Slocum Buried Alive

by Jake Logan

  “Do you intend to kill me and suck my brains out through my ear, too?” Slocum asked.

  “You do not understand the improvements I’ve made to the ancients’ techniques. No, Slocum, I remove the brains through the nose. And I do so before the interred is dead.”

  “You drilled into Harry’s brain while he was still alive?” Miranda collapsed to the floor.

  “You show some intellect now, my dear. I wish it had been more apparent earlier. You might not have tried your ridiculous scheme with your lover. Poisoning a man who works with deadly chemicals and has learned to sniff out the cause of death for even the most innocent looking of corpses? While I would have missed two glorious nights of sexual rhapsody with you, both you and he would be alive yet if you had not tried to kill me using your mail-order bride plot.” Hawkins stepped away. “And you also, Mr. Slocum.”

  Slocum tensed, ready to throw the lamp at Julian and take his chances with the small pistol Hawkins clutched in his meaty grip.

  “You have been quite a thorn in my side. And if you try throwing, or even dropping, that lamp, I will shoot lovely Miranda. Would you be responsible for her death?”

  “She doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  “Not like the poor, departed Polly Neville. Yes, Julian had reported her death. You two were quite close, I suspect. But don’t move a muscle, Slocum. Julian is weakening from the wounds you inflicted on him and will likely draw back on the trigger if he begins to pass out. You might be fast with that gunfighter’s weapon of yours, but no one is faster than buckshot.”

  “What are you going to do, Hawkins? Bury me alive again? That didn’t work out so good for you the first time.”

  “When at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Hawkins fired at him.

  Slocum flung the lamp, twisted to the side, and wrapped his arms around Miranda, knocking her out of the way of Julian’s shotgun blast. He felt a hot crease across his back as one shot hit. Then he had an armful of struggling woman—in the complete darkness.

  “Damn, he’s locked us in.” Slocum scrambled to his feet, got tangled in Miranda’s skirts, and almost fell. He braced himself against the bier and its contents.

  He yanked back as if he had been burned by contact with Harry’s mummy. Slocum got turned around as he stepped away and found himself uncertain which way the door lay. He drew his pistol, but he had no idea where he aimed. A shot inside a stone crypt might be deadly. The slug’s ricochet might hit him or Miranda.

  “Find the lamp. We can light it.”

  “It’s smashed, John. When you dropped it, the glass broke and all the kerosene spilled onto the floor.” She let out a very unladylike curse. “I cut myself on a piece of the glass chimney.”

  Slocum fought down panic. He had been buried in a coffin. This was a roomier crypt. But the darkness! He felt as if a giant’s fist punched his chest with every breath he took. That was ridiculous. Running out of air so quickly wasn’t possible. His terror subsided as he fought it back like some towering, all-devouring beast.

  “What are we going to do? I don’t want to die!”

  “Be quiet. Save our air,” Slocum said. “I’m not sure this tomb is sealed tight enough for us to worry about that, but until I find out, keep quiet.”

  Her soft sobs told Slocum where she was. He ran his hand along the bier. The door was at one end or the other. Slipping his pistol back into its holster, he held out his hands and explored their stony prison.

  “Got it. The door’s in front of me.”

  He ran his hands over the splintery wood. The door held against his hardest kicks. He tried his shoulder against it and all he got was a bruised shoulder. Relying on brute strength wouldn’t get them out. He worked his fingers around the edge, hunting for hinges to attack. Then he remembered the door swung outward, so the hinges were outside and away from his tinkering.

  “Can’t you shoot the lock?”

  “The wood’s an inch thick and hard. Remember the lock? It was a padlock. I’d have to shoot through the wood and the lock. Unless I had a mountain howitzer, no amount of shooting is going to affect that lock.”

  He sank down. Mind tumbling with ideas to escape, he finally admitted none of them were plausible. Being in the dark was the worst of it. Somehow, this turned the air stuffy and his lungs strained more as if they sucked in liquid fire. Slocum took out a lucifer and struck it. He had closed his eyes against the flare so he wasn’t blinded like Miranda.

