The Becoming - a novella Read Free Page B

again and even though he knew he would
eventually need to conserve the light, he wasn’t about to turn it off yet.
    He looked around,
the mine shaft appearing somehow even more alien than usual. The light from his
miner’s lamp seemed puny and insubstantial against the encroaching darkness,
and the mine shaft—gloomy and dank even under normal circumstances—seemed
sinister, filled with evil intent. Shadows loomed, writhing just out of reach
of the guttering light. Jesus, get ahold of yourself.
    Karl tried to
remember what the hell he had been doing when the lights went out. The cart. He
had been going to retrieve his mining cart; that was it. Suddenly, it seemed
much less important than before. It wasn’t like he had a stash of supplies stored
inside the damned thing to help him get through the next few hours or days.
    Plus, it was
sitting right at the junction of Alpha Seven.
    Where the rocks
had come from.
    Where it was supposedly
haunted.
    And Karl Meyer
didn’t believe in ghosts. No sir, he most certainly did not. But rocks didn’t
fly through the air by themselves and they hadn’t been thrown by some idiot
miner playing a practical joke. No one would stay hidden in the darkness of
Alpha Seven after an explosion inside the mine. No one.
    So he made the
decision to forget about the stupid cart, at least for now. He would retreat to
the bulkhead as far away from the fire—and from Alpha Seven—as possible. There
was a problem with his new plan, though, and the way Karl Meyer saw it, it was
a major problem, maybe a life-and-death problem. He could smell the metallic chemical
odor, the one he had first noticed as he struggled with the rusted bulkhead
door, and it was getting noticeably stronger. Clearly more potentially toxic
fumes and dangerous chemicals were seeping through the defective bulkhead doors.
    Karl began to
doubt the wisdom of returning to the bulkhead at the far end of the tunnel. What
would be the point? If the gag-inducing poisonous fumes had already traveled this
far along the main tunnel, how long would it take them to arrive at the rear
bulkhead doors?
    The answer, of
course, was not long at all; in fact they were probably already gathering back
there, invisible and deadly. The obvious solution would be to go pound on the
doors until the miners trapped on the other side opened them for just a moment
and let him in. But that was impossible. The doors had been designed to remain
locked once they had been closed. They could not be opened, no matter how much
the men might like to do so, until a management representative arrived with a
special key after the fire had been contained.
    The air in the
shaft felt warmer, fetid, much like it had at the first bulkhead before Karl
had managed to close the doors. Breathing was becoming more difficult as the air
quality deteriorated. The urge to gag and cough threatened to overwhelm him. He
began to feel sick, lightheaded, like he might throw up at any moment.
    If he survived
this disaster, Karl made a promise to himself he would walk up to mine owner Jedediah
Norton and punch the cheap bastard right in the nose as his way of giving
notice before quitting outright. Sure, jobs were hard to come by, but risking
life and limb for a few measly dollars worth of scrip a day, money that was
useless anywhere except company-owned stores where prices were jacked up so the
owner could recoup most of the wages he paid out? On a job that was dangerous
enough even without taking into consideration Tonopah’s shoddy safety measures?
It just wasn’t worth it. Not any more.
    Karl began to
wheeze. He sounded exactly like his little brother Harold had just before he
died from asthma when they were kids. His eyes were watering and he rubbed his
sleeve across his face, accomplishing nothing but smearing dirt and coal dust
into them. Now they watered and stung.
    He wasn’t going to
make it. It had been less than an hour since the explosion and the air was
already barely