© 2012 Phylicia Joannis
After learning that the tunnel walls had collapsed, we had all gathered in a circle: the Climber and his follower, the Nurse, the Old Woman, the Congressman, Dreadlock, and myself. We stood, or sat, near the end where the Climber was rescued.
Away from the Dead Guy.
“So what do we do now?” the Climber’s follower asked.
The Congressman shook his head. “I don’t know. We can wait for help.”
“Help?” The Climber’s follower began a long, complaining rant. “Who’s going to help us, huh? We’re in the middle of a route that nobody knows about with no electricity, no food, no water, no supplies, no –”
“Enough already!” the Nurse cut in. “We don’t need a list of what we don’t have. We need to find out what we do have so we can survive.”
“How long before you think they’ll find us?” I asked the Congressman.
“If they find us,” the Complainer grumbled.
The Congressman shook his head. “They’ll find out the car is missing sooner or later, hopefully within the next couple of hours. Once they realize we’re missing, they’ll launch a search. After that, it’s only a matter of time.”
“Even if they find out where we went missing, there’s no guarantee they’ll come in these old tunnels right away,” the Complainer interjected. “There could be several days of debate by some committee somewhere before they even send any unionized workers down here to rescue us.”
“He’s got a point,” Dreadlock nodded from his place on the floor. The Nurse had set his leg, sutured his wound and given him something for the pain. “Nothing happens right away when it comes to these tunnels, otherwise they would have been closed off a long time ago. And if the walls have collapsed around us, they may not be able to find us.”
The Complainer shook his head. “I’m not staying here to wait around for a rescue that might never happen. I say we dig our way out!”
The Climber nodded in agreement. “I’m with you. We make our own way, and anyone dumb enough to stand around and wait for help is kidding himself.”
The Nurse frowned. “And what about those who can’t fend for themselves? This man has a broken leg, he can’t just walk out of here.”
The Climber shrugged. “Not my problem.”
The Nurse glared at him. “You ungrateful pig! Just minutes ago you were trapped under rubble and we helped you!”
“Yeah, so what?” the Climber scoffed. “You helping me out a little doesn’t obligate me to stay down here and die with you.”
The Nurse raised her voice. “You’re no more capable of getting out of here than any of us! Because of you the train flipped and that man is dead!” She pointed at the corpse laying still several yards away.
“I didn’t ask him to follow me, and you can’t blame this whole thing on me!” the Climber defended.
“Oh, really?” the Nurse replied sarcastically. “If you’d have dropped dead this morning, I bet we’d all be way better off!”
“You’re fooling yourself if you think anyone’s coming,” the Climber sneered. “You’ll all be dead in a couple of days, and who will you blame for that?”
The Congressman grimaced. “We don’t know how long we’ll be down here, that’s true. But we won’t survive if we don’t keep level heads and conserve our energy. Fighting is not going to help us with either.”
The Climber defused, temporarily. “I’ll wait a few hours, but if no help comes, I’m outta here.” He glared at the Nurse. “With or without you.”
The Complainer grunted in approval and he and the Climber ambled to the middle part of the car.
The Congressman sighed and I touched his arm.
“Do you really think they’ll find us?” I asked.
“I hope so,” he answered honestly. “But in the meantime, we need to find supplies, see if there’s anything we can use to get out of here.”
He shifted his gaze to the Nurse. “Do you have any more medical supplies in your bag?”
She nodded. “I have a first aid kit and a few bottles of ibuprofen. They keep first aid kits in the conductor’s car, but…”
“The car’s been sucked into the ground,” the Congressman finished her sentence. Although the car was relatively level, the conductor’s portion was still partially submerged in the murky recesses of the sinkhole.
“What about food sources?” the Congressman looked to all three of the women. I shrugged and the Nurse shook her head.
“Well, I always keep a little something in my bag,” the Old Woman pulled out a few candy bars from her oversized bag and handed them to the Congressman. “It’s all I got.”
“Keep them,” the Congressman handed them back to her. “I’d like you to hold on to our supplies, for safekeeping.”
She nodded in understanding and I furrowed my brow.
How would seven people survive on two candy bars and a bottle of pills?
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