Rehab Run

by Barbra Leslie

  I looked at the rusty ladder. Did I mention how much I hate ladders? I peered down into the hole, and couldn’t see anything but darkness, and the ground at the bottom.

  “She doesn’t have a light down there?” I said. “They put her down there in the dark? She must have thought she was being buried alive.” Oh God. Poor Mary.

  “She was,” Ned said. He was grim. “She must have been there for days. There are a few empty water bottles. And the smell – well, I hope you have a strong stomach.”

  I looked at Dave and he looked at me. He knew that having a strong stomach was not exactly what I was known for. He probably didn’t know about my ladder aversion, however, and a girl likes to keep a few things to herself.

  “Maybe I should go,” he said.

  “She doesn’t know you, man,” Ned said. “It’s got to be Danny. She’s like a terrified little animal down there.”

  “We don’t know for sure that Mary wasn’t the one who hit Danny,” Dave said, but I stopped him.

  “It wasn’t Mary,” I said. “I told you. It was someone tall. Pamela or Geoffrey. Besides, no matter what she did, she’s in no shape to do any damage now.” Enough talking. Bull-by-the-horns time.

  “Give me your weapon,” Ned said as I hesitated at the top of the stairs. “If you have an accident and it goes off down there, somebody’s going to get hurt. Not to mention your hearing.” I handed him the Glock and looked down into the darkness.

  “Mary?” I called. I waited a second. I heard nothing. “Mary, it’s Danny. I’m coming to get you.”

  After a minute, I heard her. “Danny?” she was saying. “Be careful.”

  “I’m coming down,” I said. I put my foot on the first rung of the ladder and felt rust fall away under my boot. Jesus. “How deep is it?” I said to Ned.

  “Maybe fifteen feet,” he said. “Too far to jump safely in the dark.”

  “Just take it one step at a time, Danny. You’ll be fine.” I looked up at Dave as I started down the ladder. “I’ll chuck you down a bottle of water when you get to the bottom. Try to get some in her before we bring her up. Just a little bit.”

  “I have to wait until you get to the bottom, Danny,” Ned said. “I don’t trust that ladder with both of our weight.”

  “Peachy,” I said. “That’s just great.” I took a minute, clutching for dear life onto the ladder while taking my gloves out of a pocket and putting them on. I wasn’t sure if I’d gotten a tetanus shot in the hospital, but I was pretty sure with all this rust and my luck, I was going to need one. “Okay. I’m going down, boys,” I said.

  “That’s what she said,” Dave and Ned said at the same time, and I couldn’t help but laugh with them. Which made me feel immensely better. If we were laughing, I was going to be okay.

  I took the ladder slowly. The rungs were unusually far apart, or so it seemed to me. I was careful to get a firm footing before I took the next one, like a scared kid on the monkey bars.

  The smell hit me about a third of the way down. Feces, and something else. Blood, maybe, and vomit. Poor Mary.

  I put my foot down on the next rung. Then my other foot. My walkie squawked and startled me – hadn’t it been on silent? On impulse, I went to grab for it to silence it, and it fell.

  Then the ladder collapsed from under me, and I fell the rest of the way down, chunks of rust falling like bloody hail all around me.

  THIRTY-THREE

  I heard the boys calling down, but the wind had been knocked out of me, and something was tearing into me somewhere. I closed my eyes and concentrated on being calm. I felt Ginger, patting my forehead, telling me everything was going to be fine. Breathe, she said.

  I felt rather than heard Mary crawling behind me.

  “Danny,” she was saying. Her voice was weak, so weak I couldn’t believe she could speak at all. “Is anything broken?”

  Good question. As soon as I thought about it, I felt a burning in my right hamstring. And then the burning turned into a searing pain. I opened my eyes and tried to move my head to get my lamp to illuminate my leg.

  Lovely. From what I could tell, a chunk of rusty metal had impaled my right leg, gone right through. Looking at it, my mind and stomach rebelled. I tried not to vomit from the shock and pain. Between the pain and trying to get air back into my lungs, I was pretty sure I was going to pass out.

