Blood Secret

by Jaye Ford

  ‘Have you done this sort of thing before?’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘Rescuing people?’

  He’d seen her pack equipment, use tools, bark orders, must have been trying to find an explanation – and she wished suddenly she was a better person for him, like the one he was trying to invent. Someone to give him hope. ‘I saved my sister once.’ She shrugged, tried a smile but it fell from her face as his question found its mark. ‘Mostly I just saved myself. I never had anyone else who needed me. Who I needed. Now I need to find Max more than anything I’ve ever done.’

  Her throat tightened and her eyes stung and she angled the torch down the tunnel again so Hayden wouldn’t see the shine in her own eyes. ‘I know how to find my way in the dark – I’ve done that before. I need you to make sure I’m safe in there. Can you do that?’ Could she trust him?

  ‘I’ll wait here for you, make sure no one locks you in.’

  ‘Thanks, I definitely don’t want to be locked in but it’s not safe for you in here.’

  ‘No one can see me.’

  He had to understand. ‘Listen, Hayden. I think someone hurt your dad and I think it’s someone who knows us. It might be the person who took my gun or there might be more than one person involved. And they might come up here looking for us. Do you understand what I’m telling you?’

  He opened his mouth to speak, then just nodded.

  ‘If you stay in here, there’s no way to get out if someone else comes down. So you need to go up top. Hide in the bush. Close enough to see me when I come out, far enough in so you won’t be seen if someone shows up. Okay?’

  Another nod.

  ‘Don’t make any calls and don’t answer any. There’ll be no reception in there so it won’t be me and I’m the only person you need to be talking to. If someone turns up, stay out of sight. If they go into the bunker, call the cops.’

  ‘What if it’s Uncle James?’

  ‘No one, Hayden. Even if it’s someone you trust.’ She saw the flash of uncertainty in his eyes. ‘I know you don’t want to hear that but I’m going into a hole with only one exit. Until we know what’s going on, the only people we can trust are you and me.’ She watched his face for a sign of dissent. He licked his lips and rubbed them together as he watched her back. What was he looking for? ‘We need to get moving.’ She grabbed her backpack, dug out a snack bar and box of juice and handed it to him. ‘Try not to run the batteries down on the torch.’

  He didn’t move.

  ‘Come on, Hayden.’ Was he scared or debating her instructions?

  It happened quickly. He was in her arms before she realised, ducking his head, pressing his cheek to her shoulder. A gruff, awkward, boy-type hug. It was so unexpected, so out of character that for a few seconds she didn’t know how to respond. Just held one hand above his back, waiting for him to pull away. But he didn’t, so she let it land, giving him a pat, then pressing him closer, holding him briefly, tightly to her.

  ‘We’ll find him, Hayden. I won’t stop looking.’

  He stepped away, knuckling a hand across his mouth, keeping his face averted.

  ‘I’ll see you soon,’ she said. ‘Brain in gear, okay?’

  42

  She stayed by the opening until the light from Hayden’s torch faded from the ammunitions bunker then aimed hers straight ahead at the darkness, clenching her teeth on the dread filling her chest.

  Don’t be dead, Max. Be conscious enough to hear and answer back.

  ‘Max!’

  Her voice reverberated away, sucked into the depths of whatever lay ahead. She listened in the following silence. All she heard was the pulse pounding in her ears.

  She put the mallet in her pack, left the other tools in the bunker, then hitched her bag onto her back, glad the tunnel was high enough to stand upright. Ten steps in and she saw the elbow in the wall ahead, the engraving and the arrow pointing in the direction she’d come: No. 4, Bennett’s Bunker. So the gun emplacement closest to the road was near the end, not the beginning. Would the maze get more complicated the further she went in?

  Stepping into the mouth of the new tunnel, she called again and sensed the space ahead of her. Narrow and never-ending. As she walked, graffiti moved past her on both sides like a cartoon reel in slow motion. Wartime scratchings and more recent: MT was here; Jack Akkers, Corporal, 1943; Fuck you. There was paint slapped about and sprayed on, the signature blocky letters of street artists; crude drawings; a devil’s face, its red lines dripping like blood. None of it did anything to slow her breathing.

