Inhabited

by Ike Hamill

  Justin nodded his agreement.

  Kristin glanced out the back window at the desert road. “Can we leave?”

  “Not until you promise,” Bert said. “I helped you, and I’m not going to be around to help the next poor soul.”

  Kristin looked down.

  “I promise,” Justin said.

  Kristin kept her eyes down. “Yeah. I promise.”

  Chapter Fifty-Seven — Shadow

  FLORIDA PULLED ONE LEG from the shadows, but the blackness covering her lower leg stretched back, connecting her to the pool. Meanwhile, she sunk even more.

  “Hey!” a voice called.

  She looked up. A person was standing there, right on the edge of the asphalt. The form moved and something tumbled out of the darkness. Florida covered her head with her arms and the shadows pulled her down.

  It was a thin white rope. Florida grabbed it and looped it around her hands. She tugged on it and greedily took up the slack as she started to climb.

  “Hold on.” It was a man calling from above.

  A second after he yelled, the rope began to jerk upwards. Florida stopped pulling and focused her effort on simply holding on. She looked down as she was dragged up the gravel. The shadows stretched and then receded. Her legs pulled free. They no longer looked covered in ink. Florida pumped her legs and got to her feet. Using the rope, she ran up the slope.

  The man had a car parked on the edge of the asphalt.

  He looked to be about her father’s age.

  “Thank you. Oh my God, thank you so much,” she said. She shook the coils of rope from her hands and reached out to shake the man’s hand with both of hers. “You won’t believe what happened. We all went in there to do some experiments for my class, but I think they’re all gone.” She gestured behind herself and stopped to catch her breath.

  “I know,” he said.

  Florida stood straighter and took a slight step back.

  “The thing in the mines—It digests,” the man said.

  Florida took another step. The interior lights in the car came on. Florida saw a woman in there. She pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped out.

  “You’re scaring her,” the woman said. “It’s okay. We’re here to help you.”

  “I don’t know you,” Florida said. She knew it was a stupid thing to say, but it was what came out.

  “I know,” the woman said. “Listen—I was you. I was right in the same position you’re in now. It was twenty years ago, but I was you. You don’t know us, but please, let us drive you out of here. You don’t have any other choice.”

  Florida glanced back in the direction the mine. She’d seen no living sign of her group. The equipment was gone. Even the bus had disappeared.

  She turned back to the woman. Her eyes were sad and kind. She looked at least as old as the man, and she looked like life had been a struggle for her. Most of all, she looked trustworthy.

  “My partner,” Florida said, gesturing over her shoulder. “He’s still inside.”

  The woman nodded. “It always keeps one, and it lets one go. In our case, it let two of us go.”

  The man had already moved back to the driver’s door. He slipped inside and closed the door, leaving the woman to persuade Florida.

  “Can we go get help?” Florida asked.

  “Of course,” the woman said. She shook her head slightly as she said it. Somehow, even that was comforting. Florida knew that the woman was lying, but she was at least being honest about it.

  “Okay,” Florida said.

  The man backed the car around and pointed it towards the highway. Florida looked at the seat beside her. The white rope was coiled next to her. That simple piece of cotton had saved her life.

  “Honestly,” the woman said, “we didn’t expect you. I found that rope in my garage and I brought it along at the last minute. Justin didn’t even think to bring one.”

  The man interjected over his shoulder. He defended himself. “We talked about it, but we thought it would be years before we ran across anyone.”

  “What are you talking about? Are you from the university?”

  The woman shook her head. “No. We’re just keeping a promise.”

  Florida saw the woman reach out and put her hand on the man’s shoulder. He nodded and slowed to a stop. Florida’s hands curled into fists. She had fought for her life plenty in the past twenty-four hours, and she was ready to do so again.

  “You have to make a promise,” the woman said. She looked Florida in the eyes.

  “What?”

  “We saved your life, and someday there’s going to be someone who needs you to save theirs.”

  “A poor soul,” the man whispered.

  “That’s right,” the woman said. “Some poor soul is going to try to escape and they’re going to need your help. We helped you, so our job is done. It’s your turn now.” As she said the words, some of the sadness began to leave the woman’s eyes. She actually began to smile.

  “I don’t get it,” Florida said. “What is this, some kind of joke?”

  “No,” the woman said. She shook her head, but there was still the ghost of a smile on her lips.

  Chapter Fifty-Eight — Choice

  ROGER WAS A CHILD in the darkness. The world didn’t make any sense to him until Carlos showed him the way. He had to learn where to find water, where to shit, and the sorting places. Sorting was his job. His payment was the occasional mouthful of stolen meat. Carlos would eat anything—snake, scorpion, spider, or coyote. Roger was picky at first, but as the days turned into weeks, his standards sank into the subterranean depths.

  He spent much of the time yelling. He yelled for help, and yelled against the injustice. He was convinced that someone would hear him eventually.

