by JJ Lamb
She brought her knees up, rested her head on them; she raked her fingers through her hair and dry-washed the grit away. It seemed to comfort her in the inky blackness.
Harry, where are you? What have they done to you?
Tears welled up; she tried to swallow down her despair. Soon she was moaning and her sobs filled the space around her. She was crying for Harry, her parents, her brother, friends whom she loved, people whom she had cared for. They, too, were all doomed. None of them would live forever. Everyone died.
Everyone!
* * *
Gina awoke with a start. Exhausted, she had dozed off in the darkness. She felt on the ground around her for the flashlight. But there was nothing. It was gone!
Terror cramped her gut. “Where … are … you?”
She tried to stay calm, but was soon clawing at the surrounding dirt until she could barely breathe in the clogged atmosphere.
“Stop!”
She couldn’t go on like this. She had to take time to think.
Falling asleep, she must have nudged the flashlight until it rolled away from her.
She remembered walking on a downward slope. Crawling on the floor, she followed the ground, feeling the subtle turn in the path. Her fingers touched it—the flashlight! It had rolled next to the wall. She twisted it and it flicked on; the beam fought its way through the dust. She sat back on her heels, eyes closed in relief.
It was then she thought she heard something, something different. She listened carefully.
Someone crying?
Or was it her imagination? She stood, tilted her head.
“Hello!” She waited. “Any one out there?”
As she started walking, a faint voice answered, “Help me! Please help me.”
Gina started walking faster, then running full out. She wrapped the coiled strap from the flashlight around her wrist, leaving her arms free so she could run even faster. The light bounced every which way.
She was suddenly airborne. Her stomach seemed to fall to her knees. She came down hard, rolled, and rolled some more.
* * *
When Gina opened her eyes, a crazed woman was across from her, clutching hard onto … a corpse. Her hand seemed to be deep into the rotting flesh. The putrid stink of decay struck Gina like a fist slamming into her.
“Help me! Please help me!”
She caught the desperation in the woman’s voice but Gina turned to stare at piles and piles of corpses in all stages of decay—from the newly dead to the bones of the long dead. She jerked into a sitting position and saw Derek Kopek’s face.
“Oh, my God!” she whispered, a chill coursing up and down her spine.
The woman kept crying out to her. “Please! Please help me!”
Gina turned back to her. “What happened? How did you get here?”
“I don’t know. I came to see my mother. Someone drugged me and when I woke up I was jammed into this hole with … with all these gross bodies. I can’t move. If I let go,” she looked at the corpse she was holding onto, “I might slip down even more.” She screamed at Gina, “I don’t even know if you’re real.” Her voice dropped off to a whisper. “Are you really here?”
Gina swallowed her revulsion and crawled over the bodies separating them. Twice she almost dropped into the open spaces between the corpses before she got to the woman.
“Oh, thank God, you are real!” The woman grabbed onto her hand.
“Yes. My name’s Gina Mazzio.”
“Help me,” the woman said in a quavering voice. “Please help me.”
“Who are you?”
“Tuva Goldmich. My name is Tuva.”
“You’re Emma’s daughter?”
“You know my mother?”
“I do. But right now we need to get the hell out of here.”
The collective souls of the dead watched as she got to her knees and tugged at Tuva’s hands. “What are your feet doing?”
“I think there’re bones all around my legs; I’m jammed between them.”
“Can you wiggle your feet at all?”
“I think so. I think they’re hanging free.”
“Okay, Tuva.” Gina swallowed hard, tried not to vomit from the stink of decay around them. She spoke very softly, tried to focus only on the woman. “Pretend you’re climbing a mountain.” Tuva’s eyes grew wider. “No, listen to me. Close your eyes, hold onto me, and try to find footholds, and climb.”
“I can’t do that.”
“You can, Tuva. Hold my hands and when your feet have a toehold, I’ll pull, and you’ll climb.”
Gina tugged at Tuva’s hands.
“It’s not working. I can’t do it.”
“Tuva, listen to me … this is the only way.” Gina put some steel into her voice. “Do you understand?”
After a moment Tuva said, “I’ll do it. I’ll try really hard.”
“On three.” Gina said, “One … two … three!” Gina yanked hard, could feel the woman moving upward. When Tuva finally emerged, Gina fell back, gasping for air. Tuva fell on top of her; her tears washed across Gina’s face.
“You did it!” Gina said. But Tuva had shut down, began to rock back and forth, moaning, lost in a fugue state of despair. She was there, but, at the same time, she was gone.
Gina wrapped her arms around Tuva, hugged her, drew as close to her as she could. “Can you hear me, Tuva?” Gina said, over and over.
Finally, Tuva answered. “Yes.” But she still held onto Gina’s arms, nails digging deep. “I’ve been down in this hell-hole for hours … in the dark … with all these dead people. In the dark … the dark … dark—”
“It’s all right, Tuva. You’re not alone anymore. We’re not alone. We have each other.”
“The bodies kept rolling into me, touching me. There were creatures moving around. I could hear them.”
“Tuva, there’s nothing alive here … except you and me.”
