Part one Return to the Silver head Mine Part 1 : nosleep (reddit.com)
I looked behind me to see dozens of Wiowalks laying on the ground not moving. The 308 was hitting with much more kinetic force then my 40 caliber pistol. It was putting them down and keeping them down. An empty magazine hit me right in the face as Mairo continued the onslaught. A thought popped into my head from one of the firearms instructors, Pistols put holes in people, rifles put holes through people.
As another magazine hit my face, Mairo yelled, “I’m out.” He grabbed me by the collar of my shirt and with what seemed like no effort at all, he picked me up and said, “ Marine, we are leaving.”
He shoved me toward the cook shanty. I looked out over the area between me and the elevator. There were over three dozen Wiowalks laying on the ground with the back of their heads blown out. I was so shocked that I stopped running and just stood there, mouth agape. Mairo ran up, shoved me, and shouted, “Unless you are trying to catch a flying rooster in your mouth, close it and keep moving. We are not done with this fight.”
I looked closer and saw at least thirty more crawling out of the mineshaft and coming towards us. In its mad dash to get to us, one of the Wiowalks crashed into a telephone pole, snapping it like a toothpick and knocking out the power to all buildings.
I ran though the double doors gasping for air. Mairo looked like he wasn’t even breaking a sweat. He spun around and was trying to figure out how to lock the door. In a move of sheer genius, Mairo took his rifle and put it between the two pull handle loops on the door. He disconnected his rifle sling, wrapped it around the handle for good measure and tied it off. The door began to shake and groan as the Wiowalks tried to push their way into the building. The sound of cracking plastic could be heard as the polymer frame began to bend and flex. After a brief moment the sounds stopped.
I whispered to Mairo, but in my current state it came out as a shout. “Do you have any more ammunition for that rifle?” Mairo looked at me, cupped his hands around my ear and said,
“If I did, I would not be using it as the world’s most expensive door lock.” I gave him a shrug that meant ‘Ok fair point.’ “We need to clear this building of hostiles,” Mairo said.” I gave him a thumbs up.
Under the glow of emergency lights that cast everything in erie long shadows, we walked over to the first door we saw. Mairo pointed at me and gave me the number one sign and pointed to go right. He then pointed at himself, made a number two sign and pointed to the left. I nodded my head in acknowledgment, unholstered my pistol and had it in the low ready. Mairo opened the door and stood to the side. I went in first and turned right with Mairo close on my heels as he swung left. We cleared the kitchen attached to the cook shanty. We did this for each door we came up to. Most of the rooms on the other side were small closets. One of the doors led outside, but luck was on our side as no creatures were around so we immediately retreated back into the cook shanty.
“Last door.” Mairo said as he opened the door. I rushed in and hooked right, my weapon light activated. I saw a man sitting in a chair behind a desk. It looked like he was sleeping. I fell back on my training and without even thinking I yelled,
“Sheriff’s department, show me your hands. Do it! Do it NOW!”
Mairo grabbed the guy out of the chair and put him on the ground. I holstered my pistol and went hands on, putting my knee next to his elbow and moved his right hand to the small of his back. I placed my other knee and leg across his back on the shoulder blade and grabbed his other hand. Holding both of his hands in one of mine, I reached on my belt for cuffs. A surge of panic washed over me when I could not find them. Then I remembered that I don’t carry them anymore. I looked up and saw Mairo smiling at me like a lion proud of his cub taking down his first gazelle.
“Mario, restraints,” I demanded. The former Gunnery Sergeant handed me a roll of duct tape. With Mario’s help, we tied the man up.
”Dang, you jumped on that guy like fly on crap,” Mairo said.
“Is he dead?” Mairo asked.
“No, he’s drunk. Passed out. I’ve seen it before. Also, the trash can is full of empties, which was a dead give away. He’s breathing and also has no wallet or ID. We just need to wake him up.”
