Drifting back out of my daydream, the tears were running towards the back of my head as I lay there on the cold hard surface. The makeshift chandelier hanging from the ceiling took no interest in my wakening, so I tried to get myself into a sitting position. I let out a groan as my body refused to move from the neck down. My encounter with the Jackhammer may have been pretty severe, and depending on my fall I may have incurred spinal injuries, which would explain my paralysis. Taking a deep breath and mustering all the strength that I could, I lifted my head to see the what I could of the rest of my body, it soon became apparent as to why I couldn’t sit up.
I was tied down.
“Shit.” I said quietly, wondering where the hell I was and finally making use of my fingers, but the hands were securely tied, perhaps even handcuffed to the table.
At least I thought it was a table, the cool metallic surface seemed to me as if it were raised off the ground. I wasn’t exactly sure as to what happened after the Jackhammer struck its blow, but Sapph…
Sapphire!
I remembered the faint images and sounds before I passed out, her screaming warnings to me, moving towards me and then everything went dark. I hoped that she was able to flee the robot before it had a chance to strike again.
“Sapphire…” I groaned, not expecting a reply, and wasn’t surprised when none came.
There was a mechanical noise somewhere near my right hand, and the sound of something being pressurised with gas.
“Ah!” there was a jolting pain in my right arm near the elbow, something jabbed into me, was it an injection of some kind? I didn’t have long to think about it before the world around me grew foggy again, a warm relaxing feeling swept over me like a warm tide, then I was asleep again.
When I awoke the room around me had taken on a different perspective, instead of facing the ceiling I was now stood against one of the walls covered in news papers. Still fastened tightly to the table, the tracks on the floor below told me that it was mechanically operated to move that way.
Purpose built torture table, nice.
There were two other tables similar to mine, empty and both lowered to their floor positions to my left and right. The room also had two doors, one on the left wall and the other was a double, directly opposite where I was. With the glare of the candlelight’s hanging from the ceiling, I couldn’t make out if there was light coming from the door on the opposite side of the room.
I decided to try and escape, at first I thought I was in some sort of friendly medical bay, but the fact that I was now practically standing, my opinions of optimism were beginning to dwindle.
Looking down at my feet, I saw that the contraption that had injected me was still attached to my arm, a small oily digital timer indicated one minute and forty seconds. It was probably timed to give me another shot of the sleep inducing drug. The feeling of alarm was beginning to give me a new lease of life, and I tried to pull my left hand free, thankfully it gave a little, but it had only succeeded in bending my wrist to an awkward and painful right angle in the restraints. After five more attempts, I had an arm loose, the digital time read one minute.
There were two reasons behind my needing to move quickly.
One of them being that when the needle gave out its dose, whoever it was that put me here would return to finish what they had started. That troubled me, because I was oblivious to what was happening around me still. I still couldn’t understand where I was or what I was brought here, it was insane, one minute I’m on the road to my folks house in Teulon, the next, I’m lying down here in the darkness, killing people for survival, fighting with metallic monsters and shooting alligators while falling into pools of blood. All in a days work!
The second reason that I was becoming more and more agitated with my predicament…
I could hear voices.
I looked down at the injection mechanism and the way that it was puncturing my skin, if I were to pull the needle out fully, blood would more than likely begin to pour down my arm without lasting pressure. I didn’t know how much time I had, but I needed to think of something.
Perhaps if I could get free of the restraints…
I tested the belt buckle that had my upper torso secured firmly to the table, I was just able to get my fingers to pull the belt through, after pulling it tighter to get some leeway on the buckle while breathing in. It dropped to the floor in a thunderous clatter, if someone really where closing in, they must have heard that! I had to move quickly, just as the machine beeped its injection signal, I noticed I still hadn’t removed the needle from my arm. Without ceremony I ripped it from my arm, almost choking on my vomit as the sensation ripped through my senses. The needle must have been three inches long at least, blood was indeed dripping from my arm, but not too freely. I tried keeping pressure on it while I managed to get the right hand free.
Moments later, I was completely free from the restraints!
Seconds later, I was on the floor in a heap…
All the strength was gone from my limbs as I flopped to the floor like a rag doll, I felt as if I had no muscle sinew at all, my foot slid forward onto the stone floor and skidded away from me, I hit my head off of one of the metal tracks the bed was attached to. Luckily for me there was no real damage, that I could tell just now at least and soon the strength filtered back into my body. I couldn’t find anything useful and I was dressed in a new t-shirt, with the same filthy combat trousers on. I could tell instantly that my socks had been changed, my feet had a new lease of life!
The voices that were approaching, did just that, from behind the double door now opposite me, I had no other route of escape save for the other door to my left, if that was unlocked of course.
I made for it, staggering along in some weird dance as my limbs slowly got over their atrophy. My right hand clasped the door handle firmly and turned it, it seemed well oiled.
The door was open.
Almost simultaneously, the noise of a key being used on the double door echoed in the distance. I gently closed the door, deciding not to leave it ajar, despite the people knowing that would be my only avenue of escape. It was right then that I was faced with the problem, with my eyes accustomed to the light in the operating/torture room, the light in here was non existent.
Pitch black.
I heard two voices on the other side of the door.
“What do you think about it?” the voice sounded female, I couldn’t quite make out the origin.
“I don’t think down here, we just-“ The male voice was cut short, obviously realising that I was no longer tied down. A few moments silence passed before I felt something brush my arm, stupidly looking in the direction of the sensation, the strong hand clamped over my mouth and pulled me back.
“Don’t say a fucking word, or I’ll break your neck!” The voice sounded serious, so I let my body go limp. I heard the voices continue in the other room, growing louder and more panicked.
“How the fuck could this happen??!? Bennedict is going to kill us!!!” the female voice screeched, sounded British.
“Sound the alarm, I’ll inform Bennedict that the three of them have escaped…”
Three of them?!
Sapphire’s voice was a muffled noise in the hazy darkness as I fell backwards awkwardly into the dark stairwell, my shoulder crunching into the centre railing that creaked under my weight. There was no telling how many floors down there were still, if I were to fall, I wouldn’t survive, my luck couldn’t be that good.
Hydraulics screeched dryly in front of me as the Jackhammer made its death dance, the barbed sphere shot out at me and hit me flush in the chest. The creaking of my ribcage could be heard echoing through the darkness, only muffled by the screams of the marauding robot in front of me.
I was dead…
The pain was overbearing as the world around me spun and faded into a darkness that wasn’t due to the lack of light, my world faded to black.
Then my eyes opened, and I tried to lift myself in shock that I had survived the Jackhammers wrath, the muscles in my chest clearly refused the action and I didn’t move an inch. Pinned to the floor, my eyes began to focus on the ceiling…
I could see the ceiling?
It couldn’t be, I was sure that I was dead, but here I was, laying on my back, the pain pulsing through my limbs and torso. I was very much alive. So where was I? Managing only to raise my head I looked around to see exactly where that was, the room around me appeared to be different from any other I had seen so far.
For one thing, there was a makeshift chandelier hanging from the ceiling, with two old oil lamps dangling from it, the draft making them sway left to right. The four walls around me were covered in newspaper clippings, some of them that I was able to focus on were dating back to before 'The War' started. Some were even optimistic reports that the delegations of the United States and Peoples Republic of China had been successful. How wrong those reports were, as far as I could recall that was reported six days before the first rockets were launched, many of the first reports of the attack stated that it was North Korea that had launched the first ballistic missile towards its northern neighbours Russia.
Then all hell broke loose.
The Son of Star Wars missile defence program was a success, initially, but no one would have forecast the invasion of the countries harbouring those systems.
I recalled a day during the initial attacks, just after TSSW systems had proven successful, the phone call that I made to my friend Derrick in Edinburgh, Scotland at that time, the call would be engraved on my memory forever.
“Well things are a little tense over here, what was the story about London?” I said to Derrick, the static on the line was present right after the first bombs hit Russian soil. He was working for the Lothian and Borders Police force at the time, his wife Nyree was having their first child, everyone – including myself – was pretty emotional about it.
“Apparently Kings Cross Station was obliterated by a dozen suicide bombers, hundreds of people are reported dead. I really can’t believe it, we’ve just come back from there.” His voice was a little strained, Nyree was due in the next fortnight, but with things escalating on all borders, everyone was trying to make arrangements for emergency scenarios, Derrick was on full standby when he wasn’t working.
“What about the flights out of Edinburgh? Toronto have stopped allowing planes to head out, even the short domestic flights.” I knew that because I had just tried hopping on a flight to Winnipeg in Manitoba. All flights from Canada other than military flights were suspended.
“It’s probably a precaution against terrorism, everyone and their aunt is looking to stick it to the States.” He replied over the crackled telephone line, it was likely that this call was being recorded, the keywords traced by word recognition would have the federal service people working overtime listening to calls, because quite simply, there was nothing else on peoples minds these days.
