But his hiccuping cries were upsetting. Having no relief to offer him, she just joggled him some, which satisfied him not at all. His wailing grew shriller, more demanding. He squirmed, kicking, his tiny fists beating the air, his face redder than a fire engine.
He sounded like a fire engine.
“What’s wrong with the baby?” the girl behind her asked.
“He’s hungry.” Theresa kept walking, not even bothering to glance around. She had done her part to help the girl, who’d been crying intermittently ever since she’d emerged from the crawlway, by leading her out of the mine. Since then the girl had stuck to her like a leech, as if she expected Theresa to save her.
She didn’t need anyone else depending on her, Theresa thought. Her efforts had to focus on Elijah—and herself. With her whole family gone now, as she was pretty certain they were, there were only the two of them left.
Whatever the future brought, she had to look after Elijah. When he had awakened in the mine, after she had been so sure he was dead by her hand, she had heard her mother’s voice as clearly as if Sally had been standing next to her.
Take care of your brother, she had said.
Those were the terms of the miracle, Theresa knew. You can keep him only if you take care of him.
For her mother, her brother, and herself, Theresa meant to do her best.
“Why don’t you stop and feed him?” the girl asked.
“Do I look like I have anything to feed him with?”
This time Theresa did glance back. With her ponytailed blond hair, yellow turtleneck, and slouchy jeans, the girl didn’t look that much different from herself. It was her attitude that was different. She was clearly of the world. She had been to school, to movies and malls and restaurants. She had friends, maybe even a boyfriend.
A twinge of envy, which she almost immediately dismissed as ungodly, narrowed Theresa’s eyes.
“Can’t you, uh, nurse it or something?”
“He’s not my son, he’s my brother.”
“Oh.” The girl was quiet for a minute. Then, “Would he eat this?”
Theresa glanced over her shoulder again, then stopped walking and turned to face the girl, who was holding out a flat, ruler-size rectangle wrapped in yellow and white cellophane.
“What is it?” she asked, ignoring the rumble in her own stomach. How long since she had eaten? she wondered, then decided she was better off not knowing the answer.
“Beef jerky. I had some in my pocket.”
“Thank you.” Theresa took the package and placed it between her teeth. As she ripped the package open, the smell, spicy and tantalizing, made her salivate. Glancing down at howling Elijah, whose face was redder than ever and wet and crumpled with distress, she removed the opened package from her own mouth and extracted the strip of brown meat.
Getting it into his mouth was not a problem. He was crying with such intensity that she could see clear back to his tonsils. Touching his cheek with a finger, murmuring to him, she placed one end of the strip on his tongue and kept hold of the other end so he wouldn’t take too much and choke.
He sputtered, gulped, and closed his mouth around the jerky like a fish taking bait. His face was still red, his blue eyes still teary as he met her gaze, but he gummed the meat. And frowned. Theresa supposed that he didn’t like the taste, but he didn’t let up, sucking and chewing for all he was worth.
Theresa watched him use the new tooth that had been such a source of pride for their mother. She felt a sharp pang of loss.
“He likes it,” the girl said.
Theresa glanced up at her. “What’s your name?”
“Rory.”
“I’m Theresa.”
“I know.”
Theresa nodded, then looked back at the baby. “This is Elijah,” she said.
“Hello, Elijah.” The girl met Theresa’s gaze. “Why are you and he all alone? Where’s the rest of your family?”
Theresa felt a surge of emotion, which she immediately forced back. As Daddy had said more than once, you do what you have to do when you have to do it. She would mourn later.
“They’re all dead. Those men who attacked us in your car—they killed them. I saw my cousin—his throat was slit. The others—my mom and brothers and sisters—were lying there in the grass, too. They were so still.…” Still holding the end of the jerky while Elijah chewed ravenously at it, she turned her back and started walking again.
