A Plague Year (36 page)

Here are the names of the miners and their rescue times: Randy L. Fogle—1:00 a.m.; Blaine Mayhugh—1:15 a.m.; Tom Foy—1:30 a.m.; John Unger—1:40 a.m.; John Phillippi—1:55 a.m.; Ron Hileman—2:10 a.m.; Dennis Hall—2:23 a.m.; Robert Pugh—2:30 a.m.; Mark Popernack—2:45 a.m.

All nine miners emerged from that cylinder alive and well. Arthur and I kept watching, mesmerized, as the TV station kept rerunning the tape.

Jimmy Giles came back out of the bedroom at 5:00 a.m., dressed in a white shirt and tie. He stood next to us and stared at the TV. He looked like he was having a rough morning. His face was flushed and his eyes were watery. He was facing some major triggers.

Arthur took immediate action. He pointed at the screen and
exhorted Jimmy like a preacher. “Do you know what happened here, Jimmy Giles?”

Jimmy gulped, his Adam’s apple rising and falling. He replied weakly, “What? What happened? Did they all die?”

“Hell no! They did not die! They all got out! Every one of them. Nine for nine!”

Jimmy seemed to change with that news. His eyes came into focus. His shoulders pulled back.

Arthur continued: “Miners went in and got them, goddammit. Coal miners went in and got their own out. Because nobody else would, because nobody else could! Now, what do you think of that?”

Jimmy’s eyes filled with tears. “That’s good.”

Arthur pointed at the screen. “That’s great stuff! Right there!”

Jimmy added quietly, “That’s what you did for Warren. You went in and got him out.”

Arthur answered humbly, “Yeah. I guess so.” Then he returned to that preacher way, his voice rising. “The devil’s after us, Jimmy Giles. Right here, right where we are living. He’s after us something fierce, huh? He came at us from above on 9/11 and took forty souls. You know about those souls, don’t you?”

“Oh yeah.”

“He came at us from all sides with the meth plague, and all the zombies walking around here, and he killed a lot of us. Didn’t he? He killed Warren that way. Didn’t he?”

“He did.”

Jimmy’s tears spilled over onto his lined cheeks, running down in rivulets.

Arthur concluded by saying, “And now he came at us from below, in the Quecreek Mine. He trapped nine miners, and there
was no way for them to escape. But they
did
escape, didn’t they? We got nine souls back today, didn’t we? We got nine back.”

Jimmy responded, “Amen,” and Arthur’s work was done. He didn’t need to say anything else; Jimmy was completely transformed. He straightened his back. Then he pulled up the knot on his tie (not all the way, but close enough for government work).

I got up and joined Jimmy and Arthur near the door. When Jimmy opened it, I saw a faint red glow in the east lighting the tops of the mountains.

I watched Jimmy’s lips carefully, trying to read them. Then I figured out what he was saying. He kept whispering over and over, “Amen. Amen to that. Amen.”

He was going to be all right.

We all were.

One day at a time.

Arthur and I stood out on the roadway, on either side of Jimmy, as he waited for the WorkForce van. The air smelled fresh and the birds were singing. It was a beautiful Pennsylvania morning.

It was like a morning in the Garden of Eden.

Like a morning in paradise.

Edward Bloor is the critically acclaimed author of the novels
Taken, London Calling, Story Time, Crusader
, and
Tangerine
.

He grew up in Trenton, New Jersey, and currently lives in Winter Garden, Florida.

Praise for
Taken

“Charity Meyers is thirteen when she is kidnapped in the year 2036. Her father remained wealthy even after the World Credit Crash, and since child-snatching has become ‘a major growth industry,’ she is trained in what to expect. According to the rules, her parents will turn over the contents of their home vault within twenty-four hours. But this isn’t a ‘normal’ kidnapping. As the hours pass and tension heightens, we learn Charity’s back story. Taut and disturbing, the ending is a gobsmack.”

—
Daily News

Praise for
London Calling

“Seventh-grader Martin Conway gets to time-travel in this beautifully written story of an unusual friendship that grows between Martin, an unhappy boy in modern-day New Jersey, and Jimmy Harker, a British boy living through the bombing of London by German airplanes in World War II. There’s a little bit of history and a little bit of fantasy in this book. And there’s a lot to think about as Martin struggles with his sometimes rocky relationship with his father, and Jimmy struggles with life in a war zone. Read the first three pages and then see if you can put this book down.”

—The Washington Post