She found her courage now and rested a hand on Kerri’s shoulder—right on the one square inch her parka and her shirt failed to cover. Her fingertips quivered with joy.
“You can hang it on your pants. See, this goes through your belt loop. No, not like that; the other way around, so you can draw fast. (Guides her, white wrists burning in her hands, without unsheathing the weapon.) Like this, edge up. Never like the killer from Halloween; you thrust upward. Okay? You don’t want to stab them in the back; that’s hard. You want to hit them in the abdomen, hopefully puncture an organ. Also, you may want to twist it as you pull it back. But make sure to pull it back; otherwise, you just gave them a free knife.”
“I don’t think the wheezers can handle tools.”
“I wasn’t talking about the present situation only. It’s a life tip.”
She bent down to fasten the weapon on Kerri’s belt and spied her lips through the orange curls.
“Kerri,” she called softly, a hand conquering the other’s leg. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“You keep saying that.”
“So far I keep being right.”
“And you keep pushing me a lot,” Kerri accused, looking up.
“Because you can take it!” Andy argued, surrendering to a chuckle. “Kerri, two nights ago I told you I’ve been in love with you since I was twelve, and you didn’t even flinch. Do you know what that is? It’s you being in my thoughts, in my fantasies, all through puberty; it’s everything I’ve held in and been choking on for thirteen years, and you just took it with a smile. After that, you can handle anything.”
A flimsy smile in the corner of Kerri’s mouth ruined her perfect misery while she sat reading Andy. She was wearing her most transparent, honest, unconcealing face. She had always been inept at masquerading.
“You never mentioned the fantasies before,” Kerri said.
“Yeah, well. It was implied.”
She gazed away now at the balding hills, but Kerri didn’t take her eyes off her.
“Andy, when you came back into my life and said that we had unfinished business to attend to…exactly what business were you talking about?”
Andy gave that some thought, then concluded, “Everything.”
Kerri’s face saddened up a tiny bit. “Andy, I may not be able to fix everything.”
Andy nodded tranquilly. “It’s okay. Let’s deal with the subterranean monsters first and we’ll get to the rest later, all right?”
—
No one had bothered to replace the old chain and padlock that Captain Al had bolt-cut thirteen years before. Rust and dry mud were all that held the wire gate shut and probably up. After creeping forward for another two minutes, the road crested Sentinel Hill and expanded into a dissolute cul-de-sac, its edges littered with yellow black-bruised machinery and forgotten robots like very sad girls waiting for someone to offer a hand and lead them to the dance floor. Al stopped the truck and the detectives jumped into the arena. A Manhattan of battered signs sporting their warning colors dutifully greeted them, shouting their caveats about self-evident, prosaic dangers, like landslides or moving vehicles: the last of the kids’ concerns.
A few things had changed since their last visit: the tunnel where the lake creature’s footprints led them and which they used last time to enter the mines had been walled up; the shaft had been sealed; and the timber headframe had crumbled on itself. Nothing they had not anticipated.
“Okay, listen up,” Andy called, spreading the xeroxed blueprints over the truck’s hood. “This is us, on Sentinel Hill. (Fingerstabs a point on the map.) This is the level station, a hundred feet below. We’re getting through here. (Index follows a flimsy horizontal line.) This is an adit—it’s a gutter and waste disposal tunnel that opens above the Zoinx River; the opening should be that way.”
She pointed off the map, at the panorama of mourning dark hills surrounding them, all spotted with treeless patches—the scars of human industry.
“Now, once we’re underground,” she resumed, waving them back to the blueprints, “the whole mine complex is huge, but we’ve done our homework. Everything south of this line was dug by the RH Corporation after ’forty-nine. And much of what’s on this side was abandoned well before that. The only shaft in use at the time was this one: Allen shaft. That’s one-point-six miles in that direction. (Vaguely, over the hills in the east.) Once there, we go down the Allen shaft to this plateau and inspect these galleries. (Changing to another, larger-scaled map.) N-3 is the deepest; then N-4, N-5, and E-6.”
“What are these?” Nate asked, pointing at dark geometrical shapes lurking dangerously close to those tunnels.
“Water. Probably underground rivers connected to the lake.”
Captain Al took the baton: “A word of caution. The mine was wired for electricity; I’ll stay up here and try to get the generator running. The deeper you go, though, the worse conditions you’ll find; no lights, no indicators, no steps, and cave-ins are a likely possibility. Also, we’ll probably lose communication once you’re in the drift. Provided I don’t hear otherwise from you, you have exactly six hours before I give you up for lost and call rescue. Roger?”
Andy checked her Coca-Cola watch. “Roger.”
“That path there will lead you to the adit. Good luck.”
They geared up, carrying backpacks and a caged bird, and started the trek down over a rain-abated stretch of rotting wire fence through which dandelion heads poked and cheered at the sun.
—
The path was more properly a track of frequent landslides that faded away just a few yards from the hilltop. Tim led the party for most of the way, finding the more convenient route through low vegetation that thickened and grew up as they descended, slowly drifting toward the east face of the hill into a steep, shadowy valley.
After ten minutes, the harrumphing Zoinx River came into view. It looked like it usually did north of Sleepy Lake: cold and irate.
Not far ahead, a conspicuous slope of gray pulverized rock poured down the hillside and into the roaring waters from the adit mouth. It was less ceremonious than mine entrances were in westerns: an open hole on the hillside, supported by three massive slabs of concrete. No theatrical soul had etched an agonizing KEEP OUT on an ineptly crafted wooden sign; no vultures or forgotten human skulls livened the place. But by the time the detectives stood on the landing before it, they were convinced that no such details could have made it any more ominous. A simple framed square of no-light that the sun could not penetrate and darkness could not escape. A service tunnel leading into the earth’s center.
Andy faced the team, and even Tim sat down, tutting the caged canary to pay attention.
“All right, listen: we’re not doing anything we didn’t do thirteen years ago. Remember that. We were twelve years old and we dared to go inside the mountain to follow clues. And all that time we were convinced there was a lake creature prowling around.”
“Actually, that was Wickley, so we were being stupid,” Nate pointed out.