by Russ Watts
“Miss Sykes, perhaps you would like to hand out their treats?” asked Norman, as he removed the heavy backpack from his shoulders. “I just need a few minutes.”
“Why? Where are you going?” Melanie told the children to be quiet and saw Norman looking at what she could only describe as a chasm. “You don’t want to go down there, surely? Look, we really shouldn’t leave the path, and the kids are quite safe here. We head off any further, and who knows what we’ll find. There could be snakes, sinkholes, anything down there. Look at the way the trees are bent out of shape. If an earthquake has—”
Norman sighed, knowing Melanie was right. It was dangerous. Tomorrow, he had to go back to work, back to the mundane reality of running a school. Rarely did he get an opportunity to do anything more exciting than ordering pay-per-view these days. There was every likelihood that he’d be retired before they came back here, and he couldn’t face the prospect of getting back on that bus just yet. It had taken them hours to get here, and it was time to put common sense to one side.
“Melanie, just stay here with the kids, please? I’ll be fine. Five minutes, that’s all. I’m curious as to what sort of earthquake leaves damage like that. Why isn’t this clearing damaged too? The ground is perfectly fine, yet all around it is a mess.”
“Norman, wait…”
Ignoring Melanie, Norman knew he just had to look. The ground at the edge of the clearing was scuffed and rough, and as he put a foot on a boulder, he peered down the chasm. The ground had been split open, and it resembled a dry riverbed. The area was strewn with rocks of all sizes, and Norman carefully clambered over a few in order to get a better view. The twisted roots of a tree tried to trip him up, but he had every intention of going home to Joan when this was over. If Melanie really needed any help, he was only two minutes away. He wasn’t about to go digging his way down into the ground, or go caving, he just wanted to see what was going on.
He could still hear the children in the background, and he sat down on a smooth piece of rock that was sheltered from the direct sun by an overhanging tree stump. Looking further down the track, it appeared as if the ground gave way into a black hole. There was a cave down there, although he had not read of any caves in the area, or seen any on previous trips. It was thirty or forty feet across and pitch black. Despite the overwhelming sun above, the opening of the cave was shrouded in darkness.
“What is it, Mr Livingstone? A den?”
Norman turned to find a small boy standing behind him.
“Matthew O’Leary, you’re supposed to be with the others. Did Miss Sykes give you a candy bar?”
Matthew shook his head. “I don’t eat sugar. I need to look after my body. Mom said if I eat too much junk, my brain will rot, and then I won’t get into Harvard.”
Norman suppressed a laugh. Matthew was a good kid, and one who actually might make it all the way through school without getting a criminal record. He could be a bit of a nerd, but Norman would rather have thirty nerdy children truly interested in investing some time and brain power into what they were learning today, instead of unruly kids who were just eager to get home so they could fester in front of the all-powerful, all-consuming demagogue that is TV.
“It could be a den, but it looks a little too large, don’t you think?” asked Norman. “Besides, the ground around here seems to be a bit…unstable. I rather think the mother would choose somewhere safer to raise her pups, don’t you think, Matthew? A little more private?”
The young boy looked puzzled. “But I can see the coyotes.”
Norman looked down at the cave, and saw no coyotes anywhere. “Matthew, I think you must have been out in the sun too long.” He clambered back up the rocks and stood beside the curious boy. Norman could see the rest of the children all sat in a circle around Melanie. She would be telling them about the dangers of wandering off in the desert, or perhaps about how many deadly snakes there were nearby. Nothing like a little fear to ensure they followed orders.
“There, sir, can’t you see?”
Norman looked at Matthew. He held out a long arm in the direction of the cave, yet was not pointing directly at it. Norman let his eyes follow along the line of sight where the boy was pointing.
“See? They’re asleep, right? I guess it’s too hot for them now.”
