by E. E. Giorgi
The General squinted. “Good point. But better be cautious just the same.” He grabbed the rifle from Harry’s hands and pointed it to David’s face. “You. Go find it,” he said.
David stared into the black mouth of the rifle and swallowed. “Find what?”
“The callbox, you idiot,” the General grumbled. “Go find it.” And then to Harry: “Cut his bindings and let him find the hidden callbox.”
Harry’s eyebrows shot up his bald forehead. “But sir… Maybe the girl would be a better choice.” His tilted his head toward Anu.
“His life is expendable, the girl’s is not. Just do it!”
The comment sent a chill down David’s spine. He’ll kill Joyce and then me, once he’s done. What the hell does he want to do with Anu?
He mentioned a vaccine… but why would he want a vaccine if he spread the virus in the first place?
Harry let go of Joyce, making her flop on the ground like an old rug, then snapped a penknife open and cut the duct tape wrapped around David’s wrists. David exhaled and massaged his wrists, the tape still stuck to his skin, red and swollen from the lack of blood flow.
The General handed the rifle back over to Harry. “Make sure he does what he’s supposed to.”
David sent them both a glare full of spite and then climbed up the layers of rock at the base of the formation. He stood in the opening between the pillars, suddenly feeling small against the sheer size of nature. The structure was a staggering cathedral built solely by the forces of wind and water. The sun shone down on the gray pillars and a sliver of light cut through the open ring at the top and fanned down through the narrow opening. Inside, the ring of rock was pitch black. He thought of the Egyptian pyramids and the ancient secrets they held. Treasures, as well as deadly traps.
He turned, one second only, and briefly met Anu’s eyes. He wanted to say something, even just mouth a word, but Stein stepped forward and pressed his gun between Anu’s shoulder blades.
“Step back,” he told her. “Now.” He pulled her back and made her sit on a rock a couple hundred feet away.
We’ll make it. I promise you, David thought. And then started humming the lyrics of Reign in Blood in his head, the gruesome imagery of a blood painted sky energizing him. He touched the pillar to his right, brushing his hands up and down the rock. It felt rough and cold and chalky.
Stein sniggered. “You’re searching for a call box, not making love to it!”
Harry bowed over with laughter. David sighed and walked behind the pillar, scraping the rock with his bare fingers.
As soon as he stepped in the shadow of the inner ring, cool air blew in his face. Away from the scalding sun, his eyes readjusted to the dark. The two walls faced one another like a small canyon, layers of sediments lining them horizontally. It felt friable to the touch, old nooks and crannies etched by time, wind, animals.
And some by humans.
But where?
“Are you taking a nap in there?” Harry called.
He stepped deeper inside the ring of walls. The coolness of the rock was soothing, refreshing to his scorched skin. He realized how thirsty he was. If only he could have some water, or some ice, even…
Something blinked on the ground, in his peripheral vision. He turned. A mirror? Impossible, the sun didn’t reach this far down. He stooped down and saw the tiny bulb, a diode, buried deep inside a fold in the rock, and almost touched it.
Almost. He didn’t, when he realized what it was.
Clever.
Outside the wall of rock, the General grew impatient. He stooped down next to Joyce, grabbed the hair at the back of her head, and pulled. “Are we in the right place?” he snarled to her ear.
Joyce flinched. “You’d think I’d risk my daughter’s life?”
The General liked her reply. He smiled nice and big, licked his lips, and smacked a wet, disgusting kiss on Joyce’s bruised temple. “No. Of course you wouldn’t.”
“I found it!” David yelled, stepping around the pillar and into the harsh sun again. He raised the piece of stone in his hands, his nails cracked and bloodied from pulling it out of the wall. “The call box was hidden behind this slab.”
“What does it look like?” Stein asked.
“Like a call box,” David replied.
Harry growled. “Don’t play smartass with us.” He climbed up the stairs, shoved the rifle in David’s stomach and said, “Show me.”
