Stirred (38 page)

H
e watches her through a hole in the wall, night-vision goggles presenting her in washes of gray and green.

Eyes sparkling like emeralds.

He can see her chest heaving in the darkness.

The fear in her face a profound and lovely thing.

One of the handful of times he did this before, a woman simply crumpled down into a fetal position and screamed until she lost consciousness.

But Jack won’t do that.

Jack is afraid, sure, but she’s in control of her fear.

He removes the goggles, puts his finger on the switch, and waits.

I
stopped.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Breathe in, breathe out.

Gave my heart a chance to settle down.

In place of the terror, I conjured up the faces of Phin, Herb, and Harry. Imagined Phin sitting across from me at the end of my sofa, rubbing my swollen feet and telling me some story from his past with that mischievous glimmer in his eyes that I’d first fallen for while he hustled me at the pool hall. Saw Herb with donut crumbs in his walrus mustache, trying to convince me his newest diet was working. Harry—insane, stupid, offensive, wonderful Harry—trying to name my daughter after the newest trendy brand of vodka.

Let my affection for my boys carry me on.

Two steps later, I bumped into something and jumped back, stifling a shriek.

No, not something.

Some
one
.

The soft pliability of skin through fabric was unmistakable.

“Luther? Is that you?”

Still staggering back, I realized I’d let my hand lose contact with the wall.

Disorientation rushed in.

I wanted to grab the floor, so I didn’t fall over, but I managed to stay in a crouching position.

“Who’s there?”

No one answered.

I couldn’t hear anything over the tribal drumbeat of my heart.

Tried to walk but collided into a wall.

Turned.

Started forward again.

Thinking I was heading back toward the double doors, but instead I stumbled into someone else, and as I screamed, it hit me.

Rot…decay.

Please no.

A rivet of blinding blue flashed in the corridor for a fraction of a second, and I felt my knees soften from abject terror.

Swaying men and women—perhaps a dozen of them—dangled from the ceiling in clear plastic body bags, their toes just inches off the floor.

“Is anyone alive?”

No response, and in the next burst of strobe light, I caught a glimpse through the plastic of the damage that had been inflicted upon them—gunshot and knife wounds. Blunt-force trauma to the head. Some of them leaked through rips in the plastic, the linoleum floor just ahead of me slicked with their blood.

I could feel the hyperventilation coming on, felt myself standing on precipice of a world-class, point-of-no-return freak-out.

No. No. No.

That’s what he wants.

To see my fear.

To break me.

To hell with that and to hell with him.

I needed to keep going. For my friends. For my baby.

I had nothing to fear from the dead. The dead, I could handle.

I righted myself and forced my way through the hanging corpses which swung on their chains as I elbowed past, careful to avoid the puddles of blood, careful not to inhale the eye-watering odor of total putrefaction.

When I’d made my way through, I turned the corner, and the strobe shut off.

Darkness again.

I stumbled forward faster than before, hands outstretched, just needing to put distance between myself and those—

My knees bumped into something new.

It moved beneath me, crying out.

I stumbled back as the noise of metal crashing into metal hammered my eardrums like a peal of thunder.

A panel of soft, blue light glowed overhead.

I found myself in a room of solid concrete walls with the dimensions of a bathroom.

The panel of light shone at least ten feet above my head, and the walls rose another five beyond that before disappearing into darkness.

The door that had closed behind me was black and metal.

No handle, no keypad.

At my feet crouched an older woman in a gold ball gown covered in sequins that glittered in the pale light.

The first things I noticed were her fingers and toes—completely laden in bejeweled rings.

At least ten pearl necklaces encircled her neck, and her wrists and forearms, all the way up to her elbows, were practically encased with gold bracelets.

She cowered beneath me on a stone floor speckled with pennies.

The woman scrambled onto her feet, but she could only stand hunched over. A collar around her neck chained her to a black, cast-iron ball the size of a watermelon, with “100 LBS” printed on one side and “HUSBAND # 6” on the other.

I had to squat down to look her in the eye.

Older woman, but beautiful.

Face heavily made-up and tear-streaked.

“I’m Jack Daniels,” I said. “What’s your name?”

“Amena.” Her voice was barely audible and raspy, as if she’d blown it out screaming.

“Did Luther put you in here, Amena?”

“I don’t know his name.”

“A man with long, black hair?”

“Yes.”

Again, I surveyed the room, searching for something to break the chain, but found nothing on the smooth, concrete walls.

Not even a plaque, which worried me.

“Why is he doing this?” Amena asked.

“He’s sick in the head, and this is how he gets off,” I said, knowing he could hear.

I stared up at the walls again. This made no sense. There was no way out as far as I could tell.

Wait.

There.

I’d missed it in the dim illumination of the light panel, but there was an opening ten feet up. From where I stood, it looked like an air duct.

How the hell was I supposed to get up there?

“You have to get me out of this!” the woman screamed.

“I’m trying,” I said. “Just give me a second to think.”

Maybe I could stand on her shoulders, reach the duct that way. No, she’d have to stand straight and tall for me to even have a chance, assuming my pregnant ass didn’t crush her.

And she was attached to a sphere of solid iron—she wasn’t going anywhere.

I reached down and touched the cold weight that held her to the floor.

Gripping the chain, I gave it a tug.

Nothing moved, but my spine crackled like a bag of chips.

I tried to roll it, succeeded in budging it a whopping four inches.

