The Great Jackalope Stampede

by Ann Charles

  “Mac?” she called when she found her voice. She could hear the panic edging her tone and dry-swallowed it down. Twenty rungs deep in a dark hole was not the place to lose her cool.

  She tried to hear what was going on up above, but the only sound was the water dripping below her. Then even that stopped.

  “Mac, what’s going on?” she called, her voice high with fear.

  A bright light appeared above her like the sun, shining down, blinding her.

  “Keep going,” the woman with the gun hollered down.

  Claire flipped her off. “Where’s Mac?”

  “Don’t go wigging out on me. He’s alive, just incapacitated at the moment. You will be, too, if you don’t get moving.”

  Fuck this.

  Claire pulled her flashlight from the back of her pants. Move this, bitch! With all of the leverage and thrust she could manage, she whipped it up the hole in an underhanded fast pitch.

  The flashlight arced on its way up, ricocheting off the wall of the shaft. She heard a clinking sound, and then the bright light shining down started coming closer, getting even brighter, really fast.

  Claire pulled close to the wall. She grabbed onto the ladder with both hands and tucked her head down, wishing she hadn’t thrown off her hard hat.

  The light bounced off the ladder three rungs above her, glass crunching. All went dark in the shaft as it splashed below.

  A hollow sounding crack rang out above. Claire looked up, but her eyes were still blinded by that damned bright light.

  She heard a thump and another crack. Then a scream rang out overheard, echoing down the shaft, zinging through her like a lightning bolt.

  Wincing, she hugged the ladder even tighter. Something bounced off the wall on her left, then splashed into the water below. What was that?

  Then there was a thump followed by a cringe-inducing crunch. Another scream blasted her, this time right over her head.

  Holy shit! Someone was falling down the hole!

  She plastered herself against the ladder, waiting for the impact of a falling body.

  A gut-wracking cry of pain rained down, but that was it. No body. Just silence.

  “Claire?” Mac called down the hole.

  A beam of light rippled over the ladder in front of her.

  “I’m okay,” she yelled. “What happened?”

  Something dripped onto her wrist. Something dark.

  “She fell in,” Mac called down.

  The drop ran down her forearm toward her elbow.

  “What did you do?” she asked.

  “I didn’t do anything. You hit her with something.”

  The flashlight!

  Claire looked up and gasped at the mangled mess of a leg entangled in the ladder partway up. From what Claire could tell, the woman had gotten caught on her way down. She now hung upside down, her arms dangling over her head. Blood dripped down her forehead onto Claire’s arm again. The beam of Mac’s light flickered over some khaki colored material, and Claire suddenly placed the voice.

  The rattle of the woman’s breath made Claire shudder. “She’s still alive.”

  “Hold on, sweetheart and I’ll figure out a way to get you out of there.”

  Something popped up above.

  There was a clink and then another.

  Then a screech rang out that went on way too long for comfort.

  “What was that?” Claire asked, praying it was Mac doing something up top to get her out of there.

  “It’s the ladder,” Mac said. “Hold on tight, Claire. I’ll try to secure it with the rope, but I think it might—”

  After another echoing screech, the ladder shuddered under her hands. Claire squinted up toward the light in time to see the ladder bend and twist between her and the hanging woman as if some huge hand was wringing it out.

  “Oh, fuck,” she whispered, stepping down as fast as she could go.

  A loud groan rang through the shaft.

  Something cracked and scraped.

  Pebbles and stones clattered down around Claire’s head. She tucked under as best she could while clinging to a rung, bracing for a big stone or piece of the ladder to come down on her shoulders.

  Everything went still around her except the dust, which filled her throat.

  She coughed and looked up. Something partially blocked her view of the top. She tried to move to see around it and a flashlight shined down, the light thin and dispersed by the time it reached her.

  “Claire!” Mac yelled down. “Please tell me you’re okay.”

  “I’m so not okay.” That word was at the other end of her spectrum at the moment. “I’m scared shitless down here. But I’m not hurt.”

