Artemis was already shaking her head and heading the other way. “No, nope—”
“Are you seriously ditching your duty right now?”
As Artemis turned the corner, a flashlight swept up the tunnel, followed by a new set of voices. “... it isn’t as cold in here, anyway; that’s nice!”
“Maybe you could strip and show some skin. The miners would like that.”
“You’re disgusting, Eric. Shine a light down these other tunnels. I feel like we’re missing things.”
“Oh, eff,” Artemis whispered.
I grabbed her and pulled her deeper into the mine. The air got wetter and warmer, and the tunnel began to slope downward. Deeper into the hills. This was officially farther than I’d gone before, farther than I’d ever wanted to go. I had no idea if it was safe here. There might’ve been dangerous gasses or holes in the floor. The dead lined up so we had to charge through them, more of them than I’d expected. Adults and children. I wished I could stop, ask them what was down here, what could cause them turmoil, but they wouldn’t answer. My ankle burned with every limping step, and we moved too fast to stay completely quiet. We escaped Leila’s and Eric’s lights, but their footsteps continued to follow us.
“Find a place,” I whispered to Artemis as she overtook me, even with the heavy backpack on her shoulders, and I thanked god she couldn’t see all the dead she sidestepped. “Find a place for us to hide.”
My foot landed on a rock. My ankle bent hard. I yelped inpain, clapped a hand over my mouth, and grabbed the back of Artemis’s bag as I fell. She fell with me; we collapsed on the floor with a heavy thud and scraping, a rush of air and identical groans. Artemis’s camera clattered against the rock.
“Wait,” someone said behind us. “Did that sound like...?”
I scrambled to my feet and yanked Artemis up by her arms. I’d ripped the backpack from her shoulders. She bent to grab it.
“No!” I pulled her jacket. She got her hands on her camera, the viewfinder still open. We started running before we realized we’d left the flashlights behind and were navigating by the camera’s night vision. No ghosts appeared in it, though they loomed all around us.
“There’s a backpack and flashlights. These aren’t Tad’s or Mike’s.”
Artemis ran with me holding her jacket, limping as fast as I could. The tunnel dove down and down and began to snake around, and footsteps followed us. Lights flashed. The dead pressed in. We turned down one passageway to the right, then another to the left. Anything to lose them. Voices echoed, and I couldn’t tell whose they were or which direction they came from, though it seemed like they couldn’t still be following us.
Artemis took another turn. The ghosts disappeared, and the floor dropped sharply out from under our feet. We landed with a huff several inches down, tumbling over each other.
“Are you okay?” Artemis whispered. Her breath stirred my hair. The air was warm all around here, muggy with humidity, and my hair stuck to my forehead.
“Fine, besides my ankle.” I picked myself up. “Hey! This might have worked. They knew someone was down here, but they didn’t find us. Now we just have to wait for them to leave.”
Artemis was slowly panning around the room with her camera. Itlookedlike a room, and not another tunnel. It was a large open space with a ceiling supported by six old beams. The mine tracks continued until they met a wooden bridge that spanned a deep crevice. I glanced up and around, shoulders prickling. The dead had left us.
“This is one of the caves, I think,” Artemis said. “Look to the right—the crack in the floor goes farther that way, and it gets wider. Ten or fifteen feet. And how deep...?” She moved toward it. I grabbed her arm.
“Uh-uh,” I said. “Rule number one in old abandoned mines: donotstep near the giant hole in the floor.”
“Have you been here before?”
“No, which is why I’m saying don’t touch anything. Let’s wait for a while until they’re gone, then we can get out of here and go home. Mission accomplished.” As long as theDMWcrew didn’t come any deeper, we were probably safe. I could come back tomorrow night and investigate, but for now I needed to get Artemis out before she got herself killed.
“No, missionnotaccomplished,” she said. “There is so much more to explore here.”
“What happened to ‘let’s leave’ Artemis?”
Artemis pointed the camera at her own face so I could see her look of annoyance. “We’re here, and they didn’t follow us. While we’re in the clear, we should keep investigating—”
“What is it?”Tad’s voice rattled down the tunnel. We both froze. The temperature ratcheted up several degrees.
A second later, Eric called back, “Some teenagers running around, we think. We found a bag and flashlights.”
“These damn KII meters are still going off.”
“Ignore them. We have to start over; this is useless.”
“Start over? It’s cold and late, why not play it as it is?”
