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CHARLIE
Charlie’s dirty nails sank deep into the hard ground. She pulled herself up over the edge, the pit’s mouth, which still yawned wide to swallow her back down. She threw her knee up and hooked her foot as best she could.
The rock and dirt crumbled under her, and she fell for a split second before her hands caught her. Her heart and guts seemed to fall all the way to the base of the pit while her body froze at the top.I’m okay. I’m okay, she repeated to herself.Come on. Have to move.But her body remained frozen in place.
Movement might mean escape, but it also might mean more of the old wall crumbling, sending her back down to the bottom. She’d been lucky to not sustain any serious injury the first time when Dariom threw her in. She might not be so lucky a second time.
The long climb had sapped most of her strength. She worked out on occasion, and she went rock climbing a time or two, but she was used to repelling down into dig sites and having someone or multiple people pull her out. Her body wasn’t cut out for this.
“Come on. You’ve got to move,” she whispered.
Her fingers were gripping the dirt, curling in, willing the rest of her rigid body to move with them. Her foot ventured out to find a new hold, but with the leg stiff as a board, it couldn’t find much.
The image of her mother flashed in her mind and the memory of when she’d held her hand on her deathbed.You are capable of such great things, Charlie.Her mother believed in her, and she’d been a dauntless woman herself.
“Move, damn it.”
She leaned her head forward, and her shoulders followed, and then her arms curled in to pull her up. Her legs, realizing that simply hanging there would be counterproductive, swung up onto the side, the one that hadn’t collapsed, and she pulled herself over the top.
She rolled to her back, staring at the roof of the canopy tent covering the pit. Two of the bones she’d packed in her makeshift sling stuck into her side. She’d used nearly everyone she’d taken.Thank you, 1948.Hopefully, they’d be happy that she escaped, happy they’d saved her even after no one had saved them.
She pulled the two bone fragments out, both smaller ribs. She thought about burying them as she flapped her shirt out before putting it on, but voices came before she could do anything other than tuck them in her back pocket.
“Why do we have to watch her?” one man asked. “She’s in a damn hole in the ground. She’s not getting out.”
“Who cares? We get paid to sit around and do nothing.”
Charlie ducked behind a collection of crates as the two men came into the excavation tent.
They meandered up to the edge of the pit. “How’s it going down there?”
They both tensed when they peered down, finding nothing but dirt and bones.
“Where the …”
Charlie didn’t waste the element of surprise. She shoved one guard forward, and he screamed as he dove headfirst into the pit. The crunch of bones when his neck snapped reached up and gripped Charlie’s ear as if to whisper,That was going to be you.
But the fear of what could have been didn’t freeze her the way it did when she clung to the pit’s edge. She pulled one of the bone fragments from her back pocket as the second guard grabbed her other arm. She lunged forward and stabbed the man in the throat, puncturing his jugular before she ripped it out.
The man’s eyes went wide and wild with the fear of knowing he was already dead. He staggered forward, still gripping her with one hand as his other tried in vain to stop the bleeding. Those wild eyes hung onto Charlie as fiercely as his hand, then they flicked to the pit, and when they came back to Charlie, they turned hard with revenge. Most people never get the chance to avenge their own death, but this man might. He stepped toward the edge, his legs shaking like the rest of his body.
“No!” Charlie cried as she wrestled with his grip.
The man tilted over the edge, shifting his weight until it became a matter of seconds before they both fell to their deaths.
Tears didn’t even have time to stream down her cheeks as everything slowed. Her final moments of life to savor. Even though they were filled with dread and violence, they were still life, still something she wouldn’t have once she reached the bottom of the pit. They’d all be left to rot like 1948 had, till they were nothing but bones.
Bones.Her mind snapped to the rib still in her hand.
As her weight shifted, pulled by the larger man, she stabbed his forearm, and he released her.
She leaned over the edge as momentum pulled her. Her arms stretched out, desperately throwing as much of her weight back as she could.
The man’s eyes never left her as he fell, his jacket rippling in the air. His grimace faded, and in that last moment, before he landed on his neck, his eyes begged for forgiveness.
She didn’t give it as she wobbled, teetering on the edge of the pit as time slung back into its standard, unforgiving motion. She exhaled the last of her breath, and that made the difference, pushing her back to fall on her ass, safe from the devious pit.
“Fuck!” The word ripped from her mouth all on its own. She clamped a hand over her lips and prayed no one heard her.
