by The Behrg
Dugan glanced back into the open room, at the commotion that thundered from within. Or maybe he was keeping his emotions in check. Finally he looked back. “Dammit, you are worse than your mother!” He wiped at some of the blood on his face with a sleeve. “We’ll do everything we can for them.”
“He wants you to kill him, you know?” Faye waited for a response, but none came. “I think … I think maybe you should.”
A man stood at the mouth of the tunnel, wearing nothing but dirty jockey shorts. His face slathered in what looked like soot. Then the native with long hair that accompanied Dugan the previous night at the church stepped forward, brandishing a long black blade, slick with blood. Faye felt herself shudder. It was a reminder that Zephyr wasn’t the only monster Dugan traveled with.
“Yo, can we speed up the reunion?” the Calvin Klein model said.
A shout sounded behind them, a voice Faye recognized.
“My friend!”
Based on the look on her father’s face, she wasn’t the only one.
“We need to speak,” the alcalde said, voice echoing through the corridor.
“Stay here,” Dugan said.
“No, I’m coming with you!” She shot forward to accompany him back into the room.
“I know you are.”
Her father turned with surprising speed, plunging something into her stomach. Faye gasped, a sharp pain exploding as she drew in a breath. Her father pulled back, holding a depressed syringe.
“Sorry, sweetheart, but I promised to protect you.”
An unholy rage surged through her. She moved in to hit him, strike him, but instead slouched to the ground. Dark spots gathered before her vision, her tongue growing thick, limbs no longer responding. Her last memory before darkness overtook her was an image of her father and the Shaman merging into one.
Verse XXXIII.
Dugan tossed the syringe aside and moved back toward the open cavern. A part of him wondered if he had made the right play. There was still a good chance they’d need to subdue the Shaman to get him out, but his daughter could have been even more of a liability.
He had done what was needed. Let her hate him for it, if it got them out alive.
“Stay with her,” he said, passing Kendall.
The man must have sensed Dugan’s fury, not bothering to even comment but jumping to his command. Dugan reentered the cavern, glancing around for the alcalde. If sheer presence could kill, the man would soon drop dead.
Rojo stood on the opposite side of the wooden elevator shaft, smoke still rising from its scorched top. Several new corpses were huddled around the opposite corridor, a few still aflame. He was bent over, adjusting one of the tubes to his makeshift flamethrower.
“Dere he is, the man of the hour!” The voice boomed in the cavern, bouncing from wall to wall. “Like the Venezuelan cockroach, jou are difficult to kill!”
Oso caught Dugan’s attention, pointing upward. In the opening of the ceiling, where the elevator platform had descended, a dull glow backlit a figure almost as wide as he was tall.
“Can’t face me like a man, can you, Gutierrez?” Dugan shouted. “You always were a rat.”
“You know, Dugan, most people, dey try to escape the prison, not break demselves in.”
“I’m coming for you. As soon as I have what I came here for. And if you had a thousand men — ten thousand — it wouldn’t be enough!”
“Ah, jou Americans, always so quick to aggrandicize yourselves.”
“Aggrandize. Learn to speak the language, you piece of shit.”
Whispers rolled down, spoken too low to fully hear. Dugan realized that while he was the one making threats, he was also in the position of vulnerability. A feeling of dread spread quickly through him.
“Rojo, leave it!” He motioned for Oso to join him back in the corridor.
“But —”
“Leave it!”
Rojo looked at him like a child asked to leave his favorite dog behind. “Barely had any fun with this,” he finally said. He ripped his lighter off, tossing the contraption down. A tube sprung out, liquid squirting into the air.
Before Dugan and Oso had taken two steps towards the corridor, the room shook with a reverberating rumble. Oso gripped the side of the wall with an outstretched arm, Rojo likewise finding a corner of the elevator shaft to hold onto.
“The Shaman?” Rojo shouted.
The corridor behind them suddenly imploded. Chunks of rock and dirt sprayed down in an awkward avalanche that completely sealed off the exit. A thick dust rolled toward them.
