“George!” Through the fogged-up lenses, he scanned the tunnel for his friend. He spotted him seated on the floor, leaning against the collapsed wall, mere feet away, wearing Thomas’s cracked mask.

Thomas grabbed hold of the lantern and crawled over to him. “George.” He nudged his shoulder, but George didn’t respond. “George!” He shook him harder, and George slumped forward.

“No, no, no, no.” Thomas pulled his broken mask from his friend’s head. The shadows of the tunnel leached the color from George’s freckled face.

“What did you do?” Thomas screamed. He yanked George’s mask from his own head and pressed it to George’s face. Ignoring the heavy dizziness swirling through his head, Thomas held the mask firmly over George’s nose and mouth and pounded on his chest. He leaned his forehead against George’s. “Please! Don’t do this to me!”

Pain, grief, anger, and fear clawed up his throat in ragged cries.

His screams filled the small cavern, echoing off the clay walls and trembling through the beams. He no longer cared who heard. Pain erupted from him with the fury of grief. He raged against God and fate and unanswered prayers. He raged until his voice broke and his vision blurred. He collapsed next to George. And then, taking his friend’s cold hand in his, he waited to die.

“You won’t go alone,” he whispered. “I’m here. You’re not forgotten.” His breathing shallowed, and his vision dimmed as the carbon monoxide seeped into his blood. Numbness crept from his fingers and toes through his hands and feet, up his arms and legs. After years of tormenting him, death was finally showing mercy.

No fear. No pain. A peaceful numbness.

“We’ll face it together,” he whispered to George. “As soldiers. As brothers.” Then he rested his head against George’s shoulder, closed his eyes, and waited for death to claim him. He didn’t know if it would ride in on a thunderous explosion or slip in on the whisper of a final sigh.

But death did neither. It scraped and groaned, creaked and clanged, mumbled and barked.

Barked? Thomas shook his head to free himself of the hallucinations gripping his mind, but the noises grew louder. Someone called his name. Large hands grabbed him. Pain seared through his leg as his body was jerked up, but he’d screamed his throat raw and could only release a weak whimper. Strong arms held him tight against a barrel chest. A voice screamed.

“Go! Go! Go!”

His limp body was jostled with every pounding step.

“What about Shillings?” another voice asked.

“He’s there, but I’m not sure he’s alive.”

Thomas tried to tell them they couldn’t leave George behind, but his head spun with dizziness, and the words he needed swirled past too fast for him to grasp. The only word he could find was “No.”

They couldn’t leave George to face death alone. He’d promised.

His rescuers ignored his plea. At the base of the shaft, he was passed up the ladder from one set of hands to another.