  The air felt still and stale with the slightly sweet stink of something rotting. She moved the torch beam up and down, side to side, anxious to find the source of the smell before she walked into it. She was thinking bats and rats when she saw it. A brief, faint glint on the dirt near her feet. She moved quickly, focusing the beam on . . . a piece of . . .

  It was Max’s watch.

  *

  There’d been noises. Intermittent distant echoes that’d found their way through the dark passageways like whispers. He’d tried shouting but there was no volume to his voice anymore or enough fluid left inside him to make tears.

  He closed his eyes, his mind reeling and spinning, turning inwards and backwards to the ever slowing march of his past, praying he could stay alive long enough for the source of the sounds to find him.

  Rennie. Working, painting, stressing about the big job. He barely saw her for days, which he was grateful for. He was ashamed and disgusted with James, worried about Naomi, anxious for Pav. Her bullshit detector would pick it up and he didn’t want her involved. She’d wanted better stories in her life – this one didn’t qualify.

  It was the end of the week when Max started making demands. He got nowhere trying to reason with James and the shouting came back to him in dizzying, nauseating bursts. His cousin was going to leave a fucking mess and Max couldn’t bring himself to just watch it happen. He told James he had to admit the affair to Naomi, give her a chance to get things in place before the baby came and gather her family for support. He told him he could take the profit to date, Max’s share too, but the rest had to go back in the accounts – there were bills to be paid and business loans to close and Max wasn’t going into debt for his cousin’s mid-life crisis. If he didn’t see the dollars in the bank, he’d go to the police. Funny how the ‘you’re my cousin’ argument made sense to James when there was a chance he might lose something.

  Max got drunk in front of the TV that night, watch­ing the Friday night soccer and trying to bolster himself for the next episode. He felt the disjointed numbness of it now, not sure if it was memory or his brain cells checking out.

  Saturday he . . . Had he spoken to Rennie before she left for the breakfast shift? He could only remember fortifying himself with painkillers so she wouldn’t notice how bad his hangover was when he went see Pav at Skiffs later. Max cornered him in the kitchen, made him swear not to meet the supplier on his own. He needed cops or, at the very least, a friend who knew how to swing a fist. It was stupid bravado but it was all he could think of.

  And Dallas. He thought of Dallas a lot.

  None of it – Pav, James, Naomi, Rennie, the whole mixed-up ugly mess – felt worthwhile, not even the fact that he wasn’t the arsehole in the equation this time. He just wanted . . .

  Pain sliced through him. Knife-edge sharp. Icy, burning. It made his ears ring and his brain hiss with static and his pulse pound in his throat.

  Rennie scooped the watch into her hand, heart racing, the light jumping and leaping across every surface as she searched the darkness for him.

  ‘Max! It’s Rennie. Maaax!’ The echo seemed to roll on for a whole minute. How the hell would she hear him? She waited for the sound to die and tried again, speaking slowly through the reverb. ‘Make a sound if you can hear me.’ As she strained for a reply, the
stench seemed to intensify. Whatever it was must be close. She crept forward, beam down, and stopped.

  There were indentations in the earth on the tunnel floor. It looked like scuff marks made by shoes and the pressure of large body parts, hips and butt. Then in the centre, where the surface was hard packed from fifty years of foot traffic, was a puddle shape and the unmistakable residue of old vomit. ‘Oh God, Max.’

  Urgency and fear pushed her forward, moving fast, keeping the light trained ahead. The graffiti grew more sparse, as though only the strongest and bravest made it this far. Christ, she hoped not.

  She’d gone about three hundred metres when she saw the opening in the right-hand wall. Shining the torch around the corner, she saw only more rock wall and a long, dark tunnel. There were engravings on each face of the corner. She was standing in Wangi Wangi Way, the new passage was East Street. Which way did you go, Max?

