“Anywhere but here. There must be some way out of this hellhole. The way I see it, the two of them came through this tunnel. It’s pretty solid. I say we follow it till we find some way out.”
“But they came from this direction,” Thomas said. “It’s a dead end, they told us, remember? Let’s stay here.”
The woman named Rebekka Franck blew air into the man’s mouth. She was in distress. He could tell by the frantic movements. It fascinated Thomas. He liked to watch her. He liked the look in her eyes when she was panicking. The man they had saved started coughing. Rebekka smiled in relief. Thomas lost interest in her. He looked at the handsome man named David Busck. He was pulling another person out by the arm. More of the dirt wall came down and landed on them.
“Oh, great,” Brian growled. “They just keep making the cave smaller and putting more people in it. I tell you. They’re going to be the death of us!”
Thomas wasn’t listening any longer. His heartbeat was drowning out everything else as he watched the handsome man pull out the next body and perform CPR. He felt lightheaded. And it was not from the lack of oxygen.
“I say we split. Are you coming?” Brian asked.
Thomas was breathing heavily. He could hardly hear anything anymore. He stared at the girl with the big bruise on her forehead, who the handsome man was trying to revive.
Please be dead. Please don’t start breathing. Please be dead.
“If you’re not coming, I’ll go on my own,” Brian said. “I’m not staying here and dying with all these losers. That’s for sure.”
Thomas held his breath while David pushed on the girl’s chest. She didn’t move. Thomas felt relieved. Maybe she was dead, after all? David blew air into her mouth. Thomas remembered trying to kiss those lips just a few hours ago, forcing her to kiss him. She had expected him to rape her, but he hadn’t. That’s not what he wanted from her. He wanted her to show him affection; he wanted her to love him. He wanted her to tell him she loved him. Then he would kill her.
The girl moved. Thomas froze. As he watched the handsome man breathe life into the girl, he kept thinking about how he had enjoyed looking into her fearful eyes. How he wanted it again, how he wished he could hurt Rikke again.
Cheating lying bitch .
When the girl coughed and gasped for air, Thomas knew it was time for him to disappear. None of this felt like a daydream anymore. In his dreams, his victims never survived. They never came back to haunt him. He didn’t want to be there when the girl started to tell her story. He turned and looked after Brian who had started to crawl through the tunnel.
“Wait up,” he said. “I’m coming. Wait for me.”
22
I T STARTED TO look like a war hospital. Hurt people were lying everywhere in the small cave next to dead bodies. It was a mess. But, nevertheless, we managed to save a lot of people. Afrim’s mother had a cellphone in her pocket with a full battery that we used for light, since Thomas and Brian had taken the lighter with them when they left. David and Afrim helped me identify the many bodies. In the dead-pile were a Mr. Frandsen, a Mrs. Krogh and the remains of the taxi-driver I had been in the car with. As I watched his lifeless body with the missing arm, I couldn’t help think that if we hadn’t stopped…if the two women hadn’t been in the accident that blocked the street, then we wouldn’t have ended up down here. We would have been long gone.
But I couldn’t think like that. It would only drive me crazy.
All I could do was move ahead. Focus on the living and keeping them alive. I was still praying and hoping that they would try to dig us out somehow. There had to be a rescue team up there, trying their best to get us out. All we had to do was wait and hope that we wouldn’t run out of oxygen. It was getting tight already, as we were a lot more people to share the sparse air. I was getting tired and sat down
David Farland
MR. PINK-WHISTLE INTERFERES
Leigh Bale
Alastair Reynolds
Georgia Cates
Erich Segal
Lynn Viehl
Kristy Kiernan
L. C. Morgan
Kimberly Elkins