First Blood

The spasm in his chest nearly made him drop. He could not let himself. He had no idea what was below him. His head still above the hole, he persisted in supporting himself by his arms and elbows on the rim while he shifted his feet down there to find a ledge or a crack. The funnel was slippery and smooth, and he let himself down a little more, but still there was no place to rest his feet. The weight of his body stretched his chest, ribs cutting. He heard the men shouting indistinctly in the mine, and eyes watering from the smoke of his fire, he was about to release his grip and drop the rest of the way anyhow, hoping there were no rocks down there to break him, when his feet touched something slender and round that felt like wood.

The upper rung of a ladder. From the mine, he thought. It must be. The guy who worked the mine must have explored here. He lowered himself gingerly onto the rung. It bent but held; he stepped gently onto the second rung, it split and he snapped through two more rungs before he stopped. The sound of his fall drummed through the chamber, startling him. When it faded, he listened for the shouts of the men but he could not hear them now, his head below the rim of the hole. Then as he relaxed, the rung that held him bent, and fearing that he would crash through to the bottom, he quickly waved his torch to see what was below. Four other rungs and then a rounded floor. When it rains, he thought, water from outside must drain down here. That's why the smooth worn rock.

He touched bottom, trembling. Looked. Followed the one exit, a wider fissure that sloped down as well. An old pick was leaning against one wall, its iron rusty, its wood dirty and warped from the damp. In the flickering torchlight, the handle of the pick cast a shadow onto the wall. He could not understand why the miner had left tools here but not in the upper tunnel. He came around a curve, water plunking somewhere, and found him. What was left of him. In the shimmer of the orange light, the skeleton was as repulsive as the first mutilated soldier he had ever seen. His mouth tasted of copper coins as he stood away from the skeleton for a moment and then took a few steps toward it. The bones were tinted orange by his light, but he was certain that their real color was gray like the silt that had gathered around them, and they were perfectly arranged. Not a bone was out of place or broken. No sign at all of why he had died. It was as if he had lain down to sleep and never wakened. Perhaps a heart attack.

Or poison gas. Rambo sniffed apprehensively, but he smelled nothing except dank water. His head was not off balance or his stomach queasy or any of the other symptoms of gas poisoning.

So what in hell could have killed this man?

He shivered again and hated the sight of this perfect set of bones and hurriedly stepped over them, eager to get away. He went farther down, and the fissure became two. Which direction? The smoke had been a bad idea. By now it had dispersed so he could not see which way it was drifting, and it had dulled his sense of smell so he could not even detect its path with that. His torch was burning low in the damp air, flickering sporadically in no particular direction. What was left to him was a kid's game, moistening his finger in his mouth, holding it at one opening, then the other. He felt the breeze slightly cool on the wet of his finger going to the right, and uncertainly he followed down, sometimes forced to squeeze through, occasionally stooping. His torch was burning lower in the damp air all the time. He came to another set of openings and wished that he had rope or string to lay out behind him so that if he became lost he would he able to find his direction back.

Sure, and wouldn't you like a flashlight too? And a compass? Why don't you go on over to the hardware store and buy them?

Why don't you forget the jokes?

The breeze seemed to the right again, and as he moved along, the passage grew more complicated. More twists and turns. More offshoots. Soon he could not remember how he had come to where he was. The skeleton seemed a long confusing distance behind him. It was strangely funny to him that the moment he considered turning around and retracing his steps, he realized he was lost and could not do that. He did not actually want to return yet, he was just considering it, but all the same he would have preferred the option of being able to go back if the breeze suddenly ended. It was extremely faint even so, and he wondered if he had missed some crack in the rock where it seeped out of the hill. God, he could wander here until he died, end up like those bones.

The murmur saved him from panic, and he thought it was them coming, but how could they find him in this maze, and then he recognized the distant sound of water rushing. Before he knew, he had increased speed toward it, at last a perceptible goal in mind, shouldering against walls, staring into the darkness beyond his light.