I was in a coffin. That was the only explanation. Pitch black, reeking of decomposition. Dan and his friend had buried me alive.
I scraped blindly at the unyielding lid. How long had I been out? Everything was confused. I had awoken gradually, realizing, to my horror, that the blackness and confinement were not the results of my drug-induced stupor.
Don’t panic. Conserve air. How long did I have? A day? An hour? The stench in here was unbearable. I recoiled in horror at the idea that I might not be the only occupant of this casket.
Slowly, still groggy and disoriented, I groped through the darkness. My terror of touching whatever was rotting in here soon diminished. I was alone.
Something wasn’t right. What I had attributed to dizziness was actually a loss of equilibrium. I wasn’t lying on my back, but sitting up. Sitting on something. Some sort of a seat. In fact, it felt like…
This wasn’t a coffin. I was in a Johnny on the Spot.
I experienced a sense of relief unlike any I’d ever had in a public restroom. Scrabbling for the door, I yanked at the handle. It refused to yield, blocked from the other side, somehow.
Where was I? Was Dan outside? Figuring I had nothing to lose, I kicked and pounded at the door. No one answered. I might have been able to tip the outhouse, but decided the results would be much worse than premature burial.
After about five minutes I heard the noise of a key in a lock, followed by the sound of a chain unraveling. My captors had returned.
I tried to brace myself to pounce, but stumbled. The drug hadn’t totally worn off and I was in no position to wrestle. Whatever Dan had in store for me, I’d have to go along with, at least for a while.
When the door opened, I feared that my previous theory had been correct and I was looking into the blackness of an underground vault. As my vision cleared, I realized I was only seeing the darkness of night. A distant streetlight dimly illuminated some sort of parking lot or car dealership.
Dan’s female companion had opened the door and I got my first clear look at her. She would have been no great beauty, even without the damage Charlie had inflicted to her face. Her hair was brown and unkempt, she was underweight, and would have greatly benefited from orthodontic braces in her youth. Lines of stress radiated from her eyes and mouth, pulling her face back into a permanent look of desperate anger.
I was used to seeing her type at Wal-Mart, hollering at a gang of unruly children. She certainly did not belong in this outhouse doorway, waving a cheap pistol at me with a shaking hand.
“Move,” she snapped. “They’re ready for you.”
During my unpleasant encounters with Dan, I always felt he was in total control of the situation. Even when Charlie threw her drink at him, he didn’t lose his cool. This woman, however, showed fear. She constantly glanced to the side and held the gun unsteadily. That was not a good thing. Nervous people tend to make mistakes. Like accidentally shooting the hostage in the stomach.
I tried to comply with her order, but, still weak, I stumbled at the door. My captor leapt back with a yell. I expected a bullet in the brain, but it didn’t come.
“C’mon! Saberhagen’s waiting.”
My surroundings began to come into focus. This was no car lot. Every vehicle here was pocked with rust and damaged. Of course. Columbia Salvage.
The Silverado had been moved from its pentagram-inscribed slab and the hidden trapdoor lay open.
“Walk in front of me.” The barrel of the gun jabbed me in the small of my back. “Stop when you get to that opening.”
And three weeks later, hikers find my headless body in a culvert. However this turned out, I could not allow myself to be taken into that pit.
Far down the empty street, tires squealed. This visibly upset my companion.
“Now! Move your ass!”
The car drew closer, but gave me little hope. We were too far from the road; the driver wouldn’t notice us. Helpless, I shuffled towards the hole.
There was a crunching noise as the approaching auto made a high speed turn and ricocheted off the mailbox at the front of the lot. Headlights blinded us while the wheels kicked up gravel and the phantom vehicle barreled toward us. The woman screamed as it braked a few yards in front of her.
Even before the car stopped, three figures burst from inside. One waved a baseball bat, another held a length of pipe. The glaring headlights made it impossible to see their faces. Only when the third figure exclaimed “Ypsilanti, Michigan!” did I recognize my saviors.
My armed escort took this opportunity to lose her fear. One bony elbow snaked around my neck, while she jabbed the gun into my skull with her other hand.
“Not another step!”
My three friends paused. I could see them more clearly now. Aaron was smacking the pipe against his open palm, while L.J. tapped the ground with the tip of his Quidditch bat. John waved his tiny fists in a menacing manner.
“Give it up, lady,” said Aaron, in his best drill instructor impression. “We’ve called the cops, they’ll be here any second.” Was that true?
I felt myself being dragged backwards. The pistol never left my temple.
“Let him go!” said L.J., in what I hoped was a calming tone. “You can still get out of here. We won’t stop you.”
We had backed into something. Out of the corner of my eye I recognized the large pickup which had brought me here.