“I guess, but how the hell am I going to get to the folks?” It had been bugging me all morning, if I was to set out now, it would take me two days driving at full speed, on clear road to get to Saskatchewan. Then I’d have to take the long way around to avoid the congestion around Winnipeg, heading north to Teulon, some fifty miles north of there. To top things off I hadn’t heard from either mom or dad since yesterday, to say I was worried was an understatement. I longed to be away from this city before it starts to tear itself apart, signs were already beginning to show that the civility of the local people was freying.
“Kobin, you there?” I had been daydreaming, ignoring my dear friend, his voice sounded slightly different.
“Yeah, sorry I was miles away, what’s wrong?”
“I just got a call on my mobile from headquarters, they want all emergency service workers to report to Dreghorn, immediately.” He sounded alarmed, and that got the hairs to stand up, I got off the sofa and began walking around it.
“Did they say why??!”
“No, it was very abrupt, they said drop everything that I was doing and to get my ass over there now, I’d better go,” there was a beeping in the background, and a few moments of silence on the line, “That’s Nyree just sent me a message, she’s already on her way there now! What the fuck!” he was almost crying the words over the phone to me, my heart began to sink. With Derrick being called over to the Military Barracks next to the Pentland Range, he would have understood that as some sort of preparation for martial law in the countries capital.
But Nyree being whisked over there as well, that made the situation more alarming, my legs began to shake uncontrollably but I didn’t want to sit down, she was a qualified Doctor in the Burns Unit at St.Johns Hospital, some thirty miles west of Edinburgh.
“Maybe it’s just a precaution Derrick, they’ll have her as an adviser if the city goes to shit!?” I tried my best to reassure my friend even though I was unsure of the situation myself.
“What’s that?” I heard him say distantly on the phone, so I tried to repeat what I had just said, this time sounding even more unsure of myself than before. There was a noise on the line, in the background it was loud, like a car going past Derrick, but he was in his apartment.
“Jesus Christ…” Derrick said absentmindedly, a loud noise clattered through my earpiece as he dropped the phone at his end, the noise in the background grew louder and louder, then faded before returning again stronger.
My right ear was burning as I pressed the receiver hard against my head, with the added static on the line it was hard to make out much of what was going on in the background, a few moments later, Derrick came back on the line, the noise continuing in the background in waves.
“Kobin, I have to go… I’ll call you back once I get to the barracks.” Derrick sounded more worried than I had ever heard him before, I was almost in panic.
“What is it? What just happened?”
“There are jets, dozens of them, flying across the Forth.” The Forth River was north of Edinburgh, the famous Forth Road and Rail Bridges, alongside the newly and controversially built Forth Tunnel, opened the gateway from the bustling capital city into the open beauty of its countryside and northern towns. The Rosyth Naval base wasn’t too far away from there, from what Derrick said, the planes were heading in that direction.
“Are they British?!?” the question really surprised me, I wasn’t even thinking of anything other than U.K. Fighter jets flying over the Scottish capital.
Derrick dropped his phone again, and the faint sound of his front door slammed, the noise of the fighter jets in the air faded to the noise of the faint static on the line.
It was the last transatlantic call I’d ever make, or receive…
]]>Looking around the room, standing some ten feet away from a non functioning killing machine, we took in the scene around us. The two candles flickering nearest to us gave the Jackhammer a serene appearance, like a dog sitting by the fire. I blocked out the scene as it immediately began to fill me with sadness. The Jackhammer was no dog, it was four hundred kilo robot designed to search and destroy, I was slightly surprised that it was so easily damaged in the chase. Perhaps it was ‘injured’ by some previous encounter, I was almost positive that this couldn’t have been the same machine that chased me through the corridors above. Unless someone, maybe that Mexican man had hurt it during his encounter. It was a minor distraction to what was really troubling us both, but yet again I was slightly distracted.
In the candlelight I could finally see the woman that I had allied with about twenty minutes ago, she was standing looking around the room for other signs of importance, she eventually settled her eyes on me. Realising that I was staring at her she slowly moved her right hand to my face and used her index finger to gently lift my jaw.
She was beautiful, if somewhat ragged by the recent and whatever previous problems that she had come across in the darkened depths. Her hair was fairly short, but neatly swept back in a ponytail, it looked jet black and back just to the nape of her neck. But that wasn’t what caught my full attention.
The girl in front of me had the most startling blue eyes, really accentuated by her light complexion, she wore a dark red skinny shirt, that showed her athletic figure to its full. She wore red combat trousers and scuffed white shoes.
“You look like shit.”
The comment almost made me burst out laughing, I looked down and saw that the comment was pretty accurate, my shirt beneath the black outfit I acquired was also a brownish red colour, and the blue denim jeans that I had on were a darker shade of purple, strange…
I continued to look at myself for a few moments, and saw that the tail end of my shirt was still damp with the water that I fell into above, I’d lost count of how many flights of stairs we had descended into the darkness.
I rung the edge of my t-shirt out in my hand, and was shocked to see what happened. The droplets of water hit my dirty left palm, although there wasn’t a lot of it left in the drying shirt, the water that I did manage to wring out, was red.
Blood red.
“Holy shit.”
Sapphire edged closer to see what I was groaning about, then recoiled in horror.
“It’s all over you.”
I realised she was right, I was soaked in blood, it had began to dry into my skin and clothing. “Am I hurt??” I couldn’t understand it, it didn’t feel as if I was hurt anywhere, at least serious enough to cover my almost head to toe in my own blood, it was almost as if…
Oh my god.
“The pool…” thoughts began to flicker through my head at the scene covered in near perpetual darkness above.
“What?”
“The pool upstairs that I fell into, I remember that it felt the water was making me sluggish as I waded through it. Maybe it wasn’t water at all, for the most part at least.”
Sapphire stood there for a few moments remembering the scene above, the revelation spread over her face as quick as lightning, she grimaced at the thought.
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
“I wish I was! There’s no other explanation for it, the blood is still damp for Christ’s sake!”
Reflecting on my own statement, I felt the sudden urge to strip naked. The thought was in my head to rinse all of the clothing in the stream, but if it was contaminated then that would prove to be equally problematic. My hands would soon be giving me the answer in around an hours time, if I don’t find a means of washing them before then.
“The candles.” Sapphire timed the question brilliantly, the thoughts of what I was wearing flushed immediately from my mind.
When we both burst into the room moments ago, the sensation of being able to see was almost as overpowering as the Jackhammer that distracted me from it. Now that I was able to reflect on the room, the feeling of being able to focus took a little getting used to. If the light was that of normal daylight, then we would probably have suffered some sort of permanent damage. But the lighting was just at the right level to not cause any discomfort. In different circumstances, I would have said that the feeling was almost romantic.
“Where do you think we are?” Sapphire asked, realising that I wasn’t going to retort to her previous statement.
“I have no idea, I didn’t even know where I was when I started, hell knows where we are now.” The room had no real significance with the exception of the stream running through it. My initial urge was to test how deep that water was, so scanning the room for disposable objects and finding none, I headed back to the robot.
“What are you doing?”
“Just hold on a minute,” I reassured her, stepping quietly over one of the Jackhammers extended forelimbs, it was motionless, with the fluid barely dripping from it now. As I manoeuvred my way over the large metallic monster, I tried to keep an eye on any sudden movements from it.
Even in the flickering candlelight, I didn’t see the movement in my periphery until it was too late, the barbed sphere of the Jackhammers’ main attacking prowess floated through the air without as much as a sound of hydraulics. The shouts of Sapphire echoing behind me didn’t travel quickly enough through the thick musty air as I stumbled backwards…
The sounds coming from above were almost as surreal as my ability to navigate the stairwell in the pitch black darkness, Sapphire took the lead and it almost seemed to me that she knew where she was going.
I don’t know why, but the scent of her jaded perfume sent my thoughts away from this hell hole.
It wasn’t long before dust and debris began to fall all around us, and the screaming metallic sound of the Jackhammer in pursuit was terrifying. I did feel that the air around us was becoming more stifled the deeper into the ground that we travelled. The musty smell that I filled my senses back in the loading bay seemed like a summer breeze compared to what I was inhaling now. The decaying odour was broken by the gentle pulling of my fellow countrywoman.
“Do you know where we’re going” the musty air escaping tickled the back of my throat and triggered fits of coughing that slowed my progress into the dreary depths.
“Yes” was the blunt answer that I received, the total stranger leading me panted between breaths. I tripped over something, it could have been rubble from the attacks from above ground, or a dead body lying in the small stairwell. Trying not to think about it and concentrating hard on my footing, I followed her obligingly.
The only reason that I was trusting her at this moment in time was that an 800-pound metallic killing machine was working out the quickest way to descend a concrete stairwell.
