I’d kill a couple for posterity’s sake and then we’d be through. The steps stopped right outside the hole. I had my pistol pointed up and what I’m sure was a grim look of determination on my face. This was not how I figured going out. But then, who does know? Once read this thing where a guy got buried in elephant shit and died. Can’t imagine he knew that was going to happen when he woke up that morning. Probably took a couple of bites from a burnt bagel, a large swallow of orange juice, kissed his wife, and then headed off to his job at the zoo. Jumbo the elephant suffering through a bout of constipation is given a little assistance by his keeper who falls off his chair, strikes the corner of it, and passes out only to have Jumbo, much to the elephant’s personal relief, completely evacuate a quarter-ton of backed-up oats and straw directly on top of the poor guy. Yeah, no fucking way he saw that twist of fate. What do you want to bet he was planning on quitting after that day’s shift? I mean how many elephant asses can you stick your arm up before you’ve had enough?
I thought I saw an elongated finger reaching down through the notched hole. This was it; my finger was pressing tight on the trigger, a pound, maybe less, of pressure and I’d be sending rounds up and through that gelatinous fuck. It was the smell that got me first. A vile black stream of what I think passed for whistler piss was coming through the hole. Burnt eggs, that was the smell; it sizzled as it struck the rocks on my side. Trip was going to get his wish after all because I was not going to be able to sleep over there now. I backed up from the stream that was obviously reacting to the environment around it. Where droplets contacted the wires, I watched as the heavy plastic conduit began to melt. I moved to the far wall and looked to where it was hitting the stones, and I couldn’t be completely sure, but their surfaces appeared to be glowing red as if they were melting into lava. If I’d spun that lid the other way, there would be a good chance that Trip and I would be screaming from the chemical burns raining down upon us.
I was afraid if he dropped his trousers and took a crap that the offal would be like bombs exploding on contact with the ground. Not all that difficult to believe, considering. He finally called it quits, and I figured things would get better—they didn’t. The hole started filling up with smoke, sulfuric acid type smoke, as his puddle of pee began to eat through the steel cover. Trip was cupping his hands and trying to pull the smoke into his nose and mouth, thinking it was some sort of wasted bong hit. To compound the horror, I started to see fingers of light through the once solid disc above us. I could not even fathom how the whistler could carry something so toxic within it that it could eat through a quarter-inch of steel in minutes. That would have been bad enough, but a few minutes after we received our new ventilation system, half of the disc fell to the ground—not before it struck the pipes, though. Inside that hole, the noise was deathly loud. Sure, my eardrums weren’t bleeding, but if a whistler came to investigate, well, you can imagine the implications.
At first, I figured this had to be some sort of hunting party, that somehow, someway, they had stumbled upon our trail. Trip had probably left corn chips like bread crumbs. Then I rethought that. He wouldn’t waste one, ever. I’d seen him pick half a chip up off the roadway and pop into his mouth like that was the most normal thing ever. Sure, if we were low on rations and starving, otherwise not so much.
“Get wasted not, want not,” he had told me.
I told him I didn’t think that was how the saying went, and he made sure to tell me in no uncertain terms that indeed it did. And in a Trip sort of logic, it fit.
“You see, if you don’t get wasted, then you don’t really want munchies.”
It didn’t really matter why they’d stopped, hunting party or just some cruel joke from the cosmos. Though I was thinking it was less of the former; they weren’t fanning out and they weren’t looking. There wasn’t an abundant amount of clicking and whistling. There was a good chance they were calling it a night. Made sense. We were out in the open, expansive vistas for miles. The chances there were any night runners in the area were minimal. Sure the whistlers were dangerous, but so were the night runners, and they didn’t seem to be friends. No chance they’d want to go through a city in the middle of the night and expose themselves to certain danger. In that, we and the whistlers shared common ground. It wasn’t much, but it was something. Not that it would save me from a poisonous staple and subsequent dragging. That might not even be the most dangerous part—if they started using this hole as their personal porta potty, we’d be in serious trouble.
