Claw

by Katie Berry

  Like someone flipping a switch and cutting the power, the quake ended as quickly as it started.

  There was dead silence in the building, and nobody moved for a moment. Pushing aside a pile of treasures that had built up around their table, Alex and Trip crept out from underneath their pine shield at the same time as Austin extracted himself from his.

  “I guess the ride’s over!” Trip said, standing on legs that still felt rubbery like there was a little of the quake still vibrating in his bones.

  Alex slowly surveyed the damage and whistled. He crunched through the broken glass over to his father, saying in a quiet voice, “Was that an earthquake, Dad?”

  “None other, sport,” Austin said, patting his son on the shoulder.

  “I don’t like them.” Alex’s eyes were wide and unblinking.

  “I agree,” Austin smiled at his son’s comment and looked about the building. It was almost entirely devoid of artefacts and gewgaws, apart from some old BC licence plates that were still solidly screwed in place, along with one toilet seat. The large plate-glass windows were now mostly scattered across the restaurant's floor, sitting in a drift of broken glass along the front portion of the dining area.

  Trip gave out a low whistle. “Looks like now would be a good time to repaint.”

  As usual, Trip’s face was unreadable beneath his bushy, white beard and trademark squint. Though his voice seemed unshaken as he spoke, his eyes betrayed how he really felt -- they were currently open about three times wider than usual. With relief flooding his voice and a glint to his squint, Trip said, “Glad you didn’t get deep-fried, Boss.”

  “You and me both! I didn’t relish the thought of being served with a side of fries.”

  “Hah! Relish! That’s a good one, Dad!” Alex piped up at Austin’s side.

  “Puns ‘R Me, I guess,” he laughed half-heartedly. “In the meantime, we’d better check on Marie and Ed.”

  “You read my mind, Boss,” Trip said as they moved toward the kitchen, being careful to avoid the still hot and slippery oil spread across the floor.

  With a crash that made all three men jump, Marie Popov unravelled herself from the kitchen pass-through, her face white from shock. Her foot had knocked a plate that had miraculously remained on the counter, unbroken. It now sat in shards beneath her feet as she sat up.

  After abandoning her kitchen doorway sanctuary midway through the quake, she’d perched safely inside the stainless steel opening in the wall where Ed passed through the burgers and fries. It had provided her with excellent protection from the falling doo-dads and boiling oil. Alex stepped toward her and gently helped her down.

  “Thank you so much,” Marie said as her feet set down on the floor, feeling grateful to the strong young man. She gave Alex a quick peck on the cheek and headed through the swinging galley doors to the kitchen to check on her husband, being mindful of the puddles of oil on the floor.

  Against the far wall of the kitchen, Ed was currently blaspheming away in Russian as he extracted himself from the metal shelf underneath the heavy, steel counter that held the industrial potato peeler and slicer. He blinked his eyes and continued his Russian rant, taking off his pop-bottle lensed glasses. Ed called them his second pair of eyes, and never went anywhere without them. He wiped at the thick lenses, removing the moisture. The glasses had steamed up during his cosy curl amongst the potato peelings that piled up on the secondary shelf.

  Each day, the kitchen at the Burger Barn prepared hundreds of kilograms of fresh, delicious, Grand Forks grown potatoes, readying them for their vacation on the other side of the kitchen in their canola oil jacuzzi. He shakily placed his glasses back on his face and peered at his wife. His dark brown eyes appeared much larger once he’d secured his spectacles, and he gave his wife a shocked, moon-pie stare. He asked if she was all right. She nodded and then he took her in his arms while she buried her face in his shoulder.

  “Glad to see you’re okay, Ed,” Austin said with concern as he approached. “Watch your step, though; it’s a little on the greasy side today.”

  Alex took the high road and slid Hollywood-style over the chromed countertop where the burgers were assembled, neatly bypassing his dad to assist Ed and Marie. Both seniors looked unsteady on their feet and ready to keel over where they stood. As the boy grabbed Ed’s arm, he noticed the man was still vibrating. “Here, let me help you, Mr. Popov,” he said, wondering if the man if were just jittery from the jarring he’d recently taken or if he had Parkinson’s Disease.

  “Thanks, young fella.” He patted Alex’s arm. “I swear If I didn’t have a heart murmur before that shakin’, I sure as hell do now!”

  Marie looked up from Ed’s shoulder, her arms still around his waist, her face wet from crying. She said with a sniff, “A little swabbing the deck is in order, that’s for sure!” Ed looked to his wife, a look of relief now replacing his shocked expression, now that he held her in his arms once more.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, but we have to run now; a friend is in danger,” Austin said. He turned, leaving the couple to commiserate with each other. He and Alex carefully navigated their way back across the oil-slicked, treasure-filled floor to the kitchen doorway where Trip was standing by, ready to help.

  Marie called out from the kitchen, “Oh, Austin! Could you do me one small favour before you go?”

  Almost to the front door, Austin turned back, saying, “Sure, Marie, what’s that?”

  Could you flip the sign over to closed? I think we may be down for a few days for some much-needed renovations.”