  She held up an arm to protect her eyes as she knelt at the side of the bier. He saw where the kerosene lamp had smashed on the floor. Miranda had been right about the volatile liquid seeping away into the floor. Only a small discoloration remained to show where it had stained the rock floor before being thirstily absorbed beneath.

  Slocum scowled as the match burned his fingers. He tossed the tiny stub away. He had seen what he feared most. There wasn’t any way from the crypt other than the door leading in. For the life of him, he couldn’t imagine that Hawkins would have put in a back door or some escape tunnel. The ancient Egyptians might have hidden a chamber for a king to keep the robbers from looting the crypt, but that chamber still had only one exit.

  Slocum leaned back against the solid wood door that gave them their only way out.

  “We can dig out, John. I saw how the kerosene went between the floor stones. We can tunnel out!”

  He heard Miranda scrabbling about, trying to get purchase on a stone. When she did, a gasp of despair filled the chamber.

  “The ground’s too hard to dig through,” he said.

  “It’s harder than the stone. Maybe if I used the edge of the stone as a spade, I can get out that way.”

  Sounds of frantic burrowing slowly subsided until all he heard were Miranda’s gasping and the pounding of his own heart in his ears.

  “We’re going to die in here, aren’t we, John?”

  He made his way to her in the dark, fumbling a bit as he found the stone she had removed. A quick brush of his hand over the dirt showed only shallow grooves. Digging out would take forever.

  “Hold me, John. I can’t stand it much longer unless you hold me.”

  He worked around, leaned against the bier, and took the woman in his arms. Her warmth and soft breath gusting across his neck as she lay her head on his shoulder calmed him. No decent escape plan came to him, but he held his panic in check.

  “I never thought I’d die like this,” she said.

  “We’re still alive. I want to get Hawkins in my sights and pull the trigger.”

  “He left you with your six-shooter. Why?”

  Slocum kept silent on that. He had been buried with his six-gun before. Hawkins and probably Julian took special pleasure in the idea that their victims might choose to kill themselves rather than die in the dark of suffocation. He had his gun and enough ammo to erase the misery both he and Miranda would be feeling when the air finally became too stale.

  “I got out of being buried alive by them before.”

  “Can you do it again?”

  Slocum bit his tongue, wishing he had never mentioned that. Polly and her brother had saved him. Both of them were dead now. The whole damned Neville family was dead, shot down, crucified, or . . . buried alive.

  “We’ll need to think of some other way.” He felt her stirring against him. “This time there’s more air, and we’ve got plenty of room.”

  “But we’re going to die. I know it. I want my last minutes to be something more than stark fear.”

  Her hand moved down to his leg, then worked up to his crotch. She began rhythmically squeezing, pumping him up, getting him rock hard. Straining against the fabric of his jeans, he felt confined in all ways now. And then he was suddenly free. Miranda had popped the fly buttons and let him come leaping out, like a racehorse at the starting line.

  “You understand what I mean,” she sa
id in a husky voice. “If we have to use up the air, let’s do it fast. And hard. Very hard to make us both forget.”

  She clamped down around his erection and began moving her hand up and down slowly. For his part, Slocum reached around and undid one button after another on her blouse. Then he burrowed about and found one warm mound of woman flesh beneath the loosened fabric. As she held on to him, he squeezed down on her. The tiny nip at the crest of the fleshy mountain hardened as he toyed with it, twisting and tweaking until he felt the distant throb of her pulse in that rubbery flesh.

  Moving in the dark proved easy enough since they both clung to each other in intimate ways. Slocum shucked off his gun belt and opened the button at his waist so he could scoot down his pants. Lifting his ass off the floor to skin out of the jeans proved too awkward.

  He used his grip on her boob to lift her.

  “Stand up,” he ordered.

