Robopocalypse (9 page)

We should be drilling by tomorrow noon, first shift. We’re ahead of schedule, but that hasn’t stopped the boss man from chewing me out over the phone. Mr. Black thinks we have to be finished and out by Thanksgiving, no matter what. That’s what he said, “No matter what happens.”

I told Mr. Black, “Safety, my friend, is number one.”

And then I told him about the hole already being here. I still haven’t figured out why that is. And not knowing poses a serious risk to my crew. Mr. Black says he can’t find anything on it, just that the Department of Energy put out a call for proposals to get it monitored and that Novus won the contract. Typical. There’s about a half dozen partners on this project, from the cooks to the chopper pilots. The right hand is ignorant of the left.

I checked Black’s state drilling permits again, and the story adds up. Even so, the question still teases me:
Why is there already a hole here?

We’ll find out tomorrow, I guess.

Dwight here. November sixteenth. Uh, oh boy, this is hard to say. Real hard. I can’t hardly believe it’s true.

We lost a man last night.

I noticed something was the matter when that steady hum of the drill started kinking up. It woke me from a sound sleep. That drill sounds like money falling into my bank account to me, and if it stops, I take notice. While I sat there blinking in the dark, the sound went from a deep grumble you could feel in the pit of your belly to a squeal like fingernails across a chalkboard.

I threw on my PPE gear and got upstairs to the rig floor, pronto.

Geez. What happened was, the drill string plowed into a layer of solid glass and pieces of old casing. I don’t know what the casing was doing down there, but it bucked the drill string. The drill came unjammed okay, but the boys had to change it out quick. And my senior roughneck, Ricky Booth, went after it with a lot of speed but not a lot of brains.

You gotta grab them horns and push, see? The guy missed his grab at the drill shaft and it went swinging, spraying mud and shards of glass all over the rig floor. So he tried to toss a chain around it to get hold. Shoulda used a Kelly bar to ease the drill shaft into the bore instead of slapping it with a chain like a hillbilly. But you can’t tell a roughneck his job. He was an expert and he took a chance. I wish he wouldn’t have.

Problem was, the shaft still had some spin to it. When the chain went round, the shaft took hold quick. And Booth had the chains crossed over his gosh-darned wrists. Willy couldn’t stop the spin in time and, well, Booth got both his hands tore off him. The poor kid staggered back a few steps, trying to holler. Before anybody could grab him, Booth fainted and ate it right off the platform. Banged his head on the way down and landed limp on the ice pad.

It’s terrible, Lucy, really terrible. It breaks my heart. But, even so, this kind of situation happens. I had to deal with it before, you remember, out in the Alberta oil sands. Thing is to jump on it fast and get it under control. You can’t be left prying bits of your man out of the permafrost with a crowbar the next morning.

I’m sorry, that’s just awful. My mind isn’t right just now, Lucy. Hope you’ll forgive me.

Anyways, I just had to keep moving. So, I roused the second shift. Me and Jean Felix dragged Booth’s body to the storage shed and wrapped him in plastic. Had to, uh, had to put his hands in there, too. On his chest.

In a situation like this, out of sight, out of mind is crucial. Otherwise my boys’ll get spooked and the job will suffer. Plan for the worst and recover fast is my motto. I promoted a roustabout named Juan to roughneck, relieved the shift with four hours left on the clock, and stopped the drill.

Mr. Black musta been watching the log file, because he called right away. Told me to get that drill going again when the day shift started in a few hours. I said hell no, but the kid sounded panicked. Threatened to pull the whole project out from under us. It’s not just myself I’m thinking of, Lucy. I got a lot of people depending on me.

So, I guess we’ll get her going again when the next shift starts in a few hours. Until then, I’ll be on the horn reporting the accident to the company and calling for a chopper to come get the body of my senior roughneck and carry him on home.

Lucy, it’s Dwight. November seventeenth. What a night, last night.

Well, drilling is over. We penetrated that solid glass sediment layer last night at forty-two hundred feet and it opened up into a cavern. Strangest thing. But this is where we’re supposed to place the monitoring equipment. I’ll be more than happy to get that jinxed package safely underground. Then I can forget all about it.

I still haven’t figured out who plugged the monitoring equipment into the antenna, but Mr. Black says the thing is self-assembling, like the drilling rig modules. So, hey, who knows, maybe it plugged itself in? (
NERVOUS LAUGHTER
)

Another issue. Something is hinky about our communications. I’ve noticed that all the folks I speak to have a similar twang. It could be some kind of atmospheric thing or maybe the equipment is funky, but all the voices are starting to sound the same. It doesn’t matter whether I’m doing my progress reports with the ladies at the company call-in counter or checking weather from the boys in Deadhorse.

