Flesh Worn Stone (3 page)

“I don’t think we have a choice,” John replied. “There’s nothing out here for us, no escape and no appearance of a rescue on the horizon. Whatever this place is, it is inside these cliff walls. If we stay out here, as beautiful as it is,” he said, pointing to the beach, “we will die within days. There is no food, and more importantly, there is no water. We cannot survive on sand.”

Steven, still holding Rebecca, told the group. “The other girl, Cassandra…she said ‘this isn’t how this was supposed to be’ before she ran out, like she knew something about what was going on. Did she know why we’re here?”

Amanda ignored him, still crying uncontrollably, her chest heaving like a child who’d cried itself into a frenzy.

“I’m sure she meant it in general terms,” John replied quickly. “Like this isn’t the way life was supposed to turn out. How could any of us know what was going on here?” He stood, taking a deep breath. “There is only one thing to do, but much like our large friend Darius, I do not want to do it. We can only go inside the cave and attempt to find out what’s going on.”

“I don’t want to,” Darius said sadly, “but I can’t see any other option. Let’s go.”

Steven helped Rebecca stand and once again lied, “it’s going to be all right.”

She looked at him coldly, the tears replaced for a moment by something else, something he hadn’t seen in his wife’s eyes before, and managed a smile. “How’s this for excitement?”

* * *

He remembered exactly the conversation they’d had, where they’d been, even the Jasmine scent of her perfume. He remembered the cool breeze filtering through their open window, the smell of the bayou that ran behind their house. He remembered quite vividly the nightgown Rebecca wore and the way its red lace danced with the wind. The boys were sleeping soundly upstairs and the wine was uncorked and on the windowsill. He remembered their lovemaking, as passionate as the first time, and then relaxing in each other’s arms by candlelight.

“Is this all there is to life?” she’d asked, leaving him a bit confused and taken aback.

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know. I just sometimes wonder if this is all there is. Don’t get me wrong. Life with you and the boys is wonderful. I can’t remember ever being so happy. I just wonder, sometimes, if this is all there is to life.”

“It isn’t enough?” Steven asked, wondering if the wine was taking hold or if the conversation was something he should be worried about. He didn’t know what he’d do without Rebecca. After Michelle had died, she was all he had. Her and the boys.

“Of course it is, silly,” she said, caressing his cheek, “but that’s not what I mean. Don’t you miss the thrill? The desire for excitement?”

“What, like bungee jumping?” he asked, still perplexed.

“Sure…like bungee jumping. There’s a rush there, a thrill you can’t get by standing still. The sudden onrush of the ground…the fear of death. That’s what’s missing. We don’t fear death.”

Steven did. He remembered his first wife’s corpse, barely recognizable when he’d been asked to identify her.

“I’m sorry,” she said, again stroking his face, “I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s okay,” he told her, “I just don’t get what you’re getting at.”

“Life seems perfect. We have great boys, both of us have great careers. We live in this ideal house overlooking the bayou and we have great friends we can laugh with. We have everything we need,” she told him. “But do we have everything we want?”

“I have everything I want,” he said playfully, cuddling closer to her and trying to lighten the mood of the conversation, “But if you want a little excitement, how about we go again?”

She laughed out loud in that way only she could, completely disarming and enchanting. “Oh, you want to go again? Like we’re teenagers?”

“You bet.”

“Come get me, big boy.”

* * *   

They lingered another half an hour before conquering their collective fears of the cave and stepping forward. When she finally found the courage she’d lacked, Amanda darted ahead of them. Light danced with shadows in the cave entrance, barely filtering around the large form of Darius, who took the lead, followed closely by John, then Steven and Rebecca. The entrance was barely wide enough to walk through and Steven half wondered if Darius’ shoulders scraped the side, if maybe his head was bouncing along the top of the tunnel. The tunnel was filled with sound, not only of their own haphazard scuffling, but of the people ahead of them. There had to be hundreds, judging from the cacophony of sounds not unlike a market festival or even the food court at the mall. There was laughter, screams, fear, and happiness all in one place at one time.