“They rubbed against me. I was so scared.” She began to cry again.
Gina turned off the light. A dim glow remained in the pit. The top edge was too far up to reach, but for one ghoulish moment she thought of piling the bodies and bones atop each other to help them climb to the lip of the pit. But she knew she would never have the strength to do it. Even on her best day.
Where was the light coming from?
Tuva let out a blood-curdling scream. “Something touched me again.” She clung to Gina. “Help,” she screamed in her ear.
“It’s all right, Tuva. Let me see what it is.”
Gina carefully unwound herself from the squeezing, clutching arms of the terrified woman and tried to see in the dim light, then turned on the halogen flashlight.
The light shone into the luminous eyes of a cat whose fur was streaked with caked gore.
“Look! It’s a cat.”
Tuva had her eyelids clenched closed and it took her several seconds before she would open them. She pointed where the beam of the light fell. “Oh, my God. Look what they’re doing.”
Gina followed Tuva’s gaze. All around them were cats of all shapes and sizes.
They were feeding off the dead bodies.
Chapter 44
Harry never thought he would die in a mine. When he and his brother went exploring underground, it was an adventure with no real thought of danger, let alone death.
They didn’t know what they were looking for deep under the earth, even though they’d found some old relics: pickaxes, gloves, and even a risqué picture of a woman who probably earned her living in a brothel sometime in the late 1800s.
When he wandered in a velvety black universe, he learned a lot about himself and what he considered the important and unimportant things in life.
Petty thoughts were really just that – small and useless. And there seemed to be a lot of that to ignore. What mattered most in life was love and friendship. Those were the reasons to return topside again.
Now, Harry tried not to think about dying. If he allowed himself to do that, he would
glom onto the certainty that there was probably only a finite amount of oxygen left in the small outlet he was wedged into. Exactly how much air? It could be days, maybe only minutes. He didn’t know and didn’t want to know.
One thing was certain: there was no going back. Five feet behind him was an impenetrable wall of dirt and rocks. And the sad truth? The shaft ended right here because it was too narrow to advance any farther. It was a dead end.
This was it.
He focused on the one person he desperately wanted to see one more time.
Gina, I can feel the oxygen in this space dwindling. Sooner or later there’ll be no more air to breath. I would give my last breath to have one more moment where the two of us could hold hands and know for sure that nothing else has ever really mattered except being together.
We found each other. I’ll always be grateful for that.
You are the love of my life… forever.
It was time for him to close his eyes and let go. If he could do that without panicking, just surrender to his final moments, he would die in peace.
He turned off the Maglite and laid his head down on his arm and stared at a yellow outline in the distance.
Light?
It hadn’t been there before.
Can’t be real.
But there was an outline of light framing the edges of a square about ten feet in front of him.
He tried to wiggle ahead, force his way. But he just couldn’t get through the dirt. He backed up and grabbed hold of the Maglite again. He twisted off the bottom, let the batteries fall into his hand, and tossed them behind him.
Using the open end of the flashlight as a chisel, he started slamming into the earth. Each blow cut deeper and deeper into the soil blocking his way. He hit, hit, hit at it, again and again; grabbed fistfuls of it and shoved it behind him until the lower half of his body was almost buried.
Would his chipping away at the dirt cause enough vibrations to bring the ceiling down and bury him? Sudden fear paralyzed him. His heart raced, he gasped for air.
“Stop it!” The words exploded in his brain, but the sound was muffled, buried in the dirt.
This was his chance to survive. His only chance.
The soil began to drop away in large clumps. The opening grew larger; it began to open up enough for him to squeeze his way through.
He moved ahead, his elbows propelling him forward until he came face-to-face with a square panel of wood. Light seeped around the cracks, coming from what was probably a room on the other side.
Harry listened for a long moment. There was no sound.
He squeezed his knees up to his chest and inched forward. Over and over, he punched hard at the wood until it finally sprang open.
The crash of light blinded him as he pushed through.
When he could finally see, he was staring into the muzzle of a gun.
* * *
“Well, aren’t you the clever one,” Ethan said, waving the gun in Harry’s face.
Ethan held the weapon in one hand and a computer carrying case in the other. The administrator’s shirt was mapped with perspiration, his blanched face coated with sweat.
Harry leaped for the gun, but his cramped leg muscles failed him. Ethan easily side- stepped before Harry could snatch the barrel. He fell to the floor.
“You and your girlfriend have caused me enough problems. Get up on that table! Now!”
For the first time Harry looked at the room with its shelved walls holding container after container of floating brains, just as Gina had described it. And in the center of the room was an autopsy table. His heart clawed at his chest. That’s where Ethan wanted him to go—onto an autopsy table.
Harry stayed down on the floor, eyed the carrying case. “I don’t care what you do, or where you go. Just tell me. Where’s Gina?”
“Oh, I’m afraid you’re too late to help your girlfriend. She’s dead. Now get up on that table!”
“Noooooo!”
Harry grabbed onto the table, pulled himself up, kicked out with one leg, and knocked the gun out of Ethan’s hand. It slid across the floor and through the opening into the tunnel he’d just crawled out of.
