Deep Down (Sam Stone Book 1)

by Worth, Janean

  The man was interrupted by an eardrum-piercing scream.

  The shout broke off suddenly and then the skinny kid who’d been playing with the bacteria’s protective case earlier stood up from his place several tables over and screamed again. The boy screamed loud and long this time, his voice undulating and breaking several times with the force of his shout. Even from her position behind Alice’s chair, Jenny could see the boy’s throat straining as he screamed and screamed.

  Goosebumps blossomed along Jenny’s arms and scrambled over the sensitive skin at her nape as the unnatural sound of the boy’s scream went on and on and on. The noise echoed through the cavern and out into the tunnels, reverberating back in undulating waves of sound that crashed together, creating a conglomeration of shouts, all reverberating wildly around the enclosed space.

  Jenny felt the hair at the back of her neck stand to attention. Something was very, very wrong. The boy seemed to be screaming for no reason at all. There had been no trigger to his outburst, no inciting incident, yet Jenny knew that no one screamed with such ferocity without a reason. Did they?

  Seconds later, as the boy still screamed, Gilbert, Debbie, Cheryl and Paul all began to cough violently.

  Chapter Eight

  Jenny still had the inhaler held in hand, so she quickly moved from person to person around their table, administering a shot from the inhaler to each, trying to ignore the chaos that had erupted across the room around the screaming boy.

  The chaos was hard to ignore. People were leaping to their feet, chairs screeching noisily across the saltcrete, the high-pitched sound blending with the sounds of the boy’s seemingly endless scream. Men and women were shouting.

  Jenny focused her attention on Stone’s friends. She had to help them. For the moment, someone closer to the boy would have to deal with that situation.

  She knew that it was unsanitary, but she had no choice. Administering the inhaler into so many mouths, one right after another, would not be a considered a best practice under any circumstances, but it was the only thing that she could do to help Stone’s friends. Not only was it unhealthy, it was also dangerous, because the medication it contained was not prescribed for those at the table. She had no idea if there would be drug interaction problems with their current medications, complications or side effects, but faced with the violent breath-stealing coughing fits, she didn’t know what else there was to do. Based on Stone’s loss of consciousness and lack of ability to breathe on his own, Jenny was certain that Stone’s friends would die if she didn’t use the inhaler to help them breathe.

  Cheryl was the last to receive the inhaler, and by that time, the cartridge of Albuterol inside was running low. When Jenny shook the inhaler after giving a dose to the older woman, the inhaler was light and empty feeling. There might be enough left in the inhaler for one last dose, but Jenny couldn’t be sure. The cartridge was almost spent.

  This knowledge made her feel edgy. The inhaler was her safety net. Her defense against the infirmity of asthma. Without it, what would happen if she had another attack? That was the whole reason she always carried the inhaler, though she rarely used it. The thing was her emergency backup. One that she feared that she might need badly in the very near future.

  Still, she could not have just stood by and let Stone’s friends die, not even if she was risking her own life by using up all of the medication that the inhaler contained.

  Stone was on his feet beside her now, and seeing the concern upon her face, he took the inhaler from her hand and shook it himself.

  “Do you have another cartridge?” he asked, raising his voice to be heard over the still-screaming teenager.

  Jenny just shook her head, staring at him. They both knew what the empty cartridge meant to her. It meant that she would most likely die if she had another asthma attack.

  Stone’s lips compressed into a grim line as he pocketed the inhaler himself. “We’re getting you out of here, one way or another.”

  “How?” she asked.

  “This is still a working mine near the other end of the tunnels. There’s got to be another lift there. It may not be as fancy as the one here for museum visitors, but it will work to get us out of here.”

  “There’s a map…” Gilbert gasped, wheezing loudly as he struggled to talk. “In the museum. Map of the mines.”

  “There are trams too,” Alice said, her voice was rough, but her breathing was now smooth and almost normal. “I saw the trams near an exhibit. They’re supposed to use them to take us back to the lift after the dinner theater tonight.”

