The Complete Short Fiction (2017, Jerry eBooks)
Page 14
Suddenly.
Without warning.
The Delta man fell fast, and—shluck!—was impaled on the wooden stakes positioned ten feet below the false floor.
Chase and Kenny had had better reflexes.
When the floor had dropped, they’d both lunged at the nearest carvings. Now Kenny clung to the carved stone head of a woolly mammoth, clutching it in a full hands-and-feet bear-hug, while Chase—ironically—hung from the carving of the giant rat head.
It was then that she saw Leonard Breslin, standing at the inner end of the passageway, his foot next to the trigger panel that had activated the floor.
Then Breslin hit the floor panel again and the passageway’s floor swung back up into place.
OF RATS AND MEN
Breslin and the last Delta man charged down the ultra-narrow passageway-the Delta man with his gun up, Breslin with the Visitor’s Stone tucked under his arm.
‘Don’t move,’ Breslin said as he and the Delta man squeezed past them, the gun trained on their noses. ‘If you follow us, you will be shot.’ The two men then disappeared out the far end of the passageway.
Chase and Kenny released their grips on their carved stone heads.
‘Great,’ Kenny said. ‘Now we’re stuck between two sets of rats. What do we—’
A sniffing sound made them turn.
They spun to see one of the creatures step slowly and menacingly into the passageway from the other end, thirteen yards away.
‘At least we have a chance against Breslin,’ Chase said.
‘I agree,’ Kenny said. ‘Run!’
THE RACE
Chase and Kenny ran—ran for all they were worth.
They came to the long stone with the rodents close behind them, jumped over it like hurdlers.
The knotted rope still dangled from the well-shaft.
Chase and Kenny grabbed the rope and started climbing. A second later, they heard the resounding bang! of the piledriving mechanism.
The rodents had discovered the long stone.
Chase could see Breslin and his Delta bodyguard halfway up the well-shaft, climbing the rope.
The bodyguard fired down at them one-handed—but after a single shot, his gun went dry.
He’d used up his bullets downstairs.
But they still had the upper hand.
Breslin would almost certainly cut the rope once he was safely at the top of the well, letting Chase and Kenny drop back—There came a sudden tug on the rope.
Chase looked down.
The creatures were climbing the rope!
‘Hey, Miss Former Gymnast,’ Kenny said. ‘Think you can climb this rope in record time?’
‘Right . . .’ Chase said grimly.
And she started climbing—fast—hand over hand, gymnast-style, all arms, no feet.
THE MINE ENTRANCE
Leonard Breslin stepped out of the well-shaft-still holding the Visitor’s Stone-closely followed by his Delta bodyguard.
‘Cut the rope,’ he ordered.
The Delta man unsheathed his knife, brought it to the edge of the well-shaft——just as a female hand reached up out of the hole, grabbed his wrist, and yanked him down into the well!
The Delta man wailed all the way down, just missing Kenny as he sailed past him.
Up in the small mine entrance, Breslin tried to make a break for the airlock door, but Chase was too fast. She swung herself up out of the well-shaft and dived at his legs, tackling him rugby league style.
The two of them hit the floor hard, just outside the squat stone entrance to the mine. The Visitor’s Stone tumbled to the floor.
Kenny emerged from the well-shaft shouting, ‘They’re coming! ‘
As the first creature’s claws appeared on the rim of the well-shaft, Breslin clambered for the Stone, crawling through the dirt.
Chase and Kenny just ran for the airlock’s doorway.
Breslin grabbed the Stone, and he smiled—just as he was sucked violently back across the floor by one of the creatures!
‘No!’ he shouted as he was yanked back inside the dark mine entrance, the Visitor’s Stone dropping from his grasp.
Kenny dashed through the airlock’s Lexan doorway. Chase, however, paused in it.
‘Jessica, come on,’ Kenny urged.
Chase was gazing at the Visitor’s Stone on the ground in the entryway to the mine.
