Free Hellblazer 2 - Subterranean by John Shirley Page B

derisively at Bosky’s remark, the sound of Geoff’s struggling went unheard.
    “Big kidnapping! Who kidnaps people by dropping them underground!”
    “That’s the question,” Bosky said, mostly to himself. “Who?”
    “Maybe they’re already digging up there—the authorities, I mean,” Butterworth suggested. “Trying to dig us out.”
    “What, under millions of tons of rock?” Skupper snorted. He had been a military engineer at one time in his life. “Not bloody likely. They’re writing us off and trying to figure out how to explain it so no one blames them.”
    Garth nodded. “You’re right, Skupper.”
    “I am? This calls for another glass of whiskey,” said Skupper, his voice slurring. He was just sober enough to stand up and pour a drink without pitching on his face, but no more.
    He turned to get a bottle and then gasped, pointed at Geoff being dragged out the back door. Geoff was flailing his arms, his eyes wild with desperation. Garth and Bosky ran to try to yank Geoff free, but the inexorable pull of the long, slender gray arms seemed unstoppable, all powerful. Bosky and Garth held stubbornly on to Geoff’s legs, and were dragged out the door with him.
    Outside—outside the ruins of the pub, but still within the great cavern—they saw that Geoff was being pulled upward, straight into the air . . . his screams muffled by another hand, clamped over his mouth.
    The two arms lifting him up seemed at least a hundred yards long, perhaps longer. They extended to become mere convergent lines in the distance overhead, reaching clear to the distant cavern ceiling, where they joined with a blob of gray that could only be dimly made out, perched on a dark shelf within an enormous crack. Garth let go, cursing himself, and a moment later Bosky lost his grip too, and fell seven feet to the weedy turf in the open space behind the pub, landing on his back, the air knocked from him when he struck, still clutching one of Geoff’s sneakers in his right hand.
    Wheezing for air, Bosky stared up at Geoff’s frantically waving legs. His best friend receding into the misty blue air overhead . . . drawn up and up, dwindling with distance, until at last he was pulled into the crack, to vanish with the gray blob into the shadows.
    Bosky watched for a long time, hoping for some other sight of Geoff. But nothing moved up there.
    “Bugger this,” Bosky said in a low voice when he’d gotten his wind back. He stood up and fixed Garth with a hard look. “That hole up there goes somewhere, Granddad. And some have disappeared into other holes, lower down, near the edge of town. I’m going to get a gun from that cabinet, and I’m going to go in one of them holes. There must be a connection, a tunnel system to the ones up above. I’m going to climb up and see what they’ve done with Geoff. I’ve had enough.”
    Garth swallowed and licked his lips—but said nothing.
    Bosky shrugged and turned, stalking off toward his house. Garth watched his grandson go. Bosky’s father, Garth’s son-in-law Pauly, hadn’t been a bad sort, except for the drinking binges. Driving drunk one night he’d crashed into the river in flood season and drowned. Ill-luck for the boy, who’d loved his father, and Bosky hadn’t been right since. But now, at last, he was showing some character. Something that ought to be encouraged—in Hell or not. So Garth sighed and turned to Skupper and Butterworth, gaping from the doorway. “Well, gentlemen: I’m an old man after all. What difference does it make if I die a day or two sooner? May God bless and keep you.”
    He started off to find Bosky, wondering if he had any provisions left to take along with them.
    Skupper and Butterworth stared after Garth. Then they went silently back to the bar.
    ~
    Constantine woke up in darkness, profound darkness, on what felt like stone. He couldn’t remember having fallen onto it, not exactly. There had been that endlessly spiraling descent, feeling his way