  Stone smiled, “Then that’s our ticket out of here.”

  “We’ll have to wait until they’re breathing normally again, Stone,” Jenny said, gesturing to his still incapacitated friends. “I don’t think we will get very far with them like this,”

  He nodded. “Sit down and try to look normal. We’ll wait. I’ll go check on the kid.”

  Jenny had reached her chair and was just sitting down when the gun went off.

  The sound of the shot was like a small explosion in the cavern, and she clapped her hands over her ears a second too late to block out the reverberation of the echo.

  Her eardrums ached, but as the whine of the reverberation filled her ears with remembered sound, she suddenly realized that there was also an absence of sound under the echo.

  The boy had stopped screaming.

  Seconds later, a woman’s anguished cry filled the void.

  “You shot him! You shot my son!” the woman wailed, and Jenny turned to see the guard from earlier, the one who had threatened the kid, still holding his drawn weapon.

  The guard’s expression was shocked, as if he could not believe that he’d just shot the boy.

  He looked at the screaming woman, then at the kid lying on the floor, a slow ooze of blood running from the boy’s shoulder, and then the security guard brought the gun up towards his own head.

  As the barrel pressed against the man’s temple, several people at the surrounding tables next to the guard surged to their feet. Chairs were knocked over, clattering to the floor and filling the awful silence with a jangle of sound.

  “Don’t do it,” the blonde tour guide screamed from across the room. “Sam, please don’t!”

  Jenny shot to her own feet, but she was too far way from the man to stop him if he truly intended to shoot himself. Beside her, Stone had apparently realized the same thing, because he’d taken two steps toward the man and then stopped. He was now standing absolutely still, watching the guard silently, as if calculating the odds that he’d make it to the man’s side before the guard could pull the trigger.

  Jenny wanted to close her eyes, so she wouldn’t be a witness to the horror that was about to happen, but she couldn’t. Her eyes felt locked upon the security guard. A millisecond passed, but it seemed to Jenny as if time itself had slowed. There was an ominous hush through out the cavern as everyone held their breath and waited for what came next.

  Only the boy’s mother showed no reaction to the guard’s predicament. The woman was down on the floor, sobbing in big choking gasps, her son’s head cradled in her lap as tears streamed down her face.

  Jenny saw the security guard squeeze his eyes closed as if bracing for the bullet’s impact. She wanted to squeeze her own eyes shut too, but instead, she watched the horrifying scene as it unfolded.

  At the crucial second, instead of pulling the trigger, the man burst into a sudden fit of coughing. The gun swung away from his temple as he convulsed with ferocity of the coughing attack, but his finger was still on the trigger and as his chest spasmed violently, the gun went off again.

  Beside her, Stone shoved her to the saltcrete floor, not bothering to be gentle about it in his haste.

  “Down!” he roared as he pushed at her shoulders, following her down to the floor to crouch beside her.

  The bullet hit the wall and ricocheted several times, pinging off of the hardened salt walls with a whining sound like the buzz of a ve
ry angry hornet. The echo of sound caged within the enclosed space made it impossible to determine where the bullet was inside the cavern, and Jenny expected to feel the burn of the bullet as it entered her flesh at any second. Worse, she feared that she might hear the sound of the bullet hitting Stone.

  She knew the pain that a bullet brought. She’d experienced it herself once before. It wasn’t something that she could bear to see Stone go through. The mere thought of him writhing in pain as he bled out was almost more than she could endure. She clenched her teeth tightly together and pushed the gruesome imagery away.

  Mere seconds passed as the bullet whizzed around the dining cavern, but it seemed like years to Jenny.

  Stone’s large hand was upon her back, holding her flat against the saltcrete floor as he crouched low next to her, sheltering her with his own body.

  Jenny felt salty dust coat her throat with every inhalation, but she dared not move, not that she’d have been able to with half of Stone’s weight pressing her to the floor.

