by Matt Drabble
“Run..., run..., run,” his father started to chant, and Dale’s right foot joined its brother’s journey.
Dale tried hard to think but his body was taking matters into its own hands now and he took another step and then another. The thought that was trying to be heard managed to shout a little louder but his strong sense of self-preservation attempted to strangle it.
Dale moved closer to the exit again. In his mind he was giving press interviews and reading newspaper headlines proclaiming him a hero for saving the island and everyone on it.
He was almost out now. One foot was actually outside and the moonlight was showing him the way.
“That’s it,” his father exclaimed excitedly, and then Dale heard it.
The voice wasn’t his father’s; it never had been. The man at his shoulder wasn’t a ghost. It wasn’t his conscience. It wasn’t any kind of guardian angel; it was him.
He turned to look at his father and saw his own eyes staring back at him. Older, yes - maybe even his father’s age - but it was Dale Clayton, not Haider, staring back at him.
“No, no, no,” he called back to himself. “Don’t you dare. We’re almost out. We’re so close… so close!”
Dale knew then that this man beside him was who he would become, who he was and who he’d always been. There was only one problem with that: he didn’t want to be that man anymore.
He turned back into the tunnel, ignoring both the pain in his body and the screams in his head. He limped faster and faster until he was almost running.
The Niner looked back at him. The man now held a handful of wires in his hand and had been trying to figure out a way of disconnecting them, seemingly sensing the danger they offered.
Dale picked up speed and shut out all thoughts in his head as he broke into a sprint. There was no one from town here to witness what he was about to do, only some Niner, but somehow that didn’t matter anymore - nothing did, except what he had to do.
Perhaps one act of bravery didn’t much matter when it came to balancing out his life’s accounts. He had murdered his own father, after all, on top of a shit pile of other assorted crap, but at least it was a start and, more importantly, this was all him and not the ghost of his father.
Dale reached the Niner at top speed and dove straight at the man. He was almost horizontal as his shoulder struck the man. They both fell heavily in a heap and on top of the plunger, sending it downwards and blowing up the whole world around them in a fiery explosion that brought the monastery down on top of them. The only bright side was that Dale barely felt any pain before a huge chunk of rock landed squarely on his head, crushing the life from his body instantly.
CHAPTER 25
Fallout
The explosion shook the whole island, and at that moment, everyone looked up in shock and confusion.
Inside Casey’s shelter, the fighting stopped amongst the residents who were shocked into wondering what they were doing in the first place.
Casey Parker herself had blood-smeared hands, and Pearl Christian’s face was a wet mess.
There were several conflicts being acted out violently at the same time throughout the basement shelter.
Angela Hove had her fingers curled around Eric Dare’s throat, and the old man was turning blue under the assault.
Don Mann was using a large commercial-sized can of beans to batter against the side of Charlie Davis’s head for a reason he couldn’t quite remember now.
There were more fights that ground to a halt and the stench of insanity rang thick through the stale air, now to be replaced by confusion and concern as the generator fell silent and the shelter was plunged into darkness.
Dr Marion Simmons also looked up from her business, but she was now far removed from the shelter, having fled before the worst of the violence had fully started.
Instead, she looked up from the workbench at her surgery office. The table was covered in her work and little of it made sense; or should that be it made perfect sense?
When she’d arrived, her arm had been covered in drying blood, both her own and Mary Clark’s.
The woman had gone crazy and attacked her. She’d had to fight for her life and inflict sickening injuries on a woman she’d considered a friend for 20 years. The thought of her own actions, however justified, still turned her stomach, but now there was another thought permeating through the dark.
As a doctor, there was always a wall of her profession that was easily erected, one to shut out such unhelpful things such as human emotion. There was a problem to be tackled here: one that cold reason could tackle and one that crying wouldn’t help.
With some difficulty, she was able to isolate Mary’s blood from her own leaked sample. Thankfully, she was finally able to find Mary’s sample on a finger that hadn’t shed its own. Once she had that, it was time to set upon a course of elimination testing. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for with the sample, but she’d know when she found it.
Even the explosion only took her attention for a second or so, before her mind drifted back to the work and she buried herself in it once more, welcoming its cold embrace and promise to take away the pain and fear.
The work was all-consuming; so much so that she never realised she was no longer alone.
----------
It took a long time before Quinn managed to come to terms with where she was.
At first she thought it was a dream, the kind that you had trouble waking up from. At one point she thought she might be showering, but the water was cold and somehow sticky.
Her senses were ringing and it took a while for her eyes to adjust, even after she realised that they were open.
Her head ached monstrously and her ears were full of a dull ringing drone as though a car alarm was going off under a giant pillow.
There was a thick cloud of dust covering her and one leg felt trapped under something heavy.
She tried to take a couple of deep breaths but her lungs soon filled with a noxious substance which caused her to cough violently, hard enough to jar her trapped leg and send a shot of pain up to her hip.
