Critical Dawn by Colin F. Barnes, Darren Wearmouth Page B

camera was attached to his harness. Its umbilical cord twisted up to the surface alongside his own rope, the last two things to connect him to the real world.
    His movements didn’t echo.
    Any sound was hungrily consumed by the hole, snatched from the air as soon as the sound waves birthed. Even his heartbeat that pulsed through his ears seemed muted as if shrouded and stolen by the darkness.
    Filming with one hand, Charlie slowly panned the camera round and down, giving those on the surface a chance to see what he saw. His hand shook as vibrations ran up through the hole.
    Fragments of dirt fell away from the sides as the noise of moving earth roared louder, gas and air and debris shot up, making him cough. He swung forward, hooking the camera to his harness but pointing down. He dug his feet in firmly and clung to a half-inch-wide groove.
    The shuddering vibrated through his hands. It felt like an earthquake.
    He’d experienced a number of them during his time in California, but there was something about this that just didn’t sit right with him.
    One particular time, he was half a mile underground, exploring a cave system when a quake struck. That was more violent than this one, but the roar of moving earth and air beneath made it seem like the hole was alive and devouring anything within its gullet.
    He wondered then that if Luke were indeed down there, he’d likely have gone lower as the hole continued to sink.
    “Charlie, what’s happening down there? Are you okay? Over.” Pippa said over the radio. He looked up to see her face poking over the edge.
    Taking one hand away from the groove to depress the radio he replied, “I’m fine. The hole has sunk further I think. I’m going lower. And stand back. I don’t want you falling in. It’s hard to tell how safe the ground is around here. Over.”
    “The camera showed the basin of the hole fall away,” Pippa added. “There’s a shelf of some kind not far below. I think Luke’s there. We can see a coat among the dirt. Over.”
    “I’m heading down right away. Over.”
    It took a few minutes of descending into the darkness until he found the shelf. The material was solid rock, jutting incongruously out of the sides of the hole. The edges were smooth, rounded, almost as if something had shaped them that way for some unknown purpose.
    Letting the ropes dangle a further twenty feet below the shelf, Charlie crouched down and looked over the side, shining his flashlight into the gloom and pointing the camera down.
    Something shined beneath the light.
    A piece of fabric.
    It moved.
    “Luke? Is that you? Can you hear me?” Charlie shouted. He cupped his ear, waited for a response, but could only hear a low, subterranean rumble and his own pulse.
    “I think I’ve found him. Over.”
    “Is he alive? Over,” Pippa said.
    “There was movement; I’m going closer. Hold on. Over.”
    Charlie turned his back to the hole and repeated the abseiling procedure and back off the ledge, letting the rope rest with a notch on the edge of the ledge. He zipped down the rope and stalled his progress a foot above the mound of dirt and debris.
    The rumble continued from below.
    He tried to ignore the idea that it sounded like some great beast, its maw open just waiting to swallow him whole. Tentatively, Charlie placed his feet on patch of soil and tested his weight.
    It seemed solid enough.
    Luke’s blue windbreaker stuck out of the soil, his arm and hand held up, the fingers moving. Charlie reached down and grabbed his hand, traced his body until he found his head cocked to one side, half-buried in debris. Charlie cleared some of the soil and turf away from the kid’s face. His eyes were open and glinted with recognition beneath the flashlight.
    “I’m here, buddy,” Charlie said. “We’re gonna get you out. Can you move? Is anything broken?”
    “I … don’t know,” Luke said, his voice barely a whisper, the weight of the soil on his chest making him breathe in