The woman unwound her arm from my neck. Keeping the gun trained on me, she reached for the truck door.
“Yoink.” It was a blur. Someone shot up out of the truck bed. With the ease of a grandfather pulling a coin out of a child’s ear, the apparition had snatched the Saturday night special.
Denton trained the weapon on Saberhagen’s associate with ease. After a few moments it became apparent he wasn’t going to give her any instructions, so Aaron told her to back away from the truck.
Denton looked as if he’d been rolling around in a grease trap.
“Were you back there the whole time?” I asked, collapsing against the fender.
L.J. gingerly approached the dark-haired woman, who stood in stunned silence. “Denton called me right after they picked you up. Sorry we took so long, but he had a hard time figuring out where you were going, and we kept losing his signal.”
Denton grinned. “I tried to call the cops, but apparently my name sent up some kind of a red flag in their system. So I tried the last number you’d called.”
Denton’s long-winded explanation caused him to forget he was holding someone at gunpoint. That’s all it took. The woman hurled herself at him.
She may have been aiming for his face. The blow to Denton’s neck, however, was even more incapacitating.
Denton made a noise like he was trying to spit out his tonsils as the gun slipped from his grip. The woman lunged for it, missed, and tore off across the neighboring vacant lot.
Aaron grabbed the weapon and, with both hands, aimed at her retreating figure. He probably could have made the shot, but he stuck the firearm in his belt instead.
Denton had collapsed back into the truck bed, breathing with difficulty. Aaron and I bent over him. I was horrified to see, even in the dim light, that his face was turning blue.
Aaron vaulted into the back of the truck. Showing unexpected gentleness, he unstrapped the neck brace. With one hand on Denton’s forehead and the other on his jaw, Aaron tilted his head back a few degrees. Denton’s breath became more regular. He stared at us mutely.
L.J. and John had joined us. “He needs to get to a hospital,” said John.
“We can’t move him like this,” said Aaron. “How long did the police say they’d be?”
“Five minutes,” replied John. “But I’m not sure if they thought I wasn’t a crank call.”
As soon as I realized Denton wasn’t in immediate danger, I ran over to L.J.’s car. Rummaging through the debris in the back seat, I found his flashlight.
“Where are you going?” Aaron shouted.
I had reached the opening in the ground. “They have Charlie. I think she’s down there. When the police get here, tell them what’s going on.”
Aaron was still sitting in the truck with Denton. “The hell, you say! Wait for the damn cops!”
I shone the flashlight into the hole in the earth. “I’m not going to make Charlie wait.”
“Then I’m coming with you,” said L.J.
“Steph’s dead and Charlie’s in trouble,” I barked. “I’m not risking you too.”
Aaron and John had joined us. “Never leave a man behind,” said Aaron. “You don’t have a say in this.”
“What about Denton? Someone has to stay with him and tell the police where we are.”
“I’ll stay,” said John, looking at the ground. “I’m a coward by nature.”
Aaron clapped him on the back. “If anyone else shows up, get him out of here.”
I lowered my legs into the hole. “Aaron, you might want to have that gun ready.”
Aaron drew the gun and sighted it at an old Mercury. “It won’t do us any good.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s a starter pistol.”
Squatting in the dry ditch outside the Synod headquarters, Knowles remembered a myriad of nights sleeping in French trenches, his bedroll drenched with the brackish water that oozed into everything. It was not an experience he was anxious to relive.
“See anything?” he whispered to Professor Roebuck, whose flabby figure stood just visible in the moonlight. He shivered behind his pair of antique field glasses.
“There’s a couple of lights on. No one’s come in or out for about half an hour.”
Sammy had found a pile of leaves and made himself comfortable, lying back and staring up at the stars. “So are we going to do this?”
The three men turned to Reverend Gowen, their unofficial leader. He had been sitting on a stone for the past hour, staring at his knees. When Sammy addressed him, he raised his head. Gowen had obviously been sweating. If any of his companions had been religious men, they might have been reminded of another clergyman who also spent a rough night waiting in a garden. He eventually smiled.
Knowles knew the smile; he’d seen it on half a dozen captains and lieutenants who were about to send men off to die, but didn’t feel guilty because they knew they’d probably be among the dead themselves. The expression did not fill him with hope.
“If any of you want to leave now, I understand,” said the minister.
The three men shook their heads. “We’re all in this together,” said Sammy.
A crow called somewhere and Gowen inexplicably laughed. “So are we just going to bust in the front door?”
Knowles shook his head. “Someone should check the cellar. I doubt the body’s still there, but we should make sure. The professor and I will go through the front door and get pictures of whatever we can before they stop us. They’ll be less likely to attack Roebuck, he looks like someone important. You and Sammy sneak in the basement, see what you can find.”
