Crossover (12 page)

~

Ash started
jogging back up towards the north tunnel. Now came the tough part:
sneaking back out. The miners had all evacuated, so they would be
watching from a distance as she emerged from the tunnel. Even if
she put her overalls back on and wiped the grime off her face,
they'd be curious, wondering why she'd taken so much longer than
they had. So she'd have to find a way to get past them without
being spotted.

Or a place to
hide, she thought, while I wait for them to come back in and resume
work. But who knows how long that'll take? I have to be home by the
time school finishes, or Dad will freak.

She kept moving.
She couldn't strategise without seeing how far back the miners had
evacuated. Maybe they'd be so far away that she could just walk out
the mouth of the tunnel and head straight to the
rendezvous.

A vague glow
stained the tunnel wall up ahead – she was getting closer to
daylight. She reached up and switched the headlamp off. There was
no way of telling how long it would be before a hazard team got
suited up and came down to search for the gas leak. If they rounded
the corner further up the tunnel, Ash didn't want them glimpsing
her torch.

She didn't think
it was likely to happen soon, though. It seemed quiet and still up
ahead.

Now that she was
further away from the cavern, she could hear a little better over
the alarms. 'Benjamin,' she said. 'I'm coming out with the
box.'

There was no
response.

'Benjamin?'

Nothing. Ash
strained her ears to listen – and heard the rustling of
static.

Her heart kicked
against her ribs. Had something happened to Benjamin? Had the local
cops found him? If that had happened, she told herself, then
there'd be no static, just silence. Right? It must be an equipment
malfunction. Nothing to worry about.

Right?

The light was
brighter now. She was almost at the guard station. Hopefully the
guard would have evacuated too. He was suspicious of her before,
he'd be even more suspicious now –

Ash rounded the
last bend, and saw that the guard hadn't evacuated. He was slumped
halfway through the frame of the guard station window, broken glass
stuck into his belly, a chunk of his throat torn out. There was a
bullet hole in the wall behind him.

Ash's eyes
widened until the lids hurt. What the hell?

Then she looked
down. And stumbled backwards, stifling a scream.

The miners were
strewn all over the floor of the tunnel. Most had exit wounds in
their backs. The rest had imploded heads. Ash could smell the
blood, rank and coppery.

Someone had
opened fire from outside the mouth of the tunnel. At first Ash
imagined a psychopath with a machine gun, sweeping it from side to
side with his finger on the trigger, possibly cackling maniacally –
and then she realised that the accuracy was too good for that.
Almost every shot seemed to have hit someone in the head or the
heart.

A sniper? No,
too slow – a sniper wouldn't have been able to hit them all before
they realised they were under attack and started
running.

Then what on
Earth had happened here?

'Psst!'

Ash jumped.
Jennings, the woman who'd been drilling, was crouched against the
wall in the darkness. Her hand was covering a thigh wound – blood
bubbled up between her fingers. Her face was white.

'Run!' she
hissed at Ash.

And then her
head snapped sideways, a half-second before the sound of the
gunshot reached Ash's ears.

She clapped her
hands over her mouth to stifle a scream. Her mind was whirling. A
sniper couldn't do this, she realised. But a dozen snipers
could.

And even as Ash
had this thought, she heard them. Boots thumping, ammo belts
jingling. Sprinting towards the tunnel from outside.

Her paralysis
broke and she ran, heart in her mouth, back down into the darkness
towards the cavern...

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