Copyright 2012 Michael Offutt. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.
No part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including printing, photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system without permission in writing from the author.
This novella is a work of fiction and uses characters featured in the book "SLIPSTREAM" available in ebook or paperback by Double Dragon Publishing and Media Group. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Email: kavrik@hotmail.com Website: http://slckismet.blogspot.com/p/books.html Twitter: @MichaelOffutt
Author's Note: If you visit my website, there is a picture of Jordan that I drew myself in the gif image at the link found above. This novella and the book "Slipstream" is based off of the events established in the short story, "The Insanity of Zero" also published on the Nifty Archive. If you haven't read it, please check it out.
Chapter Three
"Rabbits old boy," Kolin said, shaking Jordan by the shoulder.
"What time is it?"
"I haven't the slightest. But the bathroom will be empty at this hour so you'd better get a wash while you can."
Jordan stood up, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and grabbed a towel from atop a wicker table by the door, and proceeded down the hall to the communal shower facility. He didn't know what time it was. What he did know was that it was still early enough that the sun hadn't risen above the mountains.
The water in the shower felt hard but at least it was warm. It left his skin feeling dry. His sister was awake when he returned, and he gave her directions. Jordan modesty donned his jeans and shirt as they were the only clothes he had brought with him.
The shanty they'd hunkered down in for the night lay in quiet this morning. Out by the perimeter of the camp, workers toiled away in the oil refinery. He could hear them far beyond the only window in the room.
Jordan walked over to the dirty glass and gazed southwest. Appearing like a ghost in ivory above the horizon rose a twisted ruin--a colossal structure from an alien time. Because the sun had set on them last night before they'd been close enough, he hadn't seen the White Tower.
Despite having been told of it since he'd met Kolin, he was still astonished that its ruin was so huge. If it'd been whole, the top of it might have brushed the upper layers of the stratosphere. He reasoned that it must have been an absolutely titanic undertaking. How could a civilization have built it? It staggered his mind to think that the base of it lay hundreds of miles in that direction, and yet he could still see it in the dawn.
Kolin slid up next to him with the deft grace of a prowling cheetah. The Brit's predator-like eyes darted about with that same nervousness that wild cats have out on the plains when stalking prey. He hooked Jordan about the shoulders, skin warm and smooth. He smelled faintly of sweat and Jordan decided that he liked it and wondered how Kolin might taste.
"The air hums for miles around the base of the structure and the landscape is featureless and cracked like the most water-starved desert you can imagine," Kolin said. "The wind never blows near the proximity of the tower's base and nothing dares to fly in the sky. It's like a zone of death, eerie, quiet, and alien."
"What's inside?"
"No one knows as no one has returned from it. Plenty of people have ventured inside, but there's something about the tower that makes communication impossible. And the people that have gone inside don't ever come out again." He looked back over his shoulder. "To commit a non- sequitur, I think we'll grab some morning grub before heading out. Did you 'rabbits' your sis by any chance and tell her where to find the bathroom?"
Jordan glanced back at Kolin with an embarrassed, almost pained expression. It was then that Ashley spoke up, acting as an interpreter. "He means did you wake her up? His accent can be difficult to grasp sometimes."
"I knew that's what he meant of course," Jordan said. He didn't really, but he, like most boys, didn't like to admit when he didn't know something. "She's just in the shower."
However, just as he finished saying that, Kathy walked in from the corridor, towel wrapped about the midriff. Her timing seemed perfect, as if she'd overheard the others carrying on about her. Silently, she went about donning the same garments she'd worn on the previous day. A gentleman, Kolin was not, and he watched her get dressed even when she dropped the towel.
"I wish I'd time to grab a change of clothes before we set out on this whole journey," she stated.
"I'll meet you fellas down in the pub," Ashley said, grabbing her pack. She buckled on her belt and exited the room.
"Well that seemed hasty," Jordan said.
"In what way?" Kathy asked.
The three of them waited while Kathy put on her sneakers.
"I don't trust her entirely," Jordan said. "It's a feeling. She seems far too accommodating."
"What's that?" Kolin asked, adjusting the straps that held the two swords across his back. "She's my mate, the same as you two. And I'm not saying that just because I find her dishy. The fact that we ran into her at all is the dog's bollocks. Our journey together has barely started so put a sock in all the pessimism, all right?"
Kathy gazed back at Jordan who shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "It's just a gut feeling."
