by S. A. Hunt
Two hours into the pursuit, the pain drained out of his ankle and it’d become stiff and swollen. Euchiss paused to examine it and found a port-wine bruise the size of a baseball across the outside of his heel. Sprained. Damn.
He took his phone out and woke it up. No signal. His police LMR was also out of the picture—too far away from town for the walkie. He fussed quietly to himself, swearing in his New England accent. In his other hand was a scoped Nosler M48 Patriot rifle, carried underhand like a briefcase. Oh, well. Cutty would be pissed I messed up. Better I get this tied off by myself, ASAP. Solo mission it is.
He wriggled back into his shoe and picked his way over a brook. On the other side was the decades-old remains of a barbed-wire fence, and several yards to the south was a NO TRESPASSING sign. We’ve been curving in a northeasterly direction, he thought, slinking through the rusty wires like a wrestler getting into a ring. Must be getting close to the mines.
The aforementioned quarry Bowker had been heading to lay at the far end of a network of mine shafts snaking through the belly of Red Hill Mountain. The locals called it the Mushroom Mines because the damp conditions inside the cave caused white fungus to grow on the wooden tables and scaffolding. The air inside was soupy with spores. He wasn’t sure if it was poisonous, but he and Bowker never took any chances and usually went in with gas masks.
Shit, he thought, pausing. You dumbass. He’d forgotten his mask in the truck.
Crossing increasingly steep and stony terrain, they were in the foothills of Red Hill Mountain now. Up ahead, the trees thinned out, and Euchiss found himself on a bare shelf of limestone overlooking a large gorge some two or three hundred yards across—the sort of gap that would have warranted a bridge were it more traveled. Briars and heather choked the bottom, but the sides were steep and clear.
The Ellis boys were scrambling up the opposite bank, picking their way through the boulders and briars. They were almost to the top, no more than a stone’s throw from the tree line. Euchiss threw himself down and shouldered the rifle, a frisson of glee coursing through his body. A quick adjustment to get an optimal angle, cocking one knee up, and he thrust the gun forward, resting his elbows on the cliff and looking through the scope. In the sharp magnification, he could have reached out and plucked the two men off the valley wall with his fingers.
Etched into the upper receiver was a single word: MAGA. Euchiss licked his lips and steadied himself, the crosshair settling over the Mandingo with the buzz cut. Breathe in, breathe out, relax. He tugged the trigger back until the firing pin hammered the cartridge. The sharp, hollow CRACK! surprised him and sent a pulse of pleasure through his testicles.
Dirt spewed up inches to the right of Fisher Ellis’s head. He looked over his shoulder, scanning the gorge wall.
“I’m up here, you dumb cuck.” Euchiss cycled the Nosler’s bolt, ejected the empty casing, and chambered a fresh round. Something went off with a pop like an M-80 and a bullet whirred into the trees behind him. He peered through the scope and remembered the faggot with the shaved head had stolen Bowker’s Glock. Joel fired several more rounds, all but one whizzing into the trees behind Euchiss. “You can’t hit me from there with that. Who are you foolin’?”
He took aim on Joel, who seemed to realize the futility of shooting back and threw the empty pistol into the gorge. As Euchiss was getting ready to pull the rifle’s trigger, his trousers vibrated and a jangly melody came from his pocket.
Being this high up, he must have gotten a signal. He dug out his phone and grunted in irritation at a text message.
WHERE U AT? CUTTY WANTS UPDATE
Euchiss sighed and looked through the scope. Joel had made it to the tree line, and his brother was almost over the gorge bank. Euchiss put the crosshairs on his back, center mass, and fired another round. That warm ache hummed in his balls again at the sound of the blast. This one plugged Fisher in the upper left arm, blowing a chunk of meat all over his brother.
By the time he’d cycled the empty casing out and sighted on them again, the fag had pulled him out of the ravine and they were running into the trees. The pine trunks flickered across their fading bodies like a picket fence.
Euchiss snatched up his phone and typed a text.
