Itch Rocks

by Simon Mayo

  “You’re right,” he said. “I’ll stop throwing things at her. For now, anyway. Presumably Itch is tied up farther down. Having a nasty time of it, I hope. That Tan Fook girl can be quite vile if she’s pushed, you know. Better check around though, just to make sure.”

  Loya nodded at Voss, who headed back toward the labs. He checked the smelly science lab, looking under the benches, and walking through a huge pool of water in one corner near a basin. Tutting to himself, Voss repeated the cursory examination in the metalshop and, finding nothing untoward, entered the woodshop.

  In the seconds that he had available, Itch had thrown the tarp over the cesium and himself into the wood store. It was a small cabinet behind the teacher’s bench at the front of the classroom. The absence of future work meant that supplies were low, and so there was room for Itch to fold himself into the limited space. It meant he was standing on a small pile of timber while leaning diagonally across a rough plank that poked splinters into his cheek. He reached out to pull the door shut, and the handcuffs banged against the handle; in the confines of the cabinet it sounded like a clanging bell and Itch froze. The men’s voices carried on, and he exhaled slowly.

  The shutting of the door had stirred up a cloud of sawdust, and he had to shut his eyes and mouth quickly. When it had settled, he brushed his hair with his hand, and showers of fine powder fell around his face again. As he listened to the voice of the hated Flowerdew, Itch suddenly realized that he did have a plan after all. Spitting out sawdust, he allowed himself a little smile.

  But now the footsteps were coming closer again, and Itch braced himself for discovery. He found a long piece of wood with some nails sticking out at one end, and closed his good hand around it. The steps sounded slow and meandering—not the walk of a man who was searching for a dangerous intruder. They continued past the cupboard, then stopped; Itch’s hand tightened around his makeshift club.

  In the woodshop, Voss was glancing under the teacher’s bench. It gave him a view under most of the other benches and, seeing nothing suspicious, he shrugged and went to rejoin Loya and Flowerdew.

  “Nothing?” asked Loya.

  “Nothing,” confirmed Voss.

  “Good,” said Flowerdew. “Now the only issue is whether Tan Fook makes it out of the well before we have company. Anyone fancy going to ‘help’ her?”

  Loya looked down. “Our equipment has not arrived yet—we weren’t expecting to be going down there so soon. Without light it would be tricky, but without climbing and diving gear it would be stupid.”

  “What’s wrong with stupid?” asked Flowerdew. “Stupid gets the prize; stupid might just be the only chance we have.”

  “You want to try it?”asked the Argentinean.

  “If that’s what I have to do … hell, yes.”

  The older man, Voss, snorted. “Look at you in your Savile Row suit and polished loafers!” He waved dismissively at the Englishman.

  “You have a better idea, Boer seun?” snapped Flowerdew, and Voss squared up to him.

  Loya quickly stepped between them. “I’m impressed you know how to insult a South African, but calling him a farm boy is a little lame, don’t you think?”

  “He seemed to understand.” Flowerdew kicked out at the wheelbarrow. “We didn’t know the cops would be so close. We’re not dressed for an underground expedition, damn it. We’ll have to wait. But if it takes too long, we put the lid on.”

  “And trap them all down there?” said Loya. “Really?”

  “Listen, do you want these rocks or not? Is Argentina a proper nuclear power? Your uranium’s dull, but this is spectacular. You’ll be a national hero and no one will worry how you obtained them. And neither should you. If the police get close, we put the lid on and walk away. Then we come back and pick up the goods when we are”—he turned to Voss—“appropriately dressed.”

  A cry from the well sent them all hurrying to the edge.

  Exhausted, shivering, and weaker than she’d ever felt, Shivvi had climbed the rungs to the horizontal shaft. The total darkness had slowed her considerably, but she could feel her way upward, and painstakingly hauled herself clear of the water. When the rungs stopped, she nearly lost her footing and felt the rocks shift in their box, pulling her down again. But she found the top of the shaft and hauled herself up, collapsing on the floor of the tunnel.