  Together they got to their feet. Slocum bent over and licked and suckled at the woman’s chest, leaving a wet trail that went from the deep valley between her breasts, down to the well of her navel, and then lower until he was thwarted by her skirts. He came at her from the other direction now. His hand found the trembling pillar of a leg, and he worked upward under her skirt. The flesh of her thighs was already damp from juices leaking from her interior.

  When he thrust two fingers into her, she cried out. Miranda began grinding her crotch down into his hand, seeking to drive him even deeper. His fingers wiggled about with her center. Warm juices lubricated his fingers and let him stroke over the scalloped flaps of her nether lips. Catching one between his thumb and forefinger, he ran slowly from top to bottom and back.

  He had to support her as she sagged in reaction.

  “I almost came, John. Almost. Don’t you dare stop now.”

  “Is this all you want?” He twirled his fingers around within her. “Or do you want more?”

  “This, this!” She tugged on his steely length, pulling it toward her. “I want this in me, making me forget everything but—”

  She cried out when he shoved his thumb into her and used his middle finger on a different entrance to her body. He kept up the dual assault until he could turn her about so she leaned over the bier.

  With a wide sweep of his arm, he shoved Harry’s mummy from the bier. In the darkness, she couldn’t see it, but he wanted nothing to distract her from what he did from behind. She lay forward across the stone slab, arms outstretched to tighten her belly and backside.

  He explored a bit more, spreading her ass cheeks and probing with his fingers. She sobbed and rewarded him with a wider stance. When she reached back to hold herself open to him, Slocum worked the tip of his shaft against a tightly clenched hole. A gradual pressure moved him forward, a fraction of an inch, a half inch, deeper. All the while Miranda cried out for more.

  He finally penetrated her with the thick purpled head at the end of his manhood. Slocum had to pause. Heat boiled from her interior. Never had he felt such tightness around him. When she began pushing back so her curves fit into the hollow of his belly and upper legs, he pressed forward. Not hurrying, he sank inch by inch into her until both lost all hope for rational thought.

  The fury boiling in his loins threatened to erupt. But he wasn’t going to let it happen. He fought for control so he could relish the pleasures Miranda so wantonly offered up. Drawing back as slowly as he had entered, he finally had to pause again and regroup.

  She cried out constantly now, cursing and sobbing, shouting and demanding he return to fill her to overflowing. This time his entry was faster. And the retreat? Twice as fast. His new thrust moved with more power and finally he was pistoning until he reached the point of no return. One hand gripped her waist and the other pressed into the stone bier. Eyes closed or open didn’t matter. He felt the woman around him, the stone slab sliding as he thrust even more deeply into her from behind until he could take it no more. He exploded, slathering her innards with his seed.

  Miranda crammed herself back onto his impaling shaft, reached down, and began fingering herself, then cried out in release. Slocum thought he was going to be crushed flat as her inner muscles tightened so much there was no room left for him. But having spent, he was already going limp. He let her soaring desires fade and pulled back until he flopped from her. He kept his hands on the rounded curves of her behind, stroking and feeling the warmth of her flesh until she simply sprawled forward, as exhausted as he was.

  “I’ve never felt anything like that before,” she said. “Too bad it’ll be the last time.”

  Slocum put his hands on either side of her body and leaned forward. He shifted his weight and rubbed against her bare bottom.

  “As good as you are, John, you’re not going to get hard enough soon enough.”

  “I know how to get out,” he said. He thought she climaxed again at those words.

  18

  “I know how we can get out,” Slocum repeated.

  “What? How? You figured it out but screwed me first?”

  “During,” Slocum said. “It came to me while we were doing it.”

  Miranda laughed, and it was almost cheerful. He heard a note of hysteria rising in her voice but she tried to keep it light. “I inspired you?”

  “The stone slab on the bier moved.”

  “Lots of things moved, but I don’t understand. That’s where Harry was laid out, but you must have pushed him off.”

