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BP 254

As I mentioned several weeks ago, I am in the process of sharing an excerpt from each of my fiction books in my Jack Sutherington series over this five-week period. Today’s excerpt comes from the fourth book in the series which is entitled Escape Room in the Heart.

In this excerpt, we find Jack fighting for his life in an underground river. He is on a mission to save his Academy friends from a dungeon where he and they had been imprisoned by the evil Draegan DaFoe. Jack had descended the shaft of a well to seek a way of escape but ended up falling into an underground whitewater river that carried him miles away from the well he had downclimbed. He is beaten into unconsciousness by the pounding water but later wakes up lying on a stone shelf in a part of the tunnel where the water has turned into a slow-flowing stream. Hope comes alive for Jack when he sees light for the first time in hours . . .

When he reaches the three rectangles of light that fall on the lazy water, he splashes into the middle of them. Lifting his head slowly, he discovers that there is no ceiling here. Standing up to his full height, he tilts his head back and finds himself looking up into an ascending well shaft that appears longer and narrower than the one he had descended not that long ago.

So, I do get to look up from the bottom of a well for a second time before I die, he thinks to himself with a laugh that has not an ounce of humor in it.

Then, abruptly, it strikes him that he may yet live to see another day. Having previously resigned himself to death, he now entertains the slim possibility that he might survive after all. He thinks of Rachel, Aly, Stewart, and Armando and is suddenly filled with new resolve. He must live so they also might live.

With his head and shoulders inside the well cylinder, Jack looks around. Studying the shaft more closely as he does a 360 degree turn in the stream, he notices that, unlike the DaFoe well, this one appears to be striated with well-defined ribs that offer excellent holds for his hands and feet. He is certain he can reach the lowest one if he can find a rock to stand on.

When he’s done with his examination, he decides that the difficulty of the climb will be moderate at worst—except for the length of the climb and the beginning of it.

The most daunting unknown variable is his strength. Does he have enough stamina remaining to make the climb since he hasn’t eaten in a long time? Will he have adequate gripping power to scale the wall of the shaft?

The words from Jonah seem to enter his mind randomly, but Jack knows better: “Salvation is from the Lord.” The timely reminder of God’s faithfulness fills him with a renewed hope after he had thought all was lost.

“Jesus, I can’t do this,” Jack says as he gazes upward. “I have no strength left. You must be my strength, O Lord.”

As he is praying at the bottom of the well, he remembers the object that is slung over his shoulder. He rifles through the compartments in the briefcase in the dim light filtering down through the shaft. Tucked into one inside pocket, he discovers several flash-drives and a larger hard drive zip-locked in a plastic baggie. He puts the flash-drives in the plastic baggie with the hard drive and stuffs it into the shirt pocket Stewart’s phone had once inhabited before he was carried downstream.

“Well, Jesus, this is all going to turn out wonderfully for your glory and my joy if I’m able to climb this shaft,” Jack says aloud as he prepares to make his ascent. “Little did I know that going upstream was the wrong direction from the very beginning. Just like you used a fish to get Jonah pointed in the right direction against his will, maybe you used a rushing stream to take me where you wanted me to go against my will.”

After taking one last drink of water and stretching his arms and legs for the climb, Jack suddenly remembers what was in his pocket when he entered the well shaft below the DaFoe house. Patting the front pocket of his jeans, he discovers that the small container is still there. He extracts it from his pocket and opens it. The powder rouge is still dry! He quickly applies the rouge to his fingers and toes as he had done earlier in the basement.

Jack finally takes his position inside the well cylinder, his feet standing in the 30” deep stream. Then, with a surge of strength fueled by hope and excitement, he reaches up on his tiptoes and grabs handholds as high up the narrow shaft as his fingers can reach. It helps that he is standing on top of the briefcase that is stuffed with his blue jeans. Together, they have added over half a foot to his reach, critical inches that might represent the difference between success and failure.