The General shot to his feet and watched, as David and Harry vanished behind the rock.
Harry’s voice echoed through the empty walls one second later. “He’s right. The thing’s in here. It’s got buttons and stuff.”
The General looked down on Joyce and kicked her. “The passcode!”
“What? You’re gonna put all those barrels of uranium in the chopper and flee?”
“I wanna make sure it’s in there before I’m done with you.”
She looked up at him, her black eye puffy, bloodshot, and full of spite. “I can give you the passcode,” she said. “But I’m the only one who can open the passage to the underground cave where the uranium is.”
The General gave her a skeptical look, his boot poised to kick her. “Why so?”
“Fingerprint scanner.”
The General clicked his jaw.
“We can always chop her hands off,” Harry said, and giggled.
Joyce looked at him and squinted. “And retinal scan.”
Stein shook his head. “That one’s definitely more complicated. Not impossible, but more complicated. Especially since I don’t even have a scalpel with me right now.”
“Shut up,” the General snarled. “Both of you. I need to think.”
Damn it, David thought. He’d seen the silhouette of a hand drawn next to the call box and a red light encased over a curvy plastic strip—a chin rest, for the retinal reader. Was Joyce telling the truth? Was she really the only one who could set the damn thing off?
He met Anu’s eyes as she sat still on the rock, Stein’s gun pressed to her back.
There’s got to be a way out of this.
I know there is.
“On the count of three, Joyce,” the General said. “You tell me the password now, or at the three Harry blows off the brains of our nerd friend here.”
Harry grinned, cocked the rifle and stuck the mouth of the barrel into David’s ear. David went suddenly pale.
“One…”
“Three-six-one-nine,” Joyce said. “But like I said—”
“Shut up.” The General stooped down, lifted her and dragged her to the rocks. Joyce whimpered, her broken ankle bending inwards as she tried to keep up with his pace.
“Come down, Harry, and keep the barrel on the loser’s skull.”
Harry kicked David, making him stumble down the rocks and fall on his hands and knees.
Anu instinctively stirred, as if to run to help him, but Stein grabbed her by the hair and held her back. “I wouldn’t do it, sweetheart. His brains are at stake right now. You stay here with me and we’ll do some bonding, shall we? No pun intended, of course.” He grinned, his filthy breath making her stomach churn.
“I hate you, Stein.”
His eyelids drooped. “A small price to pay.”
Harry knocked the gun’s barrel into David’s head. “Get up and move your hands over your head.”
The General snatched the penknife from Harry’s belt and cut the duct tape off Joyce’s wrists. He let go of her, and Joyce fell against the rock, her right foot hanging from her broken ankle like a split twig. The General pulled out his cell phone, dialed a number and pressed speaker. A loud tick crackled through the static.
“Here that, Joyce?” he said. “That’s the ticking of ten pounds of TNT under your girl’s sweet bum.”
She shook her head, tears coming down her cheeks. “You bastard. There’s no reception out here.”
The General held his phone high, his face as flat as a slab of stone. “I don’t need no fucking reception.
I press this little button, the counter jumps to zero and… boom.”
She nodded, sobbing, and scrambled back to her feet, levering on the uninjured ankle. She got to the base of the first pillar, held onto to it and turned.
David saw it. In her blue eyes.
He shook his head, wanting to say something, anything, but there was nothing left to say. There was no going back.
Harry watched Joyce struggle her way between the pillars. “Should we follow her?” he asked the General. “Make sure she doesn’t play any tricks on us?”
The General hesitated. “Did you spot any booby-traps inside?”
Harry shrugged. “No, sir.”
Still, the General watched and stayed behind. “Follow her,” he said to Harry. “Bring the loser with you and follow her.”
Joyce disappeared behind the pillar. Harry nudged David with the rifle. David hesitated. He tripped on the rocks, felt the mouth of the rifle press hard into his back.
“What?” Harry snarled. “Are you stupid or what?”
