The Hole (21 page)

If they’d sat together, they might be at blows by now.

Even as it was, Sarah was starting to let her anger build up a head of steam.

“So what’s she going to do now?” Sarah said, making sure Mullins wasn’t going to be able to ignore her. “Take us out to a field and shoot us in the head? Or maybe just throw us down a hole? What
orders
does she have this time?”

Fred was starting to wish he’d followed Charlie’s example and filched a bottle of JD from behind the bar. Getting between two women in a fight was never a good idea at the best of times.

And now ain’t anywhere close to the best of times.

“My only job here is to make sure you get to safety,” Mullins said.

“Like you did with Ma and Pa?” Sarah said, her voice rising so that she was close to a shout. “They’re sure
safe
now, ain’t they?”

Mullins kept looking straight ahead. Fred guessed that she couldn’t look them in the eye.

“I’ve told you before, that wasn’t me…”

“Yeah, you said. I ain’t seen you coming over to our side yet though.”

“It’s not a question of sides. We’re all in this together.”

“Give me a gun then,” Sarah said. “Let’s see how far this
togetherness
goes.”

The armed guard in the passenger seat up front turned and showed Sarah his rifle.

“If you don’t keep quiet, you’ll get a closer look at this gun than you’d like.”

Sarah didn’t flinch.

“I’ll make it easy for you,” she said and started to rise from her seat. “I’ll just get off here.”

The girl tried to push past Fred, just as the truck hit a bump, and she fell into his lap. Fred smiled, but Sarah looked like she might slap him.

“Let me go,” she said…just as she was hit by a nosebleed that dripped in a constant stream down her shirt. Fred tasted blood at his lips, felt the vibration shake along his jaw.

We’re in trouble again.

“Brace yourself,” he said to Sarah. She grabbed him tight, her face buried against his chest. Fred looked past her. He had a clear view through the gap between their driver and the armed man up front, and soon wished he hadn’t.

The road crumbled, falling in slow motion, down into darkness. The driver tried to haul the truck aside, but was too slow. The front wheels went over the edge and the truck tipped forward. If Fred had been driving, he’d have thrown the vehicle into reverse, but he saw immediately that he’d only have managed to tip the truck over. Instead their driver went with the collapse, accelerating into it, driving down into the hole, skidding and sliding on a loose bed of dirt and gravel that accompanied their descent.

The headlights showed them getting deeper into a narrowing crevice, one that was also getting steeper, until the driver lost control of the truck completely and they were carried down, bucking and swaying, on a monstrous roller-coaster ride to hell.

* * *

Sarah clung so tightly that Fred felt his chest constricting, and he struggled for breath. The headlights suddenly picked out a wall of rock, looming ahead of them, filling the view. The driver slammed on the brakes. They didn’t slow. The truck hit the wall headlong in a crash of tortured metal and glass, throwing the passengers around like so many rag dolls.

Fred’s head hit something, hard. He tasted more blood in his mouth and could see only blackness. He was now breathing more freely, but that only meant Sarah no longer held on to him.

“Sarah!” he shouted, but heard no response. He felt dizzy, and when he pushed, tried to move, his muscles didn’t reply.

Fred is dead.

A flash of light told him that wasn’t quite true. Something shifted in the darkness, and he felt a hand at his cheek.

“Sarah?”

“I’m here.”

“Keep talking,” someone else said. “I’ll get to you.”

The light moved and bobbed.

“Charlie?”

“That’s me,” the older man said. “Anybody else here?”

“We’re in one piece back here,” Janet replied from somewhere behind them. “Mullins?”

There was no reply to that one.

“Anybody up front?” Charlie asked. There was no reply to that either.

“I’m still here, if anybody cares,” Ellen Simmons said.

“Can anybody get out?” Charlie said.

Something shifted at Fred’s right, and Mullins spoke, her voice clearly showing she was in some pain.

“Shine that light over here,” she said.

Charlie did as she asked. The beam hit her face, and Fred got a good look at her. Blood poured from her nose and ears and her eyes fluttered.

“Doc. We’re going to need you,” Fred said.

“Nobody move,” Mullins replied, although the act of speaking was clearly causing her great pain. “I’ve got the door if I can get more light on it?”

Charlie moved the beam towards the truck door.

“That’ll do it,” Mullins said. She slid the door open, leaned over…and fell out of the truck into the darkness. There was a soft thud as she hit ground outside.

Fred felt Sarah move away from him, heading for the open doorway.

“Charlie, get over here. We’ve got a problem.”

“Just the one?” the older man said. The flashlight beam shifted again, and a couple of seconds later Charlie climbed his way out of the door. Now that Sarah’s weight was off him, Fred found he could shift himself easily enough.

He climbed out of the truck, having to squeeze through a gap between the seats that was a lot narrower than it had been earlier. There was no sound at all from up front, and Fred was suddenly afraid to speak, lest
something
answered. He followed the bobbing light from the flashlight out of the truck.

Sarah sat on her knees in the dirt beside the prone body of the scientist. The blood on Mullins’ face looked black as tar in the flashlight. Her eyes had rolled up into their sockets, and her breath came in short, fast hitches.

“Doc, we
really
need you out here,” Charlie shouted.

“We need some light,” Doc’s voice came from the dark in the back of the truck.

Charlie shone the beam back towards the truck to show Doc the way and the truck rocked and creaked as the three people in the rear started to pull themselves out.

Fred’s eyes were starting to adjust to the darkness. The truck was little more than a black shadow, but it still had some power—the dashboard lights were on, shining bright in the gloom. While Doc got down out of the truck, Fred went to check on the two men up front.

