The Unfortunates

by Kim Liggett

  “Shh…” someone whispers.

  “Loop it through the clamp on your vest thingy and tie it off,” she says as she proceeds to get everyone lined up on the other end of the rope, taking the front position. “Now all you have to do is free yourself from the old rope.”

  “Are you crazy?” the bigger guy says in alarm. “He probably weighs a hundred and eighty pounds. We can’t hold him. It’s suicide.”

  Finally, a word of reason. I know they’ll feel guilty leaving me, but that will quickly fade when they get out of here and find out who I was.

  They’re arguing over what to do when I say, “It doesn’t matter anyway. Like I was trying to tell you, it won’t work. The first rope … the carabiner is stuck. It won’t budge.”

  Shy lowers her voice. “Then I guess you’ll have to use the knife in your hand to cut it.”

  Gripping the Swiss Army knife, I can feel her dark eyes digging into me, like she knows everything.

  “We can do this,” Shy assures everyone.

  I can tell they’re scared, but they all seem to agree.

  “We’re counting on you,” she says, turning her attention back to me, and I know exactly what she means. Don’t screw this up.

  It’s so dark I can barely make out the details of her face, but I can feel her resolve. And if something goes wrong, I’m not sure she’ll let go of the rope. She’ll be the first to go over the edge.

  As I open the blade, I realize I could cut through all the ropes at the same time. They wouldn’t know I did it on purpose. They’d just think I made a mistake. It’s dark. I’m exhausted. Accidents happen all the time down here.

  “Cutting now,” I say as I press the blade against the rope. I hear the unmistakable sound of fraying fiber. Every caver’s worst nightmare. But it’s like music to my ears. Because no matter what happens, that sound is going to set me free.

  12

  WHEN the rope snaps, I hear screams echoing through the cavern as I go slamming into the side of the chasm wall. There are grunts of exertion, skidding feet, tiny bits of rock falling from above, but by some miracle, it holds.

  “Are you there?” someone calls down.

  I try to answer, but I’ve had the wind knocked out of me.

  “Dude, can you hear us?”

  “We don’t even know his name.”

  “Please, don’t be dead,” someone whispers.

  As a flashlight glares down on me, I look up, meeting their eyes for the first time—four sets of eyes, glistening in the dark.

  I take in a rasping breath. “I’m good.”

  As they pull me up, I glance back to where I was hanging. The severed red rope dangles there like a warning: this is how close you came to death.

  As I get near the ledge, arms reach out for me.

  “Stay back,” I say as I dig my fingers into the wet rock. If I fall, I don’t want to bring them down with me.

  As I’m pulling myself up the last few inches, I lose my grip and begin to keel backwards. The taller girl grabs onto the strap of my harness. I cling to her for dear life. I’m almost embarrassed by how much my body wants to live in this moment. How it yearns for solid ground. After everything I’ve done, I don’t deserve this, the kindness of these people who are probably stuck down here because of me. But this is bigger than me and my pathetic life right now.

  As they drag me back from the ledge to the safety of the tunnel, the rock slab I was anchored into finally gives way, filling the chasm with an avalanche of stone in a matter of seconds.

  The skinny one fans away the settling cloud of dust. “Guess we won’t be going that way.”

  Looking back at how close they came to being trapped under all that makes me sick. I lean my head between my legs, trying to get ahold of myself, but the world is spinning out of control. I throw up. Nothing but liquid and bile.

  “He needs water,” the shorter girl says.

  The skinny guy grabs the water bottle from my pack. “It’s empty.”

  “Well, look around,” she says. “This place is dripping with water.”

  “Not that we’d want to drink,” the bigger guy adds. “Remember that little virus, Ebola? Found in a cave.”

  “Not now,” the shorter girl says.

  The main girl grabs the water bottle, fills it up with the water trickling down the side of the cave wall, and forces me to drink. It tastes of earth and metal; fine bits of grit coat my tongue, my teeth.