He slid backwards and failed to get up, buying time. Harry snapped and hit him with the butt of the rifle.
The General bristled. “She’s getting away inside the ring, you fool. Will you follow her?”
Ten more seconds, David thought. And they were the longest ten seconds of his life. Ten seconds in which he saw his life replay from the beginning, from the chubby toddler with curly blond hair running at the beach, to the skinny, long haired teenager playing Frisbee with his older cousins and eating cold pizza through the night watching Dr. Who reruns. Ten seconds in which he relived it all, his first thrash concert metal concert, the guitar riffs blaring in his ears, loud and brutally satisfying, the long runs up Twin Peaks with Max, and then the mushroom growing off the coast, red and angry like an awakened dragon…
Like the blast that followed when then ten longest seconds of his life were finally over…
A cloud of fire burst through the walls of rock, so strong it swept them off their feet. David struggled to keep his head up, yet the brutal force of the explosion threw him several feet away. Rocks came tumbling down, debris flew everywhere.
The rifle, damn it. Get the rifle.
The pillars collapsed, their rumble deafening, an avalanche of dust and sand falling over them and enveloping them. David fought against it until he realized he had no more strength to fight and gave in to the wave, sand funneling up his nose and down his throat. Harry’s fat hand emerged from the deluge, and his hairy fingers clasped David’s shirt, pulling him down.
Then the wave stopped and David rolled over, coughing, the cloud of dust so thick his eyes burned. He couldn’t see.
Anu.
“Anu!” he wanted to call, yet his throat was pasted with sand and only a croak came out. Harry still had his fingers wrapped around David’s shirt, yet wasn’t moving. David kicked him in the face, straining his eyes to find the rifle.
He’s not holding it anymore. He must’ve lost it during the blast.
Harry roared backward, blood oozing out of his nose. David scrambled back to his feet, picked up a piece of rock and smashed it into the man’s head. His skull cracked open with a wet thud.
Red sand splashed low into the air.
David squinted.
The ring of pillars was no longer there, replaced by a pile of rubble and gray rock, a thick cloud of dust floating above it. The blast still rang in his ears. The blast and something else, like a distant swoosh…
The chopper!
Still parked in the gravel lot, the rotor blades of the chopper had started moving again, a cloud of dust swirling around it.
Damn it!
Stein and the General were running up the trail and back to the helicopter, dragging Anu with them. The General was limping and slowing them down, a gash on his right thigh bleeding. David spotted the butt of the rifle half buried in the rubble. He pulled it out, dropped to the ground and aimed.
His hands were shaking, adrenaline wildly rushing through his body.
I can’t, damn it. I can’t aim.
He couldn’t risk harming Anu.
He pointed the barrel in the air and fired.
Stein and the General froze. And in that one moment of stupor, Anu slammed her head in Stein’s stomach, making him fall backwards. She jumped on him and bit his arm. The man roared in pain and let go of the gun.
The chopper’s engine whined in the distance, its rotor accelerating. David spotted the General fumbling for the gun in his holster and fired the rifle once more, this time aiming at the sucker. He missed, but it was enough to dissuade the General from retrieving his gun and flee to the chopper instead.
David picked up the rifle and ran to rescue Anu.
Stein had managed to roll over and slam Anu to the ground, squashing her throat with his forearm. The rifle barrel sank straight into the soft tissue at the nape of his neck.
“Hands up.”
Stein froze. He swallowed, raised his hands.
“Get up. Slowly,” David said.
Stein scrambled to his feet, the rifle following him as he moved away from Anu, still lying on the ground, hands tied behind her back.
“Step away from her,” David ordered. And when he had him sufficiently far from Anu, he squeezed the trigger and fired one single round through the man’s thin neck. Stein’s eyes bulged, the bullet skewering his throat through and through, a gargle of blood and tissue jetting out of the exit hole as his lanky body collapsed to the ground.
The Koala took off, the swooshing of its blades rattling in their ears.
