2. Buried In Mud
Sally Rogers ran and the horde ran with her.
Hundreds of bodies churned through a thick warren of mud, roots and rain; at her sides, at her back, in front of her. Elbows pumping, thighs slapping, breath coming in short, sharp gasps as cries rang across this heaving, many-bodied mass.
Sally's heart pounded madly. Her muscles burned and stretched. Pushed right to the edge, juiced with adrenaline and caffeine.
She'd have it no other way.
At a sharp twist in the downward trail, heading for the mid-stage events in a forest of old oak and birch, half a dozen runners lost their footing and slid out of control just ahead.
They became a human avalanche, gaining greater mass as others ran in and bogged down; bodies toppled over outflung limbs, tumbling in filth and sliding off the course together, arms raking furrows in the deep muck.
Cries rang out. Screams.
Sally leaped once, twice, three times cleanly. Skipping a pale calf here, landing in a closing window of mud as the avalanche rolled by, then regaining her feet in the approach to the fourth obstacle.
Deep Dive.
A 50-foot stretch of freezing water and mud in a four-foot deep trench, sunk with five sections of concrete sewer pipe. Completion required full submersion for each section of pipe.
Sally's heart reached fever pitch as she raced up to the water line. People stood all around, some too afraid, some catching their breath, some vomiting into the filth.
This was her greatest fear.
She dived, hit the filthy water and sailed through the first pipe. With both legs kicking and one hand raised like a fin to stroke the ceiling, she resurfaced in seconds, surged over the gap, sucked in a breath then dived for the next.
Bodies thrashed around her. She powered past with clean kicks and controlled strokes. Dark Peak was in the past. She was moving on.
Then something had her ankle. All forward movement halted.
Someone? She spun and kicked, but the water dulled any impact and she couldn't get free. Was it a hand, clamped around her left ankle? Bodies thudded past her, elbows thumping against her chest, knees kicking by.
Her chest tightened. The water became dirt, packed and settling, crushing her on all sides.
She flailed, tried to pull herself down to untether her ankle, but took a shoulder in the nose, bursting air from her lips.
She tried again and this time the top of someone's head cracked into her cheek, driving her back.
Silver shot across her vision as the seconds mounted.
The one-way flow of bodies made going backward impossible.
All she could do now was kick. She kicked until her right heel found what felt like a thumb and she pounded it repeatedly, digging the edge of her rubber sneaker into the soft pad of flesh.
The urge to breathe grew desperate. She twisted, bucked, kicked with everything she had and finally the lock released.
Sally shot out of the pipe. Her head broke the surface and she gasped for air, rubbing her eyes and spinning on the spot.
Mud Beasters sped by oblivious. She surged for the bank, dragged herself out and ran shaking to the inlet on the second pipe.
No one came out. She ran back to the outlet, but there was only a steady flow of reddened, wheezing faces emerging from the mud; nothing to indicate it was them.
What was happening? Had someone just tried to kill her, or…
Without thinking, she jumped back into the water and returned to the pipe.
This time, there was nobody there. She ran her fingers over the smooth walls as she swam through. Nothing to snag her, nobody hiding, nothing at all.
She emerged again, panting hard, and climbed back to the bank.
"Are you OK?" a voice came.
She turned to see a wide-eyed young man wearing a red cross on his armband.
"What?"
"Just, I noticed you went through twice. Did you lose something?"
Sally fought for control. Had someone really grabbed her ankle, or had it been… what? Panic? Had someone else panicked and latched onto the nearest person?
"Ma'am?"
Sally opened her mouth to say something, tell him what she thought had happened, but stopped as her thoughts sped ahead. There was another possibility.
What if she'd imagined the whole thing?
Claiming an attempted murder now would halt the entire race, in her name. She closed her mouth as the consequences played out in her head.
After Dark Peak she'd gone through compulsory therapy; a dozen hourlong sessions. Her record was already scarred by that, and it showed. Deputy Director James McMaster at the National Crime Agency had kept both her and her partner Liam O'Connell on desk duty for the last three months.
She'd kept busy in her off-hours with the private investigation that had brought her to the UK in the first place: the Louisiana massacre she'd survived at 18, possibly tied to a school spree stabbing in Lincolnshire on the day she arrived.
But without her full warrant, she'd been forced to take side alleys and detours, fostering anonymous contacts and digging by proxy.
It was like investigating in slow motion, and it ground her down.
She needed to get off desk duty, with only nine months left in her exchange.
But if she halted the Mud Beast now?
She'd be done. Dark Peak had been national news, after all. She could see the follow-up.