Jack looks up the long shaft and takes a deep breath. He lets it out slowly and says, “This is all you, God.” He knows that the next thirty seconds will be the most critical part of this free solo climb because he will be limited to using only his hand and arm strength to pull the weight of his whole body up the first five feet of the shaft.

The moment has come. Groaning loudly, Jack pulls his body upward handhold by handhold until his legs are dangling several feet above the briefcase and the shallow stream. He is driven by the realization that he must be successful on this first attempt for the sake of the ones he loves. As weak as he is, he will not have enough strength for a second attempt.

He pulls himself upward by the strength of only one hand toward the next handhold and cries out, “Jesus!”

ꟷ

Lila Anderson is ten years old and her brother, Dawson, is eight. They are playing an outdoor role-play game created by Lila to help make the long, boring summer days on the farm bearable. Now that school’s out, they have been playing the game every day when they’re done with the daily grind of their seemingly endless chores. They call the game Zombie Wars. They take turns being the human and the zombie.

The object of the game is for the human to find a good hiding place around the yard or the half-dozen farm buildings on their property while the zombie counts to one hundred and then comes hunting the human. The human must wait for a good opportunity to run back to the ‘safe zone’—the porch of the house—before the zombie catches them and eats their brains out.

When their cousins come over for a visit, the game is much more entertaining because then there are more humans for the zombie to find and catch and eat their gray matter.

Today, the sister and brother are playing alone and are on their third round of the game. It’s Lila’s turn to be the human while Dawson is the zombie. Lila is running around the yard like a chicken with its head cut off, something her father does quite regularly—not run around the yard but cut the heads off chickens so her mother can make a casserole with rice and broccoli. Yuck!

In her manic excitement, Lila is having a difficult time deciding which hiding place to choose while her little brother counts to a hundred on the porch. She knows she must hide quickly because Dawson, even though he will never admit it when confronted, is known for counting by fives. Even all the cousins know that.

After initially hiding in the tall grass that borders their yard and then behind the large oak tree with the tire swing, she settles on a spot in the bushes behind the old, abandoned well that has four courses of stone rising three feet above the ground. She is just crouching down behind the well when her brother yells out, “One hundred! Here comes the zombie, ready or not!”

Lila peers out from behind the tall stone lip that encircles the well and watches as Dawson walks in the direction of the machine shed, far from where she is hiding. She smiles gleefully to herself, confident that she will be able to walk lazily to the porch before the pathetic zombie even sees her.

Out of nowhere, Lila hears something that is disturbing because it means she might lose this round of Zombie Wars after all. It is a nonverbal grunting noise, and it grows louder as she waits on her knees behind the old well.

Initially, of course, she assumes the noises are coming from her brother who loves to discharge zombie grunts and groans and shrieks as he scours the yard and buildings—limping dramatically the whole time–in search of his human victim. The sister ignores the nagging thought that the inhuman sounds can’t be coming from Dawson because he was headed for the machine shed.

Eventually, it strikes Lila that the nonverbal noises that are increasing in volume sound different than Dawson’s–much deeper in pitch. Once again, however, she dismisses the anomaly as her imagination.

Soon, she hears a scraping sound near her hiding place. Thinking her brother has somehow snuck up on her, she stands up slowly from her hiding place behind the bushes hoping that she will see him before he sees her. It is only then that she notices—in horror–the hand reaching skyward through the opening between the heavy boards covering the well. The fingers have faded red stains on them that look like dried blood.

Lila’s eyes almost jump out of their sockets as she screams bloody murder. She wills her legs to run, but she cannot make them move. She can only shriek, “Zombie! Zombie!”

Transfixed with terror, ten-year old Lila screams even louder as she watches one of the boards covering the well curve upward as if being pushed by a powerful force. A loud growl accompanies the warping of the board. Under great stress, the ancient screws that have bound the board to the lip of the well for decades eventually rip loose from their stone sockets. The board pops high into the air only to land at Lila’s feet. Not long after that, another growl louder than the first rises from the shaft and the other board soon breaks away from its moorings as well.