The two options were simple, down and around the stairs like we were doing, or through the stairs themselves. From the crashing sounds echoing around me I decided that it was the latter of the two options it was going for.
“Well?” I managed so cough out into her ear, my left foot almost gunning into an uncontrollable slide down the dusty steps.
"Running... Down... Stairs, idiot."
Right then, we exploded out into a wide corridor, two candles burned in the distance some twenty yards away with two more by the doorway that we just entered. The sound of running water filled my senses, the thirst stretching the back of my gullet was almost as dry as the stone floor that I was not walking on, still holding Sapphires hand.
“Where are we?” The question was short lived as the sound of metal ground to a halt some twenty feet behind me. The Jackhammer’s hydraulics sounded wheezy in the dim candlelight.
We stood watching it, me pulling the pistol that Sapphire had reconstructed and handed back to me. I was about to raise it before she placed a warm hand on my wrist.
“It’s pointless” Sapphire said calmly as I’d seen her since I met her, that’s not saying a lot, seeing as I met her about five minutes ago.
I followed her gaze towards the Jackhammer, where it was crouched, looking in our direction. There was a whirring noise that came to my ears as it lay there staring at us, and the dripping of fluid from one of its legs. It appeared to be ‘injured’ if such a creation could suffer it. Rightly enough, it wasn’t making any attempts to move for the two of us, we could only stand and stare as the two candles flickered wildly at the draft coming from the water behind us.
Water?
I spun on my heels, forgetting about the injured left one that quickly reminded me of its affliction. The shooting pain made me fall to my knees, the reflexes almost causing me to pull the trigger of the pistol.
There was a river running right to left of me, perhaps five yards away. The light of the candles behind me caused an enlarged monstrous shadow to be cast against the far wall about ten more yards from it, but it wasn’t what caught my eye. There was a doorway on the other side but the river was about two and a half yards across, possibly more. With my foot being injured and not knowing how nimble my newly acquired ally was, the distance was greater than I thought achievable. The river was flowing rapidly enough to know that it would sweep anyone weak enough to the dark depths beyond, and god knew what was further downstream. That is, if the river was deep enough at all. But the noise that it made in this small enclosure made me think that it was pretty deep. Deep enough not to risk it.
The temptation to drink from the running liquid was alarming, before I knew what was happening I had a cup of water in my hand, moving it quickly toward my parched lips.
“NO!!!”
The scream from behind me was echoing loudly in the square room, but the noise didn’t deter the hand from moving closer to my face.
The foot did…
From out of nowhere, BLAM! I fell backwards with my knees still bent, the angle of them made me contort to my left as I felt the ligaments stretch almost to breaking point. Luckily, I survived the acrobatics, albeit with a sore hand, and even more painful upper lip that was swelling by the second.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I shouted at her, almost pointing my pistol at her head before quickly gaining control of myself.
“You drink that, and you may as well put a bullet in your head, idiot!”
I looked at her as if she were insane or speaking in some alien language. After a few moments reflection on the statement my eyes widened.
Jesus…
The water running through here had to be from a natural resource because of its flow, and it didn’t smell like sewer water. It must have run from a natural resource above ground.
Contaminated ground.
The radioactive fallout was saturating the Earths surface for almost every square mile, it was the main reason I was so surprised to see any living animals down here. On the flipside of that, I hoped that I wouldn’t run into any more or at least not in such close quarters.
“Thank you, “ I murmured with a stiffening upper lip, “I don’t know what came over me.”
“Yeah you do, trust me, I’ve been there and almost did it myself. You don’t realise how thirsty you are until you hit water. You didn’t drink any of the sludge upstairs did you??”
Now there was a question, as I plummeted into the darkened depths of that pool where the alligators lived did I actually take a mouthful of that slime in? I didn’t think so, at least my body would be telling me otherwise by now.
“No, luckily I didn’t”
“Luckily for both of us, don’t think I could make it alone any longer down here.”
In the dim light of this underground aqueduct, we both paused for a moment on that statement, then something occurred to us both simultaneously. Turning, we looked back in the direction of the fallen Jackhammer, but not directly at the scrap metal. Something else caught our eye in the scene in front of us, hardly giving it a moments thought until this very second, we looked at each other, our hearts dropping into our stomachs as the realisation came about.
Who lit the candles?
The words filtered into my brain slowly as I stood there wondering why I wasn’t dead yet. This woman that was now trying to speak with me had disarmed me like I was some sort of kid. Not knowing what to say in retort, I wondered at her outline for a moment. In the enclosed place that we had found ourselves in, I could only make out her faint outline in the darkness. She had known where and when to disarm me, so I guessed her visual acuity to dark places was far superior to that of my own. Dumbstruck at the thought of making conversation on peaceful terms for more than a year had taken me aback slightly, I didn’t have a clue what to say…
“What?” was all that I could think of.
There was a slight smirk in the air, even though it couldn’t be seen in the shadows.
“I said, what the hell do we do now?” I heard her picking up the pistol magazine from the floor, and surprisingly, she placed it gently in my right hand. A few more seconds passed before I thought of saying what again, what the hell was wrong with me?
“What do you mean?” the words made me sound sheepish, when really I was stalling for time, I had no idea how to take this female, I needed to find out where she was from, even though it apparently wasn’t on her agenda to consider.
“Well, we survived the drop into that croc infested pool-“
“Alligator…” the word came out of my lips without me even thinking about it, I looked at where I guessed her eyes were. There was a short pause before she continued.
“-I’m sorry?”
“Alligators, those were alligators in there, not crocodiles.” Now the next words that I were expecting were along the lines of ‘Who the hell cares!’, but she seemed to give my statement a little thought.
“How could you tell?” The question sent parts of my brain into overdrive that I hadn’t used for a long while. I tried to think of a simple way of putting it, so that I wouldn’t sound as though I was a field specialist. She may think that I’m slightly more adept at things that I was currently letting on.
“They sounded like alligators.” It was the best that I could do to put it into layman terms. Hopefully it would work
“Ah, I see. You’re a little more intelligent that you’re letting on mister.” I could tell that she was smiling, my bluff had failed, she was probably now wondering how specialised I was and at which particular subjects.
“My name is Sapphire Dupré, you are?”.
Now there was a question, her name sounded French alright, I wondered if I should try and make up a name, but opted for the honest approach. My bluffs on this woman hadn’t worked so far, there was no point in trying again, it would probably get me killed.
“I’m Kobin.” I extended my hand once I replaced the magazine in the pistols empty chamber.
“Kobin, I’m sure glad to have met you, where are you from?”
It was at that moment the tone in her voice wavered, the first sign of nerves from someone who sounded so sure of themselves only moments ago.
It was crunch time, do I tell her my heritage? Or do I try and play safe by saying American? I figured I still had the intact rifle slung over my shoulder that she hadn’t made an attempt for. I attempted to take in the surrounding enclosed space as much as my eyes had allowed. The sound of the rock that Sapphire had clearly thrown to distract me had definitely tumbled with the flow of gravity, echoing into the silent depths below. Judging from my fall after being chased here by the Jackhammer, I felt I had dropped at least two flights. Perhaps three.
“I’m Canadian.” I said with a resigned tone, if she was going to kill me, now would be the time to do it, the next few moments of silence passed like years, the aching frame of mine reminding me that I was in no great shape for hand-to-hand combat. Especially with a female who seemed to be able to take care of herself.
There was a deep inhalation of breath from her, and my fists clenched, poised for her pouncing on me with whatever weapon she had concealed on her. The intake was quickly followed with what sounded as a sigh of relief.
“Sheesh, that’s great to hear.” Then something out of the ordinary happened, again.
She hugged me.
I was startled at first, thinking it was a sly form of attack, but I was surprised to find myself returning the gesture after a moments hesitation.
Jesus, she felt good, but from what I could tell she was barely dressed, maybe wearing a thin t-shirt and underwear.
“What the hell are you doing in here?” it was the first question that sprung from my lips during the initial meeting. Maybe her answer would shed some light on the reason why I woke up in this dark shadowy place. Her name didn’t ring a bell but the French connotation reminded me of something that the Englishman said before his South African friend had shot him accidentally in the head.
Heller-Fontaine.
I wasn’t going to ask her about the name this early on, for all I know, she could be working for him or this Benedict that was mentioned earlier.
“Beats me, I woke up a few hours ago in some room somewhere above this level, it’s a long story, but to cut it short I ended up falling into that disgusting pool that you did.” I heard her thudding against the wall and rubbing something, her feet maybe?
“You ok?” genuinely interested in her welfare, if she were telling the truth, then she would be the first Canadian that I had met since… since…
I tried not to think about that.
“Yeah, my feet really hurt, running around barefoot around here really doesn’t do well for my soles. As I was saying, you’re the first person that I’ve seen or heard ali-“ her voice trailed off into the darkness and my ears shot up, along with the hairs on the back of my neck.
