Dead Five's Pass

by Colin F. Barnes

  “What if the alarm goes off?” she said.

  “I know the codes and have a key, it’ll be fine. Besides, the other key holders are back in the village. We’ll have ten minutes or so before anyone can get here, and by then we’ll be miles away.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  12

  Marcel zipped his jacket up and pulled his hood low, not to hide his face from prying eyes, but from the slicing wind. They stalked through the trees that lined the approach to Derry’s Mining & Demolition Contractors yard. Marcel had walked that route many times in the past, but this time he felt like a stranger. The slush of the snow beneath their feet made a sucking noise, which seemed entirely too loud in the dead of night.

  Carise was right behind him when they finally came to the ten-foot-high chain-link fence. An iron gate at the front was held closed by a series of thick, rubber-coated chains and locks that looked like iron bricks. To the side of those was a second lock integrated with the gate post, and above that a small box that held within it a keypad.

  Taking a small flashlight and his keys from his jacket pocket, he set to open the main lock, but when he lifted the square metal device, he realized it was already open and the chains were only there for show. He unlashed them, placed them quietly on the ground. Perhaps one of the workers was in a rush—because of the weather—and hadn’t locked up properly behind him?

  He tested the gate, and to his surprise, it opened; the electronic pass-system wasn’t active.

  “I think we’ve got company,” he whispered to Carise and pointed to the left of the squat, single-story brick building. “The cameras are on the right side—where the storage room for the explosives are. We can enter through the front office. Stay low under the windows…just in case.”

  “I thought you said we’d have the place to ourselves?” she whispered back, her voice shaky with nerves.

  He shrugged. “Maybe they were in a rush and left it open, or maybe someone’s prepping for a big job and clocking some overtime.”

  Marcel led Carise around the building to where the office entrance was located. They ducked beneath two windows, one of which showed a light on inside and a shadow told him that indeed someone was there doing work. As he got near the door, all the time keeping himself against the wall and under the windows, light from inside spilled out onto the snow, coloring it in sodium yellow.

  Marcel stopped in his tracks and felt Carise bump into him. He turned and placed his fingers by his lips. His heart rate jumped a few notches and he waited for the person inside to discover him, but all he saw was smoke puff out into the chill air; long and snaking, it floated upwards. The stench of cheap cigarettes gave away the identity immediately. It was Derry himself, and when he spoke, Marcel nearly slipped over in the snow.

  “Hey,” Derry said.

  Marcel was about to answer from his hidden position in the shadow of the building when Derry followed up with, “Yeah, I’m good. What’s up, Janis?”

  Daring to leave the safety of the shadow, Marcel could see Derry standing in the doorway, roll-up cigarette in his mouth, and a cell phone against his ear. He was talking to Janis…made sense, given the way Marcel had left her earlier.

  “He did that? I always thought he was high-strung… Uh huh…sure…no, he won’t work here again…absolutely…if I ever see him…why?…the dirtbag deserves it… You should have stuck with that guy, what’s his name…the guy you met last month…yeah, Steve…seemed like a decent guy…okay…look, you take care of yourself and come stay with me for a bit, yeah?…sure, no problem. Gotta look out for my sis, right? Okay, Jan, I’ll see you shortly, I’m just finishing up the accounts and will be back in an hour or so. Yeah, let yourself in, Anne’ll be there, but I’ll text her to let her know you’re staying with us for a bit…no, she’ll love having you there, give her a bit of female company for a change instead of the boys. Okay…speak soon, bye, Jan.”

  Marcel’s blood felt like it would explode right out of his skin at the revelation of this Steve guy. How dare she! Despite his feeling’s for Carise, he’d always remained faithful and gave Janis everything she wanted, but it was never enough.

