by Andrew Dorn
She spotted Roy’s crossbow on the ground and made a show of retrieving it, but he cut her off, blocking her with his bulk.
“I’ll get that, if you don’t mind.”
Despite the spots dancing in his vision, Roy picked up the weapon with an ease borne of familiarity. He checked it for damage, saw none, then shoved it back inside the tactical scabbard strapped to his back.
“About time you got here,” Roy said, glancing across to where Rutledge had parked the Polaris.
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t easy, you know. The army called and—
“The army?” Roy asked, a deep wrinkle on his forehead.
“Yes, I overheard a report mentioning they were camped out about 10 kilometers away...” she made a show of looking out at the horizon. “South east of our present location.”
“You saw them?”
“Kind of. I just happened to be in that area when I noticed a column of smoke rising up in the air. Maybe there was an action taken against the sludge... but I’m not certain.”
“A column of smoke?”
“Yes,” Rutledge said, her eyes narrowing. “As if something was burning.” She wondered why he was pressing the issue. Surely the smoke was not what Roy had been searching for.
“But you haven’t observed any army troops inside the perimeter?”
“Correct, Elijah.”
This was the first time she directly addressed him with his first name. She loved his name.
Elijah.
So much prettier than her own name.
But then again, his set of features were within the accepted perimeters for beauty, quite the contrary to her plain jane image. Still, she reflected, when he first saw her, he hadn’t run away hollering about a rampaging gorgon.
Roy’s brow furrowed in concentration. Rutledge had said the army had not entered the perimeter, which either meant they were being unduly cautious or, in all likelihood, they were facing unforeseen problems. Perhaps the sludge was more dangerous than he surmised. He would have to be careful then if he were to cross paths with it again.
At last, the spots in his vision faded and the pain in his head cleared. He thought once more of the strange vision. Had it been real? It had felt real, no question about it. But was it real in a physical sense? Couldn’t it all have been a hallucination?
“Did you see a weird shadow hovering about the trail?” Roy asked, locking eyes with Rutledge.
She jerked back, startled by the question. “Huh, no. What shadow?”
“Never mind.”
He stared out towards the trail, lost in thought.
“What did you see?” Rutledge said, taking a step forward.
He hesitated before answering. He didn’t want this woman to think he was losing it. The stakes were too high for that, the situation too critical. He needed her to be an ally and someone he could count on, someone that would obey his judgment.
He knew she could be that person.
He could sense her thirst for power, for dominance, for control. It was strong, clear, unequivocal. It mirrored his own longings, those formed by misery, injustice and alienation. This was a woman who could accept his true self, and more importantly, understand what was required to alter their future.
And he found it intoxicating.
He had never met this type of woman before.
“I had a vision in need of answers,” Roy said. “One that calls for us to find out who or what is behind the sludge.”
Rutledge nodded, staring back with eyes wide open.
“Gwen?”
“Yes,” Rutledge croaked, startled by his use of her first name.
“You said the sludge originally appeared from the underground, from the bottom of the mine?”
“Yes.”
Roy stared at the vast sinkhole at his feet. The answer lay somewhere down there, and it was waiting for him to unearth it.
“Then, let’s go find out what makes it tick.”
24 Into Darkness
SIMON WINCED AUDIBLY as his left foot hit the ground.
“Are you ok?” Emmeline asked.
“Yes,” Simon said, rubbing his knee. “Nothing two months of full-time physiotherapy can’t fix.”
He was standing at the bottom of the sinkhole, right next to a crushed dumpster jutting out from the pile of debris. It had taken more than an hour but at last he had reached his goal.
“Wow, I can’t feel my hands anymore,” he said, staring at his calloused hands. Emmeline, waiting on an overhanging ledge some 30 meters above him, exchanged glances with Declan and Anna standing nearby.
“Will you be able to make it up again once we have completed our sweep?” Emmeline said.