By this time, Lila’s brother is running toward the well as fast as his eight-year-old legs will take him. Never in the long history of Zombie Wars has he heard his older sister scream with such terror. He knows something must be terribly wrong.

About this time, Judah and Kristina Anderson, the parents of the siblings, burst out of the screen door of the house and break into a dead run only ten yards behind their son. Mr. Anderson carries a shotgun in his hand and is attempting to load it as he runs. Mrs. Anderson wears an apron and clutches a wooden spoon smeared with cookie dough in her hand. Two hound dogs are hot on their heels, howling loudly.

So it is that when Jack finally pulls himself out of the well with his very last ounce of strength and rolls off the stone lip and thuds to the ground dressed only in his briefs and a T-shirt, he has a small audience. The three running members of the Anderson family and their two dogs come to an abrupt stop and stare with incredulity at the young man who lies splayed out and unmoving before them. He looks like what he should look like if Judah Anderson had just pumped him full of shot.

“Is he dead?” Dawson whispers to his father.

“Don’t know, son,” the farmer replies without taking his eyes off the apparition.

“Is he a zombie?” the boy asks.

“Don’t think so, son,” Judah answers, licking his lips.

“Better call the police,” Kristina Anderson says, pushing on her husband’s shoulder with the hand that isn’t holding the wooden spoon. “He looks like city folk. Maybe one of those gangsters. He don’t belong in these here parts. Must be up to no good. Maybe poisonin’ our well.”

“Uh-huh,” Judah says as he pulls up one of the shoulder straps of his denim overalls with his left hand while his right arm cradles the loaded shotgun that is pointed down at the sprawled body. “As sure as I’m standin’ here we need to call the police.” He pronounces the last word with the accent on the first syllable.

Jack rolls his head back and forth over the grass of the yard and mumbles, “Please don’t call the police.”

“He’s alive!” Dawson yells as he points at the body in the grass that has no pants.

“Shore is son,” Mr. Anderson comments.

“Please don’t call the police,” Jack repeats without opening his eyes.

“Why not?” the farmer asks suspiciously as his daughter runs to his side. “You kill somebody?”

“No, no, no,” Jack groans. “It’s a long story.”

“Start ‘splainin’, then,” Judah Anderson insists in a voice that is not entirely unfriendly.

“This should be good,” he whispers to Kristina with a crooked smile that reveals gaps where several teeth are missing. “Never had nobody come climbin’ outta our well b’fore. ‘Cept a rat or two. Maybe one possum.”

Dawson’s head pops out from behind his father’s back, and he makes a vow to his sister. “I ain’t never playin’ Zombie Wars again, not when it brings ‘em up from the center of the earth.”

Lila nods her head vigorously. For the first time in the history of her life, she does not disagree with her pesky little brother. . . .

Thank you for reading this excerpt from book four in the Jack Sutherington series. If you enjoyed it, I invite you to check out the entire series beginning with book one, The Rumbling Beneath. This series is God-honoring, integrates faith and psychology in a manner relevant to real life, and is built on deep character development. Check out my author website at Davidgkirbyauthor.com for more details about all five books or find them on Amazon.

”But now thus says the Lord,
he who created you, O Jacob,
he who formed you, O Israel:
“Fear not, for I have redeemed you;
I have called you by name, you are mine.
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;
and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you;
when you walk through fire you shall not be burned,
and the flame shall not consume you” ~ Isaiah 43:1,2

“I called out to the Lord, out of my distress,
and he answered me;
out of the belly of Sheol I cried,
and you heard my voice.
³ For you cast me into the deep,
into the heart of the seas,
and the flood surrounded me;
all your waves and your billows
passed over me.
⁴ Then I said, ‘I am driven away
from your sight;
yet I shall again look
upon your holy temple’” ~ Jonah 2:1-4