The faintest of echoes came in to breach the silence, we were both holding our breath as someone, or something was making a noise in the distance. I could tell that it was above us, and that there was a noise of metal against stone…
Metal... against stone…
Then a piercing shriek came through the darkness, the echo multiplying the sound so it sounded like there were hundreds of voices screaming in the darkness, enough to drive anyone insane…
“We need to move.” Sapphire had moved closer to me, placing her right hand on my left arm as we both stared upwards.
“I know.”
We both tested to see the width of the steps, I grabbed the railing in the centre of the large stairwell, Sapphire grabbed the outside. We began running just as there was a explosive crashing into the stairs two floors above, or maybe three?
It was the Jackhammer...
Earth had ground almost to a mutilated standstill after the main Fallout nearly a decade ago. Most species were wiped out in the cataclysm of our own doing. I was one of the fortunate people who remember seeing most of the animals in their natural habitats. One of the perks of my previous employment you could have said.
The pleasant moment of reflection was short lived as the splashing water to my right reminded me of my dire situation. As far as I could tell the two alligators in front of me, almost guarding the only exit, were accompanied by the one thrashing fallen Mexican.
Taking a deep breath, I needed to compose myself for the next few moments at least. The woman who tried to speak to me earlier was on the other side of the two adult reptiles, I still wasn’t sure where she was from, and probably couldn’t trust her even if I did get the chance to talk to her. One thing was for certain, there was no way past the two killing machines that lay ten feet away from me. A pang of guilt crossed my mind at the thought of shooting them for my own survival, but in fairness there was no other way, unless some miracle occurred right this second then it was a race against who would attack first.
Do I sit here in the darkness? Or do I make the unfortunate choice of using my newly acquired weaponry.
“What do we do?”
That was what I heard wasn’t it? The voice was quiet, almost like a thought to me, but it was definitely from the female, she raised her hand ever so slowly and backed off, obviously noticing the to lithe figures in front of her.
A thought had occurred to me as I stood perfectly still in the darkness, a slight hint of optimism crept into the back of my mind. The fact that there was a limb floating in the water as I waded through meant that these animals may have had their fill. Maybe they weren’t going to be as aggressive, it was a long shot.
Then something touched my foot.
I glanced down and panicked at the thought that the other adult alligator had come from the water to silently take a nibble from my right leg. But relief swept over me to see that crawling over my foot was a juvenile alligator, around ten inches long. To my right just at the slope leading into the watery depths I noticed others leaping and rolling around playfully.
There are juveniles in here!
It was exciting that after all that had happened in the world that the most primeval of creatures that still remained on the Earth, albeit in small numbers, had found the capacity to breed in this darkened arena. The thought occurred to me that this room may be purpose built for these creatures.
There are babies in here…
Slowly and surely, the dread crept in. There were juvenile alligators in this room, still at the vulnerable stage where…
The parents would aggressively protect there young from any danger.
It was a solemn moment for me, made all the more potent by the slow, lethal movements from the nearest monster. Beads of cold sweat dripped from my brow as I made the decision that I knew I would never forgive myself for, I pulled the pistol from my holster and pointed. Judging where the most damaging shot would be, the ripple of water to my right made everything all the more important that I move quickly.
As I depressed the trigger, the shock of the recoil rippled painfully through my right arm, the muzzle flash exploded through the darkness and lit the room briefly. The roaring of the creatures and the explosion from the water beside me was all I could recall as I continued firing and ran towards my only exit. I had no idea what the other human occupant was doing, if anything. Three yards from the exit when the farther of the two lizards made a move for me, I fired blindly in its direction as I made a leap for the doorway. If the door opened inwards my actions would be short lived, literally. If it opened outwards, then I may very well survive this episode.
My body floated through the darkness, to my surprise the door gave little resistance as my aching body flew through.
Hitting the ground surprisingly well, I managed to roll over and point my pistol towards the open doorway. The creatures luckily didn’t follow my trail.
I had maybe just killed one of the endangered reptiles as I passed through the doorway into another corridor filled with darkness. For all my luck so far it wouldn’t have been surprising to find a Jackhammer waiting to smash my brains in here. After gasping for breath, more through panic than any other reason, I slowly got to my feet and spun around with my gun in the dark, looking for any other surprises that may have wanted to make themselves known.
Nothing.
I moved quickly towards the door and pushed it closed, without a care as to what happened to the woman in the makeshift terrarium. Ideally I would have liked to have had her on my side, but the way things are at the moment, survival of the fittest – and better armed – was paramount. I hoped deep down that she would make it out of there.
There was the sound of a rock falling in the distance, not in the room that I had just come from, but somewhere down the corridor. The noise echoed in the darkness but I could tell that it was lower than me, perhaps there were stairs nearby.
The copper smell that filled the air rapidly cleared in the dark confines of this corridor, another smell replaced it, it stirred me inside and I couldn’t understand why.
There was a brief sensation on my left hand as the magazine release was pressed, the top chamber was pulled back in one flowing movement and the gun removed from my grasp. The magazine hit the floor and echoed loudly before silence filled the air again. I said nothing and felt helpless as a warm hand grabbed my wrist.
“As I said… What do we do?”
While everything was unfolding rapidly in front of me, I took a brief second to think of the room where I first awoke. The two men that had spotted me – through every fault of my own – were of different nationality.
I couldn’t understand how this Heller-Fontaine had gotten two people from different countries to work together. Maybe they were friends before the Fallout period, that would certainly explain their attitude towards each other.
So here I was, panting nervously as my heart thundered in the shadows. The circular rooms farthest point was still totally in darkness to my unattuned eyesight. The man that had fallen from the same level as me definitely landed a lot harder by the sounds of his groaning. Thinking about it, I was lucky to have survived the fall from above, the Jackhammer must be programmed to chase people into this area. Thank god there was a pool here, else I would have met a painful agonising death, if I was lucky.
So had the girl heard my trembling voice? As I slithered my way through the thick sludge in the pool. Had she really noticed my accent in the little that I said, I couldn’t risk it, if the girl was American and she found out about my Canadian heritage, then she could turn in an instant. I was faced with the dilemma of leaving them both here, or having to take them out. The latter option would have been the easy choice, if I was mentally stronger than my weakened state.
Instead, I found a smooth half crescent pillar that protruded from the wall and ran upwards towards the curved ceiling.
The man that had fallen into the pool was crying with pain, the urge to go and help him almost overrode the driving sensation to remain in the cover of darkness. It would be interesting to see what happened between the two strangers from this distance, maybe they would join forces to escape this gargantuan tomb I found myself in, covered in this thick sludge that I dared not to think of.
“Help!” The man called, I remained silent, searching the shadows for any sense of movement, something inside me told me to get down from the standing position I found myself in. I trusted my hunches, and crouched as low as my aching limbs would let me without shaking wildly.
No answer.
And I thought I knew the reason why, the mans accent was definitely not American, it was Spanish. If there was any chance that the man wading to the waters edge was Mexican, then the current situation that I currently found myself in was about to become a lot more interesting, and probably not in a good way!
“Help!” the voice repeated over and over again.
And then it happened.
A deep, almost guttural growling erupted from the other side of the room, my reflexes weren’t affected by my tiredness, and I had already trained the pistol on the shadows lurking on the other side of the room.
The guttural roar sounded again, as the man’s wading began to speed up, he had stopped making any vocal noise, but the splashing was unavoidable given his state of panic.
The urge to fire the flare in my newly acquired jacket pocket was almost to much to bare, the only thing that would serve would be to give up my location to the people and other creatures that lurked in the darkness. God knows what would happen, maybe I didn’t want to see.
The growling stopped as whatever made it slithered into the slimy water. The rank smell of copper filled my nostrils again and somehow it seemed familiar, though I couldn’t quite place it.
The man was about five feet away from the waters edge, I took a step forward, having no idea why. What was I going to do? Jump in, wrestle some creature that can clearly swim better that some fish, kill it, help the injured man to the waters edge and then get murdered unceremoniously.
Let’s think of something else, shall we?
I scanned along the edge of the wall to my right, where the female had tried to make contact with me, also where the injured man was swimming for. Looking along to the left I saw nothing but bare wall and another pillar jutting out of the wall some fifteen feet away.
Still holding the pistol, I moved as quickly and as quietly as my sore feet would allow, hoping to catch a glimpse of anything that remotely looked like a doorway.
The man made it to the waters edge, the relief that he must have felt would have clearly had me screaming with ecstasy, but the noise that came from him was totally different, the shivers ran through my body as I turned and looked to the direction I thought he was in.
Apparently I had crossed a lot more of the room that I had once thought, the man was on the other side, almost out of view.
