by Michael Bray
“Cody,” whispered Garrett.
Cody didn’t respond. He simply stared, doing the best he could to cope, process and hang on to his sanity.
“CODY,” Garrett repeated more firmly. He looked at Garrett, and for a moment, they were mirror reflections, each sharing in the other’s horror.
“Close the door. Come on,” Garrett said as he lay a reassuring, shaking hand on Cody’s shoulder.
“What is it, what’s in there, fella?” asked Lee from the other side of the room.
Garrett shook his head, unable to find any words that would even begin to explain.
“Son, what is it?” Donald said, starting towards them.
“No,” Garrett said, perhaps a little too sharply. He softly closed the freezer door. “Nobody should have to see that.”
Silence.
Garrett looked at the group and wondered if any of them really knew how grave their situation was. He supposed it might be a blessing of sorts that they didn’t.
“Okay then,” Bernard said, clapping his hands together. “We either go down, or we go back. Fifty-fifty choice people.”
Garrett noted how— much to his disdain— Bernard seemed to have a much better grip on himself now, and if anything actually seemed to be the most composed of them all.
“We can’t go back. That’s not an option,” Garrett heard himself say from some distant place.
“Okay then. Down it is,” Bernard shot back sharply, Keeping eye contact with Garrett and even flicking that arrogant smile in his direction.
“I CAN’T!” Leena wailed, breaking into huge, shaking sobs. Helen held her close and stroked her hair, then looked to Garrett with eyes that were just as afraid.
“I agree. I’m not prepared to go down there. Nothing good can come of it.” She shook her head and looked at Donald, who nodded in agreement.
“Well somebody needs to go down there and see if it’s safe!” snapped Bernard, his lip twitching as he glared at the group.
“Don’t let us stop you, arsehole,” Lee muttered.
“What about you, big man? Bernard shot back. You’re the one with the weapon after all.”
Bernard’s tone was mocking, and he looked at Lee with a sly, oozing smile. “What’s the matter? Not so brave now, are you? Pathetic.”
Lee stepped towards Bernard, who took a compensatory step back, and snorted down his nose.
“What? Are you going to resort to violence again? Is that the only response you have?”
“Don’t push me, you prick!”
“Oh, please.” Bernard sneered, shaking his head. “You’re brave enough waving that weapon around but how much courage do you have when it really matters?”
“That’s enough!” Garrett snapped. Bernard paid him no attention. He was glaring at Lee with a secretive, snake-like smile.
“You don’t understand. I have a daughter…” Lee mumbled.
“Oh, and I can only imagine how proud she is of her gutless excuse for a father.”
Before Garrett could intervene, Lee was pointing the gun at Bernard’s head.
“Tell you what, fella,” Lee said, flashing a nervous half smile. “Why don’t you do the honors for the rest of us and go down there and take a look?”
Bernard held his hands up, but he was still smiling and made no effort to move.
“Lee, take it easy,” Garrett warned, unable to keep his eyes off Bernard, who looked completely unconcerned.
“Stay out of this, fella. This is between him and me.”
“Is it?” Bernard asked playfully, tilting his head to one side. “Is it really about the two of us or is it about you, and the fact that despite the tattoos and the cliché biker getup, you’re a failure, a waster. A god-damn loser, drifter just like every other drain on society, on hard working people like me.”
“You shut your mouth!” Lee roared, aiming the gun with much more intent at Bernard’s face.
“Lee, please...”
“Don’t worry, Mr. Garrett,” Bernard smiled. “He doesn’t have the fortitude to pull the trigger. I’d bet my life on it.”
“I’m warning you!” Lee said, his hand shaking as he aimed the weapon. Bernard only smiled and shrugged his shoulders.
“Warn as much as you like.” He sighed. “We both know you won’t pull the trigger.”
“Lee, just relax and put the gun down, please,” Garrett said softly, trying to diffuse the situation.
“This prick is asking for it! He’s been asking for it all fuckin’ night!”
