Burrows

by Reavis Z. Wortham

“Get out!” John quivered with the effort. “Crawl out now! Use my legs and pull!”

  With an instinctive will to live, Cody grasped his thick calves and used the anchored deputy to drag himself free of the death trap. He kept the momentum by pushing with his almost numb legs as the pressure released, until he fell between John’s feet.

  John slowly lowered the impromptu lever, allowing the dead weight to settle a little at time into the opening. Wood snapped overhead with a muffled sound. The ceiling dropped slowly with a terrifying groan until it rested on the huge cotton bales, which compressed even further into the gap Cody vacated only moments before.

  Thoroughly exhausted, John could do no more than retrieve his flashlight and aim the shaft of light directly overhead. “Oh lord, I don’t think it’s gonna hold.”

  The young man knew the giant hero beside him was for the moment at the end of his rope. This time there would be no Big Bad John to hold the ceiling up if enough joists snapped.

  He could do nothing but reach out and take the big man’s hand. Two adult males holding hands would have been ludicrous outside. But in the house of horrors, the human touch was all they had left in their last moments before their world collapsed.

  Emotionally and physically spent, they could do nothing but pray that the ceiling held. Deep grumbles, muffled rustles and sharp pops both above and below filled the room until finally dwindling into silence.

  John settled onto his haunches and caught his breath.

  In the harsh illumination, a grimy brown plastic Mr. Potato head with one yellow arm and a black mustache stared back at Cody with a single eye.

  He finally released John’s hand and picked it up. “I had one of those once.”

  He closed his own eyes in exhaustion.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  “These yours?” an irritated young police officer asked. “They say they belong to you, Mr. Ned.”

  He and O.C. turned toward the voice behind them. The officer had Top’s shoulder under one hand, and Pepper’s under the other.

  Ned took off his Stetson and rubbed his forehead where the leather band made it itch. The kids stared at their feet, knowing their grandfather’s blue eyes would be flashing. “They are for the time bein’. Where’d you find them?”

  “They were on the side of the Exchange, about a block away. A couple of our men found them walking in this weather without coats when everyone was looking for the one who shot at our officers a little while ago. They said they were coming here.”

  Griffin glared at the children. O.C. stifled a chuckle and shifted his body slightly, putting himself between the sheriff and the family dispute.

  Almost spent, Ned knelt, grabbed the kids, and roughly pulled them toward him. “I’ll take them.”

  “Yessir.” The officer gratefully released the two young outlaws and wove his way back through the cars and emergency vehicles.

  For the next five minutes, Ned spoke with quiet fury. No one knew whether the kids shivered from fear or cold, but most of the officers within earshot were glad it wasn’t them getting dressed down.

  After he finished what he had to say and cooled off, a thought occurred to Ned. “Was it you two that was on the other side of the Exchange? Did y’all have a part in letting that feller get away?”

  Pepper shrugged. “We were over there.”

  Sorrow filled Ned’s eyes. “I don’t need this right now. I’god, when I tell you two to do something, you do it. You know what’s coming when I get y’all home.”

  Pepper’s eyes leaked. “I know, but can you get us some coats, first? We’re freezing.”

  O.C. turned completely away so the kids couldn’t see him laugh.

  The kids looked up at their grandfather who didn’t know what to say other than, “Girl…”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Rusting washing machines lined the wall in a parody of the Western Auto’s appliance showroom floor.

  ***

  Resting, Cody painted his flashlight along the fluffy bales towering over them. The only way out of the soft cavity was an irregular hole behind them. He stuck his light into the opening to find another room only feet away. “I hope this doesn’t dead end. If it is, we may be here a long while.”

  “Sorry if it was me that done it.” John sucked in a deep breath, feeling the pain in his lower back from the tremendous effort only moments before.

  Cody coughed. “I don’t think you tripped anything. Maybe it was me. The stuff probably shifts from time to time. You got me out so I didn’t end up like Andrews out there. Thanks.”

  They rested in awkward silence for a moment, each man with his own thoughts.

  “How does a place get like this?” John thought aloud, asking the air instead of Cody. “This ain’t right. It’s like one of them picture shows.”

  “Who knows. Sometimes people’s brains go haywire and they throw up their hands.”

  “This has been going on a long time and nobody said a thing. My people talked about the Ghost Man, but nobody paid a lick of attention to what he was doin’ here.”

  “I don’t know John. It sure ain’t natural.” Cody winced, feeling his muscles complain. “You ready to go?”

  “As ready as I can be.”

  On rubber legs, Cody crouched and stepped through the opening. John’s own legs trembled as he followed into still another room piled with trash and filled with a familiar scent.

  John recognized it at once. “This smells like my old Auntie’s house. It smells like old people.”

  “Old furniture is where that comes from, for one thing, but the air is surely getting rank. What’s that?”

  “Where?”

  Cody shined his light on a dark patch of polished wood behind stacks of boxes and a chiffonier. “Is that a desk, or paneling?”

  John pushed himself to his knees and rapped the small section. It sounded hollow. “This isn’t furniture. It’s a door.”

