He felt hungry, grisly with hunger. His joints shivered with a lightness for the pain of it. He made his way down the slope of the ruined buildings and stopped when he got to the street and peered back up the way he had come. His stomach was a small hard stone squeezing itself smaller. He shook out his arms, brushed the dust from his clothes.
All was confusion down below. There were people standing alone or in small groups and others moving purposefully off down side streets. There was much shouting. The air pale with dust, dust on the abandoned cars stopped in the street. The buildings that still stood looked sorrowful and ghostly with their dark windows blown out.
He moved hungrily through. He stood in line at an old flatbed truck where sandwiches were being distributed and bottles of water and he waited his turn but when he took the sandwich and tried to eat it he spat the food out and found he could not eat it. He drank a little water and turned aside and sat down on the curb near the cab of the truck. He felt a hand on his shoulder and he turned in surprise but there was nobody there.
The doors of the flatbed truck were standing open, the radio was on. He could hear a reporter's voice, a woman's voice, crackling from the tinny speakers in the doors. Cutting into static then back out. Shouting to be heard over the rotary
whump
and roar of her helicopter's blades. We don't know very much for certain, she shouted, nothing's been confirmed, but early reports are saying the tremor registered at 8.7. The epicentre was somewhere off the coast, oh just a moment, yes, that's right, somewhere off the coast.
He raised his head. Others were standing or crouching in the street with heads lowered as if in prayer and with arms idle and some wore bandages or slings and others had blood in their hair. The radio station's helicopter was passing now over the city and the reporter within peered down describing a vision of hell half-medieval in its imaginings. She might herself have been in some horrific torture chamber as she shouted of the smoke in black columns funnelling up into the air and of the great low clouds of dust drifting over the city and of the fires in the street grates. She sucked in her breath as the helicopter approached Chinatown, Market Square. All of it blown inward, lone walls left tottering in the dark air. There are people in the streets, she was saying. I can see people in the streets but I can't tell what they're doing. They seem to be just standing there. I don't know. Oh god some of them are crawling out of the buildings.
He listened, grim. It seemed to him where he sat in his exhaustion that the vault of his skull was floating and a great dizzying absence filled his brainpan and he could not think.
And now followed a litany of destruction as the reporter postulated on further ruin unseen by the human eye. On ruptured telephone cables and power lines and water pipelines. On leaking gas and imminent explosions. She spoke of streets with little or no damage though these were few and remarkable for it and as the helicopter nosed onward the harbour came into view. She told of the Empress Hotel leaning violently backward but not quite fallen over and she told of the Parliament Buildings undamaged to her eye and of the great crowds gathered on the provincial lawns. The tide in the harbour was strangely low and she spoke of boats keeled over in the shallows and passing now over James Bay she told a tale of such unrivalled ruin and horror that at times her voice did fail her.
The curb where the old man sat was rubbed smooth like soap and as he leaned back on it he felt it again. A hand on his shoulder. And this time when he turned a woman with a bandage over one ear was crouching over him, her eyes very dark.
It's time, she said.
Under the watery afternoon sun he donned a pair of heavy calfskin gloves given him by a youth and then a man unpeeled a name tag onto his shirt and a fletched rope was tied to his ankle. He was given a headlamp, a hammer, a chisel. Then a slender girl with a soft yellow bruise on her forehead warned hoarsely of the lay of the tunnel and what would be found within.
Pike's already in there, she said. You know how this works. Just follow the ropes in. You'll want to check that lamp. Alright?
He nodded. He hitched his trousers high and toggled his headlamp.
Then went in. In through a jagged gash in the rubble. Twisting his hips and torso aslant and ducking his head and sliding his left thigh and forearm in first, into a small cavity of light. A low tunnel no taller than his knees. It sloped downwards and he laid himself out and crept forward following the engineer's rope, wriggling in filth and finning forth on his elbows like some wormlike beast. The stink of gas was strong and the strewn battery lamps hot in the dirt where he crawled. His safety line dragged at his ankle. The
tchink
of hammer and mallet in one fist as he went.
