The Five Dollar Mail (Book 1: The Green & Book 2: Lynch's Boys)

145: Flattened

Cover painting by Angela Taratuta. Chapter artwork of Bender by Diego Candia. All graphics by me.

Bender writhed in the rocky dust on the ground in front of the imploding tunnel, his arms wrapping his head in a desperate protective embrace as the earth shook with the force of the earth settling. The shuddering vibrations of the rockfall behind him were dying away, the noise echoing in the blasted, unforgiving landscape. He rolled onto his back, sitting up and scrambling painfully to his feet. His hat had been knocked from his head, and blood streaked down his face from an injury he hadn't even felt. He wiped his eyes clear with the back of his arm, new panic setting in at the sight of the jagged, boulder filled mouth of the collapsed mine. Miss Lil...

"Miss Lil!" he shouted, grabbing at the rocks, pulling and fumbling as the broken limestone tore at his fingernails and knuckles. She's not dead...not dead... he hauled a boulder out, heaving it behind him and setting his hands against the next one, barely noticing that he'd torn the nail on his index finger down past the quick and the blood smeared the pale stone like paint. He paused, drawing his coatsleeve across his eyes again, the rough oilcloth painful against the abraded and bleeding cut on his brow. 

There were countless boulders in the tunnel. Some were bigger than he was. 

She's not dead...

He gasped, anger and horror boiling inside him as he defiantly grabbed another boulder and threw it behind him. Balls. Balls! Buggering...shit! Another red-smeared rock flew behind him. His injured arm throbbed with the strain and he shook the blood from his eyes. "Lily!" He yelled, his voice shaking and hoarse. "Please answer! Bari...answer, you sheep shagging piece of..." 

The effort of jerking another boulder loose sent firebolts through his arm and he groaned, desperate and frantic. He threw it aside and reached for another, hauling it free with a wordless grunt of pain and fear.

The spill of long, matted black hair he'd uncovered startled him, left him standing before the rockpile with a boulder in his arms.The sight of Littlewolf's crushed and mangled corpse jerked his mind back from the great, sprawling never-never of his panic, reconnecting him with the here and now. He gave the boulder a half-hearted toss to the side, breathing hard and feeling suddenly too weak to keep digging. 

He knelt down and cleared the debris from Littlewolf's blood-streaked face, drawing the man's dark, staring eyes closed. Rolling back onto his butt, he took in a deep, shuddering breath and wiped his eyes again, feeling blood running over his eyelids and dripping from his jaw in a steady stream.

"Bugger," he whispered. 

She's probably dead. They're both probably dead as this poor dead yob is. They were far back into the cave. They didn't buggering get out. They're still in there. He fumbled a bandanna from his pocket and pressed it hard into the cut on his forehead, closing his hot and tear-filled eyes. Depending on how much much of the mine caved in, all three of them might be dead. 

Think, governor. Think, think. His mind was reeling. He didn't want to think. He wanted to either scream curses at the sky, or lie down among the jagged mess on the ground and never get up again. Thinking was the absolute last thing he wanted to do right now. 

Another stream of hot, sticky wetness rolled into his eyes. He increased pressure on the bandanna. Not going to do anyone any good to pass out and then lie here and bleed to death. His head spun with dizziness and a sheen of sweat broke out over his skin. He steadied himself, breathing deeply. I have to keep going. I have to find them, dead or alive. I owe her that. I'm so sorry, love. He let out a shuddering breath, his throat constricting with a restrained sob.

How did this get so cocked up? I came out here to take care of her, didn't' I? I should have stayed in the buggering cave. I should have been right there next to her....who knows where she is back there? That tunnel went on a bit. 

He stopped, a thought poised in his mind and he held it firmly, studying it. A strange calm washed over him. 

"Yes, it does," he whispered aloud. Jesse wasn't in that tunnel.They took him somewhere. That tunnel leads to someplace else...

And there might be more than once way to get there.

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