“I can’t risk you getting hurt. Not again.” The thought alone almost kills him.

“I’ll help. I’m not some weak-kneed little brat. I just need a weapon.”

“We don’t have any weapons.”

“We have you.”

Pride blooms in his cheeks. It tightens his fists to sledgehammers.

But still–

“I can’t. Nora, I can’t. I don’t want to lose you again.”

She sneers suddenly. “You’ll lose me if you don’t let me come. You let me out of your sights, Mookie, and I’ll walk. I’ll walk out of this tunnel, and you’ll never see me again. Stop keeping me at arm’s length. Stop treating me like a little girl. You want me back in your life? Then we do this together. You want me gone? Then do it alone.”

A glimpse of the old Nora. No. Not the old Nora, but a recent one – the cruelty of a teenager, the acid response to what she must perceive as betrayal.

But strong, too. He sees Jess in there.

And maybe he sees himself, too.

From down the tunnel comes yelling. Hollering. The bellows of hearty men. Sandhogs. Must be. Seconds later, the sound of drilling vibrates the concrete.

She looks around, reaches down, picks up a rock. “Look. I have a weapon.”

He sighs.

Then he nods.

“You can come,” he says. The decision is a small knife in his heart. The only comfort is that the knife could have been so much larger.

Chapter 30

30

[gibberish written on bound swatches of human skin, inked in blood and coal dust]

– from the Journals of John Atticus Oakes, Cartographer of the Great Below

The slaughter comes quickly but not without cost. As expected, the men of the 147 ½ are prepared for an assault at any time. They plan for this, they run drills, they come armed. The gobbos sweep over them like a tide. The men draw guns – a shotgun from a gearbox, a pistol from a hidden holster under a slicker – or they grab those tools around them that serve as weapons: pick-axes, hammers, wrenches. The goblins are armed, too, their best weapons brought to bear against the flesh of men: A mace made from a baby goblin at the end of a stick, its wormy mouth and sharp teeth ready to bite; a whirring sharpened blade made from the end of an old box fan, the fan running off a tank of gasoline on the gobbo’s back; a slingshot firing oblong marbles of hematite into the exposed eyes of goggle-less Sandhogs.