by Paul Haines
Some time later, the candle guttered and the last of the wax dripped off the table edge. Don had been hoping for some scrap of light, a grey beam telling them they weren’t buried that deep, that maybe they had some hope. So he waited, but the darkness was an impenetrable shroud. He was taunted by visions of Marco in that video, hostage with duct tape over his mouth, the cigar cutter, fingers dropping to the floor. Plump, juicy fingers. Drool slipped over his bottom lip, down his chin. He let it go. Who was he keeping up appearances for now?
Time passed. Maybe minutes, maybe hours or days. Outside, the infuriating cascade of melting snow continued. The pool of water under the door got big enough to share. Thank God for global warming.
Don pushed himself up from the puddle. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“What?”
“That story. The Stephen King story.”
“ ‘Survivor Type’?”
“Yeah.”
Don waited, expecting Rick to make some pre-emptive strike, pooh-poohing the idea before he’d even voiced it. But he didn’t.
“We’re not surgeons. But we could tear up the banner for tourniquets, use the road salt to stem the blood flow,” Don said.
“Oh, Jesus.”
“I’d eat myself, but we don’t have a knife. I can’t bear the thought of biting into my own flesh.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
“Think of it this way. If we survive, you’ll live off this story for the rest of your life. They’ll probably make a movie about it.”
There was a long pause. Don thought Rick had fallen asleep. But eventually, he spoke.
“How . . . how to we decide who goes first?”
“The usual way.”
More silence, then the noise of Rick fishing the coin out of his top pocket. Don got a match ready.
“Call,” Rick said. The coin whistled briefly through the darkness, before the slap of flesh on flesh.
“Heads.”
Don lit the match as Rick pulled his hand away. Tails.
“Shit.”
By match light, they tore the Islamist banner into strips, and moved everything they would need beside the door.
“Arm or leg?” Rick said.
“Leg. We can hobble out of here on one leg, but we need our arms.”
Don pulled his pants off, then sat on them on the cold floor.
Together, they tied a tourniquet around the top of his leg, and readied some salt and a makeshift bandage. And then they were quiet again.
Don’s breath rasped in time with the throbbing in his leg.
“Are you ready?” Rick said.
“No. But do it anyway.”
Don squeezed his eyes shut—a childhood habit useless in the pitch black. There was a rumbling noise—so low that, at first, he thought he was imagining it. He felt Rick’s hands against his leg, then lips and teeth.
“Wait!”
Rick pulled away. They could both hear it now. The bunker vibrated.
“Holy shit!” Don said. “It’s the truck!”
But it wasn’t. The noise grew louder and louder, until the bunker rattled with the force of it. Another avalanche. The two men embraced, swearing and calling on a God neither really believed in. The flood of snow passed overhead and the darkness and silence seemed even more impenetrable. They peered around, hoping for some ray of light, a glimmer of hope, but the darkness was unbroken.
“Go on, then,” Don said. “Make it quick.”
The hands grabbed his leg again, this time more forcefully. Lips pressed against his flesh and then there was an explosion of pain, bright red on black. Don let fly with a torrent of curses, each one bouncing back off the bunker walls. He pressed a hand to his leg and felt the wound, blood pulsing slowly. He could hear Rick gagging.
“Don’t you spew, you bastard. The damage is done,” he said.
Don heard hands slide against dusty concrete, then felt a new bloom of agony as Rick thrust salt into his wound. He greyed out, and when he came to his leg was throbbing again, red pulsing through his eyeballs. Rick panted in the darkness.
“I guess it’s your turn now,” he said.
“Uh-huh.”
Don waited until Rick was ready and then lowered his face to the plump thigh. He smelt sweat and piss; Rick’s leg hairs tickled his lips. He opened his mouth as wide as he could and visualised a rump steak at the Brekkie Creek Hotel, rare and bloody, just the way he liked it. He bit down and tasted flesh. Warm blood pumped over his face, as Rick’s abuse battered his eardrums. He resisted the urge to jerk away, instead sucking the blood into his mouth and swallowing.