The pain at least shook her senses back into working order and she started to remember where she was if not what had happened.
The last thing she remembered was Torvan standing over her, ready to end her life; then the world had exploded and she had been falling.
She looked around her now. The only light was a dim shaft from above and she seemed to have fallen through a hole in the floor, sending her tumbling some 30 feet down into the darkness below.
“Caleb?” she cried out, suddenly remembering his face and the fact that he’d shared the same fate as her.
All of a sudden, the pain in her leg mattered little; all she could think of now was him.
She used her free leg as a lever to try and push herself free. She had to clamp her lips together to keep the scream of pain from ripping clear as she inched herself backwards.
The large chunk of rock that had pinned her took a good deal of skin with it as she yanked her leg out, but the wet blood helped for lubrication.
Once she was free, she tore a strip from her sleeve and tied it around her leg to stop the bleeding. A quick test of her limb thankfully told her that it was still operational and not broken. It hurt like hell, but she could still move at least.
She crawled out from under the rubble and carefully manoeuvred herself around the fallen debris, trying to acclimatise herself.
Looking up, it seemed like the entire centre of the monastery had given way and fallen into the hole. There were piles of rubble littering the ground and several half pillars leaned at precarious angles. Every now and then there would be another tremor and more chunks of concrete would fall, making her wary of moving too quickly.
She listened intently but struggled to find any sound of movement outside of the groaning foundations. There were multiple blood splatters around her, but thankfully, the dim shaft of light didn’t touch the corners of the basement level, meaning
she was spared the worst of the carnage.
There had been a lot of men on the upper level. Several had been either dead or wounded by the gunfire, but many more had been crushed when the collapse had happened. The more she looked around, the more she was shocked that she was still alive.
“Caleb?” she called out softly, still aware that the Niners might offer a threat, especially Torvan if the man had also survived.
She had no idea what had caused the explosion. She couldn’t imagine that the monastery was hooked to main gas lines as their way of life was a simple one. She had a hard time believing that anything on the basement level would have been this combustible.
“Quinn?” A voice coughed weakly from off to the side, and she moved quickly towards it, recognising Caleb’s voice.
She followed his soft noises, climbing over slabs of concrete and piles of rubble. There was a severed arm lying in a pool of red mush and what might have once been a head that was now a gooey splat.
There were several limbs sticking out from under a huge wall that had caved in almost intact, but she didn’t stop to estimate the dead underneath.
She pressed on, shifting rubble and rocks as gently as she could manage for fear of bringing what remained standing down on top of her.
Caleb’s calls had started out weak and were now growing weaker. She started to move quicker, risking burying them both.
The air was tough to breathe now as thick mucus-forming clouds of dust started to descend and settle on the lowest level, forming a heavy weight inside her chest.
She was starting to panic now as she could barely hear Caleb anymore. Blissfully, after what seemed like an age of searching, she finally spotted the pair of unmistakable hiking boots sticking out of a crack in the rubble pile.
“Caleb? CALEB!” she yelled as she crawled forwards.
She gripped his boot and shook it hard.
“That hurt,” Caleb snapped back, but at least his voice sounded a little stronger.
“You’re trapped,” she said, looking around.
“No shit.”
“Hang on. I’ll try and get you out.”
“Wasn’t planning on moving,” he quipped back, and she could almost feel his smile and that gave her strength.
“Anyone else alive out there?” he asked.
“Haven’t seen anyone yet.”
“Well keep an eye out for you-know-who.”
“Hopefully, he’s at the bottom of the pile,” she spat bitterly.
After a little searching, she picked up a four-foot-long piece of metal shrapnel and hefted it in her hands.
Returning to Caleb, she scouted around his burial spot and checked all sides. The falling chunks of masonry seemed to have formed a shell around him as they fell, trapping him but protecting him at the same time.
She pushed the piece of metal into the gap and readied herself to put her weight on it, trying to ignore the pain in her leg that continued to seep blood.
“You sure about that?” Caleb asked from inside.
“You know what Archimedes once said?”
“Funnily enough, no.”
“Well he once said, ‘Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.’”
“How was he on collapsed monasteries?”
“Let’s find out,” she grunted as she bore down.
The makeshift shelter started to quake as she pushed down. The top slab gave a couple of inches to the right and she adjusted her position to go with it. Underneath, she felt Caleb’s not-inconsiderable strength adding to her efforts, and slowly, the slab shifted until it fell completely over, exposing him beneath.
“You okay?” she asked, concerned at the amount of blood splattered on his face.
“I’ll live.” He smiled back. “For now, at least.”
She helped him out as best she could and soon he was standing next to her, a little shaky but upright.
“How’s that?” he asked, looking at her leg.
“I’ll live too.”
“Good, then let’s get the hell out of here,” he said, looking around.
