What Have We Done (24)

When the taillights are at a safe distance, Jenna climbs out of the brush and runs to the Jeep.

Willow is in the passenger seat, hugging her knees, her head down.

She startles when Jenna opens the door.

Willow says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t think—I didn’t know my phone could…”

Jenna looks at her stepdaughter, who averts her eyes. “Look at me,” Jenna says.

Willow’s eyes, red and watery, peer into Jenna’s. “You have nothing to be sorry for. None of this is your fault.”

Jenna opens the driver’s side window, listens.

Nothing.

“You’re buckled up?” she asks.

Willow checks the strap, nods.

With that, Jenna takes in a deep breath, turns the key, and starts the engine.

It sounds to Jenna like a volcano erupting on the desolate road. She drives through the tall weeds, turning the vehicle around and climbing up the embankment and back onto the dirt road. She doesn’t know if the Camaro is long gone or dangerously nearby, but she has no time to worry about it. She needs to get to the cabin and protect her family.





CHAPTER TWENTY

NICO

The sound—a sequence of pops—startles Nico. The sky brightens in a flash, revealing the five of them surrounding the dirt pit.

But when his thoughts clear, Nico isn’t on that knoll. And the sound isn’t from a cheap handgun.

It’s louder, from up top, outside the mine. There are more bangs, like someone’s setting off dynamite on the surface. Is this another fever dream?

No, he’s convinced it’s not.

He hears five charges in all. His mind jumps to that safety training again. The instructor telling them to look at the sticker inside their helmets. What did the sticker say? If you hear three shots, they know you’re alive; if you hear five, they know where you are and are on the way. Is that right?

He listens. It is now as silent as it is dark. He clicks on his iPhone flashlight and sees the dead rats again, a sight that sends a rush of fear from his asshole up his spine to the base of his neck.

Oxygen is dangerously low.

He knows he’s supposed to stay still. But if the rats are dying, he’s not far behind. He needs to find an SCSR. They’re stored in receptacles running along the mine. But the roof collapse has blocked access to the tunnels.

A thought, one of those realizations that can save your life, comes to him: the handcar. Doesn’t it have emergency SCSRs in a compartment? He tries to stand, but he’s weak. His thoughts are jumbled, another sign of carbon monoxide poisoning.

He drags himself to the handcar, which is half submerged in a pile of rocks and debris. The front end is exposed. He uses his uninjured arm to haul himself into the contraption. Holding the iPhone light ahead of him, he scans inside. The open half of the cart is covered in coal dust, but he sees a side panel with an emergency symbol on it.

He’s confused again. Where is he? What’s happening? But it comes back to him and he opens the side panel and inside there’s the most glorious thing he’s ever seen: an SCSR.

Now the challenge: remembering how to use the goddamned thing. He holds the iPhone light to the device, which looks like an oversized aluminum canteen. That’s when he sees the red indicator that he’s got only 2 percent battery life left on his phone.

The hits keep coming.

He’s feeling confused, light-headed again. He should write a goodbye note. But to whom?

He thinks of running in the sand on that beach again. The joyous shriek as he raced away from the

waves, his mom watching him.

He pops the latch off the top of the SCSR and struggles with removing the protective cover. It’s wedged on like a giant cap to a martini shaker. It finally comes off, and he yanks off the bottom cover.

He puts the strap around his neck and the SCSR hangs at his midsection like a tourist’s Nikon camera.

He remembers something about a breathing bag at the bottom. He feels for the bag and his hand grips an orange tag, which it seems is meant to activate the bag. It’s so complicated.

His mind flashes to Maverick going off on one of his rants about mine safety and how the protective gear is no better than when his daddy’s daddy’s daddy was bringing up the black rock that powered the world.

Nico thinks of the cast of the show: Headboard (the best of the nicknames) and Kermit (for his frogface) and Doc (because of all the pills) and Bloody Joe (don’t ask).

He has the mouthpiece clenched between his teeth now, but his mind floats. He thinks he hears noise from above, but he’s probably imaging it.

He pictures the indignity—no, the embarrassment—of them finding his body with this thing strapped on him like a giant sleep apnea machine.

Breathing into the tube, he becomes strangely at ease, like he’s in a morphine fog.

He closes his eyes. At least he thinks they’re closed, because his phone has died and it’s so dark he honestly can’t tell. He clasps his Saint Christopher pendant in his fingers.

He sees a funnel of light. It’s true, what they say about when you die. There is a light, a calm, a peace, and he waits for his body to float away.

The light gets closer, brighter. Then the voice rips him back to consciousness.

“We’ve got our man! We’ve got our man!”