Bone Pit: A Chilling Medical Suspense Thriller (The Gina Mazzio Series Book 3)

by Bette Golden Lamb

  Gina Mazzio, Harry Lucke, Tuva Goldmich, the two orderlies. That part was tied up. All of them gone.

  And they were lost opportunities; human material that might have provided answers to the burning questions about Alzheimer’s. Brains that Ethan would never get his hands on now.

  He reached into the second desk drawer and lifted out two boxes of his prepared slides—all stained specimens from living tissue. Within these very cells, real answers might exist; solutions to uncovering the hidden secrets to the Alzheimer’s puzzle.

  And all the others? The remaining participants here at Comstock?

  Not my problem anymore.

  That was one loose end Zelint Pharmaceuticals would have to deal with.

  And as far as David Zelint was concerned?

  Goodbye

  Chapter 42

  Harry had always known his mine-hopping hobby would get him into trouble one day—who could imagine it would happen smack in the middle of a nursing assignment? If someone had even hinted at it, well, he would have laughed his head off. Yet, here he was on a new job, locked up in a mine with no way out.

  He couldn’t help but think about all those stories of people lost in the abandoned hard-rock mines in Alaska, or in mines of the eleven other Western States. He’d heard just about every one of those tales. He believed them, because most unoccupied mines were open and untended—provocative invitations to adventurous thrill-seekers of the mysterious world of the underground.

  Once he and his brother were in a huge old mine, could have driven a truck into it. They were on the way out when the mine’s ceiling gave way. It was the loudest noise Harry had ever heard. A roar and rumble of sound that blew out enough dust and bad air to keep them coughing for hours afterward. He could still remember the noise of dirt and rock dumping onto a floor that still held the recent imprint of their footsteps.

  The four-cell flashlight he’d taken off of Pete was heavier than he was used to, but in the surrounding darkness, it was good to have the greater power. It helped make him feel better, less anxious about the mysterious sounds around him.

  He was more than a little uneasy about stepping over the dying Pete. The man’s wide-open eyes burned holes in his flesh as they followed Harry’s every move. Worse, the whistling in the orderly’s throat, from his crushed larynx along with the struggle of his body trying to get a lung-full of air, really spooked Harry. As he moved along, he refused to look back at those eyes. He knew they would follow him while he hurried back to the Y where they’d come into the mine.

  Back at the Y, instead of finding the exit he’d expected to find, the opening was blocked by an immovable prison-like iron gate.

  Rocky must have locked it … would he do that to his buddy? Maybe Ethan…

  He turned back and had to pass Pete again. This time, the man’s eyes were closed. Harry stopped and checked for a pulse even though the air-starved squeak had stopped. He knew Pete wasn’t breathing.

  Why am I bothering?

  Was he feeding a sadistic ogre that lived inside of him? Because, pulse or no pulse, Harry was never going to do a thing to save the bastard’s life.

  He patted Pete’s pockets. There were no keys. Whoever did it probably wanted to keep him from getting out. But what was the rationale for locking in Pete, whether it was Rocky or Ethan?

  How many times had he thought about things like that, knowing, accepting that even though he was a nurse who dealt with human beings day after day, he still didn’t really understand people? Maybe he never would.

  Why did they do such despicable things to each other?

  In his job, he’d seen real generosity and sacrifice among family and friends, even strangers stepping forward to help someone they’d never met before. And in the next breath, they would commit hateful acts.

  Most days, he tried to have a wait-and-see attitude, and to be the best kind of nurse he could be. The best kind of person. He’d even dared to think his motives were pure.

  Yet, he’d just killed a man.

  His mouth was bone dry; he tried not to think about dead Pete, tried not to think about Gina alone with Rocky. If he did, those thoughts would crush him quicker than the mine.

  Picking up the pace, he walked with a steady stride, broken only by his own clumsiness.

  He would get out.

  Even if the flashlight died, he would crawl out on his hands and knees.

