13
Ted
When the quarry ’ s dirt road finally opened up to narrow switchbacks, I ’ d had to slow the shuttle to a crawl so I wouldn ’ t ding up the underside. I hooked a left and headed for The Pit, a closed section of the quarry that had been relegated to a seldom-used dumping site for random junk, bigger equipment parts, and industrial waste. After half a mile, I brought the shuttle to a stop, pushed my hair back from my forehead, and forced the tight, dark-brown pantyhose over my head. Then I checked in the rearview mirror, just to be sure my face was covered.
“ Holy shit,” I breathed, still taken aback by my own appearance. You couldn ’ t see my eyes at all. Just two faint, circular shadows on either side of my nose, which was smashed down flat like the ogre in Shrek . My eyelashes scraped against the stretched-tight fabric when I tried to blink, and my nose was already starting to hurt again. I probably could ’ ve got a bigger size pantyhose, or a better mask, but I would ’ ve had to go searching for it. And that meant leaving a trail of evidence.
As I maneuvered the shuttle down the final stretch of the narrow switchback, the gray van came into view at the edge of The Pit. Then I saw Andy—barefaced and grinning at me like a monkey as he came around the side of the van.
Panic, then rage, burst like flares in my brain.
“ Hey, Teddy Bear,” he said as I skidded to a stop in front of him and banged open the door.
“ Dude, put your pantyhose back on,” I snapped the second I got out of the shuttle. This wasn ’ t what we ’ d agreed to. And he knew I hated that nickname. For one, it made me feel like we were still in high school and I was still a skinny, acne-covered teenager with an unironic mullet. For another, he never used it when he was really joking around. There was acid behind it that meant he wanted to put me in my place.
Not for the first time, a worm of doubt wriggled at the back of my mind. Andy wasn ’ t exactly my first pick for accomplices, and this was why. When he got mad, or annoyed, he could be a loose cannon.
It wasn ’ t like I had another option, though. Andy was my option. And he knew it.
As if to prove my point, Andy lifted his middle finger defiantly and cocked his head, staying where he was behind the van. “ It ’ s fucking hot out here. They can ’ t see through the paint,” he said, nodding at the blacked-out windows. “ What took you so long?”
“ I took the exact right amount of time,” I shot back, not backing down like I usually would. And I had. I drove the speed limit, right to the digit. Took back roads off the highway, like we ’ d talked about. “ Everything is good,” I said, lowering my voice so the kids in the van couldn ’ t hear me.
Andy lowered his middle finger and shrugged. “ Fine, Teddy Bear. But we gotta hurry.” He pointed at the shuttle van behind me. “ My next pickup ’ s in half an hour. We gotta get the cargo stowed.” He pointed a thumb at the van, then reached into his back pocket for his wadded-up pantyhose and pulled it over his head.
I gritted my teeth. He didn ’ t have to call them “ the cargo,” but it was time to smooth things over. Fighting was only going to make him more stubborn.
He took a few seconds to wrestle his hair beneath the tight fabric, finally succeeding in smashing it flat against his scalp and against his face.
“ You look like a dumbass.” I forced a laugh, relieved he had the disguise back in place. We could take the pantyhose off once we had the kids safely stashed. Until then, it was better to be careful. If they saw us, this perfect plan was going to veer into territory I had no interest in touching with a ten-foot pole.
I listened for the sound of cars crawling along the dirt road, but all I heard was silence. There was almost zero chance of anybody coming down here over the weekend. The Pit was no-man ’ s land. And even the working sections of the quarry shut down at four o ’ clock sharp, Monday through Friday. Shifts started at the buttcrack of dawn during the summer and early fall, and Andy ’ s dad —who owned the quarry—wasn ’ t about to pay anybody overtime.
We had the place to ourselves until Monday.
But what was the point of all our—my—careful planning if we were going to cut corners?
“ Come on, help me move the slab,” Andy said, walking toward a sheet of metal at the edge of The Pit.
He pointed to a warped yellow metal sheet lying in the dirt. This particular metal sheet was a panel from a long-dead excavator, about the size of a door.
I glanced at the back of the gray van as I hurried to catch up with Andy. None of the kids had made a peep since I ’ d showed up. Were they okay? It was pretty hot, and a ransom wouldn ’ t work if the kids were dead. The Pit was mostly shaded, and the sun was already setting past the steep rock face rising above us at the edge of The Pit, but the air hadn ’ t cooled down even a little yet. The airless van, with its blacked-out windows, had to be boiling inside.
