Page 10 of Wired Ghost

“So. Let’s review. Tell me what I missed while I was knocked out. Did you pick up any actionable intel?” Jake asked.

“Not much. O’Brien told his men they were going to evacuate from the site due to our discovery of them and the troubling volcanic reports coming in from Kilauea’s monitoring station. Apparently, that earthquake was indicative of an imminent eruption.”

“Just what we need. A volcano going off while we’re trapped underground in a lava tube,” Jake groaned.

As if in agreement, the walls shuddered and the ground bucked. Sophie cried out as rocks crumbled from the ceiling and thundered as they hit the ground around them. She threw herself over Jake, but he was already trying to shelter her. So they clung together, their heads hidden down below their shoulders, as a hailstorm of pebbles and dirt rained down on them.

At last the earthquake stopped.

Sophie raised her head. The gray circle of light was bright because the piece of plywood the gang had used to cover the pit had fallen in, along with some of the edges of the hole they’d been forced into. A haze of dirt and dust made both of them cough, and Sophie lifted her filthy shirt to breathe through it. “One good thing from the earthquake—some of the smell from the trash pile has been buried,” Sophie said, and coughed.

“We have to find a way out of here. Another one of these quakes, and this whole cavern could collapse.” Jake heaved himself up onto his hands and knees. In the dim gray light, covered with slime from the garbage pile, which the fall of dust and dirt had adhered to, he looked and smelled like he’d crawled up out of the primordial ooze. “Now that there’s a little more light in here, let’s do a recon of this cave and see if we can find anything that we can use to get out. I’ll go right, you go left.”

“Okay.” Sophie hated to leave his side, but there was no help for it. She staggered to her feet and navigated along the wall, one hand trailing over the rough stone. She was glad she’d kept her shirt up over her mouth and nose as the cavern continued thick with disturbed sediment; orwas it new volcanic emissions, blowing in from somewhere?

She suppressed a surge of panic at the thought.

“This haze isn’t really clearing,” Jake hacked and choked from where he’d disappeared from her view. His voice didn’t sound as echoey as it had before; the part of the ceiling that had collapsed had introduced a muffling layer of debris, as well as the toxic air they were trying to breathe.

“Make a filter from your shirt,” Sophie said. “Tie it over your nose and mouth like I did.” She’d finally reached the roughly circular wall of the cavern and begun curving back around when she encountered another opening. This was roughly six feet in diameter and led away from their cavern. “I found a hole. Looks like it might lead somewhere, and the air’s slightly fresher here,” she called to Jake.

“Yeah? Well I found some old crap they pitched in here that might be useful,” Jake said. “Work your way over to my side and let’s take a little inventory.”

Sophie’s eyes were gritty from the haze, which seemed to be dissipating at last. She continued on, looking for any further openings or cracks in the walls or ceiling, and seeing none. Nothing but rock, dirt, and fallen piles of ashy soil that had detached from the ceiling. She eventually made her way back to her partner, who was squatting outside of a circle of dim sunlight that looked bright in contrast to the thick darkness. “What did you find?”

“A body,” Jake said, and held up a human skull.

Chapter Seven

Jake

Sophie’sshort hair was gray and thick with the ashy sediment from overhead; her honey-brown eyes gleamed in the filth that coated her face. “We landed in a crime scene.”

“Who knows? The guy might have died of natural causes and they didn’t bother to bury him.” Jake waggled the skull back and forth, and the bits of hair clinging to the scalp swayed in a macabre way. “If only these bones could talk.”

Sophie tightened her jaw, clearly not interested in the body. “You said you found something useful.”

“Yeah. They didn’t clear the body. I found some very old smokes in his pocket, and this.” Jake flicked a good quality stainless steel lighter triumphantly. “He was also wearing a belt with a knife on it.” He held up the item in question, a wicked looking combat blade. “We’re armed. We have a source of light. It’s all good now.”

As if to mock them, the ground shuddered again, a feeling like being on an animal shaking its coat. Jake threw himself on Sophie instinctively as more debris rained down on them from around the opening above.

The quake was short this time and ended almost as soon as it started. Sophie cursed in Thai, and wriggled beneath him. “I appreciate you trying to protect me, Jake, but right now you smell like the devil’s armpit. Get off!”

Everything still hurt. Every breath stabbed like a thousand ice picks. Jake groaned as he rolled off Sophie onto the rough stone floor of the cavern. “Why did I have to land in a pile of crap after getting the shit beat out of me?”

“I don’t know. Life’s not fair?” Sophie pointed to the litter of bones that marked the body. “I’m sure that guy agrees.” She put her hands on her hips and looked toward their light source, the crumbling hole far above. “I worry that the ceiling will collapse further. I think we should figure out a way to use your lighter. We could make a torch and explore the tunnel I found. At least the air and stink are better there, and if it’s a dead end, we can always come back. Eventually, Bix will be looking for us at the coordinates I sent.”

“Sounds like a plan.” Even though breathing hurt, Jake would rather be on the move than trying to keep his mind off their circumstances and waiting for help. “Let’s find some kind of stick. We need something that can burn—ideally, a fuel source.”

“Ugh. I guess we have to get back into the trash.” Sophie pulled her shirt back up over her nose and mouth again, and approached the foul-smelling heap that had mercifully broken their twenty-foot fall.

Jake breathed shallowly through his mouth and focused on the fact that, once they were able to make some torches, they’d be able to get away from the stench—at least for a little while.

He pulled aside several branches and a palm frond or two. With the knife, he’d be able to fashion them into some kind of handle—but nothing would last long if they didn’t find something that could fuel the torch. Perhaps the clothing on the corpse could be useful. Technically, they should have left the body undisturbed, but the necessity of survival outweighed corruption of a possible crime scene.

“Eureka!” Sophie shouted.

Jake spun to see her, halfway up the refuse pile, brandishing several spherical items. The light was too dim to see exactly what they were, but he turned eagerly away from the grisly prospect of stripping the clothing from a corpse whose body had rotted inside of the garments.

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