Lee glared at Bernard, who watched on in quiet amusement, seemingly oblivious to the tiny thread by which his life was hanging.
“Lee, come on. Give me the gun. Think of your daughter.”
Garrett was sure his words went unheard, and regardless of them, Lee was going to do it. Garrett held his breath, expecting at any time he would see Bernard’s smug face explode in a mist of blood and bone.
“Yes. Think about your daughter. Do as your fearless leader tells you,” Bernard taunted, stepping forwards and pressing his forehead to the barrel of the gun.
Garrett and the others looked on in disbelief. It was obvious by now Bernard was crazy. He must be, because even though Lee was just a half-pound of pressure away from ending his life, Bernard had somehow managed a wide, Cheshire cat grin.
“We can’t stand here all day,” Bernard taunted. “Either do it or don’t. Just make the decision so we can move on.”
Lee gritted his teeth and glared at Bernard.
“Fuck you.”
Garrett knew Bernard had pushed things too far and was about to pay for it with his life. Lee pressed the gun harder into Bernard’s forehead and held his breath, then exhaled deeply and lowered the gun.
“Sonofabitch” he grunted, handing the gun to Garrett.
Everyone visibly relaxed, and whatever spell there was, had been broken.
That was a close one.
The thought had entered Garrett’s mind as he turned towards Donald to hand him the gun for safekeeping when there was an almighty roar of gunfire. Garrett spun back around, at first sure the weapon had somehow gone off in his hand. As he began to understand what had happened, it played out in a series of snapshots in his brain.
Bernard standing, feet apart, arms straight, in the trained pose of a man who is both familiar and comfortable with shooting weapons.
The black pistol that had been holstered in his jacket held confidently in his hands, a thin wisp of smoke coming from the barrel.
Lee’s eyes rolling back into what remained of his skull, the entry hole visible just above the right eye; the bullet's exit painted in sharp ruby red on the wall behind him.
Leena’s piercing scream, and then the smell.
The smell of sulfur. The smell of smoke and burning blood.
Then there was Bernard. His face twisted into a horrific, twitching cheeked rictus of defiance, the grin of a man who has lost his sanity, a man who is desperate enough to do anything to save his own skin.
The entire scene lasted only seconds. They watched as Lee fell to the ground, the little that remained of the back of his skull hitting the concrete with a thick wet slapping sound that brought the recently averted nausea flooding back. The rest of the group looked on in silence, unsure how to react to the unexpected turn of events. They looked from Lee to Bernard. Lee to Bernard again. Still trying to process, still trying to understand.
Garrett would have bet his life there would be screams, mass panic, and chaos. Instead, everyone stayed where they were. Everyone looked at Bernard with open-mouthed surprise as if he had just performed some incredible magic trick, or given some profound statement that required a moment to just stand back and consider. In a way he had, because in the space of a few short hours, Bernard had gone from irritating, stubborn stranger, to frightened survivor, to murderer. Bernard was still smiling as he looked at Garrett.
“Hand over the weapon please, Mr. Garrett,” he said calmly.
Garrett looked at
the gun held loosely by the barrel in his hand. He was still trying to come to terms with what he had seen when he was suddenly eye to eye with Bernard’s own gun.
“You were armed... all this time, you were armed…” Garrett muttered.
“Don’t make me ask you again, please.”
Garrett glanced at the shocked and frightened faces of the group, then at Lee, a small curl of blue smoke seeping up out of the entry wound above his eye. Then at Bernard. Bernard who was wild-eyed and desperate and who would have no issue with putting a matching hole in Garrett or indeed any one of them. Seeing no other choice, he numbly held out the weapon to Bernard, who took it and expertly ejected the magazine, kicked it across the floor then tucked the unloaded gun into the waistband of his pants.
“Thank you,” Bernard said softly. He then motioned towards the bare earth staircase in the floor and smiled at Garrett. “Now, go down there and find a way out of here, please.”
