BLIND DESENT

by Nevada Barr

  "Anybody else hurt?" Anna pressed.

  "Like I said, I don't know," he snapped. Strain came across as irritation. After a moment he went on, his unspoken apology accepted. "Most of the others went ahead. They must have gotten clear. The Distributor Cap is solid. I'm betting this was a local slide."

  Peter McCarty was locking his ascenders onto the rope. He had said scarcely a word since he'd pronounced Frieda dead.

  "Will you be okay with . . . You know, here?" Oscar asked almost as an afterthought. "As soon as I'm up I can send down my climbing gear."

  "Thanks," Anna said. "I'll be here."

  They left her a flashlight, and for that she was grateful. Watching them walk back up the wall of the chasm, she hugged it to her chest as if it were a magic wand.

  Alone again, she crawled over to where Frieda lay. There was nothing with which to cover her face. By the light of the flashlight, Anna closed her friend's eyes and folded her hands on her chest. They wouldn't stay put, and she had to hook the elbows against the frame of the Stokes to keep them in place. Why it was important, she wasn't sure, but it was. Death required ritual, even ritual that wasn't completely understood. Anna found herself wishing she knew the words of the last rites. All that came to mind from a distant and spotty religious training were the first lines of the Twenty-third Psalm. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil." The sentiment was apt, so she spoke the words aloud. They were all she could remember. The rest of the psalm was inextricably tangled up with the Charge of the Light Brigade.

  "Sorry," Anna whispered. "It's the best I can do." Clicking off the light she sat cross-legged near the Stokes, one hand resting on Frieda's shoulder, and listened to what was going on above.

  Remembering the drop, then watching the men climb, she estimated they'd fallen close to thirty feet. Dust was thick in the air but had ceased to boil and twist like a live thing. In increments almost too small to note, the lamps were growing brighter. Sound, human notes, were discernible, but just barely. They seemed far off and impossibly lonely.

  "I'm scared, Frieda," Anna admitted. "I wish you were here." Tears came again but quietly this time, a steady stream of sorrow cutting channels through the dirt on her face.

  One of the lines used to descend began to snake up the wall. The slithering frightened Anna till she shined her light on it and knew it for what it was. Half a minute later came the call "Heads up." She used her light to follow a burgundy sidepack, streaked with mud, down the rock face. It came to rest a few feet from the foot of the Stokes. She made no move to retrieve it.

  "Got it?" came a call.

  "Got it," she shouted, and continued to sit and stare as if it were an alien object for which she could not fathom any practical use.

  Now that the time had come to reenter the fray, take up those burdens she had righteously eschewed abandoning, she wondered if she had the wherewithal to do so. There was an undeniable appeal to sitting in the bottom of the ditch with Frieda, unmoved and unmoving, letting emergencies be dealt with by others. For a bit she indulged this desire, finding deep wells of self-pity to justify inaction.

  "Shit," she said finally, that being as close to a personal philosophy as she could muster. "I guess I'm not dead yet, Frieda." She pried herself up from the rock and retrieved the pack.

  Oscar's gear was a rotten fit, but it was a short climb and it would suffice. Once she was rigged she turned back to Frieda. It was time to say good-bye. She doubted they'd be alone together again. And, soon, Frieda's soul, if such a thing actually existed, would take flight, rise effortlessly through the layers of bedrock. It crossed Anna's mind to kiss her friend, but it wasn't something she would have done had Frieda been alive. It seemed impertinent to do it now that she was dead. Anna racked her brain for a gift to leave her with, but the dead are hell to buy for. The answer came in a flash of insight a superstitious woman might have taken as a message from the Other Side.

  "Taco," Anna said, naming Frieda's middle-aged golden retriever. "I'll take care of Taco," she promised. "As if he were a cat." She waited a few seconds more, but there was nothing left but a hollow mountain and the smell of dirt.

  9

  Following the lights, Anna left the standing rope to Frieda in place and edged along the chasm. While she picked her way over the precarious goat track, a shouted dialogue echoed from one end of the Pigtail to the other. Besides registering that probably more people had survived than not, she paid little heed. Her attention was taken up by the placement of each foot. Ambient anxiety had settled on one thought: that she would fall again. And, though she'd gone beyond where the Stokes lay, there came with anxiety the horror that she would again land on Frieda. Knowing the fear was irrational did nothing to dispel it, and Anna crept and clung like a lifelong acrophobe.

