Down: Trilogy Box Set

by Glenn Cooper

  “We know where she is,” John said, “and we’re going to get her on our way out of here.”

  “Where is she?” Trotter asked.

  The young guard winced again as he talked. “In the dungeons.”

  John lifted his cloak and unslung his rifle.

  “An AK-47,” Trotter said. “Brilliant move. Bravo, Camp.”

  “Thanks for your endorsement,” John deadpanned. “All right everyone, stick together like glue.” Then he said to the young guard, “You’re going to take us to the dungeons in a way that avoids your friends. If not, the first bullet that comes out of this big, black gun is going in your brain.” Finally he whispered to Trevor, “Keep tabs on Trotter. I don’t trust him.”

  The guard led them down a back staircase to the ground level and past some storerooms to a flight of winding stone stairs that were almost too dark to navigate. The air in the lowest level of the palace was fetid and damp. The stone walls of the corridor were cold and slimy.

  “Just around the corner,” the guard whispered to John.

  “How many guards will we find?” John asked.

  A shrug brought on a gasp of pain from his cracked ribs. “Not sure.”

  “You go first,” John said. “I’ll be right behind you. The rest of you, stay back.”

  Trevor made sure Trotter saw his blackpowder pistol. “Behave yourself,” Trevor said.

  “Don’t worry, we’re on the same team,” Trotter replied.

  Halfway down the next corridor, four burly soldiers were hunched over playing dice. At first they waved at the young guard and called for him to come but as soon as they saw John they reached for their swords and charged.

  John berated himself for needing six rounds to put the four of them down. He reached for a ring of keys on the belt of a stricken man. The young guard pulled his fingers out of his ears. When John asked him which was the cell, he led him there. The rest of the group followed.

  Each cell was crammed with pathetic, starving men, too weak to even grasp the bars or call for help. But one cell had a single occupant, a woman curled in a fetal position on a bed of dirty straw.

  “That’s her,” the guard said.

  John began trying keys. While he worked he told the others to check the other cells for Kelly. When the lock turned he motioned for Chris to help him.

  John gave Trevor the rifle and he went inside with Chris.

  The woman knelt beside Smithwick and said, “Karen, it’s Chris. We’ve come to get you out of here. We’re going home. We’re going back to Earth.”

  Smithwick turned her head toward them and Chris fell backwards at the sight. Her lower face and neck were swollen beyond recognition and covered in dried blood.

  John dropped to his knees to have a closer look. “Karen, it's John Camp. What did they do to you?”

  Smithwick tried to speak but she could only make guttural sounds. He told Chris to bring a candle burning on a table by the guard station and by its light he gently opened Smithwick’s mouth.

  “My God,” he said.

  “What is it?” Chris asked.

  “They’ve cut out her tongue.”

  Chris choked back tears while John told Smithwick he was going to help her up. It was clear she was too weak to walk so he gently lifted her over his shoulder.

  In the hall the others looked on in shock as Chris passed the word what had happened to her.

  “Trevor, take the point,” John said. “There’re eleven rounds left in the mag.”

  “What about me?” the young guard asked.

  “Which way out?” John asked.

  “Just down there.”

  “I can lock you in,” John said.

  “I’ll be tortured when I’m found. I hate to say it but I’d be grateful if you’d shoot me in the arm and leave me lying with those lads. By the look of them they’ll be telling no tales.”

  Trevor laid the guard down on the pile of writhing bodies and put a round through his triceps muscle. The young man yelped in pain and then gave him a grateful nod.

  “Let’s go,” John said.

  Chris piped up, “We didn’t find Kelly.”

  “I’m sorry,” John said. “She could be dead. She could be anywhere. It’s a big palace. She could have even been sold off to someone on the outside. We’ve got to get out of here. Then we’ll need to find a boat big enough for all of us.”

  Trotter said, “Cromwell keeps his barge on the docks.”