“Is there a way out?” she asked.

“There’s a vent ten feet up the wall. I’m thinking maybe there’s a keypad inside of it that’ll open this door.”

“So get up there.”

“I can’t reach it.”

“You stupid, bitch, help me!”

Something struck the top of my head and bounced off onto the floor.

It felt like a chunk of small hail, hard enough to smart.

What the hell?

I looked up just as another one pinged my forehead.

“Ow!” Amena cried.

Another one hit my hand, and as it fell to the floor and spun out, I realized what it was—

Pennies.

Copper pennies falling from above.

“What is it?” Amena said. “I don’t have my glasses. I can’t see.”

“They’re pennies,” I said.

“What?”

“Pennies.”

“Where are they coming from?”

“I don’t know. Somewhere above us.”

They were falling faster now—pounding the top of my head, some becoming stuck in my clothes, most bouncing off onto the stone floor, and filling the concrete cell not only with a raucous noise but with the stench of money.

The odor of rust and blood.

Already, the stone floor lay covered in coins and they were falling faster and faster, the air thick with them.

Amena yelled something, but I missed it over the tremendous noise getting louder by the second.

“What am I supposed to do, Luther?” I screamed, but if he answered I couldn’t hear him.

Only the noise of the pennies raining down.

Intensifying.

“Pennies from heaven, Jack,” Luther cooed in my ear.

Then the floodgates opened.

So many coins striking me, I could feel their accumulation on my back, my head, my shoulders. My shoes were quickly buried, now standing in four, five, six inches of copper, paralyzed, trying to comprehend what was happening, what I was supposed to do—

—and then I understood.

Oh, no.

I squatted down, the pain in my hamstring flaring, and shoveled the coins away from the cast-iron ball, which was already a third of the way buried.

I didn’t know if she understood yet what was happening, what was going to happen, but I couldn’t communicate it to her regardless through the hailstorm of copper.

Bending my knees, I heaved my weight into the ball, managed to lift it several inches, but by the time it came to rest, it was already becoming buried again.

I tried to heave it with every bit of strength I possessed.

Four vertebrae popped.

No way. Wasn’t going to happen.

I locked eyes with Amena, saw the fear bleeding into hers.

She knew.

“Help me!” I yelled at her.

The coin-depth was above my calves now, approaching Amena’s waist. I dug furiously, clawing the pennies away from her as she strained to raise her head, but the chain prevented her from lifting it more than several inches above waist-level.

I wasn’t stopping anything, the pennies falling impossibly harder, faster than I could bail them out around her.

In my ear I thought I heard Luther say, “Can you feel the change in the air, Jack?”

The metal rain continued to pound down on us.

My attempts to help Amena were futile.

She screamed, the side of her face inches above the pennies which were piled at least a meter high.

I had to keep moving my feet, staying on top of the rising pile to avoid getting buried.

I began digging under Amena’s face, shoveling pennies aside, but there was simply nowhere for them to go as the level continued to rise. A block of coins slid down into the depression I’d made, filling it in, expanding and reaching her chin.

She couldn’t lift her head another millimeter, face turning purple as she struggled against the chain, and then her screams went silent as the level of pennies raised above her mouth, then her nose, her eyes, forehead.

I clawed them away, my fingernails breaking, scratching into her cheek, and for a brief second, I exposed her mouth which had filled with coins and blood, eyes bulging beyond terror.

When they finally covered her head I let out a whimper. Then I began to focus on saving myself.

The pennies were accumulating too quickly. In the time it took me to lift one foot, the other was buried up to the ankle.

Soon, both ankles were buried.

I scooped up piles by the handful, throwing them over my shoulder, and once my feet could move, I scrambled up onto all fours.

It must have been as close a sensation as it gets to walking on water—the surface constantly changing and sinking, always threatening to drag me back under. I worked my way over to the wall and spread my stance, ever shifting as the coin-level rose, making me ascend, inch by inch, toward the air duct above.

I saw a hand rise up out of the pennies, reaching for the sky, for something, bejeweled fingers twitching.

I stepped into the middle of the room, got a decent purchase on the surface, and grabbed Amena’s hand, squeezing for ten long seconds, the coins rising over my ankles, until her grasp went limp.

I didn’t know this woman, but my eyes filled with tears in that awful blue light as the copper rain poured down on me.

• • •

In another three minutes, the pennies had lifted me high enough to climb into the air duct.

Just before squeezing myself through, I noticed something on the concrete above the opening to the vent.

A plaque:

CIRCLE 4: GREED
Here saw I people, more than elsewhere, many,
  On one side and the other, with great howls,
  Rolling weights forward by main force of chest.
They clashed together, and then at that point
  Each one turned backward, rolling retrograde,
  Crying, “Why keepest?” and, “Why squanderest thou?”
Inferno, Canto VII

I heaved myself into the air duct, wriggling my swollen belly along the metal, coins dropping out of my hair.

It was much darker in here, and the thunder of falling pennies behind me had begun to ease.

By the blue panel of light in that concrete room, I glimpsed the keypad up ahead.

I reached it, experienced a moment of terror when I remembered there had been no code on the plaque.

So I took a shot in the dark.

211—the police code for robbery.

Punched it in.

Green light.

The door opened and I heaved myself up into a wide air duct. I was still gasping for breath and fighting back wracking sobs that had come out of nowhere when Luther said, “You’re uncharacteristically quiet, Jack…a penny for your thoughts?”