  “She’s hurt,” Mary was trying to call up. She was beside me. I was so grateful she was beside me. I could feel how hard it was for her to speak. She tried to swallow, and she called louder, “She’s hurt.”

  “Danny, I’m coming down.” Dave’s voice. Then I could hear Dave and Ned up top. More rust fell down on me as one of them was testing the strength of the bit of ladder that remained.

  “Danny, it’s Ned.” I still couldn’t talk. Mary took my hand, and I squeezed it. “I don’t think Dave should try it. The ladder’s integrity is gone, and if he falls, he’s going to fall right on you. You shouldn’t move.”

  “I’m going down there,” I heard Dave say. I heard it clearly.

  “We have to get help,” Ned was saying. “Buddy, it won’t take long. Half an hour…” Then their voices either lowered, or I lost some time.

  I opened my eyes, and I could see Dave’s face peering down at me. He seemed so far away. Was it that far? Ned had said fifteen feet. This had to be thirty feet. Didn’t it?

  “Danny, Ned is going to get on the road and call for help.”

  Ned stuck his head over the side. Looking up felt like far too much work. My eyes wanted badly to be shut. “Danny, I think I should just go and get Bert and Lydia and a ladder. We shouldn’t be around here when police come. Dave told me what happened. We’ll have a lot of explaining to do. We’ll take you right to the hospital.”

  “You’re calling 911,” Dave said. His voice sounded hard, and I tuned them both out. I let my eyes close and concentrated on the pain. Or at least, not screaming. I tried counting my breath to calm myself, like I had done in the water when the tide was rushing in at me, but it wasn’t working.

  I couldn’t look at my leg. Seeing the bar sticking through it might make me sick.

  “Danny,” I heard Dave saying again. “Ned is gone. He’s taken the vehicle and the walkies and the bag with the yearbooks, and when he’s in range he’ll call for the ambulance.” I nodded. I knew he couldn’t see me properly, but I nodded. “I’ll stay here with you. It won’t be long. You’re going to be fine. I promise you, you’re going to be fine.”

  Oh really, I wanted to say. Let me stick a rusty bar through your leg and tell me how fine everything is.

  “I’m throwing down a bottle of water now. I’ve only got one, so you have to share it. Mary, can you hear me?”

  “Yes,” she croaked.

  A plastic water bottle came tumbling down and, because I’m lucky that way, hit the bar sticking out of my leg.

  I screamed. At least I had my breath back.

  “Fuck,” I heard Dave say. Mary was moving around me and I felt her put the bottle to my lips.

  “No,” I said. “Mary, you have some. You need it. I don’t need water.” She paused for a second, then I heard her take a tentative sip. Then a long chug. “No more right now,” I said. “You might just throw it up. Let it settle.” The pain was settling into something I could almost feel that I could live through. It was nauseating, but it was a thudding nausea, as opposed to the searing, screaming pain it had been. But I had no intentions of moving anytime soon.

  I was glad Dave was there. He was talking to me, and I let his words wash over and around me. The pain was incredible, but it was less if I stayed absolutely still. I tried not to envision the blood gushing from my femoral artery, or the bar puncturing my sciatic nerve so that even if I lived, I’d never walk again. I felt tears leaking from my closed eyelids, and I did my best to think about Darren and the boys, and getting back to Toronto. Buying a big, very safe place where we could all live together. I could hear Dave above me, just talking calmly, a
nd his voice was soothing.

  I had just had my birthday. Ginger’s birthday. We were thirty-three now. No, I was thirty-three. The age when Jesus died. Or was it Hamlet? Or both? I remember Ginger telling me it was supposed to be a very important year in a person’s life. Or was that thirty-two? I hoped not. Thirty-two had gone by in a haze of crack smoke and sadness and death.

  I heard a commotion up top. It seemed like a long way away. I heard a voice, or voices, and a cracking sound. Nothing good would make that sound.

  I opened my eyes and looked up, and Dave wasn’t there anymore. I didn’t hear Dave, and I couldn’t see him.

  “Dave?” I called up. Gathering the energy to speak that loudly made me move my leg, and I tried not to shriek.

  I heard footsteps, and I was pretty sure I saw black boots.