‘There’s one more thing to do,’ she said, as she pulled from her pocket the second object she had taken from the mauled Delta man down in the cage-dropping tunnel.
It was a grenade.
She pulled the pin and tossed the grenade toward the mine entrance. It rolled to a stop next to the Visitor’s Stone, right in the doorway to the mine.
Chase then ducked through the airlock doorway and sealed it shut behind her.
The grenade detonated.
The cube-shaped airlock spontaneously filled with rapidly-expanding smoke as the mine entrance was blasted into a thousand pieces.
Chunks of rock slammed into the superstrong Lexan-glass, while clouds of dust billowed up against its clear-glass walls.
When the dust eventually settled, there was no longer any mine entrance—just a pile of rubble, packed solid, completely covering the well-shaft.
The Visitor’s Stone—so close to the grenade blast—had been completely destroyed.
DEPARTURE
The hangar complex was now deserted.
It had been three hours since Chase and Kenny had arrived and Breslin’s corporate jet had long since departed. The medics and the wounded men in the infirmary were also gone.
Chase and Kenny emerged from the hangar into brilliant desert sunshine. The complex around them looked old and decrepit—deliberately made to look disused.
The dull-brown Nevada landscape stretched away from them in every direction.
They walked for several miles down a pitted dirt road until they came to a gate. Beyond that they found a highway where they thumbed a ride.
As she sat in the back of a pick-up truck, swaying with every jolt, Chase reflected on the past few hours.
The tablets—the booby traps—the subterranean pyramid—the Visitor’s Stone—and of course, the rampaging hairy creatures.
She snuffed a laugh.
The creatures. How had they survived for so long inside the subterranean pyramid?
Haynes and Breslin had never known, just as they would never know if the Visitor’s Stone could do all it was claimed.
But Chase knew.
Because of what she had seen during her brief glimpse of the interior of the pyramid, when she had seen the Stone on its pedestal.
For in that moment, she had also seen something else.
She’d seen a trickle of condensation dripping down from the ceiling of the dark stone room, a steady drip-drip that had been landing right on the Visitor’s Stone and which had formed a puddle on the floor around its pedestal.
A puddle that any animal would drink from.
THE END
For now . . .
THE FATE OF FLIGHT 700
Fate of Flight 700 is the contracted, micro-fiction version of Rewind, written for the Tropfest programme. At just 174 words long, it tells a chilling story of a secret so well kept . . . it’s murder:
In the darkest corner of the darkest neighbourhood in the darkest industrial sector of Washington D.C., there is a crumbling old dead-end street.
At the farthest end of this street, at the point farthest away from civilisation, there is a warehouse.
On the bottom shelf of the most remote aisle of this warehouse, you will find a very ordinary-looking wooden box.
If you were to open this box, you would find a sturdy bright-orange box-like device. It is the flight data recorder from a 747 jumbo jet, known as a ‘black’ box despite its true colour.
If you were to play this particular flight data recorder, this is what you would hear:
‘Good God . . . To anyone who can hear me, this i
s Captain Harold O’Shea of British Airways Flight 700, ex-New York. We have visual on a missile bearing down upon us! Yes, a missile! It appears to be coming from a cluster of US Navy vessels on the horizon, over by Horn Island—’
It is then that the bullet will enter your head.
REWIND (a screenplay)
30 November, 1999
(first draft)
FADE IN:
INT. CELL—NIGHT
NEIL CALLAWAY—34, handsome, but roughed-up, with bruises on his face—sits tied to a chair.
An evil-looking BALD MAN crouches before him, rifling through A LEATHER BAG. He looks up at Callaway as he extracts A SMALL CIRCULAR TAPE REEL (from a reel-to-reel tape player) from the bag. He smiles thinly at Callaway.
CALLAWAY
The paper will come looking for me.
The bald man stands. Moves over to a table. On the table is A STEEL CASE. The bald man pulls A SYRINGE from it.
BALD MAN
No they won’t, Mr Callaway.
CALLAWAY
What about Danny—
BALD MAN
He is already dead, Mr Callaway.