  He would get out.

  He directed the light at the shoring above him, which looked ready to collapse here, too.

  An unexplainable chill jolted him. There was something ruffling the mine atmosphere. It was weird, like everything was squeezing, sucking in the air all around him.

  He tried to ignore it and continued to walk as the tunnel turned 180-degrees, reversing on itself. Harry assumed he was now facing in the same direction as when they’d originally entered. At least, it felt that way.

  His heart was racing and his breath was rapid. A sudden deadly panic drilled into his chest. Then he knew why. That sound—there it was! The sound he’d only heard once before—with his brother.

  Not loud at first, more like the creaking or groaning of an old porch. With a shaking hand, he shone the light above, inspected overhead for as far as he could see. Above, the sagging timbers were drooping into a critical point of no return.

  “Nooooo!”

  He took a deep breath and ran.

  He was still running when the roar and rumble of the collapse filled the mine.

  The sound of tons of rock and dirt blew through his ears as it fell. A solid wall of debris was at his back, close at his heels, as it entombed the mine behind him and tried to drag him in.

  And then it stopped.

  Harry kept running, but the silence and his heaving chest finally made him stop. As he looked back, he couldn’t help feeling that any quick movements on his part could send some kind of vibration to the collapsed pile. And maybe next time the mine would claim him.

  Dazed, he turned and pointed the flashlight down the tunnel at the fallen wall of dirt. As he clutched the Maglite, he saw the dirt shiver, start to move toward him. The rush of dirt was still coming for him.

  The racket behind kept him running; the mine was shrinking over his head, pressing closer around him. He ran harder until the shoring was right on top of his head and he had to tuck his arms in close because the walls were squeezing into him. Finally, he was down on his knees, leading with only one shoulder, barely getting through an opening.

  He finally stopped.

  The silence behind him was deafening. The mine had stopped filling itself in. But he was trapped. There was no place for him to go.

  Chapter 43

  The deeper Gina moved into the mine, the more a sense of finality, a feeling of doom pressed down on her. She stopped, stood on shaking legs, wondered if she would ever escape from this endless nothingness.

  The mine held her in its belly, and it was not silent. Creepy, eerie sounds surrounded her, and she jumped at every one. It was like being in a haunted house, where a suffering unseen entity was taunting her. The groaning, rasping creaks warned that Gina would suffer, would writhe in pain. It told that this is where she would die.

  Gina had seen her patients die. For some it was a fight to the very end; for others, it was a strange, ethereal acceptance. But her own experiences of almost being murdered remained closeted in the depths of her soul, rarely examined. Had her pounding heart ever crashed in her ears like this? Had every step brought this sense of an unknown that could reach out with strangling tentacles; tighten its grip around her throat?

  She tried not to listen as she shone the light on the beams above her head. They looked splintered and weak, ready to let a load of heavy rocks rain down on her, pound her skull to a powdery white residue.

  Harry had laughed when he told her that these ancient mines were held together by only a scattering of molecules, a mere thread of substance glued to the memory of once having been whole and strong. It had seemed
colorful, even amusing at the time. But that was when they were above ground and he was with her. It wasn’t funny now. At any moment those threads could shred and all the dirt and rocks above would crush her, bury her alive.

  She started hyperventilating, sure she would be smothered at any moment by her own strangling fears. But she forced herself to stare at the slash of light from the tiny flashlight—her only hope. Without it, she would wander aimlessly though underground passages that went on for miles and miles.

  No, it couldn’t end that way.

  She removed the purse from around her neck, felt inside for her Swiss army knife and was strangely reassured when her fingers touched the bulk of it. The folded knife might not be enough to stab herself to death, but it would sever her veins with very little pain.

  Move! You have to keep moving.

  She continued to trip, fall over chunks of ore that had dropped into the tunnel over the years; she knew she was breathing in massive amounts of dust that carried toxic elements. It was the purest of luck that she was wearing long pants—it would at least help her avoid open wounds that could further expose her to arsenic, lead, or mercury, or any other contaminants left behind in old deserted mines.

