A/N: By popular demand, here is the next installment. There be a bit of delay before any more posts.My beta won't be available for a few days while she's off visiting her sister and spoiling her nephew.
If you have any specific scenes beyond this you'd like to see, please let me know.Although the rest of the story is mapped out, there is still room for adjustment. Thanks forbeing a great audience!
Chapter Ten
Out of the Darkness
Thursday, Morning
Grissom could no longer say how much time had passed. Had he been dozing? It disturbed him that his thoughts were becoming disjointed, as if the numbness invading his body had spread to his mind and made everything seem distant and just slightly out of focus. He considered turning on the light long enough to try to see his watch, but decided it would be a wasted effort. The batteries were so depleted, even with only intermittent use, that the light produced barely touched the Stygian darkness. He only turned the flashlight on now when Nick was awake, and those intervals had become briefer and less frequent. At the moment, Nick was asleep – or, more likely, unconscious – sprawled on the rock slope he no longer had the strength or coordination to try to descend.
The sounds that reached Grissom through the darkness had become so familiar they now registered only as another element of the ambient atmosphere: Nick's occasional incoherent mumblings between rasping coughs that left him gasping for breath, the faint rattle that accompanied each shallow inhalation. Another noise slowly insinuated itself into Grissom's awareness, and it took a moment for its significance to register. He was so accustomed to the scrape of stone on stone when Nick made any sort of move that he failed to notice, at first, that the sound came from farther away, beyond the stone barricade.
There it was again – a series of thumps and cracks underlain by sporadic bursts of something that sounded almost like a radio turned just at the audible threshold. His own heartbeat began to interfere with his attempt to isolate and identify the sounds; it echoed from within, accelerating with the hope that rescue was near at hand.
"Nick!" he called sharply, switching on the fading light at the same time. It wasn't enough to allow him to see the other man clearly, but at least it kept the dark from being absolute. "Nick, wake up!"
A low groan and another cough answered him, followed by the scrape of movement against the rocks and a faint curse. "Grissom? 's wrong?" Nick's voice was weaker and more slurred than the last time he'd spoken, but at least he responded.
"Listen," Grissom commanded. "Do you hear that?"
After a moment he saw Nick push himself partway upright, and a few small rocks clattered down the slope. Nick moved closer to the short tunnel he'd created and called as loudly as he could, "Hey! We're here! HEY!"
The muted sounds ceased, and Grissom wondered if he had only imagined them before. No, his rational mind insisted. Nick must have heard them, too, or he wouldn't have roused himself to call out.
A flurry of scrabbling noises confirmed his earlier thoughts, and a few minutes later a thin shaft of light slanted through the rocks to illuminate a narrow path through the gloom. "Nicky? Grissom?" The voice that called through the gap was distinctly Warrick's, and at that moment a Bach concerto could not have rivaled the music of that sound. "Talk to me, guys! You all right?"
"Warrick?" Nick's voice cracked as another cough stole his breath. When he had recovered he inched closer to the opening. "Get us outta here, man," he begged shakily.
Warrick's answering words reflected concern. "Talk to me, Nicky," Grissom heard him say. "How bad are you hurt?"
When Nick didn't answer right away, Grissom called from his greater distance, but with more clarity, "Warrick? Nick's not doing too well. Gunshot – fever – he's not breathing too well either."
"Grissom? How 'bout you? You in better shape than Nick?"
"I'm not bleeding," Grissom answered vaguely. "I can't move, though. How long till you clear a big enough opening to get us out of here?"
"Not long," Warrick assured him. "I'm gonna move back now and let Search and Rescue take over. I'll be waitin' for you, though."
Grissom had no doubt of that. "Tell them to be careful," he called back. "Nick's on the breakdown slope, just below the open space."
At that Nick roused enough to shift farther back. "Jus' get 's outta here," he said, his words slurred and barely a whisper.