  “You get down too,” she hissed at him, awkwardly twisting her arm behind her back, reaching up to tug at his shirt.

  Stone didn’t listen.

  When the bullet stopped pinging about the room, Stone stood quickly and crossed the room to the choking guard, his hand fumbling in the pocket of his jeans.

  He grabbed the guard by the collar of his shirt and picked the man up from the floor with one hand, and then stuck the inhaler into the man’s mouth in one smooth motion. After administering a blast of the inhaler, he lay the man back down upon the floor, none too gently.

  “That was the last dose,” he announced to the people surrounding him. “And we don’t have another. Does anyone else have an inhaler?”

  No one answered, so Stone shrugged and stepped over to where the kid lay upon the floor.

  Jenny climbed to her feet, dusting salt and dirt from her shirt and jeans as she quickly crossed the room. She joined Stone at the boy’s side, laying her hands upon the shoulders of the sobbing woman, yet knowing that there was nothing that she could do to help or comfort the shocked mother. Though the bullet had hit high up on the boy’s right shoulder, missing any vital internal organs, it appeared as though the boy had stopped breathing.

  Stone crouched down beside the woman, placing two fingers upon the boy’s neck. Absolute silence reigned in the cavern as Stone sought a pulse. He fingered the boy’s neck lightly, his strong hands gentle against the boy’s rapidly paling skin.

  After several long seconds, Stone looked up at Jenny and gave a small, negative shake of his head, then gently moved his fingers to close the boy’s staring eyes for the final time. The boy’s mother let out a keening cry of grief as he finished the motion. The wail was full of anguish and horror of such depth that it brought tears to Jenny’s eyes, as if she could feel the woman’s loss as her own.

  Jenny’s heart trembled within her chest as she stood there uselessly, unable to do anything to help the boy or his mother. There was nothing that she could do to ease the pain a mother experienced after witnessing the violent death of her own child. Jenny knew that she could not bring the boy back, but still, her mind sought a solution, clutching desperately at useless scenarios that began with ‘maybe’ and ‘what if’ and ended with ‘if only’. If only things had gone differently. If only… Jenny knew that this activity was useless, but for a moment, her mind pursued this course anyway, desperate to find some way to save the boy, until reason once again returned and logic dominated her thoughts once more. There simply was no way to cheat death.

  Long seconds passed. The woman continued to cry harshly, her grief manifesting itself in ragged sobs and gasps and horrified groans. And no one else in the room uttered a single word, as if they were all caught up together in a funereal tableau that could not be disrupted.

  The awful moment was broken suddenly when several men pushed their way noisily through the people gathered about the exit to the cavern. They shoved in through the milling group, rudely breaking the silence and even more rudely clearing a path for themselves.

  Dressed in protective suits, covered head to toe in white plastic-like drapings that were burdened down with oxygen tanks and large, enclosing hoods, the three men looked like something out of a sci-fi movie. Jenny had never met anyone wearing a suit like that. Events that would require that kind of gear just didn’t happen in Hawkington, Kansas. But everyone, including Jenny, had seen that type of suit on TV at one time or anther. They were quarantine suits, used to protect the wearer from severe environmental or biological hazards. At the sight of these suits, Jenny’s heart stuttered with fear.

  What need was there for quarantine gear down in the tunnels?

  Jenny felt again the ghost of remembered pain from the severe coughing attack that she’s suffered and the agony in her lung after the inhaler had been administered, and she knew. Gooseflesh prickled along her arms at the realization that they’d all been exposed to something deadly. Something so lethal that it required hiding the truth and preventing the exit of the infected until a quarantine unit could arrive.

  The men drew nearer, the lead guy pushing his way through the gathering crowd around the dead boy to stand over the crying woman.

  “Back up, I’m a doctor,” he told Stone.

  Stone rose to his feet and said, “There’s nothing you can do for him. The boy is dead.”

