The tall one reached a long arm into the pocket of his baggy combat trousers, slung low on thin hips. Petra saw him pull out a fistful of gold, then return half the haul to his pocket with a clinking of metal. Not gold. Brass. A clutch of bullets. ‘Five naughty monkeys,’ he repeated, and flipped the revolver chamber from the side of his pistol. As he slid each bullet into its cylinder, he casually pointed the barrel at each one of them. ‘Un.’ Shunk, went the bullet as he looked at Ed. ‘Deux.’ Shunk. Mary shrank away from the barrel. ‘Trois.’ He smiled at Petra. Shunk. She held his gaze. He stopped smiling and turned to Carly. ‘Quatre.’ Shunk, his thumb pushed another .45 calibre into its snug chamber. And as he turned to Dane he pondered the maths for a beat, shrugged and said, ‘And two for you.’ Shunk, shunk, the final death sentence sealed with a slap of the gun, locked and loaded.
‘Wait!’ Petra heard herself say. ‘Just wait.’ He looked at her, almost amused. Her friends looked at her, too. ‘You don’t have to do this. It’s … unnecessary.’ The tall man looked confused, bordering on pissed off. It was a stupidly long word and she knew it. ‘I mean, you don’t need to. You will never see us or hear from us again. Ever!’
He shook his head and said to his partner over his shoulder, ‘Worst thing about doing deals on this fucking rock. Tourists and monkeys.’
Mary joined Petra’s plea, her cheeks stained with grubby tears. ‘We’re just tour guides. We’re lost. We just –’
He chopped the gun towards her and she stopped. The fat Tunisian had made a noise and turned to face the darkness. Something wasn’t right. The Algerian turned, keeping his gun raised and targeted. His fat friend took a few steps away and a glimpse of white torchlight cracked the darkness from within. Then Petra heard footsteps.
‘The policeman!’ whispered Mary.
‘HELP!’ shouted Petra, and a splintering pain shot through her head as the gun whipped her scalp with effortless accuracy. She fell to her knees, wet rock spinning in front of her. The swooshy sound of her friends’ cries morphed into the sound of words. She looked up, pulling focus on the new light. It wasn’t a cop. It was two more men, difficult to make out in the shadows, but in the lamplight the one holding the torch looked like the Spanish football coaches Petra had seen on those soccer TV shows her ex, Zach, had watched: glossy hair and baggy sportswear. They stopped in their tracks when they saw the scene before them.
‘Que?’
‘Esta bien,’ said the Tunisian, placing his free hand on the shoulder of the visitor, who backed away.
‘Nononono. This is not what we planned.’ He raised his arm to shield himself from the five pairs of frightened eyes gazing at him. The other man pulled his T-shirt up to mask his face as they backed into the dark.
‘Attendez! Aucun problème!’ assured the Tunisian, but this deal had already turned rotten.
‘Vamos!’ said the Spaniard from the dark, and Petra heard their feet jogging away as the LED light danced away with them and was consumed by blackness.
‘Merde!’ The Tunisian spun round to face his partner, unsure of what to do. ‘Ahmed?’
Their captor looked furious but stayed steely. ‘Go after them.’ He sighed, raised his gun towards Ed, and while the tubby Tunisian took off after his prey, Petra saw a slender finger slowly pull the trigger, lifting the pistol’s hammer.
In a flash she burst into motion – a crash and a blaze of light, as she kicked the paraffin lamp up at Ahmed. It showered him with broken glass and fuel, which immediately burst alight. He reeled back, terrified, his fear resurrected from whatever blaze had scarred his face. He was shaking his arm, the sleeve alight, flames making sweeping patterns in the dark. Dane grabbed Carly and ran, almost through Petra, who spun and followed them with Ed and Mary. The light behind them was fading fast. Petra knew that paraffin burned bright, but not for long, and judging by the angry roar from Ahmed he wasn’t about to curl up and die. He’d be right behind them. As they rounded a bend a shot rang out and she heard the bullet ricochet off a couple of walls, along with Carly’s scream.
They ran. Harder. Further. Arms outstretched, effectively blind, until eventually Ed panted, ‘Wait!’ and they slowed to a halt. Mary switched on her torch but Ed slapped his hand over it. In the eerie red light through his flesh, he held his finger to his lips, then cupped his hand to his ear and they all understood. Silence. They listened. No shooting. No shouting. Nothing. After what felt like an age, Mary spoke.