No point letting good food go to waste, he thought, and hysteria bubbled at the back of his mind.
Don rolled to one side, panting, enjoying the surge of energy the fresh blood was already providing. After a moment, he slid his hands around on the floor, looking for the bag of salt. He grabbed a handful, shoved it into Rick’s wound. Rick screamed. Don was glad.
Now you know what it feels like, you prick.
They spent what felt like hours telling each other they’d done the right thing, that it was their only hope of survival, but the lie was bitter on Don’s tongue. There was always a choice. Brave men chose to die. He knew that if he survived, he would never purge himself of that strangely exotic flavour. He was stained.
Guilt subsided, hunger filled the void. They feasted, with no way of knowing how much closer to rescue—if any—they were edging.
They told each other how vile it was to eat another living being’s flesh. But in truth, Don enjoyed it this time. Like sheep’s brains or bird nest soup, it was only disgusting because we told ourselves it should be. Any qualms he earlier had were quieted by the coppery tang of blood.
Rick cried a lot. He prayed a lot. Rick knew more prayers than Don would have given him credit for. Catholic education? It dawned on Don that he didn’t really know this man at all, although they’d worked together many times. Over the years, they’d swapped war stories, chatted about the here and now, but never once got personal.
Rick was a stranger, getting stranger by the minute. A blank slab of meat. Don’s meal ticket.
“What if God’s punishing us?” Rick said. “What if this is a test? What if each bite we take dooms us to another week in here?”
Don sighed. “What if we’re already dead?” he said. Darkness cloaked his smile. “What if this is purgatory.”
Rick fell silent. Don could smell the waves of fear coming off the photojournalist. He waited a heartbeat.
“Dinner time,” he said.
“Don’t call it that!”
“Calm down. You know stress causes meat to toughen up?”
“Don!” He was crying again now.
“Keep you pants on. Or off, as it were.”
Don waited for Rick to remove his bandage, then crawled across the floor. His own wound pulsed in sympathy. What they were doing was wrong; Rick was right about that. But not because of the snapper’s new-found morality. It was wrong because they couldn’t sustain each other indefinitely. No such thing as perpetual motion.
All they were doing was lining their bellies with tainted meat.
Despite the salt, Rick’s wound smelled bad. Don chose a new cut, further down the thigh. He latched on then snapped his head to one side, guzzling blood, relishing the screams. When he was done, he flopped back, savouring the meat, then wiped his mouth and licked the blood off his hand. He waited until Rick’s sobs had died down.
“Your wound doesn’t smell too good, Ricky-boy,” he said.
“No shit.”
“I think we should take a look at it.”
“And how do you propose we do that?”
“Your camera. We can take a look on the screen. I’m amazed you didn’t think of it earlier.”
“You’re sick.”
“No, but you might be if we don’t take a look at that wound.
Where’s the camera?”
“You can’t have it.”
Don threw himself onto the photographer, hands sliding around on the dusty cement, looking for the camera. Rick got to it first, but Don easily snatched it away from him.
“Please, Don. Don’t.”
“Don’t be such a baby.”
Don fumbled for the on switch. A metallic chime sounded.
“Say ‘flesh’,” Don said, and pressed the shutter release.
Both men cried out at the sudden shock of light. Don blinked away the after-image then peered at the small LCD screen on the back of the camera. It shocked him. Rick’s gaunt face, mouth caked in dried blood. Clothes tattered and grimy. He aimed the camera down at the leg this time, shielded his eyes and hit the button again.
The wound was a stomach-churning mix of bloodied salt, white flesh, and yellow pus. It was turning dark around the edges. Don sucked in breath between his teeth.
“Doesn’t look too good,” he said.
Rick turned away. “I don’t want to see.”
Don shoved the camera at him, but he covered his face. He was crying again.
“Baby. C’mon—it’s your turn to eat.”
“I don’t want to.”
“It’s your turn.”