The driver hadn’t made it. He lay, slumped in his belt, neck obviously broken, his head hanging limply at too sharp an angle. If that hadn’t killed him, the steering wheel embedded in his chest would have finished the job.

The man in the passenger seat was still alive, breathing heavily, but out cold. His face looked red in the dashboard lights.

Like one of Big Bill’s demons.

He fought down an urge to flee, and opened the passenger door, having to tear it forcibly away from its hinges before he could reach the injured man. The guard moaned in response to the tearing of metal, but he didn’t wake up. When Fred tried to get the guard out of the seat, he quickly found that the man was pinned in position by a mass of crushed metal and plastic below his waist. Fred smelled gasoline, oil—and blood.

“If you’ve got time, Doc,” he said. “We’ve got a man in bad shape here too.”

Fred lifted the automatic rifle from where it lay on the man’s belly. He made sure he did it slowly and carefully.

It wouldn’t do to shoot the guy I’m trying to save.

He put the gun on the ground, just as Doc spoke.

“Mullins needs me,” she said. “How’s your guy doing?”

“Trapped by the legs and losing blood, but I don’t know how much.”

“I’ll give you a hand,” the sheriff said, climbing down out of the truck.

But even between the two of them they couldn’t shift the mangled mass that was tangled around the trapped man’s legs. The sheriff put his whole strength into it, and only managed to shift the wreckage an inch. Fred leaned across the wounded man, feeling hot breath on the back of his neck, as warm as a hair dryer.

“It’s no use, Sheriff,” he said. “He’s held tight. We ain’t getting him out of here anytime soon.”

As Fred bent over him again to try a different angle of approach, the man’s radio crackled, so loud that Fred jumped and banged his head on the roof.

“Find that radio,” the sheriff said. “It might be our way out of here.”

It took a few seconds to locate the small radio that was tucked deep inside the man’s flak vest. As Fred got it out, it crackled again.

“Winton. This is home base. Come in.”

Fred held the radio up, then realized he had no idea which button to press to reply. He handed it to the sheriff. The big man pressed a button and spoke.

“Sheriff Wozniak here. We need help, and we need it now.”

To the credit of the man on the other end, he wasted no time asking futile questions.

“How many are you?”

“Six civilians, and three of your folks, one dead, two wounded and not ready to be moved. We’re at the bottom of a hole in the Western Road, and I’ve no idea how deep we are.”

“Sit tight. We’re on our way.”

* * *

The trapped man woke up a couple of minutes later and immediately moaned in pain.

“What happened?”

As if it came naturally to him, Charlie took charge of the situation. He handed the wounded man the bottle of JD.

“We crashed,” he said, dryly. “And you’re stuck until help gets here. I ain’t got nothing for the pain but old Jack here, so I suggest you get it down you while you can.”

“There’s a field kit under my seat,” the man said. “But I’ll take my medicine any way I can get it.”

While Charlie tried to get under the seat, the man drank from the mouth of the JD bottle, and the level of liquor inside had dropped markedly when he passed it to Fred.

“Don’t give me any more unless you have to,” the soldier said. His eyes were dark pits in a pale face, lit red by the dashboard lights. The sheriff passed the man the radio.

“They’re on their way,” he said. “Just hang tight.”

Doc looked up from where she knelt by Mullins.

“They’ll have to be quick,” she said softly.

Fred looked down. Mullins was unconscious, her face a bloody mask.

“Her left lung’s punctured, I think,” Doc said, rising “And there may be other internal bleeding.”

Charlie drew a squat case out from under the passenger seat.

“Anything here that will help?”

The case contained a field medical kit. Doc opened it and checked the contents.

“Not much that’ll help the internal bleeding. The best I can do is to make sure she’s not in pain. There’s enough morphine here to keep an elephant quiet.”

“Morphine is always good,” the wounded soldier in the passenger seat said. “I wouldn’t mind some myself.”

“Move aside,” Doc said to Fred and the sheriff. “Let’s see if there’s at least someone here I
can
help.”

Sarah was still on her knees by Mullins, head down and not speaking. Fred stepped away to stand beside the sheriff and Ellen Simmons, who, for once, seemed struck speechless by the situation. The only sound came from the intermittent tumble of fresh dirt down the walls of the hole.

Fred saw that the sheriff had the army man’s rifle in his hands.

“It’s more light we need,” Fred said. “Not bullets.”

The sheriff smiled, and flicked a switch on the gun. A powerful beam shone out from a top-mounted flashlight, just for a second or so before he switched it off.

“Best to save it until we
really
need it,” the big man said.

The trapped man spoke.

“There’s spare clips in my vest. Probably best if you have them too.”

Doc helped the man shuck off the flak vest. Big Bill managed to put it on, a tight fit over his large frame.

“Anything else in the truck we can use?” the sheriff asked.

The trapped man tried to speak, coughed, and bubbled blood down his front. He wiped it away, and finally spoke.

“Nope. Sorry. All the good stuff is back at base camp. But don’t worry. They’ll get us out soon enough.”

Doc turned away from the soldier. She looked worried.

“Did they say how long they’d be?”

The sheriff shook his head. Doc leaned over and whispered in the sheriff’s ear. Fred didn’t need to be a lip-reader to catch her gist.

He’s not going to make it.

Ellen Simmons chose that moment to do something stupid again.

“Well, I’m not waiting here. We were nearly at the town limits. It can’t be far.”