  Calling as she ran straight ahead, she reached another locked gate, turned around and headed back to the T-junction, the pack thumping on her back as she turned the corner and followed it. A dark, damp strip on the wall made her pause – water leaking in from above that reminded her Max had been missing for almost forty-eight hours and losing more fluids by retching. Then another junction: Rathmines Row carved into the rock. The tunnel to the seaplane base at Rathmines? Hayden said it was bricked up.

  ‘Max!’

  She waited, turned left, heard a noise and stopped as the hairs on the back of her neck sat up.

  ‘Max?’

  The echo died, the silence enfolded her. She waited. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. There it was. Not a voice, not human. A brief, dull . . . scrape. It sounded like something dragged fleetingly across the rock. And again.

  She fought the urge to cry his name and listened, swinging her head one way then the other, not sure which direction it came from. She didn’t shout this time. ‘I can hear you. Do it again if you can.’

  Another scrape and another, and adrenaline fired like electrodes. ‘I’m coming!’ She spun, headed the other way, feet pounding, light careering around the walls as she searched ahead.

  A shape in the darkness at the furthest reach of her torch beam. Low down, hard up against the left-side wall.

  ‘Max? Is that you?’

  It didn’t move. It didn’t look like Max. It didn’t look like anything living. And she started to slow up, unsure, unnerved, dread rushing through her veins.

  She brought her bold game. It was in her voice. Firm, determined, hard-edged. It sounded fucking fabulous. Max let the stone drop from his fingers, glad she’d finally heard him, wishing she’d hurry up and get there. Wishing he’d curled in his foetal position facing in the other direction so he could see more than just the glow of light getting bigger and brighter. But man, after total darkness, he could hardly bring himself to blink.

  ‘Max?’

  There was hesitance in her tone. Maybe she thought he was dead. Maybe he was. He tried to swallow but his throat was like sandpaper. He nudged his head a little.

  ‘Max.’

  A scatter of dirt and she was there, fingers on his shoulder, then crawling around his feet then her face in his. Oh God, her face. He thought he’d never see it again. He wanted to smile but only one side of his mouth twitched. She cupped his jaw in her hands and kissed him, pressed soft lips to his forehead, cheek, ear. She smelt of sweat and heat and fresh air and coffee and he wished he could get an arm around her, find enough voice to tell her he loved her.

  ‘Don’t try to talk. I’ve got water. Just hang on a second more.’

  Then cool, wet, heavenly water was on his lips, his tongue, filling his mouth, trickling a magical course down his throat. He coughed, gagging on it, swallowing on compulsion.

  ‘Slow down. There’s plenty. It’s going to be okay. You’ll be okay. I’m going to get you out. I’m . . .’ She was crying. For a few short moments, her shoulders shuddered, her lips trembled and a single fat tear slipped over an eyelid leaving a clean trail in the smudges on her cheek. Then she pulled it together, pushed the heel of a hand across her face. ‘I’m going to get you home.’

  He couldn’t take his eyes off her. All wild hair and fierce resolve – and his guilt at bringing her down here joined the rest of the pain in his body. ‘I’m sorry, sorry. I thought you’d leave.’ It was more croak than formed words.

  She cradled his head in her elbow. ‘Shhh, it’s okay. Try to drink some more.’

  The water cleared his throat a little. ‘Tunnels?’

  ‘Yes, you’re in the tunnels under the gun emplacements up at the point.’ She fingered the crusted wound on his temple. ‘Where are you hurt?’

  ‘Right there.’

  ‘Sorry. Where else?’ Her hands moved over him, feeling his arms, his pelvis, his legs.

  ‘Neck hurts. Cracked ribs.’

  ‘How’s your hip?’

  ‘Still there. Seems to work.’

  ‘I found your watch back at the entrance. How did you get here?’

  ‘Walked, crawled, dragged.’

  ‘So you can walk?’

  ‘Not if I don’t have to.’

  She picked up the torch, shone it one way then the other, uneasiness in her eyes when she looked back at him. ‘I’m sorry, baby, but you’re going to have to. We can’t stay here. It’s not safe.’

