The eyes. That was it. Angie wasn’t watching him. Not with those eyes, anyway. Those were fakes. Put in by the mortician in the unlikely event that the glue that held a corpse’s eyes closed for services failed. Angie couldn’t see him, which meant that she was tracking him by sound or smell. Possibly both. Darryl steeled himself, prepared for her next advance.
It was while waiting for Angie to make her move that Darryl noticed the graveyard had come alive. He risked a quick look. A few plots away, a tombstone slowly began to sag, the ground at its base rippling. To his right, a hand came into view, the dirt collapsing into the vacated coffin below.
So it wasn’t just Angie, he thought, adjusting his grip on the stake. The keys to the hearse were in his pocket, but first things first. Even if he could make it to the car, there was the matter of Angie Seward to take care of. Then, anything or anybody else that got in his way.
Angie hissed, closing in on him.
"Who's your Daddy, you withered little bitch?" he shot back, readying the stake. "C’mon, dead-girl. Come get some!”
Angie did.
REDISCOVERING DARLA
It took Martin only a few minutes to realize where he was. With a calm bordering on the inhuman, he ignored the fear and flood of emotions anyone unfortunate enough to find themselves in his situation might give in to: Claustrophobia. Terror. Anger. Panic…
Understandable, all of them. Especially if you’d just discovered that you’d been buried alive.
Though the predicament was daunting, he was determined to escape. To find a way out of his wood and linen prison. Giving up? Well, he couldn’t deny that might come later. But he wasn’t about to throw in the towel just yet.
When he’d first opened his eyes, the absolute darkness had startled him. He blinked, waiting for his eyes to adjust, wondering why neither the alarm clock on the nightstand nor the digital display on his cable box were providing any light. A blackout? Maybe, he thought, but that wasn’t all. The stiff pillow under his neck didn’t feel like his pillow. Was he in a hotel room? Had he forgotten that he was on a business trip?
No, that couldn’t be it. He didn’t have another trip scheduled until November. So, what did that leave? Had he decided to tie one on after some bullshit meeting with uptight, hayseed clients, in order to secure some contract or another for the plant? Had that been what had happened? Was he stuck in some fleabag motel a couple hours from home, forced to spend the night on this piece of shit mattress, all because Collins refused to loosen the purse strings? That sounded like a real possibility to him. Disgusted, he went to sit up.
“Fucking Collins,” he swore to himself. “If that cheap sonofabitch wasn't Luther Collins' great grandson…”
Ker-thud!
He collapsed back onto the mattress, stunned. What the hell? He reached out a hand to see what he’d struck his head on. Then his hand hit the same barrier, low, down by his hip, and he had his answer. He knew.
Satin lining surrounding him on all sides. Tight quarters, the pillow stiff because it hadn’t been made for comfort. He was in a coffin.
Tentatively, he reached out with his right hand. A scant few inches marked the boundaries of his confinement.
How the fuck had this happened, He fumed, trying to put together a plan. At the moment, there was nothing rational he could come up with. Not to explain his presence in a casket, or how he might extricate himself from one. Troubling on both counts. He patted his pockets. First his pants, then the jacket. Worth a try, even though he didn’t expect to find anything useful.
No surprises.
“Damn,” he cursed silently, not wanting to waste precious air. He was wearing the Pinstriped Hugo Boss Darla had bought for him three years ago, when he’d gotten promoted to Accounts Manager. Landing Gardenshire Farms and their eighty thousand acres hadn’t gone unnoticed by the old man, and Darla had driven all the way to the outlet mall in Louisville to buy him the suit, and a pair of shoes that didn’t come from Sears. He kicked the base of the lid, not surprised when a stockinged foot met with the same result.
Of course. You didn’t bury a man wearing his shoes.
He gave up on the why of his entombment and worked his arms up so that his hands were in front of his face. He grabbed hold of the fabric, pulling on it until it began to come loose.
The panel tore free, the gauzy material covering his face like a shroud. He quickly pushed it aside, balling it up and shoving it down by his thigh, where it wouldn’t get in his way.