HAD ACCIDNT ON WAY 2 QUARRY. LT DEAD. CHASING 2 GUYS @ RED HILL ON FOOT. COME GET ME. TAKE E ACC ROAD, BRING GUN. ILL B AT MINES IN ABT 45 MIN
The reply was immediate:
ON MY WAY
18
Kenway Griffin opened his eyes and rolled over onto his hands and knees, disgorging that morning’s Burger King breakfast on the asphalt. The puke burned like magma in his stretched and abraded throat.
Blood dribbled on the puddle of vomit. He touched his hairline. Electric pain shot across his scalp.
Dragging himself to his feet, he staggered across the highway and examined his head in the wing mirror of his truck. His hair was sopping wet and his whole face was coated in streams of crimson. As far as he could tell, the rifle bullet had skipped off the crown of his skull, cutting his scalp open and knocking him unconscious. Dad always said I was hardheaded. His eyeballs throbbed in dull agony. He climbed into his Chevy and tried to will the nausea away, tried to summon the cool, collected warrior that had bubbled up back in the vineyard, but the Chevy wouldn’t stop spinning. Several minutes passed before he realized the windshield was shot out.
The truck full of kennels was now a roaring bonfire, black smoke rising in a column to the white sky. Cats yowled helplessly from their cages out in the grass, safe but abandoned.
The cat.
What the hell happened with the cat? He remembered reaching into the cargo compartment of the overturned truck, and then nothing until a few minutes later, on his hands and knees in the mud, choking. He’d vomited then too, but it wasn’t food, it was hair. A huge wad of hair that scratched his gullet coming out.
Felt like strep throat, needles in his esophagus. Kenway swallowed with a wince. The hair had claws. He remembered holding a cat in his arms. Had he saved the cat from the fire? He couldn’t be sure. It had been wet; he knew that much. Maybe it’d fallen in the river? He casually leaned over and vomited again, this time nothing coming up but sour bile.
Sweat ran down his face, cutting streaks in the blood. Did he have a concussion? He didn’t think so, but it was possible.
Hey, man, you all right?
Fuck, dude, his fuckin’ leg is gone.
Somebody help me start a saline—how are we gonna fix the medic without the medic?
God, he felt drunk. He grabbed a wad of Arby’s napkins out of the door pocket and mopped at the blood on his face with trembling hands, scraping it out of his eyelids and the creases beside his nose as if he were removing makeup. All he could manage to do was smear it around. Lucky, so goddamn lucky, he thought, wadding the napkins up and tossing them into the floorboard. Two near-death experiences in his life. If he made it out of here, he was going to have to go skydiving or swimming with dolphins or ride a bull named Fu Manchu or something.
Found his leg, Lieutenant. Non-viable.
Where did they get popped?
TCP 6. There was a mo-bile IED coming in from the south, and Griffin stopped because of the fucking kids. There were kids in the road, in front of the vehicle.
Fuck ’em, he should have kept driving. He knows better.
He closed the door, his head tilting back in exhaustion as the Chevy slowly rotated in place. Saliva pooled in his mouth. Not for the first time, he wished he had the first-aid kit in there, the one usually in the glove compartment. He’d used it on somebody recently, but he couldn’t remember who, or where he’d left it.
Smoke no longer roiled from under the hood. Might as well give it a try while I’m in here. He took the ignition in one bear-paw hand and twisted it. The engine gave a sick grunt but refused to turn over. He tried it again. Still nothing. He sat back and rested. Thought about puking again, but he didn’t have anything left. Rolled down the window and spat.
&nbs
p; In the side mirror he caught a glimpse of a vehicle coming down the road. He squished himself down,
(VBIED IT’S ANOTHER CAR BOMB FUCK GO GO GO)
his knees pressed against the dash, his balls at six o’clock on the steering wheel. A few moments later, the driver drew even with the Chevy and slowed, rubbernecking at the crash.
When there was no explosion, Kenway relaxed. You’re not over there anymore. Get your head out of your ass.
Whoever it was put it in Park and let the engine idle. Kenway thought about getting out, asking for help, but something about it seemed wrong—why would they simply sit there silently instead of getting out to go look for survivors?
Drowsiness crept in around the edges and he clenched his fists, trying to will himself awake. His hands shook. His skull felt like it’d been cracked down the middle like a walnut.
