by J. R. Ayers
Joe scooted backwards until he felt he was a safe distance from Buddy, who was coughing and hacking up thick, black blood. “You’re under arrest, Sayers,” Joe said, wincing at the pathetic tone of his voice. The Thing inside Buddy giggled and pushed Buddy to a standing position.
“Arrest this,” he said, flashing a middle finger.
Then he turned and ran to the edge of the tree line where the terrain sloped off to meet the Monongahela River. He had a good pace going when another arrow hit him in the left buttocks knocking him sideways over the embankment to the river below. Joe could hear the splash he made as his large body hit the water.
Leaves crunched off to the left and Joe looked over to find Jackie Hobbs walking toward him. He was carrying a combination bow in one hand and an arrow in the other. “You alright?” he asked.
“Think I broke my ankle,” Joe said. “You hit him again?”
“Yep, got him in the ass. I believe he went in the river. You want me to go look?” Joe pushed up an elbow and nodded.
“I’d appreciate it. Be careful though, that guy, or whatever he is, has a fondness for trying to brain people.”
Jackie walked the riverbank looking for any sign of Buddy. Due to the recent rain, the water level was up and whitecaps dominated the surface of the rapidly flowing river. Jackie didn’t search long; it was clear to him that the man who had gone into the water was now far down stream somewhere. He walked back to Joe and said, “He’s gone. My first shot got him through the heart. He was probably dead before he hit the water.”
“Don’t count on it,” Joe said. “I shot him in the heart twice with a Beretta 9 mil two days ago. I don’t know how to explain it, but for all intents and purposes, you just shot a dead man.”
Jackie helped Joe to his feet and with Joe leaning on Jackie’s shoulder they backtracked through the brush to the cruiser. “I’m sure glad you came along,” Joe said sliding behind the wheel. “I was real close to having my brains bashed in. I owe you my life.”
“No big deal,” Jackie said. “You cut me some slack earlier. The way I see it, we’re just about even.”
“Still trying for that deer are you?” Joe said.
“Yep. Gotta stock up on meat before winter hits.”
“Good thing for me. Talk about the right place at the right time, you couldn’t have timed it any better,” Joe said. Jackie shrugged and slipped the arrow back into its holder.
“Probably planned that way,” he said. “I think we all have an angel lookin’ out for us. Lucky for you yours wasn’t on a coffee break.”
Joe stuck out a hand and said, “Thanks again for being there. If you ever need anything, just give me a call.” He removed a business card from the glove box and passed it to Jackie. “I mean it,” he said. “You need anything, just call. My cell numbers on there, so call me anytime.”
Jackie slipped the card into his pocket and asked, “You sure you can drive with that foot like that?”
“Yeah, it’s my left ankle. I can manage alright,” Joe said. “At least until I make it back to Stephenson and see the doc.”
Jackie looked out toward the woods where the sun was slipping behind the taller trees. “What about that guy?” he asked.
“Just have to let him go for now,” Joe said. “I’ll get a few people to help and we’ll track him down. He’s dangerous, so if you see him in your travels, don’t take any chances.”
“Oh, I won’t,” Jackie said. “I got a nice .30.06 that’ll take a chunk out of him. He’d be wise to stay clear of my place.”
“Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that,” Joe said. But in his heart he wondered if all the .30.06s in Wyoming County could stop whatever it was Buddy Sayers had become.
Chapter Twenty-one
Now that the two survivors of the mine cave in had been transported to the hospital, and the excitement over Buddy Sayers’ shooting had waned to some degree, most of the activity had died down at the Logan number 12 coal mine. The only thing left to do was to start the laborious, dangerous job of removing the deceased miners from the comprised area of the mine.
Wilcox Mining Corporation brought in temporary trailers and a caterer out of Mullins sat up a makeshift kitchen by the admin building to feed the workers and family members still waiting for the bodies of their loved ones to be brought above ground.
All but one local news station had moved on to other stories. With the lull in action, the lone reporter from channel eight spent more time in the straw bosses’ office drinking coffee than actual time on the ground reporting on the recovery effort.
Jess Phillips organized a crew to once again began the task of clearing out the bottom of the elevator shaft. The subsequent cave in had blocked the access tunnel to the new excavation site, and as far as anybody knew, entry to the number two and three tunnels as well. The plan was to clear out the debris and remove the bodies as quickly and safely as possible, the one caveat being that they would suspend activity at the slightest hint of untenable methane gas levels or signs of a loose ceiling.
George Calicino was tasked with heading up the recovery crew. Together with engineers, electricians and equipment operators, he devised a simple yet hazardous plan to drill straight the rock clogging up the entry to the main working tunnels. “I know we can get to Royce Dixon fairly easily,” he said to Jess Phillips. “Then we can clear a path over to Townsend and Shrewsberry, and if the top holds, we can get J.T. and Rodney out last.”
Phillips was concerned about the potential safety risks. “That top came down awfully damn quick,” he said. “You watch your ass down there, George. I don’t want to have to send down another recovery crew to haul you out of there.”
