LIFERS Chapter Thirty Five

Gregg watched as they walked into the torrential rain for a third time to see Jill pause at Sheldon’s remains before she turned to give him the merest punctuation of a smile, a smile, he guessed, suffused with pity.

Gregg also glanced at Sheldon but spared him no feelings of his own as he contemplated the fate he decided to bring upon himself once he’d freed the girls. He couldn’t return to friends and family, or the life he lived and loved only yesterday, and staying in Martinsville was in no way an option for him. Besides, if all goes according to plan, there won’t be anyone left in Martinsville after the next hour or two.

He was about to hit the shutter’s down button when he saw the photograph Nick just snapped of him and Jill and something in it caught his eye. He looked a little closer at the image which showed them standing inside the garage and both looking at the camera in surprise.

Behind them was the open hatch, and it was this that grabbed his attention, because someone was disappearing down it in a blur of motion. So there was another one of them was out there after all, and this one must have overheard everything they just said.

Without thought of a flashlight, Gregg bounded down the steps after them and picked up the shotgun on the way, and as he ran through puddles he couldn’t see, he kept the dim shaft of light from the schoolhouse in the centre of his line of sight until he felt sure he’d reached the junction with the main tunnel.

Once there he stopped in the hope he’d hear which path the blur from the photograph had chosen, but there were no diminishing footfalls for him to follow. He waited a few seconds then heard rapid breathing just a few feet to his left. He looked, but the black of the tunnel allowed him nothing.

He raised the shotgun to the same height as the breathing and was about to squeeze the trigger when the heat from his damp jeans distracted him, and then his quarry took off again, southward.

Gregg followed and reached the right turn for the Chambers’ tunnel to see a figure silhouetted by the light coming from the shaft. He raised the shotgun one more time then saw something that didn’t quite compute with the wet tunnels, something that shouldn’t be there. He dropped the gun and raced toward the stairs in time to see a bare foot alight the final step. And that’s when he heard the screams after the person had discovered what was up there.

The stairs of the shaft flew under him unnoticed as a vision of a young girl, still screaming and crouched on the floor between two of the hanging corpses, greeted him. Her face was pressed into her thighs with her arms wrapped over the back of her head. From her size he guessed her no older than fourteen.

The stairs of the shaft flew under him unnoticed as a vision of a young girl, still screaming and crouched on the floor between two of the hanging corpses, greeted him. Her face was pressed into her thighs with her arms wrapped over the back of her head, and from her size he guessed her no older than fourteen. The flies were still present and still removing decaying flesh from around them and the stench of death was just as thick as it was earlier.

He reached out to the girl but his touch was met with more screams and a barrage of fast, aimless blows he could do little to defend against. He stepped back and allowed her to return to the position he found her in before he tried again, and again she struggled and tried to pull away from him, but he managed to get his arms around her to hold her firm and close as he spoke in a soothing tone.

‘Shush, shush, it’s okay, you’re safe now,’ he said, and repeated those words over in a soft voice. ‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ he said again.

Gregg’s actions and tender words seemed to assure the young girl he was more her saviour than her executioner. He rocked her to and fro and repeated those same soothing words, “It’s okay, you’re safe now” which eventually began to settle her.

He tried to put a small amount of space between them to check she wasn’t harmed, but she clung to him like a terrified child would cling to its mother after being lost and found in a crowded shopping mall. But as far as Gregg was concerned, that was okay, too, because he’d just found Alicia Vincent.