  When Carlos got too close, or had the temerity to touch his shoulder or his arm, Roger attacked. Carlos was slippery in the dark. Before Roger could do any damage, the old man was gone. Eventually, he encountered Carlos less and less. Roger moved between the sorts, doing his work and claiming his reward. He would protest—refuse to work and sit sobbing in he darkness—but hunger would eventually propel him forward.

  As sight became useless, Roger could feel his own brain reallocating resources to his other senses. The echo from a drip of water would give him a clear idea of his surroundings. The texture of the rocks would tell him where he was in the cave. Roger even started to understand how the caverns shifted and breathed. Nothing was static in the dark. Passages opened and closed. Everything moved in the living rock.

  -o-o-o-o-o-

  Roger woke from a dream of a picnic on a summer day. His eyes had been shut so long that his eyelids were crusted over. But the dream of the sun had been so happy that tears were running down his face. He forced his eyelids open for the first time in an age.

  He saw light.

  Roger crawled towards it, climbing the ledges up and up. The light was just the tiniest flicker in the distance. He moved in complete silence. His eyes had almost forgotten how to see.

  Roger saw the old man in the distance. The dim light was flowing down the long tunnel, illuminating the portraits. The light didn’t seem to come from anywhere in particular. It simply flowed down the rocks, like spring runoff.

  Anger formed as a hot ball in his stomach as he approached Carlos.

  The old man was scratching a new portrait into the wall. It was a crude representation, but Roger recognized Dr. Deb.

  “I’m no good,” Carlos said. He stood back to assess his drawing.

  “I’m going to kill you,” Roger said.

  Carlos nodded. “I know.”

  The light faded as Roger attacked.

  Chapter Fifty-Nine — Duty

  FLORIDA WOKE BEFORE HER alarm, bathed in sweat.

  She didn’t know if she had contained the scream or not.

  In her dream, the rope had never come. The shadows had dragged her down into the darkness to be digested by the soil. The dream had come every night for
a week. It happened the same way every year. No matter what she did—pills, booze, sleep deprivation—the dreams always came in the days leading up to the anniversary of her escape.

  Florida got out of bed and gathered up the sheets.

  The phone rang as she was stuffing them into the hamper.

  “Hello?”

  “Good morning!” he said. He was always so chipper in the mornings. Florida both loved and hated that about him.

  “Hey,” she said.

  He paused, reading her mind over the phone. She loved and hated that too. It was nice to be with someone who could understand her state of mind from a single word, but it also made her feel naked.

  “Nightmare?” he asked.

  “Yeah. It’s okay. They’ll end today.”

  “You say that every year.”

  “And it’s true every year,” she said.

  He laughed at her. “I think you and I have different definitions of what ‘end’ means.”

  “Is there a reason for this phone call?” she asked. Florida did her best to sound angry, but he knew her too well.

  “Hey, hold on,” he said. She could hear the smile in his voice. “I was just calling my lovely lady to see if she wanted to have dinner with me tomorrow night. But if you’re going to get all crabby about it, I’m sure I can cancel my reservations.”

  “Tomorrow sounds good, but it has to be early.”

  “Give me some credit,” he said. “I remember—you’ll be sleep deprived. What I’ve got planned is a nice dinner that will be over long before your bedtime. Can I mark you down as a yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wonderful! I will swing by and pick you up.”

  They said their goodbyes and hung up.

  Florida sat on the stripped bed and looked at the phone. Her alarm went off.

  The call wasn’t really about dinner. He was checking up on her. It was sweet, but it was also a little constrictive. She still wasn’t convinced that she wanted anyone to know her that well. Florida shook off the thought and headed for the shower.

  -o-o-o-o-o-

  She parked her truck on the shoulder of the highway and watched the access road. There were concrete barriers erected to keep anyone from trespassing, but it would be easy enough to circumnavigate them.

  One time, a few years earlier, she had chased off a group of thrill-seeking teenagers. They had hitchhiked out there. They laughed and joked with each other as they began to hike across the desert. Florida had stopped them by firing a rifle in the air.

  After collecting themselves and yelling obscenities in her direction, they made themselves scarce.

  Most years, Florida didn’t see anyone except the cars gliding east and west on the highway. They never bothered her. The police didn’t even bother to stop and ask her if she needed assistance. The area seemed to give off a vibe that most people weren’t interested in getting involved with. That was Florida’s theory, at least.

  Justin and Kristin had warned her.

  “You can go to the cops if you want,” Justin had said. “I bet they won’t even care.”

  “He’s right,” Kristin had said. “Bert Ulrich told us the same thing. We tried. We told everyone we could think of. I got down on my knees and begged Carlos’s mom to go to the police. She kept saying, ‘He’ll be back. He wanders sometimes, but my Carlos always comes back.’ She never gave up on him.”

  “It’s a self-defense mechanism,” Justin had said. “The thing knows how to make people ignore it. It’s how it has survived all this time. I bet there are tribes of Indians who lived near the thing for centuries and they never acknowledged it.”

  “It doesn’t have mind-control powers,” Kristin had said.