  “The ladder gave under her weight.”

  “I noticed.” She cleared the dust from her throat. “Mac?”

  “What?”

  “You know how you said I don’t lean on you?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I could use your help here.”

  “Got it.”

  “Make a note—this is me leaning on you.”

  “I’m going to lower down a flashlight with the rope.”

  “I’d rather you lower down a firefighter to carry my ass out of here.”

  A beam of light bounced off the walls around her. She huffed as he lowered the light along the wall, coughing through the dust and fear clogging her throat.

  The flashlight snagged on the broken piece of ladder that had tipped and gotten jammed against the opposite wall overhead. Mac wiggled the rope and threaded the light down between the rungs.

  Claire held onto the ladder with her left hand and reached out to grab the flashlight as it drew closer.

  “A little farther,” she yelled.

  A groan above her made her freeze. A human groan.

  The flashlight bounced off her fingertips.

  The sound of cloth ripping filled the shaft.

  Cloth ripping … ?

  The woman’s body slipped from the ladder’s hold. It slammed into Claire and knocked her off the ladder.

  Screaming, Claire fell down through the dark, dust-filled air.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Ronnie was debating the wisdom of having brought Jessica to the Skunkmobile.

  Since they’d stepped inside the door, Jessica had not stopped talking, not even while Ronnie had hidden in the bathroom for a few minutes, plugging her ears. Apparently, Jessica needed to talk things out, and talk, and talk, and talk.

  “… and that was when Jacquie told Sherry to try the passion fruit lip gloss,” Jessica went on, following Ronnie into the back bedroom. “I told Sherry not to use it because it would stain her shirt. You should see her shirt, it’s really cool. It has these cute pink roses all around the …”

  Ronnie tuned out again. She glanced around the bedroom, noting the unmade bed, the clothes piled everywhere, the litter of cups on the nightstand, and Claire’s tool belt tossed into the corner. What a sty! It reminded her of when they were kids and had to share a bedroom. No matter how much she tried to pick up after Claire and Katie, the room was always trashed. She sniffed, picking up the scent of fresh air, and noticed the window was open. She watched the curtain move in and out, as if the R.V. were breathing. Thank goodness it smelled better than it looked.

  After five years of sterile living with Lyle, where she made sure every room in her mortgaged mansion was dust free and spotless, and perfectly perfumed, the untidy bedroom made her smile. It felt good to be home, back to her roots, even if they were messy. She scooped up a folded pile of Claire’s T-shirts and opened the tiny closet door, stacking them on the shelf over the rack.

  “You know I have a boyfriend, right?” Jessica flopped onto the bed. “He works with the archaeology crew. He’s majoring in Anthropology.”

  “I know about your boyfriend, Jessica.” Ronnie grabbed a basket full of clean clothes Katie had brought back from the laundry a couple of nights ago and dumped them on the bed next to Jessica. “I worry that he’s
a little old for you.”

  “He may be older than me, but I’m more mature. That’s what he says, anyway.”

  After listening to Jessica’s extensive views on how important it was to match her lip gloss to her nail polish, Ronnie wasn’t sure that was saying much. She had a feeling Jessica’s boyfriend would say whatever it took to get Jessica to plant some of that lip gloss on his mouth. Ronnie hoped that was the only place he had in mind for lip planting, or someone might need to show him the error of his ways with a baseball bat. She preferred solid wood ones herself.

  In her experience, college boys wanted to do a lot more than kissing. Hell, even high school boys got bored with the light touching according to Claire and Katie. They had both explored the opposite sex more in depth from the start compared to Ronnie, who had waited until college to jump into sex. After saying goodbye to her virginity, she’d had two milquetoast monogamous relationships in her twenties before meeting and settling down with Lyle. Maybe if she’d been a little more curious about men before getting married, like Claire and Katie had been, she might not have been fooled so easily by Lyle’s charm.

