ground, and I grabbed fistfuls of his coat, tugging him up onto the lip of the void. He breathed a deep sigh of relief, resting in that strange crescent as I pulled out the keys I'd scavenged and undid the locks. Once the chain at his wrist had rattled to the dirt, I took hold of both arms and dragged him a safer distance, unwilling as I was to risk standing both of us up where little pebbles were still tumbling over the precipice.
Exhausted, I dropped him near the doorway of the wood shack, before collapsing myself. We lay there, the soil warm in contrast to the rapidly cooling air of an new desert night, him face down at my feet, me face up with my eyes shut against the possibility of stars: I had seen one infinite dark below me, and was uninterested in another above.
"Thank you." Errol's tone elaborated on the gratitude the simple nature of the phrase failed to convey.
I nodded in the dark. "Uh huh." Sentimentality was never our strong suit. My breathing finally slowed, and with some effort, we got to our feet.
I noticed my partner rubbing his wrist. "How is it?"
Rist frowned at the injured body part. "I'll live. My back is singing, though."
We collected our purloined weapons with some effort, Errol walking off a limp in a hurry. He wasn't the most patient guy. Took some digging through the mobile home to find his shotgun, but the search turned up a good solid flashlight and an rickety looking lantern with fresh oil. Rist made no comment on my handiwork with poor Angus as we went through his pockets, though the bizarre totem that serendipity had made of Osmond rose his eyebrows. He looked it a moment, considering it, a smirk on his face. "Goddamn gallows humor. Gonna get your ass hung up one of these days." We tumbled the mess over, checked for anything my first hasty search for the keys had missed. Didn't bother with the rifle. Didn't have to discus the decision.
The last thing that was grabbed was my backup piece, still by the wood shack's door where Angus had flung it. I scooped it up, jammed it in my belt. Rist was looking at the keys I used to liberate him. Their ring held several more, one to the motor home, one to the refrigerated trailer, but a few more less obvious ones as well. Padlock keys and a simple deadbolt key. But what caught my partner's attention was a long, black, twisted piece of metal, it's ornate shape like a snake with a broken back.
I looked at it as he held it aloft, studying the strange, jutting contours in the beam of the flashlight. He looked from it to me, caught my gaze, them looked past me, drawing my eyes to the shack. A wind picked up, bitter as only the desert night can be. It caught the door, made of mismatched wooden planks, some carven, some splintered, all given a feeling of unity from the rough, unfinished surface wind driven dust had slowly revealed.
The door swung back, an open invitation. I raised the lantern, but all we could see within was a hole in the dirt floor, with stairs leading down.