Geoff North - How the World Ends

“Was? It isn’t there anymore?”

“I’ve never seen the actual tunnel. I’ve only heard stories, you know, like old town myths that it was ever there. Hell, I’ve never even been in the basement.”

Someone was screaming retreat and fall back outside. “Well there’s only one way to find out.” Fred led them to the stairs and started winding his way down. The area that had once served as Brayburne’s money vault was now used as a storage area. He thought of Scrooge’s money bin again. There was clutter everywhere, boxes upon boxes of decades-old files, dusty office chairs with broken wheels and worn upholstery, fans with rusted blades that no longer spun, and every other piece of worn out, dated office equipment imaginable from the last sixty or seventy years.

“I really should’ve had someone come down here and clean this place out,” Joanna said.

“You and about a dozen mayors before you.”

They went to the west side and started moving garbage away from the wall. There was no inner brick wall that Fred could see. Once they’d cleared most of the clutter away, all that remained was a dingy-looking wall of old gyp-rock, painted a few times over. The old doctor thumped on the plaster with the side of his fist, listening and feeling for any change from behind. After a few seconds a hollow sound bounced back. “Here… I think I’ve found something.”

“What good does that do us? How are we going tear down that wall?”

It was a good question. Fred looked about the room, searching for something he could smash into the plaster. His eyes settled on an ancient fire alarm box on the north wall. It was one of those long glass enclosures with an emergency axe and bulky red extinguisher tank inside. He’d seen them a thousand times in a thousand different buildings when he was a younger man. “This place is already a museum,” he muttered heading towards it. He picked up a defunct fax machine from a pile of dead printers and computer monitors. Fred drove a corner into the glass and stepped back as the shards fell to the ground. He grabbed the axe and went back to the section of wall they’d cleared away.

“Are you sure you can—” Joanna started to say as Fred swung the axe back in both hands like a baseball bat. The sharp end sunk into the wall at a depth of less than an inch. Fred grunted, pulled it free, and swung again. Cracks appeared in the dry paint running a foot either way from the axe blade. He let it drop to the floor, his arms already aching, and his lungs on fire.

“I thought I could… used to split wood when I was younger.” He was panting heavily and leaning against the wall where the cracks had formed. “I can’t do this anymore. I’ll have a goddamned heart attack if I swing this thing again.”

He held the handle out towards the mayor and she took it grudgingly. “I’ve never swung an axe in my life. I’ve never even picked up a hammer.”

“Just do what I did… what I tried to do. Swing that fucker with all your might and keep going until that shit is out of the way.”

Joanna Hensky may have been a non-remarkable mayor, but she was a big woman with plenty of strength in her arms and back. The axe blade sunk all the way through the wall on her first try. Fred helped her pull it back out, tearing big chunks of plaster along the way. “Good girl,” he gasped. “Now hit it again.”

Joanna swung and missed the wall altogether. The blade struck against the concrete floor in a shower of sparks. She tried again, found the mark, and another two feet of ancient gyp-rock collapsed away.

“That’s enough,” Fred said as she prepared for another strike. “We can pull the rest away with our hands.”

They went at it, each pulling larger sections away on either side. A minute later they had cleared enough away to see well enough what was behind. There was a second wall, the one Joanna had spoken of upstairs in her office. It was made of dull brown bricks and crumbling mortar. Fred made an exasperated gasp, but Joanna saw something in the shadows between the plaster on the edges they’d torn away. “There’s a wooden sheet or door a bit further over.” She picked the axe back up and wedged the handle in, tearing away more of the plaster. It made a creaking noise as ancient nails pulled free from two-by-four joists separating the walls.

A larger section of wall fell away revealing a sheet of rough, warped plywood set into the bricks. Fred saw a piece of rope tied to a nail in the wood, it was tied on the other end to a ring worked into the brick. There were rusted hinges on the other side. Fred untied the rope and tried swinging the five-foot high, three-foot wide sheet of wood back towards them. It didn’t budge.

Joanna pushed him aside and kicked at a bottom edge. The sheet popped open at the top corner, and a dank rush of cool, mouldy-smelling air rushed out. Fred bent over and peered into the black door crack. “This is it! This is the tunnel.” He pulled at the top edge and the small door scraped open along the concrete floor.

Joanna shook her head and stepped back. “No… this wasn’t a good idea. I won’t… I can’t go in there.”

“Claustrophobia?”

The woman’s big head started bobbing up and down instead of wagging side to side. “Yes, since I was a little girl. It’s terrible.”

Fred reached for her hand. It felt cold and clammy. He could see the fear in her eyes focused in on that black slit, and he could only imagine at what terrible things she thought might be waiting inside the tunnel. “We have to go. There’s no other choice.”

“I won’t.”

Fred started in. “I’ll go a little ways. You’ll see there isn’t anything to fear. You can hold my hand the entire way. But we have to go , Joanna.”

She was shaking her head again. “I won’t.”

The door at the top of the basement landing slammed open. Fred craned his head back through the escape tunnel opening and saw black boots descending the stairs. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw the military uniform. Whatever siege had befallen the town had passed. The military had defeated, or at least held back, whatever it was trying to enter Brayburne.

He saw the soldier’s face a moment later and realized it was Corporal Stevens. And then he saw that the corporal’s eyes had been plucked out of their sockets. Blood and syrupy black liquid were oozing down his grey cheeks, and dripping onto his shirt and pants.

“Corporal Stevens?” The doctor asked quietly. “Adam… are you okay?”

The thing that had once been a living person opened its mouth and made a low, guttural sound. Its bottom jaw continued dropping open—farther than the bone could allow—and its neck swelled up. A gusher of thick black pushed its way out and plopped down on the remaining steps before it like great piles of cow shit. The mayor backed into the plaster remains of the inner wall and placed her hands over her mouth. Fred grabbed one of her thick wrists and started yanking her into the tunnel. “No more time, dear. You’re going to have to get over your phobia a lot faster than you would’ve liked.”

She didn’t argue. Her stiff body loosened in jerks, and moments later she was in the tunnel behind the old doctor, holding his hand and moving her feet without realizing where she was, or what she was doing. One crippling old fear had run smack-dab into a new impossible horror. They had cancelled each other out, putting an end to whatever reasoning bits remained in her brain.

“You’ll be alright, Joanna,” Fred spoke softly.

Mayor Hensky kept moving her feet in the dark. She didn’t make a sound as one of her shoes caught in a dry rift of dirt and pulled free of her foot. She didn’t yell as her meaty shoulder scraped along sections of rough stone and cut her skin open. She didn’t cry out when the bloated corpse of Corporal Adam Stevens moved into the tunnel behind them. She just kept holding the old doctor’s hand, and she kept moving her feet one in front of the other.