The stone platform of the backup water chute station smelled of sulfur water drops, wet soot, and the metal copper tang of fresh bright red blood.
Len Vey lay flat on his back, his head resting against the rough white-oak base of the emergency winch frame. The violent crash with the flat stone slabs had driven every cubic inch of leftover air from his alveoli, collapsing his lungs into two flat, empty sacks of screaming tissue. The back of his skull had struck the unbending timber. That left a dull, ringing ache that pulsed through his back-skull lobe in rhythm with his racing, shallow heartbeat.
He couldn’t inhale.
His larynx was locked in a violent, tetanic laryngospasm. A reflex nerve reflex triggered when the central nervous system was overwhelmed by total skeletal trauma. His throat cords were clamped together like two iron wedges driven into a log. His mouth was stretched wide in a silent, numbed rictus, his jaw muscles corded into rigid stone ridges. His eyes stared blankly at the vaulted brick ceiling six feet above his face. The brickwork was weeping dark, greasy stone water that gathered on the mortar lips. Then it fell in steady, freezing droplets onto his brow and cheeks.
