The Deep Dark (18 page)

1:03
P.M.,
M
AY
2
4800 Level

A
BOUT THE TIME THE TATTLETALE RECORDED ITS LAST MOVEMENT,
most of the men on 4800 had determined that their self-rescuers were useless and had ditched them. The air was reasonably clear where they had gathered by the battery barn. But looking at what was coming down the shaft, it seemed a good bet that the air around the station would soon be contaminated. No one conceded concern. Help would arrive soon. Someone suggested that opening a pair of air doors about fifty yards down the drift might drive away the smoke. The doors ran east-west across the drift and were used to channel airflow to the lower levels. For all that the miners on 4800 knew, the ventilation scheme was a house of cards, and one change could affect airflow a thousand feet above. It was a risk they had to take.

Partners Ron Flory and Tom Wilkinson took self-rescuers and went for the air doors. The first of the big wood-and-steel doors swung open without any trouble. But when Wilkinson pushed on the second door, it opened, only to slam shut again. It took strength to do it alone. He planted his feet, pressed his shoulder against the door, and shoved with everything he had. His self-rescuer fell from his mouth.

Nearly at that instant, Flory looked over. His eyes running from the acrid smoke, he strained to see his partner.

“Wilkinson's down in the piss ditch!” someone called out.

Flory spun around and yelled his name, but Wilkinson lay facedown in the narrow channel that carried runoff from the working areas. Flory cradled Wilkinson in his big bear arms.
Jesus, what's happened?
At 135 pounds, Wilkinson was slight, but his deadweight seemed ten times greater. Try as he might, Flory couldn't lift him high enough to get him over his shoulders.
Something's wrong. Lifting Tom shouldn't be this hard.
Flory felt dizzy and called out for help. A couple of guys helped him carry Wilkinson back to the battery barn. He was out cold. Flory clenched his shoulders and shook him with increasing intensity.

“Tom! Tom!”

Flory had no idea why Wilkinson had suddenly fallen unconscious. Maybe a heart attack or something. He had been pushing on the air door and just dropped. No words, no “Hey, I'm feeling funny . . .” He just slumped. Wilkinson was a discarded marionette, slumped in the muck in a heap.

Flory's thumping heart propelled a surge of adrenaline through his heaving body. He looked at the other miners.

“I got to get him to better air,” he said. “Gotta get him out of here.”

T
HE LAST MEN ON 3100 WERE SPUTTERING WITH THEIR FINAL
breaths. Some had already stopped trying to fight the smoke. It was as if the air were infused with acid. Elmer Kitchen, who had been helping Byron Schulz run the cage that morning, was sprawled on the ground. Buz Bruhn's carpool buddy from Mullan, the decorated war hero Casey Pena, had plunged his head underwater in a trough in a wasted attempt to escape the merciless air. Duwain Crow, one of the toughest miners and motorcycle riders in Big Creek, was inert, lying across the track line. Blood surged from the stocky miner's mouth and nose.

Double-drum cage tender Schulz sucked hard on the rubber mouthpiece of his BM-1447. His eyes bulged and his heart pushed at his rib cage. He turned around and went to find Gene Johnson. If anyone knew what to do, Schulz felt, it was the indomitable mine foreman. He walked around like he owned the mine. New guys thought he actually did. It was Johnson who had given Schulz his first self-rescuer when the smoke started—and when there was time to hand them out. Schulz's light worked overtime as it passed its blade of light through the smoke and over dead men. It finally pinpointed Johnson. He was lying on the slab of the station; the big man with the military bearing had crumpled into a ball. He, too, appeared lifeless. Driven solely by adrenaline, Schulz went toward the hoist room, where he found Don Firkins, who'd escaped from 5400, buckled over on the concrete floor. Firkins, thirty-seven, was working desperately on a self-rescuer. His skin was nearly paper white, his black beard dripping in sweat and mucus. Schulz knew that Firkins had been safety trained. Why couldn't he get the self-rescuer working? Between convulsions, Firkins tried to speak, but his words were lost in the noise of other men fighting for their lives. Nothing anyone was saying made sense. It was gibberish mixed with grace notes of despair and anger. Schulz knelt and tried to talk to Firkins and other fallen men, but none seemed to understand a word he said. One by one, the men in the room fell silent. Besides Schulz, the last two standing were Bob Scanlan and Doug Wiederrick. Scanlan, thirty-five, stood by the hoist chair fighting to steady his six-foot-three-inch body. His ruddy complexion had gone pallid, and he started to shake. Then, very suddenly, he slumped over. Wiederrick, also thirty-five, was upright, but appeared dazed. It appeared he was desperately trying to get the cage to one of the lower levels, but in his confusion he was unable to do so.