  She folded a pair of Claire’s jeans. On the other hand, her marriage had taught her some important lessons. The next time she got involved with a man—IF there was a next time—she would not be so naïve. The home video of her satisfying her own needs in what she thought was the privacy of her bedroom flashed through her head, lighting a fire in her chest all over again. Not so damned stupid either. If the sex sucked from the get-go, she was out the door.

  “He asked me to come visit him in Tucson after they finish at the dig site.” Jessica sat up and crossed her legs pretzel-like, looking every bit of her sixteen young years. “Do you think Mom will let me go?”

  Hell no. “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask.”

  “She probably won’t. I don’t think she likes him much. But Dad might let me go.” Jessica sighed. “Wouldn’t it be awesome if I could go see him at the next dig site Dr. García has lined up for them during my spring break? It’s somewhere down in Mexico in April, I think.” She blew a bubble. “A week in the jungle would be so romantic.”

  Romantic? A Mexican jungle full of mosquitoes and snakes and who knew what other icky things? Ronnie would rather spend a week alone on a lifeboat with her mother and a German U-boat commander.

  “He said most of the crew will be going down there, even the volunteers. Hey, I could sign up to be a …”

  Carrying the stack of Claire’s jeans and shorts over to the closet, Ronnie nodded her head, tuning out Jessica’s voice. Claire kept a stash of clothes at the R.V. park now permanently. Ronnie debated on emptying out her luggage and settling in, too. Jessica hadn’t made her choice about staying with her mom yet, but Ronnie was getting sick of living out of her suitcase.

  Screw it, she thought, and pulled out her luggage, dumping it on the bed next to Jessica.

  “Now that you don’t have a job or a husband,” Jessica said, “you should volunteer to work on a dig site. You may not make any money, but you get to travel and eat for free. You could be like those two old ladies who keep bugging me to help.”

  Ronnie thought about walloping Jessica upside the head to see if it stopped the stupid shit from pouring out of her mouth. Instead, she unzipped her bag, shaking out a blouse and hanging it in the closet. That one would need ironing again. “Jessica, I highly doubt they are doing this for free.”

  “They are.”

  Ronnie paused. Traveling around to different dig sites would be the perfect opportunity for a woman on the run. She wondered how much education and experience was necessary to be hired to help chart their finds and do whatever other busy work was required. Would she be qualified?

  “There must be a little money in it for them, Jessica.”

  “I don’t think so. My boyfriend said they were down in Mexico at some Maya site before they came up here. He said they are like a traveling circus group that way.”

  Ronnie pulled out one of her knit skirts, brushing off a layer of dust that had somehow gotten inside her suitcase. The desert had to get its dirty fingerprints on everything down here. “Even traveling circus groups make a little money.”

  “He said they pay their own way, insisting the university uses their funding on the students and dig site stuff. It’s even their own camper. The only thing the university pays for is their campsite.”

  How could those two afford to travel all over the place without making a dime for their efforts? Had they come from money? Were they widows living on their dead husbands’ retirement funds?

  It was too bad Lyle hadn’t kicked the bucket. Although that life insurance he claimed to have was probably just another work of fiction. Oh, wait, she wasn’t even his real wife, so the money wouldn’t have gone to her anyway. Damn, so much for putting a contract on his head while he was serving time.

  “He said they live up in Sedona in a huge, fancy house they are having totally remodeled while they travel.” Jessica lay back and stared up at the Skunkmobile’s ceiling. “I wish we had a fancy house in Sedona. I hear it’s really cool up there.”

  Ronnie had heard that, too. It was also expensive as hell according to that real estate channel her mother kept watching on Ruby’s television. The housing prices were some of the highest in the state.

  She unzipped the flap of the inside pocket in her luggage where she kept her jewelry. Opening her purse, she fished out the bracelets that Aunt Millie had refused this morning.

  “What’s that?” Jessica asked, rolling over to get a closer look at Ronnie’s jewelry. “Can I see them?”

  “Sure. There are more in that pocket. Have at it.”

