9. Gauge
GAUGE
The grit turned sour as it got stuck between my teeth. Wind whipped around my body as dust kicked up all around me. The closer we got to the explosion site, the worse the sand tasted. Like twisted metal and broken iron, slashing against my teeth as I revved my engine.
Today, Bait came home.
I figured there would’ve been a smell. An odor to follow that picked up the closer we got to the crime scene.
But with the sour taste of the sand and the lack of smell, it didn’t take a genius to know what was happening.
My nostrils flared as I leaned forward. I brought up the rear of the charge, watching Dallas lead the troops while Deac fucked off to God knows where.
Where the hell did that son of a bitch go anyway?
“You sure we can do this?”
“Where the fuck is the smell?”
“There’s a damn shovel here. Who the fuck’s been out here?”
“Watch out for the crime scene tape.”
I pulled my bike off to the side and whipped the kickstand down.
As I sat there with my engine idling, I looked out over the horizon.
The mound of sand trapping the stench of death beneath us made me shake my head.
The second we dug, that shit was gonna be rancid as fuck. I knew that sand absorbed the smell.
“You think we can really do this?”
“That’s a fuckton of sand. Do we even know how much we have to get out of the way first?”
“How the fuck will we get in there, even if we do move all that sand?”
I grew tired of them complaining. I whipped my leg over my bike, walked over to a shovel sitting by the massive rock that once housed the button for the entrance, and I let out a screeching whistle.
“Plug! Catch!”
The man whipped around and caught the shovel in his hand. But I didn’t give him a chance to speak, even as he drew in a curt breath.
“As for all your fucking questions,” I said as I lumbered into the middle of the group toward Dallas, “we get in there the old-fashioned way. We get this sand out of the way, we find the door that leads into that bunker, and we fish out anything we can find that may incriminate this bitch before it rots away with Bait.”
That drew silence as the wind kicked up, swirling layers of sand away from the hill in front of us.
I closed my eyes and let the sand batter my face.
I held my breath as the metallic grit sandpapered its way against my skin.
I hoped to any God listening to us that the door held.
That somehow, miraculously, that blast didn’t compromise that massive metal door leading into that hallway.
The hallway with the lights.
The hallway with the doors on either side.
The hallway that led us straight to Bait.
“This ends today,” I growled as I snatched the shovel from Plug.
“Hey! Gauge! Wait a second!”
“Grab a shovel and start digging!” I exclaimed as I whipped back toward the man.
Plug took a couple steps back as the crew fell silent. I didn’t stop, though. I just turned back to the mound of sand and stuck the shovel into it.
“There are a few more shovels by that rock over there. My guess is Nielson’s deputies have been out here. Come on. We’re burning daylight.”
Dallas brushed past me. “You heard the man. Grab a shovel and let’s get to it! Let’s go! Let’s go! Let’s go!”
I shed my jacket and tossed it off to the side.
With sweat dripping down my brow and the sun beating against my back, I dug my shovel into that sand and hauled mounds of it off to the side.
Mace stuck his shovel beside mine, helping me to dig downward.
The more sand we dug out, however, the more that slid into place. And that pissed me off.
“Stupid fucking bitch,” I grumbled.
I tossed that shit over my shoulder and ignored the way it spilled into my hair.
I let the sweat carry it away from my scalp as the rough texture slipped down my neck.
We were in an absolute shithole of a situation, and I knew there was no way in hell we’d dig up Bait by the end of the day.
We didn’t have any other choice, though.
We had to produce bodies, or at least pieces of bodies, to even prove the situation we were in.
“Oh hell yeah, Deac!” Dallas exclaimed.
One by one, the guys cheered. One by one, they tossed their shovels to the side and clapped their hands. I ground my teeth together as I kept shoveling sand over my shoulder. I didn’t give a fuck what kind of distraction Deac brought our way, we had too much to fucking do.
That was until I heard a horn beeping behind me.
“You gonna move or what, Gauge?” Deac asked.
I slowly peered over my shoulder and what did I find?
I found that big ass motherfuck sitting behind the wheel of an excavator, that’s what the fuck I saw.
A smile spread across my face. I held my hands up in mock surrender as I carried my shovel off to the side.
I joined the pack of men near the rock as Dallas patted my back.
You know, before he shook his hand out.