Simon looked up at his three companions. “Sure, no problem. Just don’t ask me to play guitar tonight.”
“I didn’t know you played guitar,” Anna said.
“I don’t.”
Both women shook their heads, disconsolate.
“Men...” they agreed at once.
Simon grinned, wriggling free of the rope encircling his legs. The sinkhole’s floor was a hodgepodge of man-made debris and displaced boulders of different sizes, ranging from microwave ovens all the way up to big SUV’s. The wind whipped up clouds of dirt, turning the area into a grim, distorted, and forbidden landscape. The play of shadows across the debris accentuated the grimness of the scene. Simon watched a miniature dust devil make its way around an overturned SmartDozer. The vivid yellow of the machine contrasted sharply with the overall gray light bathing the bottom of the hole. The whirlwind evaporated with blustering swiftness, dissolving into nothingness.
A stillness settled down unto the debris.
Simon could hear breathing in his ears, his own, but nothing else, so complete was the silence.
Then he saw it.
A disturbance.
There was a minute shift in the shadows, moving about the machine.
Simon’s heartbeat quickened.
Calm down. It’s probably just a groundhog, no need to be apprehensive.
He stared hard at the dark patch alongside the dozer’s engine compartment. There it was again. A sudden dash of movement.
“There is something moving near that SmartDozer,” Simon called back to the others.
“What is it?” Declan said.
“A groundhog maybe ... I don’t know.”
He was about to move closer and investigate when it hit him. The smell. The stomach-churning malodorous stink he now associated with the sludge.
“Oh, shit!”
He looked up and saw Emmeline and the others scramble away in haste. The sinkhole’s cliff face, which they had climbed down minutes ago, was changing right before his eyes. The soil was churning, bursting apart in a gush of mud and loose rocks. Huge boulders rolled down with a thunderous roar as the meltdown accelerated, an outflow of dirt flowing down with massive power. The rocky missiles slammed into the ground with tremendous impact, shattering apart into hundreds of pieces.
Simon ducked as a volley of shrapnel flew over his head. He sought the others, cornered on the ledge, and watched them scurrying away. They had no real escape. They were trapped on a narrow piece of land, caught on a ledge between the bottom floor and the upper rim. A rim splitting apart even as he stared.
He saw Declan pull Anna to safety, the two running away from a giant boulder as it steamrolled downwards, cutting the narrow ledge into two separate land masses.
Emmeline was tossed aside by the upheaval and landed hard, her body hitting the ground with a thud. The boulders kept hitting the ground around her, the gap in the ledge widening with each impact. She got to her feet, eyes wide with fright and realized at once she was cut off. Dodging her way across the ledge amid the onslaught of rock, she made a run for it.
“Get to safety!” Emmeline shouted, waving at them in alarm.
Looking up to where Emmeline raced, Simon realized she had no place to go. The cliff face behind her was bulging outward, like an overinflated football, the sludg
e pushing through from subsurface.
“You have to move!” Simon called, seeking eye contact with her.
He raced towards her, oblivious to the rocks pelting the ground ahead. Emmeline scrounged backwards, hugging the wall as rocks fell around her.
She had nowhere to go.
Then she saw it.
The rope.
It was still dangling from the hook Declan had hammered into a massive boulder near the top of the cliff. The giant rock had started to shift position, sliding out to the edge, but the hook itself was still firmly implanted.
She estimated the rope was at the extreme limit of what she considered a manageable distance. It was almost out of reach, but if she timed her jump perfectly, perhaps she could grab it in midair. There was no time to ponder if it was a good or bad idea. Every second of hesitation meant an increase in the distance separating her from safety. The boulder was slipping into the void and there was no time for deliberation, even with her reasonable self, the one screaming at her that the rope was too damn far.
She had to decide... now.
If she missed, she knew it meant broken bones. 25 meters was high enough to be seriously injured. She took 3 quick breaths, pumping herself for the leap, then launched herself into the air.
