Undersea Prison (42 page)

She caught him up outside and he headed deeper into the main tunnel, the surface of the water now close to the ceiling. Stratton stuck to the side closest to the scrubber room, hoping to find an opening or a corridor that would lead to where the noise had come from. He considered the possibility of not being able to return to the scrubber room but he still felt compelled to find the source of the noise. He could never ignore his instincts when they were this strong.

Stratton came to the top of a door and glanced back to see that Christine was closing in on him. He ducked beneath the surface to feel if it was open.

It was slightly ajar and he heaved against it, wedging his body into the gap and pushing the door open wide enough to get through.

He broke the surface to find himself in a small room with a raised floor. A single emergency light provided some weak illumination. He pulled himself out of the water onto the raised ground.

Christine broke the surface and swam to the edge of the floor. After pulling herself out of the water she stood beside Stratton, rubbing her arms against the cold that was gripping her. Stratton put a finger to his lips. They were in a miners’ storeroom. There were piles of picks, hammers and shovels, drill bits and chisels, mining helmets, harnesses and overalls. Stratton tested the light on one of the helmets. It worked and he left it on to provide more light.

The sound came again, still with the muffled effect that made it seem like it was coming from beyond the walls although now it was louder than before. Stratton put his hands on the wall as if trying to feel where the noise was coming from.

Christine looked back at the water rising above the top of the door they had just come through. She wondered if they would be able to make it back to the scrubber room.

The metallic tap came again. Stratton followed the wall to the edge of the floor where it disappeared under the water and he crouched to examine the spot. He climbed off the platform into the water and quietly sank below the surface.

Christine watched as the water was disturbed further along the wall.

A moment later Stratton surfaced. ‘There’s a way through.’

‘Can you tell me why we’re doing this?’ she asked.

‘Not exactly,’ he replied.

She nodded. ‘OK.’

‘It’s a hole, right below me, a metre or so down. I’ll see you on the other side.’ He ducked below the surface again and was gone. Christine did not lack courage and lowered herself into the water. The cold attacked her immediately. She was blindly following a man she didn’t know into oblivion and was doing so without much of a second thought. It didn’t feel like the wrong thing to do, either. She took a breath and ducked under the water.

Stratton surfaced inside a large natural cave that was brightly illuminated by a string of small halogen spotlights hooked onto the walls. There was a large rudimentary triangular metal framework made up of dozens of pieces of iron lengths welded or fixed together with clamps, bolts and cables. An acetylene bottle and gun leant against a wall. A pulley hung from the apex of the framework near the ceiling with a cable running through it, one end disappearing into the water, the other over a rocky plateau above him.

Christine surfaced beside him, wiped the water from her face and eyes and looked surprised at the contents of the cave.

Stratton climbed out onto the plateau to see Hamlin propped against a winch that was secured to the rock floor. He had a hammer in one hand and a chisel in the other. He looked as if he was asleep. Christine climbed out of the water as Stratton went to Hamlin’s side and put a hand on his chest.

Hamlin opened his eyes and took a moment to focus on the face above him. ‘Ahh, the ferryman,’ he said, a smile forming on his lips. ‘Come to take me to Hades? I do believe I’m finally ready.’

The end of the cable that came from the pulley at the top of the derrick-like construction was secured onto the winch drum which Hamlin had evidently been trying to free.

‘How you doing, Tusker?’ Stratton asked in a soft, friendly voice.

‘Not too good . . . Gann screwed me up,’ Hamlin said, releasing the hammer and chisel. ‘I warned you he was a son of a bitch.’

‘If it makes you feel any better he isn’t any more.’

Hamlin nodded approval and as he took in a breath it was accompanied by a gasp of agony. Several of his ribs were clearly cracked or broken. He took a moment to concentrate on his breathing, keeping it as shallow as possible to reduce the pain. ‘Gettin’ outta here is all I’ve ever wanted to do,’ he said.

‘You can still make it,’ Stratton said, fishing for the ‘how’ of Hamlin’s escape plan, wondering how lucid the older man was and if he would share whatever it was he had been coveting. Stratton had no doubt that Hamlin had hatched some kind of plan.

