by Jacob Rayne
He reckoned they’d be on a while yet with their clean-up and figured this would be his best chance to get away.
When they turned, he tried the door. It was stuck fast.
Panic started to well up inside him.
He looked around the door and saw that there was a key card slot set into the frame.
Cursing, he looked around for a key card.
The answer to the problem filled him with dread.
He was going to have to return to the lorry and see if the dead driver had a key.
The next morning, Annie Morris, one of Sylvia’s well-meaning but dull neighbours, called to see how she was doing.
As Sylvia opened the door a large bouquet of flowers was thrust into her face. She noted that it was the same ten dollar bouquet that she’d bought herself the previous day.
Maybe even grief has a price tag, she thought.
‘Hey, Sylvia. Hope you’re alright,’ Annie said.
‘I’ve been better.’
‘I don’t doubt that. Wanna talk about it?’
‘Not really. Coffee?’
‘Yup.’ Annie picked up her cup and took a drink straight away, gasping as the hot liquid hit the back of her throat.
‘Careful.’
‘I know. So how are you coping?’
‘It feels like my mind is falling apart.’
Annie nodded. Her expression was part sympathy but mostly curiosity.
Sylvia felt a little like a freak show act.
This thought made her remember the strange visitor at Ray’s grave. She mentioned it to Annie.
‘Oh, I’ve seen him too,’ Annie nodded.
Her casual tone infuriated Sylvia.
‘Please… elaborate.’
Annie shrugged, took another swig of coffee. ‘He seems to be there every time I pass the grave.’
‘Really?’
Annie nodded.
‘Mind if we go see if he’s there now?’
‘I’d rather not. There’s something off about him.’
‘Suit yourself, I want to see if he’s there.’
Sylvia left Annie in the kitchen and set off for the graveyard.
As she entered the yard, she saw a cloaked figure leave by the other exit.
Sylvia found it highly suspicious and vowed to set Annie, the street’s biggest gossip, on the case.
Back home, she told Annie she’d again seen the figure.
‘Told you he’d be there,’ she said, swilling her coffee round her mug.
Sylvia wasn’t sure what she disliked most; Annie’s casual manner or the fact that she’d helped herself to another cup of coffee.
She let Annie finish her drink then shooed her out.
Alone at last she sunk into the comfortable grief she’d come to know as normality.
An hour later she was disturbed from her TV talk show by insistent braying on the back door.
She pulled it open to see one of her young neighbours.
The neighbour’s very presence here unnerved her; this was a young lady with two toddlers – the type of woman who no doubt longed to gossip but didn’t have enough hours in the day to stand on the doorstep and shoot the shit.
The fact that she was here at all suggested something serious was amiss.
‘What’s up, honey?’ Sylvia asked, noting the girl’s anguished expression.
‘I’ve just seen Ray in the graveyard.’
The next thing Sylvia knew, the ground was racing up to meet her.
One minute Parker had been there, Goldstein reflected, then he’d disappeared. His best buddy had been missing for about two minutes now and he still had no idea where he’d gone.
He stared up into the trees.
Stared at the ground, looking in vain for holes into which his friend could have fallen.
Choosing not to panic, he began calling out Parker’s name. Every cry received no response.
He cursed and pulled out his comms unit.
‘I think someone’s got Parker,’ he said. ‘Keep your eyes open.’
‘I’m coming to find you,’ Hammett said.
Pike and Mann would have to cope without him for now.
Mark reluctantly started creeping back towards the lorry. He was halfway between the shadows and the lorry when a figure appeared without warning. He felt certain that he’d been spotted, but the man didn’t react.
When the guard turned away, Mark rushed to the front bumper. Sucking in lungfuls of air, he did his best to fight back the panic which threatened to consume him.
He waited for a few passes of the guards, watching their feet from beneath the lorry, before he dared make his move.
He moved quickly to the door of the cab and opened it as carefully as he could. The courtesy light made him curse – it would probably be enough to give him away.
The sight of the driver’s pallid face sent vomit flooding into his mouth. He spat onto the floor. Tore his eyes from the slit in the driver’s throat.
When he was far enough inside he pulled the door shut, not wanting the open door to give him away.
Though the idea of touching another dead body made him physically sick, he forced himself to go through the driver’s pockets.
Smiling for the first time since this whole ordeal had begun, he pulled out a plastic card which had a logo of the store and the word ‘Delivery’ on it.
The smile faded when footsteps approached the cab.
When Sylvia awoke, her thoughts were a jumble, but somewhere she remembered her young neighbour’s comments.
‘Sylvia, are you alright?’ the young girl said, gently shaking her shoulders.
‘Yeah. Fine.’ The girl’s face swam in and out of focus.
Sylvia looked around and found herself propped up against the wall behind her front door.
‘I’m worried about you, Sylvia. This can’t be easy on you.’
‘I can’t pretend it is. Did you see where he went?’
‘No. He was staring at his own grave, but when I approached he disappeared.’
