“Too many bodies on that sledge,” the trooper on the left said as they pushed their cart toward him. He used the muzzle and butt of his pulse rifle to shove Doc, Mildred and Jak to one side. “You three, go back up top and get another one. The rest of you go that way,” he told Ryan and the others. “Move it.”
There was nothing Ryan could do about the split up.
“Do not fret,” Doc assured him. “We’ll be fine.”
Jak nodded.
“See you later,” Mildred said as they turned back for the entrance.
A short way down the right hand tunnel, which angled down slightly but steadily, Ryan and J.B. helped Gabhart get into the sledge box. It was either that or abandon him. No way could he keep up.
As they pushed on, Ryan stared into the eyes of the people coming the other direction, pushing or dragging heavily loaded carts. They were exhausted and terrified, their faces and hands bleeding, their radiation sensitive badges glowing like spotlights on their chests. The greenish pall cast by the badges made them look like zombies.
It wasn’t long before they started seeing people dead and dying in the dark corners of the shaft. Some of the dying ones appeared to be delusional; others were having out and out fits, foaming at the mouth while they rhythmically bashed their heads against the wall.
Nobody paid them any mind.
There was nothing anybody could do for them.
The side tunnel continued its gradual descent, one foot of vertical drop for every hundred feet of horizontal distance. The available natural light grew dimmer the farther they went, filtered as it was through a growing thickness of glass overhead.
Gabhart raised his chin from his chest and said, “This tunnel dead ends around the bend ahead. We’ve got to leave the sledge there. Past that point, the turns are too tight for it to pass. Somebody will have to stay behind and guard the cart, or the other slaves will steal our ore. As you’ve noticed, there’s no honor among the damned.”
At the end of the tunnel a group of half-filled sledges sat parked. Each cart had at least one miner standing in it or in front of it, with a short-handled rock ax ready to defend the cargo.
Ryan stopped their sledge against the tunnel side wall and helped Gabhart out. The colonel pointed to the numerous man size tunnel openings in the walls. “We’ve got to go in one of those crevices, follow it until we find the seam of the hot stuff, then hack it out with our axes, bag it and drag it back here.”
“You aren’t going anywhere, Colonel,” Ryan told him. “You’re too damn weak. Just sit here with J.B. and Dean, and rest. Krysty and me will go in, check it out and bring back the first load.”
“Watch out for the stickies,” Gabhart said. His voice cracked and whistled in his throat; he was badly drained from the effort he’d expended. “They like to hide in the low-rad spots where the badges don’t give off much light, and then they get hold of you from behind. Once they get hold of you, you don’t get away.”
Gabhart sucked in a ragged breath, then continued. “Be careful of cave-ins while you’re hacking ore. When the glass comes down, it comes down huge, and it cuts like a band saw. Another thing, keep those rags over your noses and mouths. We’ve got Mind-burst mushrooms growing down here. They’re one of the few things that seems to be able stand the radiation. It’s just them and the rats. The rats live off the mushroom caps, but they’ll take a piece out of your nose if you fall asleep in the wrong place.”
“You’ll find the mushrooms sprouting up along the horizontal cracks and seams in the glass. Any place there’s a ledge. If you breathe in their spores, you’ll start to hallucinate within minutes. If you breathe too much, you’ll collapse and fall into a fit. If you accidentally get stoned on Mindburst down here, you’re as good as dead. You’ll get lost. And one way or another, you’ll get killed. There must be a thousand ways to die in this hellhole, and none of them are quick and painless.”