Norman felt queasy. Suddenly, being back on the bus seemed like a great idea. There were three coyotes, no doubt the remnants of a pack, lying on the ground just to the side of the cave. Norman could tell they were dead, and he was thankful that Matthew had such poor eyesight. Two of them were smaller and lay next to each other. They did look like they were sleeping, but there was just too much blood, and no movement from their bodies. The largest of the three had a leg missing, and its head was cocked to one side. Its neck had clearly been broken, and Norman knew this could not be the work of another pack. Maybe hunters, he thought, but unlikely.
Norman had never seen anything like it. The bodies were lying out in the sun, and it wouldn’t be long before their intestines swelled up and exploded. The fact that the bodies were, for the most part, still intact, suggested that they had been killed recently, perhaps even only earlier that morning.
“Matthew, let’s leave the coyotes to sleep it off, what do you say? I think it best we don’t tell the others, they may be frightened. Just keep it between you and me, huh?”
Norman caught sight of another coyote as he went to take Matthew’s hand. Its body lay halfway up a boulder, its corpse mangled and torn apart, as if something had been angered by its very existence and thrown it there. It was possible that the earthquakes had injured some of the coyotes, maybe even killed one, but these bodies weren’t trapped between the rocks, or buried in the ground. It looked very much to Norman as if something had been feeding on them.
And that thought made him very nervous indeed.
As Norman looked closer, he thought he saw movement at the entrance to the cave. Something shifted in the shadows. There was a stirring of the dense air within, a whisper that could become truth, and finally common sense kicked back in. He decided to get back to Melanie and herd the children back toward the bus. Whatever had taken out the coyotes wasn’t part of today’s agenda.
A cold, low moaning sound came from the cave, echoing off its rocky walls and drifting over the harsh terrain to Norman. It was deep and mournful, and worryingly close, as if it was coming right from the cave’s entrance. It made him shiver, and he felt Matthew grab his hand. The moaning sound continued for a full ten seconds before abruptly stopping. It was followed by a series of short, sharp barks.
“Matthew, let’s go,” said Norman firmly.
As Norman helped Matthew up over a large rock, the ground began to tremble. At first it was barely perceptible, just a quivering that shook the loose grains of dirt and made his already shaky hands grip Matthew’s even more tightly. Norman felt the vibrations increase and they traveled through his shoes, up through his body to his head. This wasn’t right. He looked across at Melanie. Her expression was one of confusion. Was this another quake?
“Matthew, I want you to—”
Norman never finished his sentence. The ground exploded in front of him, throwing rocks and boulders up into the air, blocking out the sun. The Joshua trees were lifted up, their roots pulled up from the earth like a baby being reluctantly pulled from the womb. There was a deafening boom, and then Norman felt himself falling. His feet had nothing to stand on, and he felt Matthew being wrenched from his hands. There was a short, high-pitched cry of horror from the boy, and then more sounds of children screaming in terror. As Norman fell into the hole beneath where he had been standing, he saw the flying boulders falling down toward him, and the last thing he thought of was how nice it would be to have one more glass of wine with Joan. The earth swallowed Norman greedily, and then he was sucked into the cold dark underground.
CHAPTER 2
Time seemed irrelevant, yet very important. Something bad had happened. Something had gone wrong. H
ad it been mere minutes, or hours? He was on a bus, on a hot, uncomfortable bus, and then…
Something very bad had happened.
Norman tried to open his eyes, but he realized they were already open. He was in complete and utter darkness. How could he be? It wasn’t night, he was fairly sure of that. He reached a hand out in front of him and it touched soft dirt. Where the hell was he? Panic began to grip him, spreading out over his body like a network of cobwebs, slowly wrapping him tighter and tighter in their tense web. It was as if he had been buried alive, but that wasn’t likely. He had been on a bus. What happened to him? What happened to the children?
The children!
Suddenly, Norman remembered: the school trip, the dead coyotes, Miss Sykes looking at him confused, Benji dancing, the bus driver cursing, the ground trembling, and the sound of boulders falling all around him.