  Derry flicked the cigarette butt out into the snow and closed the door. Marcel quickly dashed past to the other side and knocked. The door flew open, Marcel stopped it with his boot, slammed it back into Derry’s face, knocking him onto his back, his head bouncing off the wood laminate with a dull crack. He gurgled something and tried to stand, but Marcel launched himself into the office, pulled Derry up by his collar, spun him round and struck him on the back of the neck with an elbow strike, knocking the other man clean out.

  “Shit, Marc, what the hell was that?” Carise said.

  Marcel was still shaking with rage when he dragged Derry’s unconscious body into the small accounts room: a torn leather chair sat in front of a well-scratched mahogany desk. Beside that was a rusting metal filing cabinet with one of the drawers open. Marc looked around the room to find something to tie Derry up with and remembered the rolls of detonator cord in the supply room.

  “If he wakes up, kick him,” Marcel said. Carise looked horrified.

  The supply room door was open, and it was much more organized than the last time he was in there. He quickly located the rolls of det cord and took one back to the office.

  “I don’t know about this, Marc.”

  “That bastard knew she was cheating on me and looked me in the face as though I was one of the family. For months things haven’t been right between Janis and me, and this bastard has known all along. Lift his legs.”

  She did as she was told and Marcel quickly tied his legs together, followed by his hands. By this time, Derry started to come around, mumbling and groaning. Marcel grabbed an opaque plastic bag from the trash can and placed it over his head, puncturing holes so that he could breathe without suffocating.

  Marcel gestured in silence for Carise to leave the room. At first she hesitated, a fearful expression on her face. Marcel knew she thought he was going to kill Derry, and despite his rage, he knew he couldn’t do it, or wanted to do it. Derry himself really wasn’t such a bad guy, but Marcel had no time to delay. He needed to get the explosives and get out, and he couldn’t afford Derry following him.

  “What…what’s going? Who…”

  Lowering and muffling his voice through a glove, Marcel said, “I’m sorry.” Before taking Derry’s keys from the desk and locking him in the office.

  Marcel ran down the corridor past the stockroom until he came to the door leading to the controlled and secured explosive’s storage room. He entered his code on the panel and cursed himself as it unlocked. He realized that his code number was now in the system and they’d know it was him. But too late to worry about that now.

  Inside the dark room, cardboard boxes of various diameter explosive cartridges were neatly stacked on secure shelves. The room itself was temperature and moisture controlled. The cartridges, which looked like ice pops, weren’t volatile, being a much more modern product than the old-fashioned sticks of dynamite. He grabbed a couple of boxes and handed them to Carise, who stood away from the door as if her presence would set them off.

  “It’s okay, they’re perfectly stable. They won’t ignite without a high-explosive detonation.”

  Still, her hands shook when she took the boxes. She held them away from her body as if they would taint her.

  Marcel located a sack trolley and loaded three more boxes onto it, along with two large bags of ammonium nitrate prills—tiny pellet versions of the chemical fertilizer often used by terrorists to make car bombs and IEDs. Along with the explosives, he took a roll of det cord and a box of electronic matches, which acted as remote detonation triggers. He also took a roll of plastic wrapping and several rolls of duct tape. “For the kids’ bodies,” he said when Carise gave him a strange expression. “In lieu of body bags, it’s the only thing I can think of.”

  It was as much as they could carry, but should be enough to rip the
beast apart and take down the entrance of the cave. That was the plan anyway.

  With a loaded trolley, he left the building and headed back towards the truck.

  Carise stopped him by the gate. “Are you really going to leave Derry in there?”

  “He’ll be fine. We can’t afford anyone to know what we’re up to.”

  “I know…but…this isn’t right, this is…I don’t know, it just seems extreme.”

  “We’re in extreme circumstances, and so what if he’s uncomfortable for a few hours? His wife and Janis”—the name felt like poison on his lips now—“will soon investigate when he doesn’t turn up. By the time that happens, we’ll be in that damned cave doing what we have to do. Let’s just keep our mind on that, shall we?”

  She sighed, and agreed. “Okay, fine, but as long as you know what you’re doing with this stuff.”