“Trip,” I whispered. “We need to get into those empty holes.” I couldn’t believe I was even uttering the words.
“Ponch, you don’t like tight spaces,” he said in all seriousness.
I wanted to ask him how he knew, but of all the phobias I possessed, that one was one I shared with a great many of the population; wasn’t such a stretch for him to think that.
“You get in that one, I’ll get in this one over here.”
I picked the side where the rocks had been turning into slag. I was afraid he wouldn’t be careful enough and would get some on his soles or something. Plus, I wanted to make sure he actually got in his. All right, the real reason was that I was stalling; I wanted to get into that thing as much as I wanted someone to pull my fingernails out. I was getting a bout of anxiety just thinking about it.
“Want a Valium?” Trip asked as he headed over to my preordained hole.
“You’ve got some?” As good an idea as that sounded, I couldn’t imagine being drugged if we were ultimately forced to fight our way out.
“I wish, man.”
“Ass. Where are you going?”
“That side, it would be better if we stuck together.”
“Trip, I appreciate the camaraderie, but that means you’re going to have to go about twenty feet in, and with me in the way, you’re not going to see the opening.” Just saying the words was giving me heart palpitations.
“You’re the one with the irrational fear of enclosed spaces. Me? Makes me feel like I’m back in the warmth and safety of my mother’s womb.”
Maybe that should have made it better for me, but it didn’t.
“You know you’re only born with two fears, that of falling and of loud noises. The rest is in your head.” Trip thumped the side of his own with a finger. “Think on that,” he said gleefully as he entered. Head first, I might add. Within a few seconds, he and his bags of Phritos had scurried so far down I couldn’t even see him.
“Must be easy not to think about something when you don’t have any usable brain left.”
“The thing about a tight shaft like this is that it focuses sound. I can hear you. You should get in now,” Trip said clearly.
Head first was not an option for me. And getting in feet first was a more difficult prospect than I had anticipated. After some grunting, shuffling, and scraping of some parts that don’t necessarily enjoy being treated roughly, I was in. My head was about five feet from the exit, I had my gun out in front of me, but I did not have a whole bunch of maneuverability. With one arm tucked to my side and one mostly stuck in front of me, getting even a modicum of comfort was out of the question. Spending the entire night like this was going to seem like several eternities.
Trip, on the other hand, was snoring almost immediately, like just the fact that he was in the horizontal position necessitated him being asleep. I reluctantly had to crawl deeper a couple of times to kick his feet because he was making so much noise. The human body is only capable of handling so much stress before either something blows or it shuts down; thankfully, mine decided to shut down. I was tired and I succumbed to that, figuring it would be a lot easier to deal with the present situation if I wasn’t awake for it. I awoke with a start some time later; there were a few terrifying seconds when I had no idea where I was. I thought maybe I’d been buried alive as I tried to rise and slammed my ass and the back of my head into the concrete conduit.
My right firearm-clad arm was asleep and I had to take
whizz like no one's business. But something, some sort of internal alarm told me that to move was not in my best interests. The whistlers were still outside, else I would have heard the noise of that many motorcycles starting and pulling away. It was the quiet, tomb-like, stifled silence of the night that had me convinced all was not well. Even down in the hole, I should have been able to hear something. Crickets, an owl hooting off in the distance. Nocturnal rodents scurrying about looking for an errant nut, that kind of thing. I was convinced being dead had more sound. This was an expectant silence, like there was a void of sound being saved up to be released in some cataclysmic event. I banged my head again when Trip spoke by my feet.
“Shit man, you scared the hell out of me.”
“If only I could do that,” he said almost sadly.
That was a sentence I would reflect on much, much later in a vastly different place, but right now I attributed it to Trip being Trip.
“How did you turn around?”
