free in one big, wet outburst.
It did me no good.
The lid dropped, settling onto the liner with a puff of dust. Concrete ground against concrete as it settled into place, sealing me in. Seconds later, the muffled sound of dirt being shoveled into the grave started. Thump after dull thump, it rained down on the lid, becoming quieter as the dirt piled up. The liner creaked ominously under the building weight. Unable to move, all I could do was listen to the fading sounds above and the pounding beats of my frantic heart.
I was trapped, buried alive.
I don’t care how badass you think you are, how much you can bench press, or how big your dick is, all that gets tossed out the window the instant the first shovelful of dirt lands over your head. Courage and machismo mean shit when there’s two thousand pounds of earth between you and breathable air. Alone, excised from the light as hope withers on the vine, terror sets in.
Barely able to manage the slightest of movements, enclosed in a three-by-eight steel reinforced, concrete box, the darkness swallowed me whole. Blacker than the deepest obsidian, I could see nothing. Not the lid of the liner, not the nose on my face; nothing.
Deprived of sight and the sounds of the world above, my fear turned inward. Crowded as it was in my head already, it wasn’t a welcome addition. Overcome, I thrashed about knowing it would do me good, but I couldn’t help myself.
Terror knows no reason.
My movement still restricted by the poison in my system, I rocked back and forth, bouncing from wall to wall, squirming inside my tiny prison. After a few moments, my skull finding the head of the liner with a solid thump, I felt something cold pressed against my temple.
It took all my will to battle back my unrepentant shivers and twitches so I could take a second to examine what I’d found. Breathing heavy, my heart still slamming into my ribcage, I gathered myself. Unable to use my hands, I pressed my head against the object. It was small and hard and apparently attached to the concrete wall of the liner.
The skin of my head not sensitive enough to determine what it was, I craned my neck to the side and stuck my tongue out. After a few seconds of fishing around to find the object, the sour taste of old plastic, and a small hint of glue, filled my mouth as my tongue struck home. Fighting back a gag, I let my tongue run loose.
The object was little more than a few inches around, and circular, extending about six inches from the wall. Out of reflex, thinking about the dimensions, I pulled my tongue back in disgust.
Whatever the thing was, it owed me dinner.
Putting aside the question of my manhood, I returned to the examination. When my tongue slipped inside a narrow cavity in the object, nearly getting stuck, my brain engaged.
It was a pipe.
My thoughts started to whirl with excitement. I bumped my nose on the cylinder as I leaned into it in a rush, trying to get as close as I could. With my nose pressed up against it, I sniffed hard. A very faint odor of moist grass crept to my nose. It was the greatest scent I’d ever smelled. Driven by the desire to live, I wrapped my mouth around the pipe-keep your comments to yourself-and sucked hard.
The chilly night air filled my lungs.
I sighed and pulled away from the pipe, relief washing over me. Once again, Karra had been given an opportunity to kill me and she’d passed on it. Regardless of who she was, whatever her relationship to me, she was burrowing past my cynicism and making me think maybe she wasn’t one of the bad guys. That probably meant Reven wasn’t either.
My head hurt just thinking about it.
With my adrenaline taking a dive, my heart rate slowing, I tried my best to get comfortable. No longer worried about suffocating to death, I could wait out the poison, then see what I could do to get out. Hope had returned, springing eternal.
Once the fear passed, I drew in a deep breath and settled in. At least down here, I was pretty safe. I didn’t have to worry about getting caught up in the middle of the pissing match between Baalth, Lilith, and Reven. All things considered, I had it pretty good squirreled away underground, alone in my grave.
“Poodle-juice!”
Or not.
I shrieked when the raspy, guttural voice shouted beside me. The sound echoed through the box as I exploded into squirms again, my crotch warming as my body found a creative way to express its fear. My eyes scanned the inky darkness, but it was like peering through steel; no one would ever mistake me for Superman. My heartbeat ramped up as my mind was a flurry of questions, wondering how anyone could have gotten into the liner with me.
“Who’s there?” I squeaked, my voice easily three octaves higher than usual.
“Fiddle-dee-deeeeeeeeeeee,” the darkness answered, its words moist.
I wiggled into the corner as far as I could to put as much distance between my uninvited guest and my paralyzed ass as possible. My senses fluttered out. Though I didn’t feel the chilling cold which came with the presence of a ghost, I wanted to know what I was dealing with. It only took a second to find out.
Loosing a growl, I withdrew my senses and relaxed. “Stupid zombie.”
“Zom-b-e-e-e-e-e-e-,” it repeated.
I thought back to when I’d been dumped inside the liner and realized I’d managed to grab a hold of something as I fell. That was what landed on me; the zombie’s head. I’d torn it off.
Lucky me.
“I hope you’re happy I pissed myself,” I grumbled as I squirmed from the corner with a wet squish, wedging my stiff leg against the head to keep it from moving, and from biting me.
“Pomegranates!”
The smell of urine wafted about the box and I was glad I had a vent hole. I was also glad I’d only pissed. I’d had burritos for lunch.
Thank Starbucks for small favors.
“Whaaaazzzzup? Whaaaazzzzup?”
As I listened to the zombie’s random insanity, I knew I was in for a long night.
“Bud-wei-ser.”
At least he was singing my song.
Chapter Ten
At first, I’d thought about squeezing the snot out of my chatty roommate, but by the time I could move again, we’d come to a casual impasse. Besides, once I’d gotten to know him, he was pretty fun to be around. We even had the same taste in music.
He actually liked Death Metal.
How ironic is that?
Since I couldn’t get anything coherent out of him concerning Karra or Reven, we’d spent the majority of the night singing our way through the classics until I’d felt strong enough to get to work.
Not given a lot of options, I had to figure out how to move a ton of dirt without it crashing down on top of us. After a little while of banging my skull on the wall, I had an idea.
As the air pipe was by my head, and going straight up guaranteed my new buddy and I would be crushed, I decided to renovate the wall at my feet. Limited in space, it took me two hours to kick the concrete wall into pieces, the rebar reinforcement holding it together. It didn’t help my legs had deep, leaking gashes in them from Karra’s sword. They still felt a little weak, but I managed to get it done.
While some dirt spilled in through the hole I made, the moistness of the new ground held it mostly in place. I breathed a sigh of relief and moved on to the next part of the escape plan.
Contrary to the laws of physics, I bent myself into positions that would have made a Siamese cat jealous, and