  It’s the first time I’m seeing her up close. She has long, dark curly hair that’s been pulled back from her face. She looks vaguely familiar. “Shy, right?” I try not to stare too long. She’s pretty, but there’s a sharp edge about her. “I think I saw you when I hiked in for the drop. Do you remember me?”

  “We don’t need to be friends, okay? All we need you to do is get us out of here.”

  “Jesus, Shy. Ease up,” the shorter one says. “He almost died.”

  “So did we. Saving his ass,” she says as she takes the water away from me, wiping off the rim with the bottom of her sweatshirt.

  I can’t help but laugh at that. She actually thinks she did me a favor.

  “Hey … don’t worry about her.” The other girl, the small one, crouches in front of me, shining her light on the side of my head. “That looks pretty nasty, but it’s not bleeding anymore. Follow my finger with your eyes,” she says as she checks my reflexes, my pulse. I don’t think she likes what she feels, because she’s scrambling to get me out of the harness.

  I groan with how good it feels to be free of that thing. All I want to do is curl up on the floor and rest, but she won’t let me.

  “You can’t close your eyes, not until I know you don’t have a concussion,” she says as she starts roughly squeezing my limbs.

  “What are you doing?” the big guy asks.

  “We need to get his blood circulating.”

  I study her face. She has on makeup … or she used to have on makeup. Most of it’s melted off by now, but you can tell she’s into that kind of thing. “How do you know about all this?”

  “EMT training,” she answers, blowing her bangs out of her eyes.

  “Next step, med school,” the big guy says as he stoops next to her to help out.

  “Please. I’ll be lucky if I can scrape enough money together for my phlebotomy certificate. What’s your name?” she asks.

  I glance over at Shy; she’s whispering something to the skinny guy. No doubt something about me.

  I think about lying, telling them it’s Jack or John, but I’m sick of lying to everyone—lying to myself—and they deserve to know what kind of person they’re down here with.

  “Grant Franklin Tavish … the fifth.”

  Shy rolls her eyes. “First name would’ve sufficed.”

  I look around, and they’re just staring at me blankly.

  They don’t know. They don’t know who I am.

  “Shyanne Rose Taylor … the original,” the tall girl says as she leans against the cave wall.

  “But everyone calls her Shy,” the other girl says, almost apologetically, as she finally stops pounding on my legs. “I’m Maria. Maria Priscilla Perez.”

  “Priscilla?” the lanky guy laughs.

  “What?” Maria stands up, dusting off her skinny jeans. “My mommy’s an Elvis fan.”

  “Darryl James Arnold,” the bigger guy says. He wraps his arms around Maria to warm her up, but I know he’s also doing it to send me a message: hands off.

  The other guy steps forward with a wide, easy grin. “I’m Kit.” He reaches out to shake my hand; it’s colder than mine. “Real name is Jeremiah George Jackson. At least that’s the name the state gave me.”

  “Where does Kit come from?” Darryl asks.

  “Kit Kats,” he says as he blows into his hands and then shoves them in the pocket of his hoodie. “Fourth grade, I found a rolled-up twenty outside that house on Hay Street.”

  Shy shakes her head. “You’re lucky some tweaker didn’t come out lookin
g for it.”

  “Truth,” he says with a booming laugh. “But instead of spending it on a bunch of junk, I bought one of those jumbo packs of Kit Kats. Made a sign about needing to raise money for soccer uniforms. For some reason, rich people love soccer.”

  “Normally, I’d argue with you about gross stereotypes like that,” Darryl says as he scratches his fresh buzz cut, “but I think you might be right on that one.”

  “Took the bus to the mall and sold them for two bucks a pop. Quadrupled my money in a day,” he says as he flips up his hood. “And an empire was born.”

  “Hustler from birth.” Shy glares at him.

  “Knock it all you want, but how do you think I got my Xbox?”

  “It’s still wrong.”

  “Well, I don’t have a Grandma Ruth taking care of me.”

  “Then why is she always feeding you?”

  “You know what I mean. I wasn’t begging. I wasn’t stealing. The way I look at it, for a couple of bucks people get to feel good about themselves, and they get a damn good candy bar on top of that. Win-win.”

