Stuck into Collins’ temple. The detective lurches to one side, steadies himself on a trolley that crashes beneath his weight. Fozz is thrown clear and hits the ground in a broken heap.
“No, please,” Liz says, sinking to her knees beside her friend, hauling him up onto her legs. His head swings to her and his face isn’t a face anymore. Beside her, Collins kicks a last spasm then stills. The metal bar clatters free. She can barely comprehend the sight of either of them.
Then Shepherd’s grabbing her by the back of the collar and dragging her with him. She shrugs free, freaking out, and he screams at her. “Look!” Across the room Austin has stalled, and he’s ripping at the Black Lung plants too, shoveling the poisoned leaves into his mouth.
Liz snatches up the length of bloodied metal, sprints after the SOG commander. At the blast doors, Jacko waits until the last possible moment, and then he leaps after them. Almost instantly, the door bangs in a foot behind him, the numbers moments from bursting through. And Austin is already turning to him, sensing the man coming, ready to embrace him.
They can’t save him. Can only run for their lives toward the cave opening. Gunfire behind them, Jacko’s scream as he’s eclipsed.
And then it’s only the two of them, their numbers cut in an instant.
Shepherd pushes her forward, covering her at the entrance, and she jumps for the hole. The darkness takes her.
6 ‒ ENDGAME
LIZ SCRAMBLES ACROSS razored rocks into the swallowing dark. Her knees scream. The only light comes from Shepherd’s gun barrel as he skitters in behind her, crawling backwards and sighting on the circle of light behind them.
She looks back past him and sees a face at the entrance. It’s Austin, black-eyed, mouth covered in blood. A huge boom that shakes the fragile roof above, that nearly blows her eardrums, and Shepherd puts a hole in his forehead. The detective keels away.
Shepherd keeps retreating, slithering back on his stomach, as the noise comes and the room beyond begins to boil with shadows. Hands claw at the lip of the tunnel, and then suddenly the gap fills with faces. He opens up and Liz can only crouch and clasp her hands to her ears, silently screaming.
“Keep going!” Shepherd cries at her and Liz moves further crouched into the black, slapping a hand against the wall to feel her way forward. She thinks she can feel footprints in the stretches of mud beneath her own, so she knows the gang have been using the passage, but then her head gashes the roof and she has to crawl as the cave tunnel shrinks. Soon she’s on her knees again, yelping as the rock cuts into her kneecaps. The ground becomes slicked with her blood.
Behind, the SOG commander rests on his stomach, methodically picking off targets. The light from the room begins to shut off as the bodies mount in the gap. Still they come. And come.
“Reloading!” he yells through force of habit. But what’s she going to do, cover him with the iron bar? He slots the mag home, resumes sniping.
The roof continues to creep down, the walls narrow. She’s forced on her own stomach now and the air is so stale, she’s having trouble drawing breath.
Panic begins to overwhelm her. She’s going to get stuck. No one’s used this passage before. It’s just going to end and they’re not going to be able to back up. She’s going to be trapped headfirst in the tight rock. Even if the crazed residents don’t squeeze in after them and tear them apart they’ll be trapped for hours, for days. Slowly dying from lack of food and water. If they’re lucky, more quickly from no air.
She starts to thrash, hitting the sides of the tunnel around her. She can’t escape it. There’s resistance everywhere. No room. The uncontrollable terror builds deep within and she knows if she opens her mouth the sound will never stop, that she’ll use the last of the foul air in here screaming at existence.
“Have to… have to back up,” she forces herself to say, but she can barely hear her own rasping voice.
“I’m running out of ammo!” Shepherd cries back. “I’m blowing it.”
Liz’s mouth snaps shut. “No. Wait!”
She’s able to just glance back beneath her arm. Sees Shepherd aim at the roof of the entrance. And fire.
Bullets glance off the rock at first, casting sparks. Shepherd steadies himself. “Please,” he breathes out. He squeezes the trigger.
A huge whump and the tunnel collapses in a great gout of dust that sweeps all the way towards her, snuffs out her air as it snuffs out the light.
She couldn’t scream even if she tried.
She’s going to die like this. After everything she’s fought through, all the pain, the loss. It ends like this.
Something breaks in her. And the fear goes. Just washes out of her, sinks down through the earth beneath her.
I’ll be with you soon, baby…
The rocks settle, and there’s silence. Then: something coming toward her. She opens her eyes. Light flicks past her, shines on down the tunnel ahead.
“Can’t… breathe—”
“We’re okay,” Shepherd is saying. “There’s air ahead.”
She looks up, focuses. Can’t see anything, but there’s a hint of cold seeping toward her. Shepherd had risked everything, but this isn’t a dead-end tunnel. It leads somewhere.
“Don’t go to pieces on me now, Liz.” Shepherd’s just behind, his voice somehow comforting, part of her.
She clutches the rocks beneath her shredded hands, surprises herself with movement. A strength even now. “Don’t you.” And then she pulls herself on, dragging her snaking legs deeper into the trench.
After torturous seconds, she begins to see something ahead: a rippling reflection on the roof somewhere above. A pinhole light appears in the distance. As she scrambles on, it grows, beckons her.
“There,” Shepherd says. “We’re almost there.”
She pushes to her limit, the tears coming now hot and endless. Her belief in release growing by the moment until the light opens out to a room ahead. She scrabbles the last few claustrophobic numbing feet and tumbles over the end of the tunnel onto the wet clay floor of the room.
She lies panting, sucking in air, staring up at strange rippling reflections on the roof of the cave. Someone has installed crude electric mine-style lighting in here, offering dim but the most beautiful illumination, and the walls are propped up with timeless timberwork. She doesn’t know how deep beneath the city they are, but someone once modified the ancient cave system to their own ends. And it’s saved their lives. Even at the moment she was finally prepared to let go of hers.
Shepherd tumbles out after her, nearly rolls over her with his kit of heavy equipment. She barely registers the impact.
They lie a moment in stunned silence, staring upwards, breathing through damaged lungs. Cold air wafts over them.
“I didn’t think that would work,” he says.
She cries then. Turns her face from him. She’d been so close to release. Why did she always keep fighting? Why can’t she just let go?
“Hey. Hey! Liz. Look at me. We’re okay. We made it out.”
Shepherd’s face is dark with mud, with his own blood and sweat. As must hers be. She nods. “I know.”
“I need you to keep fighting.”
“I know.” But her eyes are dead as she looks at him. She wants to scream. How, after every horrific thing he’s just seen, can he still think this world is still worth fighting for? But she can see the resolve in his face. He’ll fight to the last breath.