11.4

Solomon saw that there was little point in going much further up; the rock that formed the ceiling of the cavern was as impenetrable as steel.

So he did his best to shimmy along to his left.

The dogs followed him step by step, their muzzles tilted up towards him.

Their eyes were pale, cataracted, blind. Their dirty white muzzles, distorted like melted candlewax, sniffed hungrily up at him. Black tongues lolled from between their gore-stained jaws, seeming to taste the blood on his skin.

They growled incessantly, reminding him of the cost of a fuck up.

His legs blazed, the ache now seeming to permeate through his entire lower back.

I’ve not got much more of this left in my tired old legs, he thought grimly.

He pressed on, making slow progress due to his exhausted limbs and his desire not to slip and fall to the waiting dogs beneath.

He reached the end of the corridor and realised that he was going to have to drop, since the walls began to get wider and there was no way he’d be able to keep up with this method of moving around.

Every second he delayed further killed the blood flow to his legs, reducing the chance of outrunning the murderous dogs.

And yet he couldn’t psyche himself up for it.

Finally, a plan hit him.

It was a desperate plan and he hoped it was going to be enough.

The plan went like this; throw seventeen stone of solid farmworker onto a dog’s back and it’s going to snap it.

Hopefully.

It was the best he could come up with in his starved and terrified state.

So he got to within maybe six feet of the dog, took a huge breath in, counted to ten and dropped.

The dog’s teeth scraped his left cheek, drawing blood from one of the only parts of him that wasn’t lined with an extra layer of meat.

He cursed his luck but then his weight fell on the dog’s back.

There was a horrific crack, then it let out a pained howl. But already the other dog was on him, doing its best to tear the flesh from his face.

Like the Alsatian from the previous room, it seemed to deliberately be going for his flesh over the meat suit.

He had no time to delay; he clashed the two dogs’ heads together and propelled himself up over them with a hard shove of his arms.

There was a dumb waiter lift in the corner of the room.

He ran to it, seeing an orange fluorescent arrow on the wall that pointed down.

He crammed his frame into the tiny box, getting a horrendous view of the pissed-off dog now racing towards him. The injured dog was still trying to get him, dragging itself along with its front paws. It was as pitiful as it was terrifying.

His hands tried to get the door shut in time, but he only managed to get it halfway closed.

The dog seized the meat around his thigh and began pulling.

The meat was secured with a thick stripe of superglue it seemed, as the fillet almost pulled Solomon’s skin off with it.

He lashed out, trying to fend the dog off, but it had only one thing in mind.

It devoured the meat, sinking its teeth into his bare leg and tearing a small bite from there too.

Solomon realised he needed to get the door shut or he was in big trouble.

He lashed out with his free leg, kicking the rabid dog back.

It retreated a little only to lunge back with renewed fury.

He stuck his thumb in its eye.

This seemed to only make it madder and its powerful jaws began to crush down into his leg.

Finally he could grab the door handle.

He slammed the door shut, bludgeoning the dog in its neck, just as it poked its head into the lift again.

The dog was undeterred.

He slammed the door into the dog’s neck another half a dozen times before it ducked back.

Finally, the gap narrowed enough to keep the dogs out.

He began to work the rope mechanism frantically, hearing the dogs already trying to nudge the door open with their deformed snouts.

The asthmatic wheeze of their breathing echoed horribly around the tiny box.

With both of his hands on the rope lowering the lift he’d be powerless to stop them.

Finally the dumb waiter began to descend and he grinned.

Although his relief was to be short-lived.

He found himself in a dark area.

It seemed like the coal drifts from the old mines.

They were so narrow that he had to crawl out of the dumb waiter.

His arms scraped the walls. The roof skinned his back in the one small part of him not covered by the meat suit.

For once he was grateful for the meat stuck to him as it provided a little extra cushioning against the sharp rock.

It was hard work moving at all, especially after the exertion of shuffling along the rock face. Almost a fortnight without food exacerbated his fatigue. His limbs were leaden, his breath always seemingly out of reach.

He moved forward into the gloom, following the yellow fluorescent arrows sprayed on the walls.

Eventually he crawled his way to a crossroads.

Three fluorescent green arrows, one pointing left, one right and one dead ahead, were sprayed onto the floor. A question mark was painted on the floor beneath each arrow.

What really got Solomon’s goat was the crudely sprayed smiley face in the centre of the arrows.

‘Craven you fucking bastard,’ he bellowed, grabbing a small rock from the floor beside his right knee. He scratched the rock across the smiley face until it was obliterated then hurled the rock into the darkness and began shouting curses again.

After thirty seconds of some of the most colourful and imaginative insults he had ever produced, Solomon caught hold of himself.

‘You’re wasting your energy, Solomon,’ he muttered. ‘Calm your-fucking-self down, lad.’

Solomon froze and listened intently. He could hear growling from every tunnel on the crossroads, but his gut told him to take the middle path.

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He crawled on for what seemed an eternity in the dark, soggy hellhole.