Mairo cracked a grin and said, “Well Deputy, would you like to do the honors?” The grin was contagious, I could feel one of my own forming on my face. I put my hands up in mock surrender.
“Oh no, no, no Gunny. The pleasure is all yours,” I said sarcastically.
Mairo let out a snort, “You know how many times I woke up to lance corporals doing this? Way, way too many.”
With the stranger sitting up in the chair, Mairo closed his fist and placed his knuckles firmly against the man’s sternum and vigorously started to rub. After a few seconds the man let out a groan and his eyes fluttered open. He looked around in panic. As soon as he realized his arms were tied up, he started to hyperventilate. The light from an LED lantern we found was the only thing lighting up the room.
The man yelled, “I got to close the mine!”
Mairo grabbed his shoulders to hold him still and got right in the man’s face. In a calm upbeat voice bordering on the edge of sounding like a psycho killer Mario asked, “Hey buddy, care to tell us what kind of grab ass goat rodeo is going on here today?”
“My my my name is Mark. I own this mine. Now let me go. I have to close the doors to the mine. You don’t understand the danger we are all in.”
“Yeeeeeaaaahhhhh, about that…… little late for that,” I said in a long sarcastic tone.
“What time is it? Who are you people? Let me go.”
Mairo looked at his watch and said, “It’s 1813 hours, and we are with the armored truck to pick up your cash.” With a quick wrist flick I opened up my pocket knife and was about to cut Mark loose.
“Hold up Alex. Before you cut him loose, he needs to tell us exactly what is going on here and what those things are.”
Mark’s eyes got as big as dinner plates. “You mean they got out?! Oh no, that’s not good,” Mark said anxiously. “Ok, so let me explain. When a man named George Ravenwood owned this mine, he did some bad things to good people. The land was cursed by a local Native American tribe. Demons called Wiowalks attacked everyone, so the surrounding towns came together and built the iron doors to seal the mine shut, but the curse remained after all these years. They hunt based on sound and if they come out into the sun, they turn to dust.”
“How many are there?” Mairo asked.
“Ummmm, I don’t know, probably sixty. They only come out at night so I lock up the mine before sundown and never get an actual count.” Mark replied.
“Where are the other employees?” I asked.
Mark gave me a quizzical look. “Other employees? No, it’s just me.”
“No, there was a girl that was working in the ticket booth. She has blond hair and an athletic build,” I explained.
Mark looked at me, confused.
I let out a sigh and mumbled, “Really nice rack.” Mairo perked up at that.
Mark looked at me in horror as the realization slowly sunk in. “Was there anyone else you saw?” Mark asked with a shakiness in his voice.
“Yeah, one tall guy with a high and tight military haircut and one chick with the most emerald green eyes I’ve ever seen. I swear I’ve seen her before.”
“Oh fudge me,” Mark exclaimed. “I hired some college students to give tours and something really bad happened.”
We cut Mark loose and he spent the better part of an hour explaining everything that happened and the horrific details.
“You are a monster,” I proclaimed.
“What, so they are ghosts? Ghosts are not real,” Mairo said.
“You sent lead into the brain stems of demons but ghosts are where you draw the line?” I replied.
“Yeah, it’s a matter of principle,” Mairo said.
“That’s not…..but how….. you know what….. just whatever,” I said. “Wait just a second. If they hunt based on sound, why have they left us alone this time?”
“I don’t know. There’s probably something louder outside,” Mark answered.
Mairo peeked out the window and said, “Well, there’s your loud noise.”
We joined Mario at the window and saw about twenty of the Wiowalks swarming over our truck, trying to get at the loud diesel engine that was protected under armor plating.
Mark got closer to get a better look and said, “Perfect, we will just wait them out until morning. They will either go back into the mine or die in the sun. This calls for a drink. Mark walked over to the bookshelf and pulled a flask out from between two books and took a long pull. His hands were shaking the whole time. “You boys want to tie one over while we wait?”
