Hayden and Angela emerged from the smoking car wreck, supporting Caitlan between them. “Told you not to pull so hard,” the big woman complained. “I think you broke my fucking hip.”
“Would you rather I left you there to asphyxiate?”
Fred helped them back to the Buick. Caitlan leaned against the hood with a noisy grunt. “Is it broken, Doc?”
“Not now, Caitlan,” he said. Fred grabbed Hayden and started pulling him back to the moose. “The sickness has spread,” he whispered. “We can’t outrun it.”
The big animal was no longer moving. Its hooves and antlers were completely still.
“It’s dead,” Hayden announced.
The blood pooled around its gargantuan head was deep red, not black. Fred ran his fingers through his thinning, white hair. “I thought… I could’ve sworn…”
“After everything we’ve seen, I’m not surprised what you thought you saw.”
Fred actually laughed. “I’ve never been so happy to see something so dead in my life.”
A low whumping noise sounded from the car wreckage. Orange flames lit up through the smoke. “Come on,” Hayden said. “Nothing more to see here.”
A minute later the Audi’s gas tank blew. Caitlan’s treasured ride was no more. She sat dejectedly on the Buick’s hood as Fred checked her over. Her hip wasn’t broken, but he suspected her spirit had been. The seven crammed into the remaining vehicle and turned back north.
An obese black bear lurched out of the trees a minute later and started feasting on the moose’s spilled steaming intestines. Black liquid ran from its dead eyes and dripped from its red snout. Birds swooped in and pecked at the remains as well.
The moose’s broken body jerked back to life.
Chapter 43
Louie watched the roughly hewn rock slip by as they descended into the earth. There was a six-inch space between the bars of their cage and the mine shaft wall. Sometimes that wall sank back even further, allowing a foot to a foot and a half between jagged rock and dropping cage. The bars surrounding them were spaced approximately eight inches apart—not wide enough to actually fit through, but definitely enough room to push a human head into and inflict major damage. Louie considered briefly doing just that to Fiona. It would rip her head off. Worse yet, it could drag her body through and damage the lift. And then we’d be stuck here, a quarter mile beneath the surface.
“How long does this fucking drop last?” Roy asked.
“Fourteen minutes,” Fiona replied. “It could be worse. Shaft 292 is a twenty plus minute descent. Why, you afraid of deep holes in the ground, Piggy?”
“I’m going to bury you in one.”
She jabbed his forehead with the barrel end of the rifle. Roy cried out and a trickle of blood ran down the bridge of his nose. “Don’t even think of pushing me between the bars. I’ll hold this trigger down and tear you all to pieces if you try.”
Even with the warning, Louie figured Roy might be psychotic enough to try it anyway. He tried to change the subject. “292… Are there really that many shafts going down?”
Grace answered from behind him. “There are only two main shafts in Odessa. Shaft 168 was the first, drilling began in 1968. Shaft 2 was dug out in—”
“1992,” Roy interrupted. “We get it. We’re not stupid.”
Fiona stabbed with the rifle again and broke out one of his front teeth.
“Fucking cunfff!”
“Keep it up,” she warned. “Shoot your mouth off a few more times and you’ll likely bleed to death before we reach bottom.”
The four traveled the last nine minutes without speaking another word. The only sounds were those of Roy repeatedly spitting blood and tooth fragments onto the pallet’s edge, and the mournful twang of the heavy steel cable carrying them down. Finally they heard the blare of a second klaxon beneath, and the cage started to slow. It thumped softly at the bottom and the door opened automatically before them.
Fiona backed out first into an immense dimly lit cavern, her rifle aimed at Roy’s face. “Bring the pallet out and park it by the others.”
Louie pushed from the other side as Roy pulled on the jack handle. His eyes wandered up along the curved rock walls, up into the dark shadows fifty feet above where hundreds of stalactites hung down like monstrous fangs. They pushed their load into place next to a pallet stacked with drinking water bottles. The other pallets were similarly loaded with more emergency living supplies and dry foods; enough to last the four of them a year, if not longer.
Louie spun around in a slow circle, taking it all in. “How did you two find this place?” He looked at them apologetically. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying two women are any less capable of looking after themselves than two men are… but to find a working mine shaft, and then figure out a way to transport all this stuff underneath? It’s just… well it’s incredible.”
Grace raised her eyebrows. “This coming from a couple of resourceful men that locked themselves in a tool shed with duct tape?”
“Don’t forget, one of them had his pants off,” Fiona added.
Louie chuckled. “It was turning out to be one of our better days, actually. We’ve been sleeping in open fields and ditches most nights.”
“I can’t believe you,” Roy said. “Look what she’s done to my face! And now you’re trying to suck up to them. You spineless little shit.”
It was true. Louie was sucking up to them. He had been practicing the fine art of sucking up to pretty women and bigger men his entire life. Louie had never become true friends with any of them, but he had a quiet way of being tolerated. He found ways to make himself useful. And when Louie no longer needed someone to fit in with, or to protect his interests, he was pretty good at finding a way of disposing of them. His co-workers at the DSC had learned that the hard way.
Louie figured Roy’s usefulness had come to an end. “See what I’ve had to put up with the last few weeks? The man’s an animal. He’s been threatening to kill me the whole time we’ve been together.”
Roy’s jaw dropped open. “What? I’ve kept you alive.”
“Alive to torment me.” He looked at Fiona and Grace and then pointed at him, his hand shaking for effect. “He was going to rape me in that shed, you saw it for yourselves.”
Fiona rolled her eyes. “You were right, we should’ve left them there.”
“It’s too late now. They’ve seen where we are… how to get down here. They might bring others—others carrying the sickness.”
“Then let’s kill them now and dump their bodies down one of the tunnels.”
Louie held both hands out, and they were genuinely shaking. “No! Not me! I know what the sickness is, I know how to fight it. You’ll need me!”
“You’re dead,” Roy whispered. “So fucking dead.”
“The man’s a cold-blooded killer,” Louie said. “I’ve heard him talk in his sleep about how he murdered all these people after the bombs dropped. I saw him bash in a defenceless woman’s face. He would’ve killed her too if I hadn’t talked him out of it.”
Fiona’s rifle swung towards Roy’s face again. “Is this all true, Piggy?”
Roy started to stammer. “He couldn’t know… I never said a goddamn thing… never hurt a fucking soul my entire life.” Fiona took aim at his crotch. Urine started trickling down Roy’s leg. “Oh please, don’t listen to him… none of it’s true.” Roy started to cry. “It was self-defence. People were looting and hurting each other… It was my job to try and keep control. I didn’t want to kill anyone. Please… believe me.”
Fiona pulled the trigger.