, Alex, jump—

But then, all at once, it was too late. It was over, and even her
father, as strong and sure as he was, couldn’t save her.
What was left of her air boiled from her lips, drawing with it the
thin, fiery ribbon of a final scream. Her mind shimmied, and she bled
from her body, her consciousness detaching, letting go, hurtling up
and away until she saw herself as if from a great height and through
the wrong end of a pirate’s spyglass: faraway, helpless in the chop and
churn, red hair streaming like bloody seaweed. With no conscious
thought at all, no planning whatsoever, her left hand slipped off the
Uzi. The greedy current instantly snatched her ankles. If not for the
hump of her right shoulder, she’d have been torn free of the strap to
swirl away and drown. But it held, and then, somehow, she was twisting, flipping herself around. Her right hand was locked tight, and the
Uzi held; her left hand found the weapon, and the Uzi held; and then
she was surging up with a mighty kick, the sudden shear in her ankle
only a twinkle against the greater agony in her chest, because she had
no air, she was out of air and time; but the weapon still held—
She shattered through, breaching the surface like a clumsy whale.
She managed a single, wheezy, strangled
aaahhhh
, and that was all.
No match for the pounding current, her elbows unhinged, and she
instantly submerged, her head going completely under.
Hang on, hang on, hang on!
A drill bit of fear cored straight into her
heart. As far as she could tell, the Uzi was locked tight. With every
shudder of the earth, however, the gun bucked like a bronco, and it
was so far below the surface, she had to work for every breath.
Another kick, another gulping razor of air, and then down she
went again. The burn in her chest was less, which was to say that her
lungs weren’t on fire and her mind was clearing, slewing back into
place. But she couldn’t do this forever. Although it felt like a century,
she probably hadn’t been in the water more than two minutes. Her
waterlogged clothes and boots were so heavy she might as well have
been wearing chains. She was tiring, her muscles going as shivery
as Jell-O, the icy water burning her skin, leaching heat and the last
of her will. Another kick. A sobbing breath. There was an almost
continual stream of stone: small rocks that bit her arms and nipped
her scalp and drew blood, which the water washed away as soon as
she submerged. Much larger chunks rained down, too, some so close
she heard the
whir
and
sploosh
.
Maybe try to rest somehow, wait this out until things calm down.
Which
was almost funny, in a bizarre way. Calm
down
? She’d be a Popsicle
long before then. If she hadn’t needed the air, she might’ve laughed.
Kicking for the surface, she opened her mouth for a breath—
And that was when she realized, as she sucked in not air but water,
that the tunnel was still filling, the water level rising—and fast.

No.
Flailing, she fell back with a splash. Her left hand slipped from the
gun, and she was nearly swept away. Kicking, she fought, got her left
hand around the Uzi, and surged up for a breath. She only just made
it. The water was now so high, she had to tip her head and still, water
slopped over her chin to lick at her lower lip.

Got to get out.
But how? She dropped beneath the surface again.
From far below came a strange heaving, as if the earth was a shell
that a giant was trying to crack. An instant later, there was a dull
boosh
as another boulder bulleted into the water just off her right shoulder.
God, what if this tunnel broke up, or a wall collapsed? That might
happen, too, and then it would be like the
Titanic
. It was that damn
physics again, water displacing air. The sudden rush of water
out
of
this tunnel and into an adjacent, dry cavern would be too much. She’d
never hang on then but be swept away to spin and drown in the dark.

She held her breath as long as she could before struggling up for
another precious sip of air. She tried to think of what she could do to
save herself, and came up empty. Her only tools were the Uzi to which
her hands were locked tight, the Glock 19 at the small of her back,
and Leopard’s tanto strapped around her leg. While great for dirt
or even chopping handholds in ice, the tanto was useless here. The
Glock was an option, but only if she wanted to go out with a bullet.
Could she risk butting the Uzi free, reseating it higher? Submerging
again, she forced her eyes open. The cold was a blowtorch against
her corneas. Couldn’t see a thing, not even her hands resting on the
weapon. Working blind, going by feel alone with numb, icy fingers—
that was a nonstarter.

No tools, then. Just numb hands and clumsy feet. Resurfacing, she
eked in a meager snuffle of air. High above, the tunnel seemed to
have closed down, gone black.
Moon must’ve set.
But the space also felt
dense and . . . crowded. Something jammed up there, probably rocks
sealing the tunnel’s mouth to cork her in like a genie in a bottle
.
And
that was it, wasn’t it? Up was a dead end. Probably just as well. She
truly
did
suck at climbing.

But life is precious and the body is stubborn, and so was she.
Dad is right. You have to try.
Surfacing again, the peak of her nose
just barely clearing, she pulled in another panicky breath. Maybe
two more and that was it. Her mind kept doing that swimmy slip, a
mental sleight of hand that gave her brief, bird’s-eye views of herself,
waaay
the hell down there.
Jump, Alex, jump. Climb, and do it now before
you lose your nerve.
Eyes shut tight, she let herself fall back. Water closed over her
head. Then, gritting her teeth, she scissored her legs hard at the
same moment that she pulled with her arms. Shifting her hands as
fast as she could, the right first and then the left, she went from an
underhand grip to overhand. Her elbows locked, and then she was
swinging her left boot up so fast and hard and high, her hip joint
shrieked. She jammed rock, felt the jolt in her knee and then metal
under her foot, and thought,
Push.
She hung on, driving up, locking
her left leg as she straightened. Her head broke the surface, followed
by her chest and now her torso. Panting, she hugged stone, balanced
a quick second, then bent her right knee and repeated the process.
There was a white blink of pain in her ankle before the sturdy toe of
her boot stubbed rock. She managed an awkward, sidelong shuffle,
gradually easing onto her right foot, testing the joint, her knee.
Easy,
easy, go slow, don’t push your luck.
She gradually relaxed, let her legs

“Oh God.” For the first time since the ladder disintegrated, she let
herself enjoy a tiny squeak of triumph. There was no relief, not yet; if
she was right, there was a lot of distance to cover and, oh yes, all that
rock jammed in the mouth of the tunnel besides. Pain sparkled in her
ankle, and her temples throbbed, a rapid
puhpum-puhpum-puhpum
in
time with her pulse. Water streamed from her hair and clothes. Air
stroked her cheeks, her neck, and she was starting to really shiver.
But she was standing, clutching razor-thin rock, precariously balanced on a thin ridge of metal as the tunnel shook and water bulled
and sucked and eddied around her knees. The shuddering was much
stronger than before, the rock sawing at her fingers. Between the
water pounding and surging into minute crevices and cracks, and the
continual shifting of the earth itself, the rock had to fatigue sooner or
later. She didn’t think she had much longer.