The Zero Game

Up ahead, the right and left sides of the hall are covered from floor to ceiling with metal storage racks that look like shallow bookshelves. But instead of books, they’re filled with gear: dozens of knee-high rubber boots, thick nylon tool belts, and most important, mine lights and white construction helmets.

“Is this gonna fit?” Viv asks, forcing a laugh as she pulls a helmet onto her short-cropped Afro. She’s trying her best to act ready for this, but before she convinces me, she has to convince herself. “What’s this?” she adds, nervously tapping the metal clip on the front of her helmet.

“For the light,” I say, pulling one of the mine lights off the shelf. But as I attempt to grab the round metal bulb, I notice that it’s connected by a black wire to a red plastic case that holds a paperback-sized version of a car battery – and that the battery is connected to some clips on the shelf. This isn’t just a bookcase – it’s a charging station.

Unlatching the clips, I unhook the battery, pull it from the shelf, and slide it onto one of the nearby tool belts. As Viv fastens it around her waist, I thread the wire over the back of her shoulder and hook the light onto the front of her helmet. Now she’s all set. An official miner.

She flips a switch, and the light turns on. Twenty-four hours ago, she would’ve bobbed her head back and forth, teasing me by shining the light in my face. Now the light shines on her feet as she stares at the floor. The excitement’s long gone. It’s one thing to say you’re going underground; it’s entirely another thing to do it.

“Don’t say it…” she warns as I’m about to open my mouth.

“It’s safer than being-”

“I said don’t say it. I’ll be fine,” she insists. She clenches her teeth and takes a deep breath of the hot, chalky air.

“How do we know which ones are charged?” she asks. Reading my expression, she points to the bookshelves on our right and left. Both are filled with battery packs. “What if one’s a check-in station and one’s a checkout?” she adds, knocking on the red casing of her own battery. “For all we know, this came back ten minutes ago.”

“You think that’s how they-?”

“That’s what they do at laser tag,” she points out.

I give her a long look. I hate myself for bringing her here.

“You keep yours from the left, I’ll take mine from the right,” I say. “Either way, we’ll at least have one that works.”

She nods at the logic as I grab two orange mesh construction vests from a nearby garbage can. “Put this on,” I tell her, tossing one of the vests her way.

“Why?”

“The same reason every bad spy movie has someone sneaking in dressed as a janitor. An orange vest’ll take you anywhere…”

Skeptically examining herself as she tightens the Velcro straps on the side of the vest, she adds, “I look like I should be doing roadwork.”

“Really? I was thinking more crossing guard.”

She laughs at the joke – and from the smile on her face, it looks like it’s exactly what she needed.

“Feeling better?” I ask.

“No,” she says, unable to hide her smirk. “But I’ll get there.”

“I’m sure we will.”

She likes the sound of that.

“So you really think we can pull this off?” she asks.

“Don’t ask me – I’m the one who said you can’t win ’em all.”

“You still feel that way?”

I lift one shoulder and move up the dust-filled hallway.

Viv’s right behind me.

At the far end of the hall, the metal bookshelves are gone, and the basement walls are instead lined with wooden benches that sit end to end for at least a few hundred feet. Based on the photos in the brochure, during the mine’s heyday, miners lined up here every morning, waiting for their ride to work. Back in D.C., we do the same thing on the metro – line up underground and take the subway downtown. The only difference out here is, the subway isn’t a horizontal ride. It’s vertical.

“What’s that noise…?” Viv asks, still standing a few steps behind me.

Straight ahead, the mouth of the hallway opens into a room with a thirty-foot ceiling, and we hear a deafening rumble. The wood benches vibrate slightly, and the lights begin to flicker – but our eyes are glued to the elevator shaft that slices from floor to ceiling through the center of the tall room. Like a vertical freight train, the elevator rockets up through the floor and disappears through the ceiling. Unlike a normal elevator shaft, however, this one is only enclosed on three sides. Sure, there’s a yellow stainless steel door that prevents us from peeking into the shaft and having our heads chopped off, but above the door – in the twenty-foot space before the ceiling starts – we can see straight into the elevator as it flies by.

“You see anyone?” I ask Viv.

“It was only half a second.”

I nod. “I thought it looked empty, though.”

“Definitely empty,” she agrees.