Page 85 of Satisfied By the Slime
Beside me, Oz’s colors flare. The muted gray of this morning burns away in a wash of deep violet, his posture going rigid.
I know what he’s feeling without asking. Two heartbeats growing faint. Lungs struggling against dust and diminishing air. The slow crush of bodies buried in rock.
Mrs. Pritchett notices. Her gaze snaps to him, taking in the sudden brightness, the rigid stillness, and her eyes narrow.
“Is he okay?”
I glance at Oz, who nods. We both know what needs to be done. “Oz might be able to help,” I say. “He can fit through spaceshumans can’t. He can move without disturbing the structure around him. He can find them.”
Mrs. Pritchett’s mouth works. Suspicion and desperation war across her face, plain as text. A slime going into a mine to rescue people. How does she explain that to the town council? How does she write it up in her Neighborhood Watch log?
Gram stands. The wool drops from her lap, and her expression shifts from raw vulnerability to a harder practicality.
“The Cunningham shafts,” she says. “My father ran cattle near those when I was a girl. There’s a ventilation opening on the north side. Smaller, but it might give Oz another way in.”
Oz speaks. Quiet. Steady.
“I can do this. I can find them. I can bring them out or at least stabilize them until help arrives.” He looks at Mrs. Pritchett directly. “But I need someone to show me the way.”
I take his hand. I don’t tell him what to do. I don’t tell him to be careful. I just hold on,his surface warm beneath my palm, and then I turn to Mrs. Pritchett.
“Take us there.”
Mrs. Pritchett watches us. Her gaze moves from our joined hands to Oz’s determined colors to my face, and whatever she sees there makes the decision for her. She turns and climbs back into the golf cart.
“Get in,” she says.
Chapter 22
Between the Cracks
Oz
The golf cart lurches overthe rutted road, and I compress myself lower in the seat beside Maisie. The wind carries dust and diesel and the sharp mineral scent of the ridge. Mrs. Pritchett drives with white-knuckled focus, the orange flag snapping above uslike a distress signal.
The mine entrance appears through the dusk. Headlights from parked trucks cut harsh beams across the scrub, illuminating faces that turn toward us as we approach.
The town has gathered in silence, their shadows long and strange against the rock. I can feel their heartbeats from here. A cluster of elevated rhythms. Fear, thick and sour, radiating from the crowd.
Mrs. Pritchett stops the cart. I step out, and the crowd parts without a word. I sense it, their wariness. Their disbelief. Their desperate hope they’re afraid to name.
The shaft entrance yawns ahead. Jagged timber frames a hole torn into the earth, the wood splintered and old. Darkness pools beyond the threshold, absolute and waiting.
I pause at the entrance. The air rising from below carries the smell of fractured stone, old iron, and something fainter. Blood, still fresh.
I give Maisie a long look. She nods, and I descend.
The darkness swallows me within feet. My body compresses through cracks that would trap a human. I feel the stone ahead. The tiny vibrations of settling earth. I taste the air, sorting particles. Dust. Copper. The mineral tang of blood, stronger now.
The mine groans around me. Timber supports that should hold weight have softened with decades of moisture. Stone shifts in places where the structural integrity has become a suggestion rather than a guarantee.
I move carefully, testing each passage before committing my mass.
Sound reaches me. Ragged breathing. Two patterns, one shallow and quick, one slower and labored. I follow them deeper.
The passage narrows. I compress further and slide through a gap where the ceiling has buckled. Beyond it, the tunnel opens into a small pocket of stable rock.
Gary is wedged against a fallen beam. His leg bends at an unnatural angle, and blood has soaked through his torn jeans where thebone has pushed against the skin without breaking it.