  Gina’s legs were aching; she kept forcing herself to move through the heaviness. It felt like she’d been going for days, but her watch told her she’d only been in the mine for about two hours.

  Two hours! An eternity!

  When she couldn’t take one more step, her legs folded and she collapsed to the rocky floor.

  She shone the flashlight everywhere so she could remember what was all around her. Then she turned off the light—she had to conserve the batteries. If there were ghosts in the mine, they would find her whether they could see her or not.

  She brought her knees up, rested her head on them; she raked her fingers through her hair and dry-washed the grit away. It seemed to comfort her in the inky blackness.

  Harry, where are you? What have they done to you?

  Tears welled up; she tried to swallow down her despair. Soon she was moaning and her sobs filled the space around her. She was crying for Harry, her parents, her brother, friends whom she loved, people whom she had cared for. They, too, were all doomed. None of them would live forever. Everyone died.

  Everyone!

  * * * *

  Gina awoke with a start. Exhausted, she had dozed off in the darkness. She felt on the ground around her for the flashlight. But there was nothing. It was gone!

  Terror cramped her gut. “Where … are … you?”

  She tried to stay calm, but was soon clawing at the surrounding dirt until she could barely breathe in the clogged atmosphere.

  “Stop!”

  She couldn’t go on like this. She had to take time to think.

  Falling asleep, she must have nudged the flashlight until it rolled away from her.

  She remembered walking on a downward slope. Crawling on the floor, she followed the ground, feeling the subtle turn in the path. Her fingers touched it—the flashlight! It had rolled next to the wall. She twisted it and it flicked on; the beam fought its way through the dust. She sat back on her heels, eyes closed in relief.

  It was then she thought she heard something, something different. She listened carefully.

  Someone crying?

  Or was it her imagination? She stood, tilted her head.

  “Hello!” She waited. “Any one out there?”

  As she started walking, a faint voice answered, “Help me! Please help me.”

  Gina started walking faster, then running full out. She wrapped the coiled strap from the flashlight around her wrist, leaving her arms free so she could run even faster. The light bounced every which way.

  She was suddenly airborne. Her stomach seemed to fall to her knees. She came down hard, rolled, and rolled some more.

  * * * *

  When Gina opened her eyes, a crazed woman was across from her, clutching hard onto … a corpse. Her hand seemed to be deep into the rotting flesh. The putrid stink of decay struck Gina like a fist slamming into her.

  “Help me! Please help me!”

  She caught the desperation in the woman’s voice but Gina turned to stare at piles and piles of corpses in all stages of decay—from the newly dead to the bones of the long dead. She jerked into a sitting position and saw Derek Kopek’s face.

  “Oh, my God!” she whispered, a chill coursing up and down her spine.

  The woman kept crying out to her. “Please! Please help me!”

  Gina turned back to her. “What happened? How did you get here?”

  “I don’t know. I came to see my mother. Someone drugged me and when I woke up I was jammed into this hole with … with all these gross bodies. I can’t move. If I let go,” she looked at the corpse she was holding onto, “I might slip down even more.” She screamed at Gina, “I don’t even know if you’re real.” Her voice dropped off to a whisper. “Are you really here?”

  Gina swallowed her revulsion and crawled over the bodies separating them. Twice she almost dropped into the open spaces between the corpses before she got to the woman.

  “Oh, thank God, you are real!” The woman grabbed onto her hand.

  “Yes. My name’s Gina Mazzio.”

  “Help me,” the woman said in a quavering voice. “Please help me.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Tuva Goldmich. My name is Tuva.”

  “You’re Emma’s daughter?”

  “You know my mother?”

  “I do. But right now we need to get the hell out of here.”

  The collective souls of the dead watched as she got to her knees and tugged at Tuva’s hands. “What are your feet doing?”

