Divine Justice

CHAPTER 39

STONE ROSE SLOWLY to a sitting position, his limbs shaky, his head throbbing and his belly queasy. He touched the knot on his head. The blood was dried solid over the wound. He'd been out for a while, apparently. He sat on his haunches for a bit, breathing slowly, trying to keep from puking.

He finally staggered to his feet and looked around. Or tried to. He could move his hand a foot in front of him and be unable to see it. He put a hand up and it nicked the hard, low ceiling.

He was in a cave. He breathed in and nearly gagged. No, he was in a mine. A coal mine. He took a few tentative steps forward and then stopped.

Rattle-rattle.

Stone took a slow step back from the sound. It seemed like more than one snake actually. Standing in the pitch black with rattlesnakes within striking distance probably constituted a pretty decent nightmare. Most people would have been frozen to the spot, waiting to be bitten and die. Stone was not stupid, so he was scared. But he wasn't paralyzed. He moved both arms out from his sides. One hand brushed wall, his left nothing but air. He leaned toward the left and his fingers now grazed the rough side of the mine. That the mineshaft was not very wide was not much help since he couldn't exactly walk on walls. He reached up again and his hand hit the low ceiling. Rattlers could not see very well in the dark, he knew. But they could register his body heat and also sense any movement he made from the vibrations on the ground.

He was in grave danger of being fanged repeatedly with no way to get out. How long before they found his body? Or his bones? And then it dawned on him. That's why they hadn't just killed him and left his carcass to be found. Here he would die and never be discovered. People would just assume he had left town. No explanation or cover-up required. And yet there was more to it, he sensed. Whoever had done this could have just left him in the mineshaft with no way out; they didn't have to use snakes too. Or they could have just shot him and left him here. There was a desire here to cause not only death, but terror as well. They wanted him to die horribly, and alone, and in the dark. Then the panic did hit him. But not for the obvious reason.

Abby.

He'd been with her. They might know that. They might think he had told her things. What things he wasn't sure. But they might go after her just in case.

Stone felt around the ceiling until his fingers touched what he deduced was a support beam. The beams helped hold up the ceiling, preventing tons of rock from raining down and crushing him, for which Stone was understandably grateful. Yet more important, there was a light cage attached to the beam by a sturdy metal plate. The light obviously wasn't working. Yet he didn't need light, just the cage.

He moved backward, away from the rattles, holding his arm up to the ceiling. Roughly four feet later his hand grazed another beam and another caged light. Four feet later, another.

Figuring that the snakes would've been placed between him and the exit to the mine, Stone slowly moved back toward the sounds. A rattler was deaf so it couldn't even hear its own rattles, but it was an instinctive signal to prey or predator that the snake was there, coiled and ready to strike. With each hesitant step he took Stone braced for the venom shooting into his legs. When he reached the first ceiling beam he'd touched, he reached up and gripped the metal light cage. Praying that it would be strong enough to hold his weight he lifted himself into the air, his legs bent and raised to chest-high. His injured arm ached badly, but he simply focused on what he was doing and willed the pain away. The Triple Six Division had been great at beating that technique into him at the Murder Mountain training facility, because they'd been expert at inflicting all types of agony, both physical and mental.

He swung back and forth and then lunged forward in the air, his hand outstretched like he was working the monkey bars, as he had in basic training. His hand closed around the next metal cage. Keeping his knees high, he let go of the first cage and kept moving. He had no idea if a rattler would strike upward and nail him in the ass, but he also didn't want to find out.

Four beams later, and after he missed one cage and almost fell, he stopped and listened, dangling there, his knees still bent to his chest. The rattles had stopped. But he didn't want to drop to the ground just yet. He kept swinging until his lead hand went out and touched nothing but rock wall.

Shit!

Had he actually gone the wrong way? Or had the snakes perhaps moved past him while he'd lain unconscious? Or had whoever put him here outthought Stone and placed the snakes on the side opposite the exit? Or was this actually a nightmare and he would wake up any moment now?

His arms growing heavy, Stone cautiously lowered his legs and stood on firm ground. He put out his arms again, trying to gauge the width of the shaft here. He touched what he believed was the dead-end wall, but nothing was on the other side. He kept moving to that side, but nothing was there. Puzzled for a moment, the truth finally struck him.