“Doug, we got to get out of here,” Schulz yelled, his voice raspy. “There's nothing more we can do!”

Schulz had doubts they could survive much longer. Everyone around them had passed out or was already dead. But Wiederrick, the last hoistman at 10-Shaft, was not completely in his mind. He didn't see the urgency. It was as though he didn't know all the men had fallen across the station like a toxic fish kill.

“We've got to get out of here!” Schulz repeated.

A brief semblance of lucidity came to Wiederrick's sweaty face, and he finally agreed to evacuate. The pair started toward the drift, but Wiederrick stopped.

“I'm calling topside,” he said, returning to the hoist room.

Schulz clutched one of the three BM-1447s that he'd used while Wiederrick picked up the phone and said they were on the way out, and needed to know where they'd find fresh air.

“Oh my God,” Wiederrick said. “We'll never make it.
I'll
never make it.” Those words barely out of his mouth, he fell to the floor.

Schulz tried to feed Wiederrick a mouthpiece, but the hoistman spat it out like a baby refusing a pacifier. Schulz, now in tears, pleaded, but Wiederrick wanted no part of it. On Schulz's third try, Wiederrick defiantly batted the breathing unit across the concrete of the floor. Schulz fumbled in the smoke to retrieve it.
We're both going to die,
he thought. He begged Wiederrick once more, but the hoistman turned away.

He's giving up,
Schulz thought.
Doug's giving up!

Schulz stumbled over to the water hose where men washed off diggers to avoid muddying up the station at shift's end, tore off his shirt, and soaked it. Then he wrapped the dripping garment around the self-rescuer and his face.
Everyone is dead.
He could scarcely see. Tears surged in his eyes to impede the sting of the seamless, acrid black sheet. He tripped over a body. He couldn't tell who it was, but a white hat caught the fallout of his light. Shifters wore white hardhats; crewmen wore yellow.
Virgil Bebb?
He got up, but after a few more hurried steps, Schulz toppled over another lifeless form. The young man's face was burning hot. His throat was constricted with coagulated mucus. This was like tear gas, he thought; it surely wasn't ordinary smoke.

A
ROUND
1:00
P.M.,
M
AY
2
3100 Level

R
OGER
F
INDLEY WAS FACING DEATH, AND THE SCARIEST PART
WAS
that he knew it. He moved in a herky-jerky, meandering fashion as he tried to navigate the length of the drift. A wet rag stayed fused to his mouth and nose. With each attempted breath, he found himself coughing and thinking how he was going to get out of there somehow. Had the men he'd seen sprawled out on the drift or in the piss ditch thought the same thing? Just past an abandoned drift with a bundle of ten- and twelve-foot timbers, a pinhole of light from a miner's cap lamp pierced the blockade of smoke. A man had propped himself up against a timber, and was staring across the drift. When he saw it was a shift boss, Findley could have wept. He'd know what to do to get out of there.

“Hey,” he called out, “what are you doing?”

The man was mute. Findley aimed his light directly into the man's face. His hazel eyes were an empty stare.

“Hey!”
Findley tried again. A shudder of horror grappled with his overwrought emotions, chilling and escalating his own fear. The man was dead. Findley gulped for air, but there was nothing but rank-smelling smoke. He started to run. Another two hundred feet and he could go no farther. Though he hadn't been in church in years, the young man sat on a timber and started praying. He'd set religion aside in favor of partying and carousing in the district—territory well trod by miners. But now Roger Findley was back before God, asking for a second chance. He had made it so far, it was almost as if the Almighty owed him. There could be no greater cruelty than to steal a man's life when he'd fought so hard to live. He looked up to see the diffuse glow of a headlight and the firefly dots of three or more cap lamps. Someone was out there. It was a lovely dream as the lights drew closer. He got back on his feet and rocked his head back and forth.
I'm alive.