He was clinging onto the smooth surface like it was the only land that he would ever feel on his fingertips. The screaming of terror and helplessness failed to brake over the sound of something exploding from the watery depths. For me the noise mercifully blotting out the sound of his fingernails breaking against the unforgiving rock as he was dragged back in. Moments later, he was gone, dragged below the surface by the creature that made its home in this very room.
I need to get out of here!
Looking further ahead I saw a rectangular, shimmering contrasting the grey surface of the room.
A door!!!
I could hardly believe it, there was a doorway out of this place, I needed to get to it. It was only twenty or so feet away, maybe thirty at a push. Steadily as I occasionally glanced into the water, I moved towards the door. I stopped about twelve feet from the door, surveying the scene in front of me.
The ledge that ran around the edge of the room seemed larger at this point of the room, expanding some forty inches farther into the room than the rest of the pathway. Rather than a ledge leading to the pool, there was a subtle ramp that slid into the cold, murky depths. It must have been the shallow end.
About the same distance from the door, but in the opposite direction, stood the silhouette of the woman that had tried to make contact with me. She was perfectly still, I didn’t think she was looking completely in my direction. Guessing her line of sight I followed it to the paving in front of the doorway, it was then that I saw the two bodies lying static in front of the door, not moving as if they were dead. But I knew for a fact, as my own heartbeat echoed loudly in my ears…
The two alligators were not dead…
So as I pondered the sensation of falling, I saw nothing below rush towards me, to at least give me a rough idea how long I had left in my eventful life. The Jackhammer had ran me into this situation, it left me wondering if it was programmed to do so. Maybe I was falling to my untimely death like dozens of other helpless humans that managed to outrun the Jackhammers wrath.
Splodge.
It wasn’t quite a splash, and it wasn’t quite a crunch, as I lay there staring at the dark arena above me. My initial thoughts of my left index finger being broken were wrong, as I ran all of them through the smooth, slushy compound. I was relieved that I managed to float back to the top of my own accord, and further pleased that I wasn’t sinking slowly.
The sensation relieved the stress on my weakened body, the rifle strap was digging into my right collarbone, but all in all I had survived another interesting situation.
As I lay there staring at where the ceiling should be, the room opened up around me as my eyes grew more accustomed to this level of dark. It was much larger than the loading bay that I was in originally, for a moment it was almost as if I couldn’t see either side of the room. Then after a moment I could see one side of the room as I turned in the thick liquid to my left, a thin line followed the surface of the water what I could only guess at being twenty feet away, so, half dragging myself and half swimming I moved towards the only hard surface that I could see, it wasn’t long before I hit something in the water.
It wasn’t a surface, it was long, almost like a log floating in this thick sludge. I grabbed at it, hoping to gain some purchase for a moments rest as my wading was really sapping the life out of me.
I ran my fingers along the surface of the object, trying to get an idea of what it was I was clinging on to besides my sanity. As I waded a few feet further the log buckled in the middle, I was surprised at how easily it gave way to the pressure that I was applying to it. What was even more surprising to me, was the boot that hit me on the left cheek.
A boot!
“Fuck!” I groaned as I pushed the detached limb away from me, reeling in disgust at the thought of someone’s leg floating around aimlessly. It also didn’t fill me with any great hope as to where I was.
Then the smell hit me, my nostrils flaring at the sensation and I almost threw up, the copper like scent was almost as thick in the air as the watery sludge I was wading through. To my relief, the edge of the pool was only two or three feet away and I could make out the edge of the water, a ledge was raised about six inches from the dark rippling surface.
As I pulled myself onto the raised concrete ledge I rolled over and lay there for a few moments. The temptation to lay there and sleep was almost too much to…
I was asleep.
Sitting up with a start, it may have been minutes, or it may have been hours, it’s hard to tell how long I was lying there in the darkness. With my eyes closed for so long my eyesight had become attuned to the light around me. I could see most of the room in its entirety, the far wall was just out of my sight as it faded into shadow. I turned and almost let my feet dangle into the watery slime that I was still drenched in. Some of my clothing was now drying, which made me think I had been out for a few hours at least. Also in my periphery, I could make out the silhouette of someone standing to my right.
Someone else was here!!!
I sat there, trying to remain as quiet and as still as possible. The figure was static in the darkness, I didn’t move my head at all, using the more acute peripheral vision to try and make out the person standing about fifteen feet away from me. It was entirely possible for them to be upon me before I could do anything if they acted now, but they didn’t, they were probably trying to figure out if they had seen something move or not.
Toying with the idea of slipping back into the pool, I decided not to, it would put me at an immediate disadvantage if the intruder saw my actions. Instead, I opted to reach for my pistol, thankfully, it was still in my holster, the strap was already undone from my encounter with the Jackhammer.
“Hello?” a gentle, almost frightened female voice said in the darkness, thankfully it came from the silhouette to me left and not from something else lurking in the darkness. The accent was American, I couldn’t tell if they were Canadian or not, the difference nowadays was harder to distinguish with all the influx of foreigners from tainted American soil over the last decade. The difference between the two at this moment had a crucial bearing on how the next few minutes would pan out.
In the distance however, there was a faint moaning, which grew in decibel to that of a panicked screaming. The figure to my right began moving away from me, it gave me a brief chance to look upward, in the direction of the noise.
It seemed like there was someone going through the same experience that I had just gone through, the chase through the darkened corridors that led them into this room. And it wasn’t long before the screaming was echoing loudly through this large auditorium-like place, the dark image of someone falling through the sky was almost humorous in a sick kind of way, as they splashed into the dark pool I used the opportunity to get into a crouching position.
Quickly glancing around to see if the female figure was there, I saw that she had backed against the wall and continued moving away from me, she was almost out of my sight as I backed against the wall too. The distance from me to the pool edge could only have been around five feet in length.
Three people were now in the room, at least two of them were fit enough to walk, the other was wading towards the pool edge and coming in my direction. I needed to get out of this position and get somewhere more hidden, from both people. At least I knew there was a 50/50 chance that I could have an ally in all of this, of course, there was also the chance that I could have a sworn enemy, or two...
The flowing blur of motion doesn’t help much when you run around in dark, confined spaces like I was right now. The screeching of the metallic monster behind me echoed through the terrifying darkness, I’d thought about using the flare but that would only succeed in doing two things. One, give the Jackhammer an exact location of my whereabouts, and two, give me an exact location of the Jackhammer. Neither of which was particularly useful at this stage.
Not knowing where I got the strength from, maybe it was the sudden fear that I could possible die in the next few moments…
Just maybe…
As for the Jackhammer, it was one of mans finest military creations since the atom bomb. Some idiot in a white coat came up with the idea that, instead of sending in troops to take out guerrilla fighters in their natural habitats (most notably the New Liberation of Afghanistan struggled to free provinces held by Taliban fighters in 2023), that we could send robots in instead…
Panting for breath, I felt my left index finger crack and fall limp as I collided with the corridor wall that took an abrupt right. My first thoughts were that it was probably broken, but I had no way of telling at the moment, as long as the legs were still working then that was ok. The Jackhammer smashed into the wall behind me, it wasn’t anticipating the turn either. The echo of the crashing metal machine almost burst my eardrums.
…So they send in specially designed robots that have six large, spiked forelimbs pulling at tremendous speed, linked to the three feeler legs at the rear by four solid metal plates for chitin armour on the body. The sphere that I had spotted floating in the darkness is what was more commonly referred to as its ‘Cannonball’. The sphere is mounted on a hydraulic arm that exploded forward at astonishing speed and power. Initially it was thought that this would be used to clear the debris from caves and perhaps knock down temporary cavern fortifications. It became clear after the artificial intelligence system was loaded, that the cannonball could and would be used for attack purposes, with devastating effects. The pound per square inch strength was measured at thirty thousand pounds. If it hit me, I would be dead or at the least incapacitated, which would more or less mean I would dead in a moment.
The six arms help it move along at astonishing speed for a computerised robot. The. know little else except to clear the corridors of this underground abyss of darkness.
But it wasn’t the fear of being hit or caught by this killing machine, but the terrible screeching that was generated by it in the enclosed confines of the corridors. It was a noise that made me want to stop in my tracks and cover my ears, it felt as if they would burst if it got any louder. The Jackhammers vision was based on its inbuilt infrared and movement technology, the thought had occurred to me as I almost tripped over what I thought was a dead body. If I was to use my last flare, the chances are that the Jackhammer machine would stride on past it because of my movement. The inbuilt A.I. had a learning capacity which meant it began to predict human decisions and courses of action, it had probably chased dozens of people through this same stretch of corridor, like a spider it just sat, waiting for the slightest hint of movement to trigger the hunt.