The girl had warned him of a corpse crushed over the hole and he could smell the rot in the tunnel as he neared it. A dead man trapped by a slab above. The corpse was pressed into the ceiling of the tunnel half-visible with his arm dangling there, his fingers curling earthward. The dead hand swollen and hard and hanging putrid before him.
He flattened himself as he could and crept on.
The tips of the dead man's fingers brushed through his hair, brushed his neck. As he passed it the cadaver bloated with gas hissed eerily. His right elbow seeped into something soft and cool and he rolled it squelching out and kept on.
After a time the tunnel turned sharply and he approached the edge of a vertical drop and he could hear the crunch of digging from below. He eased himself over and peered down and called in.
Hello, he called. You're Pike?
A man drenched in sweat and wearing a thick dark beard glared up out of the darkness. Begrimed and stout and brazen like a coal miner. A lamp pinned at an angle under his boots. He was folded awkwardly over a low girder and he twisted around to see the old man and then he grimaced weirdly.
I guess the doctor's in, he whispered. Come on down here doc. Keep your voice down. The kid's just through here. His name's Mason.
The old man slid very carefully down into the hole. The engineer's eyes were shining in the lamplight and the old man could feel the heat coming off the man's skin as if he were very sick. They were pressed up together at the bottom of that narrow shaft among the pipes and debris.
The engineer called softly into a crack in the wall. Hey, Mason. Hey you still in there buddy? He looked at the old man. I told him you were coming. He's been quiet.
The old man held his breath.
Come on in there pal. Don't go falling to sleep on me. Hey. You can hear me, I know you can hear me. I got a doctor out here to help your mom.
His mom?
She's buried in there with him.
The old man shifted his weight. The engineer blew dust from a deep crevice no wider than his thumb and he peered in and cursed. His voice bashing off the wimpled rocks overhead, rippling and fading up the tunnel.
I'm not a doctor, the old man whispered.
The engineer studied him. My name's not Pike.
He wondered if the engineer were joking. He regarded him a long moment then wiped the sweat from his eyes and called in to the boy. Mason? Mason, are you in there son?
They sat in silence for a long moment, listening. The old man could hear a hollow drip of liquid obscene in the depths, like water or blood or some darker grease. The creak of rubble all around them as in a ship's hull.
He's not doing so hot, the engineer muttered.
He'll make it. If he's in there.
He's in there. Unless I'm a fucken idiot. The engineer pressed one eye socket to the crevice, wet hair in curls at his nape. And you can fuck right off if that's what you think.
The old man's breaths came quick in the bad air. He rolled his forehead against a slab of warm concrete, dust in his throat, dust searing his eyes. He raised his head. A wet half-moon where his forehead had been. The heat was worsening.
Did you hear that? he hissed suddenly.
The engineer waved him quiet. His blood loud in his ears.
And then up out of the dirt and battered depths it came: a small voice. She's sleeping, the boy whispered. She can't hear you, you have to be quiet.
The engineer was grinning angrily in the ghostly light. What did I tell you?
The old man knuckled his eyes shut. Thank god. Jesus.
God didn't do shit, he said. And then, into the darkness: We're going to get you out of there buddy, just hold on.
I could hear him from up top. He was singing to her.
You want to lower your fucken voice?
The old man froze.
What?
What do you think? The engineer turned back. Hey, bud, he called in.
I'm thirsty, the boy was saying. You're getting us out of here? He started to cry.
We're going to get you out, the engineer called in. Can we speak to your mom?
A long silence.
She won't wake up, the boy said. I can't wake her up.
It's alright, the old man called. Just hold on in there, okay?
Another long pause.
Okay, the boy said.
She's dead, the engineer muttered. She's gone and fucken died.
I was dead too. I got out.
The engineer looked at him. She's
dead
, he said flatly.