'FBI agent nearly dies in the dirt, now hallucinates burial alive everywhere she goes?'
She couldn't let that be the headline.
"I'm fine," she said. "Just got mixed up."
The young man tried for a smile. "Well, it happens. People get turned around in these tubes. If you're sure?"
"I'm sure," Sally said firmly. "Thanks."
She turned and dived back into the water.
The rest of the Mud Beast passed in a blur. Her body performed the feats she told it to. Rope climbs. Wall vaults. Barbed wire crawls. None of it really touched her, because she wasn't really there at all. She was back in the water, back in the dirt, fighting for her life.
At the end they gave her a medal, a banana and a bottle of electrolytes. She ate the banana then vomited in the trash can at the edge of the parking lot. She tossed the medal and the bottle in after, then headed to her car.
It was still early, barely 9 a.m. in Hawkenbury, Kent.
She'd driven 90 minutes to get here, and was no longer sure why.
At her leased vapor blue Ford Mustang GT, she drank a quarter gallon of water and dropped into the driving seat without thinking to put down a towel.
She cranked up the heat and just sat there, heels of her hands pressed into her eyes, feeling the hot air wash over her but getting no warmer.
Maybe five minutes passed. Maybe half an hour.
Real. Imagined. She didn't know what it meant. Just as she was lifting her head to rub the drying grit from her eyes, her phone rang.
The sound was sharp. She rooted through the bundle of towels, clothes, old food packaging and paperwork on the passenger seat to dig it out. When she saw the name on the display, she straightened and answered at once.
"Director."
"Rogers, I've got something for you here," came the deep northern tone of Deputy Director McMaster. "Proper effed up case, just the way you like them, and breaking now. You're off in Kent, aye, personal day?"
The way he said ‘personal day' pissed Sally off. Like it rhymed with ‘weak'.
"I'm in Kent, sir, that's correct."
"Bully for you. Looks like you're finally getting off that desk, your partner too; just in time for the big move this week. Are you up to it?"
Sally blinked. The big move. She'd hardly been paying attention to her email inbox, but there were signs everywhere around NCA headquarters in Vauxhall. The HQ was moving after 30 years in place, somewhere north of the river.
"Yes, sir, of course."
"Champion. Now, there's been reports of a macabre death scene down at Dungeness; ever heard of the place?"
"No, sir."
"Don't blame you, it's a godforsaken hellhole, used to be a nuclear power plant, now it's just angry fishermen and small boat arrivals; your standard dinghies full of the world's lost souls. The body's a young man, down on the shingle in the shadow of the old power station."
Sally instantly refocused. "What's macabre about it, sir?"
"You're going to love this. Apparently the lad's got no eyes, popped clean out, and some bright spark's stuck cockle shells in there instead.
Hardly my idea of innovative plating, but then I'm no Michelin-star man.
" He took a hard breath. "Get to Dungeness and liaise with DCI Gloria Mayhew, she's Kent Constabulary out of Rye, SIO on this.
I know her; she's a proper ball-ache, don't quote me on that, and she'll likely have it in for you from the off. So don't screw it up."
Sally tried to process all of that. "Why would she have it in for me, sir?"
"She despises the paparazzi, and we all know you're clickbait for this country's greasiest rags. So head down, put in the hard yards and no showboating this time. Do I make myself clear?"
Sally's fist tightened on the phone. "Perfectly."
"This is your ticket back into the big show.
And one more thing; a kill like this, it's not the first for Dungeness.
Thirty years back another boy turfed up on the beach, same designer eyewear.
There was a true crime podcast on it a while back.
Despicable voyeuristic shit, if you ask me, but maybe it stirred up a copycat.
I suggest you start listening on the way down.
But keep your head about you. It's storm season right now, and they always get hit something rotten. "
He hung up.
Sally remained with the phone by her ear, looking out through the windshield at the rain-bleared forest. Mud Beasters shambled by, battered but transcendent, glowing with the endorphin rush.
Her ticket back into the big show.
She needed this. She also dreaded it; another plunge into the dark, another chance for the mud-slinging press to try and bury her. But that was fear talking, and there was only one thing to do with fear.
She brought up her phone, pulled up her podcast app and ran a search for ‘Dungeness shell murder'. The lead result made her skin crawl.
‘The Cockle-Eye Killer.'
The podcast's cover art showed a washed-out beach scene overlaid with blood-red lettering. Beneath it were thousands of five-star ratings.
People had binged this. Loved it.
A cool, sour sensation rolled in Sally's gut. She hit play and spun the Mustang out of the lot.