by David Haynes
Meg turned the key and the engine fired up first time. He gave her the thumbs-up.
“I’ll follow you up. Get moving!” he shouted. He doubted she could hear him above the howling wind.
As she edged forward, Draper watched the tracks roll over through the snow. It would be hard, slow going, but with any luck they would make it all the way down in one piece.
His eyes found footsteps. Not his, not Meg’s, and they were fresh. They were disappearing as more snow fell on them, but they were distinct, leading around the other side of the plant. There was only one person who could have made them.
Vinson.
He smiled up at his daughter again, thinking about how badly he’d let her down after Delta Junction. How he was still letting her down. He had let all of them down.
Nobody else was taking their gold. His gold. The thought came from nowhere but it hit him like a punch in the side of the head.
He climbed inside the other cab and started the engine. Meg had driven just a few yards away. She was waiting for him. Draper drove forward slowly. The excavator’s tracks gripped the deeper layers of snow pulling him forward with ease. Meg started moving forward again, her vehicle moving faster than his. Just how he wanted it.
As she crossed the bridge, he slowed down and almost stopped completely. She was about twenty yards in front of him now. The shape of the excavator became less distinct with each passing second.
He removed the Beretta from the holster and reversed the vehicle. There was still gold in the plant, maybe fifty, sixty thousand dollars worth. If could get his hands on just a small portion of it, he could send the others home with something in their pockets. He could pay for Flynn’s funeral and Mercer’s treatment. He would give Meg all of it and keep her away from places like this for the rest of her life. He had maybe ten minutes, at the most, before she or Puckett came back down here to look for him.
He could stop Vinson taking it. He would stop Vinson taking it. The thought was fiercer than any fear he felt for the beast.
He positioned the excavator as close to the plant as he dared and climbed down onto the gantry. The sluice boxes were buried beneath several feet of fresh snow, and beneath that they would be frozen solid. But if he could push the snow aside, he might be able to drag the riffle bars out and get to the moss beneath. He could pull some of it out and throw it in the cab. He could get something.
He got down on his knees and started pushing snow out of the boxes. Vinson was somewhere about but before he got too close, Draper knew he would hear him and shoot him in the middle of his lying, thieving head. And if the beast came, he would empty the clip into it and climb back inside the cab. He wanted the gold. It was all worth it if he could get his hands on just another few ounces.
It took less than a minute to realize he wasn’t going to be able to remove the bars and get to the moss beneath. They were frozen in place. It would take a heater and three hours to defrost them. It had been a ridiculous idea. He screamed in frustration, his voice lost in the wild cacophony.
He stood back up and looked the plant up and down. There had to be something he could do. There had to be some way of getting to the gold.
He jumped across onto the gantry positioned higher up, in the middle of the plant. This was where the water made its final passage into the sluice boxes. Icicles clung to the parts of the frame still visible. He snapped one off and threw it into the plant. He was mad. Mad that fate had dealt him another sour blow. Mad that he had let them all down again. Frustrated that some little sneak had got the better of him.
The icicle clattered down through the metalwork, ringing out as it cracked and splintered. And then it hit something that made a different sound – a hollow ring. A second later, the flickering overhead lights picked out an irregular golden shape sitting in the snow by his feet. It hadn’t been there before, it had no snow on it at all.
It was like he’d just played the slots and won. He bent down and picked it up. It was a nugget. For a moment he stood there, holding it between his fingers; staring at the irregular shading, the uneven surfaces and the beauty of what had just dropped out of the plant.
It was a good-sized one too. Possibly the largest of the season. He stuffed it in his pocket.
“Any more where that came from?” he asked the plant.
Despite the engineering that went into the plants, the years of experience and know-how, nuggets still occasionally got trapped in parts of the plant nobody would think to look. Most of the time, under the enormous pressures that were being exerted inside the frame, they would work their way loose and drop into the box like a jackpot.