They began carving with a toothed trowel into the facing wall. Banging and splintering off the rubble. Scooping the debris clear into a bucket and grunting softly as they worked. The engineer hoisted the filled bucket to the old man who raised it up to the tunnel overhead and lowered down a fresh bucket. The shadows sluicing crazily. Over the din the old man spoke to the boy telling him of the work being done and of the nature of their excavations and of the brief time left before their breaking through. While he spoke he dipped a black rag into a pail under his boots and sprinkled water upon the debris to settle the dust but nevertheless the air went bad and then was worse and despite the damp cloth tied to his face the old man soon sat wheezing. He ran a palm along his unshaven jaw and it came away black.
One of the buckets lowered from the tunnel held a water canister with a long plastic tube attached and in a folded handkerchief a rubber stopper and a sliced orange. The old man sat with that clean handkerchief open like a white lily in his lap and he stared. It seemed miraculous to his eye. He knew in that moment that he had been underground too long.
He called to the boy but there was no answer and he called again and he waited. Feeling always that wild insensible terror as his voice seeped into the rubble and was lost.
We've got some water here for you son, he called. Are you still thirsty?
He shifted nearer to the crevice and a pain seared his left leg and he sucked in his breath, he stamped and rubbed his calf until the blood again moved. He felt old and angry and useless in his anger and he leaned again nearer and he fed the thin tube into the crevice and his thick gloves jabbed it deeper in. He wafted it back and forth with his headlamp shining in and he called out to the boy to move towards the light. He did not know the hour.
Son? Can you reach it?
The boy did not answer. But all at once the hose dipped and tugged like a bite on a line and the old man's heart surged and the engineer wiped at his face and nodded soberly and turned back to his digging. The old man held the canister over his head and squeezed it gently and paused and squeezed again and its sides slucked gruesomely like some awful bellows.
How is it? he called in. Is that reaching you?
It's good.
When the boy had drunk his fill the old man set the canister upon an outcrop near the crevice and wrapped the sliced orange in a damp rag and affixed it to a coil of fish tape.
He told the boy he was sending in some food. But eat slowly, he cautioned. Just suck at it if you can. If you eat it too fast it'll make you sick. Okay?
Then he turned and his headlamp cut the smoking air.
They send down any of that for us? the engineer asked.
He shook his head.
I'm joking.
I know it.
The engineer had stopped digging. He had unearthed a kind of concrete girder many inches thick and now he flexed his fingers and rocked onto his heels and studied the thing.
The old man coughed uneasily. What do you think?
The engineer traced a finger along the girder. The rubble around him groaned, fell still.
I can't cut through this.
You can't cut through it?
No. It won't cut.
He slashed at the girder once, twice, as if to make his point, then slewed scrabbling up to the edge of the tunnel. The old man waited observing him quietly until at last the engineer peered down and met his eye. He slid back down.
The old man said, We can't wait. We don't know his condition. Or his mother's.
We know her condition.
We don't.
The engineer lowered his head and picked at his blackened gloves.
A long ragged crack had splintered out across the girder from its centre towards a lower edge and a second crack began not two inches from the first and the engineer tapped a forefinger gently between them.
This is where you'd have to hit it, he whispered. His eyes bloodshot in the dust, his raw throat grimy. But I'm worried about the sparks. They could ignite the fumes, the whole goddamn tunnel would go up. He spat then wiped his chin.
Do you think it will?
What?
Blow up.
The engineer shrugged. Fucked if I know. He was staring at the old man with a savage look in his eye and smiling sickly and then he said, Aw fuck it. Fuck it. He picked up his chisel.
Isn't there another way?
You should go doc.
It's just Arthur.
What?
I'm not a doctor. I told you.
The engineer regarded him queerly. You should go, Arthur.
The old man nodded but made no move to leave and after a moment he shrugged wearily and said, I guess I'm too old to be climbing these damned tunnels all night.