by Chris Keith
“Trev…you okay?”
A small graze across his chin and his hair thick with blood said otherwise. He had taken a blow to the head, his second in a week.
“Trev, it’s me, Claris.”
“They beat him,” said an old woman at the back of the cage.
“Why?”
“For information.”
“About what? What exactly is going on here?”
“They wanted to know where he came from and where he got the spacesuit.”
“How long have you been in here?” asked Faraday.
“Three days, maybe four.”
Faraday glared at the young man rocking in the chair tapping the gun in his hand. “Why are we locked in this bloody cage?”
“He’s just doing as he’s told, waiting until the others return.”
“Why, what happens then?”
“Dinner.”
“What’s so special about dinner?”
There was tension in the woman’s voice. “We’re it.”
Chapter 30
Matthews had overheard the old woman and he didn’t like what he was hearing. The implication was much darker than he had first imagined. He didn’t want to believe it, though it did make some sense. Now everything fell into place. The people in the cage were petrified because they were being preserved for food. It dawned on him that the blood and bones strewn across the gurney in the room next door were not animal – they were human.
Seated in front of the prisoners, tormenting them by pulling faces, the young man’s presence made it difficult for Matthews to get to the cage. He was in the way. Then Matthews realised that all he had to do was overpower him and obtain the keys clipped to his belt. The andiron ball was at his feet. Gradually, very discreetly, he rose and moved forward, taking with him the andiron ball. Clearing the fireplace, spiralling around the beds, he suddenly tore through the bunker but caught his boot on a low table and a vase toppled, exploding on the floor. The man swivelled towards the distraction at the precise moment Matthews cracked him over the head with the andiron ball. The man fell off his chair clutching his skull and blood oozed out. Determinedly, one hand over his head, the man wobbled back to his feet, blood bursting through his fingers. Matthews lifted the andiron ball aiming a second strike. Lethargically, the man lifted his gun and pointed it at Matthews head. He froze, knowing that one hasty move would cost him his life. From his temple, the gun was moved down to his cheek and was pressed so hard into the hollow flesh between his teeth he thought it might pierce through into his mouth. But he stubbornly refused to be killed there and used as food. He sensed the man trying to summon the strength to force the trigger and Matthews pulled back his head as the chamber was emptied. Bullets glided into wood, metal and furniture. The gunshots spooked the prisoners. The man reeled back and, realising he was out of bullets, threw the gun at Matthews, who ducked and it missed his face by a fraction. He lifted the andiron ball and the man put his hands up over his head to protect himself, tripped on his own feet, fell and crawled into a ball on the floor, his hands still raised over his head. Matthews cracked the ball over his ankle and knew by the horrifying scream that it had shattered a bone. Both his hands reached for his foot, exposing his head. Matthews applied the andiron ball to his skull again, a brutal ping sounded on impact. Ping, ping, ping, Matthews bashed the head until the shape altered and the man stopped screaming.
Faraday stared at him with cold eyes. She was shaking her head, appalled. “What have you done?”
“I’m not letting this fucker eat me.”
Unclipping the keys from the dead man’s belt, he tried to unlock the cage, but the mechanism inside the padlock had buckled and it failed to unlatch. He picked up the bloody andiron ball and bashed the padlock repeatedly. He must have hit it over thirty times before it broke apart. Only wanting to let Faraday out but unable to prevent the stampede as the cage burst open, Matthews moved out of the way, panic resonating throughout the bunker as people ran for the door and ran for their lives. One of them was Gable, until Faraday grabbed him by the arm.
“Let him leave,” said Matthews.
“No, he’s coming with us.”
She whisked him over to the dead man, peeled the gasmask off of from around his neck up over his disfigured head and gave it to Gable. “Here, you’ll need this.”
The gasmask, smattered with blood, had a broken strap and she helped him place it over his face, then tied a tight knot with the straps at the back of his head.