  “I think there’re bones all around my legs; I’m jammed between them.”

  “Can you wiggle your feet at all?”

  “I think so. I think they’re hanging free.”

  “Okay, Tuva.” Gina swallowed hard, tried not to vomit from the stink of decay around them. She spoke very softly, tried to focus only on the woman. “Pretend you’re climbing a mountain.” Tuva’s eyes grew wider. “No, listen to me. Close your eyes, hold onto me, and try to find footholds, and climb.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You can, Tuva. Hold my hands and when your feet have a toehold, I’ll pull, and you’ll climb.”

  Gina tugged at Tuva’s hands.

  “It’s not working. I can’t do it.”

  “Tuva, listen to me … this is the only way.” Gina put some steel into her voice. “Do you understand?”

  After a moment Tuva said, “I’ll do it. I’ll try really hard.”

  “On three.” Gina said, “One … two … three!” Gina yanked hard, could feel the woman moving upward. When Tuva finally emerged, Gina fell back, gasping for air. Tuva fell on top of her; her tears washed across Gina’s face.

  “You did it!” Gina said. But Tuva had shut down, began to rock back and forth, moaning, lost in a fugue state of despair. She was there, but, at the same time, she was gone.

  Gina wrapped her arms around Tuva, hugged her, drew as close to her as she could. “Can you hear me, Tuva?” Gina said, over and over.

  Finally, Tuva answered. “Yes.” But she still held onto Gina’s arms, nails digging deep. “I’ve been down in this hell-hole for hours … in the dark … with all these dead people. In the dark … the dark … dark—”

  “It’s all right, Tuva. You’re not alone anymore. We’re not alone. We have each other.”

  “The bodies kept rolling into me, touching me. There were creatures moving around. I could hear them.”

  “Tuva, there’s nothing alive here … except you and me.”

  “They rubbed against me. I was so scared.” She began to cry again.

  Gina turned off the light. A dim glow remained in the pit. The top edge was too far up to reach, but for one ghoulish moment she thought of piling the bodies and bones atop each other to help them climb to the lip of the pit. But she k
new she would never have the strength to do it. Even on her best day.

  Where was the light coming from?

  Tuva let out a blood-curdling scream. “Something touched me again.” She clung to Gina. “Help,” she screamed in her ear.

  “It’s all right, Tuva. Let me see what it is.”

  Gina carefully unwound herself from the squeezing, clutching arms of the terrified woman and tried to see in the dim light, then turned on the halogen flashlight.

  The light shone into the luminous eyes of a cat whose fur was streaked with caked gore.

  “Look! It’s a cat.”

  Tuva had her eyelids clenched closed and it took her several seconds before she would open them. She pointed where the beam of the light fell. “Oh, my God. Look what they’re doing.”

  Gina followed Tuva’s gaze. All around them were cats of all shapes and sizes.

  They were feeding off the dead bodies.

  Chapter 44

  Harry never thought he would die in a mine. When he and his brother went exploring underground, it was an adventure with no real thought of danger, let alone death.

  They didn’t know what they were looking for deep under the earth, even though they’d found some old relics: pickaxes, gloves, and even a risqué picture of a woman who probably earned her living in a brothel sometime in the late 1800s.

  When he wandered in a velvety black universe, he learned a lot about himself and what he considered the important and unimportant things in life.

  Petty thoughts were really just that – small and useless. And there seemed to be a lot of that to ignore. What mattered most in life was love and friendship. Those were the reasons to return topside again.

  Now, Harry tried not to think about dying. If he allowed himself to do that, he would glom onto the certainty that there was probably only a finite amount of oxygen left in the small outlet he was wedged into. Exactly how much air? It could be days, maybe only minutes. He didn’t know and didn’t want to know.

  One thing was certain: there was no going back. Five feet behind him was an impenetrable wall of dirt and rocks. And the sad truth? The shaft ended right here because it was too narrow to advance any farther. It was a dead end.