by Lee Goldberg, Scott Nicholson, J A Konrath, J Carson Black,
Andy took the sledgehammer from Belgium and pounded away at the blocks until he could no longer lift his arms. Then Frank took over, breathing like an asthmatic. Sun had the next crack at it, struggling with the heavy weight but able to swing it underhanded.
The cinder block broke in half, leaving an L-shaped opening in the wall.
“It's not big enough,” Belgium said.
“Yes, it is.” Sun tossed the torch through the hole and then squeezed herself into it. The cinder block scraped her bare shoulders and back, but she made it through intact.
“Go on, Frank,” Andy prompted.
The biologist had to tilt his shoulders, but he managed to fit his upper body in the opening. Sun helped pull him the rest of the way through.
“C'mon Andy, let's go!” Andy looked at the opening and knew it was too small. Belgium was a thin man, one hundred and fifty pounds max. Andy was one eighty, with a broader chest and shoulders.
“I won't make it.”
“Try,” Sun pleaded.
He stuck his head and one arm through the opening, but he couldn't get the other arm in.
“Go on,” he said. “Go ahead without me.”
“No. Just get your other hand through. Then you can make it.”
Andy was wedged so tightly in the space that there was no way he could get his other hand through. The corner of the L was digging into his breast bone.
“I can't. I'm going to try to widen the hole.”
“There's no time!” Sun screamed at him.
Dr. Belgium said, “Exhale.”
“What?”
“You're lungs are full of air. Breathe all of your air out and your chest will contract.”
Andy blew out air, blew until his lungs were empty, blew until he was seeing spots. It freed up just enough space to force his other wrist through. Sun and Belgium grabbed it and pulled like crazy. The skin on Andy's arm scraped against the cinder block, and his chest felt as if he was pinned under a dump truck, but it was coming... coming...
He was through.
They yanked him the rest of the way and Sun held him, even tighter than it had been squeezing through the hole.
“I can't breathe,” Andy croaked.
She released her grip.
“The cave leads off this way,” Belgium picked up the torch. “What's our time?”
Andy looked at his watch.
“Twenty-eight minutes.”
They ran.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
This was the scariest part of all for Andy. Everything that happened prior had been beyond his control, but this last attempt at survival was completely up to him. If he ran fast enough, he'd live. If he didn't, he'd die.
The natural limestone caverns they ran through were completely dark. Sun led the way, carrying the torch, keeping it low to illuminate their footing. The ground was sometimes hard jagged rock, and other times loose gravel that sucked at their shoes like hungry fish. They ran past natural stone columns and underground pools, razor sharp walls and stalagmites, alongside steep drop offs that fell into oblivion.
Sometimes the cavern widened to the size of an auditorium, other times it was as thin as a hallway. They were following the original trail the excavation crew had made one hundred years prior, when Samhain was born. It surprised Andy to occasionally see a bootprint in the ground, the mark of someone who helped build the compound, someone long dead.
They ran as fast as safety allowed. When there was an open area ahead, Sun picked up the pace, and they sprinted until their lungs were bursting and their stomachs clenched.
There was a bad moment, at the fifteen minute mark, when the trail couldn't be found and they hit a dead end. All of them began to panic, Sun almost to the point of tears, when Dr. Belgium found a fork in the cave a hundred yards prior. They backtracked and took the fork, but precious minutes had been lost.
Andy fought the fatigue. He fought the many pains he'd incurred. But he couldn't fight his own mind, which kept telling him that this was the end, it was all over, his existence was about to be snuffed out forever.
“Please,” he begged the universe, “don't let this happen. Don't let my life stop here. There's so much I haven't done, haven't seen.”
The universe didn't answer. But surprisingly, his mind focused on something he'd long ago memorized, when he was just a boy.
Pater noster, qui es in coelis, sanctificetur nomen tuum.
Our Father, Who art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy Name.
The Lord's Prayer.
He ran on, repeating it over and over in his head.
*
Sun was in better physical shape than her male companions, and she knew it. But she couldn't slow her pace, even when they began to fall behind. She had to be the goal for them, the one in the lead who forced them to catch up.
Belgium surprised Sun. He was thin and long limbed, and on the sprints he lacked breath control, but for the most part he kept up.
Andy was the problem. He was in fair shape, but he'd suffered so many injuries. The batling attack, his wrist, all the blood he lost—it was surprising he could even stand up. Still, Sun couldn't slow down for him. If she did, they all might as well give up.
Sun only stopped once, when the torch was dying and she had to wrap the other half of Belgium's lab coat around it. The rest of the time she ran as fast as her little legs could move.
The cavern was cool, and the air was good, two things that surprised her. Her conception of caves had always been of the mining type, cramped and choked with coal dust. These caves were pleasant, even tranquil. She could see how she might enjoy exploring them one day, possibly with Andy.
It was the first time she'd considered her future since Steven died, and it opened up a floodgate of emotion. Suddenly there was so much she wanted out of life. She wanted to be married, have kids, get her medical license back, buy a little house someplace—things she'd given up on ever doing. She thought about how many times she'd worried about money, and of how little importance it actually was.
