Read Earth vs. Everybody for Free Online

door of the Mint. I figured that would be a
good start. To get away from here. Go stand in front of some other building—one
that hadn’t just been robbed. But before I could go five feet I stepped into an
open hole in the pavement and fell for a half a mile. At least, it seemed that
far. Might have been less. There had been a large water leak the day before and
it had eaten out a lot of the ground under the sidewalk. The city hadn’t gotten
around to fixing it yet and had just put a traffic cone there to warn people—a
cone that would explain the whole thing. I guess it was this cone that I had
tripped over. I wondered, as I fell, if I was setting some kind of record. I
mean, what was the record for falling to your death before this? Then,
suddenly, I stopped wondering about anything. Then I hit the bottom.
    When I regained
consciousness and realized where I was, and what had happened to me, I started
looking for a way to get back up the shaft. I saw a handhold about forty feet
above me, but I couldn’t quite reach it, not even after I took off my coat and
stood on it. I was still thirty four feet short. I thought of yelling for help,
but then I remembered there were only cops up there. I didn’t want their help.
Not today, anyway. Anybody but them.
    While I was
thinking over my predicament, the police started looking down the hole and
shouting at me to come out of there. I didn’t think they could see me—it was
pretty dark where I was—so I decided to play possum. Pretend I wasn’t there. Or
that I was dead. Maybe they’d go away if they thought I was not there and dead.
I tried to be as quiet as I could. I even shifted over a little to my right
where it looked like it was darker and quieter.
    “Did you hear
something?” asked one of the policemen.
    “Probably just a
possum,” said a voice from far away.
    That’s when they
started shining lights down my hole. I tried to edge a little closer to the
side, and, even though I was already at the bottom, I somehow managed to fall
another twenty feet. More lights shined down the hole. More playing possum.
    After they hadn’t
heard any noise from me for awhile—I had quit shifting around to better spots
by then, and my burping fit had stopped, and my stomach had stopped
growling—some of the cops started wondering if I was still down there. The
bottom of the shaft might connect to the sewer or the subway or something. I
might be long gone by now. I could be anywhere—maybe even sitting in their
offices with my feet up on their desks making long distance telephone calls, or
sitting in their living rooms watching TV with their wife and kids, while they
were wasting their time here looking into empty holes.
    It
was finally decided to see if I was still down there by dropping rocks down the
shaft. Over the next two hours they dropped hundreds of them, of varying sizes,
waiting and listening after each rock had been dropped to hear if I yelled. But
I didn’t make a sound no matter how many rocks they threw down, or how hard
they threw them. This wasn’t because I wasn’t there. I was. And it wasn’t
because I was a man of iron will and discipline. I wasn’t. It was because the
first rock had swollen my mouth shut.

CHAPTER FIVE
     
    I finally managed
to climb out of the hole several hours later, after almost getting to the top a
half a dozen times, only to fall all the way to the bottom each time and then
having to start back up again. I guess it would have been pretty comical if it
had been happening to somebody else. Some other slob. Seeing them get almost to
the top and being so happy, and then suddenly down they go again, end over end,
screaming their guts out. I guess it was funny. I dunno. I’d have to watch
somebody else do it and see if I laugh. I probably would. Anyway, like I said,
I finally got out.
    I was relieved to
find that there was nobody waiting for me at the top. The cops had evidently
gotten bored and gone away. They were probably off