Garrett moved cautiously to the top of the steps, trying his best to ignore both the pungent odor from below, and the unseeing eye of Bernard’s gun, which was trained on him.
This wasn’t how it was supposed to be, he thought to himself as he looked at Bernard, hoping to see even a shred of humanity that he could appeal to, but his eyes were blank and Garrett knew reason was no longer an option.
“Look, you don’t have to do this. We’re not the enemy. We need to stick together. If we—”
“No, Mr. Garrett, no more talking. We’ve wasted enough time listening to you already. Now we’re going to do things my way.”
“Bernard, please…”
“Go NOW, Mr. Garrett. I won’t ask you again.”
“Why are you doing this? We’re on the same fucking side!” Garrett spat.
“Don’t preach to me!” Bernard snarled. “If I hadn’t found you upstairs, then you would have left me to be killed by those… those things.”
Bernard pointed at Garrett, and tiny flecks of spittle shot out of his mouth as he spoke.
“Well, let me tell you something. Bernard Winthorpe does not lose. Especially to the likes of you. Now are you going to do as I ask or do I have to shoot somebody else?”
“No. No, I’ll go. Just…relax, okay?”
Garrett crossed to the first uneven dirt step and peered into the darkness. It was inky and pure. The bare earth walls were moist and somewhere below him; he could hear a steady, repetitive dripping. He took another tentative step and cast a quick glance over his shoulder at the rest of the group. He forced himself not to look at Lee’s body, and then he turned back to the task ahead and took another step down.
“Oh, Mr. Garrett,” Bernard said with a wicked smile. “If you do find a way out, and have any ideas about taking the selfish route…”
He held the gun so Garrett could see it, and then rolled his eyes in the direction of the group.
“Message received, you son of a bitch.”
“Good. Now go.”
He stood there frozen, unsure if he would be able to will his body to move him down into the darkness below, but something in him told him that Bernard would have no hesitation in killing again, and he was likely the next target. With that in mind, he took a last look around the room and descended into the darkness.
Endgame
The wait for Garrett’s return felt painfully slow, but in reality, was less than ten minutes. They heard him first, his rough breathing heralding his arrival. He scrambled back up the steps, dirty and exhausted, screwing his eyes closed against the light.
“I think I found a way out.” He panted.
“What’s it like down there, son?” Donald asked, subconsciously pulling Helen close.
“It’s like nothing I can describe,” Garrett said, shaking his head.
“Did you see anyone else down there?”
It was Bernard. He was crouched by the hole, his eyes burning into Garrett’s brain. He forced himself to meet Bernard’s gaze.
“I didn’t see anyone, and I sure as hell didn’t go calling out to see if anyone answered. Just hurry up and keep quiet, and we can get the hell out of here.”
Bernard seemed convinced, and nodded slowly, a half-smile still etched onto his lips.
“Then let’s go. But remember this. If you’re deceiving me… I’ll put a bullet in you. And that’s a promise.”
“I get it, Bernard,” Garrett said with a dejected sigh. “You win. I lose. I don’t care. I just want to get the hell out of here and back to my normal life. Now are you coming or not?”
He didn’t wait for a reply. He simply turned and trudged back down the steps and stopped at the bottom. The rest of the group followed, eying Bernard cautiously as they passed. He watched them go by, keeping the gun trained on them as he joined the back of the line.
The bottom of the steps led to a long, uneven corridor carved out of the dirt which descended on a gentle downhill gradient. It was too short to stand upright in, and the group shuffled along hunched over and in silence, feeling their way across the rough walls. Garrett led them down, trying to ignore the increasingly foul stench as they went deeper.
“Be careful. More steps here.”
Garrett’s whispered voice drifted to them as they moved further into the darkness. The second set of steps were even narrower and steeper than the first as they went deeper than the foundation of the supermarket. Now they could see thick, gnarled tree roots curving in and out of the walls, and could feel the pressure of the weight of the building above their heads.