He tried to peer inside but it was simply too dark to see anything, so he thrust his arm into the only gap he could find. He pushed material aside with his fingers. Material that had become stuck, the black sand would be frozen now. The mud and dirt was all frozen together in one solid gold-bearing mass. Except this wasn’t. There were smaller pieces of jagged rock. He pinched one between his fingers and withdrew his hand. His eyes lit up at the sight of another nugget. Smaller than the other but still a decent size.
He put his hand back inside and repeated the process. Another nugget. He repeated it five times, each time pulling out another beautiful golden nugget. And each time he pushed them into his pocket. The memory of where he was and what was happening all around him gone in that instant.
“A nugget trap,” he whispered. “A nugget trap none of us knew about. None of us, except.... except Vinson.”
That day when he had found the piece of gold that went missing, only to be found in Mercer’s jacket, Vinson had stood here. Stood here holding the nugget in his hands, staring at it like it was a mystery. A staggeringly beautiful mystery.
How many more had there been? How many had he taken out of there and put someplace safe? Waiting until it was time to pack up and go. They would all have nothing. Nothing at all except for their gas money home. Vinson, on the other hand, would be walking away with his pockets full of gold.
Something must have gone wrong when Burgess showed up. Did he find out what Vinson was up to? Did he kill him or did that animal? He’d never know the answer to that. He didn’t need to know anything else about Vinson, he knew enough to paint a real good picture, and the wound on his arm would paint an even better one to the cops.
“Bastard.” He took a last handful of the gold, shoving it all in his pocket.
Just as he was about to turn and get back to the excavator, an overwhelming stench came up from the ground around him. It rose like a miasma and settled just above the snow, turning it from white to a filthy brown color.
He heard it then. A scream, a howl, a roar and a whine all combined into one nightmarish din. Voices – thousands of wailing, tortured voices all clamoring for release. It was behind him, he knew. If he turned he was as good as dead. He’d stared into the abyss once before and been hypnotized. He pushed the lining of his hood against his ears to drown out the sound.
But it wasn’t outside, the noise was in his head where the beast had put it. He could hear Neil Evans’s voice clearly.
“I was lowering the gun. You didn’t have to shoot me.”
He roared into the storm as a grotesque shadow lumbered through the gloom.
He turned and ran.
33
Draper sidled along the rail and then sprinted across the gantry toward the excavator. The whole plant shook as he ran but he knew it wasn’t just his footsteps that were making it move. Something was rising up around him, under him. Trying to go through him.
He leaped into the cab and jammed the pedal down as hard as he could. The excavator lurched, churning the snow out from under its tracks and started easing backward.
“Too slow,” he said but didn’t look up.
A loud bang to his side made him turn. At first he thought something had been thrown at the side of the vehicle but Vinson was standing on the edge of the cab. His face a distorted, gray horror as he shouted something utterly incomp
rehensible through his bloody, swollen mouth.
Draper tried to bring his gun round but Vinson held the advantage, bringing the knife down. The tip of the blade drove through the back of Draper’s hand, sinking down through the flesh until it popped through the other side.
Draper grunted, the sound going down through his belly, and jerked his hand away. The knife ripped through the flesh sideways as he did, tearing a jagged line along his hand. The Beretta dropped to the floor of the cab with a loud clang.
Vinson raised the knife again. Draper knew the next strike wouldn’t just be aimed at his hand, it would be to kill. He jammed the control lever down, turning the cab through ninety degrees. The movement caught Vinson off-guard. As a follow up, Draper threw an elbow upwards. He felt it connect under Vinson’s chin and whatever teeth he still had left cracked together.
It brought him a few seconds to think. Unfortunately it also brought him face to face with Vinson’s pet dog.
