“Crap,” Emily said.
“If it’s that same pack of ‘em we’ve seen, we can’t outrun them,” Jim said. “They’ll get in here and tear us to shreds. We’ve gotta close this gate.”
“I’ll stay behind with you,” Deacon said. “Emily, Hannah—I think both of you should go on ahead and figure out how we get inside the mine.”
“Are you sure?” Hannah asked.
He nodded. “Go.”
Emily and Hannah hurried ahead, their shoes sloshing along the muddy dirt path that led to the entrance. Deacon turned to Jim.
“Let’s get it done.”
In only a minute, the dogs’ barking had grown much louder. The darkness in the woods was so thick that he couldn’t see anything. He brandished his tactical flashlight and swept the beam across the woods beyond. He saw only trees, but the light had a limited range of perhaps ten yards.
“Cover me, chief.” Jim raced outside the gate.
“You’re clear.” Deacon drew the .357 and held it at a low-ready position. He clutched the flashlight in a reverse grip, allowing him to scan the area with the lamp while keeping the firearm prepared for a quick shot.
“Shit,” Jim said, tugging at a piece of metal. “It’s got a post keeping it in the ground, and the mud’s got it all clogged up down in there.”
“Take your time,” Deacon said, though his heart slammed and he wanted nothing more than for them to finish this, asap.
He light-scanned the woods again, found nothing, but from the sound of them, the dogs were closing in fast.
“Got it.” Jim snatched the post out of the earth, the metal screeching. Gripping the handle, he strained to pull the gate shut. The rusted hinges creaked.
Deacon stepped forward to help him. In the backsplash of the flashlight he spotted a dog running at them, like something out of a bad dream. It was the St. Bernard that had nearly ripped out his throat that morning. Emerging from the darkness, the infected dog looked impossibly huge.
Deacon fired. The hollow-point round drilled the monstrous dog squarely in its massive chest, and it staggered to a stop and collapsed on the grass.
“Move it, Jim!” Deacon shouted.
Cursing, Jim struggled to pull the heavy gate shut. Another hound leaped out of the shadows, a German Shepherd with feral, inflamed eyes. Deacon went for center mass again and blew a round into the animal. It wobbled to the ground.
But plenty more were coming. The woods were alive with furious howls and barks.
Jim swung the gate into the closed position. Deacon grabbed a piece of the gate and held it while Jim drove the post into the fence’s metal sleeve, snapping it in place.
“There’s a padlock by the ATV.” Jim pointed.
“Forget about it,” Deacon said. He rattled the gate, once, and it held firm. “This’ll do fine.”
As he spoke, the rest of the pack thundered out of the woods and gathered at the fence. The group was larger than what they had seen earlier; there were over two dozen dogs, varying in breed and size, but all of them marked by the same symptoms of illness. The canines snarled, snapped, and slobbered, their snouts poking at the chain-link barrier.
A couple of them tried to chew their way through the fence, teeth breaking on the metal.
“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Jim said.
They backed away from the gate.
Where’s the dog walker? Deacon thought. Earlier, a young man had been steering the pack through the community like some demonic version of the dog whisperer. It was unlikely that the dogs had tracked them to the mine on their own.
Someone yelled what sounded like a battle cry. Deacon looked up and saw a large shape hurtling toward them, coming from the elm tree boughs that nearly overhung the perimeter fence.
“Jim!” Deacon raised his handgun.
The dog walker launched himself off the tree, over the fence, and on top of Jim. Jim collapsed under the weight of the big man like someone flattened by a falling safe, his head rapping against the hard earth with an ugly thudding sound.
Wild, damp hair obscuring his face, rain glistening on his nude body, the dog walker seized a fistful of Jim’s mane and slammed his head against the ground. Jim twitched like a sputtering live wire. The dog walker shouted incoherent words, leashes swinging like strange talismans around his neck.
Deacon fired the .357 from a range of barely ten feet. The round penetrated the attacker’s chest, knocked him back a few feet off Jim’s body. Another shot in the head dropped him for good.