What time is sunrise?” I asked. Mark smacked his lips and tossed the flasked away. He was rooting around the cabinet under the bookshelf for more alcohol and came up with a bottle of Knob Creek.
“It’s not until 7am or as you military people say Oh-Seven Hundred,” he said, giving a half assed salute. Mario turned from the window, pure anger radiating from him. I turned to respond,
“Hey Mairo, it’s cool, remember we don’t want to draw the attention of those things outside.” One of Mairo’s eyes was twitching. He stomped up to Mark and said,
“Oh……Oh…… Oh?! Oh is not a number, you mother jumper. Oh is the sound my wife made for three hours straight on our honeymoon. It’s zero…zero seven hundred.” Mairo continued on, his rage slowly subsiding. “And it doesn’t matter. The truck will run out of fuel in about three hours or so. We were going to fill up at that shitty little gas station at the edge…” I cut Mairo off.
“Mark, is there a landline phone we can use to call for help if our cell phones don’t have service?”
Mark let out a hiccup and with a slight slur said, “Yeah, it’s in that cabin over there,” he said, pointing toward the window. Mairo started grinding his teeth like he was eating his own jaw.
“You mean the cabin between us and the armored truck? The same armored truck swarming with those things around it?”
Mark had the bottle to his lips and gave a nod. In less time then it would take to describe it, Mairo lunged across the room and slammed Mark against the wall stunning him. Mairo even managed to grab the half drunk bottle of Knob Creek and hold onto it. In a deep growl Mairo threatened, “Listen here you rooster sucker, the bar of expectations is at the ground, yet here you are with an eff-ing shovel. I swear to heaven you must have two brain cells left and they are both battling it out for third place.”
I was caught between helping Mark or just falling over laughing at Mario’s words. By the time I was ready to decide, Mairo was starting to wind down. “If you were one of my recruits, I would have you outside apologizing to the tree for its extra work to provide you with oxygen.”
“Hey Gunny, you good man?” I asked, while trying to hold back my laughter.
“Yeah, I’m good. Sometimes you gotta yell at stupidity extra loud,” replied Mairo.
“That’s all well and good, but we need to find a way out of here. As soon as the truck runs out of fuel, our goose is cooked. Do you have your portable radio?”
“No, I left it in the truck. What about yours?” Mario replied.
“It’s at the bottom of a lake. It was attached to my vest.”
“Hey, hey, hey. *Hiccup* I have an idea. Why don’t *hiccup* one of you like, ninja crawl over to the cabin and call for *hiccup* help.” Mark said in a drunken slur.
“You know what Mark? I’m going to start calling you Baskin Robbins because you’re thirty-one flavors of messed up. You do know that, right?”
I let out a snort and said, “It could be done if we were stealthy enough.”
“Although the police will not *hiccup* come out this far last *hiccup* last time I called 911, the park ranger showed up. It is their jurisdiction.” Mark said.
“No park rangers!” I blurted out.
The other two looked at me in confusion. I took a deep breath to calm myself.
“No…no park rangers. Park rangers and I don’t get along very well. Mark sat down in the chair behind his desk and said,
“Well, I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to sit back and relax with my favorite drink and listen….to you two figure out a solution to this problem.” Mairo grabbed the bottle of bourbon from Mark’s hand. He took a pull and smacked his lips and then handed the bottle to me. I shrugged my shoulders, took the bottle and said,
“When In Rome.” The harsh liquid burned my esophagus as it made its way down to my stomach. I started to cough. Between coughs I said, “Smooth.”
Mairo and Mark both let out a little laugh. “We need to assess what we have available to use. Look for what is going to help us implement and improve our odds of escaping,” Mario announced. “Everyone empty their pockets.”
Mairo and I started laying everything out on the desk. Amidst the pile there was a pocket knife, wallet, and keys. Suddenly, Mario started to grin. “Lookie lookie what I got here.” He held up a silver device about the size of a thumb drive.
