Burrows

by Reavis Z. Wortham

  Heart thumping, Cody twisted and wormed his way into a position to lever the dog out of the way. Using the spotty glow of John’s flashlight around his own body, Cody thumbed his own light off and fumbled with the animal’s limp carcass, lifting it off the stakes and wincing at the wet noise. He pushed the dog’s corpse deeper into the tunnel to be recovered later.

  One by one, Cody snapped the pointed stakes off the trap door and tossed them aside. Once the way was clear, he cautiously stood upright in the closet, and flicked on the light. For the moment at least, the immediate area appeared to be clear of more traps. “Come on partner, it’s time to go up.”

  John inched toward Cody’s feet. It was a tight fit, and Big John would have to contort himself for a moment, but Cody figured there was room enough for them to get out of the confining tunnel.

  “All right. Stand up here beside me and let’s see about getting started.” He moved aside to make room. Grunting and straining, John worked his way into the small opening. He continued to wriggle upright until they stood side by side, waist high in the narrow confines of the enclosed closet.

  Cody put his hand on John’s broad shoulder and wedged the edge of his boot on a six-inch wide section of the sub floor. “Brace yourself.”

  John spread his feet and tensed. Taking a small jump, Cody simultaneously used his big shoulder for leverage until he stood on the thin ledge. Setting his feet carefully, he extended his hand and helped John climb beside him. Together, they leaned back against the tiny closet’s crumbling plaster and lath walls.

  “George may be insane, but he knows all the tricks.” Cody glanced upward. “Each time he passed through, he raised this trap door with the punji sticks into place behind him.”

  “You said George.”

  “Right.”

  “I been meaning to ask you. I thought you’s after that Kendal Bowden.”

  “We are, but Kendal didn’t make all of this. It took years, and he was in the nuthouse most of that time, so George and Alvin probably brought all this crap in here.” Cody thought back. “Kendal may be in here, though. When me and Jeff pulled up in front of the Exchange, I saw somebody ducking around the corner. I knew he was about my age because of the way he moved. An old man like Hart wouldn’t move that smooth.”

  “Did you get a good look at him?”

  “Naw, he disappeared pretty quick.”

  “So we might have two or three different folks in here, all workin’ together to kill us.”

  Cody nodded. “That’s about the size of it.” He pointed his flashlight at a ragged hole in the ceiling. The beam illuminated a clot of papers and trash jammed into a shaft stretching five stories overhead. Bits of paper drifted downward, falling like giant dirty snowflakes. “We could climb straight up, if we could get good handholds.”

  John added his light. “You start messin’ with that clog, the whole thing’ll fall on us. We don’t have any idy what fell in there after the dog dropped through.”

  Around them, dust particles swarmed in the beams, sparkling and dancing in the still air. Cody forced himself to breathe slowly and deeply.

  “It must have been like the trap door on a gallows.” John tested the moldy wall behind them with the palm of his hand. It didn’t give. “I’ll bet less than half the dog’s weight would have been enough to blast him right through.”

  “Prob’ly. Be careful. We’re in for a time.”

  Cody examined the closet’s old fashioned four panel door. He pressed the wood and saw it give slightly. He carefully pushed it open, thinking of the possibility that someone could be lying on the opposite side with a shotgun.

  He peered through the opening. “It’s clear.”

  The inverted V-shaped passageway made of rubbish appeared open and empty, providing a long view of brightly colored clothes filling gaps in the “walls” like mortar between bricks. Beyond, the thin aisle vanished into total darkness.

  “You first.” John eyed the rickety stacks leading into the interior.

  “Uh huh. Don’t shoot me in the back.”

  Cody led the way, stepping cautiously into the opening, tense and alert. Holding the flashlight in his left hand, he aimed the pistol along the flashlight beam. Though narrow, the aisle was noticeably wider than the previous drain-size burrow they’d struggled through.

  They moved in a crouch through a dramatically different passage. Loose papers and trash rustled underfoot as the men slowly advanced. John pointed his flashlight overhead. Papers and bulging boxes stretched twelve feet to the moldy, peeling ceiling. The walkway made a sharp right turn ahead.