  Scooping up a stack of her shirts, she took them over to the closet and made room for them next to Claire’s stuff.

  “Ew!” Jessica said. “Why do you have an eyeball in with your stuff?”

  Crap. Ronnie had spaced on that darn eyeball. She took it from Jessica and palmed it. “It’s a good luck charm,” she lied.

  “That’s just weird.”

  “So is a dead rabbit’s foot.”

  “My boyfriend has a lucky beer bottle cap on his key chain.”

  Ronnie was liking this boy less and less the more Jessica talked. She rolled the eyeball around in her palm, warming up the glass, noticing a ridge on the surface.

  “He asked me to wear his college ring.” Jessica slid on Ronnie’s zirconia studded ring Lyle had given her after coming home from a business trip to Florida. “But I told him that my mom would totally freak out if I did.”

  Jessica was probably right. A ring meant commitment.

  She rubbed the pad of her thumb over the ridge on the eyeball again, noticing something scratchy on it.

  “Is this a real diamond?” Jessica asked.

  “No.” Ronnie opened her palm and took a closer look at the eyeball. The ridge was chipped.

  “It sure looks real.”

  “I know.” Ronnie had certainly been duped by Lyle and his fancy ring.

  She scraped her fingernail along the ridge. Claire was wrong. She’d thought they were glass eyeballs. But would a glass eyeball have a scratchy ridge like this? Ronnie remembered one of those Antique Roadshow episodes she had watched with her mom about an antique doll. Hadn’t the buyer told that lady the best doll eyes were made of blown glass?

  This must be made of something else. The workmanship on it was not as detailed as the doll’s on that show. The irises looked pretty real, but there were no red veins.

  “What are you doing?” Jessica sat up and moved next to Ronnie.

  “Trying to figure out what this is made of.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “It was given to me as a gift.” Sort of.

  “If you aren’t too stuck on it, you could break it open.”

  She stared at Jessica’s freckled face. What would Claire say when she found out Ronnie had broken the eyeball? Maybe she need never know. Ronnie could always go get another one
from the box under the khaki ladies’ camper without Claire ever knowing.

  Besides, after hearing that the camper had been down in Mexico recently, Ronnie had an idea about the eyeball. During all of those years stuck in a lonely marriage, she had often watched romantic movies while left on her own for much too long. One of her favorites was Romancing the Stone, with Michael Douglas acting as her inspiration for her one-on-one moments with Raphael, her now-famous vibrating pal.

  “Grab that hammer out of Claire’s tool belt,” she told Jessica, moving over to the desk. She knocked the pile of clean underwear and socks onto the floor.

  Jessica handed her the hammer. “You’re really going to smash it?”

  “Sure. Why not?” The ridge on the eyeball kept it from rolling off the desk. Ronnie shielded her eyes with her left arm and swung with her right.

  There was a crunching sound that was definitely not glass shattering.

  Ronnie stared down at the smashed eyeball. “Damn,” she whispered. “Would you look at that.”

  Jessica reached out and knocked aside the pieces of ceramic. “Is that a real diamond?”

  Picking up the tiny, cool stone and holding it up to the light coming through the bedroom window, Ronnie frowned. “God, I hope not. Because if it is, we’ve got a big problem.”

  * * *

  Claire had a big problem.

  She was stuck in the bottom of a mine shaft with a dead woman floating face down in the water next to her. At least she was pretty sure she was dead. The beam of light shining down from the flashlight Mac was still dangling overhead shed plenty of light for Claire to see that there was no sign of life in her body.

  “Claire?” Mac yelled down, his voice tense. “Claire, are you okay?”

  She coughed, sputtering in the mineral laden water. “I think so,” she called and dog-paddled over to where the ladder rose out of the water.

  Her whole body trembling, she placed her feet on a rung and willed her legs to hold her weight. She climbed out of the cold pool, which turned out to be only about ten feet deep judging from the length of time it took her to reach the surface again after shoving off from the bottom.