"Alrighty then," Kolin said. "You've spoken your peace about this, and I've heard you out." He gestured toward the door. When Jordan scowled, Kolin responded with a toothy smile to offer physical reassurance.
Jordan let out a boyish sigh, and the two of them followed Kolin down the staircase. Kolin swung open the outside door that led to the street and stepped onto the dirt when Jordan caught a flash in his peripheral vision. Then he heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun being loaded and cocked. He stopped and cautiously raised his hands above his shoulders, spread his fingers, and didn't dare move. Next to him, his sister did the same and a bead of sweat broke out along his brow just as he felt something cold and unyielding pressed to the back of his skull.
Altogether, there were four men and six women holding rifles and shotguns aimed at their small group. Two of the them thrummed their fingers eagerly on their rifles. Directly in front of him, Kolin dodged a woman who swung the barrel of her gun at his head and the ring of steel sounded as the spring-loaded sheath with the rainbow-colored metal appeared on Kolin's wrist guard. Before he could use it to gut the female assailant in her abdomen, an earth-shattering gunshot pealed like thunder and left Jordan's ears ringing. All of them instantly froze in place. Ashley strode up to Kolin, nudging aside two men with the barrel of a Smith & Wesson style rifle that smelled of gunpowder.
"All right maybe there is more to this gut feeling thing than I was willing to give cred to," Kolin said bitterly. Then he dropped his helmet in the dirt and raised his hands in surrender.
"Stuff a sock in it," Ashley said to Kolin.
"Ashley-" Kolin continued. "Why?"
His beautiful face showed the reflection of betrayal that he must have felt in his heart. Then, the corner of the handsome Brit's turned angry and his lips parted as if he were on the verge of yelling. Before he could utter even a single word, however, the red-headed woman punched him in the throat with the barrel of her rifle, threw it to the ground, and then unsheathed a small pocket knife which she drew across his Adam's apple in a shallow enough cut to miss the jugular. It all happened in the blink of an eye, smooth and practiced, like she'd cut throats so many times before that she could do so with surgical accuracy. Bright red blood appeared almost instantly as Kolin fell to the ground. Gurgling and choking, he moved a gloved hand to his throat protectively. Jordan silently wondered if he was about to witness a Columbian necktie.
"No!" Kathy screamed. Ashley walked over to her and ordered the others to lower their weapons. Kathy angrily stared into Ashley's snake eyes but the woman's expression remained unchanging, like that of a reptile. After a brief, contemptuous smirk, Ashley backhanded her, knocking Kathy down on one knee, and then gripped the blond girl by the hair and jerked her back to her feet again. The redhead placed the flat of the blade against Kathy's cheek still wet with Kolin's life blood. Jordan shuffled in his thin-soled sneakers anxiously, kicking up dust clouds, when the barrel of the gun cracked his skull a second time as a painful reminder not to move.
On the ground, Kolin was grasping at his injured throat when two women pressed his lithe frame into the dirt with thick-soled leather boots and shackled his hands behind his back.
"I'll take these two to the edge of town and shoot them," Ashley declared in a loud enough voice for everyone to hear clearly. "Load the other one into the back of the truck headed for St. Louis. Wraith will want our prisoner alive." Ashley thrust Kathy's body away from her and walked over to pick up her rifle which she then reloaded in front of them. The others started dragging Kolin to his feet and Jordan worried at the blood he saw in the dirt.
Ashley held the rifle at arm's length for a brief moment and motioned for Jordan and Kathy to pivot in their spot and turn 180-degrees. "Now, Move!" the woman ordered, once again holding the rifle in two hands. She placed it in the small of Kathy's back. "Don't even think about trying anything or I'll kill her," she said to Jordan.
Kathy trembled with fright and glanced over at her brother but Jordan's face was unreadable. He said, "Let's just go where she wants us to go, Kat," in as steady a voice as he could manage.
Kathy nodded, acknowledging his words. Behind her, Ashley thrust the point of the rifle into Kathy's spine forcing her feet forward. "Let's go," she gestured impatiently.
Their captor forced them to walk to the southern edge of town to an opening on the side of a hill dominated by a dark hole that served as the entrance to an ancient mine. The entrance had been squared off with thick wooden railroad trusses framing a pitted and rusty iron gate which had been installed over the tracks. When they were alone, Ashley spoke, "You're not going to die, at least not by my hands," she said. "Now, open the gate."
