Ashes of the Dead - Bucket of Blood (12 page)

“Over hear,” he squeaked.

She rushed over to him and found Emmett knocked unconscious, still protecting him with his body. “Are you okay?”

“I think so
,” Caleb said.

She pulled him out from underneath Emmett and
squeezed him into her chest, hugging him tightly and holding the back of his neck. She ran her hands over him, checking for any signs that he had been hurt. “I said I’m fine,” he insisted.

She knelt down and caressed Emmett’s shoulder. He awoke and sat upright, rubbing a knot on his head. When he saw Rose and Caleb in front of him he pulled them in tightly. “Thank god,” he said,
and cringed in pain as they hugged him back even tighter. “Are you two okay?”

A few more people appear
ed out of the darkness, bloodied and covered in dirt. Rose did a quick head count and returned to the mound of rocks behind her, and then crawled up to the small opening. “I only counted a dozen people. Maybe a few more farther down the tunnel.”

“Are any of the rocks loose on that side?” the Gunman
asked.

Rose leaned over and pulled
away two small rocks, but the rest were far too heavy for her to move and they wouldn’t budge. Emmett joined her and they pulled away one of the heavier rocks, but that was all they could manage.

Cutler
continued working on the other side, trying to budge a thick beam from underneath several rocks, but it was no use. He turned to the Gunman and wiped sweat from his forehead. “What are we gonna do? Ain't no way we can dig through all this,” he said under his breath, trying to keep Rose from hearing.

“
I don't know,” the Gunman said, and set down the lantern and helped Cutler remove another rock, making the hole a little bigger. They pushed and pulled on another rock, but it was pinned against the collapsed wall and wasn’t going anywhere.

“
Rose,” the Gunman called.

“Yes
?”

“
Is the tunnel clear on the other side of you?”

“
I think so. Why?” she asked.

“
You'll have to head back the other way...back to the church.”

Rose walked for a ways down the tunnel, keeping both hands out in front her. Part of the wall had collapsed, but the tunnel
was still open, and turned in a sweeping arc that disappeared out of the light. “It’s clear,” she called to him. “What about you?”

He looked at Cutler, then back through the hole at her.
“Sit tight in the church. We’ll come and get you,” the Gunman said.

“Okay,” she responded.

“Be careful, Rose,” Cutler added, nervously fingering the front of his shirt at the thought of something happening to her.

Rose stood in the dark tunnel, knowing that they would have to find their way back to the church blind. There was a
definite possibility that they would get lost, and never find their way back, but another fear also took hold of her. It traveled up her spine and crawled into the base of her skull. The undead could be in these tunnels and there was no way for them to defend themselves without weapons. Rose took Caleb’s hand, and then started to lead everyone down the tunnel, and they disappeared into pitch-blackness, shuffling away in silence.

The
Gunman pulled out his revolvers and blew dirt out of the barrels. He wiped them with his shirt and slipped them back into their holsters. Cutler found his axe buried in the dirt and wiped off the blade, good as new.

The Gunman grabbed the lantern and turned a small
rusted knob to push the cotton wick higher, which made it burn a little brighter. “Alright,” he said, “Let’s get moving.”

“
You sure you know how to get out of here?” Andrew asked.

“No,” he responded, and started walking down the tunnel.

“And what if we get lost?” Andrew asked, trying to clean his glasses with his dirty shirt.

“
Well, I suppose we'll come out eventually.”

Cutler
smiled, liking these odds. “Sounds good to me.”

The Gunman held out the lantern and led them down the tunnel, and they began their search for a way out, groping
their way through the darkness.

•  •  •

A roughly hewn entrance was cut deep into the hillside, supported by thick beams and iron reinforcements, bathed in the cool glow of morning sunlight. The wind was blowing gently out of the West and carried moist air from the Pacific. The hillside was covered in slate and overgrown with wild Yucca.

As the sun crested over the horizon,
Jack and Clay appeared out of the mineshaft, using their hands to block the piercing sunlight. Clay stood there for a moment, allowing his eyes to adjust. They had spent the entire night walking through the dark tunnels, and even the pale morning light was more than he could handle.

Jack
sat on the ground and pulled out a cigar, and then used a silver cutter to clip off the end.

“
Where are we?” Clay asked.

“
Nevada Gulch. Far from where we want to be.”

“
And where exactly do we wanna be?”

Jack
lit his last match and sucked the small flame into the end of the cigar, igniting brown curls of tobacco into golden embers. “Far from here,” he answered, and released gray smoke from his lips.

“
Why did we leave those people back there, Jack?”

“
They know too much.”

“What do you mean?”

Jack took a deep pull from the cigar and exhaled slowly from his nostrils. “Look. Anybody who leaves here alive…besides us…is bound to find out that we moved those remains. And once we're connected to that…well….” He sucked deeply on the cigar. “…I'm sure we'll get blamed for the whole thing.”

“
What do you mean? Blamed for what?”

“
Never mind.”

“
You think those things in town are because of us? Because of what we did--.”

Jack
pushed himself up with the cigar hanging between his teeth. “That's why we need to get away from here.
Far away
,” he said, and started to descend the steep hillside. Clay stood there wondering how far down the rabbit hole he was willing to follow Jack, and then took off and followed closely at his heels.

