“We just did. By the time they get here all the evidence left will be some Polaroids and a pool of slime in Copperseed’s basement.” He appealed to Andy again. “Put it this way—as far as these creatures go, we’re the experts. Who else has faced one and lived to tell the tale? We go below Sentinel Hill again, but this time around we go armed. Al has guns. One thing we know about those creatures—they can die.”
“Christ, that line came straight out of a B-movie,” Kerri moaned, sinking her head into her palms. “Might as well put on a shredded slutty dress and start practicing my screaming.”
Nate ignored her, focused on the tiebreaker: “All we need to do is find evidence they’re down there. That’s it.”
Andy felt the physical weight on her shoulders. She consulted Nate, then Kerri, still sunk in her hands, then Tim.
She went through the plan in her head: climbing down a mineshaft, fighting, perhaps blowing up stuff. As strategies go, this one actually seemed tailored to her limited skills.
Plus, Kerri had just said something about a slutty dress.
“Okay, we’re going,” she said. “Tomorrow morning. We’re solving this case once and for all.”
An actual canary perched in its cage, oblivious to the giant luck-dragon snout puffing against the bars. Tim couldn’t care less about any of the other stuff Captain Al was still unloading from his pickup.
“Glowsticks…flares…phosphorus markers…”
“Cap, where do you even keep all this stuff?” Andy wondered, already alarmed at the size of the impedimenta parked on the anecdotic sidewalk.
“I live in a junkyard, Andy,” Al said, with as much pride as any mentally sound person could convey through those words. “The one advantage is that there’s seldom a tool or instrument you don’t have within a hand’s reach. Provided you don’t mind tetanus, that is.” He finished unwrapping a new piece of equipment. “Two-way radios. I doubt they’ll do any good underground; if they don’t, just chuck them into a shaft; there’s more in the pile these came from.”
Nate stepped back to catch in midair one of the transceivers as the captain tossed it to him, inadvertently kicking the bird’s cage; the canary tweeted in protest like a fenderbent driver. Tim leaned even closer, English microbiologist eyes fixed on the compact featherball inside, tail producing enough aeolic power to feed a small city.
The plastic penguin between his jaws squeaked.
The bird, in turn, emitted a single new chirp.
Tim stepped back in shock, searched for the approval of the audience who had just witnessed that milestone in animal communication.
“Try not to get too attached, Tim,” Kerri advised. “He’s gonna be the first to go.”
“Not really; it won’t just drop dead,” Al said. “If you encounter gas, it will start chirping and fluttering first. At that point, either turn back or, if you must, put on your masks and set the bird free. It will instinctively go for higher ground.”
“Are these masks really gonna help?” Nate asked, banjoing the string of a simple respirator.
“No, those you wear all the time to prevent inhaling silica dust. If the air goes bad, you switch to these.”
Al opened one of the rucksacks and showed them the large, insect-eyed breathing mask inside, a long, flexible proboscis connecting it to a tank the size of a bike water bottle. Andy had had one chance to try one on in the academy; Kerri and Nate had seen them worn only by Tom Cruise in Top Gun.
“Don’t worry, these ain’t from the junkyard,” Al comforted them. “I drove to Umatilla Airbase yesterday to borrow them. This one’s a different story—I had to call in some real favors for this baby.”
He pulled out a cone-shaped, khaki-colored leather bag with stenciled letters: E12R8. He unlatched the cover and extracted a fourth respirator. Andy squinted at the distance between the air filter and the two visors, until she figured out the shape of the face that would fit in that mask.
Everyone turned to Tim, way too engrossed with interspecies talks with the canary to care about their travel preparations.
“They stopped making these after World War II, but,” Al italicized for attention, “it comes with no oxygen, so the dog will have to stay with the bird. And your bottles only last twenty minutes each, so if you end up needing these, do not linger.”
Kerri flipped the dog mask in her hands, figuring out the straps, while Al went on to unbag the last but not least pieces of equipment.
“Shells.” He threw a box of twelve-gauge ammunition at Nate, who was already carrying Uncle Emmet’s shotgun. Nate appreciated the package, adorned with a terrifyingly realistic drawing of a charging Kodiak bear.
The captain turned to Andy: “I trust you know how to use this.”
He flipped the M1911 pistol in the air, grabbed it by the barrel, and handed it properly to her.
Andy could feel Kerri’s queasiness like a bright orange siren glowing out of the corner of her eye. She looked up at the captain for a solacing smirk. There was none coming.
She pocketed the gun and some mags in the back of her jeans, saying, “We used the M9 Beretta; it’s the new standard. But I prefer the single-action myself.”
The captain produced a final piece of leatherware and handed it to Kerri.
“I know you will refuse a firearm, so at least take this until Andy convinces you to trade it for the pistol.”
He held a sheathed combat knife on his open hand, stretched out, not pushing or pressuring her in any way, but not retreating either.
Kerri took it and pulled the sleeve off an inch. The steel blade gleamed boastfully at her for a second before she sheathed it back.
Al kicked some empty bags and planted a foot on the side of his truck. It was the same vehicle that had driven them to the mines thirteen years ago.
“So. What else can I do for you?”
“One thing,” Andy said. “Put all this back on the truck and drive us to the mines; I don’t want to climb Sentinel Hill in a station wagon.”
“Thought you’d never ask.” He smiled for the first time.
—
Nate rode shotgun and Andy and Kerri and Tim sat in the truck bed, jolting as the pickup climbed up the rutted lake road fork that led to the mine entrance on Sentinel Hill. Kerri was still carrying the knife in her right hand, grasping it lightly like she would hold a scorpion.
Andy sat watching her, calculating whether she should put a hand on her shoulder. They had not touched the previous night, a remarkable feat given the size of the bed they shared. Kerri’s anxiety attack had not repeated; in her words, she was too anxious to afford one. They had spent all evening preparing the trip, frisking the town library for information on the gold mines and exhuming gear from seldom-queried chests in Aunt Margo’s house. Andy had failed to give the team a pep talk before they withdrew to their rooms at night. Kerri took a late shower and got into bed after Andy; Andy offered to pull out the guest bed but Kerri refused. Their only contact was a gentle whiplash of dryer-warmed hair as Kerri leaped over her to take the inside of the bed. From that moment, a 38th parallel had been drawn across the mattress. Andy had not dared cross it.