“Was that your family down at the mining camp?” Rory asked, sounding both awed at the prospect and sympathetic, too, as she fell into step beside Theresa. “We—my mom and Jess, who’s kind of our guide, and me—found the bodies, but the killers saw us. They started shooting at us—only they looked like ghosts because they were all white and floating when we first saw them. But they have to be the same men. Don’t they?”
“They are the Elders, and they wear white robes when they do their Work. They didn’t have them on back there at your car,” Theresa said. “Let’s not talk about it, please.”
She could not think about her family and their fate anymore. If she did she would surely die of grief.
“Okay.”
They trudged on for a few minutes without speaking. Then Rory said, “Look, my mom’s back there.”
Theresa had already been witness to Rory’s near-hysteria at leaving her mother behind.
“So’s mine,” Theresa said quietly.
“But mine’s alive,” Rory insisted. “I have to bring help back to her. Does this road go anywhere?”
There would be no help for her own mother, Theresa knew. But maybe—the idea was born reluctantly—she could help Rory save hers.
Rory had provided food for Elijah.
“Into town, eventually,” Theresa said. “But it’s a long way.”
“How far?” Rory asked.
“It usually takes about two hours.”
“To walk? That’s not so far.”
“To drive.”
“Oh.” Rory absorbed this, then looked at Theresa with despair. Theresa realized that Rory was fighting back tears again. “Do you know anywhere around here where I can go for help?”
Theresa thought about it, then shook her head.
“Then I’ve got to go back and help my mom.” Rory stopped walking.
“Wait,” Theresa said as Rory turned to head back toward the mine. “Can you drive?”
36
WITHOUT THE TAUT GAUZE to guide her Lynn would have been lost. Deprived of sight and hearing and the ability to speak, her skin aching from the frigid temperature of the water, she followed Jess down and then forward. Her breaststrokes were rusty but adequate. Her fingers brushing rock walls on two sides told her when they entered the passage.
Her lungs began to hurt. How long had they been underwater? Thirty seconds? A minute? More? It seemed like an hour. It seemed like an eternity.
The gauze slackened. Lynn caught up to Jess, touched his leg, his back. He had stopped and seemed to be in trouble. His movements were not the rhythmic strokes of a swimmer, but the struggles of a man … doing what? In the violent throes of drowning? Battling another survivor, like Louis?
Her lungs felt as if they would burst. Lynn pushed beside Jess, meaning to pass him if need be, desperate to survive, to reach air. Her outstretched hands encountered rock. She realized that the passage was, as she had feared, blocked.
They had to turn back.
But Jess was working to clear the blockage. Those were the frenzied movements she had felt. Fighting panic, Lynn stayed put, clawing at the barrier, dislodging stones of various sizes. She could feel them shift under her hands, feel the disturbance of water around her as they fell. How many were there? How long would clearing an opening take—if it could even be done?
If they did not turn back soon, it would be too late. There would be no time to make it to the oxygen that she knew was behind them in the chamber they had just left. There would be no time for anything at all.
They would die
, their bodies floating lifelessly in the passage they had drowned in. In time when the water went down, the corpses, hopelessly bloated by then, would be recovered.
Rory and her mother would cry at her funeral.… But of course there would be no funeral. In eighteen hours there would be nothing at all.
Tearing frantically at the barrier, Lynn fought back terror. The urge to breathe, to exhale and then inhale even though she knew she was surrounded by water rather than oxygen, was overpowering. It took every bit of mental strength she possessed to fight it.
If she surrendered to the foolish demands of her body, she would not survive.
If she even allowed herself the luxury of releasing the stale oxygen inside her, which her burning lungs screamed at her to do, she feared she would not be able to keep herself from inhaling again.
She had always heard that drowning was an easy way to die. Whoever thought that had never experienced the searing pressure in the lungs, the sense of suffocation, of panic, that came with not being able to breathe. Not being able to try to breathe.
Her body was undergoing excruciating torture. She had to breathe.
A hand grabbed hers, pulling her forward. Woozy, disoriented, she knew that she was being propelled through a tiny opening in the rocks, but every bit of her consciousness that remained was focused on battling the urge to fill her lungs with whatever substance was available.