“Any ideas?”
“I’d say up,” he said, looking up through the shaft of light shining down. “But there’s not much chance of that now,” he continued, looking at the distance between the basement level and what had been the first floor.
The floors in between the main office and the basement had all given way and there wasn’t any way to climb the distance as there was no longer anything in between.
Caleb stood still and sniffed the air around them before breaking into a coughing fit. “Not a good idea,” he spluttered.
He licked his finger and held it up in the air while concentrating hard before speaking again.
“There’s a draught,” he said with his eyes closed. “That way, I think,” he said, opening them and pointing.
Together they moved slowly through the debris. It was dark and getting darker as they managed their way deeper into the catacombs. Every now and then there would be another shift in the foundations and more rubble would fall, but they kept on pressing forwards.
There was an occasional cry for help or moan of pain from the darkness, but she ignored them, and anytime Caleb seemed to be stopping, she dragged him forwards again.
“We should...,” He trailed off.
“No,” she replied firmly. “I don’t care who’s still alive out there. They were all trying to kill us, so screw them - every goddamn last one of them,” she growled angrily.
The walk seemed to take forever as they picked their way clear. The noises grew dimmer as they moved away from the carnage, leaving the stench of blood and death behind.
“You think Torvan’s back there?” Caleb asked nervously.
“God, I hope so. Bastard should have gotten what he deserved, bloody maniac.”
“You think we’re that lucky?”
“Hey, we’re still alive, aren’t we?”
“Just about.” He coughed again and spat a thick glob of mucus and blood onto the ground.
“What do you think caused that?” she asked as they held each other and walked clumsily, relying on each other for support to keep moving.
“No idea,” he replied honestly with a heavy sigh. “Maybe God finally got pissed off enough to get involved and pick a side.”
“Maybe.” She nodded.
“Hey, I was only joking.”
“Maybe you’re not. Something caused this whole place to come crashing down on Torvan and his band of nutters. Maybe God’s as good an explanation as any.”
They walked on in silence, each wondering about the meaning of their salvation and the Niners’ demise.
Quinn hoped that all of them were buried down here, but she had a feeling that they wouldn’t be that lucky. Some of them would still be hunting throughout the town, but maybe if their leader was gone, they’d surrender.
As they walked in the dark, she thought about her father and the reconciliation that she’d been sure she’d never want, but one that now could never happen.
She also was starting to dare to think about what the future might hold for her. So many bridges had been burned for her on the mainland now. Her job was surely gone, not that it seemed important much now.
The trouble was what sort of a life would be left for her on the island now. So much death and terror had taken place. Would the land be forever tainted? She didn’t even know how many of her fellow islanders were still in one piece. Between the storm and the Niners, she had no idea as to just who might be left to even begin rebuilding.
Her mind was as heavy as her legs as she struggled to keep going. Caleb’s strong arm was around her shoulders, refusing to slow the pace as they kept on pressing forwards.
“There.” His voice startled her.
“Hmm?”
“Up there,” he said, pointing to a narrow shaft of soft light.
He pulled her back as they approached the gap and shoved his head through fi
rst to check that it was clear.
“Okay,” he said, pushing her through.
She emerged out into the gloriously cool clean air and took in deep cleansing breaths.
Caleb joined her after struggling a little more to force his way out, his bulk getting stuck in the thick undergrowth.
They were high up on a hill, one of the highest points on the island. In front of them was a long slope down to the outskirts of town. Off to the sides of the catacomb tunnel entrance was a sheer cliff drop down to the beach and rocks below.
“Careful,” Caleb said, pulling Quinn forwards in case she stepped backwards and off into midair before a several-hundred-feet drop.
Quinn moved away from the cliff edge and looked down at the island stretching out below them down the grassy slope. She was suddenly struck by a very clear thought, one that sparkled through the night sky like a million stars. She felt sure that they could rebuild, that they could reclaim their home back from the darkness and bring light back to Clayton.
“It’s beautiful,” she sighed as the town began to sparkle in the distance as pin-sized lights started to come on, indicating life as the town woke up again.
“Our people are resilient,” Caleb added as he stepped beyond her and stared down the hill. “It’s what makes us islanders. Let’s go home,” he said, turning back to face her.
At first she couldn’t quite understand what was making his face turn from gentle affection to fear, but then she felt the presence behind them and just knew who it was: Torvan.
“RUN!” Caleb yelled and grabbed her firmly before shoving her down the hill.
She tried to protest, to stand by his side and fight, but then her injured leg gave way and she was tumbling down the slope in a dizzying head over heels fall.
----------
Dr Simmons worked tirelessly, each hunch being compounded by another right guess until she finally sat back from her desk, exhausted but also excited.
Of course, the results wouldn’t stand up to any industry standards yet, but she knew in her heart that she was right; the rest would be academic at this point.