One thing that did give me a faint glimmer of hope was that the darkness in the corridor ahead appeared to be lifting. The thought never came into my head that I could very well be evading one fate to run straight into another, the survival instincts coursing through my body only had time to think of the present situation. The Cannonball hit my left shoulder, luckily it just brushed off the top and missed my neck, the metal barbs managed to take their fair share of clothing and flesh as I stumbled onwards. The reach of the Jackhammers main weapon was around ten feet, which meant that it was gaining on me, fast.
Then all of a sudden I felt a welcome relief on the striking pain that I felt in my injured heel, the heavy burden of my sluggish weight seemed to lift from me. The screeching of the Jackhammer began to die of as I heard the lethal forelimbs crashing and scraping against the concrete for better purchase.
As I looked around the lethal mechanical device had stopped its pursuit of me, I felt free, the elation swept over me and I felt as though I could fly, my senses reeling from the delirious events that had unfolded only in a matter of hours.
Something was amiss, the sensation of my foot really had lifted, the metal creature above me merely looked down in a lifeless posture of disappointment of not achieving the kill.
That was it, I realised as I thought to myself, the words that I had carefully chosen to describe the situation that I was in. All of a sudden the elation of being away from the Jackhammer’s assault sank, along with my hopes of surviving this nightmare. The Jackhammer was above me, looking down at me, the fixed expression on its ‘face’ seemed to be mocking me as I looked down…
…as I was falling…
“What the hell?” I asked myself the question, sitting there in the darkness like a baby, crying for what? The relief of surviving the most recent of trying tests that I had undergone must have overpowered all my sense of reason.
Rubbing my right wrist over my tear soaked face, eyes and then slowly hauling myself to my feet, I leant over to pick up the rifle and other things that I had thrown onto the floor from the room below.
It was at that precise moment that I heard the sound...
My body shot up rigid, and remaining as still as the two corpses lying below, I listened for the noise that removed all fear of the darkness and silence from my mind. There was nothing, but I was certain that I heard it.
Nothing.
Moments moved by as if they were in slow motion, my body felt incredibly sluggish and tired, for a moment the thought of drifting off to sleep in this eerie darkness seemed too hard to resist.
I knew that was out of the question, I willed my limbs out of temporary atrophy and grabbed for the two guns and magnesium flare that I had acquired from before. I didn’t know where I was in this compound but I knew that I had to keep moving, my mobility was my only ally in the dark catacombs around here. Removing the near empty magazine from the pistol that the South African man had dropped, I began to slowly move down the corridor.
There wasn’t ten feet travelled before the first dilemma came to my attention. The corridor spanned off in two directions, to my left it was utterly dark and it wasn’t the direction that either of the two men had come from. To my right, the darkness seemed to lift just a little as my eyes began to grow accustomed to it.
Standing there for a few moments in the silence and glancing back at the opening I had just come from, I hoped to see some sort of instrument panel on the wall, maybe to raise the floor and open the large metal doors on the ceiling. There was nothing but pale concrete.
Shrugging off the dark-fear again, I chose to go down the lighter of the two pathways as my eyesight was not as accustomed to the darkness as some of the dwellers in here. The corridor was just high enough for me to walk comfortably in, and it was around three people wide. I continued to walk with my fingertips brushing gently against each wall, just in case there was an opening my untrained eyes missed. I tried to move as quietly as possible, training myself to stop and listen for any sounds of activity, even the hint of someone breathing in the distance.
Nothing.
The corridor veered to the left abruptly as the darkness in this area was beginning to lift, but the silence was still just as deafening.
All of a sudden I stopped, not knowing why for a few moments I continued to stare straight ahead. The sound of my own breathing seemed to thunder through an almost tangible silence, the decadence reaping through the air as I remained static, almost questioning myself as to why I ground to a stop.
Then it came to me, rushing forth like a tidal wave. My eyes shot straight to my left hand, which was dangling freely in the darkness at about waist height. The sensation coming to me made me dizzy as I slowly looked up from it, to the section of wall that was missing. A dread swept over me in a way that made my limbs shake uncontrollably, the sensation that was now creeping in to my periphery made my anxiety even more prominent.
Just around the height of my neckline my eyes lifted to see that in the alcove, was a floating metallic sphere. About the size of a soccer ball, it remained absolutely still as I could only do the same while staring at it. It was jet black, the smooth underside of the sphere contrast heavily to the top side, that was covered in hexagonal plates, each with a small barbed spike in the centre. Luckily for me it that side was facing the ceiling.
Slowly as my shaking hand would allow, I moved my right hand for the pistol that was holstered on the left hip, choosing to leave my left hand dangling in the precipice of darkness, some seven inches below the object of my worst nightmares.
Well, some of the bad ones at least.
I managed to get my grip on the pistol and free it slightly before something again stopped me in my tracks, it took me a moment to figure out what it was that had stopped me.
In the top right hand corner of the dark space that lay to my left (I still hadn’t turned to face it) there was something moving, slowly and methodically, it moved out of the darkness right the edge of the opening, so only the front of it could be seen.
My heart dropped to my stomach, the noise that I had heard earlier and so easily dismissed came back to haunt me in the long, crescent shaped metallic face that wasn’t directly facing me, but I knew that it was looking at me.
Now it was all about speed, and maybe a little of that luck that seemed to be floating around back there in the loading bay, a place that I longed to be back in given my current situation. I had no idea where I was, and that made running to safety just that little bit more difficult, right now I found myself side facing death, and running around the darkness to fall, trip or run into pretty much the same…
In the back of my mind the pain in my left foot reminded me that running may be a short lived experience, but right now my whole life had a big neon light flashing “Short lived” attached to it.
I dropped to the floor a little heavily as the sphere clicked into place so that the hexagonal barbs faced my direction, then the whole sound of the world around me changed.
The silence disappeared to be replaced by a whirring sound of hydraulics and a screeching that almost knocked me off my train of thought. As I rolled to the right towards the direction I was headed, the first crunching and almost deafening sound came. The metal spiked sphere crashed into the wall opposite, and quickly retracted, leaving what I knew would be a large, ragged indentation in the solid concrete.
I knew this but never saw it, because I was already running down the corridor as fast as my limbs and injured heel would take me, somehow I knew that alone was not going be enough.
Ladies and gentlemen, making its own introduction, The Jackhammer…
So there I was, standing in a room that was around thirty by thirty feet across and just as high. There were only three significant differences in the flat – and I’m guessing thick – concrete, the two recesses for the hydraulic lifting mechanism and the alcove in the corner of the room. The alcove appeared to me as my only method of escape, unfortunately, the ledge was about twelve feet off the floor. I was posed with a problem.
I was trapped.
Realistically there was no other way that this could have gone down, once the two men were alerted to my presence it was survival of the fittest. Or in my case, the luckiest.
My breathing was still heavy from the exertion of pillaging the two dead bodies of anything that I may find useful. Unfortunately there was nothing electronic on either of them, so I was left with weapons, nearly a full change of clothing and some painkillers, which were a little too strong for me to take at the moment, I needed my wits about me and whatever remaining strength that I had.
I walked around the room, and stood pondering for a few moments, it had been nearly an hour since I killed the two guards – well technically, they killed each other – and the bright light of the magnesium flare was ebbing. There was only one flare left, each man had one each, I couldn’t take the risk of using the other so quickly, there might be a time when it will be needed, and this wasn’t worth wasting it on.
Thinking of every possible scenario, there was no way that I could move the car chassis beneath the ledge, it was too heavy for me even without the engine. There might have been a chance if it never had tyres on it, it was too big a risk for me to take, my energy levels needed to be used wisely.
Trying to attract attention was another option, but that was way too risky given my current predicament, last time luck was on my side, it may very well be running out as fast as this red flare.
An hour…
Somewhere in the back of my mind, be it through common knowledge or through my survival training, my thoughts went to the two dead bodies.
The onset of rigor would take about three hours, give or take.
“Nah forget it.” I was surprised to hear my voice jump in unannounced.
I would have to sit here in the darkness for the next two hours, place the bodies in a position that would give me sufficient leverage to jump onto the ledge, also the bodies wouldn’t be in full rigor until around twelve hours anyway, chances were that they would just crack and fall over on my initial contact. It was out of the question to wait around for twelve hours, something told me that these two men wouldn’t be missed for that amount of time, in fact, there was no telling when, who or what might come looking for them should they fail to report in.
They were also talking about a woman being held captive here, if she was nearby and as important as the two made out, then someone would be keeping close tabs on her status. It had also occurred to me that she may prove to be a useful ally.
That is, if she were Canadian… Like me.
If the woman was a different nationality from me then there was no way that she could be trusted. If I were to rescue her, arm her, she might simply turn around and put a bullet in my face, that would not be a good way to finish the shitty day I was already having. It was just the way things were in the world – if that’s what you could call it anymore – today.
Without a thought I climbed onto the cars hood and swiftly as I’ve ever moved in my interesting, event filled life, my feet slid away from me.