George was aware of the risks, but as a thirty-two year veteran of the mining industry, he wasn’t about to leave his fellow miners to rot in a dark, gas filled coal mine, not if he could do something about it anyway. So, with safety paramount on everyone’s mind, George and his crew rode the elevator to the bottom of the shaft, not sure of what they would find when they got there.
What they found was several tons of shale rock and layered bituminous coal covering the rail track beyond the elevator shaft. George checked for gas with his meter and decided the levels were low enough to allow drilling with a pneumatic impact drill. He put a man named Wes Gordon to work running the drill while he and three other men got busy with battery scoops and old fashioned picks and shovels. Although they wanted to reach the dead men as soon as possible, they didn’t work with the same sense of urgency as before when they had had hopes of rescuing seven survivors.
Wes and a man named Bob Roberts took turns drilling through the hard rock. It was slow going, but that was fine by George. He kept checking the top for chipping or signs of the shale beginning to splinter. About an hour after they started drilling, he took a third methane reading and found the levels higher than he liked. He was beginning to worry whether they would breech the rock face before high gas concentrations or a loose ceiling mandated that they abandon the recovery effort.
Another hour passed and still no penetration through the wall of rock. The burping of the pneumatic drill was beginning to get on George’s nerves. His self rescuer mask made it hard to communicate with his crew members, but he didn’t dare remove it for fear that over exposure to noxious gases would compromise his ability to breathe normally.
He was just about to call it quits for the day when Wes broke through the rock. A muted cheer went up among the men as George stepped through the opening in the rock to check for gas. Before he even had one foot through, a whirling, writhing mass of white light came rolling up the tunnel toward him. Startled, George recoiled, banging his hard hat against the top of the opening. The squirming ball of light and plasma advanced down the tunnel as silently and intangibly as a wisp of smoke. As it moved past the spot where the new excavation tunnel joined with tunnel number two, it reached out an unseen tentacle in George’s direction. George felt it probing his mind, reading him, whispering stran
ge things that made his thoughts shred like tissue paper.
It was taking him; that much he knew. And he couldn’t do a thing to stop it. He had just surrendered to the Thing’s incursion when the top of both tunnels began to rumble and buckle. Dust rolled up the number two tunnel behind the Thing and obscured George’s vision as he struggled to free his mind from the its mesmerizing influence. Two seconds later, the top collapsed in tunnel number two and a fifty foot long length of coal and rock crashed to the track below.
George felt something tugging on the back of his overalls. Wes Gordon grabbed his arm and pulled him back through the opening a split second before the top in the new excavation tunnel caved in. The rumble of falling rock gave way to the ear crushing boom of an explosion somewhere down the tunnel.
Gordon secured a strong grip on George’s arm and he and the others high-tailed it for the elevator. As soon as they closed the door behind them, Gordon pushed the up switch and the elevator began to rise from the tunnel floor.
They were about half way up when a series of blasts followed by an updraft of thick smoke and dust slammed the elevator against the side of the shaft. George and Wes Gordon fell to their knees and the other men clung to the wire mesh as another blast rocked the frame of the elevator car. “Hang on boys, the whole damn thing’s blowin’ up down there,” George said scrambling to his feet.
Five seconds later, the elevator lift motor began to whine and shudder and finally came to a dead stop. “Damn, we’re stuck,” Wes Gordon said. George went into his overall pocket for a portable radio and called Jess Phillips.
“The entire section’s exploding!” he said, yelling above the roar of the flames climbing steadily up the elevator shaft. “You gotta get us out, Jess! And you gotta make it quick!”
Phillips spent all of two minutes trying to restart the elevator motor before calling for a crane hoist from the tipple yard. With the help of two equipment mechanics, he positioned the crane over the elevator shaft and hooked up a hundred foot section of logging chain to the end of the boom. Then he put on a safety harness, crawled out to the tip of the boom and told one of the men to lower him to the top of the elevator.
“Hurry, Jess, it’s gettin’ awful hot down here,” George called. He and the other man had climbed up the wire frame of the elevator and were clinging to relative coolness of the top braces.
Phillips quickly wound the heavy chain around the center brace at the top of the cage and joined two links together with a four inch bolt and nut. Then he signaled for the mechanic to raise the boom.
The chain groaned and popped as it stretched taut, but the elevator began a slow steady assent as the mechanic reeled in the boom cable. As soon as the elevator made it to the top of the containment cage, George kicked open the door and all the men rushed out. They had no sooner cleared the area when a huge wall of flame shot up from the elevator shaft scorching the chain and the crane boom. “God bless a milk cow,” George said wiping sweat from his face. “You talk about your close calls.” Jess Phillips climbed down from the crane boom and joined the men by the perimeter barricade.
“Everybody alright?” he asked. They all said they were fine and George added,
“There’s something down there Jess.”
“What do you mean, something?” George shook his head and rubbed dirt from his eyes with a trembling hand.
“I don’t know. It was like a . . .It was a ball of light or something. It had . . .Aw hell, it was probably just a concentration of gas or something. Never mind.”
“What about Royce and the others?” Jess asked.
“There ain’t no way we’re gettin’ those men out of there now,” George said. “No friggin’ way.” Phillips was reluctant to agree, but like George, he knew the recovery effort was over, at least for the time being.