“You got the dead man switch alright Gunny.” I let out a “Hoo-Ah!”
Mario looked at me and sighed while he pinched the bridge of his nose. “Hoo-Ah is Army, Oo-Rah is the Marines and Ouch, I got a papercut for the Air Force.”
Mark butt in, “Hey, hey, I got **hiccup** questions. Not to sound stupid, but,” Mairo cut him off,
“Too late for that Burgundy Cherry, but what’s your question?” Mark completely ignored the insults and continued on.
“What is the dead man switch?”
I spoke up, “Without getting too deep into all the security components of an armored truck, the dead man switch is a device that protects against hijacking. If the truck is driven too far away from the device, the truck will shut down, lock the doors and call the police. However, with no cell phone service, it will not call the police.”
“With that in mind, I have an idea.” Mairo said
One hour later
“Let’s go over it one last time,” Mairo said. “I will take the dead man switch far enough away that it shuts the truck off. Alex, you and Green Mint Stick will make your way over to the elevator control shack and turn on the generator. Peppermint Fudge Ribbon here will ride it down and make a bunch of noise to draw Wiowalks away and down into the mine. Then Alex will stop the elevator half way down the shaft.”
Mark spoke up, “Then I just wait until morning and ride the elevator up and push all the Wiowalks up with it until they hit sunlight and BAM they are all dead. I still don’t see why I have to be the one in the elevator.”
I replied with, “One it’s our truck, and two, it’s your mine so it’s your problem. Three, someone has to stay and switch the elevator back to manual operator because the down button doesn’t work. And finally, number four, we are the ones with the guns.”
“Once Lemon Sherbet is in the elevator shaft, Alex will walk to the truck and I’ll circle back and we will ride off into the night,” Mario finished.
We made our way to the door. Mark grabbed a cast iron pan and a large soup ladle to make noise with. Mairo untied the rifle strap and pulled the rifle out from the door handle. It looked beat up, but was in working condition for the most part. Mairo silently made his way toward the woods, while Mark and I made our way to the mineshaft opening and the shack holding the generator and controls. We primed and got the generator ready. Mark handed me a set of walkie talkies. As I stepped outside, I could see the Wiowalks all over the truck. It’s going to be hard to explain the new scratch marks and missing paint, I thought to myself. The faint rumbling of the truck ended with a spudder and cough. The dark, still, silence was only broken by the occasional scratching sound of claws on metal accompanied by a hiss.
I walked inside the small shack and closed the door. Mark fired up the generator and the elevator’s control systems came to life. Mark handed me a set of big puffy headphones for hearing protection. My hearing was almost back to normal and I did not want to ruin it again.
“Here are the controls.” Mark said in a shout. “This is the elevator manual override lever. Once engaged, the only way to control the elevator is in this building.” He pointed to a display screen with a long rectangle representing the elevator shaft and a square that represented the elevator itself. He put a piece of tape in the middle of the rectangle. “Stop the elevator here,” he said, pointing to the tape. “That’s the halfway point, make sure you throw this lever.” He pointed to the lever that said ‘Override.’ “That will give me control of the elevator again, otherwise I can’t use the control in the elevator itself. Alright let’s go.”
Mark stepped into the elevator, yelled, “Wait one second.” He ran behind the generator, knocking over a large set of bolt cutters. He returned with a three liter bottle of Jack Daniels. Mark walked past me, patting the bottle and said, “Can’t forget Uncle Jack.” I shook my head in utter disbelief, but remembered that addiction is a power thing. I started to slowly lower him down. I could hear the clanging of the soup ladle against the pan.
Mark came on over the radio, “Ok, drop me down. I got their attention.” The humming of the generator was quickly drowned out by the sound of running feet and hands thudding against the ground. I watched on the screen as the elevator quickly descended. I stopped at the halfway point. A few moments later the elevator dropped a little and the screeching sound of metal on metal could be heard. I ran over to see what it was just as the radio cracked to life. “Everything good up there?” Mark said over a wave of static. The sound was the brakes pressing against the brake disk. It was holding, but any major bump would cause the brakes to slip just a little.