  At the sound of Trotter’s voice, John felt Smithwick squirming on his shoulder. He made sure he had a good purchase on her and began walking. No one but Trotter saw the bug-eyed way she stared at him and no one could understand the stream of guttural sounds that began to spill from her swollen mouth.

  35

  Trevor tiptoed along the dock. What he saw sent him hurrying back to the shadows of the warehouse building where the others were waiting.

  “The barge is crawling with soldiers,” he told John.

  “What are they doing?”

  “Drinking by the sound of it.”

  “Can we take them?”

  “Not without casualties, guv. Too many of them.”

  There were shouts coming from near the palace.

  “Search the area!”

  “Find them!”

  As calmly as possible John told the frightened Earthers that they’d have to find a place to hide. He had put Karen Smithwick on the ground where she had curled into a fetal tuck, and now he lifted her to his shoulder again.

  “You should leave her,” Trotter hissed.

  “Not going to happen,” John said.

  “You’ll slow us down.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  With Trevor on point the group of men and women began running along a dark alley into the rabbit warren of London streets. It was late and the streets were deserted. Trevor searched for somewhere to shelter and led them away from the river, further into the medieval city. George Lawrence was frail and having trouble keeping pace but Matthew Coppens and David Laurent helped him along. The voices of soldiers looking for them were not fading. Their pursuers were keeping pace.

  They ran past a long, low building. Trevor paused to try a large double door. It creaked open. Inside, a man began screaming, “Get out! Get out! I have a pistol!”

  He quickly shut the door and kept going.

  He made a random turn down a very narrow alleyway and checked the others. The group snaked single-file behind him. A foul, pungent odor began to fill their nostrils. From the way she was squirming on his shoulder, John could tell it was bothering Smithwick and it bothered him too. He wondered if there was a rotting room nearby, but as the odor got stronger it seemed to be different from the stench of decaying flesh. In some ways it was worse, more acrid and burning.

  Midway along the alley a small door was wide open. The building was a ramshackle, timber-framed structure. It seemed the door had been left open for ventilation because the stench was pouring from it like gas from a swamp.

  Trevor stopped and holding his breath, peered in.

  “We’re not going in there!” Stuart Binford gagged.

  They heard one soldier shouting to another, too close-by for comfort.

  “Yeah, ’fraid so,” Trevor said. “Tell the others to cover their faces best they can.”

  “I don’t think I’ll need to tell them that,” Binford said.

  As they shuffled into the dark building, Leroy Bitterman retched and asked, “What is this place?”

  John answered, “It’s not a rotting room.”

  “Thank God for that,” Bitterman said.

  “It’s worse, I reckon,” Trevor said, pointing his rifle into a space that was all blackness except for a faint glow coming from across a seemingly large expanse.

  “Surely we can’t stay here,” Campbell Bates said.

  John put Smithwick down gently and propped her against a wall. She gagged and sputtered. “Does someone have a cloth to put around her face?” he asked.


  Chris had a washcloth she carried with her and tied it into a mask.

  John did some shrugs to ease his cramped shoulder. “I think it’s a good place to hide because of the smell. If I were one of Cromwell’s soldiers making slave wages I wouldn’t stick my face in here.”

  “Being chased by the king’s men, are you?”

  The voice came from the darkness.

  “Who’s there?” Trevor challenged.

  “Shouldn’t I be asking you lot that question?”

  “Show yourself,” Trevor said. “We’re armed and I will shoot.”

  “Calm yourself, matey. If you’re not rovers nor militiamen then I’m not your enemy and you’re not mine.”

  The faint glow got closer until they saw it was a candle held by a small man with a leather apron hanging over a bare, muscular chest. When he was some thirty feet away Trevor told him to stop. That’s when they realized there were half a dozen more men behind him.

  “We’ve no weapons,” the man said. “This is my place. These are my men. We work here. We live here. Are you recents?”

  John answered. “You might say that.”