If they lived through this, she promised to herself she'd be different. More open. Less worried. More fun. Less angry. More loving.
If they lived.
*
Dr. Belgium was playing tricks with himself so as to not give in to exhaustion. He recited the Periodic Table of the Elements, then he gave himself quadratic equations to solve.
But the cave kept interfering with his ploy.
It was the most eerily quiet place Belgium had even been in. Their heavy breathing seemed to echo and amplify in the silence, sometimes chasing them through the dark.
Several times Belgium lost his train of thought, trying to gauge if the cavern was actually heading upward like it felt. Or calculating twists and turns and puzzling over whether they had gone 180 degrees and were actually running back to Samhain.
Once, he lost aural contact with Andy running behind him, and stopped to find the man on his hands and knees, vomiting. Belgium didn't bother with inspirational speeches or voiced concerns. He yanked Andy up by his shirt and pulled him back into formation.
Frank didn't think they seriously had a shot at surviving. The odds against them having made it this far were astronomical. But he still ran, and this was curious to him. Only a short time ago, he would have been content to sit at his desk and wait for the bomb to drop. Perhaps he had finally learned to accept himself. To forgive himself.
Maybe someday he might even like himself.
If he lived to see someday.
*
With five minutes to go on Andy's watch they ran out of cave.
They'd come to an open area, large enough to drive around in. Sun checked all of the walls and couldn't find any other tunnels. There was no place left to go.
“How far away are we?” Sun heaved.
“A mile and a half,” Belgium said, hands on his knees. “Maybe two. We have to get out of the cave.”
Andy leaned against a limestone wall. “Wouldn't it be safer dow
n here?”
“Samhain is an underground target. The nuke they use will go down deep. A lot of the blast effects will happen underground and could travel through these caves. The surface would be better.”
“I can't find the damn exit,” Sun's voice was beginning to crack.
Then the bats swooped down.
Sun lost it. She swung the torch like a club, screaming at the bats, determined to burn them all to cinders.
Belgium held her back.
“They're bats,” he said. “Plain old bats. If there are bats, there's an exit nearby.”
He took the torch and held it up, illuminating the high ceiling, following the path of the flying rodents until they disappeared into a crack in the wall.
“There's the exit,” Belgium pointed to a tiny sliver of light, twenty feet or so above them. The wall was so simple to climb it was almost anticlimactic. Even Andy, with his injured wrist, had no trouble with the large hand and footholds. At fifteen feet up, the tiny splinter of light had opened up into a large crevice amid an outcropping of rocks.
Sun climbed onto the floor of the desert and hugged it like a lover.
Andy dropped to his knees and said, “Thank God.”
Dr. Belgium looked around and tears streamed down his cheeks.
“This is the first sky I’ve seen in twenty years. I’ve forgotten how beautiful the world is.”
“Look!” Andy said, pointing up.
Sun noticed the telltale trail of jet exhaust and followed it back to the area they'd just fled from.
“Get down, behind these rocks,” Belgium said. “Put your fingers in your ears and close your eyes as tight as you can.”
“Are we far enough away?” Andy asked.
“We'll know in just a moment.”
They huddled down together and waited.
BEEP BEEP.
Andy's watch had counted down to zero.
Sun held her breath. She could feel the cool desert air on her face, and wondered if it would be the last thing she ever felt.
The moment stretched.
Andy said, “Maybe they—”
The light hit them first. Intense, super-bright light, blinding their eyes even though their lids were closed.
Then the sound overtook them, the slap of an angry God, louder than the loudest thunder, and at the same time they were bowled over by a hot wind, spitting dust and debris into their faces, knocking them off their feet.
The wind died suddenly, bringing absolute stillness.
Andy opened his eyes. A breeze hit them from the opposite direction, lasting a few seconds, but not nearly the strength of the blast wave.
“Negative phase,” Belgium yelled. “The blast happened so fast it created a partial vacuum, this wind is the result of suction.”
Andy wasn't listening. He was staring at the fireball. It was bright, almost too bright to look at, mostly red and violet with portions of pure white.
The giant fire column plumed at the top, becoming the recognizable mushroom cloud, gray and purple smoke billowing out in an expanding ball.
“Spectacular,” Belgium said.
Sun was also taken in by its destructive beauty. The apex of mankind's scientific endeavors. The secret of the atom, on display in all of its kiloton glory.
“We weren't burned,” Sun said. “How do we know about our radiation exposure?”
“It doesn't look like too big of a nuke, so it probably isn't a fusion bomb,” Belgium said. “We won't know until later, but I think we're far enough away. Our radiation exposure should be minimal.”
The mushroom cloud continued to expand, spreading open like a flower.
“Nothing could live through that, right?” Andy said. “Bub couldn't...”
“Nothing can survive a nuclear blast at ground zero.”
Andy frowned. “But what if all of that outer space crap was just that—crap? Isn't the devil supposed to be a liar? What was it that Father Thrist said? Satan’s greatest feat is to convince us he doesn’t exist. Lucifer is the Master of Lies.”