I replied with, “10-4 the brakes are struggling to hold the weight of the elevator and the Wiowalks. Just try to not move around so much.” I monitored the brakes for a few more minutes and radioed in. “Ok Mark, I’m going to switch it over to manual now.”
I was just about to throw the lever into manual mode when the door suddenly flew into the room, and I mean flew. It snapped the hinges and the locking mechanism in one go. In front of me stood a Wiowalk breathing heavily and looking like it was here for revenge. It had a cut along its cheek where my bullet had grazed it before. Visible bruises and welts could be seen where it was tackled by its compatriots. I quickly pulled my pistol out. I defaulted to my training and activated my weapon light, setting it to strobe, trying to disorient the charging creature.
I fired as the creature ran towards me with pure hatred. It was ignoring the sound coming from the mine shaft and apparently went out of its way to find me. I fired once and then a second time, not aiming for the head, but getting shots on center mass. The slide on my pistol locked back just as the Wiowalke slammed into me. My gun skidded out of view and before I could get to my feet I was picked up and thrown across the room. I landed by the big spool of elevator cable. The Wiowalk was seeing nothing but red, or I guess in this case, hearing nothing but red. It charged at me and got entangled in the myriad of hoses, cables, and other elevator parts. The Wiowalk tried to reach for me, and I was stuck in the corner unable to move. Fortunately I was just a few inches out of reach. I looked around for a weapon, and remembered that I had my pocket knife. I pulled out my Smith and Wesson border guard knife and tried my best to stab the hand. I got two stabs into the palm when the creature’s hand wrapped around the blade and pulled it from my grasp. I heard it clatter to the ground in front of me. Then, I saw the bolt cutters that were knocked over. They were just out of reach, but I had an idea.
I yelled, “Hey asshole! Yeah, you with the face! Come get me!” This enraged the Wiowalk. I don’t know if it was just the noise from me talking or the words themselves that were spoken, but the Wiowalked doubled its effort to get me. As soon as both arms came through the rubber hydraulic hoses, I ducked down and lunged in an awesome move that I probably could not do again if my life depended on it, which in this case it did. I grabbed the bolt cutters, did a somersault and landed on my feet. I spun and dove towards the Wiowalk’s hands. The head of the bolt cutters landed inside the creature’s wrist. I pushed down on the levers, cutting off one of the oversized hands with a sickening crunch.The demon from hell hissed and bucked as black oily blood squirted from its missing hand. I wound up the bolt cutters like it was a baseball bat and I need a grand slam to win the World Series. I swung for all I was worth making contact with the Wiowalks jaw. As it separated it from his body, I could hear skin being torn. The creature fell on the ground. I raised the bolt cutters over my head and repeatedly brought it down onto its face over and over again. I stumbled my way over to the control and started to panic when the override lever was snapped. The brakes were starting to strain. I got on the radio,
“Mark the control lever is broken in half. I can’t give you control.” With a rush of static I heard,
“Pull me up, pull me up!”
I replied, “I’m trying the elevator motor. I don’t think it can take the weight.” I paused for a few seconds and heard a creaking sound. “Mark the brakes are failing dude. I’m so sorry.” The sound of fishing line being unspooled grew loud as the elevator picked up speed and free fell into the bottom of the shaft, with Mark still inside. In shock I looked around until I found my pistol. I reloaded it with my last magazine and found my pocket knife. I walked out of the elevator room using the bolt cutters as a makeshift crutch. I started to close one of the iron doors when Mairo came pulling up in the armored truck. He turned the truck off to lessen our noise as he said,
“Hey, where is Cherry Macaron?”
I looked up at him and my face said it all, “He didn’t make it.” We closed the heavy iron door, wrapped the chain around it and locked it. None too soon had we finished that banging could be heard coming from the heavy iron doors.