Henry Bilderberg’s death still fresh in his mind, Diego helped Cutbirth and Yong lift one end of the log and shove it into the pit. The log crashing into the water replayed itself a few seconds later as a morbid echo. Diego couldn’t help but wonder if the log had landed on Henry’s body.
“If the bounty hunters want to cross this pit,” Cutbirth argued, shining his light across the empty span, “they’ll have to sprout wings and fly or fulfill some crazy death wish and jump.”
“I could jump this pit,” Yong said, sizing it up. “It’s not that far.”
Cutbirth showed his big teeth with a grin. “Jumping 12 feet on terra firma, where your footing is good and the possibility of dying is zero, is one thing,” Cutbirth said. “But jumping 12 feet in a cave, where the floor is wet and slick, and a lethal fall is very much a part of the equation, is a different kettle of fish.”
“I still think I could jump it.”
“The argument is probably academic,” Cutbirth said, “because Uno and Mr. Mustache by now are dealing with the painful reality that any attempt to crawl through the rocky burrow might get them shot. It’s my guess they believe Hummingbird’s distant shriek was another ploy, and I am still stationed at the end of the tube. They might have even accepted defeat and turned back.”
Again, Diego thought Cutbirth’s assumption far too optimistic. He had read stories in the Chronicle about the dogged determination and ass-kicking athleticism of these so-called Fugitive Recovery Agents—stories placed, no doubt, by a government intent on discouraging prospective runaways—but there was no point in arguing the subject.
They made camp on a wide, dry ledge near the geological marvel Cutbirth had christened the Birthday Cake.
Content in the knowledge that their journey would soon be over—Cutbirth informed them that they would arrive at the cave’s exit about noon the following day—they sat in a circle around several candles Cutbirth had taped together and secured to the cave floor in their own waxy drippings. Wicks intertwined, the candles burned brightly in the cool, damp air. Their disfigured human shadows cavorting about on the gray walls like subterranean apparitions, they snacked on a meal of dried fruit and energy bars.
Adriana snuggled in close to Diego. “Can’t get warm,” she said, hooking an arm through his. “Cold to the bone.” He took each of her hands and rubbed them warm between his own.
In the odd, flickering light from the candles, Diego saw something in Adriana’s face he had observed earlier. Her cheeks were becoming hollow. She was beginning to look like a survivor of a World War II death camp. Chewing and swallowing was increasingly difficult—she winced with each bite, each swallow—and the malnutrition was beginning to show. Diego hoped it was the fickle light that was mistakenly portraying his wife as a 38-year-old anorexic. He had decided with 100% certainty that once they made it out of the cave he would find a secluded spot in the woods and scream until his vocal cords were raw.
“Would you think I’d lost my mind,” Diego told her, “if I offered to chew your food for you?”
She looked at him in the faint light, her eyes showing surprise, but also showing gratitude.
Diego said, “I read somewhere, maybe in National Geo, that the parents of some species chew up their food for their infants who haven’t developed the ability of chew yet. It makes it easier to swallow.” He didn’t know if he had actually read such a story, but it seemed logical.
“Okay, sweetie,” Adriana said in a raspy voice.“I’m game if you are. I need to get some calories down. But how will we do it?”
“Simple.” Diego took a small bite of his energy bar. He chewed it until it was soft and moist and all the rough edges were gone. He leaned in and put his open mouth onto hers, then made the pulpy transfer. Adriana swallowed the spongy morsel without wincing as badly.
Everyone watched quietly. No one laughed or made jokes.
Diego and Adriana finished one energy bar—he allowed himself every other bite—and then devoured a second.
Adriana looked at Diego with a smile that he alone could see. She said, “It’s not like we haven’t swapped bodily fluids before.”
After their Spartan meal, Sissy said what everyone was thinking. “I wonder what was in Henry’s backpack? They had gold seals on them.”
“T-bills. Stock certificates. Who knows?” Diego speculated. “He called them ‘ill-gotten goods.’ Whatever it was, it was probably stolen or embezzled.”
“And it was overvalued,” Yong said bleakly. “Nothing of a material nature is worth dying for.”
“Except maybe a double cheeseburger,” Sissy teased. “I’d kill for one about now.”
They all laughed—the uncertainty that had hung over them for many days had been soundly defeated—and then sat quietly, listening to the total silence of the cave. Emily thought a group shot would be nice and she told everyone to crowd together around the Birthday Cake. Everyone took a knee in front of the strange formation. Emily stepped back and snapped their picture. She passed her camera around and everyone viewed the snapshot. Diego told Emily to stand beside her mother, and he snapped the next group photo.