Matthews retrieved his helmet from behind the fireplace, fitted it, and they all made their way quickly to the other room where Faraday was reunited with her spacesuit and spandex garment. She threw it on with the assistance of her cousin, fitted the helmet, the gloves and the boots and got the oxygen going. She held Gable’s hand and took him out of the bunker where heavy rain fell from the sky.
“Wait here one second,” said Matthews. He ducked back into the bunker. Down and down he went, heading deeper and deeper into the mysterious dungeon, into deprivation and misery.
Outside, Faraday and Gable waited impatiently for him. What was taking him so long? All the other prisoners had scarpered from the bunker. But now they were returning, screaming and shouting.
“Why are they coming back?” Gable shrilled.
“The Tanners!” said Matthews.
Faraday turned to see him holding a radio in one hand and a drum of water in the other.
“Who?”
“I’ll explain later,” said Matthews. “We need to go.”
Three hooded men wearing gasmasks appeared at the top of the hill. One of them was firing his gun and the prisoners were dropping like flies, clutching their wounds. Matthews heard a gun-shot and a bullet exploded in the turf in front of them. A spot of mud detonated near Gable’s toe. A loud noise and another puff of exploding mud. The sound of a gun going off and a pain in Gable’s calf. He screamed. Another bullet grazed Matthews’ suit at the back of his thigh. They weren’t trying to kill them, he thought. They were trying to immobilise them.
“Keep going,” Matthews urged.
They cleared the hill and charged down the embankment, but Gable’s injury slowed them down. He was crying and hobbling and only Faraday was keeping him moving with the firm grip she had of his bicep.
Matthews worried the men would appear at the top of the hill in a prime hunting position and execute them. He struggled with the water drum with it being so heavy and awkward to carry.
“Keep going,” he encouraged. “We have to outrun them.”
A bullet lashed by and struck the bark of a dead tree. Matthews glanced back, the men were descending the hill, stopping only to make shots and to track them with a pair of binoculars. The bullets continued. One whipped off Matthews’ helmet, leaving a scar but not a hole. God, the men were shooting off rounds like nothing on Earth, going through some heavy supply of ammunition. One struck the drum in its middle and water leaked out.
“Shit!”
“If they follow us to the White Room, it’ll be compromised and we’ll never be safe,” said Faraday.
The White Room! Matthews had neglected to consider that. By revealing their secret hideout, they would jeopardise all that they had. Furthermore, the distance between them and the White Room was far, seven or eight miles, and Matthews hadn’t factored in the distance when he’d taken the drum. With the men gaining on them, he realised it could be their final demise. More alarmingly, where was the White Room? He couldn’t remember which way they had come. Then Gable pointed to a faint white line painted in the ground smudged and diluted by the rain. “My line,” he shouted.
Matthews lifted his visor a fraction. “Your what?”
Gable was panting, his words muffled by the filter in the gas- mask. “This trail leads…to the White Room. I made it…using paint so I wouldn’t…get lost.”
“It worked well,” Matthews replied sarcastically, shutting his visor.
Following the line was dangerous, Matthews though
t, because if the men detected the trail they would have a route all the way to the White Room. He surmised that they’d traversed two miles from the bunker, that they were all exhausted and out of breath and that outrunning the men would take the stamina of an athlete, leaving him with little choice but to ditch the radio and water drum. While he weighed up the options, he listened to his legs and kept on the move. It struck him that the men would only stop once they had hunted and killed. The water continued to spew out of the drum, shedding weight.
“We need to deviate from the line,” Matthews suggested to Faraday.
“I can’t go on,” said Gable.
He stopped running, put his hands on his thighs and bent over, holding down vomit. The glass on his gasmask had steamed up and he could barely see the way. Plus his leg wound, his breathlessness, his shock and just about everything.
Matthews lifted his visor. “Then stay here and get eaten, I don’t give a shit!”
Gable stood up straight, ran a few more steps, then collapsed and could go no further. It occurred to him that he would die of a heart attack before his pursuers got to him.
Faraday knelt beside him and lifted her visor. “Stand up, Trev. It’s not far. You can make it.”
“I can’t, I can’t.”