That seemed to be the greatest puzzle of the day, and at minimum something to be vaguely concerned about. I had about thirty seconds to figure it out when any thoughts of it were ripped from the forefront. The screech of a night runner was perfectly highlighted in the stillness. Another was added, and another, until finally there was the full-throated war cry of dozens of them. That got the clicking and high-pitched whistles going as well. In a perfect world, the whistlers would hop on their hogs and screw off, taking the night runners with them. This was not that world. Even above the din, I could hear the air-pulsing push of the whistler staples as they raced out to find their targets.
A full-scale battle was being waged above us. It was my sincerest hope that neither side won and that they killed each other to the last man. Or whatever they were. The screams reached a feverish pitch as the night runners finally made contact with the whistlers and some of them were pulled apart and eaten. I could hear the sinuous tear of limbs being ripped from bodies and teeth shredding fabric and flesh. That had been bad enough, but I’d totally not been expecting the next thing. I don’t know if it was tossed in here or fell through on its race to the whistler meat market, but a night runner fell in, snapping its leg in a couple of different places as it careened off the piping.
It pushed up off the ground, obviously in a great deal of pain, but that didn’t stop it from smelling something, namely us. Its eyes shone as its head swiveled, and then he was looking right down the tube at me.
“Fuck,” I hissed.
We were basically canned food in this tube; I could not fight it like this. I was going to have to use my pistol. It came in quickly, its hands were upon my shoulders and its head was nearly pressed up against the barrel of my weapon when I pulled the trigger. Him being shoved in there and the proximity of the end of the barrel to his head reduced some of the decibels. But my ears were ringing like I’d gone to a twenty-four-hour death metal festival in Germany. The ringing was so loud it was painful, my eyes were closed and I was wincing the pain away. The good news was that the bullet had completely removed the top of the night runner’s skull; that much I had seen from the explosion of the bullet as it exited its chamber. Blood was flowing, this I knew because I could feel it traveling down my forearm; soon enough the lower part of me would be submerged in the sticky liquid. My first inclination was to push the runner out of the hole.
He stank something fierce, and now he had the audacity to leak on me. But he was also a natural barrier, should something have heard the shot. It was going to be easy enough to figure out what was going on when they saw the bottom half of him sticking out of the hole, though. When my eardrums mercifully eased up on the throbbing that threatened to tear them in two, I could still hear the battle above being waged. If they’d heard the shot at all, they weren’t worried about it during the present conflict and would deal with it later. The heavens opened up again, and this time it rained down a whistler—tough to tell if he was dead before he got tossed down in here or if the fall did him in. His body was draped over the conduit and he was presenting his weapon-laden arm to me like a debutante might to a suitor in 1850s France. Much like that hormone--laden man smelling the sweet ambrosia of a woman coming of age, I wanted that weapon as much as he wanted her virtue.
If I had to pop off multiple rounds of my pistol, my head was going to explode from the concussive forces of the expended bullets. Plus, there was the issue of ammunition, which I was dangerously low on. I had the misfortune of sticking my hand straight into the night runner’s exposed brain. It was surprisingly resilient and fibrous for what it was; I was expecting something more akin to Jell-O and that my hand would sink well past my wrist. Even so, I readjusted so I was pushing against his shoulder. He unceremoniously fell to the floor as I wriggled my way to freedom. Now that I was out, I couldn’t imagine getting back in. I looked back into the hole. Trip was lighting up a jay; he took a toke and told me to watch out. I didn’t know what he meant until another whistler fell down into the hole. This one’s mask had been torn from its head and the majority of its hideous face had been chewed through. I was thankful that the small amount of moonlight streaming down into the hole was not any brighter.
I had to go around Chewie to get to my arm-offerer——in hindsight, I really didn’t have to, Chewie had a weapon as well; I was just so focused on one aspect that I was not adapting quickly. What I was thinking was that Chewie had not stumbled into this hole——he or she was already dead, and that meant something, something vital. I was halfway through wrestling off the weapon when it dawned on me, a full minute before another whistler made the small journey.