Keep it together.
The slam of a car door.
Someone walked around to the Chevy. Kenway kept his eyes closed, held his breath, and pretended to be dead, which was easy, as he already had the disguise down, with the gash running along the part in his bloody hair.
“Nice shootin’, Tex,” said a hoarse voice right next to the open window. The man coughed and walked away. Kenway opened his eyes to see who it was.
The redheaded cop, Euchiss. How long was I out? Euchiss had changed his clothes and took a shower, evidently, judging by the lack of blood. One of his wrists was swaddled in a bandage.
Euchiss got back into his vehicle, pulling away. Kenway peered over the windowsill, catching a glimpse of a red Ford pickup and what appeared to be an airbrush painting of a Valkyrie with big boobs, catching a giant snake by the tail. He watched through the arch of the steering wheel as the pickup dwindled down the lonely highway.
Staring in disbelief, he recognized the artwork as the giant snake he’d painted on commission ages before.
Grrrrowl, chugga-chugga-chug. He tried the key again. Grrrrowl, chugga-chugga-chug. He coughed, spat blood out the window, and turned up the radio. Lynyrd Skynyrd told him to be a simple kind of man.
19
After a couple hours of running on the treacherous forest floor, Joel’s feet felt like hamburger, but he had nothing on Fisher. Blood ran down his elbow from the gunshot wound in his shoulder. His face had gone from a dark brown to a sort of charcoal-purple, and his lips were almost lipstick violet.
They emerged from the woods into a gravel clearing furrowed with dry tire ruts. To the far right was a collection of unfinished buildings, all naked studs and black-felt roof. Building supplies lay rotting in the elements. A stone bluff loomed over the clearing, topped with a crown of longleaf pine, and an enormous cave led into the depths of the bluff.
At first, he wanted to hide in the unfinished building, but he realized it would only be a matter of time before Euchiss found them there. “Come on,” he urged Fish, mincing across the sharp gravel. “We’ll hide in the cave.”
Inside, smooth cave-dirt burned his aching feet with cold. Anemic white sunlight filtered in through a dozen holes in the wall, revealing enormous rooms with flat, cracked ceilings. Graffiti spray-painted on the jagged stone declared long-dead relationships and cryptic war-cries. BRAVERY IS NOT THE ABSENCE OF FEAR. ED BRIGHAM WAS HERE (AND SO WAS ARDY) 1976. FRODO LIVES!
“I dunno,” said Fish.
Thunder broke outside, and a bullet whip-cracked against the lip of the cave, flicking chips of rock.
They ducked and ran deeper into the mine.
The main shaft drove straight into the heart of the mountain, side tunnels branching off at constant intervals into side rooms. The air was thick and close, wet, musty. Moisture speckled Joel’s face. It didn’t take long to lose nearly all light, stranding them in a void of darkness traced only by the distant star of the cave opening behind them. He could cover it with one hand.
Euchiss stepped into the void’s only sun, a tiny silhouette. He slipped a flashlight out of his patrol belt and turned it on, shadows capering at his feet. “I know you’re in here,” he called, his voice a flat, raspy echo. “There ain’t no other end to this mine. You’re trapped. Might as well give up now.”
Go to Hell. Joel stepped out of the light into a side room and into total darkness. Fish followed, clutching his shoulder.
“You go to the other side,” Fish whispered.
“Why?”
“Get a rock or something. Hide in the dark. I’m gonna come out with my hands up and distract him. You come up behind him, hit him with the rock.”
“That’s a crap plan. He’s going to shoot you.”
“Do you have a better one?”
He didn’t. Joel crossed the river of light again and into the dark, shuffling around, his hands fluttering across the floor. No rocks—at least none of sufficient size—but there was a metal bucket with a rope attached to the handle, a heavy coal pail. The rope was spongy and wet but intact. He carried the bucket to the edge of the shadow and held it aloft like a flail.
As he waited for the cop to get close, something occurred to him. What if Euchiss happened to point the flashlight this way before he could spot Fish? What if he shot Fish on sight? His lungs itched. He needed to cough; every breath he took seemed more and more congested until he was shuddering.
