The Project 01 - White Jade

know where it is. I saw a map of the mine once. There are three levels, with branches off the main tunnel and shafts hundreds of feet deep. Some parts are flooded, but I don ' t know where. A lot of tunnels were closed off when the mine began shutting down. "
    " We don ' t have much choice. You up for exploring? "
    " You lead, " she said.
    The flash wasn ' t much. They followed the narrow beam along the rusted tracks, deeper into the mine, picking their way around rocks that had fallen from the roof. Nick lost sense of whether the tunnel was going straight or curving about. The air was stifling and hot and smelled of ancient water and older rock. The adrenaline rush was gone . H e was tired and sore.
    Thick wooden posts support ed cracked beams h olding up the roof of the tunnel . They looked weak and unstable. Webs hung from the corners where the beams and posts came together. Everywhere, spiders retreated from the light. There were pools of water on the floor and wet, dark stains on the walls, drips of water from the ceiling. The air was hot and still. Nick felt the tunnel walls closing in. He told himself it would be all right. All right. One thing at a time. He was sweating.
    The tunnel split, one branch going right, the other straight ahead.
    " Which way should we go? "
    " Your guess is as good as mine. I never thought I ' d need to know, " said Selena.
    " You think right, or straight ahead? "
    " If the tunnel hasn ' t turned, the river must be somewhere to the right. I think the miners followed a vein toward the river. If they did, maybe it came out somewhere on the bank. "
    " Let ' s go right. If it did come out, it shouldn ' t be far. "
    They entered the right hand shaft. The tunnel supports were rotting and puddles of water lay everywhere. Something scurried away ahead.
    " What was that? "
    " I don ' t know. I didn ' t see anything. "
    " What ' s that squeaking sound? "
    The passage curved and they came around the corner. Fifty feet ahead the tunnel ended in a fall of rock and a churning nest of swarming and squeaking rats. Hundreds of red eyes gleamed in the narrow light.
    Carter froze. Selena gripped his arm, hard. The rats squirmed and wriggled, darting towards them and back again into the mass.
    Neither said a word as they backed away. He felt Selena shudder . Back in the main shaft they passed a boarded passage on the left, then another on the right. They began to see more closed off entrances. A rat ran by his foot.
    They came to the remains of a stable cut into the side of the tunnel, stalls still standing . A rope halter h ung on a rusty nail.
    " Why would they have a stable down here? "
    It was the first thing Nick had said since the rats.
    " For the mules. Mules hauled the carts. "
    Fifty feet past the stable the tunnel branched off in three directions. The tracks ended here in a decaying wooden triangle. The rusty head of a miner ' s pick lay in the dirt. Nick picked it up and put it in his jacket pocket.
    " I don ' t like this, " Selena said.
    " Me neither. " He shone the flashlight at the shaft on the right, then the others. There wasn ' t much difference between them . T hey all looked like highways to hell. He wet a finger and felt for a breath of air.
    Nothing. Just a wet finger.
    The flashlight beam was turning yellow. If they ran out of light they might never leave. He didn ' t like the idea of being in the dark with rats and spiders, but the batteries were fading.
    " I ' m going to turn off the light. "
    The blackness closed in. Nick remembered a cave in Afghanistan where he was almost buried alive, remembered his drunken father locking him in a dark closet , remembered a cellar in Colombia filled with the sewer odors of pain and death. He pushed the thoughts away, wished he had a drink or a cigarette or both.
    Selena clenched his hand. In the black silence he heard sounds. Too many sounds. Water dripped somewhere. There was a soft , constant noise of dribbles of earth falling from the roof. The tunnels creaked and he heard wood groaning. Something scuttled close by.
    Talking was strange. The relentless dark sucked words away like velvet as soon as they were spoken .
    " I don ' t think we should go further in. Those tunnels go deeper, and they ' re lower. We ' d have to crawl. The tracks end here and that ' s not good. If these passages went through, the miners would have run the tracks all the way to get the ore. "
    " Nick, I ' m scared. What if we can ' t get out? "
    " We can ' t think