Amanda stood by the cave entrance, completely shocked by what she saw.

“My god,” Darius said softly from the lead, stepping out of the tunnel into a larger chamber.

The cavern was immense, at least three stories tall and as wide as several football fields. Stalagmites and stalactites of different proportions dotted the ceiling and floor, sticking out like shark’s teeth glistening with moisture. There were hundreds of people, some of which were the same who’d come through the cave earlier, yet almost indistinguishable from each other in their filthy clothing. They wore the remnants of faded blue jumpsuits, the ancestors of the bright, new suits that Steven and the others wore. Many wore simple kilts made from black plastic garbage bags, burlap sacks, and all sorts of other accumulated trash. Others wore clothing that looked leather, but had a different shine to it. There were many bare-breasted women, both young and perk and old and sagging. It took him aback, his slight arousal only abated by the sudden onslaught of smells. Meat cooking intertwined with raw sewage, rotting fruit and human stink.

There were hundreds of haphazard shelters around the cavern, built between cone-shaped rocks jutting up from the floor and constructed of black plastic garbage bags, blankets, wood and cardboard. The entire cavern reminded Steven of a documentary about horribly poor people somewhere in Mexico, living in a cemetery in whatever shelters they could put together. The only thing the shelters had in common was the lack of any sort of roof. They all appeared to be opened to the air, and he could only assume they were meant more for some sort of privacy in the crowded cavern than anything else.

Thousands of torches burned, filling the air with a thick haze not unlike walking through Houston on a high ozone day, and the smoke burned at his nose. Smaller outlets dotted the walls of the cavern and there were hundreds of people there as well. Clothing hung between the upper story outlets and some stalagmites, much like it might between buildings in 1950’s New York. Children played everywhere, and had Steven not been through one of the most traumatic events of his life, he might think this was a community like any other. Poor, yes, but just people getting by.

“Would you look at that?” John said, amazed, and as Steven followed his gaze, he couldn’t help but gasp in shock himself.

In the center of the cavern, constructed above a raised platform of stone and hanging between the stalagmites, was a very old wooden ship. It was in rough shape, showing its hundreds years of age, with many holes throughout its hull. Its masts were gone and thick ropes held it suspended at the top of the cavern with a network of wooden and rope ladders, suspended platforms, and bamboo suspension bridges forming a meandering path down to the raised stone platform. A tattered black flag, bearing the same pirate emblem that was engraved into wall of the cave, hung over the side of the ancient pirate ship.

“They had to have moved it in here a piece at a time,” John said, marveling. “I can’t begin to imagine the amount of work that took.”

There were people mulling about on the deck of the suspended ship, and more on the ladders and platforms leading down to the floor of the cavern. Most, like the people of the cave, seemed to be making their way to the center.

“Who are all these people?” Darius asked aloud. “Where did they come from?”

“I’m guessing they’re like us,” John Hussein answered, grabbing the arm of a passing girl. “Ma’am…can you tell us where we are? What’s going on?”

The girl could have been the same age as Amanda, and maybe without the bruising and grime, would have been as pretty as the blonde. The girl stared at John with wild blue eyes, trying desperately to pull away from him.

“Please, ma’am,” John said as calmly as possible. “We just want to know where we are. We’re here by mistake.”

Steven thought it odd that John would include the entire group in his plea of innocence. He didn’t know him from Adam. For all John knew, Steven could be the world’s greatest serial killer, sent to the prison of prisons for life. He wasn’t, of course, but he knew nothing about his fellow newcomers. He knew that he, and his wife, shouldn’t be in this place, but he didn’t know anything about the others, other than that they claimed to be from Houston. For all he knew, they were some sort of criminals or terrorists that he and Rebecca had been accidentally mixed up with. He imagined some super secret government organization having them mixed up with another Bradjolina Mr. and Mrs. Smith couple.