  He wasn’t sure what the problem was. ‘Can’t you call someone?’

  ‘There is no one else. It’s just me. You and me. I don’t know why you’re here but I think I figured some of it out and we need to leave before anyone else realises and comes to check. Can you sit up?’

  She wasn’t really asking, was already hauling him up against the wall. He tipped his head against it, closed his eyes on the spinning inside his skull, trying to process what she’d told him. Just Rennie. She’d found him on her own. She’d figured something out. Did she know what had happened?

  She got his feet sorted, wrapped his arm around her neck, squatted underneath it like a weightlifter. ‘I can’t carry you, Max. You’ve got to help, okay?’

  ‘I’ve lost some weight recently.’

  ‘Yeah, you look terrific.’

  ‘Not as good as you.’

  Her face softened for a moment, her mouth lifting at one side. ‘We’ve both had better days. Use the wall for support. Here we go.’

  He breathed hard against the nausea, the dizziness, glad his legs still worked and he didn’t fall on his face again.

  ‘Great. You’re doing great,’ she told him.

  ‘I’m glad you found me.’

  ‘I’m glad you kept breathing.’

  While he rested against the wall and drank some more, she swung a pack onto her back and lit up the passage with the torch. It looked like hell down here. It was hell but it was better with a light on.

  ‘Right, let’s go.’

  Half carrying him, staying close to the rock so he could hold on, she hauled him in the direction she’d come. The entrance was back there? ‘How close was I?’

  ‘Close?’

  ‘To the bunker?’

  ‘I don’t know where the next one is. I came in through the second gun emplacement, number four, the one closest to the track. I found your watch back there. I think it’s where you started. How many entrances have you been to?’

  ‘I never found one. I took a punt, ended up here.’ He closed his eyes. ‘Shoulda gone the other way.’

  ‘No. You did good, Max. I only heard about this place an hour ago. If you’d gone the other way, someone else might’ve found you first.’

  She didn’t want anyone else to find him? ‘I could’ve got out.’

  ‘No, Max. You were locked in.’ She stopped, shone the light into an adjoining tunnel. ‘Do you need a break?’

  ‘Need a holiday.’ He leaned against the sharp edge of the corner, sucking at
the air, letting her words roll through his mind. Locked in. As in not meant to get out. As in left to die?

  ‘Sorry, babe, but we need to keep moving.’ She took his weight again.

  ‘Who locked me in?’

  ‘I thought you’d know.’

  ‘I thought I was down the mine again. I thought a lot of things. I wanted to keep you out of it.’

  43

  Saturday afternoon and the promise of another shit-storm on its way had terrified him. Life as he knew it, as he’d encouraged and nurtured and harvested, was about to be hit by a road train. He’d dug over the garden, needing the release, not knowing what else he could do. Then he’d watched Rennie paint for a while before Trish’s party, her overalls splattered in colour, her lean arms strong and sinewy, her hair piled up on her head like a crazed halo. Whatever she’d been through, she’d survived and come here and loved him. And it frightened him that she’d see the fallout and leave – like she always said she would.

  Maybe it was better if she did. She didn’t say it but he knew she loved him. Deep down in that place buried beneath all her layers. Maybe leaving would do less damage than staying and sifting through remains with him.

  Maybe she had.

  Maybe she came back.

  Maybe . . .

  *

  ‘Did I kiss you goodbye?’ Max remembered the party now. The kid in the car park, the sharp words with Rennie, the dread that James would turn up and play happy father-to-be. ‘I can’t remember leaving the party. Can we rest?’

  Rennie had stopped talking a few metres back. Possibly she was just tired but he’d felt her spine stiffen and her pace falter when he told her he’d wanted to keep her out of it. What did she know?

  She wouldn’t let him sit. She propped him against the wall and gave him juice this time. It tasted awful in his dry mouth but the sugar hit was sensational. It loosened his chest, made it easier to breathe, made him feel as though he could hold the weight of his own spine.

  ‘Where did I go after the party?’ he asked when they were moving again.