Free The Blue Blazes by Chuck Wendig

it like one of those party-poppers where you yank the string and loose confetti into the air–
    This doesn’t release confetti. It barks a big bang and makes a hard flash – and Mookie suddenly catches a scattershot spray of shrapnel in his side. No idea what it is, but probably nails, glass, stones, gobbo teeth, shattered crystal. And when it starts to burn, sending screaming tentacles of pain up through the wounds in his side, Mookie knows that the stuff was first dipped in goblin poison – rock-snot, or dung-thistle, maybe.
    Ahead, the tunnel is swallowed by a haze of smoke–
    Mookie staggers left, tries to barrel ahead, but the pain is an immense thing, a thing with shape and presence all its own, pushing on his side and slowing him down–
    The gobbos leap for him.
    And somewhere ahead, he hears his old friend Davey Morgan scream.
     
    Davey Morgan’s got explosives on his mind.
    Dynamite, in particular.
    Dynamite’s how the tunnel grows. Sure, for a lot of it they can use that big bitch machine, but for sensitive areas of the rock, it’s dynamite all the way.
    You drill holes. Drop dynamite into the cavities. Head back upstairs, hit the button and – the ground shakes, the earth booms, and the tunnel’s dug another thirty, forty feet. Then the men clear the rubble, put up more wire cage to keep rocks from dropping on their heads, and the process begins anew.
    That’s the job. That’s been the job for twenty years.
    Davey’s good. They say he’s the best, but he doesn’t care for that kind of talk. He knows he’s good, and that’s enough.
    But things are changing soon.
    In less than a week’s time he and his men – loyal men, good men, capable men – will be underneath the juncture between all three water tunnels. Dynamite’s not a scalpel. It’s not even a fire axe. It’s precise like a hand grenade. You don’t control an explosion so much as politely suggest what you want it to do and then pray. Maybe God gives you what you need. Or maybe God decides to blow your ass sky-high to Saint Pete’s doorstep. You accept the judgment of the blast and move on.
    A man a mile.
    But soon, they’ll be detonating rock with two other water tunnels fifty feet and a hundred feet above their heads, respectively.
    Which means this has to be done right. They’re going to be using dynamite to thread a needle. Davey can no longer be good. He has to be great.
    Has to get this right or they’re all, as he is wont to say, “fuckered”.
    And it doesn’t help that they work down here. On the edge of oblivion. With any number of horrible things coming up out of the dark, smelling the sweat, hankering for blood. They’re the union-within-a-union. The 147½. The last line between the light and the dark. Only makes the job, oh, a thousand times harder.
    Someone taps him on his helmet. It’s Boise – young kid from Jersey who when he was first asked where he was from said Boise instead of Joisey because he’s a nervous kid who stammers when he talks, but he’s also a hard worker and that’s all that matters to Davey. Boise says, “I hear a pig comin’ down the tunnel, Davey.”
    Davey tilts his head. Gets away from the boys chipping and hauling blown rock.
    Sure enough, he hears it–
    The chug chug chug of a powered mine cart.
    Now who the hell would that be? All his boys are here.
    Some fucko from the EPA? Or Home-Sec? Bah.
    He gives the tunnel a good look. Feels the Blue crackling at the edges of his vision – he’s looking for anything that belongs to this place, that shines of the Great Below. At least half his crew are Blazing at any given time. They take shifts. Half on, half off to cool down, ease off the powder. Some of them end up addicts. When they go that way, Davey puts them through his own personal treatment program. Which isn’t a fun program to go through, but he can’t have shaky hands playing with dynamite.
    He doesn’t see squat down the tunnel.
    Davey turns back to the crew. Whoops and