‘We don’t have any weapons,’ he reminded her.
Pamela looked round. Her eyes were razor sharp. She was assessing everything for its assault potential. A length of chain that was orange with rust. A shovel with a broken handle. A couple of perished truck tires.
There were more gaps than wall. Norman could see the desert hills rearing up into the dark blue of the evening sky.
‘No helicopter. No machine gun,’ he observed.
‘Sarcasm won’t help us, Norman.’
A revolver round smacked into the timbers.
‘It’s your time, Norman.’ Duke’s voice sounded frighteningly close.
‘Yeah, come on out.’ This was Boots. She still sounded winded from her climb up from the trailers.
Norman limped round an engine that must have been the size of an ice-cream truck. It had cogs the size of bicycle wheels. Levers longer than his arm. A conglomeration of valves, tubing, drive belts (long perished), dusty gauges. But nothing to use as a weapon.
Pamela followed him.
Another bullet smacked into the machinery. It rang like a church bell.
‘Damn, that was close,’ Pamela hissed. ‘What we going to do, Norman?’
Norman looked up at the remains of the wall that faced the sunset. Through foot-wide gaps in the boards he saw that tonight’s dusk was a dazzling red. Two figures – one tall and lean, one short and squat – stood in dark silhouette.
We’re caught like rats in a trap.
‘Okay,’ Duke told them. ‘You’ve had your fun. The chase is over, guys.’
‘We win, you lose,’ Boots said.
Norman stepped back, his feet drawing furrows in the dust.
‘Pammy,’ Duke said. ‘Keep your hands up. Now walk forward to the door.’
‘She’s cute.’ From the tone of her voice Boots must have been smirking. ‘Can I have her tonight, Duke? Pleezer-weezer, just for li’l ol’ me.’
‘Sure. You’ve earned some fun time.’
Pamela knew what was in store for her. She groaned, ‘Oh, dear Lord in Heaven.’
Norman took another step back. This time his foot didn’t step into dust.
Nothingness.
Fresh air.
Surprised, he glanced back.
A hole. Four foot by six.
A dark hole. An abyss kind of hole.
The bottomless-pit variety.
Warm air flowed up from it. Air that stank so bad he nearly upchucked there and then.
‘Stand perfectly still, Norman, old bud.’ Duke’s voice grew colder. ‘If I get a good clean shot, it shouldn’t hurt you none . . . at least, not too much.’
‘Okay,’ Norman said. ‘You’ve no objection to me turning my back to you so I don’t see you fire the gun?’
‘No objection at all, Normy. I should be able to plant a round smack between your shoulder blades.’
‘Poor Normy,’ Boots sympathized.
Norman figured that from this angle Duke and Boots couldn’t see the opening of the mine shaft in the ground.
He turned round, his hands held high.
‘Want me to count you down, Duke?’ Boots asked.
‘Sure.’
‘Three . . . two . . .’
Before ‘one’ Norman grabbed hold of Pamela by the sweater. He heard the rip of fabric.
Heard her aggrieved ‘Hey!’
But when he jumped she toppled with him.
Into the pit.
Madness, he thought as both of them fell.
But when you’re faced with death by shooting or death by falling, which one do you pick?
Norman didn’t want to give Duke the satisfaction of blowing him to hell and gone.
The fall was a long one. Longer than he’d thought possible.
Pamela screamed.
Kept screaming.
Until . . .
Chapter Fifty-two
Pamela screamed until they hit the bottom of the shaft.
Norman expected hardness. Hardness like you wouldn’t believe. Bone-breaking, head-cracking.
Sharp debris. Discarded mining tools. Boulders. Shards of rock.
Instead.
Squelchy. Wet. Soft. Uncannily soft.
Wet?
And when he recovered from the slight concussion he detected something else, too.
Pamela voiced it first. ‘Oh! That smell. What is it?’
Norman realized that everything he’d eaten in the last twenty-four hours was doing its darnedest to hurtle back up his gullet. He gulped.
‘What a stink . . . it’s suffocating.’