  “I’ve worked with it for years, don’t worry.”

  Marcel called Smith, arranged the rendezvous.

  “Let’s go get our ride,” he said.

  13

  Carise sat uneasy in the chopper as they flew in the night sky towards the eastern outcrop. It was so very uncomfortable to have a half the cabin loaded with explosives; no matter how safe Marcel had assured it was. Just seeing it all there, so close, made her feel queasy. It was that or the growing darkness in her mind, like a slow-moving oil slick on the surface of the sea…growing ever wider, covering ever more space.

  She breathed a sigh of relief when they finally landed.

  It was a trivial process to winch down the explosives: she and Marcel quickly piled most of the ANFO—aluminum nitrate/fuel oil—around the inside of the first chamber. Marcel set up the detonators and ran the det cord out of the cave and round behind the giant boulder steps.

  “On our way out, all we need to do is click this trigger and the entrance will collapse—hopefully.” He placed the triggers behind the boulders.

  “You don’t sound very confident,” Carise said, trying to ignore the growing anxiety. She wanted to vomit. This was worse than any other rescue situation.

  “I’m not, but we have to try.”

  “What about the sticks?” she said, pointing to the Tovex cartridges lined up inside the first chamber.

  “That we take with us—that’ll be our weapon.”

  While Carise warmed herself by the fire and watched Marcel tape together bundles of four cartridges like those dynamite bombs from the cartoons, she felt as if she was being watched, but not from her immediate vicinity. It was more…obscure than that. It was like something from beyond her normal senses, beyond the walls and shadows, lurked and talked, waiting.

  Marcel handed her three bundles and tied them around her in a makeshift bandolier. He did likewise. They looked like something from one of those Al Jazeera reports on terrorists and freedom fighters—it was never always so clear who was who.

  He passed her an electronic trigger with a safety cap to prevent accidental ignition. She took it, placed it in the interior zipped pocket of her waterproof jacket. If she wasn’t nervous before, wearing enough explosives to blow up a ton of rock certainly increased her anxiety.

  “We should get those kids out of the pool and up into the chopper,” Marcel said.

  Carise nodded, tried not to imagine those bodies, half-eaten, their skulls wide and screaming.

  The lake chamber still had that eerie red glow, and those diabolic glyphs still shifted and swayed on the walls as if they were alive. She swallowed her rising bile, ignored the stones she now knew were used for sacrifices—even if without positive proof she just “knew” it. An evil tainted them like the scent of old mushrooms. They set up a couple of flashlights around their position at the lake and illuminated through the gloom of the water.

  She could just make out three dark shadows at the bottom.

  “I’ll go fishing,” she said, taking a metal grapple hook and rope from her belt, “and you whack anything with that axe if it comes up, okay?”

  Marcel stood by her, axe at the ready. “Let’s do it…slowly.”

  Trying not to splash the surface too much, Carise lowered the hook into the water and fed the rope in hand-over-hand so as not to let the hook sink and clatter against the bottom. When she felt the line loosen, she fished the hook around the shadowy area, all the time hoping for it to catch. The first few efforts came to nothing: the hook just passing through the shadows, and then she felt the hook butt up against something. She tested the line; there was resistance and she pulled it up. “I think I’ve got one of them,” she said, although as she continued to pull the rope from the water, it didn’t seem particularly heavy, and as it approached the surface, she realized why.

  The stench hit them first: sulphurous and thick, like burnt onions and rotten eggs.

  “It’s just sludge,” she said, pulling her catch to the lake’s edge. A brown and black paste with bits of bone mixed in was entangled and partially wrapped by a fragment of bright orange fabric clearly from a ski jacket. “Oh god…what has it done to them?” Carise said.

  “Looks like it’s eaten them and spat them back out.”

  “What do we do with the others? Leave them there…? If I were their parents, I don’t think I’d want to know what happened…not like this,” Carise said, all the while feeling the pain of a parent who’d lost her own child.