  “You’re not stopping now. Get up,” she said aloud, the words bouncing down the well and along the shaft. She stood up, removed her fins and mask, and felt for the side wall. With one hand running across the mossy bricks, she picked her way along. As she approached the final set of rungs that would take her to her new life, she could see faint light. It was coming from four hundred feet away, but her eyes, now accustomed to complete blackness, detected any change. Shapes and colors only returned slowly, but she quickened her pace. At the foot of the first shaft, she looked up the narrowing tunnel leading to a tiny hole of light.

  Almost done. Nearly there.

  The only remaining problem was the broken rungs—five of them. She had jumped past them on the way down. Going up would require balance and strength, and Shivvi wondered if she’d used up all her reserves.

  The bottom rung was intact. She adjusted the astonishing weight of the bag on her back and stepped onto it. The next five rungs were broken, but the two metal stumps holding each crosspiece in place remained, like pegs in a counting game. Using them like crampons in the side of a mountain, Shivvi clung to the wall and edged her way up. They all held, but on the last stump her leg slipped, and the metal tore her diving suit, cutting deep into her thigh. Shivvi cried out but held firm, pushing herself up to the next complete rung as she felt the blood start to flow down her leg.

  Looking down, alerted by the cry, Jack saw movement and knew that Shivvi was on her way back. The light above her dimmed as Flowerdew, Loya, and Voss appeared once more at the well mouth, but she resisted the urge to look up. They swiftly disappeared again, and Jack suddenly thought of Boggis, Bunce, and Bean waiting for the Fantastic Mr. Fox. She smiled, thinking of the characters from one of her favorite books. I hope your plan’s better than theirs was, Itch, she thought.

  Slowly, relentlessly, Shivvi climbed the rungs, and it dawned on Jack that this was her moment. She could push Shivvi straight back down. One push, one kick. It would be easy.

  Itch too had heard the cry. It sounded like Shivvi, but he couldn’t be sure. Either way, Flowerdew and his buddies would be focused on the well now. He was of no use in this cabinet, and slowly he edged the door open. The woodshop was deserted, as he thought it would be, but with just one thin wall between Flowerdew and himself, Itch felt extremely vulnerable. Any noise and it would all be over. He straightened up, careful not to shift any of the planks he had been standing on; an avalanche of timber was a distinct possibility.

  On trembling tiptoe, Itch crept out. Mindful this time of his dangling handcuffs, he carefully pushed the door shut behind him. A thin layer of sawdust had landed on the floor—some from the cupboard, some from Itch—and he crouched down. With his finger he drew a five-sided shape in the dust, touching each corner in turn.

  Fuel, heat, oxidizer, dispersion, confinement. He nodded. I think that’s right.

  Itch’s mind flew back to the homework he had done for Mr. Watkins, describing an explosion in a flour mill in Kentucky. A grain elevator had developed a fault, and an electric spark had ignited a cloud of particles, causing an explosion that had blown the roof off the building. Itch had drawn a complicated picture of how the spark had ignited a small cloud of flour. The resulting explosion had shaken loose more dust, causing a secondary, more powerful explosion. Mr. Hampton had explained that a mixture containing fine dust was more combustible because there were more exposed surfaces to react with.

  Itch had finished the work with a diagram of “the dust fire and explosion pentagon.” This represented the five conditions needed for a dust explosion: combustible dust for fuel, an ignition source for the heat, oxygen in
the air, dispersion of the dust particles in sufficient quantity and concentration, and confinement of the dust cloud.

  The mill in Kentucky had all five; the Fitzherbert School in Sussex had all five.

  Crouching low, Itch looked around for the tubs of sawdust. There were two—the accumulation of many terms of sawing and chopping. One was near him at the front of the room, the other next to the door; each was large enough for him to crouch behind. He scuttled to the closer of the two, cradling his damaged hand as he moved. With his back to the plastic tub, feet and good hand planted firmly on the floor, Itch pushed.

  To start with, nothing happened. The tub held fast, stubbornly stuck to the wooden floor. Then it shifted, making a scraping sound. Itch checked but, on hearing the uninterrupted conversation from the other side of the wall, continued his gentle pushing. After a few minutes, his tub was next to the other one, four feet from the door. He caught his breath, and was about to head back for the cesium tubes when shouts from the well froze him to the spot.

