57
Ted
I didn ’ t even hear the cop cars behind me over the rattle of the backhoe ’ s engine.
That was how hard I was applying myself.
Foot on the gas, foot on the brake, left, right, left, right.
Dig, dig, dig. Get the kids out. Save them. Help them. Oh God, they couldn ’ t be dead.
I ’ d told myself a long time ago that I wouldn ’ t kill any more squirrels—or anything else—ever again. That hollow, sick feeling in my stomach was too much to bear. And these weren ’ t fucking squirrels. They were kids.
If I left them down there when there was a chance they were alive, I knew that nothing would ever be okay again.
I was a bad person. I knew that. But I wasn ’ t a killer. I wasn ’ t. So I was going to get them out, even if I had to rot in jail for it.
All I had left was that. And all those kids had left was me.
Everything happened fast and slow as the police screamed into the quarry.
Fast, as they shined a spotlight in my face and told me to put my hands in the air and step down from the excavator. Slow, as they swarmed the hole in the earth and drew their guns when I refused to stop digging. Fast again, as one of them yanked me out of the seat and took over, desperately trying to reach the top of the bunker.
They slammed me to the ground and put me in handcuffs but didn ’ t lead me away. Instead, a stout, bearded officer shouted questions at me rapid-fire over the noise of the big machine. “ How far down are they? How long have they been down there? Describe the bunker.”
And I did. Right down to the thick plywood roof on top of the bunker and the size of the battery holding it down.
I ’ d dug down far enough that it was barely a minute until they scraped the top of that bunker.
“ There’s a ladder over there,” I called, pointing into the darkness of the junk pile as more cops swarmed the hole, pulling loose dirt with anything they could find to open up the space. I thought of where that heavy battery might have landed and felt sick to my stomach.
The exhaust from the excavator and the dread soaking through every cell in my body made me feel like I was suffocating, waiting for them to get the last of that mud out.
I wasn ’ t suffocating though, and I was about to come face to face with the kids who had gone without air for real.
Because if they hadn ’ t been crushed to death by all that mud, they ’ d been breathing in their own carbon dioxide for the past—how long had it been since Andy ran off after that little girl? Where was he now? I didn ’ t know, but the flashlights combing higher through the foothills made me think the police were searching for him.
The excavator shuddered to a stop and went silent.
And then I heard it. The sound I knew would live in my bones until the day I died.
A weak little chorus of voices, begging for help.