How long had he been here? How much air did he have left?
Both questions concerned him, but he remained focused on the task at hand. The lining separated from the lid, and his fingers scrabbled over rough, wood laminate.
Wood laminate. He considered that. It was a good sign. This wasn’t a pricey box, that much was obvious. Encouraged, he probed the lid, seeking out its seams, hoping to find a weakness.
He rapped his knuckles on it. The resulting sound was dull and muffled.
Not in the mortuary, he concluded. Only when he felt the disappointment did he realize how much he’d been holding out hope that that was the case.
Martin loved to gamble. His favorite place was Churchill Downs. His second? Anywhere he could lay a wager. But this hurt. The bettor’s odds had fallen precipitously with the confirmation of his interment.
Soil. The accounts manager began analyzing that. How much did soil weigh? How deep had he been buried? Standard was supposed to be six feet, but who knew how deep his plot had been excavated? With Darryl Bowman as caretaker, the whole thing was a crap shoot. The man was half a retard, after all, and Martin hadn’t been afraid to describe him as such, so long as Darla wasn't around. Such terms offended his better half. “Slow,” she preferred, even though she, like most of Dunkill, knew that Darryl was a few sandwiches short of a picnic.
Lazy, too. Twice, the town council had taken up the issue of hiring a replacement caretaker. But Darryl was third generation. His father had been caretaker, up until his stroke, and his father before him. Eventually, sympathy won out, and Darryl Bowman remained responsible for putting Dunkill’s dearly departed into the ground. Martin seized on that. He didn’t have much else to pin his hopes on, after all. Maybe Darryl’s laziness would be a benefit. Martin didn’t have a clue what dirt weighed, but he was guessing that seven feet by two and a half feet was roughly the size of his casket, and six feet worth of that overhead totaled up to more pounds than he’d like to admit. So if Darryl had only gone five feet down, or perhaps even four…
Pushing against the lid, predictably, accomplished nothing. No, he thought, if he was going to get out of this alive, he was going to have to find some chink, some defect in the casket’s construction. And then dig. Dig or die, that was the bottom line.
Martin could accept that. As a gambler, he was used to looking at things in stark, black and white terms. Win or lose. No room for Place or Show, he thought morbidly. Not in this game. This was it, the ultimate for every true odds-player: a high stakes, all-or-nothing long shot.
He almost missed the soft spot. Had his fingers been spread any wider, he might have gone right past it. But it was there, all right, the wood spongy and damp to the touch.
That’s what you get for poor craftsmanship, he thought, silently thanking the corner-cutters for their carelessness in building his box. He fitted his thumb against the half-dollar sized section of rot. There was no question—moisture had damaged the wood a few inches from his right ear. It wasn’t much, but it was something. A place to start.
It took a full minute to roll onto his side and position his hands. He wedged his back against the wall of the casket to maximize his leverage, and began his assault.
Creaking. The wood, brittle, giving just a little. Then a crack. A distinct splintering sound. Martin smiled, in spite of his dire situation. He’d been at the Downs enough times to know that sometimes, even longshots paid off.
A fissure sucked in one thumb, and he felt cold, grainy soil. When he ret
racted the finger, he couldn’t see it, but heard dirt falling in through the hole. Energized, he spent another painstaking minute bringing his knees up to his chest, one at a time, to increase the amount of force he could exert.
His main concern was the angle. He was banking that the whole right side of the coffin had been compromised. But unless he breached the lid at an angle, he wouldn’t have any means of handling the dirt. If the lid collapsed, he’d be pinned, unable to move or dig. His death would be agonizing. He tried not to think about it, but couldn’t help himself. Hundreds, maybe a thousand pounds of dirt crushing down upon him, clogging his nose, filling his mouth when he could no longer fight the instinct to inhale…
He took slow, deliberate breaths, put his hands back on the soft spot and silently counted down.
Three…two…one…
He uncoiled like a snake and exerted everything he had, trying to force the casket wall to give. His efforts seemed to be garnering results. Was there a little more space now when he extended his arms? It seemed so, although in the darkness it was hard to tell. He held up, repositioned himself, and got ready for another go at it. What happened next, he was wholly unprepared for.
