Corpse (Commander Shaw Book 15)

by Philip McCutchan

  So there we were, Miss Mandrake and I, deep in the heart of CORPSE, and very full precautions would naturally be taken to ensure that we didn’t get out again. And as the man in purple reached the limit of what he was going to say for now and gave a gesture, the precautions were set in train. The cleric with the submachine gun prodded me in the spine and told me to walk forward, which I did. I was propelled into the shadowy part at the cave’s end and I saw, dimly, two heavy doors, both of them appearing to be of new construction. Felicity was being brought along behind me, by Ogmanfiller, who had his lethal camera in her back — I saw that when I looked round in hopes of being able to achieve a strike-back before we were pushed into whatever lay behind those doors. It was, of course, useless; I wasn’t willing to see Ogmanfiller’s wretched camera blast Felicity’s spine through her stomach, so I had to settle for an imprisonment that I could only hope would be temporary. As we neared the doors, the man with the sub-machine gun pushed past me and pulled one of them open and I looked into total blackness like the tomb. Once again I was pushed forward, through the door, and the gun-bearer flashed a torch within. I saw a space about four feet square, most of which was taken up by what seemed to be a pit. There was a ledge running all around the pit, a ledge no more than a foot wide. I didn’t like it: the torch was reflecting off polished sides and from down the pit as I entered came a gleam of water. It was like a well … maybe fed by some underground spring or river. Rain, should it come, might lift the level, Or I could slide into it as a result of some involuntary movement when I grew tired. I thought of Noah: I could do with an Ark now. The door was banged shut behind me and I heard bolts going home at top and bottom. No Felicity: then sounds indicated that she was being shoved through the door into the adjacent compartment. After that there was brooding silence, the awful and utter silence of the grave. I kept very still and began to sweat, though it was oddly cold in that dark pit-head. I didn’t fool myself I could keep still for long: it was just a question of time before I fell in. It was difficult to keep my balance, I found, and found very quickly; the darkness seemed to be doing something to my ability to maintain straightness, and I kept swaying forward. After a while I did the sensible thing and lowered myself till my rump was on the ledge and my legs dangling into the pit. That was safer, I thought, though the hard edge of the pit dug into my thighs and in time would grow bloody uncomfortable. I tried to forget my woes and think about Felicity, who was probably in a similar situation … but that was just as depressing. I forced my thoughts ahead, tried to be constructive and project towards escape, but only to see the total impossibility. We were probably expendable and would be left to die. unless the man in purple fancied he could find a use for us in the construction of his New Britain …

  In point of fact I don’t believe I’d been long in my prison before I heard muffled gunfire: two shots, fired inside the cave, then the silence came back until I heard the bolts on my door being withdrawn, and light filtered in. and once again I was at the wrong end of the sub-machine gun. There were four more men present now, a species of phony acolyte judging from their robes, now bloody. They were carrying dead Ogmanfiller, and as I watched the flowery-shirted American was thrown forward and his body plopped with a big splash into the water of the pit. Then dead Mrs Ogmanfiller went in, making a much bigger splash. No doubt they’d served their purpose … Edie and Chester, prime and primed tourists on a mission of evil, who wouldn’t be seeing the folks in Lewiston, Idaho again; not in this world.

  As a matter of fact, their sad ending gave me hope: I was as yet alive and could have been dead as the Ogmanfillers, ergo, I was as yet required by CORPSE and so was Miss Mandrake. My heart lightened as my legs dangled down towards the floating bodies, but it didn’t lighten all that much. I thought about Britain, and what awaited it, what was even then ploughing across the seas for British shores. Just at the start of their death voyages, those hulls would be forging through the clean seas, every turn of the screws shortening the time available to put some sort of spanner in the works of CORPSE, while I was incarcerated in impotence, willy-nilly, underneath that stupid Ark and right alongside the nerve centre of the operation, the place from which via church steeple the final strike orders would go.

  SIX

  I was still there next day, and still alive. In the meantime the Reverend Clay Petersen had personally and with attendant armed guard brought food and drink. Some of the local vino, very rough stuff, and a hunk of bread. It sustained life, though.