For a second she thought she had overshot, but then her hands hit something and instinct kicked in. She grabbed hold of the rope, her body swinging violently from the momentum.
She was safe... for a moment.
Her relief turned to despair when she realized the rope kept bouncing around, almost jarring her loose. She glanced upward, and sure enough, there was trouble. The hook was coming free. In fact, the boulder itself was sliding out from the wall, joined by a flow of mud and gravel. She was seconds away from being turned into puree. Hand over hand, straining with effort, she began her descent, desperation urging her downward.
Move your derrière!
There was a powerful shove and the rope was jerked away from her hands. She slammed hard into the cliff’s face, wincing in pain as her shoulder made contact with the rock.
Managing to hold on to the rope with one hand, she rocked from side to side, using her feet to cushion the impact against the cliff. Simon ran to where she swung, helpless, positioning himself directly underneath her. He glanced upward and noticed her predicament. She was working to stop the rope from its wild swaying but it was hopeless. She had no time. He stared, dismayed, as the giant boulder teetered right over her head, like a colossal anvil poised on the ledge, ready to stamp them into the dirt.
“Emmeline! Let go!”
Emmeline looked down. Simon was staring up at her, eyes wide. She realized at once he wasn’t staring at her but at the threat hanging above her, above them.
Twenty meters up, the hook fastening the rope popped free of its anchor.
Emmeline fell, the rope zipping from her hands. Simon braced for impact. He felt his heart skip and she slammed into him with full force. They crashed to the ground in a heap of limbs. Emmeline found herself a short distance from Simon, who lay unmoving, face down in the dirt. The ground heaved with another deep rumble, galvanizing Emmeline to get up and move.
“Simon!”
The geologist registered the fact someone was yelling. It sounded like a cry, or a warning of sorts and he wondered why it seemed so important. He lifted his head, wiped off the muck glued to his face and stared forward, a dazed look in his eye.
“Simon! Move your butt!”
She watched him turn to her. His eyes were unfocused, looking straight at her but without recognition. Heedless of the impending danger, she dashed to his side, adrenaline pumping. She had no time to lose. In an earlier life, she had practiced the fireman’s carry and the technique came back to her in a flash. In one smooth pull, she lifted Simon up to his feet. Then, recalling the steps, bent her knees and managed to hoist him onto her right shoulder. Groaning with pain as the weight of the man dug into her injured shoulder, she took a step forward. It was more difficult than she remembered... but then again, she had been younger then and Simon was way heftier than he looked. Each step forward was an exercise in pain but the vision of the boulder careening downwards, flattening everything in its path, kept her moving. She staggered away, knees buckling, drilling deep inside herself to push forward.
There was a thunderous crashing noise right behind her, as if a meteor had streaked from the cosmos and ended its course an arm’s length away.
So this is what death sounds like.
The force of the impact hurled her sideways, wrenching Simon from her grasp. There was an explosion of blasted rock followed by a prolonged silence. Emmeline picked herself up, perplexed by the fact she was still alive. She was standing right smack in the middle of a circle of shrapnel, unscathed by the razor-edged splinters.
“Did I miss anything?”
Emmeline spun about, taken by surprise. Simon was right behind her, looking haggard but still very much alive.
She hugged him, hard, almost in disbelief, stunned by both the ordeal and by the fact he was unhurt.
“Let’s just say the last minutes were, huh, quite exciting.”
Simon glanced around at the giant boulders strewn about like towering temple columns. It had been a miracle they weren’t squashed by the behemoths.
“Guys! This way!”
The voice hailing them was coming from the other side of the sinkhole’s floor, about 50 meters way. Anna and Declan had managed to stay out of harm’s way by scaling a mammoth boulder, flattened like a waffle, surrounded by clusters of low shrubbery.
Emmeline acknowledged their position with a wave.
“Can you walk?” She asked, eyeing Simon with a surgical stare.
“Huh, I think so,” he answered, but his words came out slow and hesitant.