She had to breathe.
Her kicking toes smashed hard into stone. The bottom! She could feel the bottom of the passage! Had she sunk, or … Pushing off with her feet, Lynn launched herself upward.
Crack! The top of her head hit the roof. The pain was sudden, sharp. She totally disregarded it, because her mouth and nose were above the waterline. Opening her mouth, she emptied her lungs and filled them again with air.
Sweet air.
Treading water, she breathed in and out, in and out, in and out. With the restoration of respiration her senses sharpened, and she realized that the wheezing sounds beside her were Jess and Louis doing the same thing.
Breathing. How precious was the ability to breathe!
“We made it,” Jess said, his voice hoarse and rasping. “We’re in the passage, above the waterline.”
He moved, his hand on her arm drawing her forward. Lynn’s toes hit rock again, then her knees. Weak, shaken, soaked to the skin, and nearly frozen, she half swam and half crawled from the water, then fell forward, eyes closing as she lay prone on the hard stone floor.
Jess sprawled beside her, breathing as greedily as she. Crawling up behind them, Louis gasped and gurgled as he, too, made it to dry land.
They lay there for what seemed like a long time, though when Jess got to his feet and said it was time to go, it wasn’t long enough to suit Lynn.
Physically and mentally, she was exhausted. Her body felt like it had been run over by a Mack truck. Her mind reeled when she tried to form a coherent thought. She simply could not go on. She had to rest.
“Get up, Louis,” Jess said. Louis muttered a protest. From the ensuing sounds Lynn got the impression that he was being dragged to his feet.
Then Jess knelt beside her, touching her arm with a gentle hand.
“Lynn, listen. We’ve got to go. There’s only so much time.”
Jess’s words cracked her torpor. The memory of what they were up against broke it wide open.
“I’m coming,” she said through her teeth. Summoning every scrap of willpower she possessed, she got unsteadily to her feet. For a moment she had to stand with her hand braced against the wall.
“Do you still have the lighter?” Jess asked out of the pitch darkness.
“Wait.” Lynn felt inside her bra. The lighter was there. She pulled it out and tried to flick it to life. No such luck. The lighter, soaked through like the rest of her, was out of commission. “It won’t work. It’s too wet.”
“Okay. I think I know where we are anyway. Stay close.”
The gauze still tied to her belt loop left her little choice. With one hand pressed to the clammy rock wall for guidance, she followed in Jess’s wake, shivering as she felt her way along, stumbling at the rear of their little trio. Jess kept Louis in front of him, presumably so that he could keep tabs on the man in case he should try anything.
Which suited Lynn fine. Total blindness enhanced all her other senses, including her sense of fear. Whether he was temporarily on their side or not, Lynn was afraid of Louis. He was a full-fledged nut case, and a murderer as well.
What if Louis changed his mind about the Lamb being mistaken and decided to turn on them, right there in the dark? She didn’t fancy getting clobbered over the head with a rock.
They were in the twisty passage that led to the chamber they had first entered, walking uphill where before they had traveled down. Lynn thought they must have surfaced about a third of the way along it, because as they progressed she recognized various landmarks by touch: a splintery timber here, a rocky outcropping there, as well as several slick spots hollowed out of the stone floor by years of wear.
“Careful,” Jess’s voice warned. From the sound of it—it no longer seemed to be coming from the bottom of a well—she thought he had reached the chamber. Remembering the difference in heights from one floor to the other, Lynn moved cautiously, feeling for the drop-off with an inquisitive set of toes. Her care was rewarded as she found the edge and stepped down.
“Lynn?”
Jess was waiting for her. His strong hand closed around her badly chilled arm, steadying her as she descended the eight inches or so that separated the cavern floor from that of the passage. For a moment after she was on level ground again she permitted herself the luxury of letting her body rest against his.
His arm wrapped around her waist. She was so tired, she thought, leaning. Nothing less than a life-or-death emergency could compel her to take another step.