Blue-white light swarmed across the floor as the flashlight came closer. Euchiss’s Oxfords scuffed across the hard-packed dirt. Come on, come on. Joel extended his arm back, bracing for action, getting ready to swing the bucket at the cop’s face. Euchiss came around the corner into view, his Maglite a cone of hard white. He’d slung the rifle over his shoulder by a strap and drawn his service Glock.
No! The flashlight was wobbling in Joel’s direction! The circle of light swept back and forth and brushed his toes.
“Hey, fucker,” said Euchiss almost casually, and flashed him in the eyes. Joel flexed, started to step forward, but Fisher coughed. The beam of light swung in the other direction and revealed Fish standing in front of a long wooden table, his hands up, squinting. “There you—” Euchiss began to say, the pistol in his hand following the flashlight.
Joel lunged blind, swinging from the side with a right cross. The bucket cut an arc through the air and missed completely.
Euchiss flinched and snorted laughter, but Joel followed through, swinging the bucket around his head, and hit him on the second go-round. The bucket whipped the redheaded killer square across the face, burying him in a cloud of black soot and knocking him flat on his back.
BANG! The Glock flashed, and the flashlight’s beam danced across the ceiling. The bucket hit the floor and left Joel holding a rotten rope.
“Run!” shouted Fish.
He considered grabbing the light, but the pistol made him think twice. He ran after his brother’s fading footsteps and they fled headlong into the silk shadows of the cave.
* * *
The constant fear of stepping off into a vertical drop made Joel reluctant to run full-speed. He was completely and totally blind in the depths of the mine shaft, and had no idea what he was running toward. Fish, on the other hand, seemed to have no such reservations, and Joel could only track him by the sound of his sneakers clapping against the sooty stone ahead. As he ran, he kept his right arm extended, trailing his fingertips across the rough surface of the wall.
Behind them, Euchiss was swearing at the top of his lungs, cycling through a thesaurus of every curse he could come up with, and threatening every conceivable form of torture. “You broke my goddamn nose! I’m gonna rip your dick off and feed it to birds!”
Deeper and deeper they went, the air thickening to a warm soup. Joel didn’t have any kind of cloth to cover his nose and mouth with, so he settled for breathing through his teeth and spitting every so often.
After twenty minutes of running, he slowed to a jog. The cop’s shouting had dwindled away, leaving them in a bone-chilling silence. His mouth tasted like he’d been eating cheese and his jeans were wet where his stitches had come loose.
> “Wait up, Mr. Goodbody!” he pleaded with the invisible Fish.
“I ain’t waitin’ up for shit. Come on.”
“You need to slow down before you run off in a hole. I ain’t carrying your no-carb ass out of here with two broke legs.”
“He’s done shot me once, I ain’t about to sit still and give him another try. This ain’t Chuck E. Cheese, Joel, this motherfucker ain’t here to win tickets.” He pronounced it Johl instead of Jo-elle, which he only did when he was pissed off. Joel figured it was his version of calling him by all three of his names. “Now how about you shut up before he hears us?”
“We ain’t exactly church mice.”
“Well, you ain’t helpin’!”
The tunnel extended on and on, some three or four hundred yards, he guessed, or maybe a quarter-mile. Or ten miles. Who knew?
Ten or twenty minutes later, his sight returned and the darkness became a faint, dreamlike hint of gray rock as light bounced in from some distant opening. A colorless square loomed ahead of them, only a shade lighter than the black around it.
Rough surfaces led them into a tunnel that ran perpendicular to the first one, and as Fish stepped into reflected daylight, Joel understood they’d reached a branching path. The right-hand shaft led toward the source of the sunlight. He came out into the intersection and squinted at a point of fierce white.
Wind whispered and the sound of the cicadas drifted down to his ears. Fish took off running and a gun thundered behind them. A bullet ricocheted off the cave wall in front of Joel with a flower of sparks.
“I see you down there!” shouted Euchiss.
The brothers burst out into fresh air and found themselves in an enormous rock quarry occupied by a handful of dilapidated wooden structures—a tall coal elevator and several small cabins. Beyond the buildings was a large pond full of rust-orange water, milky and placid.