“They rigged the room,” Dugan shouted. “Kendall!”
But his warning was too late. The corridor ahead collapsed in a barrage of earth and dust. Like a thunderous hailstorm, residue continued falling, a never-ending wave of thudding and tinkling rocks stretched over time.
Once the noise finally ceased, Dugan removed his arms from his face, coughing through the dust. The mouth of the tunnel was filled with a sloping cascade of fallen earth, Kendall and his daughter simply gone. Like a pebble tossed in a sea. Only this ocean had fallen from above.
Rojo hacked somewhere behind him. Dugan stumbled forward, waving his arm through the thick dust. “Kendall?” He collapsed onto the rubble, pulling at a stone and tossing it out behind him. Removing a second one. Three more rolled down to take their place, dirt falling like the sand in an hourglass. “Faye!”
The only response came from above.
“I think I do not need a thousand men after all.”
“You son of a bitch!” Dugan said, rising.
The voice that came back was just as angered. “We have put up with jou Americans for long enough! Thinking we are beneath jou, paying us your pennies while jou make your millions. Jou never treated me with respect!”
“You. Never. Earned it,” Dugan said, separating the words as if speaking to a child. “Have you been outside, Gutierrez? Seen the world we now inhabit? This man you stole from me is not a monkey to be trained. You can’t control him!”
“Dat is for others to worry about.”
“And where are these others? Because unless they’re here, they won’t find you. We’re on an island. No one is coming.”
“Dat is —”
“I’m not through!”
“Yes, Dugan, jou are! If no one is coming for me, then rest assured no one is coming for jou.” Harsh whispers followed. Orders being delivered.
Dugan glanced around, looking for a way out. Both exits could take hours to dig their way out from. Their only escape hinged on the rickety elevator shaft Rojo had set fire to, though the more Dugan studied the platform the more he wondered if it would even hold their weight. The freshly blackened beams revealed the rot set within the wood, major joints singed or damaged from the earlier scuffle. Not that they’d have a chance to ascend with Gutierrez and his men directly above them anyhow.
“We have your daughter,” Rojo suddenly shouted.
“What?”
“Your daughter! She’s in our care.”
“I have many daughters mister soldier man. My seed is strong!” Gutierrez’s laugh rumbled down toward them.
Without warning, Oso suddenly stepped into a throw, hurling his blade upward toward the ceiling. It sailed through the air like a missile, disappearing into the darkness.
A grunt sounded from above, then a body fell, end over end, like some acrobatic performer. Though the landing could have been improved upon. The body, however, wasn’t the General’s. Only one of his men.
The light from above dimmed even further, shadows no longer revealing a thing.
“Dat will be your last mistake,” the general shouted.
“Check the guns,” Dugan said, grabbing a rifle from one of the fallen soldiers. He slid the bolt back, finding a round in the chamber. He didn’t bother releasing the clip, choosing to search the corpse for any other weapons.
“Empty,” Rojo said, tossing an assault rifle back down.
Dugan stayed ben
eath the platform, knowing they would need any protection they could get. Both Rojo and Oso joined him, Oso carrying several rifles and pistols with him.
But the gunfight, it turned out, was over. Gutierrez had other plans.
“I sorry, my friend, is time to join your daughter. And this time I do not think we will be seeing each other again.”
A noise like a release valve turning sounded from above, followed by the gushing of water. It shot through the hole in the ceiling in a wide spray, cascading down to the ground. A second gush followed the first, opening into a torrential downpour.
“Thought we already did the whole drowning thing,” Rojo said.
They stepped out from beneath the platform, the elevator shaft bowing beneath the sudden onslaught of water. Rafters bent, then snapped. Blackened beams fell free, bringing down more support beams with it. With a loud groan, the entire platform leaned, water hammering it, then gave way. It pitched forward, slamming into the cavern wall and busting into ancillary pieces. Part of it remained intact, angled upward, though far too low to provide an escape route through the ceiling.