Norman knew he had to find a way out of whatever hole he had been buried in. There was no light to see by, so he had to go by instinct and touch. He couldn’t sense if he was upside down, or what way he was facing, so he summoned up a saliva ball and spat. The spit went only a few inches in the air and then landed back on his chin. So he was on his back, on a slight incline. At least now he had something to start with.
He wriggled his fingers and was pleased to find they all responded. Then he ran his hands over his body and waited for the inevitable pain. At some point, he was going to touch an exposed nerve, or a piece of bone. He ran his fingers over his chest and arms, but found nothing. Feeling more confident, he sat up so he could check his legs, and immediately banged his head on a sharp rock.
“Damn it,” Norman proclaimed, and he winced as he touched the fresh cut on his temple.
Continuing with his quest to check if he was seriously injured before he attempted to stand up, he ran his hands down his legs. They were covered in dirt, but there were no wounds and he tentatively moved his feet. Though his body ached, and his head was now throbbing, he seemed to have survived whatever had happened relatively unharmed. Norman put his right hand down on the ground, ready to get up, and found it touch something warm and soft. It felt disturbingly like another person’s hand.
“H…hello? Are you okay?”
Damn it, he thought, if only there was some light in this hell hole.
Norman traced his hand slowly from the hand on the ground up to the arm and squeezed. The arm was small, definitely a child’s, so it didn’t belong to Melanie. It could be Matthew, and Norman hoped the boy had just been knocked out alongside him.
“Hello?”
He tried shaking the arm, but there was no response. The darkness surrounded him like a blanket, and the silence was disquieting. He would rather have someone cry out in pain than suffer this interminable, insufferable silence. He ran his hand up the arm further, and then found his fingers sinking into dirt where the blood had soaked in. The arm wasn’t attached to anything, and Norman shuddered as he touched a piece of bone.
“Matthew?”
Norman knew the boy was dead. It had to be the boy’s arm. Nobody else had been close to him. The others were in the clearing, sitting around Melanie. Christ, what had happened to them all? Had it been another earthquake? The bus driver had said they had experienced more lately. Norman knew that smaller tremors could be a precursor to a major event and often followed by a larger one, yet there was something unusual about it. He had felt earthquakes before, admittedly only small ones, but this had been different. In his experience, the ground usually swayed or rolled gently when a quake struck LA. This had been much more violent, more like a bomb going off than a simple ground tremor.
In all his years of teaching, he had never had a child die on him before. The worst he’d had were broken arms and black eyes. Yet there was every chance Matthew was dead, probably crushed beneath the rocks and the dirt. It was an odd feeling. Norman didn’t feel particularly sad, didn’t feel like grieving, but he was upset that this horrible event had happened on his watch. He was undeniably responsible. It didn’t matter if it was an accident, Matthew was under his care; it was as simple as that. He should have listened to Melanie and stayed with the children instead of going off exploring like that. Matthew was dead, and who knew how many of the other children were injured, or worse. He had to find a way out of here, to make things right. He had a duty to the children.
Norman cautiously pushed himself up, and felt the rock above his head. He ran his fingers across it carefully, worried about unsettling it. For all he knew, it was perched right above him, just waiting to be dislodged so it could fall and crush him. When he brushed against it, it seemed to move slightly, and he held his breath, gently removing his fingers from it. When nothing came crashing down on his head, he breathed out slowly. The air was cool, but thick with dirt, and he needed fresh air to fill his lungs.
“Anyone there?” he called out.
His voice bounced back to him, and he was met with nothing but more silence. Norman stood up and began creeping forward slowly. He kept his arms outstretched, trying to feel his way around blindly. The ground was uneven, littered with stones, and he tripped frequently. Every time he stumbled, he was worried he would find himself falling again, falling into nothing but a big black hole where he would lie for days dying in the darkness. Trying to keep a lid on his growing panic, he kept moving, trying to find a way out of the cold, lightless tomb.