  At the end of the rift where the lights pooled, she joined Holden, Oscar, Peter, and Brent. When he saw the anchor shift, Holden had leapt from the bridge. Protected by the stone, he survived the landslide. In his Texas drawl he admitted, "The first step was a doozy." Rubble flowed into the end of Katie's Pigtail, burying the exit through to the Distributor Cap. By the time the slide was over, a mountain of dirt was between them and the way out. The fall created a stairway of rock down into the rift. Holden had been able to crawl up to the lip of the Pigtail.

  Unhurt, Brent Roxbury had already started the demoralizing process of fussing over Holden. Though necessary to a degree, Anna knew it increased the sense of helplessness. She was too tired and helpless herself to interfere.

  As near as Peter could tell, Holden's right ankle had been broken by the fall. As they shared their news with him, something else broke as well. Cracks appeared in his composure when he asked after Curt and Zeddie. They had been stationed along the Pigtail between Oscar and Holden. No one had seen them since the rockslide. The cracks widened, weakening the bones of Holden's face when Oscar told him Frieda was dead. Maybe it was Anna's knee that had crushed the life from her, but it was Holden's anchor that had given way. Nothing that had happened to Holden himself seemed to interest him. He ignored what had to be the painful examination of his ankle, sucked dust into his lungs as if it were the purest of air while he hefted both the boulder and Frieda's corpse onto his bony shoulders. An unsettling reflection of the feelings of those around him, despair marked his face like passing years. Anna recognized the temptation that had grabbed at her in the way he scrubbed imaginary cobwebs from his cheeks, the way his eyes lost focus as if he saw something beyond the rock walls. Holden was in shock. He wanted to give up, to lie down, pull disaster over his head like a dark blanket, and grieve. A broken ankle was a ticket to this lonely escape. Had Anna had an injury worth speaking of she might have used it to hide behind.

  She thought she was too tired and shaken to care about anything, but she watched him grappling with his devil as if she'd bet the farm on the outcome. Oscar Iverson was there and he was functioning, but Holden Tillman was of the cave itself. In some unfathomable way, she felt should he give up, the cave would take him—take them all. Even should they be freed, when they returned to the world their souls would be left behind under tons of limestone.

  "Goddamn, but I'm tired," Anna said too loudly, blowing away the morbid fantasy.

  A minute shift occurred in Holden's dull stare. He was looking at Anna, his light on her face.

  "Oscar," he said in a reasonable facsimile of his old voice, "we've got to teach Anna the fine art of cowboy cursing."

  "Dad blast it," Oscar said, and Anna heard the relief behind the words. He'd sensed Holden's return as well.

  "Gol dang it," Holden said. "The power is in the diphthongs."

  Remembering her last great blasphemy before all hell broke loose, she gave it a try. "Shucks," she said tentatively.

  Everyone laughed. Brent's laugh was shrill, an alarming whinny. There was an edge of desperation to it. Still, it was good.

  "Darn tootin'," Holden approved.

  "We're going to hav
e to rig a litter for you." McCarty jerked them abruptly back from the oasis of forgetfulness they'd forged.

  The only litter they had was in the bottom of the rift, housing the remains of Frieda Dierkz. A clutch of icy fingers tweaked Anna's insides, and she waited for Holden's retreat back into the quietude of victimhood.

  "My ankle's not broken," Holden declared. Wordlessly, Anna cheered his obstinacy. "Fix me up so I can get by."

  Anna and Oscar understood perfectly. McCarty was nudged aside. The two of them ransacked packs and first aid kits and built Holden a walking cast that kept his knee and ankle rigid. With duct tape and three of the lightweight, ladderlike aluminum rappelling devices they tied his foot and lower leg into a brace he could put his weight on. Dealing with the pain and awkwardness was up to him.

