Coal

The wall collapsed. Instead of falling through it, I fell beneath it. A shower of the hardest hail struck me, like the kind you see on Killer Storm! video footage, where car hoods are buckled and windscreens smashed. Only this hail was black. It was coal. The pit wall had collapsed. Carbon particles tried their best to fill my lungs like a drowning victim. I breathed out against them and instantly regretted it; the weight of the coal on my chest reduced my ability to catch an extra breath. This is it, I thought, but it wasn't.

Against all logic, my arm broke through the floor. Maybe the avalanche had breached the ceiling of an undiscovered secondary cavern. I didn't wait to find out. The entire floor around me gave way, and I fell. I fell and fell and fell and fell. I ached for it to stop. I ached when it did stop. Even in the pitch darkness I knew I was leaking blood from numerous places, as my previous tomb chased gravity and swallowed me again.

I kicked up through the lumps and grit, clawing my nails off in the effort to shift the suffocating slag. I broke the surface and swallowed stale air as if it were ambrosia from the gods. Injury aside, I noticed the smell of my new environment first. My supposition that I had landed in an unmapped pocket cavern was confirmed by the smell of sulfur and other natural gases. I gagged. Whatever else might be here, there was still enough oxygen to breathe. I was caught between the need to check that all my limbs still worked, curiosity to explore this new underworld, and the heavy burden of wondering who amongst my fellow miners might still be alive. I chose to worry about my concerns in that order.

I could stand. My ribcage felt like someone had snapped it open, and hurt like hell when I twisted to the side or raised my right arm. I figured there were at least a couple of broken ribs. My arms and legs were not broken. I couldn't move my right hand's pinkie finger. My left hand sought it out for a feel, and a wave of nauseating pain washed over me. The finger was bent back and out: a definite break. I employed the rest of my fingers to explore my head. Fine, just sticky. Blood, I guessed, but I felt fine.

My eyes began to make out a faint outline to the area nearest me. They shouldn't have been able to--I was about a mile beneath the planet. I concluded there must have been another light source. No sooner thought, than seen. A faint orange glow illuminated the farthest side of the cavern. A dislodged piece of coal dropped down beside me, sending an echo of itself clattering into the distance. This place was big. I stumbled and slid my way across the once-ceiling and headed toward the light.

At first I thought it was my imagination, but I realized the orange light increased in intensity. It bobbed up and down, sending demonic shadows skittering across the walls around me. The light was moving toward me, just as I was moving toward it. I shouted out, but produced only a dusty croak. In answer, the bobbing light flared and stopped bobbing.

And then began a sound I wished I never heard.

The coal dust around me trembled on the bass of the soundwave that struck me. Like thousands of island drums, the air creaked under the pressure of sound flowing along it. I fell to my knees as it rose in pitch to a groaning rent in the natural order of things. The bass thrummed on, with the low guttural rumble adding to the chord. A terrible tenor note barked out the roar of jet engines. I couldn't shut it out, even with the palms of my hands squeezed tight against my ears. The noise wound around my spine and throttled every cell in every organ. I knew the meaning of blood-curdling. I thought I might explode, but something else beat me to it.

A ripple of heat surfed ahead of a burning mushroom of flame from the place where the sound originated. The outer-edge of the orange belch gave way to yellow, and that in turn gave way to a core of blue fire so intense that it looked like a balled-up fist of ice. I couldn't move. I could only watch and marvel at the way it singed the very air in my coal-filled lungs. The heat and light incinerated the demonic shadows in the cavern like a nightmare extinguished by the sun. I marveled in awe, when I should have broken down in fear, because behind the noise, behind the light show, behind the flame, there followed a lumbering, monstrous mass of flint, slate, teeth and leather.

Dragon. The word looks absurdly impossible. The noun's owner looked much the same way. Of all the silly things to think at a time like that, I thought, I have no sword. Miners do not carry swords. I did not even have a pick-ax, just a Ground Penetrating Radar rig to collect data, and I let go of that when the wall collapsed. The reason I had all that time to think was because the dragon had stopped its advance, reduced its roar by a few hundred decibels, and had eased off the flame. Instead of one, intense blast of flame, each nostril emitted a steady billow of fire in much the same rhythm as a breathing pattern. The occasional flare of light that it gave illuminated its face and eyes clearly. It looked like a gigantic alchemical cow. It could not see forward, and wove its massive head from side to side in order to keep me in its sights. Who could blame its creator for that one oversight? Anything stood directly in front of it would not matter very much against the arsenal of fire-power at its disposal. One of those eyes rested upon me. It was black, like the coalface around it, but not deadened by millennia. An extra inner lid winked across it from the side. It barred its teeth, and the similarity with cows ended. These teeth were instruments of purpose. This thing was a killing machine. It was toying with me, stretching out the moment. I was going to die.

Having assessed my physical damage and explored the cavern, my thoughts turned back to my colleagues. They were going to die, too. I'd been swallowed by the floor like Alice down the rabbit hole. This hole was not just an entrance, it was also an exit.

The last thing I remember was the sound of island drums, the air creaking under pressure, bass chords and jumbo jets.

My world exploded.

(1144 words)