Beyond the fence, the dogs howled.
Jim wasn’t moving. He lay on the ground on his stomach, head twisted to one side, arms spread-eagled.
Deacon’s knees felt as if they would buckle. He rushed to Jim’s side.
Please, God.
He panned the flashlight across Jim’s face. Jim blinked, his eyes unfocused and glassy.
This close to his partner, with the bright light in his face, Deacon noticed that Jim’s eyes were outlined with a faint crimson hue, and the telltale lesions had begun to develop on his forehead. That tick they had found in his nose must’ve gotten some of its poison into his bloodstream before they had extracted it.
Maybe going out fighting like this is a blessing, Deacon thought.
But he wasn’t ready to give up on Jim.
“Can you walk?” Deacon asked. “Talk to me, buddy.”
Jim’s lips moved, but Deacon couldn’t hear him. Carefully, Deacon pulled him into a sitting position. Jim offered no resistance or help. His limbs felt limp, like a broken doll’s.
“Leave me . . .” Jim whispered. He wheezed. “Can’t . . . move . . . can’t . . . breathe . . .”
Cervical fracture, Deacon thought, his heart plummeting. The impact of the attacker crashing onto him from an elevated height, and hammering his head against the ground, had literally broken Jim’s neck.
It might not have been safe to move Jim, but he couldn’t leave him there to die. Gently, Deacon cradled his arm underneath Jim’s neck, to support his head. He got his other arm beneath Jim’s legs.
“No . . . chief,” Jim whispered.
Deacon ignored him. Groaning from the effort, Deacon lifted him in his arms. The strap of Jim’s rifle slipped off his shoulder, and the weapon dropped to the ground. Deacon left it behind and focused on his friend.
“Whoa, you’re heavy, man,” Deacon said. “You need to lay off those donuts, buddy.”
Jim uttered a wheeze that Deacon interpreted as a laugh, but the light in his eyes had dimmed. He didn’t want to believe that Jim would fail to pull through this. Jim was a tough old bird. He would pull through—he had to pull though. Deacon had already lost his father that night, a wound so deep and fresh he couldn’t bear to think about it. He couldn’t lose Jim, too.
He carried Jim to the mine entrance, where Hannah and Emily worked at opening the door.
By the time he reached them, the light had already faded from Jim’s eyes.
***
A roll-up metal barrier, like the kind used to secure storefronts in shopping malls, protected the mine entrance. While Emily panned the flashlight around, Hannah located the hand crank at the side of the doorway that controlled the enclosure. She was cranking it, slowly raising the door—the mechanism was rusted so it was a tedious effort—when Deacon shuffled to them cradling Jim in his arms.
“Oh, no.” Hannah felt a weakness come over her.
“What . . . what happened?” Emily had dropped the flashlight.
Deacon didn’t say a word. Kneeling, he carefully placed Jim against a small mound of rocks piled beside the entrance. He propped Jim upright.
Jim’s head drooped against his chest. Hannah didn’t need to check his pulse to know that he was gone.
“I’ll have to call his wife, if we ever get out of here.” Deacon searched Jim’s pockets and removed his partner’s cell phone. He also took Jim’s pistol and two-way radio.
Hannah touched Deacon’s shoulder.
&nbs
p; “I’m sorry,” she said. “Jim was a good man.”
Deacon pressed his lips together, as if to seal in all the emotion that Hannah knew he was struggling to contain. She wanted to hold him, but he was keeping in constant motion, in no mood to be comforted.
“We’ve got work to do,” he said in a flat tone. “Let’s get back to it.”
“Should we say a few words, a prayer or something?” Emily asked. She sniffled, tears leaking from her eyes.
Deacon pulled in a breath. He shook his head.
“Let’s just get this door open,” he said.
Emily looked crestfallen. But Hannah understood. Probably less than an hour ago, Deacon had lost his father. Now, he had lost a good friend. He couldn’t bear to slow down and grieve. It would destroy him, and without him, they would all be lost.