Hamlin shook his head in disagreement. ‘Gettin’ through that goddamned sump nearly killed me . . . You know how many times I’ve swum through there? Gotta be more’n a thousand.’

‘How’d you find this place?’

‘They let me alone for hours at a time to repair the mining stores next door. I found it when I was snoopin’ around one day. I flooded it so they’d never find it. Last two years’ve been the most enjoyable I’ve had in any prison. Maybe even beats some years when I wasn’t . . . Building it a little at a time, day by day, gave me something to wake up to.’

‘Building what?’ Stratton asked.

‘Gettin’ all the right pieces was tough . . . especially the plates. Then gettin’ ’em through that damn sump. That was as much of a challenge as puttin’ it together.’

‘You built it in here?’ Stratton asked, looking at the derrick again.

Christine did not have a clue what either man was going on about but she sat back, listening intently.

‘Piece by damned piece.’ A spasm suddenly shot through Hamlin’s body and he went rigid as he fought the pain. A moment later it subsided and he took a breath. He looked over at Christine. ‘Wish I’d gotten to know you better, ferryman.Takes a special kinda guy to find a chick in a disaster at the bottom of the ocean.’

There was a distant rumble, followed by a surge of water from the sump. The level increased dramatically. Christine looked with concern at Stratton, fearful that they would not make it back to the air supply.

Stratton got to his feet, frustrated with the old man’s ramblings, and wondered if he could figure out for himself what Hamlin had built. He studied the framework, noting the cable leading from the pulley down into the water with another, thinner cable coming out beside it where it was wrapped several times around a large rock to secure it.

Christine stepped beside him and kept her voice low, though even a gentle whisper echoed in the cavern. ‘Should we try and get him back to the air bottles?’

‘He won’t make it,’ Stratton replied, looking at the water where the cables went into it. It was separated from the sump by a natural wall of rock but there was something that looked different about it. He crouched and brushed the surface with his hand and the water that churned up was white as milk. ‘This water comes directly from outside.’

‘We’re just above the sea bed here,’ Hamlin said. ‘The opening down there is big enough to drive a truck through. It’s what started me on the idea.’

Stratton crouched beside Hamlin again. ‘What is it you built, Tusker?’

Hamlin looked into his eyes. ‘First one was made two and a half thousand years ago.’

Stratton looked back at the water, the cable going up to the ceiling, the spacious cave, the entrance apparently big enough to drive a truck through, the metal plates that Hamlin had described. He looked back at Hamlin who was wearing a smirk.

‘A bell?’ Stratton asked.

Hamlin’s smirk broadened before a painful cough wiped it away. ‘Finished it a couple weeks ago,’ he said, recovering. ‘Took me a week to get it outside. I got pretty damn good at holding my breath.’

Hamlin’s expression turned serious as he held out a hand. Stratton took hold of it. ‘Take it up for me . . . prove to those sons of bitches that I could do it.’

The water level rose again, creeping up the rock and reducing the surface area of the small plateau they were on.

‘Release that cable,’ Hamlin said, indicating the winch. ‘I don’t have the strength any more.’

Stratton took hold of the hammer, glanced at Christine who was struggling to make some sense of what was taking place, and took a heavy swing at the bracket holding the cable to the drum. It snapped off and the end of the cable shot up through the pulley and down into the milky water where it disappeared. ‘That other one too?’ Stratton asked, indicating the thinner cable tied around the rock.

‘No.’ Hamlin said, waving his hand. ‘You’ll need that . . . You said you knew diving.’

‘Yes.’

‘Inside the top . . . a tap . . . your air. Rest you’ll have to figure out,’ Hamlin said, growing weaker.

The water trickled over the rock wall and into the milky pool. It slowly covered Hamlin’s feet, rising towards his backside. ‘Help me up, will yer?’ Hamlin asked.