  “You never got busted?” Darryl asks.

  “Not really. Couple times ‘concerned mothers’ called mall security. But one time, down by the capitol, this guy in a nice suit gave me a hundred for my moxie. I had to look it up … it basically means ‘balls.’”

  I can’t help wondering if it was my dad or one of his friends who did that. They probably went back to the office, talking about this kid … how he could have a bright future in politics. An amusing story for their next cocktail party. But they didn’t do anything to really help him.

  “What are you doing down here … by yourself?” Shy asks, eyeing the expensive watch on my wrist. “Pretty sure you don’t belong with the Richmond Public Schools Outdoor Club.”

  I pull my sleeves down over my hands. “I go to St. Augustine.”

  “La-di-da,” Kit says.

  “It’s a graduation trip.” I try to stretch out my legs. “Kind of a rite of passage in my family. My dad did it, his dad before him. Becoming a man and all that.” I didn’t mean to give that much info, but I’d rehearsed that answer so much it just kind of spilled out of me.

  “Then why don’t you have any food or water in your pack?” Shy grills me.

  “It’s a survival trip.” I meet her gaze. “That’s kind of the whole point.”

  “So, your dad’s a real hard-ass.” Darryl perks up. “Military?”

  “Something like that,” I murmur.

  Shy stares at me. That same look she gave me when I passed her on my way to the drop point, like she can see right through me.

  I tear my eyes away from her. “What happened to you guys?”

  “We don’t know,” Kit says. “One minute we were fine, joking around, laughing, and then boom.”

  Maria’s eyes veer toward the dark passageway. “We kept following the tunnel, and then we heard you yelling.”

  “How long have we been down here?” I ask as I lean my throbbing head against the rock.

  “We don’t know that, either.” Darryl sighs.

  “What do you mean you don’t know?”

  “Look around … Could be three in the afternoon or three in the morning.”

  “It feels like we’ve been down here for months,” Maria says, flinching at a drop of water that falls from the ceiling.

  “Don’t you have watches? Phones?”

  “Check it out,” Darryl says as he pulls his flip phone out of his pocket, and nods to the others to do the same. “They all stopped working at the same time—eleven fifty-seven P.M.”

  “Mine too.” I rub my thumb over my watch.

  Darryl leans in, nudging my knee. “I’ve been thinking. Maybe there’s some weird frequency down here. Electrons in the rocks. Or some military device. They have those now. Things that can scramble your electronics.”

  “Why would anyone do that?” Maria sighs.

  “To cut off communication. Think about it. This would be the perfect cover for a secret military facility. For all we know, there could be a secret door or hatch around here somewhere.”

  “Spare us the conspiracy theories,” Shy says.

  “I’m serious. They have secret labs hidden all over the place. Why not here?”

  Kit shines his flashlight around the dull, confined space. “What could they possibly be hiding in this hellhole?”

  “Caves are the last frontier, right? The eighth continent, really. I read about these extremophiles … life forms they can’t even identify. Who knows what’s down here. On episode six of Ancient Aliens there’s this—”

  “You need to stop watching that garbage.” Maria smacks his arm. “It’s warping your mind.” She turns to me. “Don’t let him scare you.”

  “What if it’s some kind of experiment?” Darryl lifts his brows. “A government thing.”

  “Or someone looking for revenge.” I glance back toward the collapsed entry, wondering if the person who’s been following me could’ve done this. Maybe they thought they were doing the world a favor, which wouldn’t be wrong … but now there are innocent people involved. “Do you think they sell scramblers like that online?” I ask.

  “I know they do,” Darryl replies, without the slightest hesitation.

  “Please tell me you’re not buying into all of this,” Maria says. “It doesn’t make any sense. Why would someone do that? Terrorize a bunch of people trapped in a cave?”

  Kit bursts out laughing. “You just described at least a dozen horror movies. But no one we know could afford a piece of equipment like that, and I seriously doubt squeaky-clean-jeans over here has any enemies.”