David looked down on Stein’s crumpled body. “See? Not even your boss cared to wait for you.”
Anu raised her head. She was wheezing and croaking.
David shook off his thoughts and helped her sit up. “You ok?” he asked, fumbling with the duct tape around her wrists.
She swallowed, her breathing shallow and pained.
“It’s over,” David said. “It’s over, I promise you, you can relax now.” He undid the tape and as soon as her hands were free she flung her arms around his neck and cried.
He hugged her, touched her hair, head, her face, made sure that every bit of her was still there, still alive.
“Did you get hurt in the blast?”
She shook her head. “We were far enough,” she said, her voice cracked. “The General got injured, then Stein grabbed me and made me run.” She turned to stare at the body, a dark pool of blood growing in the dry the sand underneath, and then looked back into David’s eyes.
He felt the shame and looked away. He couldn’t have let Stein live.
“The trigger—it yields better after the first time,” he said.
She smiled, cupped his dusty cheeks in her hands and kissed him.
* SIXTEEN *
The sun was harsh and unforgiving, the ground they were walking on dry and sandy. They’d found a paved road, about half a mile away from the site where the chopper had taken off, but after one hour of following it without finding a house, an abandoned car, or a single living soul, their moods dropped. They’d survived a helicopter engine failure, they’d survived a fire, a bomb, countless attacks, yet Anu started thinking that they weren’t going to survive the merciless force of nature.
Harry’s rifle strapped around his shoulders, David tried to cheer her up, telling her he recognized the place from when he’d driven to the lab a few days earlier. Telling her they were getting closer to the Lab. His cracked and bleeding lips told a different story, though. He kept licking them and yet his tongue, too, was dry and parched.
After two hours, Anu collapsed on a rock by the roadside and refused to get up.
David kneeled by her side and grabbed her wrists. “Hey. Look at me. We can’t stop. We’ve got to keep going. We’ll find water and you’ll feel better, I promise.”
She shook her head. “Leave me here,” she whispered. “I failed. I failed at everything.” She swallowed the dryness in her mouth. It tasted sandy and bitter,
like all her regrets.
David squeezed her wrists to the point of hurting her. “Think of the virus, Anu. The damn virus you wanted so badly to defeat. Are you going to let it win?”
“Joyce let them win,” she mumbled. “She died in there, didn’t she?”
David sighed. “Joyce sacrificed her own life—and possibly that of her child—for the sake of a secret too big to give up. If she’d given up the location of the uranium she would’ve ensured a nuclear war.”
Anu stared at the middle of the road and blinked. “She—she planted the bomb?”
“The bomb was already there. The site was a decoy. I realized it by chance when I stepped inside and spotted a blinking diode. I thought the General would trigger the bomb thinking he was opening the access door to the supposed uranium storage. But Joyce was the only one able to activate it. She gave her life in order to keep the true location of the uranium secret. The sad thing is, who knows what will happen to her daughter now.”
Anu flopped her head in her hands. She wanted to sob but all her tears had dried out. Every bit of her body screamed in pain. Every bit of her body longed for water. “My mother did the same,” she whimpered. “Gave her life for a secret.”
She could see it now and she hated herself for not understanding earlier what her mother had truly done. All these years she had thought her mother a coward when instead she had been a hero.
David took her hand and pulled her up. “Tell me about your mother,” he said, prompting her to walk again.
She dragged her feet, swirls of heat rising from the pavement and blurring the horizon. All they could see for miles were the jagged profiles of the red boulders, different layers of sediment painting them different shades of grays and oranges. Contorted skeletons of dead junipers mottled the landscape.
A lizard scuttled by and vanished underneath a rock.
David followed it with his eyes, wondering how much longer until they’d be desperate enough to chase one for food. He’d kept the rifle and he was ready to use it for hunting, but he’d hoped for something more substantial than a tiny reptile.
“She left me a clue,” Anu said at last. “My mother did. And I finally got it. What she’d meant.”