  I asked about Miss Mandrake.

  “She’s okay,” Petersen said briefly. He didn’t want to talk, so much was clear. He was half-way out of the door already, having taken back the now empty cup made of cheap china that had held the wine. No chalices for me.

  I asked, “What’s the hurry?”

  “It’s Sunday.” he said.

  “Ah, yes. And you have a service to take. Tell me, are you genuinely a clerk in Holy Orders, Mr Petersen?”

  “Get stuffed,” he said. He went out and banged the door. I took his answer to be a negative. I thought, as I had thought many times over the silent hours, about Chester and Edie Ogmanfiller floating and bloating there below. Now and again, I don’t know why, the unseen waters had surged and gurgled. In answer to the spring’s pressure, or the river’s ripples — even an underground waterfall somewhere? Or it could have been subterranean fish, perhaps, a-nibble at dead flesh. Whatever the reason, it had been gruesome. I hoped Felicity had no water-pit to contend with. Time went on passing and Sunday got into its stride: distantly, I heard the church bell summoning all those retired expatriates. On arrival with the Ogmanfillers, I had seen no belfry, only the thin steeple with no bulk to hold even one bell. Either the sound was tinned like the organ music, or one of the acolytes wielded a handbell, though it sounded heavier than that. Whatever it was, it had a most curious effect: somehow or other it appeared to affect the water in the pit, to ripple it perhaps. At least, that was the only interpretation I could put on the fact that with every ding and dong of the bell, the Ogmanfillers squelched slightly, as though emitting wind. Trying to disregard the horrid sounds, I thought about the congregation, now arriving in the good light of day above. Their most senior member would probably be the brigadier who had caught the rector at it; there could be other military men as well, I supposed, and even if there were not, they would all be patriotic Britons as Britons who have escaped the restrictions of actually living in Britain always tend to be. Good, solid citizens — former self-employed fishmongers and tailors, bank managers, audit clerks, legal executives, tax inspectors taking cover from their former comrades. They would all be aghast if they knew what was below their place of worship. If only I could dig my way out during matins, I would find myself among friends — if only I could make them believe fast enough, which I probably could not. The Reverend Clay Petersen must have a persuasive tongue and a grip of iron upon his congregation. The answers would be ready and the good Flood Fearers would leap from their ridiculous rowing-boat pews and tear asunder the emissary of the Devil emerging from below the earth.

  In any case there was no possible way out.

  The bell stopped and so did the Ogmanfillers, and silence reigned again. But not for long. The gurgling started and this time it didn’t stop and after it had been going on for quite a while, a good fifteen minutes by the luminous dial of my watch, I began to feel water lapping my shoes and I withdrew my legs and lay flat and dangerously along the narrow ledge. The gurgling grew slowly closer: for me, the Flood had come. Up came the water until it lapped my body and a moment later I felt soggy flesh impinge against my arm. It was a bad moment; in the intense blackness of the pit-head the luminosity of my watch was just enough to reveal, in greenish and unearthly light, Mrs Ogmanfiller’s breasts. I had to grit my teeth against an unmanly scream as slowly but inexorably Mrs Ogmanfiller crushed me into the solid wall, no doubt thrust in her turn by her husband as he rose whale-like to the brim. Then, very suddenly, the pressure eased. There
was a very long-drawn gurgle and a loud sucking sound as, way down below somewhere, the plug was pulled out of the bath. It must have gone down at whirlwind speed, faster I believe than the Ogmanlillers could catch up, for it was a good many seconds after they had gone back down the hole that I heard the double plop. I was glad they’d gone, but the fact of their rise and fall gave me pause for much thought and conjecture.

  The plop, for a start, had positively been double: by deduction, the pit widened out farther down, or the second Ogmanfiller would have followed a split-second later into the exact spot penetrated by the first, channelled as it were by the pit walls, and there would only have been one plop. I don’t know what that proved. More interesting was the movement itself, the movement of the water. I went back to my theory of a subterranean spring, one of fluctuating intensity. It had to be that anyway, I could find no other explanation: I didn’t think the waterfall idea could be on. True enough, there are underground waterfalls in various parts of the world, Yorkshire being one. But Spain? I simply didn’t know. Spain’s a dryish land in summer, it’s hard enough to grow anything in the burned-up ground, and I would have thought someone would by now have tapped any underground supply of any real size. But maybe they had, of course, somewhere along the waterline … unless it was salt in origin? It’s not impossible to get a sea surge, if sea caves happen to interlink along the way with the land cave systems, but I reckoned fifty-odd miles was in fact much too far to be viable.