CALLAWAY sighs, winces.
BALD MAN
No. I am afraid that you have seen—and heard—
just a little too much.
May you rest in peace.
The syringe goes into Callaway’s immobilised arm. Callaway watches—terrified—as the bald man depresses the plunger.
The contents of the syringe go into his bloodstream.
CALLAWAY
No!—No!!—NO!!!!!!!
His scream carries over as we—
SMASH CUT TO: EXT. WAREHOUSE—ESTABLISHING—NIGHT
An ominous-looking building, surrounded by high fences and razor wire.
Super the legend:
ONE HOUR EARLIER.
INT. WAREHOUSE—NIGHT
A dark, foreboding place. Endless aisles. Wooden crates and boxes fill the shelves.
NEIL CALLAWAY, looking a lot fresher and more alive, SLAMS back-first into a shelf, breathing hard. He looks at A SLIP OF PAPER in his hand by the light of a penlight. The slip of paper reads:
BOX 26/A-1
CALLAWAY moves down a narrow aisle, peering at the boxes on the shelves by the light of his small flashlight.
THE FLASHLIGHT’S BEAM reveals a stencil on one of the boxes: 26/A-1.
Looking fearfully about himself, Callaway hurriedly rips open the box. He extracts—
A BULGING ENVELOPE.
He rips open the envelope. In it is THE CIRCULAR TAPE REEL.
Callaway pockets the tape reel and takes off.
CUT TO: INT. CALLAWAY’S APARTMENT—NIGHT
A reel-to-reel tape player plays the mysterious reel.
Neil Callaway stands at the window, peering out, while behind him, his friend, DANNY SMITH, listens to the reel through a pair of STEREO HEADPHONES. Danny’s mouth is falling open at what he hears.
He stops the reel-to-reel machine. Pulls off the headphones.
DANNY SMITH
Neil. This stuff is fucking dynamite—
It’s at that moment that the door behind Callaway is violently kicked in.
CUT TO BLACK:
Super the legend:
3 DAYS EARLIER.
INT. FBI OFFICE—DAY
TWO MIDDLE-AGED MEN stand around a desk. One wears single-breasted suit with an WHITE HOUSE ID on his pocket; the second man wears a heavily-decorated US Navy uniform.
On the desk before them: A BRIGHT ORANGE REEL-TO-REEL PLAYER.
WHITE HOUSE MAN
The President is concerned. Has the situation been resolved?
THE DOOR to the office opens and in rushes a young NAVY TECHNICIAN. He carries an identical REEL-TO-REEL PLAYER.
YOUNG NAVY TECHNICIAN
Same make. Same model. And now, same serial number. The unit’s been sealed and a new reel is inside.
WHITE HOUSE MAN
Can you get it out to the crash site?
SENIOR NAVY MAN
No problem. We’ll get one team to lay it and another team—who knows nothing—to find it.
CUT TO: A TELEVISION SOMEWHERE—DAY
The news. A FEMALE NEWSREADER speaks to camera.
NEWSREADER
And in breaking news, the black box flight data recorder from doomed British Airways Flight 455 was recovered today by US Navy divers.
The TV SCREEN shows a diver getting out of the water holding the BRIGHT ORANGE REEL-TO-REEL PLAYER we just saw in the office. It is a FLIGHT DATA RECORDER.
NEWSREADER (V.O.)
Investigators are hopeful that the black box will shed some light on the tragic incident. . .
CUT TO: ANOTHER NEWSCAST.
A MALE NEWSREADER this time.
MALE NEWSREADER
Investigators looking into the BA Flight 455 aeroplane disaster today revealed the contents of the doomed airliner’s flight data recorder.
A “sound screen” comes up. It is one of those screens you see on the evening news when a paragraph of words is displayed while the speaker’s voice is supered over it. In this case WE HEAR the garbled voice of a pilot:
PILOT’S VOICE
. . . New York Air Traffic Control, this is BA 455, we are experiencing complete system breakdown . . . oil pressure has been lost, electrical systems have failed, hydraulic wing controls have been lost . . . If anybody can hear this, we are going into a dive . . .