“Trip, we have to get out of here!” Sure, I said the words, but I don’t know what we were going to do about it. The night runners were winning, and they were stashing their food supply so that they could leisurely dine once the sun came up. “The night runners are going to come down here soon to roost.”
I saw his face illuminate as he took a particularly long drag.
“I don’t have enough Phritos for them all.”
His face had a genuine look of horror at the prospect that he might actually have to share. Not for the fact that a cannibal-like creature warped by a virus wanted to kill and eat us. I guess it didn’t really matter what motivation drove him. I spent a minute I didn’t feel I had undoing the straps of Chewie’s weapon.
“Come on Trip, we’ll try to sneak out while no one is looking.” I knew the futility of those words even as I said them. The battle was being waged within feet of this hole, so the odds we were going to be able to just pop our heads out and walk away was so slim Vegas wouldn’t even post them. Like it was a glow stick dropped down an unfathomably deep hole, I watched the cherry-red end of Trip’s joint fade away as he went deeper in. I placed my mouth against the opening, hoping that no one topside would hear.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
“Ponch, when did you get so thick? I’m getting out of here. You should grab a six-pack of coke, or an eight ball of it, whichever you come across first, and come with me.”
“Where are you going?”
“We’ll burn that bridge when we get there.”
“I don’t think that’s how it goes.”
“It’s not rocket surgery!” His voice was beginning to trail off as he went deeper in.
I don’t know if it was this world, the fatigue, or the constant stress, but it took way longer for me to figure it out than it should have. Trip had at some point turned around; even if he were some super special contortionist, he should not have been able to pull that off inside that tunnel. He’d found another opening, probably another junction point. I once read that the human eye is strong enough to see a candle flame from a mile away.
So why the fuck could I no longer see Trip’s jay?
I felt a spray of blood on the back of my neck as another whistler was tossed into the food storage facility. That was the last impetus I needed to get moving. Timing is everything and I was about to have a bit of some bad. I was putt
ing my weapons in the shaft and was preparing to head in myself when I dropped one of the whistler weapons; as I bent down to get it, I realized that my limited light was reduced even further. When I turned to look up I could just pick out the milky black orbs of a night runner staring down at me.
I might have said “fuck,” don’t remember. I didn’t have the time to shoot at him and I didn’t want to alert any others to my whereabouts. Right now it was me and it. I chucked my body into that hole like I was threading a damn needle with my shoulders. I was fast, the runner was faster. I’d pulled myself maybe ten feet in when I felt its ice-cold and stronger than it should have been grip around my left calf. I banged the living shit out of my right knee as I pulled my leg up hard to rear back and give him the boot. Somehow my launch had missed; I felt the ligature in my knee pop as I overextended by not making the assumed contact. He was trying to grab my flailing right leg and pull me back out of the hole. I used what leverage I could to flip over; I was on my back as I lifted my head to stare back at him, unsure if I should squeeze off a round. Not only was the runner moving my leg around, but this was causing my hips to rise, and fuck if I wouldn’t rather be eaten alive than be shot in the dick by my own hand. Well if we’re being honest, it doesn’t really matter by whose hand, I don’t want to get shot in the junk, period.
The night runner was moving up. Pulling himself forward with my body, giving me more of him to aim at. The pure unadulterated hatred in his eyes was something I don’t think I’ll ever be able to reconcile. We weren’t just enemies on the battlefield, and I wasn’t just prey to his predator. Pretty sure a great white doesn’t hate seals; in fact, probably loves them, in a tasty sort of way. That was not the case here. This night runner was going to eat me because that was part of his physiology, but it was more than that. He wanted to destroy me into the smallest most easily digestible parts. He got wedged tight at about my knees; you can pretty much guess where that put his mouth. I pulled that whistler trigger enough times that I was bound to get carpal tunnel, because you know what’s worse than getting shot in the dick? Yeah, getting your dick eaten.