  Startled by the light, a rat shot from a hole in a disintegrating trunk to disappear across the aisle into a gap stuffed with rags. Cody’s stomach clenched in fear. He had a deep-seated horror of rats after seeing some in the Viet Cong tunnels as big as cocker spaniels.

  He instinctively aimed at the motion and nearly squeezed the trigger before he realized it wasn’t human.

  Someone with an engineer’s mind had worked to arrange packing boxes and cartons in interlocking walls of the ominous tunnel. Splitting and decaying boxes of garbage, small appliances, department store catalogs, and strewn clothing filled every crack and crevice. The air smelled of urine, mildew, and rot.

  Rodent droppings covered the debris beneath their feet and Cody shivered at the thought of what lay ahead. He recognized the distinctly identifiable scent of dead rats. Covered in sweat, their hands and arms were already scratched in dozens of places, picking up God knew what in the open wounds.

  At the aisle’s bend, they paused beside a new passageway. After an eternity, Cody knelt. “I wish I could see around this corner.”

  “Go low,” John suggested. “I’ll go high.”

  Cody quickly peeked around the corner and jerked back. Startled vermin rustled through the garbage, but nothing else moved in the darkness. Adrenaline pumping, Cody turned and followed his line of sight over the cocked pistol.

  John stepped quickly behind him and swept the area with the muzzle of his revolver. He relaxed and exhaled deeply, finding the way clear. The much shorter passage dead-ended in a solid, compacted wall of trash. Another burrow barely two feet in diameter appeared like a waist-high cave entrance in the side of a wall.

  Cody wondered if the worm-like tunnel had been intentionally created in the trash, or if piles of boxes and discards had collapsed to form the soda-straw narrow passage. He finally decided that digging a labyrinth of tunnels through the preexisting mass of trash was virtually impossible, so he figured it had been intentionally constructed as a crawlspace.

  Bundles of newspaper, magazines, and lumber shaped the entrance, along with cartons, grates, wire, leather trunks, suitcases and furniture. The opening reminded Cody of Carlsbad Caverns’ entrance.

  Steel fifty-five-gallon barrels acted as columns holding up walls made of boxes and wooden crates, all containing even more discards. Through it all, filthy clothes in the cracks acted like chinking in the log walls of a pioneer cabin.

  “I really never was much into crawling into caves.” Uncle Ned said smart remarks were Cody’s way of dealing with fear. Every muscle in his body twitched with unconcealed anxiety.

  The complexity of the labyrinth was as amazing as the ant farm he ordered from a comic book as a kid. He wished for a Lucky Strike, to calm his nerves and to watch the smoke indicate air movement throughout burrow. Only feet behind, the sudden reverberation of collapsing junk caused them to crouch. Their movement through the precariously stacked aisles moved the rotting boards enough to cause a shift in the mass of material that resulted in an accelerating domino effect.

  Heavy thumps, and then an even deeper wooden crack shifted the floor. “This place is giving way.” John’s voice was full of dread.

  “No telling what’s rotted through here through the years.”

  The stacks around them suddenly tilted dangerously under tons of moving weight. Cody’s face went white and he shouted in fright. Dirty air full of dust
and powdered rat droppings quickly clouded the flashlight beams. He pressed both hands against a rusted barrel in a futile effort to stop its movement.

  John suddenly lunged and spread his huge arms to brace the debris on either side of Cody. His muscles bulged with the effort of preventing the falling mass from crushing them.

  The song “Big Bad John” popped into Cody’s mind when he saw the huge deputy straining in the aisle, holding the walls still with pure effort.

  Big Bad John, or Samson.

  Finally, their tiny world once again settled into fragile stability. John felt the change and slowly reduced the pressure from his shaking arms. When he felt it was safe, he finally dropped his hands, bent forward, and succumbed to violent, racking coughs.

  The dust impacted Cody as well. He used his undershirt tail as a filter, taking deep breaths to open his lungs. Luckily, adrenaline acted as a natural antihistamine and the attack faded.

