THE SON OF ELI

CHAPTER 11: JO IN THE HOLE

A mounted tower on the left side of the gate served as a lookout point across the beach. There was always a member of the Utility Team on the tower. A second guard was always on the ground guarding the gate against attacks.

When an agitated Jo drew up on her bicycle, the two young men were leaning against the metallic fence chatting. They snapped to upright positions when she appeared, then relaxed a bit when they saw it was the kind-hearted doctor. One was holding a rifle with a scope, and he would be the one on the tower. The second guard had a revolver in a holster around his waist.

It was not yet daylight, so the area was still shrouded in the hazy predawn darkness. One of the guards switched on a torchlight and shone it in a diagonal slant so that it would not fall directly on the beautiful doctor's face, but it effectively illuminated the area.

"Mrs Mensah," said Frank, the young man with the pistol. "Is there a problem, please?"

Jo shook her head and tried to speak with a calm voice.

"No, no, Frank. I just need to step out for a while, need to clear my head."

The two guards exchanged troubled glances. Attah, the one with the rifle, smiled uneasily.

"Um, Mrs Mensah…"

"Jo!" she said sharply. "Call me Jo."

Again, they exchanged looks and appeared unsettled.

"Well, um, nobody goes out this back gate before six in the morning, and um, you're not even to… um, go out alone!" Attah said, sounding apologetic.

Jo closed her eyes and took a deep breath. And when she spoke, her voice was quite unsteady.

"Attah, I know that. It's just that… I just witnessed something… bad, and I need to clear my head, okay? I won't go far…"

The young men exchanged looks again, and then Attah sighed.

"You know how it is, please. If the Commander finds out – "

"Well, f**k the Commander!" Jo shouted with such bitterness that they looked at her with alarm. They noticed for the first time that she had clenched her fists, and her voice trembled as she spoke.

"It's okay, Attah," Frank said quickly. "I'll walk her to the beach."

"No!" Jo said tightly. "I want to be alone!"

"I'll keep my distance, Mrs… um, sorry for that. But the only way we're letting you to out is if somebody accompanies you, and right now it seems I'm the only one available."

Jo's clamped both hands to her cheeks and remained undecided for a moment. She then opened her eyes and dropped her hands.

"Fine, fine, let's go, Frank."

It took a while for them to unlock the heavy padlocks and loosen the chains that kept the door secure, then Jo got off her bicycle and stepped out quickly followed by Frank.

***

The space outside the fence was broad.

Straight ahead of her was a green expanse that led to tall coconut trees, and beyond them was the sandy beach. To the right was a green landscape that ended on flat brownstones that stretched a bit farther to the right.

There was a spot there that had been a favourite retreat for her and Pat. They would stand on the jagged rocks and look out to sea in the fading sunlight. In the distance, in the middle of the sea, it appeared, were three head-shaped protrusions the locals used to call The Three Wisemen. The story behind it was that ships and boats used to sink around that area because of a hideous rock in the bed of the sea, and the authorities had erected that three-headed metal structure to warn ships and boats.

In the dying sunlight, the waves splashed on these three pillars, and the golden sunlight turned the ripples into sparkling diamond-like wonders that never ceased to amaze Jo.

As she hurried across the brown rocks, she barely heard Frank's frantic cries calling her to slow down. Her heart was so heavy, her inner vision still occupied by Mike's wet face and pouting mouth.

"The bastard!" she hissed as she hurried along. "The dirty, filthy bastard!"

She broke into a run suddenly, pumping her arms as the floodgates broke and tears of anguish streamed down her face.

"Woah, Mrs Mensah, hold up, please!" Frank shouted and began racing after her.

Where was Pat?

Oh, how she missed him! Pat, her true love, her endless love! He would never, ever, never have treated her this way, done this to her, hurt her this badly!

The pain was unbearable now as Jo ran, throwing all caution to the wind, oblivious to the cries of Frank behind her. Her breath came in wheezes and feet hurt because her sandals had thin soles, and the rock surfaces were mostly uneven.

She was hurting!

She was almost at the spot – their spot, their special spot – when she heard the snarl!

An enraged snarl, and it was dangerously close to her!

It dawned on her suddenly that in her turmoil, she had forgotten about the Meltdown and the constant danger it embodied! Her emotional breakdown had dimmed the violent repercussions of wandering out of the relative safety of the Complex.

Her heart lurched with terror as she came to a stop and looked around her with wide eyes. The day's first light was beginning to permeate the darkness, and the white crests of the sea waves could have looked majestic at that particular hour.

But times had changed, and there was nothing majestic about life, not anymore. There was never time to enjoy nature, or take in the sceneries, or even savour the tangy, salty crispness of the seashore wind.

Nowadays, there was a stink, an eighteen-year-old stink that refused to leave the atmosphere. It was the stink of death; the death of humans, the stench of rotten flesh from the sea and the ground, the nasty shaggy stench of deadly animals from the wild!

Nowadays, love didn't matter, and cheating didn't matter. Nothing mattered but survival. And yet, in one moment of madness, she had forgotten all that! She had recklessly ventured outside in the vain hope of finding Pat to heal the ache in her soul!

"Mrs Mensah, stand still!" Frank's shout cut through her dazed mind, and she saw him moving across the rocks towards her, and to her right was a dark, growling outline!

The ground was littered with bones and skulls of decomposed bodies. Some were shrivelled, some were bloated. The white skulls gleamed in the greyish light, seeming to grin and taunt her.

