It looked like an Aztec pyramid in reverse. The hole’s depths were stepped in wide ledges, each signifying a level that the mine had reached and pushed past. The concrete walls erected around its perimeter were dwarfed by distance, but he could still make out their unbroken edges. As the hole deepened, its middle area lessened, but the very bottom of the pit was still immense. He thought that the entire town of Fort Dodge might fit inside the expanse.
He stood there for a long time. Now there was no sea or rocks below him, only a manmade scar in the earth. He could see across to the other side, something he’d never been able to do with the ocean. Across was another barricade he would have to pass. Beyond that was the open land he would have to traverse. And perhaps past that he would find answers.
He waited until all the light had faded from the day before returning to Holtz’s building. Another storm was approaching on the heels of the last. Its angry face of clouds broadened and spit curses of lightning and thunder as it came.
The inside of the building was warmer, and he didn’t realize he was wet and cold until that moment. He paused at the thin divider before turning back and setting up a wide cot in the front portion of the building. The darkness was almost complete. The electric lantern had been turned down to a dull glow, and the windows were lighter shadows in the walls.
Quinn stripped out of his clothing, and hung them to dry on the back of a chair before showering quickly beneath a stream of cool water in the small partition against the wall. After drying off, he slid into the cot, draping one of the heavy blankets over him before curling an arm beneath his head. He closed his eyes to the rippling pulse of lightning and answering thunder in the distance.
He came out of a dream where a field of white tents wrapped around humanesque shapes wriggled and squirmed like an unending plane of maggots. Moans swirled through the air, all of the voices coalescing into a hum of misery that became his name.
“Quinn.”
The whisper wasn’t from his dream. It came from directly beside him.
Alice sat on the edge of his cot, her shape so familiar that he knew it even before the lightning strobed through the windows illuminating her face. She wore a black tank top and matching underwear, her hair a cascade of darkness across the white skin of her back.
“What are you doing?” he asked, beginning to sit up. She placed a cool hand against his chest and stopped him from rising.
“All those times I was looking at you and you thought I was staring at this,” she whispered, letting her hand trail up his neck to cup his face. “I was wondering.”
“Wondering what?” he asked. Heat had blossomed where she’d touched him, spreading outward, downward. His heart was beating so hard he was sure it would rupture at any moment.
“I wondered why you were helping us. I wondered why you were so kind to me and my son. I wondered how you had come by the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen.” She leaned closer to him, only a shadow against the backdrop of darkness. “And I wondered what it would be like to do this.”
She kissed him.
Her lips were soft but strong, moving against his own with gentle pressure. The slick wetness of them was unlike anything he’d ever experienced. He reached out, unable to keep from doing so, and put his hand on her shoulder, pulling her closer, feeling the velvety smoothness of her skin. She responded by kissing him harder, her lips more urgent in their movements. Her tongue danced out and slid against his teeth, and he couldn’t help but let out a soft moan.
Alice drew back and pulled the blanket away from him before climbing into the cot. She laid against him, her slender length almost too much to bear. He inhaled deeply, trying to keep control of the heat building in his lower belly.
“I’ve never…” he breathed, her hair brushing his chest and face as she kissed his neck.