Asking Pamela if she’d been uninjured by the fall was moot now. Both of them were focused on the appalling smell at the bottom of the pit.
‘Welcome to the pit that put the pit into Pits,’ Norman managed to say. ‘But – sheesh – what an odor.’
‘It’s so thick you could cut it with a knife.’
Norman looked round. Too dark to see anything this far down. Above them he saw the bright hole through which they’d fallen, though. Parts of the upper walls of the shaft were illuminated by the bright setting sun.
But down here—
Darkness.
Darkness and stink . . .
A sweet smell, only nauseating. Decay. Fermentation. On the shitty side as well. Like an almighty crap done by someone after gorging on chocolate.
Norman said, ‘Feel round . . . use your sense of touch. Feel what we’ve fallen onto.’
‘Oh . . . my . . . God.’ Pamela knew what they’d fallen into.
Norman knew, too. ‘Damn . . . this can’t be happening.’
Pamela’s voice whispered from the dark. ‘We’ve found where Pits dumped its leftovers.’
‘I think I’ve just picked up a hand,’ Norman said. He felt stiff fingers. The wrist appeared to be sawn through. His own finger felt a stub of cut bone.
‘I’ve just put my hand on a head,’ Pamela told him. ‘Ugh . . . I can feel the eyes – ick – no, I can feel where the eyes were.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Feels like body parts. Can you see yet?’
‘Not a thing. Probably for the best.’
‘Ugh, what a stink . . . I don’t know how much more of this I can take.’
Norman agreed. ‘And we know who created this.’ He gulped. ‘This is where the good people of Pits dumped the bodies. Or what’s left of them.’
‘Jesus. They must have been dropping human remains down here for decades. There might be hundreds.’
‘Lucky they did,’ he told her. ‘Least the cadavers broke our fall.’
‘Oooh-eee. I’m covered in corpse juice. Can you feel how sticky your skin is?’
‘Don’t . . . it’s on my lips, too.’
Norman heard scrabbling. Pamela must still have been searching the debris in the dark.
‘Find anything?’ he asked.
‘As well as you-know-whats – heads and arms and shit – there’s plastic bags full of stuff.’
He felt around too, until his hand closed over a crackling membrane. ‘Seems like a sack of clothes.’
‘Probably the possessions of these people.’
He heard a squelch followed by a rattling sound.
Pamela said, ‘I think I’ve just sat on someone’s belly . . . oh, God, post-mortem farts . . . they’re the worst, aren’t they?’
Norman would have agreed, only he was fighting the urge to vomit.
Just as he began to forget a very real threat that should have been uppermost in his mind he heard a voice wavering down from above. ‘Oooh, Norman. Coo-eee! Are you all right down there, Normy?’
‘Oh, shit, those two,’ he whispered.
Neither of them replied to Boots’s call.
Then Duke shouted, ‘Hey, Norman, reply to the lady. Don’t make me come down there!’
The gruesome twosome on the surface thought this was funny. They both laughed.
Then a second later Norman heard a noise someplace between a thud and a squish.
Pamela warned him: ‘Norman, they’re throwing stuff down at us.’
Norman looked up at the circle of light that was the entrance to the shaft. He made out two heads looking down from about thirty feet away. He also saw a truck tire sailing down through the air toward them.
He flung himself to one side.
Thud.
‘Pamela, you okay?’
‘Fine. I suggest we get out of the line of fire.’
Just for emphasis one of the pair above fired a revolver down the shaft.
Crack . . . splat.
A body part got that one.
‘Norman,’ Pamela hissed. ‘Over here.’
‘Where the hell is over here?’
‘Here. Follow the sound of my voice.’
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’m in the entrance of a tunnel . . . I think I am, anyway . . . if you follow me in they won’t be able to hit you.’
‘It’s so dark they’re firing blind anyway.’
Crack . . . a ricochet whine, then another splat.
‘But then again,’ he added, ‘if you shoot into the dark you still might hit something – and I don’t want to be that something.’
‘Then quit gabbing and follow the sound of my voice.’