‘Is everyone OK?’
‘Yeah, I’m OK,’ said Petra.
‘Are you fucking kidding?’ sniffed Carly, wiping her nose on her arm. ‘OK?!’
‘Come on, let’s get out of here,’ Ed said, resuming command and leading them further into the gloom.
‘Which way is out?’ Mary asked.
‘Noooooooo!’ wailed Carly, which got shushes from the others.
‘Seriously, Ed,’ said Dane. ‘Where the fuck are we?’ But Ed shushed him too. After only a few seconds they stopped at a corner where two tunnels met. Ed held up his hand to halt them. They heard distant voices echoing down the tunnels, shouting but muffled, unclear. Carly was fighting the urge to sob, her chest shaking while Dane clasped his arm around her stooped shoulders.
Then Petra had an idea. She pulled her phone from her pocket and checked the screen. ‘No signal, obviously. But if we could get to an outside wall?’
One of the echoing shouts sounded closer and Carly whispered through snotty tears, ‘They’re gonna kill us.’
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ growled Dane, and grabbing Carly’s hand he barged past Ed and Mary and pulled her with him down the tunnel that seemed quietest.
‘Wait!’ Mary shouted in a hoarse whisper.
Petra was gripped by momentary indecision. She didn’t fancy either of the choices ahead, but faced with going back the way they’d come or getting separated, she dragged herself into motion and followed. Ed did the same, Mary reluctantly still calling after them, ‘Wait!’
Chapter 10
‘Wait, wait!’ shouted Krishna above the laughter. ‘You’re telling me that I could swim to Africa!’ He was holding court, well lubricated and enjoying the company. A few of the locals had joined him at the bar.
Fraser cast an obvious look up and down Krishna’s portly physique and replied, ‘Well, maybe not you,’ which got a laugh from his audience. ‘But aye, it’s only twelve miles across the water, to an entirely different continent. This place has been a smugglers’ paradise for centuries. Still is. Get yourself an inflatable with a decent outboard and a few dodgy contacts – you’re in business.’
‘God, I wish my mate Dane could hear all this.’
‘Into all that is he? Dodgy dealing?’
‘No, no. He’s just a fitness freak. And a show-off. If you bet him he couldn’t swim it he’d be standing here in his Speedos before you could say “Mine’s a pint.”’
‘Mine’s a pint,’ one of the locals said.
‘I walked into that.’ Krishna pushed their empty glasses across the bar. ‘Same again, squire.’
‘Where are they?’ asked Fraser, refilling the empties. ‘Your mates?’
‘They’re inside the bloody Rock. Again. His girlfriend dropped her engagement ring in there so they’ve gone looking for it.’
‘Now?’ asked Fraser, checking his watch. Krishna saw him exchange a worried glance with the man waiting for his beer, and felt the mood darken. The locals examined their drinks, or their shoes.
He looked at the pair, waiting for an explanation. ‘What?’
Petra had come on this holiday unable to trust a man. Now, lost and confused, she felt exactly the same way about Carly’s boyfriend. And Ed, for that matter. She was coming to the conclusion that they were both testosterone-fuelled idiots, full of bravado and bullshit.
‘Dane!’ she called. ‘Stop! Where are we going?’
He slowed a little as the torch on his phone showed a dark opening in the side of the damp, shimmering wall: another path off to th
e right, another choice in a maze of confusing indecision. The group collected in a bunch, their only sound the shallow panting of misty breath. Eventually Mary said, ‘I think they’ve gone,’ but her wide eyes scanning the black space behind them told Petra she didn’t really believe it.
‘Come on,’ said Dane moving forwards. ‘This way.’
‘Wait, no hang on.’ Ed was peering into the second tunnel. ‘It feels like we need to head right. The outside is this way, isn’t it?’
Petra didn’t have any faith in either of them, but made her decision. ‘You’re right. Dane, wait!’ But before there was any debate Dane pulled Carly ahead, ignoring Petra. With a shrug, Ed followed Carly, so inevitably Mary followed him. Petra swore and found herself once again trailing at the back of the line as they trod carefully around a bend and past another hollowed-out blast-trap like the one Ed had explained, a lifetime ago.
The straggle of friends became more bunched up as Dane’s lead slowed. The passage, more rough and jagged than the others, was getting narrower. Petra noticed that the roof was getting lower, too, tiny stalactites getting closer as they walked, and soon Dane was having to walk with a stoop. Suddenly a noise behind her made Petra jump. They had all heard it, and stopped, peering back into blackness.
