Chapter 3 - THE SOUTH ADIT
I grabbed Sophie's hand and ran.
There was no strategy left beyond distance.
My ribs screamed with every step, but fear turned pain into background noise.
Behind us, Cal shouted.
"Stop!"
His flashlight beam bounced along the walls.
I heard Mason groaning, which meant the shot had not killed him.
That mattered, but I could not help him without getting Sophie killed.
The rails sloped sharply downward.
We followed the red route on my mother's map through a tunnel so narrow my shoulder scraped stone.
Sophie limped beside me, faster than I thought her injured ankle should allow.
"How much time?"
"Keep moving."
"Mom, how much?"
I checked my watch while we ran.
3:40.
"Twenty minutes, maybe less."
The tunnel split again.
The map showed a right turn at an old pump room.
The actual mine showed three openings and no readable signs.
I lifted the candle and saw a rusted pipe along the ceiling.
On the map, the south adit followed the main drainage line.
"This way."
We turned left.
Ten yards later, the tunnel ended at a collapsed wall.
"No."
I unfolded the map with shaking hands.
The candlelight made the red line look like blood.
Sophie pointed at the pipe.
"It goes through there."
"The tunnel doesn't."
"Maybe the map is old."
She was right.
A penciled note beside the route said 1991 FALL - USE BYPASS.
The bypass was drawn as a thin dotted line almost hidden under a fold.
We backtracked and took the center opening.
Behind us, Cal's light flashed across the junction.
"Melissa!"
His voice bounced around us.
"You don't know what you're doing!"
I kept going.
"The south adit is flooded!"
Sophie looked at me.
I could not tell whether he was warning us or herding us.
Cal shouted again.
"Your father only wanted the documents!"
That stopped me for half a second.
"He said nobody had to get hurt!"
The lie was so obscene I almost turned around just to answer it.
Richard had watched his granddaughter fall into a mine.
Daniel had pushed us with both hands.
Cal had just fired a gun at the only man who objected.
Nobody had to get hurt was the language cowards used after violence became inconvenient.
I pulled Sophie forward.
The bypass dropped into ankle-deep water.
It was ice cold.
Within minutes it reached our knees.
Sophie hissed when the water touched her injured ankle.
"Can you keep going?"
"Yes."
"Tell me if you can't."
"I can."
She inherited that stubbornness from me.
I wished she had inherited it in a safer place.
The tunnel widened into an old pump chamber.
A giant rusted wheel occupied one wall.
The drainage pipe continued through a steel grate ahead.
The gate was chained.
I nearly cried.
The map showed the grate but not the chain.
Sophie held the candle while I pulled at the lock.
It did not move.
Cal's footsteps splashed into the bypass behind us.
"I can hear you."
His voice was closer.
I searched the room.
A toolbox lay under the pump platform.
Inside I found a hammer, a bent screwdriver, and a long steel pry bar.
I jammed the bar through the chain and twisted.
Nothing.
I twisted again.
My ribs gave a sickening click.
I dropped to one knee.
"Mom!"
"Keep the light up."
I tasted blood where I had bitten my cheek.
The chain was old but thick.
The gate hinges were worse.
I wedged the pry bar behind the lower hinge and pushed with both hands.
Metal screamed.
The hinge shifted half an inch.
A flashlight beam hit the chamber wall.
Sophie turned.
"He's coming."
"Again."
I pushed.
The hinge tore loose.
The gate sagged.
I kicked the lower corner.
A gap opened just wide enough for Sophie.
"Go."
She ducked through.
I tried to follow and got stuck at the shoulders.
The flashlight beam swept into the pump room.
Cal stopped at the entrance.
"Melissa."
He was thirty feet away.
The gun in his hand looked black and small under the white beam.
"Don't make me do this."
I stared at him through the bars.
"You already did."
His face tightened.
"Give me the document box."
"I don't have it."
"Richard said Evelyn left records."
"Then Richard can come get them."
Cal took one step closer.
"You think your father is going to protect you if you make it out?"
I laughed once, a sound with no humor in it.
"I think my father tried to kill me."
Cal lowered his voice.
"Then you understand why I can't let you leave."
Sophie was crying silently on the other side of the gate.
I could see only half her face.
"Run," I told her.
She shook her head.
"Sophie, run."
"No."
Cal raised the gun.
I threw the pry bar at the flashlight.
It struck his wrist instead.
The light spun across the chamber.
I rammed my shoulder through the broken gate.
My jacket tore.
Skin ripped along my upper arm.
Then I was through.
I grabbed Sophie and stumbled into the next tunnel.
A gunshot cracked behind us.
Stone chips snapped from the wall near my head.
We ran in darkness until the candle went out in the rushing air.
For several seconds I had no light at all.
Then Sophie pulled something from her pocket.
Her little phone.
The screen flickered blue.
"It came back."
A battery symbol showed three percent.
No service.
But the flashlight worked.
I could have kissed the broken device.
We followed the drainage pipe.
The water rose to my thighs.
The tunnel ceiling dropped.
At one point we had to crouch and move sideways through a crack in the rock.
Cal did not fire again.
That frightened me more than the shot.
He knew something about the route we did not.
At 3:51, we reached a concrete wall with a square opening near the bottom.
Cold water poured through it.
The map labeled it FLOOD DOOR.
A wheel handle was mounted chest high.
I tried to turn it.
It did not move.
Sophie set down the phone and grabbed the wheel with both hands.
Together we pulled.
Rust cracked.
The wheel moved one inch.
Then another.
The door began to rise.
Water rushed under it hard enough to knock Sophie backward.
I caught her jacket.
A narrow crawlspace appeared beneath the door.
Beyond it I saw darkness and heard the roar of moving water.
"We have to crawl under?" Sophie asked.
"Yes."
"What if it closes?"
I looked at the corroded mechanism.
"Then we make sure it doesn't."
I jammed the pry bar into the track.
Sophie went first.
She disappeared under the waterline for one terrible second, then came up on the other side.
"I'm through!"
I lowered myself.
Pain ripped through my ribs as I flattened onto my stomach.
Halfway under, the pry bar shifted.
The steel door dropped two inches.
I stopped.
Sophie screamed my name.
I pushed with my legs.
The door scraped across my coat.
Then I slid free.
The pry bar snapped loose behind me.
The flood door slammed shut with a crash that shook the tunnel.
We were separated from Cal.
For the first time since the fall, I felt a sliver of relief.
Then Sophie's phone vibrated in her hand.
One bar of service appeared.
A text message came through.
It was from Grandpa.
Sophie stared at the screen.
The message had been sent three minutes earlier.
SOPHIE, IF YOU'RE ALIVE, ANSWER ME.
A second message appeared.
YOUR MOM IS HURT AND CONFUSED.
A third followed.
TELL ME WHERE YOU ARE AND I WILL COME GET YOU.
I felt sick.
My father was trying to separate us even now.
Sophie looked at me.
"He thinks I'm stupid."
"He thinks you're scared."
"I am scared."
"So am I."
She stared at the phone, then typed with both thumbs.
I reached for it.
"Don't."
"I'm not telling him where we are."
She showed me the screen before sending.
I HEARD WHAT YOU SAID ABOUT THE TRUST.
My heart stopped.
"Sophie, wait."
Too late.
The message sent.
For five seconds nothing happened.
Then Grandpa's reply appeared.
THEN YOU KNOW YOUR MOTHER HAS BEEN LYING TO YOU.
Another message came immediately.
SHE KILLED YOUR GRANDMOTHER.
May you like
Sophie went completely still.
And somewhere beyond the flood door, Cal began pounding on the metal with something heavy.