  Manacled to the fifteenth rung, shaking with exhaustion, cold, and cramps, Jack was running a calculation through her head. Would I rather Shivvi had the rocks or Flowerdew? What would Itch want? I could push her straight back down—and she knows it.

  Jack screwed her eyes shut. She knew the answer: she couldn’t do it. She couldn’t kill someone, even if that someone was Shivvi Tan Fook. Jack stood as far to the left of the rung as she could.

  From her body language, she hoped Shivvi would realize she was letting her through. She was allowing her to pass, letting her take her stolen rocks to the surface. She had decided not to be brave or stupid. Let Flowerdew and his cronies deal with her, Jack didn’t have the strength to fight or to play Hansel and Gretel.

  A few rungs from Jack, Shivvi had paused. Step by step she neared the surface, and as Jack had swung out to the left, Shivvi moved right. As her head drew level with Jack’s feet, she hesitated again. But Jack wasn’t even looking. She was staring rigidly at the wall, waiting for Shivvi to pass.

  Just hurry up and get on with it.

  The old ladder creaked and shifted. It had been sturdily built for the many miners who dug out the soil for the well, but that was more than a century ago. As quickly as she could, Shivvi climbed alongside Jack. The duffle bag with the rocks nudged Jack’s shoulder and she clutched the rung even tighter. Shivvi’s hips rubbed against Jack’s arm as she passed. She said nothing.

  Finally clear of Jack, just a few feet from the surface, Shivvi accelerated. The bulky bag was unlikely to make it through the hole at the top of the well while it was still on her back, she realized, so two rungs from the top, she slipped it off her shoulders. Balancing precariously, she pushed it up toward the opening. It went through vertically, then toppled sideways with a clang as it hit the metal plate.

  The clang was followed by a thump and then a scraping noise. Alarmed, Shivvi pulled herself to the surface.

  “Now! Now!”

  As soon as her head and shoulders emerged, she felt strong hands grab her from behind and haul her out.

  “Get her down!”

  Thrown to the floor, both Loya and Voss held her down. They had been expecting a violent struggle, but Shivvi’s strength was gone. As her own ropes were secured around her body, Flowerdew, black duffle in hand, stood over her. His face was triumphant; hers was distorted by shock, rage, and the deep lines left by her mask. Her diving suit was torn, and blood poured from the gash in her thigh.

  “Hello again”—Flowerdew smiled—“and thank you so much for doing all the hard work for me.” He rattled the box. “That must have been some dive down there. I really couldn’t have done it without you.”

  “But I pushed you off the rig!” gasped Shivvi. “I saw you fall!”

  Flowerdew leaned closer. “I have friends, you see …” He indicated Loya and Voss. “Friends with a helicopter.”

  A string of curses was cut off when Loya forced thick tape over Shivvi’s mouth. Flowerdew reached over and added another strip, covering her nose as well. Shivvi immediately started struggling for breath. She had been breathing hard anyway, and with her mouth and nose enclosed, she couldn’t fill her lungs quickly enough.

  He ignored her distress. “You thought you didn’t need me. You thought when I told you about the rocks that you could do it on your own. How’s that going, by the way? My new friends and I have worked it all out, you see. I located my old laptop in Brighton, where that idiot Itch threw it. Didn’t take long to remember that Watkins taught his nonsense here once upon a time, and we found out about the well underneath…. It was all too easy.”

  Shivvi was struggling now. Her eyes bulging, her arms straining against the ropes, she was making strangled, gurgling noises. Loya started to take off the tape, but Flowerdew shouted, “No! Leave her—she had it coming. Let’s see if she can still hold her breath for ten minutes or whatever she claimed it was.” He looked at his watch. “I’ll time it from now.”

  Next door, Itch was listening, horrified. He hadn’t chanced a look, but it was clear from the shouts and Flowerdew’s sickening speech that the 126 was back on the surface. And his old science teacher had it in his hand.

  Time for the plan. It was now or never. He had hoped that his emergency call from Shivvi’s phone would bring help, but he couldn’t wait any longer. Maybe the call hadn’t even made it through.

  And if the police think we’re still rigged up with cesium, they might not risk an attack anyway, thought Itch.