Unfortunately, a life-or-death emergency was exactly what they faced.
Jess had to be tired too, and probably weak from loss of blood as well, but he showed no sign of it.
“Come on,” he said, about five centuries before she was ready. His arm left her waist. Setting off across the chamber, he pulled her with him, his hand gripping hers.
“Keep going, Louis,” he prodded, and Lynn realized that Louis was stumbling through the dark just ahead of them.
“I’m tired. And I can’t see anything,” Louis complained.
“The entrance should be on the left. We had to crawl through the passage, remember, so it must be really low,” Lynn said, mostly to Jess, as her outstretched hand touched the opposite wall. By dint of sheer willpower she was regaining her strength. She had to go on, and she would.
Without light the only way to find the opening was by feeling along the vertical rock, which consumed precious minutes. Finally Jess made a triumphant sound.
“Got it!” he said. “Louis, you go first. Don’t forget to duck.”
“Ow!” Seconds later a dull thud and Louis’s cry underlined the wisdom of Jess’s advice.
“I’ll go next. You come after me,” Jess said, having no apparent sympathy to spare for Louis. From the sound of his voice his head was no higher than waist level.
“Okay,” Lynn answered, crouching. A tug on the gauze that still connected them told her that he was moving.
“Watch your head.”
Lynn followed him into the passage on hands and knees, her head carefully lowered. The example of Louis’s close encounter was strong.
The floor was as wet and slippery as she remembered. Crawling uphill was less treacherous than crawling down, however, if more tiring. Minutes later Lynn saw the first glimmer of daylight. With a quirk of her lips she realized that she was looking at the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.
“We made it!” Jess said exultantly as Louis reached the opening. For an instant Lynn pondered the wisdom of letting Louis exit first into a world of rocks and sticks and who knew what other potential weapons. Jess apparently ha
d the same thought at the same time, because he grabbed Louis by the ankle when the man would have crawled out.
“Wait just a minute, buddy,” he said, and the two left the passage in tandem, pushing through the leafy forsythia branches that masked the entrance. Lynn brought up the rear.
Even beneath the thick forest canopy the brightness of the day was so intense that it hurt Lynn’s eyes. Squinting as she emerged, she could see practically nothing. A gentle breeze caressed her face. Redolent of pine and fresh summer growth, it was doubly welcome after the musky dankness of the mine. Despite the warmth of the afternoon she was freezing. Soaked, chilled to the bone, she shivered uncontrollably under the touch of that soft wind.
Jess’s hand on her arm helped her to her feet. She leaned against him again, and his arm went around her waist in a gesture so natural that it warmed her heart. Her body, however, remained dog-tired. And she was still so cold.
Jess had to be as cold as she. She was wearing his shirt, which left him bare above the waist. Despite his recent submersion, though, his skin felt warm against her hand and cheek.
“I see now that it was Yahweh’s will that I join forces with you,” Louis said. Lynn’s adjusting eyes found him sitting on the ground not far away, knees up, his back against a fallen log. Seen by clear daylight in such a prosaic position, he did not look like a maniacal killer. He looked … ordinary. And rather pitiful. His thinning black hair was plastered against his skull; without his spectacles his eyes had the rheumy, lashless look of a rabbit’s. His skin was pasty white, his torn clothes showed glimpses of the even paler flesh they imperfectly hid, and like themselves he had lost his shoes. He was cadaver-thin. “You have been sent by Yahweh as His instrument to take me to the Lamb.”
His gaze was on Jess, who was also soaked, pale, and bedraggled but presented a far different picture than Louis. Shirtless, his sodden, ripped jeans clinging to his legs, scratched and scraped and dirty, Jess was handsome still. With his broad shoulders, muscular chest, and arms, and lean, fit build, he could have been a poster boy for virile masculine health. Except, of course, for the wound in his shoulder. The two dime-size holes that pierced him front and back were surrounded now by twin mounds of swollen purple and black flesh. Just looking at them made Lynn wince.
Heartbreaker Page 24