  "Everybody okay?" It was Zeddie Dillard coming crablike over breakdown from the direction of the goat track. Hailing her as Lazarus woman, they all but fell on her neck and wept. At least that was how Anna interpreted the calls of: "Where have you been?" Brent. "Now there's a good-looking woman." Oscar. And, "Is Curt with you?" Holden.

  Of the six of them, she appeared to have weathered the incident the best. She'd suffered no physical injury. She'd not seen the litter fall, Frieda dead. Unlike Oscar, Holden, and Peter, she carried no burdens of responsibility for a crushing past or an unpromising future. Added to these was the blessing of youth and its attendant sense of immortality. Anna doubted it had occurred to this strong, determined young woman that something as paltry as the elemental forces of nature could snuff out her life.

  Zeddie had tested the phone line, she told them. It was dead, probably sheared during the avalanche. Curt was unhurt, she reported. After the fall, she had seen Brent attending to Holden, and she and Schatz had passed the lines where Peter and Oscar descended to the Stokes. Since matters were being handled on the fall end, they had gone back to the beginning of the Pigtail to check on the others. Curt stayed back with four of the rescuers from outside who had been trapped.

  "I thought it best we not all come thundering up here till we knew how things stood." That said, Zeddie waited expectantly.

  Truth was, nobody knew how things stood. Holden rose to the occasion, drawing the invisible albatross of leadership back around his neck. "You did just right," he assured her.

  "Did anybody . . ." Zeddie's question petered out as she nodded at the pile of earth beneath and behind them.

  That they squatted on the burial ground of the perhaps undead had not occurred to Anna, and she shivered uncontrollably. To have her one hundred fifteen pounds instrumental in the death of another of her fellows was insupportable.

  "No," Holden said firmly. "The others made it to the Distributor Cap before this happened. If anybody went up there after that, they had to sneak by. Everybody was out."

  Anna released breath she'd not known she was holding and laughed—a rush of air without sound—at the image that had held her in thrall; grasping hands thrust through the soil from a movie. Probably Stephen King.

  "Frieda?" Zeddie said.

  "Didn't make it."

  Anna watched the woman's face as the simple words sank in and thought she saw genuine sadness through the grime. In a spill of light, she caught sight of Roxbury at the same instant. He had already heard the news, yet sorrow and something else—a gestalt of expressions suggesting a painful and very personal loss—crumpled his face a second time.

  "What happened?" Zeddie asked, and Anna drew breath to confess.

  "She was killed in the fall." Holden forestalled her. "After the anchor gave way and brought down the mountain there was nothing anyone could do. Anna was lucky not to be killed too."

  The statement was more than an exoneration of Anna. It was an acceptance of the blame. He'd chosen the anchor that had carried Frieda and Anna to the bottom of the rift.

  "I'm betting the anchor held, that the slide started above the boulder and knocked it loose," Oscar said in an attempt to ease his friend. "The anchor was sound. Rocks from above must have dislodged it. There couldn't have been any way to foresee that."

  Brent Roxbury interrupted with a strangled noise.

  "If you're having a heart attack, I'm not up for CPR," Anna said unsympathetically.

  For a second he searched for words or breath, then he said, "Listen." They froze in a sudden tableau, expecting a reprise of the horrible grinding. Instead came a musical cadence of taps, clear and sharp and obviously man-made.

  Again Brent whinnied.

  More taps.

  Anna laughed, and Oscar with her. They were saved.

  "Well," Holden said, a ghost of the twinkle flickering through. "Somebody answer the doggone door."

  Zeddie was the quickest to respond. She scuttled up the newly fallen scree to where the taps emanated from. In her haste she started another rock slide, a tiny one this time, but enough to remind them how inherently unstable the slope was. Deep in timeless and un-weathered earth, jagged corners unsoftened by the influence of wind or water, breakdown was cemented in place with a dry mortar of silt that had filtered down fine as dust over the centuries. Without external forces to act upon it, this bedding went untested through soundless, lightless years. Once the delicate fabric was disturbed, it flowed like sand through an hourglass, trickling from beneath, shifting rocks that had been held unmoving for eons.

  Having undipped a carabiner from a belt loop on her trousers, Zeddie rapped it smartly against a stone. No reply.

  "I think it's too light," she said, meaning the aluminum alloy of the 'biner.

