Shadows (Ashes Trilogy 2)

“Weller, even if we manage to collapse the room just beneath the kids, they’ll still be above us,” he said. “What’s to stop them from using Shaft One or working their way over to that big underground road to escape?”

“They can’t. If you collapse the room, everything drops down. You knock out the guts of an apartment building, there’s no way to get to the fire escape unless you climb up. Same thing here. The Chuckies’ only choice will be to go down, but there’s no direct connection with the Yeager Shaft or the road at all. They’ll be trapped good and tight. They won’t be able to go down or up, and then those Chuckies either get crushed or suffocated or even drowned . . .” A nasty grin oiled over Weller’s lips. “I don’t care how they go, Tom, just so long as that mine’s gone, the way to Rule is clear, and those monsters are dead.”

67

Ten days later, Tom planted his left pole in the snow and kicked off hard, skating on his right ski before shifting his weight to his left and driving forward. He had a rhythm down now, and Jed’s old Timex told him that he was making excellent time. He’d passed their first lookout post, the bell tower of an abandoned Lutheran church, an hour ago. He was panting now, but the work felt good, his muscles limber and warm. The snow was perfect, three inches of fresh powder atop an icy, heavier two-foot base like frothy whipped topping on ice cream.

His destination was a different lookout post snuggled into the east rim of Devil’s Cauldron. The lake was man-made, and all that was left of the first Yeager Brothers mine: a rough, bowl-shaped gouge chunked from the earth that the Yeagers backfilled with water when the iron ore tapped out. The tailings—monstrous piles of rubble—had been covered with a thin layer of topsoil and were now home to snow-laden scrub and thin saplings on their way to becoming hardwood forest in another century or so. For now, the scrub offered good cover and an excellent view of the second mine to the west. The last quarter mile to the rim was all uphill, and he pushed himself, bounding up the slope, poling hard. By the top of the rise, Tom’s heart was banging. His breaths came harsh and fast as he armed away sweat from his forehead, but he could feel how much stronger he’d gotten. A good thing, too: he would need every ounce of muscle he could muster, because in three hours, with any luck, they would be deep underground.

As he slid to a stop, a muzzled dog slinked from a blind. A scruffy boy, all in winter-white, followed a moment later. “Hey, Tom,” the kid said.

“Chad.” Tom unclipped from his skis, then ruffled the dog’s ears. The kid had an Uzi carbine fitted with a suppressor—another of the toys Weller and Mellie had in abundance. “Is Luke here?”

“Yeah. He and Weller showed up twenty minutes ago.” Chad lifted a chin toward Tom’s pack. “Those them? Can I see one?”

“Okay.” Kneeling, Tom opened the pack and withdrew a steel cylinder the size of a soda can. Three metal legs, secured with duct tape, protruded several inches from one end.

“Whoa, that’s pretty funky,” Chad said. He ran a finger in a copper concave divot capping one end of the cylinder. “So this is like Iraq and Afghanistan, right? An IED?”

“On a smaller scale, yeah.” Tom pointed to the divot. “That’s your penetrator. Same principle as a bullet. Throw a bullet at a deer, it bounces off. But if you put a lot of force behind it, the slug punches through. A shaped charge channels energy. It’s why bullets are so destructive. It’s not the hole that kills you. It’s the energy transfer to the rest of your body—or, in this case, the rock.” It actually wasn’t that simple, but Tom wasn’t wild about giving any of the kids a crash course on explosives manufacturing. Bad enough that he was forced to take Luke, but working alone or with only Weller would take too long.

Returning the charges to his pack, he cinched the drawstring, then stood and offered his hand. “Later, dude.”

“Is it okay to wish you luck?” Chad asked.

In Afghanistan, guys had all kinds of superstitions, like never eating the Charms from an MRE. M&Ms were okay, except the blue ones. But Charms were the kiss of death. Charms they dropped in the burn shitter. Wish someone luck, you got your ass kicked.

“Oh, sure,” Tom said.

The others waited on a small rise behind a screen of scrub. Luke heard him coming first and tipped a wave. Weller only nodded. Mellie and the other lookout didn’t turn around. Ducking beneath brush, he squatted in the hollowed-out snow at Mellie’s shoulder. “Anything new?”

Mellie didn’t look up from a pair of 26×70s mounted on a low tripod. “I see some movement to the north, and there might be another group looping in from the west. Cindi?”

“Too far yet.” Peering through Big Eyes 25/45×100s, Cindi, a freckle-faced twelve-year-old, nibbled her lower lip. “But I think those guys dropping down the north approach road have prisoners.”

Tom’s stomach tightened. “How can you tell?”

“The flashlights.” Luke was fourteen and the oldest after Tom.

He’d attached himself to Tom almost right away; nearly all the kids had decided Tom was their big brother. He really didn’t mind. All these kids made him feel a little better. He worried, too, what would happen to them when he and Alex left. Maybe . . . take along the kids who wanted to come? Yeah, but could they really all manage?

One step at a time, he thought. Do this and then find Alex. The rest will sort itself out.

Luke sipped watered-down instant coffee from a mess cup. “We’ve been watching for a couple weeks. When there are flashlights, that usually means prisoners. The Chuckies don’t seem to need a lot of light to see where they’re going.”

That was interesting. It might be another reason why the Chuckies favored the mine. “Do you know how many?” Tom asked.

Cindi did a one-shouldered shrug. “Four, five in that group. Maybe more. The Chuckies have really stocked up, though. There are a lot of people already in the mine for . . . you know . . .”

“A snack,” Tom said. “Innocent people they’re putting by for a rainy day.”

“Aw, Christ,” Weller muttered.

“Tom,” Mellie said.

“Ah . . .” Cindi’s cheeks flushed a sudden, furious scarlet. Her eyes pinged from Tom to Mellie and back again. “Yeah. Anyway, when this group gets a little closer, I can tell better.”

“Tom, we knew there would be prisoners,” Mellie said. Her tone sounded more like a warning. “You’re okay with this, right?”