  He crawled back to the tarp-covered crate of cesium.

  “This could go so wrong …” he whispered as he lifted it off the floor. It was extraordinarily heavy, and he felt the tubes shift. Praying that the one that had been strapped to him was indeed undamaged, he staggered, bent double, to the door. As gently as he could, he set the crate down again.

  Knife. He ran over to the teacher’s desk. Saws and chisels hung from a rack on the wall. Even better. He picked the sharpest-looking blade he could find, as well as a useful-looking axe. Timing was going to be everything. Surprise would be useful too. And luck, thought Itch. As much luck as there is going.

  A memory of some small bags in the science lab was strong enough to tempt Itch to pay one more visit. Next to the door, packed up for disposal, he assumed, were four small packs: two marked Al, two marked Ti. Aluminum and titanium.

  “My firelighters,” he muttered.

  Itch picked them up, one after the other, weighing them like bags of sugar. They were in powdered form, but heavy enough to make it a difficult balancing act, especially with his damaged hand.

  Unloading them carefully in the woodshop, he placed the four bags alongside each other. He sliced them open, then transferred one bag of aluminum and one of titanium powder to each tub, sprinkling the gray powders around like confectioners’ sugar on a cake. The aluminum was lighter-colored and finer, the titanium darker, with a more granular texture; they covered the sawdust in little swirls and peaks.

  “Just to be sure.”

  Dusting his hands off on his trousers, Itch pushed the nearest tub of sawdust out of the woodshop and positioned it just out of view, around the corner from the well, careful all the while not to let his dangling handcuff bang against the tub. He repeated the operation with the second tub. The shouting at the well had masked the scraping of plastic on wood, and Itch returned one final time to the woodshop.

  Placing the axe on top of the cesium tubes, he used the good fingers of his bad hand to lift the crate under his arm. He carried it through the door and crouched behind the tubs of sawdust. His heart was racing, his mouth dry, and the pain from his broken finger was pulsing again, but he barely noticed it. He picked up a cesium tube, the slopping oil and chunk of gray just-solid metal glistening in his hand. You’ll do. He replaced the tube on top of the others.

  He was ready.

  In the special ops van, the police commander had listened, horrified, to the conversation in the school. Itch’s call to the police on Shivvi�
�s phone had been patched through to the commander’s radio, and he and his colleagues strained to follow the conversation. The words were muffled through Shivvi’s discarded clothes where the cell phone was nestled, but it was clear that there had been a struggle, that Shivvi Tan Fook had succeeded in bringing the radioactive material to the surface, and that the rocks now appeared to be in the hands of Dr. Nathaniel Flowerdew.

  “We have to move,” he said. “We can’t just sit here,” and he called his chief constable. He was put straight through. “Sir, the cordon is complete and armed units and bomb squad are ready. Fire and ambulance are here too. We’ve had a call from one of the kids inside—we need to go in.”

  The chief constable had one of those voices that everyone around the phone could hear.

  “Absolutely not. The orders are from the top, I’m afraid. This is now a national security issue and we are to ‘contain the situation’ until the army units and SAS arrive.”

  “And the kids in there? What are we saying to them?” The commander realized he was almost shouting and calmed himself down. “With respect, sir, we can’t just sit here while two children are at the mercy of an escaped prisoner and a psychopath!”

  “You can and you will. I’m sorry, but there it is.”

  The commander ended the call and threw his phone against the van wall.

  Once again, Alejandro Loya made to remove some of the tape from Shivvi’s mouth, but again, Flowerdew erupted in fury.

  “I said to leave her! She tried to kill me!” He moved to stop Loya, but Voss stepped in, his hand planted in Flowerdew’s chest.

  “Back off,” said the South African. “You are not in charge here.”

  Flowerdew, for all his education and fine clothes, had long ago learned to fight dirty. His knee found the agent’s groin, and Voss dropped to the floor, gasping. “I’ll show you who’s in charge,” he seethed. “We have the rocks, the Loftes are down the well, and Tan Fook here is going straight down to join them. We throw her in and put the lid on. Clean, simple. Clear?” He snatched up some more tape, slapped another strip over Shivvi’s mouth and nose, and held it on.