Abruptly his hands came to a rock wall, and he stopped. Was he imagining it, or was there a chink of light coming from above? It was barely a spot, no bigger than a button, yet it was definitely there. He tried to find its source, unwilling to start pushing aside the rocks in case they fell. Brushing his hands over the rocks above, he found himself getting caught in tangled tree roots. He took it as a good sign. Maybe he could use the tree to pull himself up, if he could just find an opening. As he scuffed around in the dirt, his feet kicked something solid, yet soft. It wasn’t just another rock, and he bent down to examine it. It could be one of the children, so he knew he had to investigate.
As he crouched down over whatever he had kicked, a disgusting odor reached his nostrils. It was the same festering smell that permeated the hall when the school toilet block got backed up, and he wondered if he had stumbled across one of the dead coyotes. Reaching out warily, he braced his back against the rock wall, and groped around in the darkness.
“Matthew? Melanie? You there?”
His hand found hair, matted together with what he guessed was blood. It was long and stringy, more like the hair on a human head than a coyote, and he ran his fingers up over the cranium of the skull, onto the person’s forehead. He found the eyes, closed, the nose, and then the mouth with the small lips slightly parted. Whoever it was, they were staying awfully still. The features on the face were small, and he guessed it was one of the children. Perhaps Matthew, but it was impossible to tell for sure in the darkness.
“Wake up. Please, come on, I’m here now.” His voice bounced off the walls, and Norman didn’t know what else to say. He tried to pinch the person’s cheek, to wake them, but there was no response. He leant closer, and ran his hand down the child’s jaw, over their chin, until he reached the neck.
That was when he screamed.
Norman’s fingers plunged into the severed neck, coating themselves with gore and blood, still warm and wet and sticky.
“Jesus.” Norman recoiled from the severed head, his heart pounding. He wiped his hand on his chest, and stood up, desperate to get away from whoever it was that lay dead at his feet.
“Jesus,” he said again as his breathing became faster.
Norman was so eager to get away from the dismembered corpse that he forgot where he was, and as he stood up his head became entangled in the roots of the tree. They coiled around his neck, wrapping themselves in his thin gray hair. Norman screamed again. He tried to pull at them, to extricate himself from their grip, but they seemed to grab onto him and pull him in tighter to the mesh of roots. Unable to pull himself free, he began to
pull the tree down instead, sucking it toward him, hoping to create an opening from this death trap that had imprisoned him in the never-ending dark. The tree began to move, inching down toward him, bringing with it dirt and soil. As Norman howled and pulled at it, the tree dislodged itself, and then it tumbled down on him, bringing a torrent of dirt with it. Suddenly, Norman saw daylight, but it was all too brief. A flash of blue sky, and then it was gone, replaced with brown dirt and rocks, falling down to replace the tree. It was like standing in a sandpit, and Norman felt like he was being suffocated. He managed to break free from the tree roots and discard the Joshua tree to one side, only to find himself stuck in a growing pile of dirt that clawed at his legs and body. As he called for help, dirt entered his mouth and nose, clogging his throat and burning his lungs. He kicked and scrambled upward, his fingernails digging into the ever-growing pile of dirt that threatened to submerge him.
“Help!” Norman blurted it out, just as the last of the blue sky disappeared. He knew this was his only chance. If he let the whole thing cave in on him, he wouldn’t be able to get out. This was his last chance to get back to Joan, his last chance to help the children topside, and his last chance to live. Being buried alive was a horrific prospect, but it was all he could think about. It felt like he was swimming against a strong tide, and every time he managed to pull himself up, something sucked him back down. He reached up a hand and grabbed a boulder, wedging his hand into a small crack in it. Norman roared and tried to find a surge of energy, not wanting to join the dead body buried beneath him.
Suddenly a hand grabbed his, and he looked up. His eyelids flickered, protecting his eyes from the dirt falling down on his face. He couldn’t see the owner of the hand, but it was help. They were pulling him up, and he kicked as hard as he could, digging out of the sand and soil that was swallowing him.