Carly was the first to whisper what they were all thinking. ‘What was that?’
Ed quietly hissed ‘Shhh’, and their shallow breathing was all Petra could hear. Then it happened again. Tap, tap, tap, like something hard knocking against the rock.
‘What the hell?’ whispered Mary to Ed, who just repeated: ‘Shhh …’
Silence filled the tunnel for the next few seconds until the tapping sound became a rattle, then a scrape. It was getting closer. Petra heard Carly whimper and saw her clamp herself around Dane’s solid waist. He responded by taking decisive action. ‘Let’s get out of here.’ He pushed forward into the tight tunnel, quicker than before, almost at a jog, his head bowed to avoid the spiky roof. In the swinging beam of her torch, Petra saw him disappear from view as the tunnel turned to the left, and then she heard a yelp from Carly and ran around the bend to find … a wall.
Dane had his hands pressed up against the dead end. ‘What?’ He couldn’t make sense of it. ‘What the … Why …?’ Ed and Mary started doing the same as Petra, scanning their torches around the tunnel walls, looking for any glimmer of hope. They were surrounded by solid rock. The tunnel simply stopped.
‘Unfinished,’ murmured Ed.
‘Un … finished?’ repeated Carly, unable to believe him.
Dane attempted to stay calm, sweeping his phone torch across the black walls. ‘Don’t worry, babe, there’ll be a –’ but his reassuring words were cut short by a clatter behind them. They all spun round, training their torch beams at the curved wall of the passage, but seeing nothing. A rattle. Another tap. Clear as a bell, closer than before.
‘We’re gonna have to go back,’ stated Petra.
Carly emitted a whining, ‘Noooooo,’ which was squished into muffled silence by Dane’s palm over her mouth.
‘Shh, babe.’
Ed whispered a command. ‘Cut the torches. Sound travels down here. He might not be in this tunnel.’
‘No point advertising that we’re here,’ Petra agreed, and all three torches clicked off.
‘Shit. This is killing my battery,’ Dane murmured, cutting the torch on his phone.
Blackness engulfed them, shoulder to shoulder, crammed tight into the deadly tunnel that had tricked them. Nowhere to run.
Silence but for clammy puffs of breath. Then, from nowhere, whoosh! A glowing green rush of light hit them. Literally, a plastic tube of light hit Ed in the face. He swore and the glow-stick bounced to his feet. As one, they all looked from the glowing green stick on the ground back up into the tunnel, but saw nothing.
Carly squeaked, ‘Who’s there?’ but the only response was the echo of tap, tap, tap on the rock.
Petra quietly asked, ‘Are they fucking with us?’
‘We’re trapped,’ wept Carly. ‘We’re dead.’
‘Not yet,’ replied Ed. ‘Just wait.’ He took a couple of paces forward into the darkness towards the noise.
Mary hissed, ‘Edward! No!’
He turned and spat a whispered reply. ‘Mary! Please!’
She gripped his hand. ‘I won’t lose you! I can’t!’
‘Listen to me. I won’t let us die down here.’ He looked out into the dark. ‘I am not going out like this.’
He picked up the glow-stick and threw it back along the tunnel, casting eerie light on damp, black walls as it rattled to a stop. He was squinting, they all were, desperate to see the approaching threat. The dark mouth of the disappearing space within the green walls looked like the entrance to a monster’s lair. Suddenly, with a clatter and scrape, the glow-stick gained impossible life and skittered back towards them.
Dane swore under his breath and Petra said, ‘How?’
‘Torch!’ instructed Ed, and Petra lit the way for him. He was only eight or nine paces from the glow-stick but they held their breath as he slowly limped towards it. Mary trod carefully after him whispering, ‘Please be careful,’ her own torch finding nothing but empty space.
Petra followed, a feeling of dread in her stomach, a musky smell of damp filling her nostrils. Suddenly she gasped. ‘Did you see that?’
‘What?’ asked Ed.
She was sure she’d seen movement, a glimpse of something moving fast through the darkness. ‘Up ahead!’ she pointed her torch into the bend of the tunnel but found nothing. Ed kept walking towards the glow-stick lying dormant on the ground. Just a couple of paces away he was halted by a rapidly approaching sound – patter, tap, scrape, coming at them fast. Before he could retreat it was on them.