His shoulders punched through the opposite side of the casket with a sickening crunch. Earth began pouring in. The lid began to buckle.
Martin began to scream.
Panic began to take over. He tried to concentrate, fought to get hold of himself before it was too late. Very soon, it would be. The dirt was already up to his cheek. The rumble of shifting earth grew louder, the lid beginning to cave in. Desperate, Martin forced his knees down and rolled onto his back, bringing them up again in an effort to shore up the lid. He turned his upper body and thrust out his hands, stemming the inrush of dirt. He pawed and clawed like his childhood puppy Ranger used to, looking for a good spot to bury a bone. Furiously pushing back against the soil, he managed to force enough into the base of the casket to buy a few inches of wiggle room.
It was slow, plodding work, but he managed to shift enough dirt into the bottom half of the casket to support the lid. Cramped though his work space was, He kept his focus, digging in earnest, angling upwards, praying the soil would remain loose enough to allow him to keep breathing.
He was at first repulsed, then overjoyed when his hand plunged into a nest of earthworms, their wriggling forms landing on his face and neck. He brushed them away, believing their presence a good omen. It was unrealistic to think they’d burrow terribly deep, wasn’t it? Surely not six feet. Wouldn’t the dirt around a coffin be tamped down? Packed tight by the backhoe? That’s what he would expect, and it stood to reason it would make for an inhospitable home, even for worms. At least, that’s what he told himself. If it turned out he’d been lying, he’d worry about forgiving himself later. Assuming there was a later.
The fact that the soil was damp and easy to pack helped spur him on. Though it was rank and made him want to gag, it was hardly unexpected. Underground, things tended to smell bad. He’d dug up plenty of malodorous things in his time. Playing in the woods with friends, building mud forts around knobby, gnarled trees. If you dug deep enough, there was no avoiding it. You were going to dig up some stink.
Still, the noxious scent was familiar. He couldn’t quite place it, but it left a bitter, acrid taste on his tongue. He ignored it as best he could, and continued upward, his progress made easier by the moisture. The more wet earth he relocated, the bigger his tunnel grew. It wouldn’t be long now, he thought. Soon, he would reach the surface, and free himself from this earthbound Hell. Then, he would go looking for answers. Someone had a helluva lot of explaining to do. Several someones, in fact.
At long last, he grasped a handful of soil, but couldn’t pull it free. Slowly, the dirt loosened, leaving behind something else. Something that was not dirt.
A root… Martin was clutching a tree root in his hand.
Excited, he widened the tunnel, building up a mound beneath him. When he was satisfied, he raised his hands and drove himself skyward.
He punched through a layer of dead brown grass, tearing at it, ripping open a hole big enough to force his head through. His face came into the open, crusted with grit and grime. Worms—some alive, some dead—clung to his stringy hair. He shook, filling his lungs before hauling himself topside, leaving behind his not-quite-final-resting-place.
Martin lay there staring up at the stars, the wedge of crescent moon. He longed for fresh air, but couldn’t find it. The breeze carried nothing but the reek of…
He held his breath. Of course he recognized it. The past few weeks at the plant, the whole compound had smelled like this. Like the shit Collins had the guys down in gen-mod working on for those fuckers at McGraw Industries. Those cutthroats that U.S. Bioplex had hooked them up with.
Martin had heard the rumors. McGraw was one of several shady companies pumping a shitload of cash into old man Kettner’s bank accounts—pushing hard for them to complete the testing on SoilPro 4000 to meet some federal deadline. According to the scuttlebutt, now Collins was talking about a goddamned merger, partnering up with the same idiots who couldn't finish their own testing in Virginia and needed Kettner to bail their asses out. That reminded him—wasn't it just yesterday that he’d had to run down to the plant to meet with Collins about…
Martin sat up. He looked at his stockinged feet, then brought his hands up so that he could examine them more closely. He was remembering now, and the memories were unpleasant. He didn’t need to brush the soil from his desiccated fingers. He didn’t have to feel the hole in his trousers, where his protruding femur had torn through. He didn’t have to look behind him, but did so anyway. Being a betting man, it was merely another roll of the dice.