The two of them stood facing each other.
“Where the fuck is Gina?”
Ethan swung the carrying case into Harry’s head.
As he fell, Ethan hit Harry hard again in the ribs.
Everything was shutting down. The last thing he heard was Ethan laughing—the last thing he saw was a smiling Ethan hovering over him.
Chapter 45
Gina swallowed hard. Revulsion turned her stomach as she watched the feral cats feed off of the dead bodies. She held tightly onto Tuva’s shaking hand; tears rushed down her cheeks.
All these people came to Comstock for help. Instead, they were murdered, dumped like garbage.
“Is that what those cats are going to do to us?” Tuva could barely get the words out between her chattering teeth.
“Tuva, please don’t say that.”
A cat rubbed against Gina’s arm, then shrieked and leaped away when Gina tried to reach out for it. She directed the light to the top of the pit again. It was so high up she could barely make out the edge.
Nothing’s changed. We’re still not getting out that way.
“Maybe the cats jumped into the pit,” Tuva said. She was quieter now, but continued to shiver.
Tuva wasn’t the only one on the edge of hysteria. Gina knew it wouldn’t be long before they both flipped out.
“Cats are way too smart to jump down that far,” Gina said.
“But then how did they get in here?” Tuva insisted.
Gina shifted, couldn’t stop herself from yelping when a corpse pushed against her shoulder, bringing with it the rank stink of decay. She pushed hard at the body, but it was stuck and the slightest movement made it lean back against her.
She directed the flashlight at one of the cats moving from one corpse to another without stopping to eat.
“Tuva! Did you see that?”
“What? What is it?” Alarm made Tuva’s voice climb to a shriek.
“One of the cats just disappeared. One minute it was there, the next it was gone.” Gina gave the flashlight to Tuva and directed it. “Hold onto this and keep lighting up that area. And for God’s sake, don’t drop it!”
“Why? What are you going to do?
Gina tried to push herself up, but she kept falling back. Tuva reached out to help her.
“No!” Gina said, “You concentrate on keeping the light on that spot, no matter what happens. I’m going to see what happened to that cat.”
“Don’t go! What if you fall between … them … and can’t get out … I’ll be all alone again … Please don’t go!”
“Tuva! Try not to think about that. Just concentrate on our getting out of here. Now hold on tight to that flashlight, okay?”
“How do you know?” Tuva said.
The woman’s desperation fired Gina’s panic, and it was getting harder and harder to control. “Know what?” she said impatiently.
“That we’re going to get out?”
She held Tuva’s shoulders, talked to her like a child; at the same time she tried to calm herself. “We have to do this together. Just hold onto the flashlight. That’s all you have to think about … that’s all you have to do. Okay?”
Tuva nodded, her head bobbing up and down, up and down.
This time, instead of trying to stand upright, Gina got onto all fours and tried to imitate the cats. She swayed with the shift of the corpses, let the different body parts fold in under her as she balanced and rebalanced herself while moving from spot to spot. She forced herself to think only about following the beam of light.
“Are you all right, Gina?”
“I’m good.” But her hands kept digging into soft, decaying flesh. No matter how hard she tried to ignore the disgusting stink, it was so overwhelming it grabbed her by the throat. But as she got closer to the spot where the cat disapp
eared, there were fewer corpses. Here, all signs of flesh had disappeared; what were left were picked-clean bones.
Soon she was able to stand and walk, her feet pressing down on packed bones.
“Keep the light there, Tuva!” She stopped about three feet from where the beam was directed.
“Gina?”
“It’s all right. We both have to be quiet now. Twist the middle, that will turn off the flashlight.”
Gina waited for her eyes to adjust; soon she could see this was where the ambient light was coming from.
The cats probably started eating the bodies here and kept working their way farther into the pit as they consumed the food source. Standing still, Gina watched the shadowy cats move through the spaces between and on top of the bones. She didn’t even want to imagine how many cats there were.
“Tuva! Turn on the flashlight, hold it with your teeth so you can see, and crawl over here.”
“But … but I’ll have to go through … the bodies.”
“Tuva, I may have found a way out for us.”
There was a long pause before Tuva finally said, “I’ll try.”
“No, Tuva! You can do better than that. Get on all fours the way I did and do it. Do it now!”
Please don’t fall in one of the spaces. Please. Please. Please.
After several attempts, Tuva was able to crouch down and move toward Gina. She stopped time and time again to yank the flashlight from her mouth. Every time she did, it squeezed Gina’s heart with fear.
When she was almost there, Gina took her hand and helped her over. “That was really something. You were great!”
Tuva gave her a weak smile.
“See the light down below?”
“Yes.”
“That’s our way out. I’m sure of it.” A cat suddenly materialized in front of them, screeched, and jumped back down toward the light.
“Okay, we need to move these stacks of bones over and out of the way,” Gina said. “Remember, everything is crushed together, so we’ll have to start from the top and move the pieces very carefully.”
Like a giant game of Pick-Up-Sticks, they studied each and every bone that was wedged against another, throwing away each free one. They only needed to create a small space between the bones for them to get to where the cats had been entering the pit.
