The Screaming Dead Balloons by Philip McCutchan

Author:Philip McCutchan [McCutchan, Philip]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Endeavour Press
Published: 2017-11-30T00:00:00+00:00

15

ZAN gave an order to the armed men and Shaw and the girl were turned about and marched away. Once outside, they were hustled back along the tunnel to the ledge beyond, where once again, as the escort halted, they found themselves half-way down the flight of rock steps, above the muddy water and its inhabitants and the smell that seeped up from them.

Shaw asked, “What happens now?”

“Soon,” the escort leader told him, “you will see.” The man went back a little way inside the tunnel and lifted a telephone off a hook. He spoke briefly in Portuguese and replaced the instrument. High up in the cavern’s side wall a faint light came on. A few seconds after this Shaw caught the sound of an electric motor, a high, whirring note, and at the same time the balloons, alerted no doubt by the presence of the men on the steps, began to emerge again. Their grotesque cries at once drowned out all other sound. And soon after this Anya nudged Shaw’s side and said tensely, “Look...”

He glanced at her; she was staring upwards. He looked up, saw a strange contraption coming slowly down towards them. At first he couldn’t identify it, but as it came lower he saw it was a cage suspended from a thick steel-wire cable leading back into the darkness that concealed the roof of the cavern. Down and down it came, and halted on a level with the rock platform. It was big — around eight feet square, with a metal base and close-set steel bars. Like an old-fashioned lift... or a parrot-cage on a massive, man-size scale.

One of the escort pushed past Shaw and swung the door open. The leader shouted into Shaw’s ear, “Into the cage. Quickly. You will remain in it without food or drink until you have made up your mind to talk. You will then call out. If you do not, you will stay in the cage until you die.”

Shaw looked around. The men of the escort were close and watchful and they had far too many guns; below him was the infested water. There was no escape here, nothing whatever that he could hope to get away with. Lightly he touched Anya’s shoulder. “There’s nothing for it,” he told her. “Let’s get in — for now!” With his arm around her body he walked forward. They entered the cage. The leader of the escort banged the door shut behind them and snapped a heavy padlock over a hasp. He went back to the telephone. Once again the whirring of the electric motor was heard briefly before the next chorus of screams from below drowned it out. The cage began to rise and at the same time moved laterally out across the water. The rise didn’t last long and after a while Shaw felt the cage coming down again, down until by his rough estimate it was no more than perhaps twelve feet above the water; but laterally it continued until

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