  “I still need to take a look,” the man replied. Then he looked around at the milling people as if recognizing the fact that he was greatly outnumbered. “Please take your seats. The guide has another announcement to make.”

  Stone tossed Jenny a look, and she knew instantly what he was thinking. She was thinking the same thing. More lies to come.

  As one, they both turned to follow the doctor’s instruction, heading back to their table. As they passed the still-wheezing guard on the way back to their table, Stone bent to place two fingers against the man’s neck, as if solicitously checking the man’s pulse. Quickly, keeping his hand hidden between his body and the guard’s, Stone used his other hand to feel around under the guy’s jacket. No one, other than Jenny, seemed to notice when Stone retrieved the man’s gun.

  Jenny saw him quickly stuff the weapon into the front waistband of his jeans, then jerk his shirt down to cover it as he removed his fingers from the man’s neck and stood in a supple, fluid motion. She followed behind him as he led the way back to their table while two of the other security guards came to lift Sam from the floor and drag him over to a seat near the exit.

  Before she and Stone were able to take their seats, the tour guide began speaking. She had borrowed the clip-on microphone and battery pack that the actor had used earlier in the evening so that she could be heard clearly over the whispered, nervous conversations of the other visitors.

  Her voice trembled with nerves as she began to speak.

  “Now that medical personnel has arrived, I am able to tell you a bit more about our situation. It is not technically true that the lift is not working at this time. It is more correct to say that the lift cannot be used at this time. Quarantine is in effect for those of us here in the museum, as it has been discovered that the containment case for “Ed”, the museum’s on-site bacteria exhibit, has been broken. This happened in an earlier incident this evening, which involved the boy who was just shot. We fear that the bacteria may be causing the health issues that some of you have experienced tonight.”

  Here, the woman paused and looked pointedly at Jenny and Stone and the others in their group.

  Loud murmurs of dissent broke out across the room, but the tour guide simply spoke over them, raising her voice as she resumed her announcement.

  “Many of you may have noticed a difference in the air. I want to assure you that this should in no way concern you. For the safety of the residents on the surface, the circulation of fresh air in and out of the mines has been temporarily suspended until biohazard filters can be installed over the exhaust vents. However, I have been assured that t
here is currently several days worth of oxygen down here with us, so no one need worry about suffocation.”

  Many people at the surrounding tables rose to their feet upon hearing this, alarm written upon their faces.

  Before anyone could say a word, the tour guide continued, her voice squeaking and shaking with anxiety and stress. Jenny felt a momentary pang of sympathy for the woman. After all, none of this was her fault, she was just the chosen bearer of bad news.

  “Additionally, all circulation of water has ceased. No fresh water will be pumped down to us, nor will sewage be pumped up from the mines until it is determined where the contamination risk resides. This means that you should please refrain from using the bathroom facilities unless absolutely necessary. The toilets will not flush without the use of a fresh supply of water, so all use of them should be limited to necessity. However, for drinking purposes, we have several hundred cases of bottled water stock-piled in the kitchen area, so there is no need to worry about dehydration.”

  A man stood up from the back of the room, yelling loudly to be heard clearly over the microphone-enhanced voice of the guide, but the woman cut right over him with her next statement, now practically shouting into the microphone.

  “The specialist that was promised earlier has been delayed. The specialist is actually a CDC medical professional, not a lift mechanic. I’ve been assured that this man will arrive within the next 24-48 hours, and that we will be held in quarantine here until that time.”

  The guide stopped speaking, and the crowd erupted into angry questions and comments.

  Beside her, Stone said nothing, but Jenny could practically see the plans for escape forming behind his stoic face.

  Chapter Nine

  Long, slow seconds passed after the guide’s announcement as the visitors murmured angrily to each other at their tables. The tension had risen within the room so much that it was palpable. Waves of anxiety and distress seemed to emanate from the visitors inside the dining cavern.