The four men shook hands. They then sprinted to their assigned positions.
The cold metal rungs barely registered against my hands. I was still woozy from the drugging. Shining the flashlight into the engulfing darkness, it was impossible to see more than a few feet down the gloomy concrete hole.
“This is probably why they locked you in the john,” whispered Aaron. “They couldn’t have carried you down unconscious.”
We had descended nearly thirty feet, far deeper than your typical utility shaft. I wondered if my concern over Charlie hadn’t doomed us all; Dan Cooper could’ve been drawing a bead on us from below.
I experienced the jarring sensation of attempting to step on a rung that wasn’t there. Water soaked through my shoes. I sloshed sideways in the muck to give the others a place to land.
I swung the beam around, disclosing our surroundings. We were in a brick tunnel. The bricks were big, stamped with the name of the manufacturer, the kind that hadn’t been made in decades. Piles of loose blocks dotted the stagnant water while the roof of the sewer bulged unstably.
All was quiet. I longed for some sort of noise: dripping water, scuttling rats, anything to break the tomb-like silence.
Aaron spotted some sort of break in the wall about twenty yards down the corridor. Attempting to keep our feet out of the liquid, we shuffled down the tunnel. L.J was behind me and I kept turning around to make sure it really was him at my back.
We arrived at the break in the wall. A rusted metal door was set in the bricks. It was newer than the surrounding masonry, but only in the sense that a Nash Rambler is newer than a Model T. Darker rust revealed a half-century old inscription: a sideways capital E over an X.
Aaron, always the first one over the top, reached for the handle. I stayed his hand.
“Me first.”
I couldn’t read Aaron’s face in the almost complete darkness, but he backed off.
“Guys,” he hissed. “If we’re going to do this, we have one chance. Once Sherman opens that door, we have to rush them. We all have to rush them.”
I took a deep breath, yanked open the unresisting door, and barged through, my two friends right behind me. We stumbled through about five feet of tunnel hewn out of the bedrock. What lay beyond was not exactly hell’s antechamber, but it certainly could have passed for the mud room or sun porch.
The cavern was clearly a natural formation, roughly a hundred feet in diameter, and thirty feet in height. Several wall-mounted torches cast weird lights through the cave. Stacked in the corners stood odd piles of crates and barrels, with a few old army cots and blankets scattered on the floor. Obviously, this was the Synod’s true headquarters.
What caught my attention, however, was an enormous stone dais about ten feet in front of us. It was about three feet high, carved out of living rock, and garishly painted with the familiar logo. To the left stood Saberhagen and Dan, who was already aiming a revolver at us. Directly in front of the altar sat a figure in a wheelchair. Charlie was handcuffed to the chair. I could not read her expression in the flickering light, or even tell if she was awake.
Saberhagen turned to Dan with an expression of intense irritation. “I thought you said Mr. Andrews was secure.”
“He must have escaped,” whined Dan, with the voice of an employee caught napping.
“You think?” The scene would have been comical had we not all been in mortal peril.
Heedless of the danger, I lurched toward Charlie, stopping only when I heard Dan’s gun cock. I could see her eyes now. They were half open, unfocused. She must have been drugged, or worse.
I turned to Saberhagen. “Let her go…”
Saberhagen held up a restraining hand. He was dressed in a strange sort of white robe, though I wasn’t in the mood for a fashion review at the time.
“Let her go,” said Saberhagen, in a rather impressive imitation of my voice. “It’s me you want. She didn’t do anything.” He spat on the floor. “I gave you an out, Mr. Andrews. And not a day went by before you went to meet Mr. Dubbs and plan on how to expose me.”
Dan pointed his gun at me with a look of goggle-eyed ecstasy. Behind me, Aaron snorted like a rodeo bull, desperate to charge. If I tackled Dan, he’d have time to get off one shot. Would that be enough for Aaron? If I got shot, would that allow my friends to capture him? Or was Saberhagen armed as well?
From inside his robes, Saberhagen drew a long, bone-handled dagger. “You know that in exchange for my long life, I’m required to make certain sacrifices.” He pronounced the last word as if he’d been required to give up smoking, rather than murder random people. “You’re aware of Miss Lane. The police haven’t connected her death with that of a homeless man who was beaten to death last night in Jefferson City. One more and I’m guaranteed another couple of years.”
He raised the knife above Charlie, whose head lolled, totally unaware of her peril. Oblivious to Dan’s weapon, I rushed Saberhagen.
I was too late. The knife blow was swift, brutal and fatal. Saberhagen had obviously stabbed people before; death came instantaneously.
Dan lay face down on the cavern floor, the knife stuck neatly between his shoulder blades. He never saw it coming.