It was the worst thing he had ever seen. If he could have screamed he would have gladly done so. When he’d seen it before, it had been almost alluring with its ruby-red eyes. Hypnotizing. Not now. He wanted to look away, to stop seeing what he was seeing. Men, women and children all squirming and writhing in a pool of their own filth. Hundreds, thousands of them wailing, weeping, screaming and pleading for their very souls. It had them all, every last one of them belonged to the beast. An eternity of torture, anguish and pain to the very particles of their essence. And yet it wanted more. It always wanted more. It was greedy. Just like him, it was filled with avarice. More, more, more. For the beast it was souls. For him it was gold.
They were alike. Did he not carry the tortured souls of Tom Briggs and Neil Evans around with him too?
The beast opened its jaws. A new and powerful smell washed over him. Corruption, death and something sweet, almost tempting, filled the cab. And down there, down in the dark depths of its guts was hell itself.
“Pretty as a picture, isn’t he?” Vinson whispered into his ear. “He’s come to take you down. Down, down, down, down. You’ll be able to chat with your good friend Burgess down there. And when he’s finished with the others you can all have a party.” Vinson’s breath was as bad as the beast’s.
“Oh, all except for your little girl. I kinda like how her panties smell. She can stay. At least for a while.”
Draper rose out of the beast’s eyes with a snap. It was audible and painful. Like having a tooth pulled by a sadistic dentist.
“I’m not going anywhere!” he shouted and made a grab for Vinson’s hand.
The excavator turned as they struggled. It was moving away from the camp, farther down onto Resurrection Cut. It was driving itself.
He had hold of Vinson’s hand, the one with the knife, but with Draper’s strongest hand having a hole in it, he knew he need two to keep his grip. It left Vinson with free range to use his other hand on Draper’s face. Again and again he punched him. His head snapped first one way then the other. He felt his teeth jar in his skull and the world start to slant away from him. He could smell the animal. He could hear it, hear all the souls it had taken.
Vinson was laughing. As each blow connected, he laughed harder and harder. As Draper started to lose his grip and his focus, he knew Vinson wasn’t the only one responsible for bringing the beast here, for summoning it. The greed was everywhere. It was eternal and it was as much a part of him as it was Vinson. It was created by the gold, at the same time as man had discovered gold.
He hoped Meg and the others had already left. They would be safe if they could get away from here. Away from Vinson and the Keelut. He started to slip away. Vinson was reaching into his pockets, taking the gold. Taking all of their gold. Whatever came next, he would be unconscious when it took him. That had to be better.
A gunshot. The crack of a rifle above the wailing wind, the faint sound of an engine. Another shot. This time Vinson screamed, snatched his hand away from Draper. No more blows rained down on him and he could hear Vinson cursing under his breath. It sounded like it was in the distance somewhere but growing closer with the passing of his breath.
The beast, he could hear the beast. He could hear the slap of its lizard tongue and feel its hot, sour drool snapping through the air. It was tasting the conflict between the men like it was an hors d’oeuvre. It was enjoying it, thought Draper. It was enjoying the fight, savoring it.
It was beside the cab, beside Vinson, waiting for Draper to fall into its rancid mouth. It was in a feeding frenzy.
There was another crack like thunder. It drove Draper back to the surface. His vision cleared enough to see Vinson was no longer looking down at him but was looking away, back toward the camp, back to where another vehicle was coming from.
For the first time, Draper truly stared at the animal. Its shoulders – hunched, gnarly and hairless – were as black as coal. The creature stood at least six feet from the ground yet the long, almost serpentine neck writhed much lower, as if lifting such an enormous head was almost too much effort.
Fury blazed in its ruby eyes. Fury, greed, desire and hate, all shining brightly through. All barely contained. The teeth snapped together with a rapid chattering click; fishhooked, brown and dripping with gobbets of flesh from men and women throughout the ages. A thing of hell.
It spoke to him. Not in words but in pictures. It showed him how his end would be. It showed his body being ripped apart, shredding, fractured and turned to dust. It showed this over and over and over again. Perpetual, excruciating agony.
“No,” he whispered and pulled the cab around in the other direction. It was as much to move his eyes away from the beast as it was to dislodge Vinson.