“Best thing we can do now is just seal it off and let it burn itself out,” he said. “Maybe at some point we may be able to go in from the back side, but for now, there’s nothin’ we can do to get those men out of there. But I tell you this much, I hate like hell to tell that to their families.”
Chapter Twenty-two
The river was cold, but the Buddy-Thing didn’t give a shit. He just lay on his back and drifted along with the current while he devised a plan.
He was getting sick of tired of people shooting objects into him. You’d think the stupid fucks would have better things to do with their time than hurtin’ me, he thought spitting water from his mouth. I think it’s about time I did a little hurtin’ of my own.
A sand bar loomed in the distance and he dog-paddled his way in that direction. “Might as well go back to town,” the Thing said. “The idiots destroyed the mine; can’t go back there. So get your fat ass up there on the road and find us a ride.”
The ride came fifteen minutes later; a gas tanker full of high grade petrol. Buddy saw it coming a mile away and lay down in the middle of the road where he could be easily spotted.
The driver turned out to be a woman; fortyish with short red hair and almost no breast. She was smoking a small black cigar and walked as if she had a stick up her butt. “You know you got an arrow pokin’ out of your chest,” she said, peering down at Buddy’s face. “You hurt?”
“Naw, just takin’ a nap,” he said. The driver grinned around tobacco stained teeth.
“You a clown, or just fuckin’ ignorant?” Buddy was on his feet so fast he surprised himself. He grabbed the woman around the throat with both hands and walked her backwards until they bumped into the grill of the tanker truck. The woman put up a fierce fight but she never had much of a chance. She raked her fingernails over Buddy’s face one last time and died. He let her drop to the pavement and rolled her off toward the ditch with his foot. He reached for his zipper but the Thing said, “You don’t have time for pussy, Buddy. Get in the truck.”
The inside of the cab smelled like stale corn chips and beer farts. Buddy rummaged through the center console to see what he could find. Mostly shit, he thought. But, hey, this fancy cigarette lighter might just come in handy.
Popping the top on a warm Budweiser he found between the seats, he threw the tanker in gear and headed down the highway toward Stephenson.
Joe was in quite a lot of pain when he finally made it to the clinic in Stephenson. The ankle had doubled in size since the accident and the Reebok running shoe he wore was beginning to feel like a vise on the toes of his left foot.
Parking in front of the building, he hopped up to the check-in desk and asked the man behind the counter if the doctor was in. “Yep, in his office. I see you’re having a little trouble.”
“Love your keen observation,” Joe said dryly. He removed his ID and insurance card and tossed them on the counter top. “I’ll show myself in. Wouldn’t want to put you out or anything.”
Doctor Collier was entering data into a computer when Joe shuffled into his office and plopped down in a side chair. “I think she’s broke,” he said wincing. Collier closed the file and turned his chair until he was facing Joe.
“What in the world did you do?” he asked.
“I was chasing Buddy Sayers and I tripped,” Joe said. “Rolled it over real good. I wouldn’t be surprised if I didn’t crack something.” Collier peered over his reading glasses, regarding Joe as if he had just told him to go fuck himself.
“Buddy Sayers? This a joke?”
“I wish it was,” Joe said. “I can’t explain it, but it was Buddy Sayers alright. I saw him up close and personal standing over me ready to crush my skull with a rock.” Collier turned a little pale around the eyes and said,
“This isn’t the right time to be funny. What with all this tragedy we’ve had around here, how could you—”
“Apparently you haven’t been in your cold room lately,” Joe interjected. “I’m telling you Buddy Sayers swiped an ambulance and drove it out of town. I chased him into the woods, but I tripped. A guy shot him with an arrow and he fell into the river. That’s what happened, and I’m not fuckin
g joking!”
“But I examined him myself,” Collier sputtered. “Rigor mortis had already begun in the extremities.”
“I suggest you go back there and check,” Joe said. “I’ll wait here if you don’t mind.”
Collier left the room but retuned a couple of minutes later. His face was as white as his lab coat and it looked to Joe as if he might throw up at any moment. “There’s. . .there’s, ah. . . Emily. . .Emily’s dead. Oh my Lord.”
“It was Sayers,” Joe said. “I’m telling you the man woke up somehow. Call Lori and I’ll get Major Gaston over here. Do it now, doc.”
Collier went to his desk phone and Joe called Major Gaston’s cell phone. He told him there was a murder at the clinic but declined to say anything about Buddy Sayers figuring he’d rather explain that one face to face.
Gaston was on his way to Route 16 but turned around when Joe called. He arrived at tye clinic twenty minutes later accompanied by Covey and Goins. “Body’s in the back,” Joe said.
“You got a suspect in custody?” Gaston asked.
“No, but I know who did it. Trouble is, he’s. . . well, he’s dead. At least he was.”
It took quite a while to convince the Major that he wasn’t joking or drunk or just plain nuts, but Joe finally persuaded him that they needed to mobilize a few men and start searching the river for Buddy Sayers. “I can’t explain any of it,” he said. “But whatever it is affecting the man, it’s making him determined to kill, that much I can personally vouch for.”