Martin Ferguson
Born June 11th, 1959 Died October 3.
He tried to gasp, but found that he couldn’t. The mechanics were there, but he wasn’t able to complete the act. The realization made him want to cry. He hadn’t been struggling to breathe below ground. He hadn’t been desperate for air. He hadn’t run out of oxygen because he hadn’t needed any.
That was why he was in the grave. Because he belonged there.
He got to his feet, took an unsteady step, then dropped to his knees in front of the neighboring tombstone. It was a twin of his own, the same glassy-faced marble, the same filigree, the same bold, regal etching of text. Once, it had been gorgeous. Now? It was dirty and weathered, scarred by acid rain. Had he any moisture in his body, he would have broken down in tears. He mouthed the words which comprised the epitaph:
Darla Ferguson
Born Dec. 22 1961 Died Oct. 3
Beloved wife
Martin hung his head in his hands and wailed silently, his throat devoid of vocal chords. Those had ruptured or been torn outright in the wake of the explosion. In the minutes he’d been laying there on the floor of the plant, the long bone sticking out of his thigh, screaming…screaming…
He shook with quiet sobs, until a thought penetrated the veil of his belated mourning.
Frantically, he began to dig. Now, he really did feel like Ranger, tearing up the yard, heedless of his father's well-tended lawn or his mother's precious flower beds.
Darla. She’d been there at the plant, working, when all hell broke loose. When something down in the gen-mod labs had gone south, triggering the explosion that had blown everything to shit.
He pushed those thoughts aside. On a hot spring day in 1981, he had stood beside Darla Jane Bradley and pledged to love her forever. For better or worse, in sickness and in health.
His Darla was waiting for him, he knew it with every fiber of his being. Martin had given her his heart, and made a promise to spend eternity with her.
Now, he would have his chance.
BEEB’S RETREAT
She sat in the shadows staring at the trap door, leaning against a column, waiting for what was to come. Of course, she couldn’t be sure what the future held—after all, certainty was a thing of the past. Nothing was
guaranteed any more—not in a world that had gone so far down the shitter. Still, like an athlete who’d endured the pounding of a long career could predict foul weather, she knew. They were coming. It was only a matter of time. She could almost taste their stink, oily like the smoke from a swamp fire. Maybe the rest of the world had nothing left they could count on, but not Beeb. She had this. In a way, it was comforting. She had something she could rely on. It was more than most folks could lay claim to.
She opened a warm bottle of water, swished some around her gummy mouth. For the thousandth time, she eyeballed the long guns, neatly lined up beside her. She checked her holster, despite the reassuring weight of the .357 being a constant reminder of its presence.
Soon now, she thought, absentmindedly running a finger down her cheek. Won’t be long.
She capped the bottle and inventoried her supplies. She had plenty of water, another week’s worth, at least. There was still a full box of crackers, and a neatly packed cardboard carton contained Ziploc bags filled with dried fruit. Probably a week’s worth there, too, she supposed, give or take. Not that it mattered. She wouldn’t be up here much longer. No, she repeated, as if to convince herself. It’d all be over soon enough.
She debated a dried apricot, though her stomach turned at the sight of it. She tried to ignore the queasiness, but couldn’t manage. She’d dried the fruit herself, all of it picked from her own trees and garden. Wild berries, apple slices, handfuls of almonds and hazel nuts. Foods she loved…once upon a time. But now? Now they only served to make her nauseas, the fruit’s colorful meat sparking memories, taking her back…
Stop it, she chided herself, yanking her hand from her cheek and digging her nails into her palm. Stop it before you drive yourself crazy!
Easier said than done, though. Not to mention—she wasn’t entirely convinced she hadn’t gone crazy already. Most nights she lay awake, wishing she had. Prayed that it was a trick, the result of her faculties eroding prematurely, failing her at a reasonably young age. Dementia or Alzheimer’s or something like that. But no, of course not. It couldn’t be. That would be too easy.
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