  Then one of the metal doors slammed shut above me, and after a minute, the other. I thought I might have heard some rustling – someone moving Dave’s body? Covering the doors with branches? – then I heard nothing else.

  Mary and I were closed into the hole, alone in the dark, with only the faltering light from my headlamp. I was severely injured, and I was pretty sure that if I tried to move much, I was going to lose too much blood. Besides, the ladder was broken from about a third of the way down, and even had I been uninjured, I couldn’t have scaled the wall to get to it. We had what, half a bottle of water between us. Mary was already severely dehydrated, and who knew what else.

  The phrase “silent as the tomb” went through my mind.

  This definitely wasn’t in the brochures, I thought, and nearly laughed. I bit my lip. I had to avoid hysteria. If I passed out now, if I had one of my stupid fits, I was pretty sure I’d never wake up again.

  “We’re never getting out of here, are we,” Mary said. Her voice sounded a bit better, a little bit stronger. Either that, or I was engaging in some heavy-duty wishful thinking.

  “Of course we are,” I said. “You heard him. Ned went to call 911. They’ll find us. I have friends who will look for us.” I hoped they would. Oh God, Dave. I couldn’t think straight.

  “No,” she said. “We’re not.” She sounded almost dreamy, like whatever excitement and adrenaline having us come in had caused had drifted away from her.

  I tried to shift my position a bit so I could see her better, and I ground my teeth against the pain. Mary wasn’t moving, and I couldn’t tell if she was holding her breath and staying still, or if she was passed out.

  Or worse. But I wouldn’t think about that.

  I closed my eyes. I prayed that I would be out of this hole in the ground before Laurence even knew I was gone. I prayed that Dave was somehow okay. I prayed that Ned had gotten away and called 911, and that I would hear sirens very soon. I prayed that very soon both Mary and I would be in a nice clean hospital, surrounded by nice clean doctors and nurses.

  I drifted for a bit. I don’t know if I was disassociating to stay away from the pain or if I was feverish. I’d had a sore throat even since coming out of hospital; my infection was probably not gone. It was going to take hold of me anew, lying here with a rusty pipe in my leg, on dirt, surrounded by feces and who knew what else.

  Wake up, Danny, Ginger was saying. I’m sorry. Wake up.

  When I opened my eyes, it seemed to me that there was a bit of daylight trying to get through one side of the door, where the ground had probably eroded. I’d been out for hours. I tried to calculate past the fuzziness in my brain. We’d gotten out of the car at about one-thirty a.m. I’d probably come down into this hole at two-thirty? Maybe three? Daybreak at this time of year here was at around five-thirty, I was pretty sure.

  Hours. I’d been down here for hours.

  Ned couldn’t have called 911. He couldn’t even have decided not to, and made it back to the safe house to get help. They would have been here long before this. Somebody had stopped Ned, somehow.

  And then I realized with a brutal, sickening clarity what must have happened.

  Nobody had stopped Ned. Ned had never intended to get help. Ned had found this, what, root cellar or half-finished fallout shelter so quickly because he knew where it was. He was involved somehow. He had to be. He had circled back and come behind Dave and surprised him, killing him. Or knocking him out. Something. I had no idea how long Ned had been working with Dave. Ned could be working with Dickie, if Dickie was somehow behind this. Dickie had money, and Ned struck me as more of a mercenary or soldier of fortune than the rest of them. Ned had been here before Dave and the rest had come. He could have learned a lot in that time. He could be blackmailing Dickie, even.

  My mind was on fire. I couldn’t think of any other explanation. Pamela and Geoffrey were dead. I had seen them die. Nobody had come to rescue us, which meant Ned hadn’t made the call, or hadn’t told anyone where we were. But he couldn’t go back to the safe house and tell Jonas and the others that Dave and I had just disappeared, and oh hey, where’s the peanut butter?

  Or maybe Ned hadn’t made it out of the dead zone, the cell dead zone. Maybe whoever had taken Dave had also taken Ned.

  I couldn’t decide which scenario was worse. Either way, Mary and I were very, very alone.