Hello, Jo! Lovely dawn, isn't it? Say, what brought you down here, huh? Oh, let us guessssss! You found your husband shagging a witch and couldn't handle it? Ohhhhhh! So bad, isn't it? But don't you think you could have handled it better inside the safety of the compound? Did you choose to be here with us? Ahhhhh! Don't you know where this is? This is death, Jo, death! And soon, you will join usssss! You will gleaaaaam like us down here! Gleaaaam like us, Jo, gleeeeeeaaaam!!

The snarl came again from the dark mass, nasty and filled with rage, and she finally saw the red circles glowing.

"Oh, Jesus, oh Lord!" Jo cried with horror and took frantic steps backwards. "Fraaaaaank!"

And the searot moved!

It was a huge, bloated man!

He unfolded from the rock where he had been sitting, and Jo screamed! The searot had been a powerful, muscular man once. Even covered with seaweed, his powerful shoulders rippled with muscles. His face was half-eaten from the half-crown of the head to the right side of his forehead, leaving him with a macabre half-face with the three concentric circles blazing on the leftover forehead. His eyes were purple orbs, and his mouth was a dark hole with huge, fang-like teeth. His intestines trailed on his massive thighs as he lurched at Jo with great, lumbering steps. His arms were extended fully, and his fingers hooked like claws. Like all the searots, his fingers were many and metallic!

"Goodness, Mrs Mensah, move, move, move!" Frank's scream cut into Jo's lethargy, and she turned and fled blindly away from that lurching horror.

The searot snarled with rage and leapt madly after her. He reached out, grasped her hair, and lifted her off her feet. Jo screamed and flailed blindly at him, kicking wildly as those horrible fangs loomed near to her face.

She felt her bladder give and warm urine flooded her thighs as the horrible death loomed.

The sound of a shot shattered the morning air as Frank reached them and fired blindly into the face of the searot. The bullet smashed into the mouth of the searot, and he gave a bellow of rage and threw Jo on the rocks hard.

He turned towards Frank, who was aiming his gun again and screamed with fury. Frank fired rapidly, trying to aim at the concentric circles.

"Get out of here, Mrs Mensah!" Frank kept shouting.

Three bullets grazed the head of the searot before he clamped his fingers on Frank's neck.

Jo, sitting on the rocks, screamed with horror when the fingers dug into Frank's head, spiking his throat, then the searot lifted him and bit savagely into Frank's face and tore it out with a savage wrenching, tearing action!

"Nooooooo!" Jo screamed with pain, horror and guilt as the searot growled and clamped his fangs on the remains of Frank's head and bit it off, chewing with relish. He dropped Frank's body and bellowed with rage, and then he turned his gaze once more on Jo.

Frank's body thudded on the rocks, and a moment later, it began to swell up. Jo got to her feet with a groan of terror and began to flee just as Frank's body exploded, and his dry bones thudded on the rocks with musical, tinkling clamour!

The searot came after Jo with long, lumbering steps. He snarled furiously and reached for her. She felt wetness on her cheeks and looked up to see blood and flesh dripping from the mouth of the beast as he leaned down to bite her!

Jo screamed and suddenly found herself falling through space! A moment later, she landed on something hard and lay stunned for a while.

She could feel whatever she was lying on shaking alarmingly and hear the vicious snarls from beneath. Slowly, her wits returned, and she opened her eyes slowly. She had a horrible headache, but she was safe, at least for the moment.

She looked around her and realized with horror that she was in a V-shaped hole. She recognized it. It was near the spot she used to sit with Pat and enjoy the diamond rays on the Three Wise Men. It was a deep hole with smooth sides, but a little narrow! She had fallen into the hole, and there was no way she was going to be able to get out on her own! The hole in the rocks was deep, always filled half-way with seawater.

She looked up and saw the arm of the searot extended into the hole. He was lying flat on the rocks and reaching in with his hideous hand trying to clutch her out, but she was out of reach for the moment.

"Leave me alone, you bastard!" Jo screamed. "Murderer!"

The object she was lying on shook alarmingly again, and finally, Jo looked down. She had landed on something glasslike which was slanted inside the hole. It was a strange object, cylindrical with a covered black lid. It contained a multi-coloured liquid that seemed to be frothy now as it continued to be shaken hard from below.

Part of the glass object was inside the water, and at its base was a corpse, a dead soldier that had decomposed, but the shoulders were intact, and she saw the familiar name etched on the shoulder pads.

JO 1 on the right shoulder, and JO 2 on the left shoulder!

Jo covered her mouth with her hand and pain seared through her heart as tears welled up in her eyes and streamed down her face again.

Pat!

His words reached her from a long way off!

I carry my wife on both shoulders so that whenever I'm afraid, or depressed, or lonely, I simply touch a soldier and know she is with me, all the time, double of her!

She had found Pat, at last, inside the hole!

A green, rotten hand suddenly shot out of the water and flailed around the glass object!

Jo screamed with terror!

There was a searot beneath the glass!

But it was kept at bay by the glass globule!

If Jo had fallen into the hole without the glass, she would have been dead by now! But at least she would have been with Pat, her Pat, and free from this pain and torture she was going through.

For one wild moment, as she felt the searot struggling furiously under the glass globule, she was tempted to jump into the water and get it over with, and be with Pat forever!

"Jo!" the shout cut through her reverie sharply. "Jo!"

"Where are you, Jo?" another voice screamed.

"Frank! Jo! Fraaaank!" a third called.

"Over there!" someone shouted. "Searot on the ground!"

Jo closed her eyes tightly and sobbed.

Of course…

The Utility Team had come after her, led by Mike no doubt.

She cried silently as a heavyweight of helplessness, and sadness assailed her!