The male newsreader comes up again.
MALE NEWSREADER
The crash of the British Airways Boeing 777 has been linked to a similar crash of a Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777 in 1997. In that incident, complete system breakdown occurred due to faulty wiring in the cockpit circuitry—
NEW ANGLE. WE ARE in:
INT. MOBILE COMMAND CENTRE—NIGHT
The White House Man is watching the coverage on the TV in near darkness.
The Senior Navy Man comes alongside him.
SENIOR NAVY MAN
There’s been a leak.
WHITE HOUSE MAN
One of yours?
SENIOR NAVY MAN
No. Yours. One of your aides told a reporter about the switch. Gave him the location of the real tape.
WHITE HOUSE MAN
Who?
SENIOR NAVY MAN
The leak has been taken care of. The reporter’s name is Callaway.
WHITE HOUSE MAN
Can he be erased with minimal disturbance?
SENIOR NAVY MAN
By the right person. Yes.
The Navy Man turns his head and WE PAN TO REVEAL behind him—
THE EVIL-LOOKING BALD MAN waiting patiently in the shadows.
CUT TO BLACK:
Super the legend:
THREE DAYS EARLIER
INT. MOBILE NAVY COMMAND CENTER—NIGHT
A caravan-type vehicle. Cramped. Dark.
A BRIGHT ORANGE FLIGHT DATA RECORDER slams down onto the table.
It glistens with wetness.
THE WHITE HOUSE MAN from before is here, as is the SENIOR NAVY OFFICER.
WHITE HOUSE MAN
Nobody knows . . .?
SENIOR NAVY MAN
It was found by a specialist unit operating outside the publicised search area.
(beat)
The media don’t know we’ve got it.
INT. MOBILE NAVY COMMAND CENTER—LATER
WIRES are plugged into the FLIGHT DATA RECORDER. The SENIOR NAVY
MAN hits a switch and the reels start to rotate.
Garbled hash.
SECOND OFFICER’S VOICE
(on tape)
Moving to 24,000 feet, sir, all systems normal.
PILOT’S VOICE
Good work, Number Two. Take us up.
The two senior government men stare intently at the black box flight recorder.
PILOT’S VOICE
Say, anyone hear what the score was in the Mets game?
FIRST OFFICER’S VOICE
&
nbsp; Jesus, what the fuck is that?
PILOT’S VOICE
What the—
And then tangle of frantic voices: SECOND OFFICER’S VOICE
Is that what I think it is?
FIRST OFFICER’S VOICE
It’s coming toward us, Captain.
(beat)
Jesus Christ—
PILOT’S VOICE
Number Two, get on the radio, see if there are any Navy ships down there.
Tell them to abort!
SECOND OFFICER’S VOICE
Attention any US Navy vessels in grid sector 675. This is British Airways Flight 455, we are a civilian airliner and we have a visual on a—
A NEW VOICE comes over the line. Harsh. Suspicious.
NEW VOICE
British Airways Flight 455, this is US
Navy ship Liberty, what are you doing in this area?
SECOND OFFICER’S VOICE
(frantic)
US Navy vessel Liberty, we are a civilian airliner in international airspace, and we have visual contact on a missile of some sort, heading in our direction and we ask that you immediately abort its flight—
FIRST OFFICER’S VOICE
Too late!!!
PILOT’S VOICE
NO!!!
The tape explodes to hash. The sound of static fills the mobile command center.
THE TWO SENIOR MEN look at each other. They are like stone.
Unmoved by the drama they have just heard. The WHITE HOUSE MAN pulls out a cellular phone, steps over to a corner.
He speaks into the phone in hushed tones. The Navy man doesn’t watch him. The White House man returns, looks seriously at the Navy man.
WHITE HOUSE MAN
Take appropriate action. Make it go away.
CUT TO BLACK.