And fire lived on oxygen. A raging inferno could suck all of the available air right out of a shaft in minutes, leaving trapped miners gasping for breath like fish out of water, suffocating them, condemning otherwise perfectly healthy men to a horrific death, writhing in the dirt, clutching at their throats as their lungs burned not from fire but from lack of air.
Karl crawled out of Alpha Seven and back to his cart. He wondered how powerful the blast of compressed air would have been had he not been standing a few feet inside a ninety degree offshoot of the major mining artery. He grasped the side of the heavy iron cart and pulled himself to his feet, peering in the direction of the explosion.
A flickering yellow glow in the distance seemed to indicate the explosion had occurred not far from where Karl was standing, and that was bad. Smoke and gases would soon be billowing through the tunnel, threatening his life.
Metal bulkheads had been constructed at irregular intervals throughout every shaft, with the intention of giving miners a shot at surviving the exact scenario now playing out. Every man working the mines had been taught the same thing in the event of an underground fire — make your way to a bulkhead between you and the fire as soon as possible and secure it.
The theory was that with miners on either side of the blaze closing their bulkheads, the spread of the fire would be limited, accomplishing two things: a chance at survival for as many workers as possible, and the limitation of the blaze to one stretch of tunnel, making it easier to extinguish.
That was the theory. Karl had never had occasion to test it, because he had never been caught in a mine fire before. But he had no earthly idea what else to do, so he fell back on his training. He sprinted toward the source of the explosion, trying to recall how far away the nearest bulkhead might be and wondering whether he had any chance of reaching it before the noxious smoke and gases made their way through the tunnel and killed him.
He panted through his open mouth as he ran. Was it his imagination or was it getting harder to breathe? He wasn’t sure. He kept going. He rounded a gentle bend in the mine shaft and on the other side the air felt hotter, stifling even. The hint of yellow he had seen far off down the tunnel immediately following the explosion became much brighter and more pronounced and he knew he was running out of time. He was sweating profusely; the air was stagnant and smelled vaguely of chemicals.
And then he saw it. The rusted iron frame of a bulkhead. His savior.
He ran to the frame on the right side of the tunnel and reached up almost to the ceiling, where a large hook had been threaded through a hole in the metal bulkhead. Karl anchored the bulkhead door with his left hand while yanking on the hook with his right. Nothing happened. The pieces appeared to have rusted together.
Karl wondered how long it had been since anyone had tested the damned bulkhead doors and cursed between panting breaths. He pulled again, and again nothing happened. He hurried to the opposite side of the tunnel and tried that door. It lifted free of the hook easily and swung down into the shaft, filling the left side of the tunnel and accomplishing absolutely nothing unless Karl could lower the other door, blocking the entire shaft.
He returned to the right side of the tunnel. Karl Meyer had never been a religious man, but suddenly it seemed critically important he pass along a message to God, just in case He happened to be listening. Get me out of this, he thought. Please, get me out of this, and he realized he had nothing else to say. He chuckled bitterly and pulled on the rusted fixture and once again it didn’t budge. Thanks, he transmitted to God, who was clearly busy with other things, and tittered.
The first tendrils of black smoke began floating down the inside of the tunnel, up near the ceiling; Karl could see them even in the insufficient lighting provided by the cheap bastards running the Tonopah Mining Company. He tried to guess how much time he had left and couldn’t. He opened his right hand as if to slap someone and reached up and used his arm as a battering ram in a desperate attempt to loosen the frozen bulkhead door. He smashed his hand into the door and felt his wrist pop and screamed in fear and frustration and pain.
And he felt the door move.
He steeled himself against the pain he knew was coming and smacked the door again with his injured arm, and this time it pulled free of the hook with a squeal of protest. Pain exploded in his arm, zig-zagging from his wrist all the way to his elbow. Karl ignored it. He lifted the door free of the hook with his good hand and lowered it down across the tunnel where it swung snugly into place against its partner.
Karl latched the doors together and dropped to one knee to catch his breath. He was shaking from pain and exertion and, he knew, terror. He closed his eyes and counted to one hundred and gradually his breathing returned to something approaching normal. The tunnel had grown noticeably darker with the bulkhead doors blocking the light from the mine fire, but when he opened his eyes, the first thing Karl noticed was a sliver of yellow leaking through each side of the shaft around the outside of the iron frame. Either the frame had bowed inward over the decades or the walls of the mine shaft had slowly crumbled away.
Karl didn’t know which was the case and didn’t care. The fact of the matter was if light could penetrate the bulkhead, so could poisonous gases. The temperature inside the tunnel had dropped with the big metal doors closed, but he noticed the chemical odor had not disappeared. Not entirely. Karl squinted upward and could make out the shadowy impression of black smoke tendrils still hovering just below the ceiling like tiny storm clouds.
He needed to move deeper into the mine to escape the toxic fumes. The longer the fire burned out of control — and he had no way of knowing how serious it was and thus how long it might burn — the more dangerous it would be to stay here at the bulkhead. He turned and began picking his way back toward his mine car. His plan was to retrace his steps to the junction of the main tunnel and Alpha Seven, where he had been standing when the explosion occurred, and then continue past it, moving deeper into the earth. Eventually he would meet up with other trapped miners working the two-to-midnight shift. They could gather together and share warmth and light while awaiting rescue.
He was surprised the electric lamps Tonopah Mining had strung along the main tunnel continued to burn. They flickered constantly and failed on a regular basis, so the fact that he still had light by which to navigate the tunnels under these conditions was at least something to be thankful for.
Karl crunched slowly along the hard-packed dirt floor of the deserted tunnel. He hadn’t realized until just now how far he ran right after the explosion. At the time it had felt like a few seconds, but Karl figured he must have sprinted for at least a minute before finding and closing the bulkhead doors. He took his time now, walking slowly, cradling his injured arm. There was no reason to hurry; rescue certainly wouldn’t come for hours, maybe not for days. The timing all depended upon how badly the fire was burning and how much damage had occurred.
It would be nice to have some company to wait with, though. Maybe someone would be able to fashion a crude sling for his arm, which throbbed steadily and had begun to swell, turning an ominous shade of purple. Karl finally reached his empty mining car and walked straight past it. He glanced down into the darkness of Alpha Seven and shuddered, thinking about the bizarre incident with the two rocks just before the explosion. What the hell had that been all about?
He picked up his pace. He wanted some company and he wanted to get past Alpha Seven.