  At the time, Florida hadn’t really been interested in following their conversation too closely. She was simply concerned with getting home alive.

  As it grew dark, Florida sat up straight. She poured her first cup of coffee from the big thermos strapped into the seat next to her. It was going to be a long night of sitting, but it was worth it. One night in the truck would mean the end of the nightmares for another year.

  She had tried to skip the promise once. She had never made that mistake again. The guilt and worry left her frantic and unable to breathe. She had driven out to the access road in a panic. Ever since, she didn’t take a chance. She could only hope that her duty would be over sooner rather than later.

  Then again, the only way for her responsibility to end would be if someone were to die. It was impossible to wish for that.

  -o-o-o-o-o-

  Just before midnight, a car pulled up behind her.

  She recognized her boyfriend as he approached. When he knocked, she unlocked the door and moved the thermos so he could get in.

  “You don’t mind if I keep you company for a bit, do you?” Eric asked.

  The interior light shut off as he closed his door.

  “Don’t you have to work in the morning?”

  “I caught a nap earlier. I’ll be fine,” he said.

  He was smart enough to not ask too many questions. Still, his presence seemed to demand that she explain herself.

  “I can’t tell you why I come out here,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. He put his hands up. “Can you tell me which direction I’m supposed to be looking though? Are we watching the highway, the sky, or this blocked-off side road?”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Stupid question, I guess,” he said. “You wouldn’t come out here to look at the sky or the highway. You’re clearly looking at this side road. What is it, an old bomb testing site?”

  She sighed.

  “Sorry. I won’t ask again.”

  They sat in silence for a long time. Florida made a point of never looking at the clock while she waited. When the sun was completely over the horizon, she would leave. That was all the clock she needed.

  “When we have kids someday, we can get a camper and make an excursion of this trip every year,” Eric said. “At least until they start school.”

  “You want kids?” she asked.

  “A whole houseful,” he said. “You?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s settled. We’ll have a whole houseful. We can name the first one Abby and then work our way through the alphabet,” Eric said. “We’ll have to be creative when we get to number twenty-seven.”

  Florida laughed.

  Eric reached out and touched her hand.

  “That’s the first laugh I’ve heard in a week,” he said.

  She looked down. She pictured Roger’s face and wondered what it would look like now. Was he still alive? Kristin had jolted like she’d suffered an electric shock when Florida had mentioned Carlos. Florida should have never brought up the name.

  “Abby, Brad, Carlisle, Deborah,” Eric began.

  “Stop!” Florida said. “I’ll have your kids if you just shut the hell up, okay?”

  Eric made a motion that she could barely see in the darkness. He twisted a lock at his lips and threw away the key.

  Florida returned her gaze to the desert.

  Somewhere down that blocked road, the mine was still open. Nobody ever talked about the people lost anymore. Dr. Grossman had taken in several groups who had emerged just fine. It wasn’t until the June 1st trip—Florida’s trip—that they’d had any trouble.

  When the department head—Dr. Grossman’s boss—had called, Florida had lied. She told the man that she had missed the trip. She regretted it almost immediately, but there didn’t seem to be a good way out of the lie. The investigation had evaporated as quickly as it started.

  Headlights appeared from the other direction. Before the big truck reached them, it veered off the road. The truck eased by the barricade and continued down the access road towards the mine.

  Florida sat up straight. The gun was in the trunk, but the big truck was already disappearing. It was too late to warn them off.

  “Holy shit!” Eric said. “Where are thos
e guys going?”

  Florida sighed. She broke her own rule and checked her watch. It was almost one in the morning. Sunrise would begin just after five-thirty. She had counted three heads in the truck. There could have been more—it was a big cab. A strange mixture of emotions began to rise in her chest. She was anxious, sad, and a little relieved. In six hours, her responsibility would likely be over.

  “You should go,” she said to Eric.

  “Are you going to go after them? Is that why you’re here?”

  “No,” she said. She shook her head slowly. “They’re on their own.”

  Eric studied her in the dark. He was probably reading her mind again. She needed to learn that trick.

  “Call me when you get home safe, okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah.”

  He got out.

  Eric took his time getting back to his car and turning around. She jiggled her leg impatiently as she waited. When he was finally gone, she didn’t know exactly what to do.

  -o-o-o-o-o-

  Florida released some air from her tires before she attempted to drive around the barricade. It was probably unnecessary, but she didn’t intend to take any chances. She crept down the cracked asphalt until she could see the end. Where the pavement ended and the road was dirt, it looked like the end of the world.

  She imagined Roger ahead, underground, waiting with closed eyes for the new visitors.

  Florida shut off her lights and killed the engine.

  She had a thick rope in the back of the truck. She had gloves and a hook below the front bumper to attach the rope. She had less than five hours until sunrise. She remembered the promise that Kristin and Justin had exacted from her.

  Some poor soul was going to find his or her way out, and she was going to be there to rescue them. With that, her duty would be done. Maybe someday when they had a houseful of kids, she would tell Eric about that night. Maybe she would tell him about her journey underground.