Whatever source the general’s men had tapped into — tied into the underground river somehow — it had now been completely opened up. A tidal wave of water poured from every edge of the opening, no longer in streams but giant waves that never ceased. The noise of the falling water pounded in their ears.
“That son of a bitch,” Dugan said, kicking at the water. A few of the bodies began to rise, seeming to slither towards them.
“What do we do?” Rojo said, leaning in close to be heard.
Oso brought his hands together, bowing his head.
“About sums it up.” Dugan leaned in to Rojo. “Any way you can turn that contraption of yours into an explosive?”
“I can make it burn, but enough to blow through rock?”
“To at least give us a start.”
Rojo ran one hand through his beard which glistened from droplets of water bouncing off the wreckage of the elevator. “What if your daughter’s under there?”
Dugan shook his head, rubbing at where the bullet had grazed him on his shoulder. It was the question he had avoided asking. The question to which he didn’t want to know the answer.
Whatever Rojo saw in Dugan’s face made him cower. “Sorry, I’m … I’m sure she’s fine.” He sloshed through the muddy water, which had already risen halfway to their calves, and started looking through the discarded supplies in the corner. But his question remained with Dugan.
What if Faye was buried beneath that earth? What if he had come this close to finding a cure, to saving her, only to see her die before it could take affect?
Is this what I deserve? Recompense for every action it’s taken to get here?
He felt at the inner pocket of his vest before remembering he had left his notebook back with Chupa. And yet he had never been closer to those names. Closer to joining their ranks. Another line on a page. But it wasn’t his name he was afraid of adding, or having someone else add, as would be the case should he pass. It was the name of his daughter, the name he had vowed never to write in that book.
What if your daughter’s under that rock?
The only answer was that Dugan would then let the world burn.
Verse XXXIV.
Kendall couldn’t see the dust and dirt which clouded the corridor thanks to the goggles which he had lowered back over his eyes. His lungs, however, hadn’t been offered the same respite. He coughed through the staggering wave as he continued to back away from the tunnel’s collapse.
This was turning into one bitch of a day.
He waited, letting the loosened earth settle, before deciding on a course of action. Not that he had many options. The pyramid of fallen rock stretched halfway down the corridor. Any attempt at clearing a way through could just as easily bring down the remaining ceiling.
The decision he made in half a second, though the repercussions he knew would haunt him for long after. He wouldn’t be going back for them.
Which meant he had to move forward. Weaponless, half-naked, and alone, facing a mine crawling with the general’s boy soldiers and who knew how many other booby traps.
Not to mention he’d have to deal with Zephyr. If the muku was still alive.
And what about the Shaman? Could Kendall carry out what all of them together had failed at accomplishing?
A low rumble registered from the other side of the cave-in. Maybe the rest of the room was coming down with it. By the time he found the Shaman, it’d probably be too late for the others anyway.
A glow extended from beneath the fallen earth — Dugan’s daughter, only her upper half visible, the rest buried beneath rock. A large boulder was lodged in the cavity of her lower back, crushing the base of her spine. A good thing Dugan had knocked her out. Her screams would have been torturous.
Stay with her.
Blood began seeping out around her body, the loose dirt soaking it up. Her glow would soon extinguish.
“Sorry, Dugan. Not this time.”
He left in a sprint, moving through the winding corridors with the speed of someone fleeing a pursuer. In this case, his conscience. A pursuer he had learned to outrun. Back in the tunnel, more liquid continued to ooze out from beneath the fallen rocks and Faye’s crushed lower half. Not blood, but water. Finding a way out.
Verse XXXV.
Zephyr braced his good arm against the wall as the ground shook beneath him. It was impossible to tell how far back the explosion was with the way sound traveled in these tunnels, but he knew what it meant. Dugan’s team had either caused the blast or been caught up in it. Either way, Zephyr was running out of time.