  Shy looks at me, and I feel something twist inside of me. Either she knows something or I’m just being paranoid. Either scenario isn’t good.

  “Wait,” Kit whispers. “Do you hear that?”

  “Now you’re freaking me out.” Maria rubs her arms.

  I sit up, straining to hear it. Maybe he hears the whisper, too.

  “It’s the sound of Darryl’s sanity, floating away in the wind,” Kit says as he pretends to watch something drift down the tunnel.

  “Very funny.” Darryl crosses his arms over his chest.

  “Yeah, well, I hate to interrupt your paranoia party,” Shy says, “but since I don’t see any military personnel coming to our aid, or some psycho coming to terrorize us, we need to get moving.”

  “Do you think you can stand?” Maria asks.

  “Yeah,” I answer, without even thinking, but as I try to get up, my legs fold beneath me.

  “Hey, take it easy,” Darryl says, gripping my elbow.

  “I’m fine. I can walk. Just let me—”

  “You heard him. Get him on his feet.”

  “Shy, no,” Maria pleads. “Look at him.”

  “If he says he can walk, he can walk. If he needs help, he needs to ask for it.”

  “Believe me,” I say as I struggle to get up on my own, “I want to get this over with as much as you do.”

  13

  AS we form a single-file line to get through the tunnel, I take the last position. One, I don’t want them staring at me, figuring out who I am; and two, I’m not even sure if I can do this.

  The first few steps are the worst. It feels like my bones are made out of thin glass, but as my muscles slowly start to warm back up, it gets a little easier.

  The good thing is we have to take it slow. Even with my headlamp and all the flashlights on, it’s dark. The kind of dark that pushes back against you, like it doesn’t want to be illuminated.

  The ground’s fairly even so far, but there are stagnant pools of water everywhere. And I’m pretty sure I’m the only one wearing the right gear. Shy has on a decent pair of running shoes, Maria, a pair of ankle boots, clearly made for fashion, not function. Kit has on a pair of worn-out Converse and Darryl’s wearing the soggiest Timberlands I’ve ever seen. They must weigh a ton.

  The cave walls aren’t smooth like I expected; the
y’re rough, with jagged spikes sticking out from every direction, just waiting for the opportunity to draw blood.

  It feels unnatural, like we’re not supposed to be down here. Even the air feels foreign, like it’s too thick for my lungs.

  A strange breeze brushes past my cheek, like someone’s behind me, whispering in my ear. I stop and turn. Beyond the ghastly shadows from my headlamp, the soft music of the water seeping through the stone, there’s nothing there. At least nothing I can see.

  “You better keep up, Chad,” Shy calls back.

  “It’s Grant,” I say with a deep sigh, as I continue forward.

  “Whatever.”

  As I listen to them talking about everything from their teachers to basketball to the last thing they ate, my irritation grows. I shouldn’t even be here right now. I don’t belong with these people. And if rescue workers reach us before I can get them to the surface, all of this planning will be for nothing. I think about how easy it would be to take off my headlamp, set down my pack, and slip into one of the gnarled recesses. But, with my luck, they’d probably just end up wasting all their resources trying to find me. No. I need to at least get them on the right path, and then the rest is up to me. I can still pull this off.

  As they begin to emerge from the twisted tunnel into some kind of cavern, Darryl says, “Whoa.” I can tell the space is big by the way it echoes around the chamber.

  I step through to find a towering room filled with boulders. The only way forward is at the top of the incline, a small craggy opening.

  “At least it’s going in the right direction,” Maria says, staring up at the imposing obstacle.

  “Maybe it’s a way out,” Darryl says.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” Kit says as he charges ahead. As he leaps onto the first boulder, it teeters forward and the whole terrain begins to shift. He jumps off right before one of the rocks comes barreling down the incline. I feel the gust of air as it whooshes past me, exploding against the cave wall.

  Kit laces his fingers behind his head, letting out a huge breath. “Man oh man, that was close.”

  “What is this place?” Maria says as she steps behind Darryl.