But the beast followed. Wherever he looked, the animal was there. It was inside him, it was everywhere. It always had been there since Delta Junction.
Vinson shrieked as the cab moved one way then the other. Draper felt the warmth of fresh blood splash against his face.
Vinson was injured. He looked up and saw blood running freely from a wound in his neck. The bullet had not gone in, if it had he would be dead but it had grazed a good slice off him. In one hand, he clutched the knife and held onto the cab’s frame. The other hand moved between his neck and his shoulder where a dark hole had appeared.
Draper let go of the controls and punched Vinson as hard as he could in the neck wound. He had precious little leverage but the wail that came from Vinson’s mouth was pitiful. He sounded like a child. Vinson couldn’t let go of the doorframe or use his knife lest he fall into the beast’s open mouth himself. The look in his eyes was terrible. There was realization there. Knowing and understanding.
Draper hit him again and this time he saw Vinson’s expression change from pained to pathetic. His grip on the frame was failing and with it, his hold on the gold he so treasured. The knife slipped from his hand and dropped to the metal floor with a clang. A slow stream of gold followed as it trickled through his fingers.
“It’s mine!” he shouted. He looked directly into Draper’s eyes. “It’s mine!” he shrieked and tried for a maneuver that was impossible. As he released his grip on the frame, he tried to collect the gold and bring his other hand around to grab on, all simultaneously.
From some other place, not the here and now, Draper reached out to try and grab him as he toppled backward. It was instinct. The instinct to stop Vinson, whatever he had become, from falling down there. Down into hell.
As he reached out, he kicked the nuggets on the floor of the cab. They fell, bouncing on Vinson’s chest as he flailed. There was a brief look of utter, confused panic on his face and then as his hand clamped around a single piece of gold, he smiled. His face a deformed and bloody mask.
The beast opened its mouth wider. Wider and wider until it seemed big enough to consume the entire excavator.
Its jaws clicked together as half of Vinson’s body disappeared inside the darkness. Draper stood above the scene, horrified, repulsed, yet unable to look away. Vinson was still
smiling even as the blood bubbled up over the beast’s teeth and fell onto the snow in a gushing crimson waterfall. He had his gold, turning it over in his fingers and smiling wider.
The creature opened its mouth and its reptile tongue folded Vinson’s body in half, brought his legs over his back. The noise was sickening as his bones fractured and splintered into dust. Yet Vinson kept smiling. There was no indication of pain. Just of having the gold.
But as his bones were broken, one by one, his hands became useless and his fingers reduced to those of an infant. The gold fell from his grip and tumbled to the ground. He screamed then. The pitch piercing, agonized and desperate. Their eyes met again. How could he still be alive? And then Draper remembered the images of his own demise. He had been alive throughout the pain, the torture and the death. Without the gold, Vinson was being taken to his own hell. One his own greed had created. One the beast had specifically engineered for him.
He watched as Vinson tried to reach out for the nugget but his arms had been broken, were still being broken. As he slipped out of view, his skull folded in on itself and vanished into the reeking miasma.
Draper vomited down onto the animal. Its tongue lapped at the bile.
“Move, move, move!” He could hear Meg’s voice above the hammering of his heart and the wind.
Another shot rang out. Draper heard the bullet whine past his face and he fell back into the seat. He hadn’t had the opportunity to start it moving again when the excavator was hit by something that felt like a tank. The whole vehicle went up on its side, one track lifting entirely off the floor. When it came back down, the impact jarred him and the excavator. There was the terrible sound of metal grinding, grating and twisting.
“Dad, move! Get out of there!” Meg’s voice carried over the wind.
He grabbed the controls. He had no idea where the creature was, nor did he turn around to look. He could hear the other excavator behind him, close behind. The excavator lurched forward. He had nowhere to go. The road around the cut was only wide enough for one vehicle and there was no way he could turn it here. The bank dropped sharply away to the side, and the orange glow from the sodium lights made the hole look like a fathomless, fiery pit. A place where a dog from hell would be right at home.