“I can’t.”
Don couldn’t force Rick to eat. Therefore, Rick would die. There was no point waiting for him to wither away.
Don switched the camera off, then hefted it in his hand. He climbed onto Rick’s lap.
“Don?”
Don slammed the camera into Rick’s upturned face. Blood splashed onto Don’s grinning teeth. Rick cried out, and the journalist hit him again, the lens snapping off with the force of the impact. Rick’s hands came up and Don batted them away. On the third strike, the camera body split in two. He cast it to one side and grabbed Rick around the throat.
“Here’s a prayer for you. For what I am about to receive . . .”
He smashed Rick’s head against the bunker wall.
“. . . I am truly, truly grateful . . .”
Don smacked Rick’s head against the wall again, and felt blood and something meatier sliding over his hands.
“. . . Amen.”
Don fell on Rick, licking the blood from his ruined face. None of this one bite at a time crap, he thought, and feasted properly. When his belly was full he rolled up next to his partner and slept.
Don woke in the eternal darkness, belly full, face sticky with gore.
For a moment, he thought he heard Rick praying, then remembered
Rick was dead. But still . . .
Our father in heaven . . .
“Rick?”
His fingers crawled along the floor, searching for Rick’s body.
At first, he couldn’t find it and panic gripped him. He imagined Rick sitting on the table, feet swinging, leering down at him. Then he touched something cold and sticky and realised he’d just rolled away from the body in his sleep. He explored the corpse, trying to figure out which bit was which. It took a while, but eventually he found the empty eye sockets and then the mouth. He held his hand against the smashed ruins of teeth until he was satisfied there was no talking or breathing going on. He drifted back to sleep with his head on Rick’s chest.
Rick spoke to him often as Don stripped the body clean. Prayers for his soul, mostly. But sometimes, he’d be angry and lay some of that vengeful God shit on Don.
“If God hates me, why am I still alive?” Don spat back.
He paused, realising he hadn’t asked, “If there is a God, why am I still alive?” But he let it go. Rick was silent, and that was the main thing.
Rick sulked for what could have been days, but then again, may have been hours or minutes or seconds. Don gnawed on a bone, then paused. Had imagined it? No, there it was. A low rumbling sound, way off in the distance. Not another avalanche. This was sporadic.
It made Don think of thunder or drumbeats. Rick laughed.
“He’s coming for you, Don,” he said. “I told you he would.”
“No!”
Don scrambled around the bunker until he found the table. He scurried underneath, which only prompted fresh gales of laughter from Rick.
“He’s going to tear you apart. Just like you did me.”
“Shut the fuck up!”
“Except you’re going to be alive the whole time, screaming in agony. And God won’t give a shit.”
“You don’t even have a tongue, or lips, or vocal cords. You’re nothing!”
Rick’s laughter stretched into a long, piercing scream. But even the scream was drowned out by the sound of God’s thunderous footsteps, so close now Don’s fillings vibrated and small bits of cement clattered on the tabletop. Warm piss trickled down Don’s trouser leg.
Don waited for death. But gradually, the footsteps retreated. Don opened his eyes. A thin line of light sliced through the darkness, so narrow that Don thought he was imagining it.
He crept out from under the table and edged across the floor, squinting. A gust of wind rattled the door. The line of light disappeared for an eternity, then reappeared.
Don pushed at the door, barely daring to believe. The frame was warped, the brickwork cracked, the lock bent out of shape. He staggered up the steps into the bright sunshine, crying as the light speared his eyes. He fell to the ground, smelling dirt, trees, a hint of floral perfume, and something else. A metallic, burning smell he vaguely remembered from his past life. He clutched at the dirt, crying, howling as he rubbed the fine powder on his face.
He opened his eyes and realised he was looking at one of God’s footprints. The crater was black, all life extinguished.
“It’s a miracle,” he whispered, then grinned as the hunger came upon him once more.