Now, I wasn’t too sure how I managed it, maybe it’s a natural thing that you’re born with, but I landed without breaking anything or even hurting myself. Shocked more than anything and gingerly getting to my feet, I looked around to see what the hell had just happened.
The cars hood was lying on the concrete floor, still gently swaying with a big dent where my size ten feet had clumsily lumbered on to.
Things were starting to look up, literally.
I moved as quickly as my body would allow my, a sharp stabbing pain in my foot reminding me that I wasn’t completely okay. Placing the metal hood against the wall at a slight slant and at its longest points, it gave me around five feet of leverage, it might just be enough for me to get a decent grip of the ledge above. I rubbed my eyes to try and regain focus on the scene around me, and realised that it wasn’t my weariness taking over, but the signal flare beginning to burn out. I had to be quick.
Dragging the two dead bodies, whose limbs began to crack and groan with the stiffening muscle tissue, I wedged them to secure the hood from sliding away from me as I stepped on it. I placed the half naked South African on top of his English counterpart and could have sworn he let out a sigh!
“Fuck!” I jumped back, almost shitting myself, staring at his fading face for a few moments I couldn’t help but laugh at the preposterous thoughts I was having.
I tested my footing, stepping on the two bodies that were gurgling and creaking beneath my feet, hoisted myself up onto the car hood and was relieved that my hands easily reached the ledge, in fact I could get one elbow up onto it if I moved myself properly.
It was decided that I could make it just as the light faded to black, and apart from my scuffling there wasn’t a noise to be heard.
One thing that could make a man go insane down here was the darkness, but if you were to combine that darkness with a total, deathly silence it would definitely increase the chances of someone mental. Training my mind not to let the imagination run wild, I threw the rifle, flare and pistol up onto the ledge. And braced myself for the final push.
“One, two…” On three I groaned as I leapt up onto the ledge, managing to get both my elbows up without too much trouble and grateful not to hear the makeshift metal step give way, I remained there, resting on my elbows for a moment in the darkness. I didn’t know what was around on this ledge that was worth grabbing hold of for leverage, so I couldn’t risk falling back into the abyss, one man had already learned that falling from this height into the darkness can really put a mark on your day.
I ‘sniped’ forwards, edging my left elbow forwards, then the right, after what seemed like an hour, I was on my stomach, almost there. Refusing the great temptation to reach out and grab something, I continued the action until I was up to my knees in solid concrete ledge.
It was amazing, the relief at being out of that potential trap, and ever so slight closer to safety. My body rolled over onto its back, then slid into a sitting position with my back firmly against one wall and my feet against the other. It was then that I did the only thing that I could think of…
I wept.
Closing my eyes in the darkness, there was no telling what damage would be done to them if this wasn’t done right. I held the cold length of tubing in my right hand and looked away in the opposite direction, crouching down on my right knee, I brought the end of the pipe down firmly on the concrete floor.
It was easy to tell even with my eyes closed that nothing happened, my limbs ached and weakened, but my resolve didn’t. So flipping the tube in my hand and repeating the process, what I was expecting to happen, happened.
There was a thunderous roar, multiplied tenfold by the enclosed confines of the room and an explosion of bright light. Kneeling for a few moments, remaining absolutely still with my eyes closed until the light died down a little, I winced as the bright light shocked my retinas with its harsh intrusion.
It took a few moments, which seemed to last forever as the silence around me began to creep back into my senses. My ears were still whistling their disgust at the loud noise they just had to deal with, sorry guys.
I slowly opened my eyes, and saw the two dead bodies lying in front of me, it was a disturbing sight but one that I had sort of grown used to in my recent history. One man’s head was facing an awkward direction, his neck very clearly broken, I guess that was the South African that had fallen from the ledge above. What was more disturbing was the fact that the acid still continued to eat away at his skin even after his untimely (or in my case, timely) death.
It wasn’t a pleasant sight.
But what was more interesting was the injury inflicted to the ‘Englishman’ lying next to him. He lay looking at the ceiling through one eye, his faced twisted with a look of surprise that almost had me laughing in my delirious state. The right eye was missing, along with most of the forehead just above it.
He was shot by his friend.
I almost laughed out loud in the confines of the room but didn’t, what luck was on my side at the moment? I throw a bottle of acid at two armed men, one of which then goes on to shoot the other in the head, before falling and breaking their own neck, along with a couple of other bones as far as I could see.
There was only one thing to do, I fell on my ass, the relief and the outrageousness of the situation tickled my gullet. Before long I was giggling wildly in the room now lit in a foreboding shade of red, thanks to the signal flare that I had found on one of the dead bodies.
The moment of happiness soon subsided as there was still a lot to be done before I was on safe ground, if there was such a thing down here. I couldn’t risk extinguishing the flare for what I had to do, it was probably burning at too low a temperature anyway, I had to find a source of heat, my ransacking of the bodies had to continue.
In luck again! There was a lighter in the Africans jacket pocket, wrapped in a stretch of cloth that would also suit my purpose, flicking the oil lighter into action and waiting a few moments to let it get to its full heat, I folded my legs with the heel of my injured foot facing the ceiling. Unsheathing the combat knife from the Englishman’s left leg and raising the blade to the flame, I waited.
It gave me a few moments of reflection, the unanswered question as to my being here was still troubling the back of my mind, but what was also interesting was the fact that, despite me being here, no one was watching me.
No-one knew I was here??
Then what the hell was I doing here? With the burning magnesium flare placed next to the rusty old car (which was actually cut in half!) I managed to take more of the scene in around me. The doorway that the two men had fallen from was just an opening in the top corner of the room, covered by a badly secured metal mesh that had completely detached itself as the two men fell. All four walls were solid concrete, with no doors save for the opening above me and the ceiling…
The ceiling was made of metal, two huge doors came together in the centre and looked just as sturdy as the concrete that held them. On to of the walls, facing opposite each other there were metal recesses. I appeared to me in some sort of lowered platform and couldn’t see the control mechanism from here, it must be located somewhere behind the doors. Meaning there was no possible way for me to get in here unless via the twelve foot drop from the opening, which may go to explain why I was aching all over. Or it meant I was lying here before the platform got lowered.
There was nothing else of value on the platform, half a car, two dead bodies, burning fluid and broken bottles were the only things that accompanied me.
Satisfied that the knife in my hand was as hot as it was going to get, I quickly moved the blade onto the wound in my foot, almost trying to tell myself it wasn’t going to hurt.
“Fuck!”
It hurt, big time, but I kept the knife on the cut just long enough to sear the skin together on the surface. As far as I could tell, there was no other glass in the wound, so apart from the sharp pain I was going to feel for the next few days while walking, it was okay. A first aid kit would have been more preferable, but given the circumstances finding one of those anywhere except in an infirmary would be like looking for a needle in a stack full of needles. It simply wasn’t going to happen.
Gingerly getting to my feet, without scruple I moved to the dead Englishman’s feet, I needed to find boots, and semi-clean socks. I could tell immediately that his feet were too small so I limped, wincing at every step towards the South African.
“Sorry buddy.” I wasn’t really, his boots looked like a nice fit so there was no time to waste, untying the laces and pulling them off, I saw to my amazement that his socks were clean, almost fresh considering the filthy state that I found myself in.
Excellent, I was now fully clothed with comfortable boots, my chances of surviving this hell were increasing by the minute.
“Now… I’ll be needing those weapons.”
The footsteps echoed loudly in the darkness as the two shadows approached from above. Blocking out whatever light there was left by the open doorway in the top right hand corner of the room, opposite where I was now with my back pinned against the wall. I was sure it wouldn't take them long to find me, all they would need to do was flick on a light switch and my game was over.
But I knew that they would not do that, these people preferred to operate under the cover of darkness, and I’d be surprised if any of the lights in this place actually worked anyway.
The bottles of glass had stopped making any noise, but they now posed another problem…
I was barefoot.
But that wasn’t all, the pungent odour that was now scorching my nostrils and the back of my throat informed me bluntly that the content of the bottles was far from friendly.
So here I was, trapped in a dark concrete room, two armed men moving in on the commotion that I had stupidly created, barefoot, unarmed and weakening by the moment…
Great…
I did the only thing that I could think of, I gingerly moved my right hand through the darkness and felt for an undamaged – hopefully full – bottle from the crate that I had knocked over. Luck was on my side, if only in a faint sense of the word, there was a bottle left in the wooden box, the liquid on the floor was beginning to sizzle loudly in the silence broken only by the harsh English accent.
“Who the fuck is down there?” there was a short pause for a reply as I wrapped my fingers tightly around the bottleneck, there was one chance, and it was a slim chance at best. The sound of the thugs’ rifle mechanism being cocked broke the silence, not a good sign, my window of opportunity opened slightly for me, albeit slightly ajar, “Show yourself, slowly and you won’t be harmed.”
