Written in the Scars (33 page)

I haven’t even checked to see if I’m bleeding.
What does it really matter now, anyway?

Squeezing my eyes closed in an attempt to stop the tears, I see Elin. She’s lying in our bed, her shy smile printed on her pretty lips. My hands clench at my sides, my tears just running harder now, because I would give anything to climb in that bed with her, soot and all, and hold her until I stop breathing.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her in my brain, wiping my eyes with the back of my dirty hands. I can taste the acridness of the coal, feel the acid on my skin. Feel the sting in my eyes from the putrid dust.

Clearing my throat and spitting out a mixture of saliva and soot, the bitterness burning my mouth, I turn to my friends. They’re looking at me.

Down here, I’m the man in charge. I have the training, the hours upon hours of sitting in a classroom and being lectured on this very thing. I know what to do, but looking around, feeling the realness of the moment, I know one thing: all that training is bullshit.

My lungs tighten in my chest as panic begins to take root.

“How we getting out of here, Ty?” Jiggs asks again. “What’s the plan?”

I look at his face, barely a speck of skin showing through the blackness smearing his features. His eyes are wide, pleading with me for an answer.

Jiggs swallows, moving his weight from one side to the other, and I know he’s about to lose it. That’s going to use up what oxygen we have down here and make this worse for all of us.

“I’d say we’re sealed. We aren’t getting out up the ramp.” I nod behind Jiggs to the wall of rubble that used to be our road out. Racking my brain for protocol, I put together a plan. “They’ll drill an air shaft as soon as they think the ground is stable.”

“How much oxygen do we have?” Cord asks.

“Enough,” I say with more certainty than I feel. “We can’t panic, can’t go using it up by being stupid. The best thing we can do right now is to stay calm.”

“Stay calm,” Jiggs mutters, blowing out a breath. “Yeah fucking right. We’re trapped below the fucking surface and you want me to stay calm?”

It’s in his voice—that ripple that comes right before someone loses their shit. I can’t blame him, but I can’t let it happen either.

“Hey,” I say, my tone not one I usually use for my brother-in-law. “You want to make it out of here to see your wife and baby?”

The words drench him like a bucket of cold water. I ignore Cord’s look, the one that asks if I really believe that’s possible, and keep my gaze settled on Jiggs.

“Because you losing your cool down here isn’t going to help anything,” I say.

“My wife is up there!” Jiggs shouts, the words all too loud in the tight space. “I need to get out of here!”

I grab him by the shoulders and shove him backwards. “Guess what? My wife is up there too,” I remind him, standing so close our noses nearly touch. “Your fucking sister? Remember her? So stay fucking calm, man.”

His breath is hot on my face, his nostrils flaring as he waits for the next words out of my mouth.

Cord places a hand on each of our shoulders. “Settle down, boys,” he says. The calm in his tone eases the tension between Jiggs and I, and we both blow out a breath. “We’re gonna get out of here. Let’s just ease up and get comfy because it could be a long minute.”

ELIN

“Ladies, please listen to me,” Vernon says, squatting down in front of us.

I look at his face through Lindsay’s hair. At first I only see his mouth move through the tears, fear gripping me in its strongest hold, blocking out his words. But when I make out “Ty,” I pull away from Lindsay.

“ . . . aren’t sure what caused it yet. Most of the crew escaped, but we haven’t located Ty, Jiggs, Cord McCurry, “Grunt” Salis, and Shane Pettis.”

“What do you mean you haven’t located them?” Lindsay wails.

“We don’t know where they are.”

“Could they have gotten out?” I ask, not bothering to attempt to halt the trail of tears flowing down my face.

Vernon stands and joins his associates in a tight line. “It’s possible. But, ladies, I think you should prepare for the fact that they may be trapped below.”

“No . . .” Lindsay cries, wrapping her arms around my neck.

I sit, my posture rigid. I can’t wail, can’t sob, can’t ask questions. My body starts to shake, my body temperature plummeting, and I know one thing: I’m in shock.

TY

The water drips down the walls, pinging into puddles. The sound chirps through the little room created by the cave-in.