Norman didn’t have a clue where Pamela’s voice was coming from. Instead he reached out with groping hands until he found the side of the shaft. Then he followed it. The snakebite still stung his thigh. The air stank. His body was sticky with sweat – and with ichor leaking from body parts. But he kept going.
Until he reached the tunnel mouth. Then he fell forward onto a piece of living anatomy.
‘Ouch. Norman, you’ve just landed on me.’
‘Sorry, Pamela. I can’t see squat.’
‘Shuffle back here – away from the shaft.’
‘What now?’
‘Wait. They’ll get bored.’
They sat there, side by side. Norman could feel Pamela’s shivering body against his. Every so often she flinched when she heard the report of a gun as Boots or Duke fired blindly down the shaft.
‘Keep quiet,’ Norman whispered. ‘If they don’t hear us they’ll think that they managed to hit us. Or that we’re already dead from the fall.’
All they could do was sit in the stinking tunnel.
And wait.
Norman could tell by the luminous face of his watch that they’d waited nearly half an hour when he heard Boots calling down to them.
‘Normy . . . Normy? I shouldn’t be telling you this, Normy. Duke’d get mad, but me and you had a thing, didn’t we? We could’ve been a couple and done nice stuff together.’
Norman kept his mouth shut.
‘But, like, for old times’ sake I gotta tell you this. Listen. Normy. Duke’s gone to get more ammo and a flashlight. He’s gonna come down there after you. He said he’d . . . uh-oh.’ Her call turned into a whisper that Norman could only just make out. ‘He’s coming back. Run, Normy, while you’ve got the chance.’
Norman found Pamela by touch. He moved forward until her hair brushed his lips. Now he could whisper into her ear without being overheard.
‘Pamela. What Boots has just said. What do you think?’
Pamela whispered back. ‘Could be the truth. It will be dark soon. They probably don’t want to risk leaving us, just in case we find a way out.’
‘Stay here, I’ll take a look up the shaft.’
‘Careful, Norman. Could be a trick.’
Groping his way over rotting human carcasses, Norman made it back to the shaft. When he looked up he could see Boots with her halo of short blonde hair. She was looking down into the hole. From the way she didn’t react when he peeped up he guessed she couldn’t see him.
He couldn’t see much, either.
Just the entrance to the shaft. A few roof timbers above it. No actual roof. Streaks of red cloud in the sky.
Wait . . .
He could make out the inner rim of the entrance to the pit. Beneath that were the walls of the shaft. He could discern patches of gray rock. Also he could see something that made his stomach drop. An iron ladder was bolted to one of the walls. He couldn’t see how far it extended because just a few feet down from the surface the shaft walls were hidden by darkness.
But wanna bet the ladder comes all way down here?
Norman crawled back to Pamela.
‘Looks as if a ladder extends to the bottom of the shaft,’ he whispered.
‘So Duke’s gonna follow us down.’
Right on cue, Norman heard voices from above.
‘Pamela,’ Norman hissed, ‘we’ve got to get away from here.’
‘How?’
‘Chances are this tunnel leads somewhere.’
‘In the dark? Norman, we can’t see anything.’
Norman’s mind whirled into action. Gotta think our way out. Find a solution.
A crash sounded from the bottom of the pit.
Too much to hope that Duke or Boots has fallen down. Nice thought, though.
‘Sounds like they’re dropping rocks to spook us into shouting out.’ Norman touched Pamela’s bare arm. ‘Listen, these sacks full of stuff – there might be something in there that we can use.’
Pamela’s doubting voice came from the darkness. ‘Like a gun, or a magic-carpet ride out of here? Get real, Norman.’
‘Just look. There might be something.’
‘Okay. It’s worth a try.’
Norman heard the rustle of plastic as Pamela tore at the bags. He found one by touch and ripped it open.
Shoes. A comb? Clothes. A spectacle case? Hard to tell in the dark.
‘Try and search the pockets,’ he told her.
‘I’m trying . . . it’s not easy in the dark. Ugh, I think I’ve found a pair of underpants here. Big ones.’