The girl ignored him and managed to pull away, and Steven wondered if that was the case. Why were they here? It was obviously some sort of prison, yet there were no guards.

John started after her but Darius stopped him. “Leave her. She’s scared to death of us.”

“But someone in here has to know where we are and what’s going on?”

Darius nodded. “But it isn’t her.”

Others they tried to stop and question reacted much the same, as if the group of newcomers carried the Black Death and they needed as rapidly as possible to get away from them. No one would look them in the eyes much less acknowledge their existence.

Their small group plunged into the crowd of people, still sticking close together if for no other reason than because they had arrived together. Rebecca clutched at his arm, still sobbing, still not talking. Earlier, she’d mumble about the boys, and then burst into full-blown tears. He wondered if she’d cried enough for both of them.

“Oh,” a small, old, plumpish man said, stepping in front of them and looking them over, “I didn’t realize we had newcomers. Though I guess I should have, considering the new girl in the blue jumpsuit. That should have been a clue, right? Well, it doesn’t matter. You’re here now, though I should have seen to you in the Cage.” He said “cage” as it were an official designation, like the name of a city or a museum. “I’ll see you now.”

He wore a long coat made of patched pieces of leather with voluminous pockets at his waist and chest level. The coat was covered in dark stains that Steven could only guess were from blood, and a tattered stethoscope hung around his neck, nearly obscured by the thick, dirty gray beard that hung down to his chest. His feet were clad in moccasins that looked as if they were made from the same material as the coat. He stepped up to Darius without an ounce of apparent fear at the big man’s size, and said, “Bend over and open your mouth.”

“What?”

“You must bend over or I will not be able to see into your mouth. I thought it was really quite simple,” he said, turning to John. “It was, wasn’t it? It wasn’t complicated like ‘forgive thy neighbor’ or some other silly nonsense, was it?”

“Where are we?”

“I’m only allowed to examine you,” the old man said, “not talk to you. You’ll have to figure out all the rest, just like we did. I’m just to make sure you aren’t going to infect us with some disease before you get a chance at the Game.” Again, he said the world like it was a title.

“The Game?” Darius asked, bending and allowing the old man to examine his mouth. Satisfied with that, he listened to the man’s chest with the ancient looking stethoscope, repaired with tape and glue.

The old man listened to his heart, nodding. “Yup, you got a strong ticker there,” he said. “Like a damn horse.”

“Are you a doctor?” Steven asked the man.

“As much as a veterinarian could claim to be a doctor, I suppose. Actually, here, I guess you could claim to be anything you want.” He stepped back, rubbing his scraggly white beard. “You know…I never thought of it that way. I think I’ll be Richard Nixon. Yup, former President.”

He made two peace signs, grinning, and said, “I am not a crook.”

“What’s your name, sir?” John asked as the old vet examined him.

“I just told you. I’m Richard Millhouse Nixon. Tricky Dick to my friends.”

John managed a smile as the old man finished and moved onto Amanda, then Steven and John. He hummed while he worked, and then, when finished, stood back and smiled. “Well, you all look healthy, which isn’t a surprise, considering the selection process, but we have to be sure. An outbreak of disease, here in this cesspool, would kill more people quicker than we could eat them efficiently.”

Steven’s ears perked at hearing
eat them
, but the others didn’t seem to notice and he said nothing.

“It’s going to be hard for you to stay healthy from here on out, but all I can really tell you is try not to shit where you drink, you know?”

With that, the old man melted into the crowd, leaving them just as shocked and confused as they’d been when they arrived. They pressed on, trying to push between the glut of people who were gathered around the raised stone platform at the center of the cave.

A slime-covered stream of water ran down a large horn-shaped stalagmite, forming a pool of tepid water at its base. Naked children, without the arm tattoos Steven noted, frolicked in the water as people stopped to drink from it. Darius knelt and drank a handful of the water and then spat it out.