It could be relaxing, in the right situation. It reminds me of the little fountain Elin had one time in the living room until Cord drank too much and knocked it over, breaking it into a million pieces.

“Okay, let’s get a plan,” I say, pulling myself together. “Does anyone have their radios?”

“The battery died on mine a few hours ago, before all this shit,” Cord says. “I have it, but it’s no good.”

Jiggs looks around. “I have no idea where mine is.”

“Mine was lying in water,” I say, tossing the remnants of my shattered radio in a pile of coal across the room. “Battery is toast.”

I survey the room. “Do we have any food in here?”

“How long you think we’ll be stuck down here?” Jiggs asks.

“I don’t know, honestly,” I admit. “But probably longer than we care to admit.” Again, I ignore a pointed look from Cord. “So, food. Lights. What do we have?”

Cord stumbles into the back corner and rummages around. A few minutes later, he steps into the light of my headlamp. “We have one lunchbox.”

“That’s mine,” I say. My lips press together as I fight myself from snatching it from his grasp. I know there’s a little note from Elin inside, as well as my lunch—the last thing she might ever do for me. My fists clench at my sides as I rip my eyes away from the metal bucket.

“Let’s hope Elin packed you some good shit,” Cord says.

Hearing her name out loud rips through my soul. I wonder where she is and if she knows. I hope someone is with her, comforting her, telling her it’ll all be okay somehow.
That someone is lying to her.

“We probably need to save our lamps,” Cord points out. “It’s gonna be dark as hell down here if we don’t.”

“This
is
hell,” Jiggs snorts.

“No, you’re right,” I say. “Let’s get a safe place to sit and save our lights. We’ll flip one on at a time every now and then.”

We begin clearing out a space on the floor for the three of us. We take pieces of rubble and build up a little pad over the mud and water that seems to never stop trickling in. We work silently, none of us making eye contact, like if we don’t look at the others, maybe this won’t be real.

We sit in a circle of sorts, Cord to my right, Jiggs to my left, my lunch box tucked in beside me.

“If we get real creative,” Cord says, “we could convince ourselves that we’re around a campfire. Especially the way these headlamps flicker and light up this little spot.”

“We’ve had some good ones,” Jiggs remembers. “Remember the one we had at Old Man Denham’s farm back in our freshman year? We nearly let every single head of cattle out of that field.”

I chuckle at the memory. “Not our best decision, boys.”

“Nah, but it makes for a good story,” Jiggs laughs. “Shit, that was the night I talked Lindsay into going out with me.”

“I remember that,” I say. “We were at The Fountain. She said she’d go for a ride with you if you beat me in a game of pool.”

“And you let me.” Jiggs laughs, but there’s no denying the layer of sadness that creeps into the tone. “Thanks for that, Ty.”

Shaking my head, I look at the small patch of black between us.

“Ty?”

I raise my head slowly until I’m looking at Jiggs. His eyes are filled with a look that can only be described as pure fear, a look I’ve never seen on him before. A look that rips me to the core.

“Yeah?” I reply.

“We’re gonna get out of here, right?”

“Sure, we are,” I say, forcing a smile to make my uncertainty a little less obvious. “We’ll be hearing the drill soon. We just need to be patient.”

The air stills as we all decide whether we believe me or not. The drill will come. I do believe that. But will it come in time? And will it do any good? Those are two different questions.

“Hey,” Cord says, rustling us out of our thoughts. “We need to save these lamps.”

Our lungs all fill with air as we realize what this means. Total. Darkness.

One at a time, our lights go off. First Cord’s. Then Jiggs’.

“Here we go,” I whisper, raising my hand to my helmet and flicking my lamp off too.

The pitch black settles over us on the cold, wet floor of hell.

ELIN

The paper cup twirls in my fingers.

Around.

Around.

Around.

The water inside sloshes against the sides, threatening to spill out. It won’t be cold if it does and touches my fingers. It’s sat in there too long for that.

We’ve been in this room for six, maybe seven hours now. In some ways, it feels much shorter than that and in others, so much longer.

I should be getting home from work right about now.

Holding my stomach and closing my eyes, I remember my plan to tell Ty that we are having a baby.

I should be doing that now. Not . . . this.