I pushed the thoughts away. They ’ d only be inside a little longer. Kids were rubber bands, I told myself for the hundredth time. They bounced back from shit like this. I thought of what Andy had told me when I started getting cold feet a few days ago: If anything, this ’ ll give the little snowflakes something to make them feel extra special once they’re back home.
I squatted down on one side of the warped yellow metal sheet, careful not to touch the jagged edges gleaming silver. Andy hunched on the other side. “ One, two, three, go,” he said, then we both grunted and heaved the heavy sheet a few feet to the right, just enough to expose what was underneath.
With the metal sheet out of the way, the smell of damp dirt and a subtle whoosh of cooler air rose up to meet us. It wafted up from a dark, yawning hole leading down into the earth and felt good on my hot skin.
Good. It wouldn ’ t be a total oven, at least. Kids might even be glad to go down there, after baking in the van.
“ Damn, this is so good,” Andy gushed, craning his neck to look down at what we ’ d built.
I felt a tiny rush of pride, too. It was absolutely perfect. We ’ d been working on “ The Bunker” almost since I ’ d begun working at Northside Quarry with Andy a year ago.
It ’ d all started when we ’ d been tasked with widening the dump pit to make room for a discarded shipping container.
“ Dude, this thing is HUGE,” Andy had said, when the flatbed dumped it at the edge of the pile and we got our first look at it.
The words BODO TRANSFER COMPANY w ere painted in worn, scratched-up letters on the side of the enormous shipping container, tipped onto its side. Andy was right. It was huge. The dimensions were listed right on the side. Twenty feet long, eight feet wide, twelve feet high. “ Jesus Fucking Christ,” I ’ d replied, “ This is half the size of my house.”
I ’ d felt heat rise in my cheeks the second I said it. Because of course it was nearly the size of my house. I still lived in my mom ’ s shitty double-wide. Which basically was a shipping container.
Andy had ignored me though, stepping closer to the cracked, roll-up side door that had come open when the shipping container landed in the dirt. “ You know, people make like, doomsday bunkers out of these things,” he said. “ Bury them in the ground, stock them with food and guns.”
I ’ d nodded, not really thinking much of it. “ That ’ d be dope.”
He ’ d looked at the dozer and excavator we ’ d been working all week, widening the edge of The Pit to make room for the shipping container so it wouldn ’ t block the road. Then he glanced around at the piles of fresh dirt we ’ d mounded up. “ We could bury it,” he ’ d said, raking a hand through that wild, fork-in-a-socket hair.
And so we did.
At first, we ’ d just planned on making it a bunker fort. Somewhere we could slip away and smoke pot on the clock. Or where Andy could, anyway. I didn ’ t like the way the closed-in space made my brain feel slow and stupid.
We kept the fort a secret. Easy enough, since we were the piss-ants in charge of hauling waste and broken equipment to The Pit.
It took forever, but by the time we were finished, the bunker was a masterpiece.
We dug a hole deep enough that the top of the shipping container was four feet beneath the earth, lying on its side with its roll-up door facing up. Then we built a four-foot shaft made of plywood around that roll-up door and backfilled dirt over the rest of the shipping container. The only thing visible after that was the opening to that narrow, square plywood shaft.
As a finishing touch, we sent two ladders down the shaft: a long one that went all the way down to the bottom of the shipping container, and a shorter one that let us shimmy down the shaft. Then we covered the opening in the dirt with that heavy yellow excavator panel, which hid everything.
To the casual observer, the only thing visible was the old excavator door. It looked just like all the rest of the crap lying around the perimeter of the junk pile.
It was the perfect hiding place.
Too perfect to waste on stolen minutes at work, smoking pot. It got the wheels turning in my head.
When I finally told Andy about the plan—because I needed a second guy, and because he knew about the bunker—he got so excited he looked like he ’ d just taken a hit of something.
I shook my head, pushing the memory away so I could focus.
“ You ready?” Andy asked, breathing hard and striding back toward the van. “’ Cause it ’ s go-time again, motherfucker.”
I gave him a dumb half-salute and wished I hadn ’ t. I hated that I was always pandering to Andy. He wasn ’ t very smart. He wasn ’ t even very nice most days. Maybe it was just because he was one of the few people who didn ’ t treat me like a total disease when I got out of jail.
I tugged the pantyhose down, even though it was so tight around my face I could barely breathe through my nose. “ Yeah, let ’ s do this.”