  “Might I?” the man asked. “What else might I say?”

  “You can’t smell us?” John asked.

  “That’s a laugh. We can’t smell nothing no more which is much to our advantage.”

  “We’re not dead,” John said.

  The men whispered to each other and their boss said, “There’s been all sorts of rumors flying ’bout some door to the other side’s that opened allowing Earth dwellers to come to our blighted land.”

  “The rumors are true,” John said. “We’re trying to get home.”

  “And the king’s men don’t wish for you to do so,” the man said.

  “Something like that,” John said. “What is this place?”

  “It’s a tannery.”

  “That explains it,” Lawrence gasped. “I thought I recognized the stench. It’s like the tanneries I visited in Morocco. Rotting flesh, ammonia, pigeon shit.”

  They heard the soldiers coming down the alley.

  “Best come to the rear,” the tanner said. “Christopher, take the candle and lead them. Is she sick?” he asked pointing at Smithwick.

  “They cut out her tongue,” Chris said.

  “Sounds like their methods,” the tanner said.

  John picked up Smithwick and followed the candle around the mosaic of tanning vats dug into the floor. The tanner stood by the open door and waited.

  “Think he’s going to shaft us?” Trevor whispered to John from the back of the tannery behind a bunch of barrels.

  “We’ll find out soon.”

  A party of soldiers pulled up panting beside the open door of the tannery.

  “Out for an evening stroll?” the tanner asked.

  “Have you seen anyone fleeing us?” one of the soldiers asked.

  “Why would anyone wish to flee the likes of you?”

  The soldier was a dullard. “They’re alive.”

  “If I were alive I’d be fleeing you too, I’m quite sure,” the tanner said.

  “You’ve seen no one?”

  “Only my own shadow but you fine men may enter and search my premises if you so desire.”

  The soldier wrinkled his nose. “I’d sooner have my supper inside a rotting room,” he said, continuing his search along the alley.

  The tanner came to the rear and lit another candle.

  “Thank you,” John said. “What’s your name?”

  “It is John. John, the tanner.”

  “My name’s John too.”

  “But you are no tanner.”

  John smiled. “Why are you helping us?”

  “I despise the king’s men. They steal from me, they beat me, they threaten to drown me in my vats. I spit on them.”

  John reached into his pocket and produced one of Garibaldi’s gold coins. “Like I said, thank you.”

  The tanner took the coin and bit down on it. “Well, I should be thanking you. It’s a fine piece of metal.”

  “We’ll need to stay till tomorrow night,” John said.

  “You’ll be wanting food then.”

  John sniffed the air. “I don’t think food’s high on our list right now.”

  The tanner chuckled. “Before long, you won’t even notice the smell. You’ll be thinking you’re in a flowering garden. We’ll be back to our beds. In the morn we’ll bring you some bread. This lovely barrel’s got beer in it. Don’t recommend you drink the water in here. There’s a slop trench over there.”

  “What else could a man want?” John said.

  “What else indeed?” the tanner replied.

  Most of them slept fitfully in the miasma of noxious vapors but John and Trevor resolved to stay on guard. To keep sleep at bay they talked quietly into the night.

  “If we get out of this what are you going to do with yourself?” Trevor asked.

  “When, not if.”

  “Yeah, all right, we’ll keep it positive.”

  “Emily and I’ve talked about it. She says she wants to do something different, maybe teaching physics at a university.”

  “And you?”

  “Drinking beer, watching sports, and waking up every morning next to her—that’ll do me. Actually I thought about maybe opening a school for martial arts, you know, self defense.”

  “You’d be good at it.”

  “What about you?” John asked.

  Trevor stifled a yawn. “I’m not a big planner, guv, never have been. I tend to follow my nose. That’s how I came to be working for you if I recall. But right now my nose is leading me to Arabel and her kids. I feel a serious case of domestication coming on.”

  John buried his face in his hands.

  “What?” Trevor said.