Hannah returned to the hand crank. Emily picked up the flashlight. Deacon grabbed the bottom edge of the door with both hands.
Working as a team, they lifted the door, and scrambled inside.
***
The mechanism that should have allowed the door to remain locked in an open position was broken. As soon as they clambered inside the entrance, the door clattered down behind them and hit the ground with a rattling boom that echoed off the stone walls.
It’s like being sealed inside a tomb, Emily thought, and admonished herself for the idea. But she was in a grim mood, what with leaving behind Jim, who had been such an indispensable ally.
A mélange of odors swirled around them: dust, old oil, the pungent aroma of raw earth. She swept her flashlight around the area. Thick wooden columns and wide ceiling brackets supported the tunnel structure; the distance from floor to ceiling was about eight feet. Three rusted mine carts stood on a track, looking as if they hadn’t been used in decades. The track twisted ahead and dwindled into darkness. The stone walls glistened with wetness.
Beside the entrance, a small area had an old wooden table piled with assorted junk: a cracked yellow hard hat, and various tools.
There was also an elevator. A badly-rusted gate was pulled across the shaft. Emily shone her flashlight through the metal grate and saw an ancient-looking set of pulleys so frayed the slightest weight would snap them in half.
The interior of the mine was much cooler than it was outdoors, perhaps sixty degrees. The drop in temperature, combined with her rain-sodden clothes, made it feel as if she had walked into a refrigerator.
“Only one way to go,” Deacon said. “We follow the track forward. I’ll take point. Hannah, stay behind me. Emily, you bring up the rear. We keep a few feet of spacing between us, but we stay together no matter what.”
Listening to him, Emily felt good about their chances. Deacon sounded as if he had done something like this before, though she knew he hadn’t.
Deacon gave her the two-way radio that he had taken off Jim.
“We’ve all got a flashlight, a weapon, and a radio,” Deacon said. “Call out to the group if you see anything, hear anything, smell anything. Are we good?”
“Good as we’ll ever be,” Hannah said.
Emily started to answer but stopped. She thought she had heard something, a distant echo.
“I just heard a noise,” she said. “Did you guys catch it?”
Hannah shook her head.
“What did it sound like?” Deacon asked.
She shivered. “It sounded like a scream. I’m not sure it was human. Hard to tell.”
“I’ll take that as a good sign, then,” Deacon said.
“Someone—or something—screaming is a good sign?” Hannah asked.
“It means we’re on the right track,” he said. “Someone is in here doing bad things. That someone has to be the man we’ve been seeking.”
They advanced into the darkness.
Chapter 32
As Deacon led their group, the track sloped deeper into the earth. Fine pebbles and dust, displaced by their shoes, skittered ahead of them.
Although Emily had reported hearing a distant scream, Deacon hadn’t heard much since, only the sounds of their shoes crunching across the faded, rock-strewn track. He continuously panned the flashlight back and forth, but so far had found nothing of interest.
If he’d been inclined toward claustrophobia, he would have been suffering a panic attack right about then. The stone tunnel was about eight feet high and ten feet wide, but there was a strong sense of isolation, as if they were traveling into the uncharted depths of a forgotten civilization.
There were lamps spaced along the wall, the bulbs shielded in wire cages, but none of them were in operation.
About a hundred yards in, the main tunnel branched into three different passageways. At the juncture, Deacon shone his flashlight along each corridor, searching for a clue to point them in the right direction.
“Pick a number?” Emily laughed uneasily. “It’s like standing in front of three closed doors in some old game show. Guess which one holds the prize.”
Deacon grunted. “If Mr. Falcon came in this far, he left behind footprints. I’ll check the middle tunnel. Both of you, check the others. Don’t wander more than ten feet away. That’s far enough to find any footprints, and we can’t afford to get separated.”
“Good idea,” Hannah said. She took the branch on the right.
Deacon got on his knees. His joints popped. His muscles ached. He was so tired, his motor running solely on fumes . . .