Stratton put his hands under Hamlin’s armpits and pulled the older man to his feet. Hamlin winced but fought the pain, indicating that he wanted to stand on his own. Stratton let him go and Hamlin shuffled to the edge of the milky pool.

‘That leads to the bell,’ Hamlin said, indicating the thin cable. ‘Good luck, ferryman . . . Race you to the top.’ Hamlin dived into the milky water and disappeared below the surface.

Christine stared after him. Stratton tore his gaze from the place where Hamlin had dived into the water and looked at her.

‘You want to take another dive into what could turn out to be nowhere?’ Stratton asked.

‘You really believe that crazy old man’s built a diving bell? One that’ll actually work?’

‘I wouldn’t stake my life on it under normal conditions. ’

‘You’re serious?’

‘One thing I
do
know. We follow him out there, we’re never coming back.’

Christine swallowed gently as she looked around the ever-shrinking cave and back into his eyes. ‘I’ve been following you into oblivion most of the time I’ve known you. Why stop now?’

Stratton nodded, lowered himself into the water, grabbed the cable and pulled himself below the surface.

Christine watched him go. Without wasting another second to consider the wisdom of it she jumped into the milky water, grabbed hold of the cable, took a deep breath and pulled herself beneath the milky surface.

 

Hamlin emerged from the vast cloud of milky water that covered the sea bed like an impenetrable mist. He took a final stroke towards the surface, eyes wide and looking up. Bubbles escaped from his mouth as he ascended, travelling alongside him like pilot fish. He maintained his composure as best as he could until the spasms of asphyxiation took hold of him and he shuddered as he drowned. His body went limp and the bubbles alongside him grew larger.

Hamlin’s body gradually expanded, his clothes tightening around his flesh before they ripped open. His skin stretched and gave way as it tore in places. His eyes popped from their sockets and fluid escaped from his ears seconds before his skull cracked open. More bubbles escaped from his flesh and blood, his bones splitting as the rapidly expanding gases freed themselves from the marrow. A trail of human detritus floated from the wrecked torso, lengths of intestinal tubing swelling like a string of balloons.The heavier parts of Hamlin’s body sank back down while thousands of smaller bits of him, buoyed up by gases, headed towards the sunlight. Moments later a million of his bubbles broke the sunlit surface and mingled with the air.

In the distance the prison’s security vessel was moored alongside one of the escape barges. Suddenly, a hundred metres away, the surface erupted as if a huge whale was trying to reach the skies. It was the second escape barge, on its side. It had ascended at speed from its undersea mooring. It came out of the water several metres before its weight dragged it back down. When it next came up it flopped over onto its underside and levelled out, the water cascading off the flat roof and down the sides.

Stratton pulled himself along the thin cable, unable to make out anything by its shape or shade. The cable continued down for several metres where he hit the jagged sea bed with the side of his body, still unable to see anything through the white ‘milk’. He pulled himself along the bottom, quickly reliving the nightmare of his recent near-drowning.

As his lungs started to complain of the lack of oxygen his head struck something metal. It was a piece of angle iron secured to one side of a large drum of some sort. The cable coiled around the drum, effectively coming to its end, and Stratton released it to feel his way beyond it. There were several more cables criss-crossing iron struts but the gaps between them were too small to crawl through. He was running out of air and suppressing uncontrollable thoughts of returning to the cave.

Stratton stretched out his hands in every direction to work out the shape of the construction and discovered that the struts formed a rough circle. He moved over the drum and through this circle to find himself inside a container, which he followed up into a narrow dead end. He was rapidly heading into oxygen deficit and Hamlin’s words telling him to look for a tap echoed in his head. He found a small pipe that led to what was clearly a large metal gas bottle but without a valve at the connection. He quickly followed it in the other direction to find what could be described as a tap and tried to turn it but it wouldn’t budge.

Something grabbed Stratton’s leg and Christine climbed up beside him. Her hands felt up his arms and to his hands and together they fought to turn the valve. Their lungs were bursting, both of them with only seconds left before they would involuntarily gulp in water. The tap suddenly moved and they could hear the hiss of escaping gas.