  John was the first to recover. “I cain’t take much more of that.” With quivering fingers, he picked up his dropped flashlight and examined their surroundings. The filtered light showed the wreckage had settled by at least three feet, pressed from above by the weight of the garbage that had fallen the same distance through the rotting floor.

  Around them, the Exchange was a living entity. The continuous muffled creaks and snaps of timbers told how the massive building was shifting and adjusting to the redistributed weight.

  They were trapped into moving forward.

  In the burrow’s cave-like entrance, Cody’s flashlight illuminated the right hand wall of identical cardboard shipping boxes. Sanderson Farms logos stretched into the darkness. The raw odor of rot and mildew from cartons that once contained raw chickens rendered the air thick and nauseating.

  John added his light. Roaches scurried throughout the tunnel, crawling through trash and cardboard walls. Rats and mice flickered through the filth, appearing and disappearing through tiny openings. A cloud of choking death enveloped them.

  “You going in there?” John knew the answer.

  “Have to.” Cody spit, hawked, and spit again.

  “I really, really hate this.”

  Breathing through his mouth, Cody squirmed fearfully into the tiny burrow. “I don’t like all these boxes beside me. They’re too perfect for this place. You wait right there until I get to the end of this run.”

  “You don’t have to tell me twic’t.” John pointed his light over Cody’s shoulder and watched the younger man wriggle on his stomach. Like the first tunnel they’d been through, the diameter was only large enough for Cody to scoot ahead, using his elbows to pull his body along. His shoulders had only scant inches to spare on either side and he was forced to duck his head to avoid the precarious garbage pressing down.

  This reminds me of the one that killed Andrews only a few hours ago…was it years…like maybe back in the Nam…or did I get that mixed up…was it Nam…did Corporal Richards die in a tunnel like this???

  Disturbed by the men’s presence and the sudden light, giant waterbugs skittered over Cody’s legs, crawling in and out of the dark cracks in the trash. Loose paper collected under his body, and pieces occasionally separated from the roof like skin peeling from a harsh sunburn.

  Darkness, isolation, stench, and sweat that reeked of fear weighed heavily on the two men. Instead of giving in to doom, John concentrated on his surroundings, focusing his mind. In stark contrast to the assorted garbage, the disturbing wall of identical interlocking boxes on the right side of the burrow stood out like a well-constructed brick wall.

  “You’re right, Cody. This wall don’t make no sense. Them boxes was laid out smooth until a few minutes ago when everything moved.”

  The ordered arrangement of the packing boxes worried John and he knelt before the opening, painting the wall with his flashlight and frowning in concentration as Cody finally pulled his entire length into the horizontal shaft.

  He examined the crushed containers.

  “Why are all these alike?” John’s gaze traveled from Cody’s boot soles to the boxes on his right. He slowly directed the light from one box to the next and froze at a glint of light near Cody’s right leg. “Freeze! Don’t move!”

  Mentally stretched to the limit, Cody jumped at the sudden shout and then became a statue. His left arm holding the flashlight lay folded underneath his body, his right hand full of pistol extended inches above the litter under him.

  John bent awkwardly at the waist and eased his huge shoulders into the narrow burrow. “You’ve got a treble fishhook caught in your right britches leg. When you bent your knee it set the hook and there’s about six inches of tight line that runs into the boxes beside us.”

  Cody forced himself to breathe normally. “Dammit…damn damn. Careful. If there’s one, I can guarantee there’ll be another. I didn’t see any fishing line.”

  “I ain’t surprised. It’s that new stuff they came out with a few years ago that’s clear, like plastic.”

  They found themselves whispering, as if a normal tone of voice would set off the device.

  “No wonder I didn’t see it. Monofilament line is supposed to be invisible to fish. It sure was to me.”

  “Hold on a minute.” John carefully reached in with two fingers and delicately moved pieces of paper and plastic Ideal bread wrappers to get a clear view of Cody’s leg. “He hid about three hooks that I can see. They’re set with the points aiming backwards toward me so that whoever crawls along here will get caught.”