No. Gotta stay focused.
Using the flashlight, he crept forward, scanning the ground. Falcon was a large man, and would have left behind sizable footprints in the mixture of dust and rocks.
Deacon duck-walked roughly ten feet without finding any clear indication that Falcon had traveled this way. Straightening, he swept the flashlight ahead one more time.
Something passed through the light. A shadow, quick and low to the ground. It had moved too fast for him to accurately estimate the size.
A chill coursed along his spine. He rested his hand on the .357.
It’s an abandoned mine, he reminded himself. Anything might be in here. Bats, snakes, all kinds of things.
The conclusion, while true, didn’t make him feel any better. He panned the light around once more, but saw nothing.
“Guys!” Hannah said. “I’ve got something!”
Deacon backed along the tunnel to rejoin the group.
***
While searching the tunnel that lay to the far right of the others, Hannah had not only located Falcon’s footprints, she had discovered something better: the leather bag he must have left behind.
She felt fortunate that she had spotted it. She had been creeping along the ground, mindful of straying no more than ten feet into the tunnel, and found a trail of footprints that clearly belonged to a large person. That would have been enough for her . . . but slightly ahead of the limited radius she had intended to cover, she had noticed a more significant difference in the ground.
The bag lay in a section of the passage that had partly collapsed. Old slats of rotted wood had been placed underneath the rail track, for support, and a couple of those boards had broken in half. The back pack was nestled about six feet down, in a pile of shattered wood.
“That definitely belongs to Mr. Falcon,” Emily said. “He had it with him earlier when he gave me a ride on his ATV. It had dynamite in it.”
“So we know he came this way.” Deacon panned the light ahead, but Hannah saw only the continuing rail line. “He had to know where he was going. We go in this direction then.”
“Why do you think he left behind the bag?” Hannah asked, pointing. “Isn’t that strange?”
“Dropped it down there by mistake, maybe?” Emily asked.
“If I drop a bag full of dynamite that I went through the trouble to bring inside,” Hannah said, “I’m going to try my best to retrieve it.”
“He might have been attacked.” Deacon glanced behind them as if worried. “Dropped it in the melee and couldn’t come back to get it.”
“I know.” Deacon peered into the collapsed section with his flashlight. “But it doesn’t look too stable down there.”
“I’ll go get it,” Emily said.
“I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” Deacon said.
“I’m the smallest and lightest of all of us,” Emily said. She glanced at Hannah. “No offense.”
Hannah shrugged; Emily spoke the truth. But she shared Deacon’s concerns about the stability of the piled wood shards where the bag lay.
“All right,” Deacon said. “Be careful.”
“Always. Give me some light, please.”
Emily put down the shotgun she’d carried. Both Deacon and Hannah shone their flashlights into the shattered section of the tunnel. Emily picked her way down there slowly. Wood groaned and shifted under her weight.
Hannah was holding her breath.
“It’s okay,” Emily said. “It’s holding up fine.”
“You can do it,” Hannah said. She clutched the flashlight in both hands. Her palms were clammy with perspiration and dirt.
Emily was perhaps two feet away from grasping the bag’s strap when Hannah heard a crack. She gasped.
“Get out of there!” Deacon said.
As Emily turned, the fragile structure supporting her collapsed with a calamitous crackle of breaking wood.
No, Hannah thought. She stepped forward, but too late.
Screaming, Emily plunged into the dark depths below.
***
First, Pops. Then Jim. Now this sweet, firecracker of a young woman, Emily.
Deacon refused to accept it. He dropped to the ground and crawled to the edge of the hole into which she had disappeared. Dust and grit swirled into his face, and he had to cover his mouth with his hand.
He stuck the flashlight down there and tried to see. It was like peering into an abyss.
He shouted: “Emily! Can you hear me?”
“Emily!” Hannah had gotten on the ground next to him. “Make a noise if you can hear us! Emily!”
Frenzied - A Suspense Thriller Page 25