  I was dizzy. Literally dizzy. Despite the fact that I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it out of the hole, I had to figure out what had happened. I had seen Pamela and Geoffrey die before my eyes. Or had I? Dave had approached them, but I had stayed a good fifteen feet away. I knew Pamela was dead; I’d seen her head explode. I thought I had. Had I dreamed that? She’d shot her son first. Geoffrey. Geoffrey was her son. Mary was Geoffrey’s wife.

  I looked over at Mary. She wasn’t moving.

  I steeled myself to move. I had to move. My mind was slowing down, my faculties dimming, and I thought if I let myself, I would just die sitting there, while the fear and fever ate away at my brain. I had to see if there was any water left. I had a fever. I was freezing, shaking, and my eyes were doing some funny things at their edges. I was seeing lights at the periphery of my vision.

  With every bit of will I had, I used my abdominal muscles to pull myself to a sitting position without jarring the bar sticking through my right leg. I leaned against the wall, so I could see the space. Mary was at one end. She had crawled a few feet from me, like an animal, to die. She was clutching the water bottle in her hand. I tried to train my headlamp on the bottle to see if there was any water left. I wouldn’t last long without water. Two days, max. Less if I had a fever. I had a fever.

  There was water left, but I would have to get to it. I would rest first. I looked at Mary’s chest to see if it was moving. I couldn’t see any movement. I didn’t feel her there anymore.

  Mary was gone.

  I was trapped underground. Nobody but Dave and Ned knew exactly where I was, and if help hadn’t gotten here by now, I doubted it was coming.

  I had a fever. I thought I was already dead. But Ginger would come for me. I waited for the doors above me to open, for Ginger to rescue me. I hadn’t been able to rescue her, I hadn’t been there when she needed me at the end, but she would come for me. I was freezing to death, and Rose and Geoffrey were in the hole with me. We all needed help.

  I think I slept for a time. Something woke me, some noise.

  Something crawled out of the darkness to my right. I could hear it coming.

  I was in a nightmare. I swung my head to the right, my headlamp losing its power as I did.

  Something large was crawling toward me. Something covered in blood, which moved like a person, but wasn’t a person.

  I screamed. I think I screamed. I wasn’t going to die, eaten by an animal like Sarah.

  I leaned forward to pull the rusty metal pole out of my leg. I could fight the thing off with it, and at least the blood I lost when the pipe was removed would hasten my death. I was not going to be tortured and mauled in a hole in the ground. This was my life, and if it was going to end, it would be on my terms.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  I leane
d forward to get a good hold of the pipe.

  “No, no, no,” the thing said. “Stop screaming.”

  I hadn’t realized I was still screaming.

  And then, through my fever, I realized that animals don’t talk.

  It wasn’t a creature, it was a man, and he was a prisoner like I was. I tried to hang onto that thought. He wasn’t a monster. I opened my eyes and tried to catch sight of him with the fading headlamp, but he had scurried back into a corner.

  My headlamp was down to nearly nothing. Very soon we would be in total darkness, other than the thin strip of light that was getting in from the door.

  The pain was beyond bearing. I wasn’t going to get through this. I’d been through so much, but I wasn’t going to get through this. If Dave and Ned had been killed, Jonas would come down here. He would have people searching. But I didn’t have days, and I knew it. I doubted I would live to the end of today. I knew with a sudden clarity that I hadn’t gotten a tetanus shot at the hospital. That the sore throat I had was tetanus developing, and with the rusty pipe sticking out of my leg, the bacteria would be invading my bloodstream like hordes of killers. My jaw would lock. I couldn’t remember what else was supposed to happen with tetanus, but I already had the fever.

  I was going to die painfully in a hole in the ground, and Laurence would never, ever be able to forgive himself or live a normal life again. And my nephews, and Darren and Skipper.

  For some time, I forgot there was anyone else down here with me.

  I was glad. I didn’t want to see him. The glimpse I had gotten was enough.

  “Dickie?” I said. “Are you Dickie Doyle?” My voice sounded high, panicked. I tried to breathe. I had to get to Mary, to the water.

  “Yes,” the voice came back. “Who are you?”

  “Danny Cleary,” I said. Tears leaked from my eyes. “Laurence’s sister.”

  Well, I had finally found Dickie Doyle. That was something, at least.