* * *
Marco rode tall in the passenger seat, puffing on one of the Cuban cigars gifted to him at his daughter’s wedding. He had it on good authority they had once been owned by Saddam Hussein himself—a token from the CIA back in the 80s. The truck laboured over the pockmarked dirt road, winding its way up Sikaram. Abdul was a good driver, and he’d traversed this road many times.
Snow still dusted the higher peaks, but down here, it was all brown rocks, with the odd flower pushing up to taste the spring sunshine.
From the back of the truck came the occasional grunt or cry of pain when they passed over a particularly bumpy patch. There were fifty or so government soldiers back there, hooded and roped together.
They would soon have more to worry about than a few bumps and bruises. Marco pulled the cigar cutter out of his pocket and clicked it open and shut a couple of times.
The sun had dipped down behind the mountains by the time the truck’s headlights swung across the bunker’s grey face. Someone in the back of the truck screamed for help and Marco chuckled. The laugh caught in his throat when he saw the crater.
He climbed out of the truck, so transfixed he missed the muddy footprints leading to and from the bunker’s only entrance, shreds of cloth hanging from the tree branches, a lone peasant’s sandal, almost black with dried blood.
The crater was about a bus-length across. New shoots of grass had just started sprouting in the depths of the charred pit. Marco stared out across the valley. He could see the path of destruction down there. He had heard of at least one family turned to ash by this latest atrocity, still more who had lost property or animals. Bile and excitement churned in his guts. This batch of collaborators was going to suffer even more than usual. If that were possible. Abdul lurked in his peripheral vision.
“Get them out,” Marco said, patting the Desert Eagle strapped to his thigh. He watched the light drain out of the valley below before turning for the bunker. At least, that was still intact, he thought.
Abdul trudged around the back of the truck and unlocked the rear gates. He caught a whiff of shit and piss before an icy mountain breeze carried it away, rippling the canvas cover over the truck bed.
He looked in at the cargo—soldiers with flour sacks over their heads.
Then the pleading beg
an. Promises of money, women, livestock. He fed them the lie they wanted to hear.
“Do as you are told, and tonight, you will be eating with your families,” he said. “Get out.”
He grabbed the nearest soldier under the arms and hauled him out of the truck, dumping him onto the road. The rope tugged at the ankles of the next man, who got the idea. They clambered off the truck then hunched in the road, backs against the wind.
Marco called out from the steps leading down to the bunker.
“Abdul, whatever happened to those journalists?”
Abdul looked blank for a moment. “I forgot! The avalanche, then the air raid. They’re still in there.”
Abdul and Marco shared a glance.
“That’s a shame,” Marco said. “I was really looking forward to killing those Australian dogs.”
Marco leant beside the battered steel door as Abdul hauled the prisoners off the truck. He watched the prisoners so intently he didn’t notice the door wasn’t quite shut. The pungent aroma of his cigar masked the stench of carrion wafting from the death room. A gust of wind whistled through the tree, covering the sound of laboured breathing, barely a metre from his face.
Abdul slung his AK-47 over his shoulder and unclipped a ring of keys from his belt. He turned towards the bunker door. Marco was gone. The bunker door squealed shut.
“Marco?”
A scream gouged the air. Abdul sprinted towards the bunker. The howl gained a liquid, gurgling property. The prisoners joined in and begged Allah to save them. Abdul shouldered the door open, levelling his assault rifle at the darkness. Marco’s Desert Eagle discharged, drowning out the scream, lighting up the room.
Blood. On the walls. Floor. Everywhere.
Marco’s finger jittered against the trigger as the life drained from his body, offering Abdul staccato glimpses of the horror unfolding.
Abdul’s jaw dropped, terror sapping his strength. The AK fell impotent to his side.
Bodies, stripped of flesh.
Bloodied clothes. Backpacks. Shoes.
Dismembered arms, legs, heads.
The monster, tearing open Marco’s throat with its teeth.
Blood gushing over its face.
A stained press pass, hanging around its neck.
A filthy bandage around one bare thigh.
