“Is she breathing?” asked Dominic.
Adam was huddled over her. “I can’t tell.” Dominic could hear the sounds of Adam starting CPR.
“She was talking when I first crashed into her, but then at some point she went under and I think she swallowed some water,” said Logan.
Adam was counting softly to himself. Suddenly there was a gagging sound, and Adam jumped back, crashing into Dominic. “Eew. She puked on me.”
“So sorry,” said Eve through violent coughs.
And then they were all laughing, huddled together and unable to stop themselves. Dominic couldn’t see the others, but just feeling them around him and knowing that somehow they had all survived was like a drug. After a few minutes, they finally calmed down.
“Where did you get that rope?” asked Logan.
“It floated down the river to us,” Dominic said. “Alex must have made it. It feels like all our clothes tied together. What happened to you? How did you find Eve?”
“I crashed into her when I hit the wall. She grabbed on to me and we almost went through the outlet, but I managed to wedge my legs against the opening and hold on. At some point I felt her start to let go and realized that she had swallowed water. I tried to hold her above the water, but it was impossible to move without getting sucked through. If it hadn’t been for that rope, we would have been goners.”
The rope reminded Dominic. “Alex must be worried. We need to go back up stream and find her.”
“How are we supposed to do that without any light?” asked Logan.
“Slowly, I guess,” said Eve weakly.
They all laughed again, hysteria just barely kept at bay. “At least Alex should still have a light when we find her, not that I’ll get much benefit from it,” said Adam. “I lost my glasses in the water.”
“Speaking of light,” said Logan. “Do you guys see that?”
They did. Far away, a tiny point of light was moving toward them.
19
What Light Flickers
Left alone on the bank of a rushing river in a giant underground cavern, sick with worry about her friends, and feeling the dark press in around her as if it would extinguish her little flashlight, it was easily the worst moment of Alex’s life.
She saw Logan and Dominic dive into the water and disappear from sight, and a panic rose up in her throat, almost choking her. In that moment, it was all she could do to keep from throwing herself into the water as well. But Dominic’s last words to her were still ringing in her ears. Find something to use as a rope. Her panic took a new direction.
She began to rummage, snatching up each backpack and dumping its contents on the ground. A few items caught her eye but were rejected nearly as quickly as they were seized upon. Some rubber bands. A necklace. Dental floss. At that last one, Alex screamed in frustration. This was useless. There was nothing. Then her eye fell on the ace bandage from her first aid kit. But, no, it was only about two feet long. Unless…
With sudden inspiration, Alex whirled around and seized the pile of discarded clothes. It was perfect. Starting with the socks, she tied everything together, carefully double and triple knotting, praying that getting wet would make the knot stronger. Unsure how long a rope would be needed, she stripped off her own socks and shoes, adding the laces to the very end. That was it. The best she could do.
Gathering up the whole hodgepodge pile in her hand and balancing her flashlight on top, she began to make her way downstream as quickly as possible. She had only gone about four feet when she slipped and, unable to catch her balance with her hands so full, sprawled face first on the rocky ground. The soft rope cushioned her fall, and she was unhurt, but her flashlight rolled off with a thunk and went out.
By this time she could hear yelling very faintly from up ahead. There was no time to lose. She felt frantically around for the flashlight with no luck. She knew she had no chance of feeling her way along in the dark. Another yell reached her. There was no choice.
Alex stood up and began slowly creeping along, praying she wouldn’t misstep and fall into the water. Two steps, three, four. She tried unsuccessfully to remember how far away the end of the cavern was. More yelling. Five steps, six steps. She bashed her bare toe on a rock and cried out in pain. Seven steps, eight.
With no warning, her right foot came down in about a foot of water. She fell sideways this time, into the river. Flinging out her hands to catch herself, Alex let go of the rope. The water wasn’t deep, and Alex was able to get back up on the bank in no time, but the rope was gone, carried away by the rapid water.
Alex collapsed in despair. She sat huddled alone on the bank in the dark, sobbing and dripping and shivering uncontrollably, listening as the shouting from downstream continued. She didn’t know if she could bear to hear the last drowning cries of her friends. Alex covered her ears and cried harder. She had no idea how long she sat there, but at some point she heard something that caused her to raise her head. It was quiet.
Was that it then? Were they all dead?
A sudden sense of horror at being alone in the dark with all her dead friends spurred Alex into action. She crawled back upstream, feeling carefully around for her lost flashlight. When she arrived at the pile of junk that was the emptied out backpacks and realized that she had missed the flashlight, she had to stifle another sob. She turned back, this time walking and trying to count the steps she had taken before falling. A few steps in, she stepped on it, falling for the third time and skinning both knees. Clutching the precious plastic tube to her chest, she felt for the switch. A few frantic flips of the switch and a tightening of the battery cover later, the light came on. Alex cried out in hysterical relief.