  “All right.” Cody’s heart felt like it was beating out of his chest. “The only reason it hasn’t gone off is because the line hasn’t broken or been stretched far enough to yank some kind of trigger. Find a way to tie it off so the tension will stay the same before you can cut me free.”

  “I was afraid you’s gonna to say that.” John wiped his sweating brow. He closed his eyes and thought for a moment. Mentally forcing his hands to quit shaking, he delicately ran the monofilament between two fingers and gently followed it from Cody’s leg, tracing the clear line to where it disappeared into boxes stained with chicken blood. The harsh light made it difficult for John to see the nearly invisible connection.

  He moved his flashlight until the line suddenly jumped into sharp contrast.

  “I see it now. I need to put this down so I can use both hands. Be still.”

  Cody had no intention of moving.

  John carefully wedged his light between a headless doll and a pair of dirty khakis, angling it toward Cody’s hooked leg. He planted his feet and leaned even farther into the burrow. Pressing his right hand against the cardboard box, he cautiously grasped the fishing line with his thumb and forefinger to maintain the tension.

  “Shift your leg to the right a little to give me some slack to work with. I think I can work the hook out.”

  “You think?”

  “How ’bout I do my best?”

  I hope he knows what he’s doing.

  What am I doing? John fretted. I’m shaking like a leaf. His forehead beaded with sweat. It quickly collected in his short hair and ran into his eyes. His nose and chin dripped with perspiration.

  With infinite care, Cody adjusted his leg, wincing when paper rustled and crunched under his knee. John set his jaw and wrapped the slack around his thumb. With that slight anchor, he was able to work at the hook to get it free. The tiny cotton fibers of Cody’s pants kept snagging on the hook’s barb. Once, when John thought he’d finished, another of the three hooks caught in the material, causing him to repeat the process once again.

  “Stay with me, son. This damned barb keeps catching.”

  “Take your time.” Cody tried to keep the situation light. He rested his forehead on his arm. “I’m not going anywhere. You sound scared, big guy.”

  “That’s probably ’cause I’m as afraid of this thing as I am of a snake.” John stuck his tongue out like a kindergartner with a coloring book. He frowned at the predicament as he worked to free the hook. When it was do
ne, he finally drew a long, deep breath.

  “All right. I got thissun out, but don’t you move until I tell you.”

  Still maintaining the tension on the trigger with the line around his thumb, he picked up a small piece of broken packing crate and buried the hook’s point into the wood. Twirling the piece between his fingers as if rolling a cigarette, he wrapped the remaining free line around and around the chunk until it was tight. As the line shortened, he followed it toward the cardboard wall and worked his thumb free. When the wood no longer turned, he thought he’d finished, but there was an inch of slack left over and the line would come unwound.

  “I’m pretty close to being done,” John said. “But I’ve got too much slack here.”

  “What do you need to do now?”

  “Hard to say.” He paused to think of a way to finish securing the line. Then he remembered how he and his grandfather used to tighten sagging fences by twisting the slack out of the barbed wire. “Got a pen?”

  “You gonna write me a note?”

  “Gonna write a will. I need something like a pen or a pencil.

  “I don’t have anything like that in my pockets.”

  They thought for a moment. “All right,” John said. “I’ll have to use my knife, but I might need yours in a few minutes.” Digging in his pocket, he located the small Case folding knife.

  The next step required three hands, but he’d have to do it with two. Keeping the line in a fixed position, he released one loop from the roll around the wood. John created a loop around the closed pocket knife and twisted it until the growing knot drew the line tight.

  The whole thing fell apart when he released it.

  “Dammit!”

  “What?”

  “It didn’t work.”

  “Try it again.” Cody voice rose slightly.

  “I’ll have to start over and do it another way.” John realized it wasn’t like the movies where the hero knew how to do everything. “I believe I know how to fix it this time.”

  Still maintaining the pressure against the boxes with one hand, John halfway opened the blade until the knife made an L shape. He abandoned the piece of wood and carefully wrapped the curling line around the handle until it drew tight. Fingers shaking, he pressed the point of the sharp blade into the cardboard wall, burying it to the hilt. He wiped the sweat off his forehead and slowly released the knife.