A rock ape snatched the glow-stick up and bared its teeth at Ed. He visibly relaxed, and Petra felt all the air leave her chest. Dane said, ‘Oh you’ve got to be kidding me,’ and Petra saw what had been making the eerie scraping, tapping noises: in its other hand the ape held the tattered remains of Krishna’s selfie-stick. It spun on its haunches and took off back down the tunnel away from them, a bobbing green glow floating away with the familiar tap, tap, scrape of the broken selfie-stick.
‘Oh my God,’ panted Carly.
‘Curious little buggers, aren’t they?’ said Petra.
‘Was that –?’ started Mary.
‘Krishna’s selfie-stick,’ answered Dane.
‘How the hell did he activate that glow-stick?’ asked Mary.
‘Bent it?’ replied Ed.
‘Or bit it,’ added Petra.
Dane was shaking his head in disbelief, and said, ‘What a bastard,’ under his breath. Carly wiped tears from her cheek and gripped Dane tightly around his waist.
‘Come on, hun,’ he reassured. ‘We’re gonna be all right.’
Ed walked onwards to the kink in the tunnel, checked around the corner and beckoned the others to join him. ‘All clear. Let’s go back and then head the other way. Agreed?’
Petra nodded. Dane continued trying to calm Carly. ‘See? We’ll be fine. It was just a stupid monkey. We hit a dead end, but that’s rare – right, Ed?’
‘Right.’
‘We’ll be out of here in no time. And we’re OK, aren’t we, hun? We’ve got each other. We’ve got three really good torches.’ As if on cue, Mary’s torch blinked on and off. She hit it with the palm of her hand and it flickered, then died. A couple more strikes of her hand did nothing to revive it. ‘We’ve got two really good torches.’
Carly sniffled and pulled a pink, slender phone from her pocket, swiped the screen to light the teeny white torchlight and immediately looked defeated. ‘Battery’s nearly dead,’ she croaked.
‘We should save our phones,’ Petra instructed. ‘Here, use this.’ She took a glow-stick from her back pocket, cracked it and handed it to Carly, the green glow illuminating her mascara-streaked cheeks. She looked monstrous, but smiled weakly as she put her phone aw
ay. They gathered at the bend behind Ed, who once again assumed the tone of a military leader. ‘With me. I’ll lead.’
He stepped forward just a pace, extending his own grey plastic glow-stick ahead of him before reaching forward to crack its contents into vibrant chemical life. Sweeping the luminous green tube ahead of him, there was nothing but empty space. He glanced back at the group and beckoned them to follow. The moment they did, he turned and yelped.
The grotesque scarred face of Ahmed, the Algerian gangster, loomed into the green light from his blast-trap hiding place. He grinned and said, ‘Boo.’
Petra screamed, and that’s all she heard: shouting, yells of terror and the scrabbling of feet on slippy rock. She saw the gangster raise his gun before a well-aimed swish from Dane’s boot slammed into the Algerian’s forearm, sending the gun spinning off into the dark. Ed launched himself at the wiry villain and toppled him to the ground, giving Petra an open path before her. Instinctively she grabbed Carly and ran past the grappling mass of Ed, Ahmed and now Dane fighting on the damp floor. Mary followed them, screaming for Ed to come, too. Petra saw Dane slam Ahmed’s head against the ground and he shouted, ‘Come on!’ springing to his feet.
Ed hauled himself up to follow but screamed in pain. Petra spun around to see Ahmed, strewn across the floor, wet with blood, grabbing Ed’s foot. Ed twisted like a snared rabbit and, to her horror, Petra watched his lower leg wrench free. Carly screamed and for a second the puzzled Algerian looked baffled to be holding an alloy prosthetic limb, which he quickly dropped in disgust. Ed slumped forwards into Mary’s arms and Dane flew back at Ahmed to finish the job.
A kick to the gangster’s ribs threw Dane off balance and he slipped down onto one knee. Petra didn’t see what happened but in an instant Dane was on his back and the tenacious gangster, glistening with blood and sweat, was overpowering him with an onslaught of punches. Petra’s attention was on something else, something on the ground. She stooped, grappled, ran at the pair, and, with a batter’s swing and an almighty metallic clang, slammed the prosthetic into the side of Ahmed’s head. A spray of blood, black in the green glow, splattered Dane’s face. The thin, muscular gangster slid sideways, unconscious, his shoulders awkwardly propped against the wall of the narrow tunnel.
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