  McCarty dug a hammer from his pack, possibly the kind used to tap on patients' knees. "Try this," he said, and tossed it. Fortunately Zed-die's hand was sure even in the faint and shifting light, and she caught it. This deep within the earth nothing could afford to be casual. Greater threats than Hodags were ready to make mischief at every turn. Shadows waiting to swallow tools, holes to snap bones, passages like mazes to capture lost souls.

  Hostile work environment, Anna thought, and no one to sue.

  Using the hammer, Zeddie banged three times in quick succession. Three raps came back and the cavers sent up a ragged cheer that ended as spontaneously as it had begun.

  "Does anybody know Morse code?" Oscar asked hopefully.

  "SOS," Zeddie offered. They all knew SOS.

  "I think that's been established," Iverson said dryly.

  Another flurry of taps were exchanged for the reassurance of both parties. Nothing of moment could be transmitted, but the message that they were not alone, not forgotten, that help was on the way was enough.

  "How long do you think it will take them to get through?" Brent said, and Anna was grateful he'd saved her from being the first to ask.

  Holden and Oscar looked at each other in mute conference. Holden shrugged. "I'd only be guessing," Oscar said.

  "Guess," Anna demanded, unable to help herself.

  "A day. Maybe two."

  Anna's heart shriveled up till it felt the size of a wizened lemon. "Twenty-four-hour days or eight-hour days?"

  "Could go either way," he replied unhelpfully.

  Holden took over. "We got nothing to dig with and the best we can do to help is get out of the way. They're going to be pushing out on this slope, and it'll slide again before they're done. We've all put in close to a nineteen-hour day. Everybody's shot. Till we've rested we're just accidents waiting to happen. We'll set up a base of operations back at the other end of this hole. We've got beaucoup water. Rapunzel goes down forever. This cave's got enough air to be considered a wind tunnel in some parts of the world, and we've got food. Lechuguilla's warm and dry. All we've got to do is get comfy and wait for the cavalry to arrive. My guess is old Oscar here is being conservative. We only need wiggle room, not the Holland Tunnel. We'll be out of here in eight or ten hours. Let's go spread the good word."

  Though he'd chosen to be brave, macho, noble, and all the things that Anna and, she was sure, the others, had hoped he would be, Tillman rema
ined a cautious man. Because of his ankle he tied himself between Oscar and Brent, the strongest of those in their truncated group. It could have been argued that McCarty was sturdier than Iverson, but he hadn't recovered from the trauma of the avalanche or Frieda's death—whatever demons stopped his voice and drained the blood from his lips.

  Consumed by an all-encompassing fatigue, Anna was unable to take much interest in McCarty's well-being. Body, mind, and spirit were exhausted. The ache in her arm and her fear of falling kept her awake. The lure of the lamp kept her moving forward. She'd come to believe there were no flat level places in all of the inner space of Lechuguilla. The "trail" they'd been calling the goat track was like the dotted line on a cartographer's drawing; it existed only in their minds. Reality was a stretch of rock that could be navigated only by borrowing from the traveling techniques of spiders, monkeys, starfish, and weasels.

  On the careful trek back, McCarty was in line behind Anna, taking up the last position. "Sondra?" he said with the startled intonation of a man remembering a package left behind in a taxicab. He had to say it a second time before the import penetrated Anna's haze of self-absorption.

  "Sondra?" she echoed stupidly, and ceased all movement to summon the energy required to process the idea. "Zeddie!" she hollered when the thought had percolated through the layers of dulled emotion.

  "Yeah?" Zeddie called back. Anna could just see her, down on all fours like a muddy St. Bernard, fifteen or twenty feet ahead.

  "Is Sondra back with Curt?"

  A moment's silence followed, then the almost inevitable response: "Wasn't she with you?"

  Anna swiveled her head to see if the message had reached the doctor. It was the only part of her anatomy she felt she could disturb without danger of dislodging her corpus from the rock face. With the poor light and the distance, she could scarcely read his reaction, but it looked as if as much guilt as worry. Maybe he realized how late in coming was this concern for his missing spouse. Anna studied him an instant longer, trying to see if relief mixed with concern on his face. If it did, she missed it.