PARTISANCHIP: EPISODE 1
A Dystopian Psychological Thriller
©2022 Stephen Conway
“Break time!” Marcus shouts over the digging, chopping, shoveling, and drilling racket we’re making.
Everyone pauses and drops their power-tools, Pelosi-hammers, and shovels. Remove their thick canvas work-gloves. Some take out handkerchiefs—wiping sweat from their faces. Others unscrew canteens of water and start rinsing their hands after taking a swig.
“Jesus. This place is hell,” I say dropping my folding pickaxe.
“It’s so hot, Satan’s gone up-north,” Joey says tugging at his t-shirt.
“Good one, Joey,” Mitch says.
“I’m dying,” I say, peeling off my translucent shirt. “Feel like a snake shedding its skin.”
The hydraulic jackhammer lets out a gassy sigh as Marcus kills the generator’s power switch. Compressor hoses shake and shimmy as the pressure drops. We take-off our miner’s helmets. Drop them right-side up on the dirt floor. We position them around the perimeter of the u-shaped end of the tunnel we’re digging. We all squat: helmets transformed into break-room seating. At one end of the u-shape Jason opens a cooler-pack—takes out wrapped sandwiches one-at-a-time—passes them from one hand to the next—then to the worker to his right. Food moving along in an efficient relay from one worker to the next. The first sandwich makes it to the last worker who rips and tears the paper wrapper, sinking his teeth into the food. The same scene cascades along the U as each sandwich makes its way into the hands of the next hungry worker.
We’re digging under Manhattan’s west side. Looking at my analog watch, we’re on-schedule to meet-up with the other tunnel team coming in from the Jersey side. From there, we’ll probably join forces and start digging to connect up with the 1-2-3 line. As that work is in progress, the Jersey teams will be laying steel track and ties in the tunnels behind us.
Shoving the other half of my sandwich into my face there’s a low rumble in my guts.
“Is that me…,?” I say.
“Is that me what?” Marcus says.
“…or is it food poisoning?” I say.
“Yeah, I feel that,” Mitch says.
“Food poisoning?” I say.
“No. It’s not food-poisoning. I made these myself in the kitchen,” Jason says.
“I feel it,” Joey says. “One of those low frequencies. You feel it in your bowels before you actually hear it.”
The other workers are chit-chatting over their midnight lunch.
“Guys, guys, shhhhhhhhhh. Listen,” I say holding up my hand in a stop sign. “Did you feel that?”
The chit-chat-and-chewing stops. We all look up at the low ceiling. The vibrations grow stronger—we start to hear a rumble that grows louder. The direction’s hard to determine. As if it’s surrounding us now. The entire tunnel starts to shake. Gravel and dirt come loose, falling from the walls and ceiling as if from giant salt and pepper shakers landing on us and our food.
“We’d better get outta here. C’mon. Quick” Marcus says. “Leave your stuff. Go. Go. Go. No-no—leave the jackhammer!” he’s pushing everyone to get up. To get out. Backing-us all out of the tunnel.
The ceiling collapses. Marcus, Joey, Mitch and two others are knocked over and buried in the debris as a giant spiraling V-shaped drill bit drops through the ceiling like a plumb bob and spikes itself into the tunnel floor. Spinning. Grinding. Spitting earth. Looking back at the scene we turn into pillars of hardened salt. We watch Marcus get grabbed by the vortex of rotating drill-teeth. A nightmare-go-round pulling him to the back of the drill, then around to the front—this time with one arm flailing as if bronco-busting at a rodeo in Hell. The rotating teeth of the massive drill bit is pushing down, digging-up the floor as Marcus’s arm comes around into view again. I leap to grab his hand and fall backwards holding his palm and forearm, but Marcus isn’t attached to it. White and pink cartilage dangles from the end where his shoulder should have been.
The drill bit slows. Stops. The sound of metal gears grinding and greasy latches clacking. The bit started to open like a dead, upside-down flower filling the smashed and broken tunnel space. Black metal petals blooming to reveal a black hole sucking air with the roar of a jet-engine. As if someone in space and a door opened, sucking everything out. The force of it inhaling anything not nailed down: tools, hard hats, Joey, gravel, Marcus, the pile of rocks we’d excavated and stacked for removal. Mitch. All of it. Everyone. It started pulling me in to it, but I managed to get away from the riptide of air. Me and rest of us ran for our lives.
One of the lookouts later told me—and the handful of us who survived—that they’d lit the place up with LEDs that cut through the night. They backed-in a large truck. A shiny-metal canister laying on ion the bed—big enough to stand inside-of. Looked like a bio-mechanical mastodon on wheels. People in hazmat suits and masks touched and turned dials, unbuckled straps, and released hooks and hoses. Lights blinked red; then yellow; then green. A heavily armed SWAT team stood-by watching. Technicians guided the front-end of a huge accordion-hose over to group of construction workers were standing. Lit by more LED lamps. The back end of the hose connected to the massive canister truck. The technicians and the construction workers attached the front-end of the hose to a steel drill-bit—about the size of a car. The bit was moved into position by a crane-operator who balanced the point of the drill’s V point into a jackhammered hole in the street.
With the drill-bit stabilized and hanging vertically—the sound of the machinery shifted from a revving diesel motor to the sound of a jet-engine ready for take-off. The drill-bit started to rotate. Spitting out asphalt and gravel. The hose didn’t spin. It was on some kind rotating collar. The lookout said the accordion vacuum-hose started to twitch and dip and jerk with the weight of heavy objects passing through the hose—making their way into the back of the canister truck. “Those were some of our best people,”
“It made me sick to my stomach,” the lookout said. “Young people getting swallowed by a monstrous anaconda.”