Dead Simple by Peter James

sobbing, stabbed the
talk
button repeatedly. ‘Please, help me, please help me!
    Just static crackle.
    ‘Sorry, can’t talk, he’s in my face — know what I mean?’
    A strange voice, like some ham actor playing an American gangster. Was this all part of the joke? Michael guided the salty tears down to his dry, cracked lips, and for one fleeting, taunting instant savoured the moisture, before his tongue absorbed them like blotting paper.
    He looked at his watch. More hours had gone past: 8.50. For how many more hours was this nightmare going to go on? How could they be getting away with it? Surely to God Ashley, his mother,
everyone
, for Christ’s sake, must be on to the boys by now. He’d been down here for — for—
    A sudden panic hit him. Was it 8.50 in the morning or evening?
    It had been afternoon just a while ago, hadn’t it? He’d watched each hour on the hour go past. Surely he could not have been so careless to lose track of a whole twelve-hour chunk? It had to be evening now, night, tonight, not tomorrow morning.
    Almost forty-eight hours.
    What the hell are you all doing?
    He pressed his hands down, pushing himself up for a moment, trying to get some circulation going into his numb backside. His shoulders hurt from being hunched, every joint in his body ached from lack of movement — and from dehydration — he knew about the dangers of that from sailing. His head throbbed incessantly. He could stop it for a few seconds by levering his hands up to his head and digging his thumbs into his temples, but then it came back just as bad as before.
    ‘
Christ
, I’m getting married on Saturday, you fuckwits! Get me out of here!’ he shouted as loudly as he could, then pounded the roof and walls with his feet and hands.
    The imbeciles. Friday tomorrow. The day before the wedding. He had to get his suit. Haircut. They were going away on honeymoon on Saturday night to Thailand — he had a ton of stuff to do in the office before then, before going away for two weeks. Had to write his wedding speech.
    Oh, come on, guys, there’s so much I have to do! You’ve paid me back now, OK? For all the shit I ever did to you lot? You’d paid me back with interest. Big time!
    Dropping his hand to his crotch, he located the torch and switched on for a few precious seconds, rationing the battery. The white satin seemed to be ever closer to him; last time he looked it seemed a good six inches above his face, now no more than three, as if this box, coffin, or whatever it was, was slowly, steadily caving in on him.
    He took hold of the tube, dangling limp in front of his face, again squinted, trying to peer up into it, but could see nothing. Then he checked he was pushing the right button on the walkie-talkie. He pressed each one in turn. Listened first to static, then pressed
talk
and shouted as loudly as he could, then pressed the
listen
button again. Nothing.
    ‘
Nada!
’ he said out aloud. ‘Not a fucking sausage.’
    Then an image of a frying pan on his mother’s stove came into his mind. A frying pan filled with sausages, eggs, bacon, tomatoes, crackling, fizzing, popping, hissing. He could smell them, dammit, smell the bread too, frying in another pan, the tin of baked beans heating up.
    Oh Jesus, I’m so hungry
.
    He turned his mind away from food, from the pain in his stomach that was so bad it felt its own stomach acids were eating their way through his stomach lining. Somewhere inside his pounding skull his brain was reminding him of something he had read; it was about a breed of frogs — or toads — he couldn’t remember which right now, which gestated its babies in its stomach rather than womb. For some reason the stomach acids didn’t harm the babies.
    What’s to stop us humans digesting our own stomachs?
he thought, suddenly. His brain was racing now, remembering bits of all kinds of stuff.
    He remembered reading some years back a theory about Circadian rhythms. All other living organisms on this