“After we get across the border maybe I can get everyone’s e-mail address and send them some of my pictures,” Emily gushed.
Everyone agreed they’d like to have copies of Emily’s pictures.
“Cutbirth, tell me something,” Diego said after awhile. “How did you get through that tube this morning? It was all I could do to squirm through.” Diego hoped the traumatic episode had partially emasculated his phobia. He had entered the tight crawlspace a raging claustrophobic and exited only slightly claustrophobic. Future encounters would prove or disprove his theory.
Cutbirth snorted. “I forced all the air out of my lungs. Totally. It reduced my chest by several inches. It’s a trick all cavers know.”
“The thought of crawling back through that tube gives me the creeps,” Yong said in a soft voice, fondling one end of Sam’s scarf, which by now was frayed.
“There’s no going back now, even if we wanted to,” Cutbirth said, clicking on his flashlight and illuminating the bridgeless pit 30 yards away.
“I’d like to go back,” Sissy said.
“Are you crazy?” Yong said, looking at Sissy like she had lost her mind.
“I don’t think you really mean that, Sissy,” Adriana said.
“I mean back in time,” Sissy said. “I’d like to go back to the way it used to be. I saw that movie It’s a Wonderful Life on the Oldies Channel last Christmas for about the tenth time. I’d like to go back to those days. People had problems, but they were happy. Things weren’t so bad.”
“Cornball crap,” Yong said cynically. “I saw that movie. Nobody was ever that happy.”
“Does anyone recognize the name Norman Rockwell?” Diego asked.
Cutbirth said, “Sure, he was the artist who painted the covers for some magazine.”
Diego nodded. “The Saturday Evening Post. He drew homey pictures that captured the heart and soul of Americans seventy years ago. A young boy visiting the doctor for the first time. A family gathered around the table at Thanksgiving. His paintings were very popular. They struck a nostalgic chord.”
“Government propaganda,” Yong scoffed.
“I don’t think so, Yong,” Diego said. “I grew up in Seattle in the nineties. Life wasn’t that bad. The propaganda didn’t come until later.”
“Would you like to go back, Mr. Cutbirth?” Emily said. “Back in time, I mean?” She peered at him through the monstrous shadows.
“The only place I want to go, kid, is to Haute-Savole, France,” Cutbirth said, removing the wrapper from another energy bar. “That’s one cave I must explore before I die.”
“Will you take pictures?” Emily asked.
“Oh, I’m certain of it.”
“Maybe you could e-mail me some. I’d like to see them.”
“Sure, kid. I’ll do that.”
Diego thought there was a ring of sinceri
ty in Cutbirth’s reply.
***
They turned in for the night, spreading their space blankets on the ledge. Cutbirth suggested they post a guard at the pit on the off-chance the bounty hunters might make an appearance—Cutbirth repeated his terra firma theory of long jumping—and the men agreed to take two-hour shifts as they had done the night before.
“A pound of cure and all that,” Cutbirth said.
Diego took the first watch. It proved to be uneventful. He woke Yong for the second shift, and then snuggled in next to Adriana on the dry ledge.
Although sleep came easily for Diego, he awoke in the middle of the night, his head reeling from a terrible nightmare. In his dream Adriana had awakened in the darkness, stumbled away from the rocky campsite and fallen into the pit, her hopeless screams echoing throughout the underground maze. Diego had stood on the edge of the abyss watching helplessly and calling her name.
He awoke with a jerk, found his flashlight in his backpack, and clicked it on. Adriana was sleeping there beside him, safe, her breathing ragged but regular. He gazed at her sweet face and smiled.
Have I told you today how much I love you, Adriana? No? Well, I’ve been a little busy. We’ve both been busy, but I do, you know. Wildly, crazily, madly in love. The thing is, I don’t know what I’ll do when you’re gone. I wish you weren’t going.
He heaved a long, lonely sigh, his eyes burning with tears. He clicked off the flashlight. There would be time for reflection later.
Diego was sore and stiff, and he rolled over on his back to get some relief, but there was no comfort in sleeping on a bed of limestone. He lay still for several long minutes, but sleep would not come, and he sat up and clicked on his flashlight again. Nearby, the prone figures of Sissy, Emily, and Yong formed shadowy lumps in the darkness. Cutbirth had spread his space blanket at the end of the ledge, and Diego swung the beam of light in that direction.
The silvery blanket was vacant—it was Cutbirth’s turn at guard duty—and Diego searched the chamber with his flashlight. His light found Cutbirth on the far side of the cavern near the pit. Diego got up and went over to where he was standing.
“What’s up?” Diego asked.
“Thought I smelled something again,” Cutbirth said vaguely.
“What?”
