Chris Holm - The Big Reap

I smoked half Mendoza’s pack before Solares returned with a heavy padlock and a good eight feet of chain, the thickest he could manage. And he managed pretty thick; each clanking link was the size of a woman’s fist, the whole tangle heaped to overflowing in his ropy arms as he wrangled it through the door. He sounded like Marley’s ghost shuffling across the dusty floor while trying his damndest not to drop it. Every time the chain shifted and a portion hit the floor, he winced. I didn’t have to ask him why. Though realistically we all knew the creature could be hiding anywhere, not a one of us could shake the notion it was just below the floorboards, waiting.

Past the screen door, the night had reached full dark. This far out into the desert, there was no blue, just black; stars like chipped diamonds against the velvet of the sky. The air was cold and crisp and thin, the wild swing from the stultifying day enough to make my borrowed heartbeat quicken, lizard-brain instincts kicking in and telling me the atmosphere was thinner and more fragile a protection from the ice-sharp sting of space than by day I might’ve thought. To which I told my lizard-brain instincts chill the fuck out — you’ll be in a tidy little underground hidey-hole soon enough, the perfect burrow in which to weather the chill ache of desert night.

“So,” said Solares. “What now?”

“Now,” I told him, “we go hunting.”

I asked Alvarez if he was up to coming with us. Knew after what he’d been through, he’d be too scared of me to say no. He proved me right, nodding sweat-slick and wan, and eyeing me the whole time like if I didn’t find his answer enthusiastic enough, I might plunge my hand into his chest a second time. Instead, I handed him the remains of the tequila, which he killed in three quick glugs.

On my instructions, Solares gathered up as many guns as he could carry. I scooped up all but one of the rest with my left hand, taking the final one in my right and training it on Castillo and Alvarez. I told them to grab the lanterns and walkie-talkies that I’d found stashed behind the bar. And then it was time to head into the tunnels.

The entrance was behind a low cinderblock fireplace, which looked to be affixed to the far wall. It wasn’t. A switch flipped, a little elbow-grease from Castillo and Alvarez both, and the fireplace slid forward, some kind of runner system keeping it just off the floor so it wouldn’t scrape.

Behind it was a sad little smuggler’s notch, inside which was a rusted cash box and a couple pounds of low-grade ditch weed apportioned into eighths and quarters. I eyed the two of them like, are you kidding me? But the smuggler’s notch proved nothing more than a clever ruse, a rodeo clown to disguise the true reason for the sliding fireplace. Because Castillo dropped to one knee and looped a finger into a gaping knothole in the wooden floor, and next thing I knew, a three-by-three section of it hinged upward. A ladder descended from it into still, quiet darkness. Solares dropped in his pile of guns. I did the same. The clatter of their landing was swallowed almost immediately by the insulating earth. That done, Solares clanked down the ladder rungs. Once he reached the bottom, he called up to me, and then covered Castillo and Alvarez with one of their own weapons while they climbed down the ladder. Soon the tunnel entrance glowed like pirate treasure as they fired up their lamps.

I entered the tunnel last, yanking closed the hatch by the rusted iron loop bolted into its underside. Then I chained that loop to the ladder such that the hatch could not be opened, and set the lock. Below me, Alvarez said something in rapid-fire Spanish. I asked Solares what he was going on about.

“He says you do not need to do that. They are brave, and will not run.”

I shook my head. “He only says that cause right this sec, he’s more afraid of me than he is of what’s down here. I can’t take the chance that once I’m out of sight he’ll change his mind. So we lock the hatch, and the question’s settled.”

Solares translated what I’d said. Alvarez replied.

“He asks, ‘What now?’” said Solares.

“There are four main tunnels out of here,” I said, “and four of us. Tell him all he’s got to do is follow one of ’em right out of here. He can take whatever guns he wants — there’s no point shooting me and doubling back, since I left the padlock key topside. The only way out is through. We’ll each take a different tunnel, and a radio as well. If anybody sees anything, they’re to call me, and I’ll be there in an instant, like with Mendoza in the bar. I promise I can protect you all, so long as you give me half a chance. And I promise I can kill this thing. We do this right, and no one but the creature has to die down here tonight, okay?”

Solares translated once more. Castillo and Alvarez looked doubtful, but still, they nodded their assent. Then Solares turned to me.

“Is it time?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m afraid it is.”

He handled it like a champ. When I took over, his mind was quiet. He didn’t protest, didn’t scream. And once again, he didn’t puke, though once again, it was a near thing. When I was well and truly back in control of him, I turned my attention to a dazed and fuming Mendoza.

“You get all that?” I asked him.

“I understood your plan,” he spat. “What I do not understand is why you left my cigarettes back in the bar.”

“I need you sharp,” I told him. “That means your eyesight can’t be compromised by lighter-flicks. That means your nostrils need to pick up more than smoky full-flavored goodness.”

“When this is through,” he told me, “I will kill you for what you’ve done to me and my men.”

“You’re welcome to try,” I told him. “But you’ll have to take a number and get in line.”

We split up then. Each of us with a small camp lantern, doused for now on account of the dangling light bulbs trailing off in all directions, as well as a radio, an automatic rifle (two, in Castillo’s case), and a handgun. Castillo brandished his rifles one in each hand like some kind of gangster as he sauntered out of sight down the eastward spoke. All I could think was if he tried to fire the fucking things holding them like that, he was gonna break his thumbs with the recoil and spray bullets wide to either side. Mendoza, the most senior of the men, walked calmly but with purpose down the western one, battle-weary but determined, and he held his rifle like he meant to use it. Alvarez, clearly frightened, hugged his tight to his body to hide his trembling as he trundled reluctantly into the northeast tunnel. He was also the only one of us to fire up his lantern straight away, despite the burning bulbs. Its aperture was open as far as it would go, letting enough air in the wick glowed pure white, and he held its wire-thin handle with the same white-knuckled hand that clutched his gunstock. I worried his mind would give out long before he reached the other side of the tunnel. I — in the tight, responsive Solares once more — took the northwest tunnel, from which I was told the creature’s collapsed lair once stretched, and through which the slaughtered group had passed on their way to their brief, doomed taste of so-called freedom. I wore my automatic slung across my back, and my handgun at the ready. Seemed to me the quarters were close enough, I was likelier to get off a shot if I had a shorter barrel to bring around, and anyways, when it came to killing this thing, I had less faith in these glorified pea-shooters than I did in my own bare hands. The unlit lantern I affixed by its lanyard to my belt to keep one of the aforementioned bare hands free.

Ten paces down the tunnel, and I could no longer hear my companions. Twenty paces, and I felt alone as I had ever been, my fellow travelers a distant memory. Earth pressed in all around me. Dry dirt like cake crumbles left in an empty pan crunched beneath my feet. My tunnel smelled like a fresh grave. The air was stale and close and hard to breathe. A twinge of claustrophobia I didn’t realize I suffered from until just this moment wound its way up my spine like a millipede with needle-legs. I wondered idly if I could blame Solares for the sensation, some phobias are strong enough for sense-memory to trigger physiological reactions even in the absence of the consciousness that created them. I’ve possessed dead meat-suits that still got woozy at the sight of blood, or skin-crawly at the sight of bugs. But Solares wasn’t dead, and in an experience that proved a first for me I got the distinct impression he was laughing at me for trying to pass the buck at what apparently was my fear and mine alone.