Now that she had the light, she had to decide what to do. Should she just head out of the cave and go get help? Or should she attempt to look for her friends? Was there any chance that anyone was still alive? The thought of hunting by herself in the dark and maybe finding someone’s body washed up on the bank was almost more than she could bear. But in the end, she knew she couldn’t just leave without knowing for sure that no one still needed her help. With only a short pause to put her shoes back on, Alex headed downstream again.
Now that she had the light to guide her and her shoes to protect her feet, it didn’t really take that long before she could see the wall of the cavern looming up ahead of her. The roaring sound of the river was getting louder as she approached the place where the water crashed against the rock face, but she began to imagine that she could hear something else over the rushing sound. Was that laughter?
Heart pounding, Alex moved forward even quicker. Suddenly she heard shouting from the other side of the river. She couldn’t make out all the words, but she definitely heard her own name.
“I’m here!” she yelled. “Are you okay?” Alex leaned forward with her flashlight, but the river was just too wide.
There was some response, but she couldn’t understand it.
“I can’t hear you!”
More indistinguishable shouting followed this and then a pause. Finally several voices in unison reached her, “Go upstream!”
Alex did, moving slowly, aware that the others would be walking without the aid of a flashlight. From time to time she shined her light out across the water. Even though she couldn’t see the other side, she hoped they could see her light and that maybe it would help them walk.
When she arrived back at the pile of discarded belongings, Alex stopped to wait, leaving her light trained on the river. It was several minutes before she heard the yelling again. The water was a little quieter here, and this time she could hear Dominic’s voice, faint but clear.
“We’re all okay. We made it.”
The relief was so overwhelming that Alex started to tremble again. Her legs gave way beneath her and she sank down on the pile of shoes.
“Are you okay?” This time it was Adam’s voice.
It took a couple of tries for Alex to summon enough strength for her voice to be heard. “
I’m fine.”
“What now?” came the call from a across the water.
Good question, thought Alex, what now? Either they all had to get back across the water, or she had to cross to them. If they were to go on, she would need to cross. But how? And how would they get home when they had finished? She sat for quite a while thinking, but she knew all along what she was going to say.
“Let’s get me across.”
There was some muffled shouting before Dominic’s voice said, “If you wade out half way we can throw you the rope before you get to the drop off.”
“Okay.”
“Bring shoes!” yelled Eve.
Alex nodded to herself. She gathered up all the shoes and the first aid kit, now mostly empty, and stuffed them into one pack. As an afterthought, she grabbed an empty backpack for carrying back the books, if they found them.
“Have a little faith,” she muttered to herself. Surely it wasn’t possible to go through all this for nothing.
She was already ankle deep in the water when Adam’s voice reached her again. “Bring the sword.”
Alex looked around. The sword was lying off to the side where she hadn’t even noticed it before. She snatched it up, wondering how she was going swim and hold a rope and the sword at the same time.
It didn’t end up being that hard. Halfway across the river, she could make out the shapes of her four friends on the far bank. If Alex thought hearing their voices was wonderful, it couldn’t even compare to the relief of seeing them in front of her. Dominic and Logan were holding the rope between them, and when she stopped, they threw it together. Alex was able to grab it in one hand on the first try. At Dominic’s instruction, she wrapped the end several times around her hand and then began to walk again. After a few steps, her footing disappeared and Alex felt a momentary panic, but then the rope pulled taut in her hand and she started to kick in the direction it was pulling. In a matter of moments, hands were reaching out to haul her up on the bank and her friends were all around her. In the pale light of the single flashlight, she could see them all, beaming even while they shivered and interrupting each other in their haste to hear and tell everyone’s part of the story.
Alex was cold. She was wet and tired and still shaking with the shock of the last hour. But she couldn’t remember ever being so happy.
20
The Stolen Toy, The Father's Love
There was only one tunnel on this side of the river, and it was narrow enough to force them to walk single file again. Adam, the last in the line, was thankful for the tight quarters because it gave him an excuse not to have to face the others.
Everyone had asked and answered all their questions without anyone bringing up Adam’s stupidity in going into the water in the first place. Still, Adam knew sooner or later he needed to admit what an idiot he had been. He felt a lump in the pit of his stomach at the thought of what might have happened. It was nothing short of a miracle that no one had drowned. And he knew it was all his fault.
There was no way around it. The more he thought about it, the more sick and ashamed he felt. He had insisted on going into the water without a rope even though he knew it was the dumbest thing imaginable. He had been too impatient. Worse, he hadn’t wanted to listen to Dominic’s advice because he was jealous of Dominic. Now that he was forcing himself to be honest, Adam knew that he had intentionally disagreed with everything Dominic said because he felt like they were competing for the leadership of the group. Stupid? Yes. But there it was. He was jealous of Dominic because the others listened to him. When they had first begun, Adam was the unofficial leader, but all that changed when Dominic came along.
So now I’m so petty that I would rather risk everyone’s lives than listen to Dominic’s good advice? Adam was disgusted by himself. He knew this was no time for apologies, but he silently promised that he would take responsibility as soon as they were out of this cave. He hoped that he would have some chance to make it up to the others.