  “If we lift the stone slab, we can use it as a battering ram. I’ll light a match, we can get ourselves set and then run at the door as hard as we can. It’s going to be heavy, and we’ll have to do this together. I don’t think I could lift the slab alone.”

  “I hate Hawkins so for what he’s done, I’ll do anything.”

  “Close your eyes. Here comes the light.”

  He struck a match, let it flare, then opened his own eyes. The light hurt because he had been plunged into such intense blackness for so long. Slocum couldn’t help looking at Miranda. Her blouse was open and her breasts hung out. Her skirt was bunched up around her waist, and he caught sight of her sleekly rounded behind as she turned from him toward the door. This reminded him of why he had struck the lucifer. He took in everything he needed to know as the light flickered and burned out.

  “We’re five feet from the door. I’ll get on the far side of the slab. It’s already partially off the pedestal. We lift it and then run for all we’re worth.”

  He knew they might get only one shot at it if the stone proved too heavy for Miranda. Her anger at Hawkins fueled one attempt. Two might be out of the question, even if it meant saving their lives. He edged around the bier and worked his fingers under the slab and tried to lift. Too heavy for him alone. Kicking away Harry’s mummy, he braced his feet on the floor.

  “You saw where to pick up the slab. Ready?”

  “I’m ready to kill Leonard!”

  Slocum counted down, they lifted, and he yelled, “Run! Run for all you’re worth!”

  His foot slipped when he broke the canopic jar with Harry’s sucked-out brains in it. He strained every muscle in his belly and back heaving himself forward. He hoped they were on target because Miranda wasn’t holding up her side of the slab. It had to weigh a couple hundred pounds.

  Time flowed strangely. Slocum imagined himself trapped in this crypt to die, if not from suffocation, then from lack of water and starvation. Seeing nothing. Every breath a nightmare. Miranda would become increasingly fearful and might go mad. He might go crazy as death neared.

  All this flashed through his head, and then the shock of their crude battering ram echoed all the way up his arms and jolted him. The crunching sound of wood being splintered was drowned out by his own cry of triumph as light and air gushed through the destroyed door. They had knocked it off its hinges so it hung half open, held only by the lock.

  “We should have hit it
nearer the lock,” Slocum said.

  Miranda rushed into his arms, crying and laughing. She clung fiercely to him and said, “You did it. You got us free.” Pulling back a few inches, she looked up and said, “You have green eyes. This is the first time a man’s made love to me when I didn’t know the color of his eyes beforehand.”

  She kissed him hard. He enjoyed the moment of jubilation, then pushed her away.

  “We need to get out of here,” he said.

  While he doubted Hawkins had posted a guard outside, he had no idea how many of Julian’s gang remained. If they had the sense God gave a goose, they would have all hightailed it by now. The ones he hadn’t killed he had wounded and sent on their way out of town. That should have been warning enough.

  He and Miranda stumbled past the broken door and on hands and knees made their way to the forest floor. Slocum looked back at the crypt. The faint light filtering in showed the hieroglyphics and the foot of Harry’s mummy. The sight hardened Slocum’s resolve even more. Nothing Leonard Hawkins could do now would save him.

  “He won’t be at the funeral parlor,” Miranda said. “He might be at the cemetery. He spends much of his free time there.”

  “He could be anywhere in this forest,” Slocum said. The Hill Country was festooned with heavily wooded areas like this, able to hide any number of Hawkins’s crypts. “I need to figure out where he and Julian would go.”

  “The cemetery,” Miranda said without hesitation.

  Slocum set off down the path, but he wanted to be certain Miranda wasn’t trying to send him on a wild-goose chase. Her determination to kill Hawkins matched his own. She protested as he went back to the mortuary. Slocum checked his pistol, then went inside to search it.

  When he came out, Miranda stood with her fists on her hips. She glared at him, then silently pointed down the road toward the graveyard.

  “I’m not so sure,” Slocum said. “Things have come unraveled. Hawkins isn’t going to keep doing things as he always has.”