  What did seem certain was that my pit was connected to some kind of underground cave system and it could be a way out. That was, if one had the right survival equipment including breathing apparatus to tackle the water. Without that … well, it all depended, of course. The way just might not be long, though it could be blocked by the Ogmanfillers currently. They could be jammed up against the plug hole …

  Something moved against my right ear: by this time I had resumed my sitting position, legs down the pit and bottom on the ledge. My ear tickled: it was like a fly, or a wriggly worm. Little bits of rock — it was soft rock, sandstone I fancy — added to the tickle and I heard a small sound, then another. It became a kind of sawing and more material flew around. I felt the wall by my ear and something moved against my hand, in and out, round and round: Miss Mandrake was up to something and it sounded useful. I grabbed the thing that moved and held it fast, thereby giving the signal that I’d cottoned on.

  Whatever it was, was withdrawn.

  I put my mouth to the hole, which I judged to be less than an inch across. I called through to Felicity, removed my mouth and put my ear in its place.

  “I found a bone,” she said.

  “Are you expecting to join me?”

  “That’s hoping for too much,” she said. “But it’s nice just to hear you. The rock’s pretty easy to work, as a matter of fact,” she added.

  “Yes. Have you got a water-filled pit?”

  “A what?”

  I said, “Never mind, if you haven’t you haven’t, but I have.” I told her the facts, briefly, leaving out the Ogmanfillers. She didn’t comment, but started work again on the hole, wielding her bone. I wondered whose it had been and how old it was. I knew that in Spain they put their dead in things like shelves slotted into the mountainsides; maybe in some cases they had put them underground, like in the catacombs below Valletta in Malta, and under Rome. It wasn’t important; the bone, some of which was broken away, had a sharp end, which was important, and had given Felicity her start. It was a long bone, thigh probably, and I took one end and we pulled and pushed like two men hand-sawing through an oak. After a while we had a hole nearly six inches in diameter, for once we could get our hands in we speeded up the excavatory process. I still couldn’t see Felicity through the blackness, but I could touch her and we could converse almost normally. That was a help. I told her then about the Ogmanfillers.

  “Ghastly,” she said. “Poor you. I don’t feel very sad about Chester and Edie, the bastards.”

  “Quite. But they’ve given mean idea.” I explained my theories, making the dangers sound somewhat less than I feared they might be, for I was fast coming to a decision. “I’ve half a mind to try it out. Win or lose it all. If the worst comes to the worst, there’ll be a surface to float on.”

  “With the Ogmanfillers.”

  “Yes.”

  I could almost feel her shudder through the hole in the wall. I talked on persuasively; I didn’t want her to feel she was being left to face Petersen and the man in purple on her own while I drowned in the murky subterranean depths. I said if I got out I would be back with a posse and the Flood Fearers would find they had other worries. She countered that by saying there was nothing very elaborate about this set-up and if the pastor and his purple mate got away, they could always re-open the shop elsewhere, no difficulty. With that I had to agree; but emphasised that the villains would not get away once I had the place ringed with the guardia civil plus the military. After that, Focal House and the hot grill. Talking would take place.

  “Think of what’s at stake,” I said.

  “I am.”

  “And us sitting here helpless.”

  She said, “Right, but I reckon we’re all going to be helpless, out or in, us and Max and the British Government. What’s going to happen will happen. You’ve almost said as much yourself, if not quite in those words.”

  “Yes, I have. But we have to do what we can. And don’t forget WUSWIPP. This time, they’re allies for — as long as it suits them, anyway. WUSWIPP’s widespread enough to stop CORPSF in its tracks at the drop of a hat.”

  A disagreeable sound came through the hole. “Why haven’t they already, then?”