“If you can’t run, we’ll have to leave you and they’ll get you.”
“Don’t leave me.”
Matthews leaned over him. “You either come with us or you stay here alone. We won’t die for you.”
A bullet erupted at the back of Faraday’s boot.
“Trev!”
“I can’t.”
Faraday turned to Matthews. “I can’t leave him.”
“Screw him. I won’t let you die because of this fool.”
“Simon, I can’t.”
Matthews was caught up in two minds, whether to run or not, when one prevailed over the other and he put down the drum and radio. “I’ll come back for you, I promise.”
“Stop there!” shouted a voice.
Matthews turned to see the men were still closing a large gap between them, walking now, but their weapons claimed all the authority. Instinct persuaded him that attack was the best form of defence. Anyhow, they couldn’t go on and he could fight back or get killed, although he didn’t fancy their chances. He could try small talk or blackmail, that might work. Impossible. He had killed one of their family, had stolen their water and radio and had rousted their abundant supply of food.
Gable wobbled to his feet. He could hardly see through his fogged-up mask, but he didn’t need to see to know that the outlaws were standing right in front of them with guns. One of the men stepped forward. He was the father of the boys, dressed in rumpled, dirty clothes and a gasmask, aiming his rifle forward. He snatched back the water drum and radio.
“On your knees, all of you. Close your eyes,” he ordered.
Matthews realised that only the father had a deadly weapon, a hunting rifle. The two young sons were holding batons and metal pipes. One of the boys was so small he looked as though he would have trouble swinging a cricket bat.
“Fuck you!” Matthews bellowed.
Faraday saw the wisdom in doing as she was told, but it didn’t look as though her cousin would see the same wisdom. Thinking about Sutcliffe and Hennessey as she fell to her knees for execution, a blazing fear came over her and now her body was shaking so violently she thought she might die of panic. Urine filled her diaper. Next to her, Gable was sobbing. Matthews, defiantly refusing to kneel, was asking for trouble. One of the sons casually walked up to Matthews tapping the baton on his thigh and whacked him across the knee, forcing him down.
“Helmet off,” the father ordered.
Matthews held out his palms and shrugged. “If you’re gonna shoot me, just shoot me.”
The man rotated the rifle towards Faraday, keeping his eyes on Matthews. “Take it off and she’ll live.”
Matthews shot a desperate look at his cousin, surrendering to the fact that either both of them got it or just him and neither alternative kept him alive. His minutes were numbered, but if he couldn’t save his own life, he could do the noble thing and save the life of Faraday. Then again, he couldn’t trust them to be true to their word.
The man clicked a bullet into position and positioned his finger on the trigger. A range of thoughts raced through Faraday’s mind. She wondered if a bullet to the brain would hurt. She wondered what would become of her body after she was dead. What would Sutcliffe and Hennessey say about it? Would they even find out?
Matthews disobediently stood up. He was in a testy mood. The rifle swung back at him.
“Hey, let’s just talk,” Matthews said. “We’ve got plenty of food and drink. Maybe we can share it.”
Faraday closed her eyes in despair. She couldn’t believe her cousin had just given up their only supply of food, endangering the White Room and the lives of Sutcliffe and Hennessey. Then she heard three successive gunshots and heard his body crash to the floor, and the stark reality that her cousin was dead immediately struck home.
Chapter 31
Pacing the room, Hennessey was going out of her mind. She wanted to go out looking for Sutcliffe, but knew she couldn’t leave Burch by himself. What was taking him so long anyway? There were dangers outside. She had said it, over and over. Sutcliffe had told her that he was taking the amputated foot away to dispose of it and that he would be straight back. That had been over two hours ago. A worrying thought entered her head. Amputating Burch’s foot had clearly affected his mental state, now that she gave it thought, and he had acted strange thereafter. Despondent and distant. Before he had left the room, he had kissed her head and pulled her into his arms. “You’ll be fine, stay strong,” he’d said. Now she worried his words secretly meant goodbye.