“Then I propose we get out of here.”
Simon acknowledged with a small nod. “Great idea.”
The sinkhole’s floor was a mess of rocks and giant boulders. They had no choice but to make their way across the chaotic surface to reach the others.
“At least the tremors have stopped,” Emmeline said, staring out at the cliff face.
“There is that,” Simon agreed. “I think we’ve seen the worst of it.”
A huge crack appeared in front of her, opening the ground with an ear-splitting guttural noise.
“The again, maybe not,” he added, his face one of disbelief and astonishment.
“We have to move,” Emmeline said. “Now!”
She started running towards where Anna and Declan waited, atop the flat boulder. There was a heavy groan, deep from below, and the ground exploded beneath her. She was hurled backwards, landing hard on her behind. The ground fractured apart around her, a ragged cleft in the soil, the dirt crumbling away into the dark chasm. She realized with stupor there was no ground beneath her. Simon shouted a warning but it was too late. He heard her scream as she vanished into the crevasse... and out of sight.
Simon dove towards the fissure. His body slid, out of control, towards the opening and, in desperation, he dug his fingers into the dirt to kill the momentum. The maneuver worked, and he found himself at the lip of the rift, looking down into the black pit.
“Simon!”
Emmeline’s cry rang out from the hole, echoing up from the darkened pit. He squinted into the fissure. The ground had been sharply cleaved, the sides of the hole appearing smooth and slick.
There was no sign of Emmeline.
He felt as if he’d been hit by a piece of lumber.
She was gone.
Still lying on his stomach, he sensed the ground pitch violently beneath him. It was dropping away, like it had done to Emmeline.
I’m about to die.
The crevasse opened up with a loud noise, as if the earth was being torn apart, and he slipped into darkness.
25 Graveyard
“OH, MY GOD!” Anna said, eyes wide in disbelief.
They were gone.
Just like
that.
From her vantage point atop the flat boulder, she had watched her friends disappear into the abyss.
And she had been unable to do a darn thing about it.
How can this be happening?
“Are you okay?” Declan said, putting his hand on her shoulder.
She turned to him. She wanted no one else to be hurt. The search for her dad had spiraled into a fight for survival, an outcome she never wished for. It had been a mistake to even try.
And the chance Frank Curtis was still alive were now impossibly slim.
The sinkhole had turned into a graveyard.
Their graveyard.
“Anna?”
“I’m good,” she said, in a hushed voice. “What are we going to do?”
They were out of harm’s way, for the moment. The boulder they stood upon was 10 meters above the ground floor.
But, by the same token, they were also trapped. The sludge was continuing to churn about, oozing from a multitude of fissures, big and small, changing the land into a gooey mishmash of overflowing glop.
“Should we try to make a run for it?”
“Do you think we can risk coming into contact with that goo?” Declan asked.
Anna stared at the way it moved across the landscape. She shook her head.
“No.”
There had been a discussion on the presumed toxicity of the sludge during the reunion. It had weighted heavily in the decision to attempt Frank’s rescue. Would direct contact to the skin cause death? Or could it be survivable, the way some people lived thru dangerous viral infections while others died? Perhaps humans could adapt to it. The human body possessed a formidable defense mechanism after all. With no valid studies, and no time for it, they were fighting both ignorance and their own fears.
“My head hurts,” Anna said.
Declan nodded. “Mine too.”
“It’s that god-awful stench.”
The goo was surrounding them from all sides, their precarious position atop the rock minutes away from being overwhelmed. The sludge was creeping up the sides of the boulder, stirring and broiling with menace. A first tendril of sludge slithered up to where they stood, its sickening gray mass contrasting with the light ochre of the rock. Another tendril joined the first, the two merging to create a fat one, as thick as a fire hose. Anna inched backwards, bumping into Declan. The tendril of sludge made its way closer and closer, turning into a large snake-like appendage as it progressed forward.