Sylvia nodded, remembering her sighting of the dark figure in the graveyard.
‘Do you mind if we go now? I’d rather not be alone if he’s there.’
‘That’s fine, Sylvia. I don’t mind. As long as we don’t take too long. I’ve got to put the kids to bed.’
By the time Hammett reached Goldstein’s position, the Private was starting to lose it a little at the realisation that he may not see his best friend again.
‘Pull it together, Goldstein. Parker’s a tough fucker. He’s probably fine.’
Just as the words left his lips, there was a scream from the other side of the island.
Frost and Bowes heard the scream and, before Frost could say anything, Bowes went charging off through the jungle, all thoughts of inching through a territory potentially infested with traps and IEDs thrown to the four winds.
‘Bowes, you idiot,’ Frost bellowed. As he shouted there was a click and he saw gobbets of mud and bloody flesh being thrown up into the air.
Having just had a timely reminder to be vigilant in this foreign environment, Frost picked his way through the bushes.
Green spun as he saw something in the treeline.
At the same time, something had fallen from the tree above Abbott, making him stagger and turn his ankle in a pothole.
‘Job’s fucked now,’ Abbott said, grimacing with the pain. ‘Hope I don’t have to run.’
Mark surprised himself with his presence of mind. When the truck door opened, revealing the gas-masked man who’d been determined to put a bullet in his skull, instead of freezing in indecision he had shoved the driver’s body as hard as he could.
The body had fallen onto the surprised guard and flattened him.
Knowing that a moment of inaction could mean a nasty death, he dived out of the truck’s open door.
The guard seemed to be out cold – the salad-dodging driver had pinned him to the floor.
Mark ran before the guard had chance to come roun
d. He reached the door in a couple of seconds.
The LED on the door changed from red to green when he flashed the keycard. There was a click – that was far too loud for Mark’s liking – then the door started sliding to the left.
Mark squeezed through the small gap, taking the skin off his elbows, and ran to the nearest concrete pillar.
He hid behind it, his chest heaving like he was on the last mile of a marathon. The door slowly opened to its full extent and stopped.
Mark cursed; it was blatantly obvious that someone had escaped with the door standing open like that.
He risked a glance around the pillar. There were no guards at the truck.
He willed the door to close.
A few seconds later it did, emitting a shrill alarm.
The scene in the graveyard was surreal, fog rolling across the stones. The birds that normally chattered in the trees were silent and the air bore a distinct chill despite the glare of the sun.
Both women started as they saw the dark figure standing at Ray’s grave.
Though they didn’t realise it, both women trod more softly upon seeing the black cloaked figure. Neither of them wanted to spook him.
As they drew closer, the air seemed to thicken and cool.
The man looked around himself, seemingly nervous at being discovered, but he didn’t retreat.
Sylvia’s eyes tried to pierce the gloom beneath the hood but they failed. Luckily, the mysterious apparition held his ground by the gravestone.
As he came into view, Sylvia found it impossible to believe her eyes.
Her brain threatened to shut down, so incomprehensible was the information it was being offered.
The figure in front of her was her dead husband.
No doubt about it.
For the second time that night, the ground raced up to break her fall.
Abbott laid on his belly, his assault rifle propped up on a log in front of him, covering Green as the young private carefully picked his way through the foliage towards the source of the scream.
They’d both heard the explosion and seen bloody chunks of flesh fly into the air and realised what it meant.
‘Looks like this is gonna be a ball-ache after all,’ Abbott muttered.
Frost met Mann and Pike in the centre of the island.
‘No sign of this Morgan faggot,’ Mann said.
Frost nodded, took a draw on his cigar. He and Mann scoured the bushes and treeline while Pike searched the ground for tripwires.
‘Seems ok over here,’ he said.
Upon seeing a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye, he spun and ran after it.
‘Careful,’ Frost said. ‘There’re traps round here.’
Pike and Mann followed.
After a few minutes of running, Pike found himself in a place that looked like where he’d first seen the movement.
As he scanned the horizon he caught a flash of movement from below him and to his left.
Before he knew what was going on, he found himself dragged into a burrow in the ground.
He had only time for a quick cry before the life was torn out of him in hails of red.
Mark’s ears registered the sound of the alarm but he didn’t want to believe it.
He saw one of the guards come running, but a scream from the rear of the lorry made him turn.
‘Got a survivor,’ he heard one of the guards say.
Seconds later came the sound of gunshots from the back of the vehicle.
While the guards were distracted, Mark ran down the tunnel. It was so long that his journey became an optical illusion; the more he ran, the further away his objective seemed to get.
Bullets slammed into the pillar beside him, spraying chips of concrete into his hair.
He dodged from side to side, hoping to create a hard target.
To his right he saw a door that he hoped was unlocked.
The handle turned but the door didn’t open.
It took him a second to notice the key card reader to the left of the door.
