The Art of Deception

Rotten Luck

A fantail of the faint yellow light indicated either a sharp turn up ahead or the tunnel’s dead end. Her mind stuck on that thought: dead end. Had Walker ever intended to kill her, or only to present her with the body of Nathan Prair as his “peace offering”? Had she brought all this upon herself by going for Prair’s gun?

Her next thought was that Walker, cut badly and desperate, had purposefully allowed her to charge ahead because he knew she was boxing herself in. At once, the flashlight failed. Shaking it did nothing to revive it. She worked off the last image she’d seen, now fading off her retina like a projector’s bulb going dim.

A pile of debris a few yards ahead and to her right. Walker, too, had slowed, the moment the light died, probably suspecting a trap. She eased ahead, hands stretched in front of her. Slowly the absolute black lost a tiny amount of its edge. A faint amount of light was coming from somewhere up ahead-not yet enough to see by, but enough to give her hope.

She knelt and felt around and formed her fingers around a brick. Holding it tightly, she turned and pressed her back against the cold mud wall alongside what she felt to be the post of a rotting, crumbling, vertical railroad tie.

No means of death frightened her more than the idea of being buried alive. She tried to slow her breath to hear better, but the blood pounding in her ears blotted out all sound.

She could imagine him approaching but could not see him or sense him. Her eyes adjusted further and she could make out the silhouette of the post she hid against. Light meant air. Air meant the surface.

Accidentally leaning some weight against the post caused a chunk to break loose. It fell to the floor, and with it, some dirt rained down from the tunnel roof.

Walker lunged out of the total darkness, misled by the faint light, and stabbed his fishing knife into the soft post. Dirt and debris cascaded down on both of them as Matthews cried out and jumped back, her feet catching on another pile of debris.

She went down hard, falling backward, her hands groping to cushion the fall, her head striking yet another post. A large chunk of mud fell into her lap, followed by a volley of rocks.

Walker staggered toward her, seen only as a looming shape-a dark mass. She swung the brick at his head with the force of a tennis serve, but it impacted his shoulder as he, too, tripped over that pile of debris. She swung again and clipped him squarely in the ear, and separated a piece of his scalp.

“Fuck!” he shouted, his reaction time much faster than seemed possible as the knife flashed in the darkness and she felt her left forearm burn. He cut her again, higher on the arm.

He staggered forward, and she delivered the brick again, but his eyes had adjusted, and he careened out of the way, falling against the wall, smashing into another post with enough force to dislodge it. An overhead beam cracked loudly, spraying splinters and chunks of wood. It swung down toward the wall as if hinged and slammed into Walker, knocking him back and pinning him half standing. He fought to get it off him as Matthews heard it-a sound she understood before its effects were felt.

She took two steps backward but was stopped by sight of a flashlight beam. It appeared out of the darkness, well beyond Walker, who broke the fallen beam and shoved it to the side.

“Matthews!”

John! She burst into tears at the sound of his voice. She yelled a warning only seconds before the ceiling caved in, earth and wood and rock, like water from a burst dam. She dived back, rolled, came to her feet, and scrambled away, the ceiling disintegrating. Looking back, she lost sight of LaMoia and his light as the earthen roof rained down.

She screamed again for him, but the world came down as if a dump truck had dropped its load from above. The fantail of light she’d seen ahead was suddenly a beam, and then a spotlight, and then the sky, as the collapsing tunnel ripped open a section of street or alley. As fast as she could scramble, the debris filled in around her and under her. It briefly overcame her, winning the race, covering her, burying her. She dug out frantically, gasping for air, struggling for purchase, then suddenly lifted by a giant wave of moving earth. She climbed, slipped, and ripped her way toward the crest of the wave. As it broke and settled, reversing its direction, sucking her back down, Matthews clawed out and grabbed hold, a moment later finding herself dangling, clinging to a buried pipe and a lattice of tangled wires.

Air. Lights.

Behind her, below her, was nothing but dirt, and mud, and asphalt, and wires and broken pipe, all formed in a giant V

pointing down from where she’d come.

No other voices. No other sign of life.