•  •  •

The Gunman and the remaining gang made their way through the mineshaft. They moved in silence as they searched for a way out, and had been walking all night in the dimly lit tunnels. None of them had gotten any sleep that night, and very little the night before, but the Gunman and Cutler both agreed that they had to return to the church as soon as possible. There was no telling how long Rose and the others would last against an onslaught of the undead. The windows and doors of the church had been reinforced, but that would only buy them a little time. The undead were relentless, and they would eventually break through and destroy everything in their path, leaving no one alive.

They approached a point
in the mineshaft that split into three tunnels, each going in different directions, with no indication of which one would lead them out of the mine. Some old markings could be seen etched roughly into one of the beams on the outside of the middle tunnel, but time had worn them away and they were no longer legible. They were probably the initials of a miner who had worked here long ago, placing his mark in the darkness. The gunman turned from side to side, inspecting each tunnel as best he could in the low light.

“We should take this one,” Andrew said, pointing to the tunnel on the right.

Cutler looked at the entrance, and then studied the other two in the same way. “You know somethin’ we don’t, doc?” he questioned cynically.

“This one slopes
upward,” Andrew said, pointing toward it. “The other two don’t. If I had to guess, I would say that this one is our best chance.”

“Personally, I ain’t one for taking chances, doc,” Cutler responded.

“It’s our only choice,” the Gunman added. “What other option do we have?”

“We could split up. Each take a different tunnel,” Pickett suggested. “Might have a better chance that way.”

“No way. We stick together,” Cutler argued.

“I agree,” the Gunman said. “We
need to follow this tunnel and see where it takes us. Might lead us straight into a dead end, but we need to stick together.”

“Alright. Sounds good to me,” Pickett said.
“Lead the way, partner.”

For over an hour they passed through the tunnel.
The ground sloped steadily upward and the Gunman thought he could feel a slight breeze on his face. The kerosene in the lantern had finally run out and he set it down on the dirt floor. It was no use to him any more, and if anything, it was unnecessary weight. They kept moving up the mineshaft, but the tunnel wasn’t as dark as it had been before. A pale yellow light seemed to take shape before them as they moved ahead. For a while the Gunman thought he was only imagining the light, but it seemed to grow brighter with every step. They finally turned a corner and saw bright sunlight filtering from a distant end of the tunnel, like the finger of god reaching down to guide their way out of the darkness.

“Finally,” Andrew said, a smile crossing his face.

They picked up the pace when they knew the end was near.

“Let's get the hell out of here,” Cutler
said as he jogged ahead. “I’m sick of this god damn tunnel.”

They
exited the mineshaft, overlooking a deep ravine with a dry riverbed at the bottom.

“
Fuck, man. Where are we?” Cutler asked.

They
stood at the entrance and considered their options. The bright sun continued its morning climb, set against the vivid blue backdrop. It was still early morning, but the heat was already starting to take hold of the dry land. Pickett ripped off the bottom of his shirt and tied it around his forearm, using it to bandage a gaping wound that he hadn’t noticed in the darkness.

“
They won't last too long on their own,” the Gunman said as he turned to Pickett. “What's the fastest way back to town?

Pickett
pointed far into the distance toward the horizon. “Take the river bed. Over that far hill, but--,” he said.

“But w
hat?” Andrew asked.

“
There's a deep ravine on the other side of that hill. We'll have to take the long way round'…through Indian country.”

“
How long will that take?” the Gunman asked.

“Half a day,
maybe more. And it’s going to get hot today.”

“Maybe they can help us,” Andrew suggested.

“Who?”

“
The Washoe. What if we ask for their help?”

“Couldn't hurt,” the Gunman added.

“We aren't exactly on speakin' terms with them,” Pickett pointed out. “Not after the mining company pushed em' off their land.”

“We have no choice,” the Gunman
told him.

Pickett nodded in agreement, but still feared what would happen to them when they crossed the Washoe border.
They were fierce warriors and had earned a brutal reputation. The Gunman and the others started to make their way down the steep hillside, weaving around shrubs and rocks, headed toward the riverbed. The sun was already beating down on them and there was no sign of water anywhere. It was going to be another long day.

•  •  •

Rose walked slowly down the tunnel, holding a broken unlit lantern in one hand and Caleb's hand in the other. The remaining survivors followed closely behind. The tunnel was pitch-black except for a makeshift torch that Eric had managed to assemble out of a piece of splintered wood and the lower part of his shirt. He had dipped the end of the torch in the remnants of kerosene from Rose’s broken lantern, which produced a brighter flame, but burned through his shirt much quicker than he expected. He continued to wrap pieces of cloth around the end, trying to extend the torch’s life, but knew that it wouldn’t last much longer.

Only the shuffling of their feet was heard on the hard-packed dirt
floor, as they kept moving through the dark tunnel. Several people had been killed when the mineshaft collapsed, crushed to death under tons of rock and fallen beams. Nobody was ready to talk about the ones they had lost. Not now. Not in the darkness.

“
How much farther?” Caleb asked, his head hung low from walking all night through the tunnel.

“
Not far dear.”

They
turned a corner and Rose paused, gazing through the blackness, checking for any signs of undead in their path. She had no idea where they were, but could only hope that they were headed in the right direction.

“My feet hurt,”
Caleb said.