As the rescue team worked, Grissom watched the shaft of light widen until the entire upper strata of the tunnel took on almost daylight brightness. Of course they would have brought in work lights powered by a generator outside the mine or, more likely, battery packs the size of a small refrigerator. As they cleared more and more of the rubble Grissom was able to distinguish at least six different voices.
"Nick? Grissom?" Warrick called out to them again. "We've got a decent crawlspace opened up now. We're coming through."
The light dimmed as Warrick blocked the newly created passage to emerge a few moments later. He quickly moved to the side to give the other rescuers space to come through. He crouched beside Nick and placed a light hand on his friend's chest. "Hey, Nicky. How ya doin'?"
Grissom didn't hear a response, but Nick must have made some effort to answer, because Warrick patted his chest again and gestured to the two S&R men who maneuvered a basket litter through the tunnel. "Hang in there, man. These guys'll have you out of here in no time." Nick lifted his uninjured arm and clasped Warrick's in a brief, brotherly gesture before allowing it to drop again.
Warrick straightened and descended the slope to drop into a crouch again by Grissom. He summoned a smile that only partially erased the worry lines from his face. "How ya doin', Gris?"
Grissom met the concerned green gaze evenly and answered with brutal honesty. "My leg is broken, but it doesn't hurt because I can't feel much of anything. I have the great-grandfather of all headaches. And a slab in the morgue would probably be more comfortable than these rocks." He blinkedasprofound relief made hiseyes sting. "I'm ready to get out of here."
"They'll bring another litter through as soon as they get Nick on his way," Warrick said, looking over his shoulder to where the rescuers were busy immobilizing Nick's leg and preparing to transfer him to the waiting litter. "Good thing we have a Medi-Vac on standby. It should be here by the time we get you outside."
Grissom nodded, then recalled the reason he and Nick were in this predicament in the first place. "Stevens," he said abruptly. "He trapped us in here so he could steal the money from the SunWays heist."
"I know," Warrick said. "We found the money in his car. Stevens didn't make it. He got caught in the cave-in."
"I can't say I'm sorry to hear that," Grissom commented, a little surprised at the vehemence in his tone. "There's a body back there in a side tunnel. The fourth man from the heist. Stevens told me he killed him once he found out where the money was hidden. You'll need to recover the body and any evidence that might still be there."
"I know my job, Gris. As soon as we get both of you out of here," Warrick promised, "I'll take care of it." He looked up as the rescue team arrived with an empty litter and their equipment. At a signal from the lead medic, he stood up and moved away to give them room to work.
Grissom discovered that only immobility had kept him from feeling pain from his injured back and leg. As careful as the rescuers were, he still had to clench his teeth against an urge to yell when they tipped his body over just enough to slide the backboard underneath, and stabilized the makeshift backpack splint Nick had fashioned with a more rigid one. The fire smoldering within abused tissues and nerves ignited with a vengeance and left him sweating and panting for breath when they completed the process a five-minute eternity later.
During the awkward jostling journey through the rocky passage and down the long, echoing mine tunnel, he squeezed his eyes shut and tried to focus on anything unrelated to the here and now: the life cycles of sixteen varieties of fly and twenty-three moth species, the chemical compositions of various insect venoms, numbers. Numbers were good; there were so many of them – driver's license, Social Security, bank account, bank routing, credit cards, the phone numbers of everyone he now or had ever known.
Suddenly the stale, still air of the mine became a stiff breeze that whipped against his face. He peeled his eyelids open to sunlight so bright his eyes watered in response. The sound he had mistakenly thought was the pulse of his own blood through the vessels in his head proved to be the steady whump of the Medi-Vac chopper's rotors. The wide sliding door was open; Nick had already been loaded inside, and the on-board paramedic was tending him with brisk precision.
Grissom felt a light touch on his arm and looked over at Warrick, who had fallen into step with the men carrying the litter. "I'll contact Catherine," Warrick said, raising his voice to be heard above the noise, "let her know you guys are on the way."