  Before Marcel could answer, a voice called out from beyond the lake chamber.

  It was faint, but Carise could clearly make out the words “help” and “I’m stuck.”

  She let the sludge and fabric slide back down into the lake, washed off the hook and reattached it to her belt loop.

  They both headed into the gloom, their helmet flashlights bouncing of the walls and shadows as if the darkness was too intangible for light to fall upon it.

  “Here…” Carise pointed to the ground. “The drag marks we saw earlier go through here, it’s…yes, there’s a gap here.” She squeezed through and found herself standing on a ledge approximately two meters wide and about five meters long. It jutted from a smooth rock wall that rose completely perpendicular. She shuffled forward and kicked at something.

  “More bones, Marc. How many people have died in here? I dread to think what else we’re going to find.” Carise knelt down and shone her light on the litter. She picked up a human hand. It was intact, but cut off from the wrist.

  The voice echoed through the cave again. It sounded like a teenager or a young man, someone calling from below.

  “They’re down there,” she said as she flattened on the ledge, cringing as she crushed bones beneath her body. She surveyed the pit of darkness using her helmet light. “The bottom must be as black as the walls,” she said. “I can’t see anything down….wait, there…see it? There’s something reflecting in the light. It’s moving.”

  “I see it,” Marcel said, as he shone a second flashlight down into the stygian gloom.

  As he did, Carise thought she saw something out of the range of the light peel away from the wall and move away. Probably a bat, she thought…but if it was a bat, it was huge.

  And then she noticed that same weird peeling farther off to the right. She turned her head to follow the movement, but the murk devoured her light and she saw nothing. She would put it down to phantom images in the dark and her nerves, but she’d been in many places like this before and never noticed that kind of phenomenon.

  “Did you see anything move from the light?” she asked Marcel, her voice now hushed involuntarily.

  He paused for a second, scanned around, and shook his head. “I’m going down,” he said. “I should be able to get a better look farther down. He brought his flashlight back towards the edge of their platform and they both saw the gleam of old bones. “I think that’s another ledge, I should be able to reach it.”

  He shrugged off his backpack and took out the nylon rope and descenders. He and Carise went through a ten-point safety check, made sure everything was secure, and tight, and they tied the rop
e around a post of stone by the entrance to the lake chamber. He tested his weight against it and double checked the connection of his descenders.

  “Ready?” Carise said as she trained her light on the ledge below so Marcel could guide his descent. It lit up the rope, which reached beyond the ledge: the kink in it confirmed that there was a solid platform below.

  “Yeah, see you in five.” He flashed her a smile and abseiled off the edge, and using both his feet and arms in a hand-under-hand manner lowered himself down the rope.

  As he descended to the second ledge, she kept thinking she saw great winged black things moving about in the dark, but nothing showed under her light, which now trembled in her hand.

  Eventually, the rope went slack and her radio crackled.

  “I got down okay, there’s nothing on this ledge; no bones or bodies, but I can hear the voice. I think we should go down farther. I can also hear air moving. I think there’s a series of tunnels down here. I can certainly feel a draught. Over.”

  She saw him wave up to her. It must be at least a twenty meters down, she thought, estimating the depth. She attached his and her pack to a second rope and lowered it down to him. She then attached herself to the first line and abseiled down to his location. Carise, too, could feel the moving, cool air, and that voice calling for help. But now that she was lower, the voice sounded more distinct—and less human.

  Halfway down, a dark object flew past her head. She yelped and twitched away. It wasn’t her imagination, she even felt the draft of its wing. And she smelled it too. Moist and musty like an old wet newspaper that had rotted to mold.

  And then there was another, and another—a silent flap, but something utterly black that no matter where she shone her light, she couldn’t see what it was. Then something sharp cut at her face before flying off.

  She screamed then, as her arms and legs went to jelly and her heart kicked at her chest. She flapped her arms and touched something leathery and clammy, making her scream again.