Coarse dust clung to his face and his airwaves, making even breathing an ordeal.

He’d coughed and spluttered more in the last few minutes than in the past few years.

He finally came to the end of the tunnel.

There was no light at all this time; the walls just suddenly disappeared and he found himself in an underground cavern.

As he set foot on the floor, the relief in his back and knees immeasurable, he saw an orange light flashing at the other end of the room.

He was wary of this after the ordeal in the other room.

But was thankful for the small amount of light it temporarily provided.

He crept in, listening to the sounds the room presented.

The growling and snarling of dogs was there, of course, but there was something else this time.

Muffled, panicked breathing.

‘Who’s there?’ Solomon called out.

No one replied.

But he could sense someone was there, cowering in the darkness.

‘We can help each other out,’ Solomon called.

Again no reply, just the sounds of hyperventilation.

Solomon’s eyes were just getting used to the darkness when the orange light would flash again, ruining his night vision.

He cursed under his breath.

He was jolted out of his thoughts by the growling of a dog just off to his right.

‘Fucker,’ he said, as the dog slammed into the bars of its cage.

He hastily shuffled back on his arse until he realised that it was still caged.

His ears strained to pick up the sounds of whoever was in the room with him.

Again while he listened for this, another dog battered its head into the door of its cage. This one was somewhere off to his left.

His heart somersaulted in his chest.

He breathed a sigh of relief when he realised this dog, too, was still caged.

The incessant barking was not good for his sanity.

It was a constant reminder than any second now the dogs were going to breach their enclosures and rip him to shreds.

His hands began to shake.

A wave of utter terror and dread began to drown any hope he had of getting out of here in one piece.

The urge to curl up in a ball and cover his ears with his hands became primal.

When he looked more closely, he noticed that this dog had something attached to its collar, but he couldn’t make out what it was.

He scoured the rest of the room and found only one of the red buttons on the wall.

Again he knew that it would be too much to ask for it to open the exit door.

His ears picked up the breathing once more and again he called out, only to receive no answer.

It was only when he went to press the button on the wall that he got a reply; a man’s voice, desperate, screaming, ‘For the love of God, don’t press that!’

The voice was old, and so close to him that he was almost able to touch them when he turned around in shock.

‘Why not?’

‘Because we’re not near the cages, man. Are you stupid?’

‘Is the button in the cage again, like at the start?’

‘You must have had a different starting point to me, young man,’ the voice said.

The orange light flashed, revealing a grizzled old man, blood streaking his torso and limbs. He had a few meat fillets stuck to him in places, but they had an unhealthy rainbow sheen to them.

It seemed his left hand was missing, his wrist ending in a ragged stump.

‘I’m on level two,’ he said cryptically when he sensed Solomon was looking at his missing hand.

‘I’m Vic,’ he said.

‘Solomon.’

‘I would say I was pleased to meet you, but I’m sure you’ll understand if I don’t.’

Solomon nodded.

‘The way this one works is simple,’ Vic said. ‘The dog in that left hand cage has a knife on its collar. The one on the right has a key on its collar. We’re meant to press the button, open the cages and take the knife from the first dog. We then kill both dogs and take the key from the second one’s collar.’

Solomon nodded. ‘Sounds straightforward if it wasn’t for how fuckin nasty these dogs are.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Vic said, pointing to the vicious wound around the left side of his face.

‘So how do you want to play this?’ Solomon said.

‘Well you got two hands, sonny, you grab the knife. Hoy it to me and I’ll go get the key.’

Solomon nodded.

‘What about me, I’ll be facing the other dog unarmed?’

‘You look like you could handle yourself, sonny. And again, you got both your hands.’

‘OK, then.’

Vic pressed the button.

The two cages sprang open.

The dogs seemed slightly stunned by the idea of actually being able to leave their cages.

They must have been kept captive for fucking ages, Solomon thought. Poor fuckers.

Solomon darted in, shoving his meat-covered forearm into the mouth of the dog with the knife on its collar as it lunged for him.

It chowed down, seemingly satisfied for now.

While it did so, Solomon tried to grab the knife on its collar.

As he pulled, the dog growled. It let go of his arm and went for the hand trying to free the knife.

‘What the fuck?’ Solomon muttered.

When he got a closer look, the knife had been glued to the dog’s neck.

‘What’s taking so fucking long?’ Vic hissed.

Solomon said nothing, just kept grimly on.

Finally the knife came loose.

The dog roared, trying its best to take Solomon’s fingers off.

‘Quick, throw me the knife,’ Vic said.

Solomon turned, slapping the dog’s head away from his neck with one hand.

The other hurled the knife.

It clanged onto the stone floor.

‘Thanks,’ Vic said.

He edged closer while Solomon grappled with the dog.

‘Stab it then,’ Solomon snapped. ‘What are you waiting for?’

Vic paused a moment, seemingly lining up his best shot.

Then he grinned an evil grin and stabbed the knife into Solomon’s side.