  “Is that going to make us brothers-in-law?”

  Trevor showed a bit of mock horror. “It doesn’t work that way, does it?”

  “Even if it doesn’t we could be having Sunday dinners and Christmases together.”

  “I’m a 42,” Trevor said.

  “Huh?”

  “My shirt size. If you get it right the first time, I won’t have to exchange the pressie.”

  When daylight came the tannery workers got to work stirring up gut-wrenching smells from their vats. Those Earthers who’d managed to swallow their rations of bread struggled to keep the food in their stomachs.

  Everyone spent the day huddled behind the barrels, tapping into the beer to keep from getting dehydrated. “Can you eat at all, luv?” Chris asked Smithwick.

  The miserable woman was almost unresponsive.

  “Can you drink a bit? You’ve got to drink some. You’re dehydrated.”

  Chris detected a flicker of interest and spent the rest of the day patiently doling out tiny sips of beer.

  Since half the Earthers had been away at the forge for several weeks, there was a good deal of catching up to do and everyone took part, everyone but Trotter who sat as far away from the rest of them as he could pretending not to hear when his name came up.

  In the afternoon John woke from a nap and sat beside Bates and Lawrence who were locked in an animated discussion about Trotter. It grew loud enough that Trotter decided to get up and find a piece of wall to lean against closer to the front of the tannery.

  “Want to help?” John the tanner said to him, offering up his vat paddle.

  “No I do not,” Trotter replied, folding his arms.

  John came over and sat beside the intelligence chiefs. “So what’s his story?” John asked.

  “Trotter?” Bates said. “He’s a snake-in-the-grass, first degree. Before we were sent to the forge he ingratiated himself to Cromwell and the Duke of Suffolk—a real creep, he was—and managed to get himself private quarters, better food, lord knows what. When we were sent to build the blast furnace he wouldn’t do a stitch of work. Saw it as beneath him. I can’t stand the guy.”

  Lawrence nodded. “Karen took
to calling him Hell’s Quisling and she was absolutely right. We suspected he was complicit in the suicide of Brenda Mitchell, a nice young lady who was snatched away by Suffolk for his personal enjoyment, if you know what I mean. Then Kelly, another nice young girl went missing and, well, the suspicion fell on Anthony.”

  “Any evidence?” John asked, glowering at Trotter across the tannery.

  “Well, not really,” Lawrence said, “but Karen was convinced. The night she went missing she went to confront him. He maintained she never arrived. Frankly it beggars belief and poor old Karen can’t tell us what happened to her. If I survive this, I intend to destroy him.”

  “I’ll be right by your side, George,” Bates said.

  At nightfall John the tanner agreed to have a quick walkabout to look for patroling soldiers. When he reported that the streets were quiet, John and Trevor made a run to the river to check on Cromwell’s barge.

  They returned a short while later, dispirited. The craft was still crawling with soldiers.

  John produced another gold coin and gave it to the tanner.

  “Can we enjoy your hospitality another day?” he asked.

  “If you pay at this rate, you can stay a year,” the tanner said, pocketing the loot.

  “Did you live in London? Before, I mean,” John asked.

  “I did. Not far from here.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, I passed away in 1820 or thereabouts. Touch of the plague.”

  “Were you a tanner?”

  “I was. All I ever knew, except for drinking and raising Cain which is what landed me here.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It’s a funny thing, really, but ever since I was a lad my mother always told me I was going to Hell so I sort of expected it. Didn’t quite have the right notion of it though, did I? I expected fire and brimstone and got an eternity of pigeon shit instead.”

  Trevor came over and offered to take the first night’s watch. John didn’t debate him. He was beyond exhausted. Seconds after he curled up in the corner he was out cold.

  The flat plain of the Helmand Province was somewhere below them hidden by the blackness of night. Staring out the open door of the Black Hawk MH-60, John could feel the wind against his face. The rotor action vibrated through his body.