“Am I dead?”
As Doc blinked his eyes open, he could see nothing but darkness. He tossed his head one way, then the other, and the result was the same. More darkness.
But not emptiness. He could feel a solid surface beneath him, like rock, and he could sense some kind of walls around him. “Hello? If this is the afterlife, I’m really not complaining, you know. Life in the Deathlands has rather worn thin, to be perfectly honest.” When he spoke, there was no echo; he could tell from the sound of his voice that he was in an enclosed space.
And more than that, he was somewhere dank and damp. He could smell moisture in the air, feel a chill against his skin.
But there was no draft of any kind, no air moving anywhere in that space, not even the faintest breeze.
Wherever he was, it didn’t feel as if it was out in the open, which was odd, because that was exactly the last place he could remember being. Out in the open.
Reaching down, Doc felt a cold, damp sheet of smooth stone. Bracing against it, he boosted himself up to a sitting position, instantly regretting it when his head collided with a rock-hard ceiling.
“Ow!” He dropped back down, clutching his aching skull. “That hurt!”
At that exact moment, Doc realized two things: one, he was still alive and, two, he was in an even smaller space than he’d expected.
These two realizations generated a terrible thought, a possibility that was starting to seem increasingly likely. If he wasn’t out in the open, and he wasn’t dead…
“Have I been buried alive?” The thought of it made involuntarily clench the pit of his stomach. Fear seized him, as cold and primitive as a stone ax or the plunging beak of an ancient carnivore.
Had the ground opened up and swallowed him, then closed itself over him? Was he doomed to suffocate in this tiny, dark cell in the bowels of the earth?
“Help! Somebody, help me!” As Doc cried out, he scrabbled with his fingers at the ceiling, instinctively trying to dig his way to freedom. But the ceiling was all rock, as unyielding as the stone surface on which he lay.
Panting, Doc dropped his arms at his sides. “Help me!” Even as he shouted, he knew it was in vain. Even if Ryan and the others were directly overhead, they could never hear his wailing through a layer of rock. “Please help me!”
Taking a deep breath of the chilly, damp air, he fought to get control of himself…and won, at least for the moment. He knew panic was never the answer. Calm thinking and resourcefulness were the only qualities that ever saved a person in the damnable Deathlands.
“Perhaps my tools…” Doc reached into the folds of his frock coat, seeking the holster of his LeMat revolver, with no success. Next, he rolled onto his right side, searching the stone around him for the blaster or his ebony swordstick. He did the same on his left side, with the exact same result. He found a hard rock wall within arm’s reach, but no revolver and no swordstick.
“I am bereft.” Slumping back on the stone, he sighed loudly. “Without a tool to effect my escape or another mortal soul to offer solace.”
Just then, Doc heard a scuffling sound in the direction of his feet. “What now?” He pushed himself up on his elbows, staying low enough that his head wouldn’t hit the ceiling. “Rats, I suppose? Some other burrowing vermin come to feast on my flesh?” He reached around for a rock to throw but found nothing. “Begone, vermin!” Noise would have to suffice. “I shall not be your dinner yet!”
The scuffling came closer, got louder. Doc peered toward it but saw nothing in the pitch-blackness.
“Begone, I say!” He drew up his legs, pulling away from whatever was there. “You won’t find me an easy prey, I promise you!”
Suddenly, he heard a different sound from the same place, a distinctive sound that could not be mistaken for any other.
Giggling.
Doc’s mouth fell open in shock. The question was no longer what was over there—it was who.
That was no vermin scuffling in the darkness. It was a person.
Doc’s heart hammered in his chest. He meant to snap out some words of defiance to try to intimidate his giggling visitor.
But before a single word could leave Doc’s lips, the visitor scrambled forward. Hands grabbed hold of Doc’s ankles and wrenched his legs straight with an iron grip.
Then a voice, high-pitched and girlish in the lightless void, said, “You’re mine now. All mine.”
Doc gathered his bravado and snapped, “Now, see here!”
But those were the only words he got out before the person—or thing—in the night dragged him from his stony cell.
And then, all of a sudden, there were many more hands, coming from all directions. And all of them were grabbing at Doc.