Barricaded

The earsplitting vibrations, the hurricane force, the monstrous, pulsating shock waves had finally dissipated, although the men could still hear and feel the echoes through their ringing eardrums and the soles of their booted feet. The five of them were finally back on their feet, rising from the cowering, fetal position which they had assumed for the previous few eons. They had all expected death from the very first rumble of the distant explosion . None of them had ever been in a mine explosion before, but all of them had enough imagination to conjure up the images of a runaway tornado ripping through the confined, narrow entries. They saw bodies and pieces of bodies flying the entries as if they had a logical destination, as if the subway would spew forth their bodies on Central Avenue. They left horrible red streaks as they glanced along the ribs of the entries on their final trip. Some of their cap lights 27 were still working, and it appeared as if gigantic white tracers were shooting down the entries until they crashed sickeningly into a face or a post or whatever they happened to explode upon. There were several of these shooting stars, dying in their blaze of glory. These things had happened so quickly that there had been no time to think, to panic, to do anything. The force of the explosion was past, but every microsecond was etched indelibly into the brains of the five quivering men as they crawled from the crosscut which had somehow managed to take less force than the rest of the entries. The dust was so thick it seemed solid. The men fumbled for their self-rescuers and managed to get them in place. There was no smoke, only dust, but the men's senses were too numb to even attempt to make such distinctions. The self-rescuers were meant to stave off carbon monoxide poisoning and were definitely to be used in case of an explosion . In the case of these five men, the self-rescuers helped filter the dust so that they could at least take gasping breaths of air until the dust began to settle like the dust in a gray, underground tomb. Even the men appeared as gray ghosts to each other as they stumbled down the escapeway together. The dust settled on their bodies and rose again in dreamy clouds as their bodies moved in silence. The whole thing would have seemed part of a strange dream to an observer: five gray men walking through a spacious tomb. Complete silence reigned now that the explosion was done. Only the rustling of the men's clothes and their strange, raspy, self-rescuer muted breathing broke that silence. They sounded like men already dead instead of merely dying men. A gray cloud followed each of the five men, as if an evil aura emanated from these gray ghosts. There had been no words exchanged among them since the first vibrations of the distant explosion had fallen on their bodies. One of them had exclaimed in a half-whisper, "Damn!" That was all the time there had been. Now that they were moving hurriedly down the escapeway , the self-rescuers forbade their talking, so they heard only each other's breaths and grunts. They came to a wall of rubble, tons and tons of rock stretching they knew not how far. They crossed through a blown-out stopping to the return. The same wall of impenetrable chaos greeted their anxious eyes. There were only four entries on the section, so when they discovered the belt in the fourth entry covered by that same wall of death, they sat among the tangled wreckage of belt, stands and bed rails, their heads hanging, each saying a silent prayer to whatever he conceived his deity to be. Zeke Smith was the first to raise his head and remove his self-rescuer. He took a deep breath and looked around him at the huddled men and the twisted steel. It felt good to take an unhampered breath. The thought that he was perhaps shortening his life had of course occurred to him. Even though the air seemed fresh...