It’s an odd comm setup, provided by the company. My electrician says he’s never seen this model before. Kind of threw his hands in the air, so I let him get back to work watching over the rig. Looks like I’ll just have to hope the bastard doesn’t break, seeing as how it’s our lifeline to the outside world.

In more serious business … The medic held a little memorial service for Booth at the shift change today. Just said a few words about god and safety and the company. Still, it doesn’t matter how fast I dealt with it, the crew is feeling a bad mojo. Fatal accidents like this are rare, Lucy. Worse, that recovery chopper didn’t arrive today for Booth’s body. And now I’m finding I can’t raise anybody on this damned comm equipment.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this.

It’s okay. We’ll keep up our work, keep the routine, and wait. We can drop in the monitoring station and link it to the comm array tomorrow. Then we’ll be ready to break it down and get the heck out. Once the chopper comes back and we talk to the outside world, everything will be better. Just as soon as the chopper comes back for Booth.

I miss you, Lucy. I’ll see you soon, god willing.

Oh my god, Lucy. Oh my sweet god. We’re in trouble. Oh my. We’re up shit’s creek here. It’s November twentieth.

There’s no chopper coming, baby. There’s no nothing coming. This place is a goddamn curse and I knew it from the beginning and I didn’t—(
BREATHING
)

Let me explain it. Let me slow down and explain it in case somebody finds this tape. Oh, I hope you get this tape, baby. Mr. Black, I don’t know who he is. This morning, after three days, the chopper still didn’t come. We were all ready to go. I mean, the monitoring equipment is down there at the bottom of that hole. The shaft is filled up with wires hooked to the permanent antenna installation. It’s beautiful. Even scared out of their wits, my guys stayed professional.

The day we finished, the crew started falling sick. Lots of puking and diarrhea. The ones who’d been on the rig floor were affected most, but we all felt it. Honestly, we felt it the minute we broke into that damned cave. Just this creeping nausea. I didn’t mention it to you because, well, I just didn’t want you worrying over nothing.

Besides, everybody started feeling better. For about half a day we thought maybe it was just a bug. But with no chopper coming and no comm, we started arguing. There were some fistfights. My guys were nervous. Confused and angry. We all stopped sleeping.

Then, the sickness hit twice as hard. A roustabout went down in convulsions in the mess hall. Jean Felix did everything he could. Kid went into a coma. A
coma
, Lucy. He’s twenty-three and strong as an ox. But here he is with his hair falling out. And … and
sores
all over his skin. My god.

Jean Felix finally told me what was going on. He thinks it’s radiation poisoning. The boy in a coma was on the rig floor when Booth bought the farm. The kid got that glass mud all over him, even swallowed some of it.

That goddamn hole is
radioactive
, Lucy.

I finally figured it out. That tickle in the back of my brain. The worry I had. I know why this hole is here. I know what that cave is. Why didn’t I realize? It’s a
blast cavity
. This place was a nuke testing ground. That big-diameter borehole was drilled so they could place a nuclear device down there. When it was detonated, the bomb vaporized a spherical cavern. The heat fused the sandstone walls into a six-foot layer of glass. The borehole itself became a chimney, with radioactive gas pushed out of it. Then, a slug of flash-melted rock formed into solid glass and plugged the chimney. It preserved this hole in the ground for all this time.

That radioactive cave down there is as close to hell as you can get here on earth. And we got sent here to drill
straight into it
. God knows why Black wanted us to drill it. I don’t even know what we put in there.

One thing I
do
know is that son of a bitch Black sent us here to die. And I’m going to find out why.

I’ve got to get that radio gear online.

Lucy. Dwight. November, uh, I don’t know. I’m not sure what we’ve done. My guys are all dying now. I did everything I could to get the comm gear going. Now I don’t know what’s going to happen. How you’re going to ever hear this …

(
SNIFFING
)

I got my electric specialist to help me. We mapped out every inch of that piece of comm equipment. Hour after hour.

And when it was over, we couldn’t raise anybody but Black. That bastard came in loud and clear, giving us nonstop excuses about how the comms would come online real soon and we should just wait. Kept telling us a chopper was coming in, but nothing. Nobody coming. Damned murderer.

On my last-ditch try, I called Mr. Black and kept him on the line. I could barely stand his slick voice leaking out of the headset. All his lies. I stayed on with him, though.