“I can’t see a bloody thing man!” the South African shadow appeared closely behind that of the Englishman, that made my target slightly larger, so in my weakened state I wouldn’t have to be as accurate as I once thought.
“Give it a moment you fool, your eyes will focus to the light.” Englishman reassured him. He was right, it wouldn’t be long before the two men could see me clearly, then it would be bottle against bullet, in that scenario there would only be one winner.
Mustering all the strength that I had left from my aching limbs, I slowly moved myself away from the wall. The last thing I wanted was to make the effort, only to smash the bottle against the wall I was standing next to. I’d deserve to be shot if that happened, luckily avoiding the burning liquid on the concrete floor, I poised myself for action.
“What’s that?” The Englishman pointed in my direction, luckily for me he wasn’t pointing with his gun, I had run out of time.
Taking a step forward for leverage, I felt the skin on my left heel grow hot almost instantly. The searing pain shot up my ankle and almost took me off balance, but I was determined to see this action through, even if it was my last.
“What the…” The South African saw the glimmering object floating through the air, his eyes widened at the realisation that the aforementioned object was swiftly moving in their direction. He raised his rifle and took aim, with his English comrade still wondering what the hell was going on.
I found out at that moment that the African man was a great shot, the green bottle that was flying through the darkness exploded into a thousand pieces, the contents continued in the direction I hoped for.
Both men shrieked in agony, and then something surreal and unexpected happened…
The South African man was holding a pistol, instead of a rifle like the other thug was holding, a more sensible option considering the enclosed passages and dark areas, but with the burning acid already eating out his eyeballs, all reasonable actions were out of the window, shuddering in pain, he began firing randomly into the darkness, I dived for cover towards the only place I knew, the ‘car’. I pushed with my left foot and the agonising pain multiplied tenfold, the thought occurred to me then that it wasn’t the acid eating into my heel that was causing it.
It was broken glass.
Bullets ricocheted off the wall where I was standing, and then a muffled cry rang out, it sounded like it came from the Englishman before a dull thud reverberated on the floor nearby in the darkness. The shrieking from the African also died down, ending with a deathly gargle as and a crunch of broken bones. They had both fallen into the room I was in!
Feeling my foot for the pieces of glass, there were no more sounds and no backup arriving, at least for the moment. There it was, the shard of broken glass sticking into my foot a little deeper now thanks to me putting my weight on it, there was little acid on the shard so the pain from that was minimal.
Dripping with sweat, breathing like I’d just been on a 5 mile hike since the fallout, I gritted my teeth. The glass had to come out and it had to come out now, before anyone else arrived.
Screaming through my teeth I pulled the shard of glass out of my foot without care or consideration, nearly passing out with the pain as the inch long piece of glass clattered to the floor. Panting for breath and mustering up any energy that I could, a thought occurred to me.
Limping around the other side of the cars frame, I located the two dead men lying on the floor below the open doorway. One thing that was noticeable was the lack of stairs leading down from it, it was just a sheer drop, it didn’t make any sense. Saying that, not a lot did at the moment as my fingers traced over one of the dead bodies, it wasn’t long before I found what I was looking for.
Holding the object in my hand, I knew exactly what it was, and exactly how to use it. The sizzling acid melted into the faces of the two dead bodies but I was oblivious to the fact now, one thing I needed to do...
One last surge of pain…
The cold…
That’s what hit me first as my lungs drew in the dusty, fetid air around me. The smell was making the gag reflex work overtime, but most of all the feeling of the cold, stone floor was what hit my senses first.
That was, until I tried to get up, “Shit!” I managed to whisper with a bloated dry tongue, the pain was searing. Pushing all other the senses out of my system the pain started in my fingers, then spreading the arms, chest and legs. It was at that precise moment the revelation came, the starkest of all realisations hit me like a lightning bolt.
I was blind.
“What the hell is going on here?” I mumbled as the dry tongue feeling began to fade, managed to lift myself into a sitting position, luckily there was a wall nearby made of what felt like solid concrete, I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.
Were my eyelids closed through some sort of injury, or was I really blind? Lifting my aching hands to my face to feel for a blindfold and finding none, the adulation sweeps over me as I see the silhouette of my fingers against the darkened background, at least I’m not blind then. So where the hell am I??
The room was incredibly dark, almost bordering on perpetual, yet there they were, my fingers dancing slowly and painfully in front of my face. Shaking my limbs to find out if any of my injuries are serious, I’m glad to find that there is nothing broken nor torn.
Giving myself a once over to see if I’m leaking fluids of any serious nature, turns out sweat is the only dampness I feel, dripping off my forehead and down my back. Unusual in such a cold room, makes me wonder how long I had been lying there, could have been hours, minutes or merely moments.
Wearing what feels like a grimy T-shirt and loose denim jeans, the feel of the floor on my feet tells me that I’m barefooted.
“What were you saying man?” a voice echoed in the distance, very faint but discernible at least. It sounded as though the guy who just spoke was from Australia, or maybe South Africa. Whatever it was it made me freeze like a rabbit in headlights, I had no idea where I was, therefore I had no idea where to run and hide, if that was even an option!
“I cant remember, Benedict wants us to keep an eye on her, turns out she’s a troublesome little bitch.” The other voice said, he was definitely English and the other was South African. What the hell was I doing here stuck in the darkness?
Looking toward the source of the noise, there was a lighter shade of darkness. The eyes now began focusing in the distance saw what appeared to be an open doorway about twelve feet off of the floor, in what I guessed as being the corner of the room.
The shadow of what looked like one man holding what could only be a rifle, was looking to his right. The other man was just out of sight, so there must be a corridor running in that direction.
Taking a deep breath of the musty air around me, my right leg moves forward, with one hand on solid wall I test the area around me to make sure I’m safe to walk. Deciding that would more than likely lead to injury, I get myself back down on all fours, desperately trying to remember the location of the open doorway. Moving my right hand forward and testing the floor in front of me with my fingertips, which are greeted with more cold stone. Time for the left hand…
Thud.
My left hand knocked into something solid and bounced off again, although there was no real noise the sensation caused my whole body to freeze and listen for the voices above.
“Then why don’t we just kill her man? Heller-Fontaine wants her dead, we can say she tried to escape and we shot her. Then we can get out of this shitty place.” The South African man stated coldly, the determination in his voice sent shivers up my spine and drove my senses into action once more, there had to be a way out of here.
Heller-Fontaine, where had I heard that name before, it certainly sent some bells ringing, but they were more distant than the two voices that were debating the future of some helpless female prisoner.
“Because Benedict wants that filth kept alive, don’t ask me why, but she’s pretty important for some reason. Just be happy that we got to rough her up a bit before throwing her in the cell.” The Englishmen said as he chuckled with his South African comrade.
The chivalrous nature within me began to bubble to the surface for a brief moment before settling down again, I had to be realistic about the situation I was in.
So my left hand reached out again for whatever it was it had just touched, this time making contact softly with the alien surface. It was certainly warmer to the touch than the stone cold floor I was crouched on, the surface was smooth, but also had angular ridges running in straight lines over its surface. Feeling further around the surface I realised at that moment that it was a tyre.
A vehicle!
I raised my hand slowly at first to find the front left wing of the car facing my direction. The cool metallic surface of the cars hood now reflected the faint glowing light from the open doorway above. Now that my senses had recovered almost fully, I saw that there was a chain link fence between this room and the two men.
There was a car here, in this room, that meant only one thing, there had to be an exit! And from the dimensions of the room that could be seen and felt, with the car in the vicinity the exit must be nearby. My initial thought was to break cover and try to find some sort of doorway, then common sense got a hold of me in the cover of darkness, telling me if I was to escape on foot, I wouldn’t get far.
Not with my now rapidly deteriorating energy levels, the adrenaline coursing through my system was now beginning to wear off. If I was to leave, the car was coming with me, I just prayed that this fucker was working.
I moved around to where I thought the door of the car would be, feeling for a door handle that couldn’t be found, the main reason for that being that there was no car door.
It was missing!
No car door? Surely not, feeling around the chassis hoping this was some kind of modified car or jeep, my optimism faded rapidly into the darkness that it arrived from. The car wasn’t in one piece, if anything, this was a work in progress, or a dumping area for wrecked cars, either way, that method of escape had dwindled.
I let out a deep sigh, remembering to keep quiet as to not be heard by the two men chatting idly above me in the distance. Needing to find another hope of escape I moved carefully back to the wall that I had come from, when I felt my right knee nudge something...
CRASH!
“What the fuck was that?” The South African spoke with sudden alarm at the sound I had created, my body shrank against the concrete wall, next to the glass bottles that jangled and smashed loudly in the darkness, the noise soon followed by the footsteps of the two men approaching above…