  I said, “I don’t know’, unless they want a quid pro quo. WUSWIPP is, as ever, WUSWIPP. Or maybe they don’t know enough yet. There, I can help. If I get out.”

  “You’ve made your mind up, haven’t you?” she asked. She sounded scared, and sad too. We’d had some good times together, after all, and I just might not find a surface. Below ground, people can get stuck. For my part, I hated the thought of plunging down towards the Ogmanfillers and I hated leaving my Miss Mandrake up top. At that point she said that a little more work would enlarge the hole and she could come through and take her chances with me. That, I was not having, and it was not to do with the fact she was a woman, except that she was a woman named Felicity Mandrake for whom I had a very high regard and more. He travels the fastest who travels alone, and had my companion been someone for whom I had no emotional feeling, then I could and would have left him, if he got himself stuck, in the wider interest of one of us getting out and away to spread the gospel about the Flood Fearers. That’s how we’re conditioned in 6D2. But Felicity I would not leave to drown and her presence would be an inhibition. To that extent, the teachings of 6D2 had failed to stick, and to that extent I was a rotten agent. However, there it was. I reckoned Felicity would be a damn sight safer left imprisoned, that Petersen wouldn’t kill her or anything like that while she had a possible use, for instance as a bargaining counter. That, I had to concede might hold dangers for her, but my intent was to lose no time in cordoning the church and grounds and extracting Felicity as a first priority.

  Tritely I said, “No time like the present. Try not to worry. I could be back by evensong.”

  *

  I had to screw myself up to it. I had no idea, no way of estimating, how far down the waters had gone. For all I knew I might hit rock, and even if the Ogmanfillers broke my fall I could still do myself a lot of irreparable damage. Screwed up, I took a step forward and dropped. It could not, in fact, have taken me long but the journey seemed immense and gave me time for all manner of morbid thought. Blood pounded in my ears, my body scraped and bounced off the pit walls and I saw those ships a-sailing in a blood-red sunset for the British coasts, crammed to the gunwales with radioactive substances all ready to emit their betas. Plutonium, uranium, tritium … very nasty muck, especially plutonium. Three millionths of a plutonium gram could c
ause cancer in dogs. In aerosol form it’s five million times more lethal than lead. Very, very toxic. And long lasting: I’d read that plutonium ‘wasted’ today would still retain half its initial radioactive death dose after a span of years equivalent to ten times the time-lapse since the birth of Christ, which carried one back retrospectively to pre-Noah at a guess. All that flashed before me in about half a second.

  I entered water.

  Safety! Had I not been submerged I would have taken an enormous breath of relief. I went deep; it was very cold. I came up again and took in air, shivering like a leaf in a gale. To my surprise, the Ogmanfillers had gone. Sucked down further? I could feel no suction. Possibly they had at last sunk under their own waterlogged weight. I recalled Edie Ogmanfiller’s breasts up top; in my green luminous glow they had looked more bloated even than in life.

  Resting a while, I listened for any sound from overhead: nothing. I thought of something I hadn’t thought of earlier; when the Flood Fearer bosses found the hole we’d made, and didn’t find me, they would know Felicity knew my plans. True, I could only have gone down into the pit, no mystery about that, and my object had to be escape, but they might take it out on Felicity and try to wring from her a statement as to my precise movements and intentions if I made it. Too late now, of course; and she might be able to persuade them I’d fallen in, tripped over my big feet, uttered one last despairing scream and vanished tor ever towards hell. She just might. I certainly wouldn’t bank on it. One more series of deep, chest-expanding breaths and I went down again, somersaulting in the freezing water — which, by the way, was fresh not salt or even brackish — and thrusting powerfully with my feet. There was a good deal of pressure and I hoped I wouldn’t get the bends or something. Down and down and down and every thrust more of an effort than the one before. When I thought the end of life had come the waters began to narrow in and the walls’ contours forced me round something like the U-bend in a lavatory pan. Here I found trapped air. It was horribly stale and smelly, but it was air, and it helped. Having breathed, I plunged on and all of a sudden I came to the tunnel’s end. My head sped out into quite fresh air and my groping fingers found a ledge of slimy, slippery rock.