Idiot.

This was a turn or bend in the mineshaft. He got his bearings, walked his fingers along the wall and moved forward, listening carefully for more rattles. Ten minutes later he ran smack into wood.

The mine entrance must've been boarded up, because he could see a thin line of light at the bottom edge of the wood. He considered his options. That was relatively easy, because he had none. He took a few steps back and ran full tilt at the wall. All that did was land him on his butt with a bruised shoulder. He started to rise and then froze. His fingers had grazed against something metallic half-buried in the dirt. It was long and slender. As his hand closed around it, Stone could tell it was a pole with a flat end, like the shaft of a screwdriver.

He worked the bottom edge of the pole into one side of the wooden wall and started to lever. He felt the nails in the frame start to give a bit. He probed at another spot and pushed his weight against the pole, his feet slipping and sliding with the effort. Twenty minutes and much sweat later, the top right edge of the wooden wall gave way and a big shaft of light lit the mine. Encouraged by this breakthrough, Stone really put his shoulder to the effort and only another twenty minutes passed before he was able to force the board enough away from the frame to squeeze out and fall on his back in the dirt.

Free.

He let out a deep, relieved breath. Then, blinking rapidly, he looked around to see if he recognized where he might be. He didn't. There was a dirt road here that was actually colored black. It took him a moment to realize why. Years of coal trucks carrying the stuff away. Their tires had ground the black dust and bits of rock into the red clay and the black had won out. He looked down at his clothes. The black had won out on him too. He brushed himself off and walked down the road, keeping alert in case whoever had sucker-punched him was still watching to see if he escaped the snake party.

A mile later he cleared the trees and turned onto a gravel street. As soon as the stuff crunched under his feet something occurred to him and he put his hand in his jacket pocket. The empty bottle of Tylenol was gone. Great. His skull felt like it was cracked, and now he'd lost the only real clue he'd found in pounding the increasingly dangerous streets of Divine.

He hitched a ride on a truck to Rita's and went in through the back but found out that Abby wasn't there. Then he called her house from the restaurant but there was no answer. He ran to Willie's trailer, grabbed his truck, drove pell-mell to Midsummer's Farm and caught her as she was walking out to her car.

When she saw him she said, "What the hell happened to you?"

When he told her, she simply stared at him. "Oh my God, Ben," she finally managed to stammer. "What is going on?"

"Have you talked to Danny?"

"Just a bit ago. I was just now going to see him."

"I tried calling you from Rita's."

"I thought I heard the phone ringing, but I was drying my hair. What are you going to do?"

Stone thought about that. What was he going to do? "I'm going to see Trimble. And then I'm going to hook up with Tyree to see what he found out." He took her by the arm. "Abby, I want you to be careful. I know you have the shotgun. How about a pistol?"

"Sam had a couple. They're upstairs in the closet."

"You know how to fire one?"

"You're asking a girl from the mountains if she knows how to fire a gun?"

"Okay, I'll take that as a yes. You said you had a couple of guns. Mind if I borrow one?"

"I can't think of anybody right now who needs it more."

They went in the house and Stone got the pistols. He loaded them both and handed one to Abby.

"I'd like to keep in close contact with you, but I don't have a cell phone."

"You can use Danny's. I brought it home from the hospital." She looked at his filthy clothes. "You can't go see Charlie like that. You can shower here and change your clothes."

Stone looked toward the truck. He hadn't thought to check. He looked in the cargo bed. His duffel was gone.

"I, uh, I don't have any clothes to change into."

"Come on. You're about the same size as Danny."

She led him to Danny's room and picked out some clothes for him. When he came out of the shower they were all neatly packed in a bag except for a pair of pants, shirt, socks and skivvies.

Dressed with phone and gun in hand, Stone gave Abby a hug. "Thanks, I'll meet you at the hospital later," he said.

He watched her drive off. Then he sped off in the opposite direction to keep his appointment with Trimble. Then he would go see Tyree. He had to play this just right. Or the only future he'd have would be either six feet under or else making calendar scratches on the walls of a federal prison.