‘A lady’s purse. Feels like lipsticks inside. But then, it could be rifle rounds. Shit, this is harder than I thought.’
‘What are we looking for exactly, Norman?’
‘I don’t know. I’m hoping we’ll know when we find it.’
‘Great.’
More crashes from the pit. Duke must have hefted some of the heavy machinery over the edge.
‘Probably hoping to squash us before he comes down,’ Norman said. ‘Aw, crap.’
‘What is it?’
‘Thought it was a flashlight. It’s just a cellphone.’
‘Pass it here.’
‘Why? You’ll never get a signal down here.’
‘Just pass it, will you, Norman?’
‘I don’t know where it is now,’ Norman confessed. ‘I just threw it to one side.’
‘Find it. It might help.’
‘You going to hit Duke with it?’
‘No, don’t be ridiculous. Just find the phone, will you?’
Norman searched through thighbones, rib cages, moldering assholes, discarded shoes, jackets – all by touch, then—
‘Here’s your phone,’ he told Pamela. ‘For what good it is.’
‘There might still be some charge in the battery—’
‘I don’t see what—’
‘There!’
‘My God.’
‘See?’
‘Pamela. You’re a genius.’
With a bleep, as she pressed the power button, the cellphone’s screen glowed a green-yellow. It wasn’t all that bright but it was enough.
Norman could see Pamela’s grinning face in the dim glow. He looked at the cellphone’s keypad and screen glowing in her hand. She moved the phone over the bottom of the tunnel.
The downside was that now they could see the decomposing arms, legs, torsos, hearts, lungs and spinal cords of dozens of men and women.
‘No wonder it stinks,’ Pamela gulped. ‘These people are putrefying.’
At the bottom of the pit shaft was a rounded mound of more bodies. Norman was beginning to think that the illuminated cellphone screen was brighter than he could have imagined when he realized that the light w
as coming from above.
Duke was coming down the ladder. He shone the flashlight down to make sure that no one below had an unpleasant surprise waiting for him.
‘Shit,’ Norman breathed. ‘Here he comes.’
‘Hang on – we can’t walk by the light of the cellphone. See? It goes off every few seconds.’ Pamela pressed one of the keys. With a bleep the light came on again. But only for five seconds.
‘Shine the light on the bags. There’s got to be some matches here.’
As quickly as they could they searched the plastic sacks by the feeble light of the phone.
‘Wait,’ Pamela said. ‘You go through the bags, I’ll keep the light near your hands.’
Now they worked together. Pamela helped Norman by repeatedly depressing a button to keep the cellphone screen glowing. When it was lit she held the device as close to his searching hands as possible.
‘Hurry up, Norman . . . I can hear him climbing down the ladder.’
Now Norman could see drivers’ licenses, pens, combs, car keys, maps, travel itineraries, socks, women’s lingerie, novels, music-cassette tapes, spectacles . . . Then: Bingo!
‘Look.’
‘A cigarette lighter,’ Pamela said. ‘Does it work?’
‘Here goes.’
Norman rotated the wheel on the top with his thumb. A yellow flame popped from the metal casing. Norman saw that the lighter was a retro model, complete with a cannabis leaf printed on the side.
‘As far as I can tell, it’s full of lighter fuel,’ he told her.
‘We’ve gotta risk taking that. Duke can’t be far away.’
Norman kept the small flame burning as he stood up. To lift himself to his feet he pushed down on a torso, using the hand that held the lighter. The corpse was decomposing in style. There was no head. An oozing hole formed a cleft between the shoulders. The chest and belly were rounded with gas. Chest hairs stood on end. Even the belly button protruded. The dead body’s internal pressure must have been formidable.
The moment Norman pressed down on the bloated belly the torso farted through the neck hole.
A loud, rich raspberry of a fart.
An instant later the decomposition gas met the flame of the lighter. Norman flinched as a ball of fire rolled past his face, singeing his eyebrows.
Before the flame died it lit the tunnel in vivid detail. He saw the marks of miners’ picks on the walls. Saw the rails once used by the ore hoppers. They ran into the distance along a dead straight tunnel.