“That’s a relief.” Mark rolled to his hospital bed, using the arm grips to hoist himself out of the wheelchair. Sarah went to care for him and Chiun left them.
Sarah Slate was born rich, but she was born with a heart Mark Howard liked to think he sensed the goodness in her soul; that was what he found so attractive. The fact that she was beautiful… well, it helped.
But she was good, full of kindness and inner strength. She stayed with him when she didn’t have to stay, doing everything she could to make his life easier as he recovered. The tom leg muscles were healing slowly, and he’d start trying to walk again soon. But he was bone-tired so much of the time.
“What would I do?” He sighed as she inspected his leg stays.
“Without me?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“You’d have your brace checked by Nurse Escobar.”
“Nurse Escobar smells weird,” Mark said, eyes drooping.
“That’s my main advantage over Nurse Escobar?”
“You’re a
“Gotcha,” Sarah said. “Eye candy, no stink.”
Mark couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic or not. “Well, you must admit. Nurse Escobar is twice the woman you are.”
“Maybe more than twice.”
“That’s a lot of woman to love,” Mark said, then regretted it. He met her eyes.
“How would you know?” she asked. “Have you and Nurse Escobar…?”
“Maybe.”
“I see. The truth is, Mark Howard, that sometimes more is
Mark Howard mimed locking his lips and tossing away the key.
“Still, I guess I’d better prove it,” Sarah said, slipping off her sweater.
Neil Velick was on day six of his seven-day rotation in the Pit, and he was counting the minutes until the long, long elevator ride back to the surface. This time, swear on a stack of bibles, he was never coming back. Even the great paychecks weren’t worth it.
Then Neil thought about the house. It was way more house than he could afford, but it was the house that his fiancée had selected as the one and only suitable dwelling for her and her children. Never mind that the house was five bedrooms, never mind she wasn’t even pregnant, never mind the wedding was still twenty-one months away. Melody Toped had made her decision.
Neil had wondered what would happen if he put his foot down. All it would take would be a quick “I quit” to his boss. The salary would vanish. The house would go with it. Would Melody vanish, as well?
Good chance.
Neil tried to picture it in his head. Melody would throw a big crying fit, then she would beg him to try to get his job back, and when she knew it wasn’t going to happen—well, she’d be history. No doubt about it.
And then she would walk out the door, sobbing, and Neil would be standing there and what would he do?
Neil saw himself wearing a big grin as imaginary ten-ton weights were lifted off his shoulders.
He hadn’t even realized he was toting those weights around with him, but damn, now he could feel them. Wouldn’t it be great to get rid of the weights and job and, yes, Melody, too. She was nice and all, and a hell of a body, but it wasn’t as if she was all that nice to Neil, come to think of it, and it wasn’t as if she let Neil make use of that nice body very often, right?
Neil’s endless hours of boredom at the bottom of the old mine shaft had finally paid off. Enlightenment had come to him. He knew what he wanted, he knew what he sure as shitting did
Neil did not know that his life was going to be far shorter than he ever imagined, and none of the next few minutes would be anything like he planned. Or imagined. Or dreamed in his worst nightmares.
When he heard the skittering he ignored it. It was down Shaft C, and Shaft C didn’t go anywhere. Shaft A and Shaft G, those were the ones he had to keep an eye on. If the place was infiltrated by terrorists, they’d come at him from Shaft A or Shaft G.
More skittering. Neil Velick put his feet on the desk in the dimly lit roundhouse of rock known as the Intersection.
It was an old wooden desk, and how it got down into this godforsaken hellhole was a mystery. Some said it was brought down a hundred years ago by the miners. If that was so, it had to have been stored in a dry place, away from the eternal seepage of the Pit. Anyway, the antique desk was now put at the intersections of the seven primary corridors, or shafts, and that’s where the guards sat, on an uncomfortable folding chair.
The skittering became constant and Neil’s curiosity was aroused. There were always rats, but this sounded like a lot of rats. Maybe a hundred of them.