  “That’s the first closed door we’ve found since the closet when we came in.” Cody joined him against the far wall. “Maybe it’s a way out. Let’s try and see. Careful. Watch for tripwires.”

  Using only John’s light to save their dying batteries, they moved trash from one side of the small nest to the other, packing it in the cotton chamber. They finally cleared enough room to fully open the door.

  “Finally,” John sighed. “Think it’s booby-trapped?”

  “Doubt it. There was too much trash against it.” Cody slowly gave the antique oval knob a slight turn. It worked easily. He flicked on his flashlight and cracked the door to peek inside. It stuck for a moment and he gave it a jerk.

  The stench that rolled through the small opening was thick and putrid. Gagging, Cody slammed the door, but not before he caught a glimpse of the filthiest bathroom he’d even seen. In that brief second he saw the pedestal sink, toilet, and claw foot bathtub filled with waste. Insects carpeted the horrendous floor in a seething mass while rodents scurried for escape through unseen holes. Mold grew in thick, luxurious clumps from the walls and ceiling. Bats shuffled overhead and squeaked in a writhing mass as guano dripped like rain.

  “Sheew, that stinks. What was it?” John gasped, swallowing to regain control of his stomach.

  Cody retched again, bringing up nothing but a thin drool. “A bathroom. I don’t even want to describe it. Bats found a way in. Things I don’t even want to think about are growing against the door and filled in the cracks, sealing the room off. My god, how can anyone live this way?”

  “I don’t have any idy.” John turned toward the only remaining opening behind him, breathing through his mouth. “I guess we go this way. Let me lead.”

  “Hurry up so we can get away from here.” As long as they moved carefully through the extremely narrow aisle, it shouldn’t be a problem. He put his hand on John’s shoulder. “Watch for trip wires. I don’t want to sit in here for a week next to that,” he indicated with a thumb over his shoulder, “while they dig us out.”

  J
ohn shuddered, but he advanced slowly. His dimming light continually flickered over the trash, searching for any clue to another deadfall or booby trap.

  They crept through even more bundles of paper and boxes, making hard right angles and often turning back on themselves. Underfoot, piles of tin cans, pasteboard, and clothing shifted with a dry rustle, making progress difficult.

  The narrow aisle followed the wide perimeter of a concrete water fountain nearly reaching the tall ceiling. They stopped to examine the strange object that should have been in a fancy yard, or in a town square.

  “How’d he get that in here?”

  Cody rapped it with a knuckle. “In pieces, I guess. Or maybe this room is so big it had its own fountain. Who knows? Right about now it seems normal.”

  A column of mismatched boxes leaned tiredly against the top of the fountain’s cherub. They had to shuffle sideways and bend between the large dry bottom reservoir and the smaller one above to scoot past the obstruction.

  “This may be a doorway.” John painted his light across still another pathway taking them through an opening. The packed garbage led steeply upward. Cody aimed his light toward the crest of the rise and realized it stopped at an open transom less than eighteen inches below the top of the doorframe. His own weakening beam illuminated a once highly polished mahogany frame, a tiny indication of the building’s former opulence.

  “We’ve probably gone through a dozen doors since we came in here,” Cody said. “And didn’t see a one of them.”

  “I’m about tired of this funhouse.”

  “More like a madhouse.”

  They struggled to gain purchase with their feet, climbing what would have in the open appeared to be a simple, though enormous, pile of trash. Papers, magazines, clothes hangers, clothing, and even dishes shifted underfoot and sloughed off in a small landslide.

  Cody dropped to his knees and finished the climb, directing light through the transom and beyond. “There’s a room in here.”

  He studied a large area completely devoid of trash, marred only by the garbage spilling from their access point. It was as if George wanted at least one room relatively free of clutter.

  John struggled uphill beside Cody to share the odd sight. Other than a dozen battered metal garbage cans, the room was an oasis. Each can was fitted with a lid, bringing a strange order to the chaos around them.

  Cody slid over the top and dropped heavily onto the floor, where he unconsciously reached to the wall and flipped the light switch. For the first time since they entered the Exchange, a single fixture in the ceiling came on. Cody cringed at his own stupidity. The switch could have triggered any number of booby traps. Instead, the miracle of electric light illuminated the area.

  A doorway on the opposite side was blocked with clean, carefully arranged boxes. Two familiar burrow entrances, one directly over the other, led into another mass of rubbish. A four-foot length of bed slat leaned against the wall.

  “Another trap?” John asked from the transom opening.

  “Who knows? This feller is so crazy that every guess I can come up with sounds wrong.”

  “We have to go through.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I like the light.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do you think is in the garbage cans?”

  “I don’t want to know.”

  “Do you think we should find out?”

  “No.”

  They paused.

  “You first,” John said.

  The overhead lights dimmed.

  He looked at the fixture. “Electricity doesn’t act like that.”

  “Battery lights do. Come on down. We need to get moving.”

  John eyed the passageways. “Umm humm.” He wriggled around, worked his feet through the opening and dropped heavily to the floor with a loud grunt.

  “All right. We move slowly and carefully through here, one at a time.”

  “Which hole are we going to take?”

  “I’ll decide when I can see into them. Stay right here until I call you.”

  “Like I have anywhere else to go.”