“Shouldn’t touch a man after a long day’s work, pretty thing,” I said with a grin.
Dallas shoved my arm. “Shut the fuck up, you sweaty asshole.”
I whistled and clapped my hands over my head as Deac tilted the bucket of the excavator down. In one fell swoop, that massive, rusted metal bucket picked up more sand in one get-go than I would’ve been able to shovel out of the way in a fucking afternoon.
I had no idea where in the hell Deac got the damned thing.
But I also didn’t care.
“Go, Deac! Go, Deac! Go, Deac!”
I leaned toward Dallas. “This will do nothing good for his ego.”
Dallas snickered as he folded his arms over his chest. “At this point? I don’t even fucking care.”
I chuckled as I patted his back. In less than an hour, Deac already moved the mountain of sand behind us, blocking our bodies from the harshness battering down against our backs.
The shadow towered over us with the more sand that he moved, and the shade it gave us helped us all to take a collective breath.
I watched as Deac moved closer to the missing dune.
The excavator bucket dipped downward instead of scooping off the top, and I knew we were close.
“Come on,” I murmured to myself, “please still be intact.”
It was like watching an impending train wreck.
You wanted to look away so badly, but you simply couldn’t.
We were all watching. We were all holding our breath.
With every inch forward that piece of machinery went, more of the cavern we once walked into was revealed.
The metallic dome still arched over the concrete floor.
I didn’t see any twisted pieces of metal or shattered concrete pieces in any of the sand Deac hauled out of that initial entrance.
Darkness cast itself over the bunker, causing Deac to turn on the lights the excavator had on its front.
And when he did, my jaw hit the fucking floor.
“It’s still intact!” I bellowed.
I clapped my hands so fucking hard that I swear they’d have bruises the next morning.
Seeing that goddamn metal wall with that motherfucking door was the most phenomenal thing I’d ever seen in my entire fucking life.
When he scooped that sand up and revealed more of that beautifully intact wall, I knew we were going to do it.
Holy fucking Christ, we were actually going to find Bait.
“The foundation going to the door isn’t even busted!” Deac exclaimed as he hauled another bucket full of sand out of the corridor.
He officially disappeared down the slope in order to clean out the last of it.
“What does the door look like!?” Dallas called out.
Deac disappeared for a few seconds before reappearing with another bucket full of that putrid sand.
“Blasted off its hinges,” he said as he dumped it behind us, “but beyond the door is just a layer of sand coating the floor.”
“Does the sand look touched behind the door?” Plug asked.
Deac grinned as he made his way back into the corridor.
We waited on pins and needles for him to surface with another bucket of the sand that no longer held the smell back.
We weren’t sure where in the hell he dug that last bucket from, but as he came crawling back out of the darkness with it, all of us had to cover our noses.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” Dallas hissed.
“Mm, mm, mm, I’m so glad Rat isn’t here,” Mace murmured.
“You and me fucking both,” I glowered.
“The sand isn’t touched,” Deac said as he dropped the bucket of sand behind us. “The walls are still standing, too.”
Dallas’s brow furrowed. “How is that even possible? That blast was hefty.”
The silence that fell between all of us answered the question, though. The blast was never to bury Bait. It was never to collapse this place.
The blast was just to kill Bait.
Which meant there was a chance she was sloppy about something.
“Come on,” I growled as I made my way to the darkened entrance, “let’s get this show on the road.”
Dallas took up space next to my left before Deac shoved himself in between the two of us.
As we proceeded forward, we crunched sand beneath our boots while trying to avoid the stench of death permeating around us.
Particles I didn’t ever want to identify floated in the air as wind kicked up, blowing small tornadoes of sand all around us.
The guys gathered behind us as we stood at the entrance of the hallway, staring at a shadowed corridor whose end we couldn’t see.
We all know what sat at the end of it, though.
“You think the lights in this place still work?” Plug asked.
I slowly peered over my shoulder. “Really?”
He shrugged. “Just saying, maybe I could get them up and running if?—”
“Enough,” Deac said.
All of us fell silent at his command as he turned to face the crew.
“We all can’t go in here,” he said as he rolled his shoulders back. “If this place collapses, we can’t have all of us caught down here.”
He paused, waiting for words of protest. But for the first time in our crew’s fucking existence, no one had anything to say.
That was how dire our situation was.