Jordan reached out with his right hand and grasped one of the bars. It felt dry and had the texture of sandpaper in his palm. Red dust flaked off in a small cloud, staining his skin that same color from just a mere touch. He gave it a tug and the old hinges squealed in protest but the door eventually swung outward.
"Now, the both of you go into that hole," she ordered. As if to emphasize her control, she practically knocked Kathy to the ground with one thrust of the rifle.
"Stop it," Jordan warned.
"Or what?"
Jordan set his jaw like he did whenever he got angry and grasped his sister's hand. Kathy regained her balance and went forward into the mine and then turned around. Jordan gingerly stepped inside while Ashley swung a pack from her back and flung it to the ground next to his dirty shoes. Then she kicked the door shut, grabbed a chain from a barrel on the right side of the entrance, and locked the door with an iron padlock.
"I didn't want it to come to this," she said. "Kolin and I were lovers a long time ago but a lot has changed in the time that he's been gone. He's got a huge bounty on his head, and I need the resources. But you two don't need to die- not today." She relaxed a little on the other side of the door and raised her gun to the air. "No one has ever survived a night in the mine, but I'm not completely heartless. You'll find a flashlight and some food and water in that pack. If you do get out, no hard feelings eh? I'm just doing a job."
Jordan stepped forward and tugged at the iron gate with his hands, causing it only to rattle. "He'll die in St. Louis," he stated. "Ashley, the monsters will kill him."
The red-head flicked her hair over the shoulder. "We all die sometime," she stated flatly. "But he won't die immediately. No, he'll be tortured and wish for death long before it finds him. Sometimes, dear one, it can be amazing what one has to go through before you finally reach your end. Kolin's going to find that out first hand. Wraith has a special fate reserved for him I'm sure. Kolin's made lots of enemies in his life. This is his comeuppance. His death buys me a way back into Kilvarough City by purchasing a second identity. Those things cost money, and that's something I just don't have. He deserves what he's getting--you have no idea what he's like."
Kathy spat at the woman on the other side of the gate, but it fell short and landed in brown dust. Ashley laughed, then loaded the rifle, and pulled the trigger, aiming high. A peal of thunder rang out. Then she repeated the stunt. "Two shots for the both of you. The settlers back there in the town will think you're dead." Ashley shrugged, "Make the best of it. As for me, I need to collect on a bounty and see young Mr. Lightfoot off to his fate."
She left them then, turning about face and headed back to town with the gun over her shoulder. Jordan immediately crouched and opened the backpack Inside, just as she'd claimed, he found a flashlight, a day's worth of food, and a large bottle of clean water.
"What are we going to do?" Kathy asked him.
"I don't know," he said, flatly. The sandy-haired young man turned his head and gazed into the oppressive darkness. The remains of spider webs drifted lazily in a gentle breeze like pieces of gossamer and the dirt covered tracks extended into the gloom of the shaft and eventually disappeared. "Maybe there's another way out."
"What did she mean that no one ever survives a night in the mine? Was that some kind of warning? Was she trying to say that there's a monster down here?" Her eyes darted back and forth as a result of her anxiety. "I'm scared, Jordan."
"Kat, I'd like to say something reassuring here, like 'Don't be scared', but I can't. I'm frightened as well. But we need to do something and the only thing I can think of is following these tracks and seeing where they lead. It's morning now. I dunno-maybe if we can find a way out of the mine before sunset we'll be okay. Maybe that's what she meant. If that's true, then we have roughly fourteen hours until darkness--maybe not even that much. It's difficult to tell because I don't know what day it is."
"I'd go with twelve hours," she stated, concentrating on slowing down her breathing.
"All right, twelve hours it is. So we need to get moving or in twelve hours, we'll know for certain what it is that calls these tunnels home. I don't know about you but my propensity for scientific observation doesn't include field work like this."
She smiled and set her jaw with a determined fashion while looking on at her smart brother. Then, she reached over and took the flashlight in her hand. "I'll carry this; you grab the backpack." Jordan nodded in agreement and the two of them turned their back on the sunlight streaming in through the iron gate and stepped onto the old railroad tracks and began walking deeper into the unknown, the soles of their sneakers sending up thin clouds of fine dirt.
Soon, like so many other things before them, they'd been swallowed whole by the black throat of the mine.
I hope you like the story thus far. Chapter Four coming soon.