He was so taken up with these thoughts that he crashed into Logan before he realized that everyone had stopped in front of him.
“What’s going on?” Adam couldn’t see anything past Logan’s head.
“I think we’re here,” whispered Alex from the front of the line.
“It’s another cavern,” said Dominic softly. “And this one is full.”
Slowly they all stepped forward until they were standing side by side in the new cavern. Alex’s flashlight played over a massive mound of mauled books and miscellaneous junk. Even without the aid of his glasses, Adam could see that almost all the books were torn, burned, and shredded within an inch of their lives. Loose pages were everywhere.
It was beyond comprehension. Whatever Adam was expecting to find at the end of their journey, it sure wasn’t this. There must have been thousands of books, all apparently destroyed. Who could have done this?
No sooner had Adam thought the question than Eve voiced it.
“No way it was just one person,” said Dominic.
“Someone really hates books,” Alex said.
“Or just one book,” suggested Logan.
The reminder of what they were here to find turned Adam’s stomach. Were their books in this pile? Had they met the same fate as all these others? His heart sank at the thought that their efforts had been for nothing.
“Do you think our books are here?” Eve voiced his thoughts again.
“Seems likely,” said Adam. “The question is, are they in one piece?”
“Seems unlikely,” said Eve.
“Well, we’d better look,” Dominic said.
“There’s no point in spreading out,” said Alex. “We only have one light. But I’ll try to hold it up, so you can all look around a bit.”
“I think I’m glad we can’t split up,” said Eve. “It creeps me out to think of whoever did this coming back to find us.”
“Good point,” said Dominic. “We don’t know if the thief is here or not.”
“Just sitting in the dark?” asked Adam, then silently cursed himself for using that snarky tone again. Was he incapable of normal conversation?
“I don’t know,” Dominic said. “I’m just saying keep your eyes open.”
“Anyway, we know it’s probably not human,” said Logan. “Maybe it doesn’t need light.”
With that encouraging thought, they all moved to the pile and began sorting through the rubble to find any books that might still be whole.
“Here’s something,” said Eve. “It has a red cover…I think it’s a Book of Sight! It is! The cover is pretty scorched, but it doesn’t look like any pages have fallen out.”
Logan looked at it. “Yes, it definitely is.”
Hope filled Adam. Maybe they would be able to find, or at least replace, all of their books after all. With renewed energy, they all began searching again.
“What’s that?” asked Alex, pointing from where she held the light a little ways distant to maximize the beam.
Dominic went to check it out. “It’s another one,” he called excitedly.
“I think I’ve got one here, too,” said Adam. He stuck it along with the others in the empty backpack Alex had brought.
For a while it was quiet as they searched. Any time someone saw even a part of the Book of Sight that was recognizable, they put it in the bag.
“I found something,” said Logan. “It’s a book, but it’s not the same. Someone wrote in it, like a journal or something.”
He held up the tattered remains of a book which may once have been a journal with a green cover but now looked as if it had been set on fire and then soaked in water and then trampled by a herd of elephants. Adam doubted it would be of much help, but he reached out for it just the same.
Before Logan could hand it over, however, several things happened very fast. Eve screamed, a shadow passed in front of Adam knocking Logan to the floor, and Alex cried out in pain and dropped the flashlight. With a terrifying thunk the flashlight landed on the cavern
floor and everything went dark.
21
Hand in Hand and Back to Back
Head throbbing, Logan woke up to blackness and chaos. For one completely disoriented moment, he couldn’t remember anything.
Then out of the chaos of sounds around him, one voice broke through his mental haze.
“Alex! You guys, help me!”
Logan leapt to his feet, was overtaken by vertigo, overcorrected, and stumbled to his knees again. Apparently quick movement wasn’t happening for him. But at least now he could remember where he was and what had happened. He hadn’t seen whatever hit him, but it had been moving fast and when he fell, he must have hit his head on a rock.
Before his head could stop spinning, something else crashed into him and he found himself struggling for air at the bottom of a pile of writhing arms and legs and…something else. Something smooth and supple and strong.
Terrifying images leapt to life in Logan’s head. Giant snakes and nameless but fearsome amphibious creatures. He imagined a flat nose perfectly designed for smelling its prey and powerful muscles for squeezing and delicate fangs dripping venom.
Overcome with horror, he kicked out violently, clawing for a way to escape, receiving blows on all sides from unseen sources. He could hear grunting and a cry of pain. Someone’s elbow hit him in the stomach and all breath was knocked from his body at the same ghastly moment that his hands glanced off not one but two thick rubbery snakes.
Logan thought he could never have imagined a situation more horrible than this one, fighting something vile that he couldn’t even see. He was only a fraction away from utter mindless panic when he was suddenly blinded by a light.
The shock was enough to clear his head instantly and he had just a moment to register the complete blackness of the creature next to his face before it shuddered in one giant muscle spasm and threw him off, along with Adam and Dominic, who had been clutching its arms.
The Book of Sight Page 15