  “Will do.” Austin smiled, turning the sign on the cracked glass of the entry door from 'Bring on the Beef', to 'Roast Beef Roundup'.

  Ed smiled and put his arm around his wife. He looked at Marie and then around the restaurant taking in the damage, saying, “I think next time we’ll make sure everything is glued to the walls and chained to the ceiling!”

  Marie smiled at the trio near the door, calling out, “You boys had best get out there and see if you can help your friend and the rest of this town of ours.”

  “Will do. I’ll check back with you later,” Austin said, pressing on the door and stepping out onto the street. As he held it open for his companions, the lower sheet of glass in the door finally gave up its battle with gravity and slid out, shattering on the concrete sidewalk below.

  The trio picked their way through the detritus on the street toward the trucks. Alex said, “What now, dad?”

  “We need to get to the hospital.”

  “What? Why? Are you hurt?” Alex’s voice was filled with concern.

  “No, but I think I know someone who can help us find Christine.”

  “Let’s get hustling then,” Trip said. Many of the windows along the main thoroughfare were broken, with cracks visible in the sides of dozens of structures for blocks in every direction. Major upheavals had left stretches of sidewalk across the road protruding into the sky like broken teeth. Other sections of the street had sunk away into the ground, along with several buildings, including the Bank of Montreal. Many parked vehicles had been upended, and the broken asphalt made traversal a very interesting affair.

  “This looks like something out of a war zone,” Alex said in a low voice as he wandered out of the Burger Barn, a shocked expression on his face.

  The Lawless City Works Silverado Austin had been driving was still next to the curb outside of Verigin’s Deli, where he’d parked it, but the truck’s headlights were now pointing skyward by a half metre, the bed having dropped an equal amount in the back. It looked like it was drivable, once they maneuvered it out of Main Street's new sunken, angled parking system.

  Hands on his hips as he surveyed the damage, Trip said to Austin, “Why don’t you drive.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  The cavern was silent and dark. There was no sound Christine could discern, apart from her own ragged breathing. She didn’t know what had happened to the three men in the quake and didn’t much care.
She had tried to get as far away from them as she could, and thought she’d succeeded. Despite this feeling of newfound freedom, she remained still, crouched low to the ground, not wanting to give away her position if any of them were still nearby. She hoped that something large and heavy had squashed one or two of them, but she was being cautious nevertheless.

  Christine waited, silently and uncomfortably. A thick layer of rubble had covered the rounded river stones on the cavern floor during the quake. These new chunks of rock were broken-glass sharp and painful to kneel or crouch low on for too long.

  She waited patiently.

  More silence was her reward.

  Reaching into her parka pocket looking for the small Mag-lite that she kept there for emergencies, she was surprised to find the 9mm pistol still in the plastic baggy where she'd placed it earlier and then promptly forgot about it. When Vandusen had taken her prisoner, he’d removed her service revolver from her side holster, but he hadn’t thought to check her pockets for anything else. After all, why would anyone suspect a female conservation officer to be carrying a concealed weapon?

  Leaving the pistol in her pocket, for now, she pulled out the flashlight next to it. Carefully cupping her hand around it to shield the beam, she turned it on and winced at the dazzling amount of light that still leaked through her closed fingers. She tried to close her hand tighter to avoid any more light leakage but felt the rim of the light cutting into her palm and knew she couldn’t hold it like that for extended periods.

  Christine clicked the light off. She breathed quietly for several seconds, trying to hear if anyone or anything nearby noticed her brief attempt at bringing a ray of sunshine into this dreary underworld. She remained crouched amongst the debris on the cavern floor, perfectly still for a little while longer, her leg cramps now thankfully at bay.

  Off to her right side, there was a clattering noise of rocks hitting rocks. Perhaps chunks of quartz loosened by the quake tumbling down from the cavern ceiling above? Or was it someone stumbling around in the dark. It was hard to say.

  Almost ready to give up waiting and make a move, her patience was rewarded. Off toward the front of the cavern came the sound of someone moving around.

  “Jesus Christ! This shit’s sharper than my ex-wife’s tongue!” Ray Chance’s grumbled. He was on his knees, trying to stand up by pushing his hands into the razor-edged rubble for leverage. He gave up and sat on the rough floor instead, his thick parka protecting his ass from the most jagged of the rocks. “Now, where the hell are my goddamned gloves? I can’t see a friggin’ thing!” He was pretty sure he’d had a flashlight in his hand before the quake but knew as sure as shit that he didn’t have one now and figured he must have dropped it during all the shaking.

  Reaching into his jacket pocket, he found his errant gloves. “There you are, ya little buggers!”

  After another moment of silence, Chance continued, “Holy shit! What have we here?!” In his other pocket, his hand had settled onto an old friend, his flask of Napoleon’s finest -- and it was undamaged. He had to rely on touch at this point because he had no light. But that didn’t matter to him at the moment. Nothing did, except for the flask he now found in his hands. The fact that he was effectively blind in the inky blackness that now comprised his world, or that God knew what, from God knew where was out there waiting to eat him mattered not to Ray Chance. Once his fingers latched onto the metal flask, they operated on muscle memory, unscrewing the cap and flicking it aside with his thumb before he’d consciously even considered taking a drink.