  Cody stepped gingerly onto the tongue and groove oak. It felt solid and safe underfoot. He glanced upward at the ceiling, anticipating a collapse. When nothing happened, he relaxed slightly and concentrated on the two yawning black holes directly across, one at knee and the other at chest height.

  For a moment the decision was almost overwhelming. Self confidence waned and Cody didn’t know how long he could keep it up. The maize of burrows was much larger than he’d first anticipated and he wasn’t sure he had the mental presence to keep his composure much longer.

  To stall until he made up his mind, and to touch the sane outside world, he removed the walkie talkie from his back pocket and pressed the button.

  “Can you hear me?” He didn’t expect it to work, and was surprised when he heard Sheriff Griffin’s voice almost lost in the static.

  “Did you want me, or was that an accident?”

  “No, I’m resting for a minute.”

  “Y’all all right?”

  “Hell no, we ain’t all right. Do I have to remind you of what’s going on?”

  Griffin sighed. “No, I don’t know what to say.”

  “Well, neither do I. We’ve come to a fork in the road here, and I can’t decide which way to go.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We’re in a big, empty room, and the only way out is two tunnels in front of us. One goes up, and the other angles back down.” Cody was quiet for a moment, pondering the insanity of their situation. “We really need to get out of here.” His voice rose perceptibly. “I’m too tired to decide and right now I don’t think I can take much more of this madness.”

  Griffin’s eyes found Ned. They exchanged a glance. “Settle down son.”

  Even though he begrudged the old man’s presence, he knew it would help if Ned talked to his nephew. He’d just finished reading the riot act to his grandchildren and probably would have given them a whipping right then if there hadn’t been so much going on around them.

  “I have someone here that may be able to help. Wait a second.”

  Cody closed his eyes and squatted before the two tunnels. The next voice through the tinny speaker was old and familiar.

  “You’re in a mess, huh?” the old voice asked.

  “Ned?”

  “Yep?” The concern in Ned’s voice was evident. “How you doing, son?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “Well, you’ve been in a tight before. You never got into anything you couldn’t handle overseas, and you won’t now.”

  “That’s because the tunnels over there made sense. They dug ’em in the ground and we knew how those people thought. They had living quarters, connecting tunnels, and storerooms. Most of them were level, or at least they changed levels for a reason. These tunnels go up and down just for the fun of it.”

  “No, son, think about it. If George filled that place up and set traps, he had a plan and a damned good reason for doing it.”

  Feeling oddly calmed by the old man’s voice, Cody’s mind shifted gears. “You’re right. I know a few of these tunnels are diversions, and others were made for booby traps, but I’m tired and second-guessing myself. I might get us both killed.”

  “Quit thinking so hard, son. Close your eyes, listen to your gut, and don’t worry about John. He’s in there ’cause he wants to be. John crawled in while Griffin was-a-hollerin’ for him to stop. He’s full growed and knows what he’s doing.”

  On the other side of the room, John dropped to one knee to rest and closed his eyes. “Maybe.”

  They chuckled, despite their situation.

  “Now, think about it. You likely learned something over there in those tunnels to find your way around. What was it?”

  Cody loosely held the radio in his hand and thought back. What had he forgotten? Traps. Tunnels. Ammo dumps. Access and escape hatches. Then he recalled a peculiar
symbol the VC used to indicate the direction of an exit.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  John opened his eyes. “What?”

  Cody keyed the radio. “That’s it Uncle Ned. I’ve been missing signs because this madhouse isn’t as clean as a tunnel. I bet there have been signs all through here that George used to get around. I just didn’t see them.”

  “I knew you’d figure something out.” Ned met O.C.’s eyes and gave him a grin. “Think it’d be all right if you went over and hammered on one of them walls?”

  “I guess.”

  “Well, get to beating on it and let’s see if we can hear you out here.”

  John crossed the room and picked up the bed slat. Taking a good grip on the one by four, he slapped it sharply against the wall. Plaster dust exploded and revealed the lath underneath. He hit it again, and again, until he was out of breath.

  “Did you hear any of that?” Cody asked. The dim overhead lights made the scene surreal, reminding him of the dark alleyway in Saigon where he shot a woman who was supposed to be his friend. He quickly repacked the painful thought for another time.

  There was a long pause before Ned came back on the radio. “Nope. Is there another’n to hit?”

  “Yessir, here we go again.”

  This time John went to the opposite wall and banged away, gaining momentum with each strike as his frustration and fear took over. After five minutes, Cody waved for him to stop. “Anything that time?

  “Nope. You boys are in a real pickle. We didn’t hear a thing.”

  “Looks like we’re back where we started.”

  “Remember, put yourself in George’s place,” Ned told him. “Where would he go? Where would a squirrel or an old coon den up?”

  “I doubt it would be too low. I’d imagine he’d run for high ground.”

  Ned grinned at the men around him. He pushed the talk button again with a leathery forefinger. “That’s right. He might have a den dug a little lower in there, but my guess is that he’ll run to high ground if things get hot. That’s what I’d do. That way he’ll be able to get out easier. He’s not going to get himself in a bind where he’ll have his back to a wall with no way out.”