He brushed his hand over his buzzed head, removing what dirt he could. His breaths were coming in short gasps, much shallower than they should have been; his body dripping — not with water from the swim, but sweat. He had pushed himself too hard, too fast, and though he didn’t believe in excuses, he knew his body would soon begin to fail him. Dugan had been right. For once in his life, Zephyr wasn’t up to the task.
The three soldiers that had been transporting the Shaman’s lifeless body were piled against the side of the tunnel, one atop the other. The unconscious native lay in the dirt before them. But more soldiers would be coming. Maybe more than he could handle, at least in his current state. He had to wake the Shaman, find a way to counteract whatever drug they had administered.
He closed his eyes, pressing his fingers into the trigger points along the trigeminal nerve on his face. Beneath the arch of his eyebrows, at the center of the muscle where his jaw connected on his cheeks, and into a bulging vein in his neck. He held them there, digging deep, allowing the pain to grow brighter until his whole world dissolved before its intensity.
The pain was the only thing that existed.
Eventually he released his hand, taking in a deep breath. In the absence of pain, his mind was able to focus. With it, an answer formed. A way to bring the Shaman back from his drug-induced coma. The answer had been there the whole time.
Pain.
With enough of it, the Shaman would be forced out of his slumber. And no one was better at administering this precious salve then Zephyr.
Knowing he needed the Shaman not only alive, but mobile, Zephyr chose to start where he himself had. On the native’s head. But the trigger points he chose were not ones that would bring relief with the pressure’s eventual release. The Shaman would feel the effects of Zephyr’s medicine for days.
Soon the Shaman began to stir. Involuntary spasms. Light moaning, in the back of the throat. Zephyr dug in harder, his fingers kneading the leathery flesh of the native. Within a few moments, the Shaman’s hand reached up, grabbing Zephyr’s wrist weakly. He kept the pressure on until the native opened his eyes, his fingernails digging into Zephyr’s arm.
“There you are.” Zephyr released his hand.
The Shaman’s own arms moved to his head, massaging his wrinkled flesh. His lips quivered, and the
n his eyelids fell.
“No you don’t.”
Zephyr backhanded the native, whose whole body rotated back with the force of his blow. He had never hit anyone so fragile before. Like striking a punching bag without knowing it was filled with air, not sand.
The native’s face revealed a warm color where Zephyr had struck him, but the man was awake and alert. Or at least as alert as he could be. He scooted back into a sitting position, leaning against the tunnel wall.
“Heal me,” Zephyr said.
The Shaman scrunched his face as if not understanding.
“Heal me!”
Zephyr ripped at the bandages that had been wound and tied around his stump. Gauze tore at his flesh, blood and seepage having dried to his skin like glue. He had refused the doctors’ attempts back at the Facility to either cauterize the wound with fire or graft a skin implant, folded over the nub. Zephyr wasn’t interested in anyone attending to his injury. He would only settle for a full recovery that, medically, might be impossible. But he wasn’t petitioning just any old doctor.
Once all of the wrapping had been removed, his arm ended in a polyurethane cap, a temporary medical shield, to keep bacteria from the still open wound. Flesh colored, at least the color of a white man’s skin, the beige cap looked out of place at the end of his dark brachium. That cap was the only reason he had been able to swim, had managed to make it as far as he had. That, and the knowledge that he would find himself here, at this precise moment, in command of what, potentially, was the most powerful force on earth. Or at least a gateway to it.
“Heal me. Like you did with Dugan. This!” He waved the end of his arm in the direction of the native.
The Shaman looked at the wound inquisitively, reaching one hand out. Zephyr dropped to his knees to allow the man a closer inspection.
“You try anything and I will kill you. I don’t care what the world misses.”
Half a smile rose on the Shaman’s face, falling away just as quick.
Zephyr brought his hand up under the Shaman’s jaw, clasping around the man’s neck and forcing the Shaman to look at him. “I can end your life faster than you can move any mountain or call any sea or bring any other muku plague down on us. Look me in the eyes!”