The Susquehanna Virus Box Set by Steve McEllistrem

Author:Steve McEllistrem [McEllistrem, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Calumet Editions
Published: 2019-08-01T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty

Colonel Truman coughed as dust saturated his throat. The ground felt cold. He heard his companions coughing and sneezing as well. The two little girls were crying, their parents comforting them. The room was pitch black. When he reached for his PlusPhone, he felt like he’d been stabbed in the back. His right knee hurt too. Some of the rocks from the ceiling collapse must have struck him. The damn PlusPhone was dead, so he couldn’t use its flashlight setting. He managed to stop coughing long enough to say:

“Anyone’s PlusPhone working? Any lights at all?”

“Hang on,” Joffer said, his voice thick. “There’s an emergency light somewhere by me.”

As he waited for Joffer to find the light, Truman pictured Raddock Boyd, the man he’d killed in Minnesota last year—the mole on Boyd’s cheek, the Semper Fi tattoo, the crew cut. Whenever he was alone in the dark he thought of Raddock Boyd. How he wished he could erase that memory.

A yellow light suddenly shone through the dust. More than half the space was covered by a pile of rubble—boulders and jagged rocks that stretched almost to the ceiling at the back end of the room, twenty feet away. The Russian tourists, Gregor and Maria Dmietriev, lay beside Truman, partially covered by rocks. They appeared to be unconscious. “How many people are buried under that pile?” Truman asked.

“Ten,” Joffer said. “Besides those two. Your knee is bleeding.”

Truman nodded. He looked up at the people standing by the door: the Verloren family; Hicks, the Australian power plant worker; Mishra the Indian tech; Li Huan and his wife Li Chen, engineers both; and Mottz and Joffer. Joffer pulled the Dmietrievs clear and Li Huan and Li Chen began ministering to them. Mottz knelt beside Truman and tenderly squeezed his knee. Truman winced. Taking off his shirt, Mottz tied it tightly around Truman’s knee.

“Might be a broken kneecap,” Mottz said. “That will at least stop the bleeding.” He lifted Truman and set him with his back to the tunnel-side wall. It felt like a knife was twisting inside Truman’s back, but he managed not to scream.

“We’re all gonna die,” Hicks said. He coughed. “Look at that mess. We’re dead.”

“Shut up,” Mottz said as he glanced at the Verlorens. He moved toward the pile of rocks. “The medical supplies are buried along with the doc. We’ll have to see if we can dig them out. Everybody quiet. Hello!” he called. “Anybody alive under there?”

Truman heard a soft whirring sound that might have been ringing in his ears. He heard the muffled voices of people in the room next door. Somehow their voices made it through the solid rock wall.

Hicks grabbed the door handle and pulled, but apparently the force of the explosion had warped the heavy metal door and sealed it tight. “Get us out of here,” Hicks yelled as he pounded on the door. “Somebody give me a hand with this door.”

“Leave the door shut,” Li Huan said.

“We gotta get outta here.” Hicks continued pounding on the door.

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