That Risen Snow: A Scary Tale of Snow White and Zombies (Wattys 2014 Award Winner)

Chapter Thirty-Four

 Hays

THE LAST THING HAYS remembers is Captain shoving him off the lift. He smacked onto the cold ground at the bottom of the shaft, then instinctively rolled down the passage. Before he could take a breath, a tidal wave of rock smashed to the ground with a deafening roar. The impact shook the walls and extinguished the lantern.

Now he’s immersed in darkness. Dust fills the air, causing him to cough and choke with each breath. Scrambling in the dark, he finds two metal rails running parallel to each other. Must be the rails for the mining cart. They should lead him to the spiral passage.

Before leaving the rubble, he shouts, “Cap’n? Cap’n?”

No reply. Hays pulls a length of thick rope out of wreckage, which as far as he can tell fills the full height of the passage. Damn. He’ll have to take the spiral to the next level and see if he can find Captain from above.

At first, he crawls along the rails. Further from the debris, the air clears. He rises and takes tentative steps. Up ahead, a shrill noise tears through the mine. Sounds like a fairy-tale dragon screaming.

It’s coming closer.

Dim light from above the spiral passage glows brighter with each step. The noise becomes more distinct—metal scraping against metal. He’s only a few paces from the spiral when the cart whirls around the bend. His mouth drops open.

 Snoozy sits in the cart and peers wide-eyed, his bearded face frozen in terror.

Nuts.

The passage is too narrow for him to dodge. Hays turns on his heel and sprints back the way he came, dragging the length of rope behind him.

The cart screams toward him, sounding like rusty barbed wire scraping across a slate. Suddenly, his rope goes taut, jerks him off-balance. He trips over the rails. The cart’s front wheels have struck the rope. It lurches, jumps the tracks, wobbles to one side, snags the wall, and spills sideways.

Sparks shower as the cart slides forward. Screaming, Snoozy huddles inside the cart, limbs splayed stiff. Hays scampers backward on his ass. The urgent scent of hot metal and sparks fills his nostrils. He braces for the impact.

Except it never comes.

The cart grinds to a halt close enough that Hays can reach out and pat the thick metal. Somehow, Snoozy’s candle lantern remains lit. It sways back and forth, alternately illuminating each side of the dwarf’s face.

Hays pants. “We gotta get up top. The shaft caved in. Cap’n threw me off at the last second. We gotta rescue him.”

Snoozy shakes his head. “Horrors spilling. Worms for the seeds.”

“Is there another way up?”

Snoozy’s head hasn’t stopped shaking. “The spiral. Against the tide. Horrors like blood. Like sap.”

“Like hell.”     

He pulls Snoozy out of the cart and grabs the lantern. When they reach the spiral, the Horrors’ clamor above, an erratic symphony of footsteps and hisses. He sprints upward, dragging the dwarf. Their only chance is to reach the next level before the Horrors.

Around every bend, he expects his fiendish former comrades to attack. He chokes back a cough, his lungs full of splinters and dust.

When they reach the second level, Tattoo lurches around the bend. Now bare-chested and panting like a rabid dog, Tattoo cocks his head and hisses. Blood and drool spray into the air. Snoozy grabs the lantern from Hays and hurls it at Tattoo’s head. The lantern bonks Tattoo’s forehead, then smacks onto the ground.

The passage goes almost entirely dark.

Snoozy tugs him Hays down the passage, away from Tattoo’s flailing and hissing, and away from more footsteps racing downward.    

“I can see,” Snoozy says. “Better than them.”

He lets the dwarf pull him for a long, dark eternity. He crouches, but still smacks his head a few times on the ceiling. The darkness is as thick as an axe and just as threatening. Behind them, the Horrors’ thrashing and pounding grows louder and louder.   

“We’re almost there,” Snoozy says.

“Almost where?”

Snoozy skids to a stop. “The vertical shaft. Hollow. Nowhere to go but up.”

“How?”

“Throw me across. Looks like you left enough rungs.”

“What?” Hays shakes his head, a futile gesture in the dark.

“Dwarfs aren’t great jumpers. But if you throw me across, I’ll grab the rungs and light a fuse, so you can see where to jump.

“Hell, no.”

“You have a better idea?”

He doesn’t. So, he grabs the dwarf awkwardly, apologizing when his hand brushes Snoozy’s crotch. The ceiling’s still too low to stand completely upright, making for a difficult throw. He grasps the dwarf sideways by the shoulder and belt and counts down.

“This is it. Three.”

Hays coughs and pivots.

“Two.”

Spins around. 

“One.”

Tosses Snoozy into the darkness. His ears strain for any indication of the dwarf’s fate, fully expecting to hear a splat followed by a thud below.

Finally, a squeaky voice comes from the darkness. “I made it. Hang on.”

Skritch. Skritch.

A flame gasps to life. After a moment, it sparks even brighter. Across the shaft, Snoozy holds a lit fuse. Hays has never been so happy to see fire. Behind him, the mob’s hissing grows louder. They can see the fuse, too.

“Good job, Snoozy.” He takes a few steps back and whispers, “Here I go, Cap’n.”

He launches himself across the shaft, but his last step lands awkwardly at the shaft’s overhang. Flailing, he slams into the wall, knocking the breath from his bones. He catches the last rung, which pops halfway out of the wall.

With one hand clenched on the dislodged rung, his legs dangle. Flecks of stone fall into his wide eyes. The rung shifts yet again, one end now completely out of the wall. It’s the last rung he and Cap’n worked on.

No sense killing ourselves.

The rung now grits against rock. Metal bites into his hand. Holding his breath, he feels the rung on the verge of breaking free.

He flexes his bicep, slowly pulls himself upward. His muscles burn. The metal gives a little more, and bits of rock sprinkle onto his open eyes. He blinks them away and reaches upward with his free hand.

At last, he grabs the next rung and takes a grateful breath. He coughs, then whispers, “I got it, Cap’n.”

“What’s that?” Snoozy says.

“Nothing. Doesn’t matter.”   

The fuse burns out, and darkness shrouds them. He climbs, hand over hand, until finally his feet step on the bottom rung. They climb silently, not wanting to attract the attention of the Horrors. A few rungs later, feet scuffle below. Something slams into the wall.

Snoozy strikes another match. Below, a soldier with a torn face hangs from the rungs and stares up at them with wide eyes—eclipsed moons floating in a blood-red sky. It lunges, grabbing for Hays’ boot.