  All thoughts of self-preservation and fear had flown from mind once he smelled the nostril-clearing vapour of the opened alcohol in front of him. Without thinking, he swilled half of the remaining brandy in the flask in one quick quaff. The distilled gold from Saint-Rémy seared its way down his throat, making him wince slightly, even after these many, many decades of alcohol abuse. Despite the painful swallow, he licked his lips after his drink and said, “Oh, mama, that’s the stuff.”

  There was a sudden movement in the rocks behind him. Chance let out a girlish squeal, startled by the noise at this back.

  A flashlight clicked on in his face, the beam dazzling him.

  “The pause that refreshes?” Nichols was at the other end of the flashlight, crouching down next to ray. During the quake, Chance had held out a brief hope that one of the falling stalactites might have squashed the tall, arrogant prick like the oversized maggot he was, but it appeared that lady luck was not on his side this afternoon.

  Nichols reached down to offer Chance his hand for assistance in standing upright, but the smaller man waved it off, saying, “I’m a big boy. I can take care of my own fat ass!”

  “Suit yourself.” Nichols stood, retracting the proffered hand. He played the light held in his other hand around the cavern walls and stopped when the beam reached the entrance, causing him to say, “Sweet Mother Mary, we’re entombed!”

  “What the fuck are you going on about? We’re not… oh,” Chance saw the massive pile of rock blocking the entrance and stopped mid-sentence. “What in the goddamned hell are we going to do now?”

  “We’re going to have to go spelunking to find our egress.”

  “Spe-what?”

  “Potholing, caving.”

  Chance’s pasty, white face looked back at him blankly in the light’s high-intensity glare.

  “Let me drop it down a notch for you; we’ll have to explore the cavern to look for another way out.”

  “Oh, okay. What about VanDusen? Have you seen him?”

  “No, I’m not sure what happened to our intrepid guide.”

  Christine listened as the two men finished talking and decided she’d better move to a better hiding place than the middle of the cavern floor. Carefully standing, she tried not to make any noise as she moved about on the loose rock. Just as she started to step forward, she suddenly stopped.

  A yawning, inky black lava tube lay less than a half metre from where she stood. Thanks to Nichols flashlight in the distance, the opening to the yawning pit had been made briefly visible, faintly outlined in a current of vapour that swirled around the lip of the tube. Had she continued walking blindly forward in the dark, she would have found herself on a one way trip to the bottom of the pit, wherever that was, doing to herself what VanDusen had only promised. She shuddered at the thought.

  Taking a deep breath, Christine started to tentatively move toward the side of the cavern, giving the pit a wide berth. She suddenly heard the distinctive sound of a Versa Max pump slide once again being cocked behind her head.

  “That’s about far enough, Missy,” VanDusen hissed at her back.

  “Shit!” Christine flinched and froze. VanDusen’s shotgun mounted flashlight clicked on, and she saw a massive silhouette of herself on the far wall of the cavern.

  “Well, well, at least you know that from Shinola! Now get those pretty little red hands all the way up again where I can see ‘em!”

  Christine reluctantly raised her gore-covered hands. She hung her head slightly forward, giving an air of resignation, hoping to sell VanDusen on her being helpless and in despair. In reality, she was readying herself to pop the safety off the Glock in her pocket and unload it into him, the first chance she got. Perhaps dropping and rolling away in the dark as she grabbed for the pistol.

  “You don’t need to do this, you know.”

  “Hell, yeah. I know I don’t need to; I want to!”

  “What, you get off on this?”

  “Get off on it? I never thought of it like that before. Gee, I suppose I do! What do you know, I get off, on offin’ people! Hell, yeah! I like the sound of that! I should have that put on my goddamned business card!”

  Behind her, Christine heard Nichols voice from across the cavern call out as he slowly made his way toward them across the uneven floor. “Well, now, Reggie, I see you’ve gone and found our new playmate, once again.”

  “Yessir, Mr. Mayor. Looks like she thought she’d try to h
op away on us all quick-like-a-bunny-like after the quake, but I surprised her. Didn’t I, Missy?” VanDusen emphasized the Missy in his sentence with a hard, driving poke of the shotgun’s muzzle into the centre of Christine’s back. She was driven to her knees, feeling the hard quartz dig into her kneecaps immediately after the blow to her spine -- a double dose of pain. She grunted aloud from the bruising jolt. The heavy, poly-cotton shell of her parka and layers of clothing beneath protected her somewhat from the brunt of the brutal prod; otherwise, she was sure it would have done some severe damage to her spinal column.

  Christine readied herself to launch into her ‘Glock ‘n’ Roll’ action plan at the first opportunity she got. It was now apparent to her that all three men were at the very least greedy, and quite possibly, all stark raving mad with gold fever. Here they were, risking their own lives and the lives of others as they sought to carve as much gold from this mine as possible without having to worry about land or mineral rights that just might belong to the local First Nations band or the Provincial Government.