LIFERS Chapter Seventeen

Ella paced the front lobby of the town hall like an expectant father who’d just packed-in a sixty-a-day habit. Something was wrong, very wrong, the entire town had made it there but six of them. Four she could account for, two she couldn’t.

Sam and Dane had a valid reason for being absent; their outing today was of the utmost importance to everyone’s future survival. The brothers, Sheldon and Mervyn were keeping lookout, one in the schoolhouse the other in Dill’s garage. But Hal, and Billy Fisher, they were the cause of her torment; they should have finished what they were doing and joined them long ago.

She entered one of the rooms leading from the lobby and made her way to a large window where Zach Jackson and eleven others were stood watching the rain. And with a few irritated snaps of her fingers beside his ear, she roused only him from their mass trance.

‘You need to collect one of your dogs, Zach,’ she said, looking out the window. ‘Get down to that stationroom and find out what the hold up is with Hal.’

‘Why? D’ya think there’s trouble?’

‘Billy ain’t showed up, neither,’ she said, seeming not to hear his question. ‘See if he’s there too.’

‘How long’s it been?’

She turned to him. ‘Too long.’

Zach met her gaze for a few seconds then nodded and made his way from the room.

After she watched him leave, Ella took his place at the window. The view she had looked south along Main Street, but the torrential downpour prevented her from seeing more than fifty-yards of it before everything on it was blacked out. To her left she saw the faintest sliver of light had broke the horizon; it would soon be dawn, the birth of a new day, and if all went well with the transfusion, the birth of a newer and much stronger Martinsville.

When the town was first erected in 1919, nourishment was an ample commodity as workers from the nearby clay pits and brickworks proved easy-pickings, especially as most of them were loners who travelled far and wide to find employment. They would come to Martinsville looking for bed and board and would never be seen again; the majority of them spending months concealed in the town hall and drugged and tapped for their resources before they were finally disposed of. But as progress took a stranglehold of the building industy, their glory days were numbered, as newer, faster methods of construction were far more profitable, so the clay pits closed leaving them to find sustenance elsewhere.

Foraging trips soon became a daily occurrence, and young females, besides being the easiest of targets, could also produce something a burly clay-pit worker could not, and that was a foetus, which Thomas Martins would use for stem-cell extraction in his incessant quest for longevity, a longevity he strived for without the adverse side effects they all suffered from.

However,in recent months, that longevity had taken a steep nose-dive for all in Martinsville, as Ella, without the consent of Thomas Martins, had struck a deal with an outsider who promised she could stop the need for them taking people to feed on. But that deal turned sour, literally, and the town’s population began to decrease, reaching as low as 104 before Ella discovered the outsider’s deception.

She vowed to repay the woman for what she’d done to them, and if Dane and Sam got back with the girl in time, today was going to be her day for retribution.

That investigator will no doubt be dead by now, just bones and bits of flesh ready to be swept away in the morning with the storm’s debris, so no need for her to be concerned with him, which would leave her to concentrate on the task she would soon come to undertake.

When Zach entered the lobby, he put on a waterproof coat, a pair of leather gloves, and a hat with a brim wide enough to cast a shadow over John Wayne’s horse. He hated the tunnels almost as much as he hated Ella for sending him into them, but nowhere near as much as he hated Hal and Billy Fisher right now.

Half way through the town hall’s large kitchen, Zach pulled open a wooden hatch in the floor to reveal a stairway leading down to the basement. He started his descent knowing that each of the treads would give a little due to their age and sodden condition, so he pressed both hands against the walls to lessen his weight until he reached the bottom where he could flick on the light switch. Why the hell there wasn’t a switch at the top pissed him off every time he went down there; it wasn’t warm, he couldn’t see, and leaking walls were all around him. The whole place gave him the creeps.

Once his feet were on a solid, flat surface, he felt for the switch and flicked it, and even though the naked bulb might not have been bright enough to attract a moth with binoculars, it was better than nothing. To his right was a table that held a half dozen flashlights, he took one and opened the hatch that gave him access to the tunnels. He turned to look at a second hatch in that room, this one steel in construction and electronically controlled by a code known only to its occupant and Ella, where beneath, resided their creator, Doctor Thomas Martins.

‘Darn fool I am,’ Zach said to the cold, rusted steel. ‘Never shoulda listened to those crazy ramblin’s o’ yours, Doc. Never shoulda said yes. Mind you,’ he added with a smile. ‘Prob’ly wouldn’t be here right now if I didn’t.’

He switched on the flashlight and headed down to where the tunnel’s wooden floor had turned rotten from its many years of use, and every time he took a step, water and mud oozed from underneath. The walls were bare earth and saturated, and during a heavy downpour like the one up top, the tunnels were prone to flooding, and twice in recent years the wooden uprights had collapsed and had to be replaced.

When Zach reached the tunnel leading to the kennels, he shone his flashlight along it to see at least a foot of rainwater covering the ground, and even though it would have to be two feet to reach the top of his boots, it was still a good enough reason for him not to go down there.

‘I ain’t goin’,’ he told himself. ‘No sir-ree. The dogs can sit tight; I don’t need em’, and I ain’t fetchinum.’

He was right, why would he need one of his dogs? All he had to do was go get Hal and Billy Fisher, who no doubt would be sitting there watching that investigator melt into his surroundings. After that they’d be making eyes at those two pretty young girlies. Besides, he was already half way to Chambers, just a couple more minutes and he’d be in the dry