“An animal.” His eyes searched the darkness beyond the pit. “The two-legged kind.”
25
It was six o’clock in the morning and everyone was awake and ready to push on, each of them anxious to complete the last leg of their perilous journey. They ate a hasty breakfast of dried fruit and water. Just as they had done the night before, Diego chewed the food and transferred it to Adriana by mouth. Every other bite was his.
“We’re almost there,” he told her quietly, placing the palm of his hand on her cheek. Yes, Adrianna’s cheeks had taken on the hollow look of an Auschwitz survivor.
“I’m ready for this to be over,” Adriana said, her gruff voice sounding like that of an old man. “I’m so cold.” When she folded her arms and shivered, Diego brought his wife into the warmth of his embrace and tried to think of something encouraging to say—something that would mirror his shared agony and in some small way reduce her pain—but as usual nothing came to him, and he silently cursed Sam Holiday and the National Police and the bounty hunters and Raul Perez and the cancer that was killing his wife one cell at a time.
This would be the first day in a week that Adriana didn’t have a Z patch, and even though aspirin would be like trying to kill a bull elephant with a pea shooter, he dug out a bottle of the mild pain-reliever from his first-aid kit and encouraged Adriana to take a few. “It might help…a little,” he said. She washed down four, one at a time.
Diego again took her backpack. He slung his backpack over one shoulder and Adriana’s over the other.
She replied with a worn-out smile. “Thanks, sweetie.”
Cutbirth in the lead, they headed off down the underground passage leading away from the Birthday Cake toward the next stop on Cutbirth’s enigmatic map: Lake With Dam.
They hadn’t been hiking long when Cutbirth said,“Won’t be long now, children.”
“Then we’re close?” Sissy asked. “Close to the other side?”
“As a matter of fact, Hummingbird, we’re directly under the border.” Cutbirth stopped and directed his headlamp onto the adjacent tunnel wall. “A little of my handiwork,” he boasted.
They gathered around the lettering on the rocky panel. A white chalk-line had been drawn from the top of the eight-foot ceiling and down the wall, across the floor, and up the opposite wall. Cutbirth had drawn the border. On one side of the line were the bone-white words:
País Nuevo
On the other side of the line was the chalky designation:
United Secular States of America
“So I’m standing in País Nuevo now?” Emily asked. She stepped across the imaginary border drawn on the rock floor. “And now I’m in the U.S.S. of A?”
“Yeah, kid, you are,” Cutbirth said. He looked at them. “It’s only an educated guess, another of my illustrious theories, but it’s close. It’s my opinion the border is directly above us.”
No one spoke for several seconds, a flutter of emotions sweeping over them.
“This might make a nice picture, Emily,” Adriana prompted in a halting voice.
Emily agreed.
Diego and Adriana stood on one side of the words United Secular States of America, and Sissy, Yong, and Cutbirth crowded together on the other. When Sissy made a silly face, Emily giggled. It was the girlish, heartfelt titter of a ten-year-old, and Adriana looked at Emily with a sad, worn smile. Diego could see the ache in Adriana’s misty eyes. What might have been, he thought gloomily.
Emily shot two pictures and then showed each of them the images. Yong traded places with Emily and he shot a third.
Diego moved close to his wife and said, “We’ve made it, Adriana. We’re home free.”
In a thin, quiet voice she said, “I should feel thankful, sweetie, but”—she swallowed with a grimace—“somehow I’m not.”
Diego shared his wife’s sorrow. What had once been the envy of the world was now two separate republics—neurotic, broken, and put-upon—and the border somehow seemed to symbolize their sense of loss.
Yong said, “I wish Sam was here to see—” He stopped and looked at Adriana. “I’m sorry for what he did, Adriana.”
“It wasn’t your fault, Yong,” Adriana said, her dead-tired eyes smiling faintly.
But there was no more time for deliberation, and with Cutbirth in the lead they crossed into the U.S.S. of A. They followed the winding corridor from one small chamber to the next, their ragged shadows following them step for step along the uneven stone walls. At each limestone intersection, Cutbirth would consult his map.
Artistic folds of orange and gray flowstone—rock formations resembling melting wax made from eons of dripping water—curtained the walls in one of the larger chambers. Cutbirth explained that the colors in the flowstone were the minute remnants of the mineral waters that had made them. Zinc, perhaps. Maybe some lead. He said the creation of flowstone took tens of thousands of years.
All around them grew fat, cream-colored columns of stone, which connected chamber ceiling to chamber floor. Emily snapped a few pictures, and then asked Cutbirth how the columns were formed. He said they were stalactites and stalagmites coming together.
“How can you remember the difference?” Emily asked. “We learned about them in school, but I get them confused.”
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