Krysty threw herself to the ground and covered her head with her arms. Rocks rained all around her, some of them thudding painfully into her body.
As quickly as they came, the tremors stopped.
The woman raised her head, tasting blood inside her mouth from a split lip. Dust hovered in the air around them, dirtying the snow and mixing with the flurries. She was grateful to find that she hadn’t lost her blaster in the confusion. She glanced at her companion.
The old man lay very still on the ground, partially covered with rock and dirt.
“Doc!” Krysty shoved her way up from the debris.
“I’m quite all right, my dear Krysty. I was just lying here, gathering my thoughts and making sure I remained yet anatomically correct. I do feel of a piece, but not the piece that I was. And I seem to hurt in every place near and dear to me, and a few that I’d not been aware of. I shall choose to view that as a good sign.”
Krysty crossed over to him and took hold of his jacket in her free hand. She helped him to his feet, keeping watch over the two of them.
“Thank you for your concern, but I assure you I’m well enough to stand on my own.” Fastidious as ever, Doc took a moment to brush at his clothing.
As Krysty shifted around, trying to peer through the haze filling the defile, rock rushed down the incline and shot through the fissure in the ground only two yards away. Evidently the quake had done some damage to the underlying strata, because the fissure was now three feet across when before it had only been inches.
Among the thuds and splats of rock and earth tumbling over the side, there was also a decidedly metallic sound.
“And how are you?” Doc asked, gazing at her with some worry.
“Shh,” Krysty said, cocking her head to listen.
The sound repeated in a series of rapid basso beats.
Intrigued, Krysty crept closer, going down on her belly at the edge of the fissure. She peered down into it but could see nothing. “Did you hear that?”
“Indeed I did. These old ears are still sharp as a bat’s.” Doc went prone at her side, then stretched out a hand. “Do you feel it?”
Krysty stretched her hand out over the fissure, careful not to put it too close in case something predatory came roaring up with snapping fangs. The breeze coming up from the fissure wrapped itself around her fingers. “Warm air.”
“Exactly.” Doc peered down into the gloom, sticking his head in a little farther than Krysty felt was safe. “Mayhap the shivers we felt but moments ago opened up a new artery into the heart of the volcanic region that holds the roots of this mountain range.” He extended both hands out, “Ah, and it’s enough to warm an old man’s bones.”
His movements sent a fresh pile of rock and dirt cascading into the fissure. More bonging sounded.
“Something else is down there. Volcanoes don’t make bonging sounds,” Krysty argued.
“No, they do not.”
Krysty pulled out one of the short torches she carried in her pack. Holding it only a little way inside the fissure, she set it on fire with a self-light. The oil caught slowly but spread fast, casting golden streamers of incandescence above and below.
The fissure hollowed out nearly three feet beneath the surface. The shattered stone understructure of the mountain held a chamber that showed signs of old growth; twisted, dead trees and bushes gathered against low spots where the rainwater runoff evidently flowed through into even lower recesses.
The warm air that pushed up into Krysty’s face smelled of stringent sulfur and bacteria-laden loam. Her hair relaxed around her head, fanning out a little to better absorb the extra heat. She used her gift, trying to sort out any threats that lurked below. From the looks of things, she judged that nothing under the rocky crust lived.
“In past times, mayhap even stretching back as far as the nukecaust,” Doc said, “that area below was once the top of this mountain.”
“It isn’t anymore.” Krysty moved the torch, about ready to give up on the search. If the chamber did open up into the volcanic substrata, that definitely wasn’t a course she wanted to pursue. Warm air would come in useful, though, if they had to stay on the mountaintop to ride out the storm.