In the time that Sutcliffe been gone, Burch’s condition had deteriorated. His breathing was shallow and she thought he was going into shock. It taught her just how quick a human condition could go from being stable to the door of death. Life was seeping out of him by the hour and his face was alabaster white.
Simultaneously sweating and shivering, Burch was deeply aware that his fear of heights and his indecision on the balloon had brought him to his current condition, and it would bring him to a miserable end. He let out a soft moan.
Hennessey felt his forehead and offered him a weak smile. “What is it, Keith?”
“My foot, it’s itchy.”
“I’ll scratch it for you.”
She peeled off his sock and ran her long fingernails over the crest of his foot. The skin around his toes was crumpled with burn scars and she avoided touching it.
“Just tell me where exactly.”
“Not that foot.”
The comment puzzled her. “You mean your left foot, the one we amputated, remember?”
“Yeah, it’s itchy.”
“No, Keith, that’s impossible.”
“Scratch it. Please.”
Hennessey didn’t know what to do. Where was everybody?
Faraday could not understand what had just happened. She’d heard the body collapse to the ground, knowing that Matthews had just taken three bullets to the head. Seconds later, when she opened her eyes, she saw before her the father face down on the ground, his leg shuddering with spasms and a dark hole in his temple. Standing either side of him were his two sons. One had a bullet hole in the eye of his blood-smattered gasmask. She watched him slowly topple to the floor. The other man dropped to his knees and was clutching his throat where he had a dark hole in his neck with blood spilling through his fingers. Someone had shot them all. Who? Faraday turned to see Sutcliffe holding the pistol that had put all three men down. “Brad!” Faraday flew to her feet and ran to him, flinging her arms around his shoulders. She had never been so pleased to see someone. She drew back. “Thank God you came.”
Gable was in a terrible state. His leg was bleeding from a bullet wound and he could hardly stand. He was sobbing quietly to himself.
&n
bsp; Matthews said nothing. He just stood dumbfounded, unsure how to feel or what to think.
Sutcliffe opened his visor. “Who are these people?”
Faraday, almost in tears, raised her visor, understanding that Sutcliffe’s communication system wasn’t working properly. “I’ll tell you about it when we get back.”
Matthews reclaimed the precious radio and water drum and lagged behind as Sutcliffe and Faraday supported Gable along the way.
Nightfall approached. Another day was drawing to a close.
It had been thirty five hours since Hennessey had last seen Gable. Seeing him now gave her a shock. His eyes were bloodshot red, his face drained of colour, the bags under his eyes swollen and dark. He had a bullet wound in his thigh, though on closer inspection she determined that it wasn’t life-threatening, just a flesh graze. She was beginning to feel like a nurse as she dressed his bloody wound, her second of the day.
Faraday explained that Gable had been under enormous stress, what with being lost and then being held prisoner. And he hadn’t eaten for days.
“Get him some food and water,” Hennessey said.
Faraday nipped out to the elevator, grabbed a tin of vegetable soup from the top of the pile and picked out a bottle of water. Using the tin opener, she cut the metal lid off the tin and opened the water for him. Gable waded through the soup and drank the water and colour came back to his face almost immediately.
“So, the survivors are still out there?” asked Sutcliffe.
“Not for much longer,” Matthews commented.
He gave them a rundown about the bunker and the cannibals. Although the prisoners were free, they had no food or shelter and they would soon die because their lungs had been fully exposed to the radiation. Faraday elaborated on what she had observed while Hennessey put Gable to bed. Sutcliffe joined in and explained to Hennessey how he had stumbled upon Gable’s paint trail on the cliff top and had followed it for a good five or six miles, sharing details about how he had arrived to find Gable, Matthews and Faraday in a vulnerable, very frightening position after escaping from the bunker – Matthews cut in and laid the blame on Gable for that – and Sutcliffe had prevented their execution by shooting the men with the pistol he had with him. Hennessey had nothing but sympathy for Sutcliffe because she knew how difficult it must have been for him to amputate Burch’s foot, but killing three men must have been equally as hard.