Hollie
“Mikey! Get that number two engine fired up!” she shouted, flicking switches hastily and watching gauges.
Warning cries were going up and down the tunnel as she worked to bring the great machine back to life. The tunnel borer, one of the largest in the world, had recently been pulled back for repairs. But now it began to come alive. The roar of engines announced its energy. The counter-rotating titanium teeth at the front began to utter their deep-seated whir as they spun up to speed, announcing to all that they were hungry, and looking for some rock to dig.
People began to move back through the machine, heading toward the rear as they moved out and around the massive drill head. Those would be the crews from the side caverns we found, I suppose. She waited until the last one gave her an all-clear sign. Everyone was now back behind the borer and the main tunnel and all side areas had been evacuated of personnel. She nodded and began to move levers.
Slowly but surely the great machine rolled forward. In the main control area she moved back and forth between gauges, checking them, adjusting levels and pressures as they went, keeping the machine humming along smoothly. It was an intricate dance, and one that she had spent several years learning to perfect. Now, with Adam home with a broken leg, she was the only qualified person on the team to oversee the borer’s operations. It felt damn good.
Especially now that the repairs were completed, new teeth installed, and an overhaul of the number two engine finished. Even as she spoke, Mikey brought it online and the noise in the tunnel seemed to double. Hollie grinned. Now they were digging!
The dual rail lines through the mountain were a several-year-long project, but once they were completed they would allow for much faster passage of goods from the coast to the interior plains. Not only that, but her hometown of Drake’s Crossing on the interior side had won the bid to receive a massive railyard. Everyone in town was looking forward to the job boom that was sure to follow.
Mikey’s voice drifted up from below. “Number two is reading all clear boss!” He had to shout to be heard.
Hollie stamped her foot down on the grate to let him know she had heard him. “Roger!” she added loudly, her voice distracted. Number one was reading slightly high pressure. Still in the green, but she made a mental note to keep an eye on it.
“Five feet to contact!” Eduardo, the third member of her crew called from his forward spotting position.
“Three!”
The mighty borer trundled onward. Once they reached one foot Hollie increased the speed of the rotations and the machine truly began to hum. At this point everyone pulled their headsets down into place. Speaking just wasn’t an option anymore, and they needed the ear protection that was offered. The shaking increased, and she heard Eduardo call out over the radio that they were under half a foot now.
She slowed their forward movement, dialing it down to the slowest, while the teeth continued to move around.
“CONTACT!”
The entire machine shuddered, and her eyes were immediately drawn to the pressure of number one. But it was still reading in the green and hadn’t appeared to jump at all to her trained eye. She gave number two a look, but it also looked fine.
“We’re in business!” she shouted as the teeth began to carve into the solid rock of the mountain once more. Conveyor belts grabbed the chunks as they were broken down and started to send them backward up the shaft. An entirely different operation was in place to see if they ended up hitting any veins of geologically pricey ores, at which point a subsidiary mining company would come in and handle the debris.
All in all, it was an efficiently run business, something that Hollie wasn’t overly used to. Generally the higher-ups of a company were well out of touch with reality, but that didn’t seem to be the case with Heartline Drilling. As far as she could tell, they actually had their shit together.
The shaking intensified as the rest of the drill encountered rock. Now they were really back in the swing of it. She relaxed slightly, continuing to monitor the various gauges.
“Holy shit! STOP!” Eduardo screamed.
Hollie paused for a second, trying to figure out what was wrong. Then the machine seemed to sort of buck and with a shout of surprise she slapped the emergency stop. The borer, Big Betty as they’d affectionately named her, came to an immediate stop, the massive drill head taking a moment to spin down.
The ground kept shaking.
“This is not good,” she muttered into the headset. “Not good at all. Eduardo, what do you see?!”
It took a moment for a reply. By now others were coming forward.
“The entire thing just sort of fell away! We hit a cavern straight on. I was afraid the entire roof was going to come down on us,” he said at last.
The earth started to subside, and they all breathed a big sigh of relief.
“Survey teams forward!” she called over the radio as she moved Big Betty several feet back to allow space forward. This way they could step out the side of the borer into one of the side caverns, wait there while she reversed, and then proceed forward. It was a lengthy process, but their job was already extremely risky, so nobody begrudged taking some extra time.
Anytime a cavern opened up as they drilled, a team would move forward to inspect. Now she waited as they cautiously moved forward, probing into the newly opened area.
“It’s huge,” one of them said quietly.
“Anything in there?”
“Nothing…wait…I think—”
Whoever it was never completed their sentence. A wave of terror washed out from the cavern and across the several dozen crewmembers of the drill. More than one of them screamed with fear as they turned and ran.
Everything in Hollie’s body locked down. Her muscles were frozen stiff, rooting her to the spot as she heard the boots of the rest of her team pounding down the ramps toward the rear. She knew they would be fighting one another to find a place on the carts that would carry them back toward the surface. Whoever didn’t earn a place would be forced to run the two miles back to the entrance.
All of that happened while she stood immobilized, the fear paralyzing her with its thickness. She felt she should be able to see it, so dense and cloying was it in its pervasiveness. Hollie wanted to scream, but all that came out was a mild whistle as she struggled to breathe.
What the hell is going on?
Her inability to do, well, anything, was starting to anger her. Hollie wanted to shout out, to call her team back and have them proceed back into the cavern.
Fine, if they won’t, then I will!
Stubborn determination—and not a small bit of curiosity as well—began to wear away at the fear gripping her and holding her tight. All it would take was the smallest of motions to break the spell, whatever it was. Perhaps there’s a gas leak of some sort? Though I’ve never heard of gas that can cause fear…
Hollie focused on her left foot. She commanded it to lift, to pull her foot up off the ground and put it back down. Nothing happened however. She stayed frozen. Hollie tried everything she could think of. Berating herself, cracking jokes in her head, anything and everything that might chip loose the hold the fear had upon her. But nothing worked. The harder she fought against her muscles to force them to move, the more rigid her position became.
Fine. You don’t want my muscles doing anything? Well then they aren’t going to do a damn thing.
She snarled silently and commanded all of her muscles to go limp. Hollie didn’t really expect it to work, but she figured it was worth a try. So when her legs suddenly collapsed out from under her and she plummeted to the ground, her hands weren’t at all ready to stop her.
“Ow,” she cursed as she hit the steel grate of the upper level of the borer control room hard. Thank goodness for her thick safety uniform. The brown material had prevented her from getting scraped up by the roughness of the metal.
She brightened immediately though at the realization she could speak. A quick test proved her body was now responding to her controls. The fear that had been all commanding earlier was still there, but now that she was able to exert command on her limbs again, Hollie was able to ignore it. Well, perhaps not ignore it, but she could shunt it to the side, preventing it from gaining control.
“What the hell caused this?” she muttered, slowly moving down the stairs.
It was a ghost town. Nobody had remained. Every single one of them had fled for the surface. She wondered idly if they had stopped there, or if they’d gone all the way to their homes.
Reaching down, she scooped up one of the dropped flashlights. This was a high-powered unit, not something normally used by homeowners. When she turned it on, the entire cavern in front of her was lit up in its beam, the white glow splashing against the far side. Swinging it back and forth and also onto the ceiling above her Hollie proceeded forward, the exact opposite direction all of her friends had gone.
Your curiosity is going to be the end of you one of these days.
Perhaps. But Hollie had to know what had caused such a reaction in everyone, including her.
Flashlight in hand, she went to go find out.