Still, they descended— a terrified conga line holding on to each other in the darkness. Even Bernard had withdrawn slightly, some of his inherent crazy replaced by fear as the group inched deeper.
“I thought you said there was a way out. We seem to be going straight down,” Cody croaked, his voice high-pitched and frightened.
“Keep it down, damn you,” Bernard hissed.
Still, they went on, feeling their way through the claustrophobic tunnel and the ever increasing foul stench. The darkness eventually began to give way to a dull orange glow, the flicker of light subtle at first then slowly growing in intensity as they neared, so that at last they could see where they were walking.
“Okay,” said Garrett breathlessly as he came to a halt and turned to face them. “Try not to look too closely at anything in here, okay? For your own good.”
Nobody answered, and he took their silence for agreement. He led them on.
The tunnel opened up into a huge round antechamber which had been carved out of the earth. Around its perimeter hundreds of candles flickered and danced, casting grotesque shadows across the uneven walls. The chamber floor was covered in human remains. Many were only bones, picked clean and stark white. Others still had skin and were brown and leathery; the half-eaten cadavers partially mummified. Worse than all of those were the fresh bodies. Although perhaps fresh wasn’t the right word, for they were putrid with decay, bloated and ruptured and covered with maggots, which combined with the shadows cast by the flames of the candles, seemed to give them a new, undulating life. The steady drone of flies made a suitable auditory backdrop to the scene, which was only slightly less disgusting than the rancid ammonia smell, which was almost unbearable.
In what appeared to be a grisly form of decoration, fully formed human skins were stretched around the room, tied to each other at the arms and feet in some kind of primitive wall covering.
“Sweet Jesus in heaven,” Bernard muttered, the gun forgotten and hanging limply at his side.
“This must be where they feed,” Garrett said quietly, picking his way through the tangle of corpses that covered the floor. “Come on. It’s this way.”
They followed in silence. Across the room was another narrow tunnel, which was cut from the earth. Garrett paused by the entrance and waited for the group to pick their way through the corpse littered ground and join him. There was a heavy silence broken only by the soft sound of Leena’s weeping.
“This is our way out,” he said, loo
king at their haunted faces as they gathered around. Bernard strode over, poking his head into the tunnel and glaring at Garrett.
“This one goes even deeper. I told you not to screw with me,” he raged, pointing the gun at Garrett’s head.
“Relax. Hold your hand out.”
Bernard eyed him mistrustfully, and then did as Garrett asked, holding his non-gun arm over the tunnel entrance.
“Do you feel it?”
“Yes,” Bernard replied, his small smile growing into a relieved grin. “Yes, I do. A god-damn breeze!”
“Exactly. Our way out.”
“Perhaps,” Bernard said, his smile melting away. “You first. Go down there and make sure.”
“Are you crazy?” snarled Garrett. I did everything you asked. I’m done.”
Bernard took a step forward and shoved the barrel in Garrett’s face.
“You’re done when I say you’re done. Now go.”
“No. If you want to get out, then you take the lead. I’m through.”
“I’m in charge here,” Bernard snapped, his words reverberating off the walls.
“Actually, I’m the administrator of this facility.”
As a group they turned to see Nicu standing by the steps, arms folded in front of him. His face was covered in blood from the frenzy in the market.
Bernard let out a high-pitched whine, which built into a horrified scream, and fired off five consecutive shots at Nicu, emptying the weapon, but this time it wasn’t with the same cold assurance with which he had killed Lee, but the wildfire of a frightened and cornered man, and as a result every shot missed its target. Nicu didn’t even move. Bernard carried on trying to fire even though the gun was empty, and as his scream petered out, and he realized what had happened, he lowered the weapon, breathing heavily and staring at Nicu.
“This could all have been avoided,” Nicu said pleasantly as if the incident with Bernard hadn’t even happened.
“All of the bloodshed. All of the…petty violence. It’s all so…Neanderthal.”