He scanned it, pulled the door open and ducked inside, but wasn’t quick enough to avoid injury; one of his would-be assassin’s bullets clipped his right arm.
The pain was instantaneous and agonising. His arm quickly became soaked with blood.
He slammed the door shut behind him and frantically searched for a hiding place.
Sylvia’s head thumped as she came to in a hospital bed.
She was alone, not even a nurse to keep her company.
A cry of alarm escaped her when an image of Ray’s face floated up like a body resurfacing from beneath the tide.
She had to get home and see if he was still keeping his vigil by the grave.
As she started pulling wires and tubes out of her arms and chest, the machine next to her let out an ear-splitting beep which did little to ease her pounding head.
She shoved past the nurse who had come to investigate the beeping and set off down the corridor, following the signs for the exit.
Frost heard movement behind the bushes and moved forward in time to see Pike’s hand disappear into a hole in the floor.
A second later blood fountained out of the hole.
Realising that Pike was already dead – or certainly as good as – Frost fired a long burst of machine gun fire into the ground.
He heard wet sounds as the bullets slammed into flesh.
Mann grinned as he reached the hole and, without a second’s thought, started crawling in.
‘What in the holy hell’s going on?’ Abbott’s voice barked over the intercom.
‘Someone got Pike,’ Frost said. ‘Mann’s crawling in after him.’
‘None of you should be crawling in anywhere,’ Abbott shouted. ‘Get out of there right now, soldier.’
Mark frantically tried to think of a plan as the door clicked open.
The room was dark and had plenty of hiding places, but none that would stop a bullet.
All the gunman needed to do was rake the room with machine gun fire and sooner or later he’d hit Mark.
‘I know you’re here,’ his pursuer said. ‘Gonna blow your fucking head right off.’
Mark hid under a table and scanned the room for a makeshift weapon. The best he could come up with was the backrest of a broken office chair.
It would have to do.
The masked man seemed to sense Mark’s earlier thought and he opened fire, moving the gun across the room.
Muzzle flashes lit up the dark.
Bullets tore holes in the desks and walls.
Somehow Mark escaped unscathed.
When his hearing became flooded with white noise in the absence of gunshots, he checked the position of the gunman with a furtive glance under the table then stood quickly and hurled the backrest.
It hit the guard in the chest, catching him as he fumbled to reload his gun.
Mark ran past him and swiped the card across the reader then pulled the door open and sprinted down the tunnel.
Sylvia reached the end of the ward only to be collared by security and taken back to her bed.
‘It’s for your own good, Mrs Arlington,’ said a kind-faced nurse.
Back in her bed, with drips and monitors reattached, the nurse asked her why she was so keen to get out of the hospital.
Her answers stunned the nurse.
Sylvia seemed to be highly delusional, probably as a result of the shock of losing her husband.
She consulted with a colleague who dealt with grief counselling and the pair of them decided to call in the police, just in case something was amiss.
The policeman was kind and sympathetic. He listened without interrupting – something all too rare in this day and age, Sylvia reflected a little bitterly – then asked her a few questions.
He seemed happy with her answers and agreed to check the story with the young girl who’d been with Sylvia in the graveyard.
‘Didn’t she come in with me?’ Sylvia asked, suddenly confused.
The nurse shook her head. ‘You were brought in alone in the ambulance. The paramedics said someone’d called and told them that you were passed out on your husband’s grave.’
‘Strange, she doesn’t seem the type to have just left me unconscious like that.’
Sylvia’s brow furrowed as she tried to remember what had happened.
Hammett’s finger tensed around the trigger as he listened to the mayhem taking place a few yards away.
Goldstein wore a steely expression. No way was he going to let this terrorist fuck get away with killing Parker.
Both of them aimed their guns at a churning patch of mud in the hillside.
Goldstein stood to the left, Hammett to the right.
Both men quickly glanced at each other as more crumbs of mud fell away and a head-sized hole began to appear before them.
The head poked out further, like a mud baby crowning out of its earthen womb.
‘Steady,’ Hammett said, fighting his urge to pull the trigger and never let go.
Finally the head broke the surface.
It was Mann, but his eyes were just bloody holes in his head, his face thick with dripping blood.
He screamed and writhed, wriggling his way out of the ever-widening hole in the hillside.
Mark heard no sign of his pursuer.
Legs and lungs aching, he pulled up to a halt and leant against the wall.
The tunnel end seemed a little closer, but still far enough away as to be unobtainable.
He saw another door on the right side of the tunnel – this time with no key-card reader in place – and pulled it open.
The door opened onto a darkened staircase.
On the floor above a light flickered on and off, casting everything in alternating two-second patches of light and dark.
It gave the staircase the feel of a ghost train; the next scare lurking just around the corner.
Realising that the tunnel probably led the length of the mall, he decided to take his chances upstairs.
He set foot on the stairs, cautiously peering over the rail to see if any of the guards lurked above or below.
Seeing no one, he continued to the top.