A
ROUND
1:00
P.M.,
M
AY
2

3700 Level, Jewell Station

T
HE RED LAMP ON THE BACKSIDE OF THE
J
EWELL PULSED LIKE A
heartbeat. The Sun Con Switch light warned everyone to get off the tracks because a motor was en route to the station. Harvey Dionne and Paul Johnson watched for the motor, but none came. Some haze hung low in the drift, but Dionne didn't consider it dense enough to be a real health risk. What had triggered the signal? He conferred with Johnson, who was back on the phone, and went to find out. It was quiet. No voices. No motors. Just the sound of his own labored breathing and his boots against the muck. About a hundred yards in, foreman Jim Bush emerged from the smoke. He staggered toward Dionne's light, and their beams dueled.

Bush's eyes were wild, and he all but fell into Dionne's arms.

“Bob's down!” he said, referring to his brother. His speech was oddly slurred, but there was no mistaking what he was saying.

Bush said he'd fought hard to bring him out, but he couldn't even drag him to safety. But he had more bad news. Wayne Blalack and Pat Hobson had tried to help with his brother, but they were also overcome. The men had collapsed about five hundred feet past 5-Shaft.

“They're all back there,” he said, “three down back there.”

Back on the station, Roberto Diaz, Richard Nickleby, and Ron Stansbury volunteered to help. With Dionne and Johnson leading the way, they took a motor down the drift. None wore a self-rescuer or even thought to bring one. The farther they went, the darker and thicker the smoke became. Time and space faded. None had any idea how far they'd gone when they hit something on the track, derailing the motor. Dionne jumped off and waved his lamp in the darkness. Was it a timber? His light followed a form on the track partially obscured by the front end of the motor. The foreman hurriedly traced the shape with movements of his lamp, but was unable to identify what it was until he saw the whole of it. It was Wayne Blalack. The thirty-five-year-old electrician had toppled onto the tracks and the motor had partially severed his leg. The father of two grade-school-aged kids was dead. Also down were Bob Bush and Patrick Hobson. There was no saving
any
of them. Fatigue, stress, and the effects of the smoke had tapped their strength. Each had keeled over in midstep. None had a self-rescuer.

“Let's get out of here,” he said. The group tried to get the train back on its rails, but it was impossible. They started to walk, but with each step, Dionne grew weaker. He put all of his concentration into moving forward, away from the smoke. When he turned around at 5-Shaft to see how the others were doing, Diaz and Johnson were gone.

K
ENNY
W
ILBUR RETURNED FROM THE BOREHOLE TO THE STATION
to find Dionne and Johnson had vanished. In their place were an old Okie miner, an anxious motorman, and an electrician named Norman Ulrich. Another motorman took a rescue crew toward 10-Shaft.

“They ain't come back,” Ulrich said.

Ulrich, who'd been left to monitor the station phone, handed the receiver to Wilbur.

“Two minutes ago the guys were all talking and all of a sudden, nothing.”

Wilbur held it against his ear.
Nothing.
The cage tender wanted to believe that the lines had been cut by falling timber or maybe burned by the fire. But after listening more intently, he heard a muffled popping noise and it scared him. The lines were good.

“Anyone there?” he asked.

No answer.

Wilbur fixed his blue-green eyes in the direction of the drift, and the Okie shook his head.

“I've been in there. I ain't going back in that.”

But something had to be done to get Harvey Dionne, the Bush brothers, and the other men back to the station, where they could breathe. It had been taking too long. Wilbur was hopped up. He was ready to do something
—
anythin
g—
to help the trapped men. He and Ulrich took a motor and went down the drift. Near 4-Shaft the smoke thickened to a boil, forming a more or less solid plug. It was as if the motor's headlight had been swallowed. Ulrich stopped and fished out a pair of self-rescuers that had likely been discarded by escaping miners. He put one in his mouth.

“This is great,” he said, pulling it out. “Try it.”

“That's okay. I'll get another one.”

“No, you gotta try
this
one.”

The thought of tasting that slimy mouthpiece made Wilbur nearly gag, but the electrician was so damn insistent. The cager acquiesced.