“Trust me, Andy,” Belgium patted his shoulder. “Even if Bub really was Lucifer, he doesn’t exist any longer.”
Andy thought about it. “So we did it,” he said. “We actually beat the devil.”
The voice came from behind them, low and hoarse.
“I'm not beaten yet.”
They spun around and watched in horror as Bub crawled out of the crevice. He looked even worse than before. One wing was missing, and the other dragged behind him, broken and bloody. Several holes in his flesh were so big that the bones showed through. Both eye sockets were empty, but he'd grown a tiny third eye in the middle of his forehead.
The demon glanced away from the trio and looked at the fireball, the plume still rising. He dropped to his haunches and vomited blood onto the desert sand.
“I am immortal... I was heeeeere before your species began... and I’ll be heeeeeeere to lead you to extinctioooooooon!”
Bub stretched out his claws and raised them to the heavens.
“YOU CAN’T KILL ME!” he screamed, his voice spreading out over the expanse of the desert.
He pointed a misshapen claw at them, accusing.
“All you diiiiiiiiiid,” Bub snarled, “is make meeeee angry.”
Sun looked around for any kind of weapon—a rock, a branch, anything at all. She saw Belgium pick up a handful of sand, and Andy ball up his fists.
Then Bub did something that none of them could have possibly expected.
He exploded.
The demon burst into dozens of pieces with a splatting sound, like a giant water balloon had popped. Andy, Sun, and Frank dove to the ground and hid their faces from the blast.
But nothing touched them.
The trio looked, and saw that each of Bub's parts had sprouted wings and remained airborn. He had become a swarm of demons, each no larger than a tennis ball.
Perfect replicas of Bub.
They circled, briefly flapping around the trio in quick figure eights. Then they all flew off in different directions, scattering into the distance, as if each had a specific destination in mind.
Eventually they faded out of sight.
Andy reached for Sun's hand and held it. She squeezed it tight. They looked at each other, and then at Dr. Belgium.
The biologist made a long face and verbalized what each of them was thinking.
“Uh-oh.”
THE END
About J.A. Konrath
Table of Contents
Desert Places
By Blake Crouch
Blake Crouch’s Amazon Author Central page
About the Author
Table of Contents
for my parents, Clay and Susan Crouch
They cannot scare me with their empty spaces
Between stars — on stars where no human race is
I have it in me so much nearer home
To scare myself with my own desert places.
— ROBERT FROST, “DESERT PLACES”
Excerpts from “Desert Places” and “The Road Not Taken” from The Poetry of Robert Frost edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright © 1916, 1969 by Henry Holt and Company, 1964 by Lesley Frost Ballantine, 1936, 1944 by Robert Frost. Reprinted by permission of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.
I.
1
ON a lovely May evening, I sat on my deck, watching the sun descend upon Lake Norman. So far, it had been a perfect day. I’d risen at 5:00 A.M. as I always do, put on a pot of French roast, and prepared my usual breakfast of scrambled eggs and a bowl of fresh pineapple. By six o’clock, I was writing, and I didn’t stop until noon. I fried two white crappies I’d caught the night before, and the moment I sat down for lunch, my agent called. Cynthia fields my messages when I’m close to finishing a book, and she had several for me, the only one of real importance being that the movie deal for my latest novel, Blue Murder, had closed. It was good news of course, but two other movies had been made from my books, s
o I was used to it by now.
I worked in my study for the remainder of the afternoon and quit at 6:30. My final edits of the new as yet untitled manuscript would be finished tomorrow. I was tired, but my new thriller, The Scorcher, would be on bookshelves within the week. I savored the exhaustion that followed a full day of work. My hands sore from typing, eyes dry and strained, I shut down the computer and rolled back from the desk in my swivel chair.
I went outside and walked up the long gravel drive toward the mailbox. It was the first time I’d been out all day, and the sharp sunlight burned my eyes as it squeezed through the tall rows of loblollies that bordered both sides of the drive. It was so quiet here. Fifteen miles south, Charlotte was still gridlocked in rush-hour traffic, and I was grateful not to be a part of that madness. As the tiny rocks crunched beneath my feet, I pictured my best friend, Walter Lancing, fuming in his Cadillac. He’d be cursing the drone of horns and the profusion of taillights as he inched away from his suite in uptown Charlotte, leaving the quarterly nature magazine Hiker to return home to his wife and children. Not me, I thought, the solitary one.
For once, my mailbox wasn’t overflowing. Two envelopes lay inside, one a bill, the other blank except for my address typed on the outside. Fan mail.
Back inside, I mixed myself a Jack Daniel’s and Sun-Drop and took my mail and a book on criminal pathology out onto the deck. Settling into a rocking chair, I set everything but my drink on a small glass table and gazed down to the water. My backyard is narrow, and the woods flourish a quarter mile on either side, keeping my home of ten years in isolation from my closest neighbors. Spring had not come this year until mid-April, so the last of the pink and white dogwood blossoms still specked the variably green interior of the surrounding forest. Bright grass ran down to a weathered gray pier at the water’s edge, where an ancient weeping willow sagged over the bank, the tips of its branches dabbling in the surface of the water.
