Bridget met Milo at the edge of the mummified carpet, bending down to take a closer look. She’d freed a ballpoint pen from a pocket, speared one of the tiny mummies, and held it up to her headlamp, slowly rotating the corpse before her intent, inquisitive eyes.
“I hate bats,” she finally said, sliding the body off the pen and wiping it on her trousers before replacing it in her breast pocket.
Across the chasm, Isabelle had finished filming and unhooked her camera from the tripod. Warm from the hot lights, Charlie Garza wiped sweat from his forehead and adjusted his form-fitting cotton shirt. Dale and Isabelle paced the length of the chasm, speaking in low tones as they discussed the next shot. The two guides had left already, hauling rope-stuffed dry bags across the auditorium chamber.
“Get a load of this,” shouted Charlie. All seven turned to watch as he removed a powerful LED floodlight from a camera bag and aimed it into the chasm. Milo and Bridget cautiously approached and leaned over the edge from the other side of the seemingly infinite abyss. Below, the vertical walls led down just forty feet to a flat mud bottom almost entirely obscured with thick, splintered bones and flaking brown elephant leather. At first the bodies looked like a haphazard collection, a half-hidden mass grave, but the longer Milo looked the more he could see order of it all, the complete skeletons piled atop each other. He shivered—the skulls were tusked and cycloptic, like the massacred young of some prehistorical elder god.
“Elephant bones,” Bridget murmured. “Calves and juveniles by the looks of it. Maybe a dozen?”
“Maybe more,” said Milo, pulling back from the edge. “We don’t know how deep that mud is.”
“The babies must have fallen in the dark, couldn’t get out,” said Bridget.
“Somebody get me a harness and rappelling gear,” demanded Charlie from the other end of the chasm as he pointed at the grave. “We could get some killer shots down there. Never mind that—I could just down-climb.”
Milo turned to see how Bridget would react, but her face had gone ashy and cold, her mind vanishingly distant.
“Charlie!” Isabelle snapped her fingers at the host. “Go find one of the guides to help. Is anyone going to care if we rearrange some of the skulls?”
“We can do this gonzo.” Charlie lowered himself to a sitting position and dangled his feet over the ledge. “Maybe a GoPro helmet mount? Get the POV look?”
“Everybody stop what you’re doing right now,” Bridget shouted, raising her arms. “We need to get out of this chamber—we’re in danger.”
CHAPTER 9:
SHAFT
650 feet below the surface
Bridget didn’t drop the shirtsleeve from her mouth and nose until after the cavers squeezed through a fifth elbow passage, worming their way between jagged boulders and tall columns. A strange ambient noise increased as they descended deeper into the cave—with every step the silence of the elephant graveyard gave way to a mounting baritone roar that reverberated through the tight, intersecting tunnels. The dull, ceaseless noise and claustrophobia were almost overwhelming—Milo felt as though he’d held his breath for hours.
The team formed a line as they continued their escape. Lagging far behind the cave guides, Dale led the troupe, followed by Charlie, Isabelle, Bridget, Milo and finally Logan.
“Are we safe now?” Dale demanded, turning around from the head of the line, inadvertently dazzling everyone with his powerful headlamp. Milo closed his eyes and saw dancing black spots.
“Safe from what?” wheezed Charlie, sweat running down his forehead and into his eyes. “What were we even running from?”
Isabelle again mounted the camera to her shoulder and was now pointing the lens at face after worried face. Milo caught a glimpse of his reflection in the clear glass and saw his own dread.
“I can’t believe I didn’t get the doctor’s freakout on camera,” complained Isabelle, having now caught her breath. “Maybe we could reshoot from the other side of the passage, splice it back up later?”
“Not a freakout.” Defensive anger crept into Bridget’s voice. “And save your bullshit stage direction for Charlie—I will not be repeating myself, on this or any other matter.”
“I still don’t know what happened back there.” Charlie huffed as he pulled himself between two wet columns. Everyone else had removed their backpacks at the section, but Charlie did not, muscling himself through the narrows with brute force.
“You were running from Marburg,” answered Bridget, ducking under a particularly low stalactite. “I’d have to run tests to be sure, but that chamber was a perfect convergence zone—tight quarters, animal remains, the constant temperature and humidity required to preserve viral RNA structures. It was clearly inhabited by bats, elephants, and probably some other mammals as well, all with overlapping feeding, breeding, and migration patterns. If the virus ever passed through this region, it could still be hibernating there.”
“Marburg?” asked Charlie. “What the hell is Marburg?”
“Marburg virus,” said Bridget, “causes internal hemorrhaging with an eighty-percent-plus fatality rate. It’s in the same viral family as Ebola and yellow fever. Nasty business; basically melts the infected victim from the inside out. Ever hear of Uganda’s Kitum Cave?”
“Kitum is a non-solutional pyroclastic cave,” said Dr. Logan Flowers. “Predominantly formed by Mount Elgon’s volcanic activity. The geology has nothing in common.”
“In viral terms, the geologic makeup is far less important than animal habitation.” Bridget sighed and unclipped the chinstrap to briefly remove her helmet, pausing to run a hand through her long hair before re-buckling it. “The bats could have passed the virus from cave to cave, as could elephant migratory routes. Marburg virus—which bats carry, but are now immune to—twice escaped incubation in Kitum, killing dozens in 1980 and 1987, almost igniting a 2014-sized pandemic in both cases. It is a highly infectious virus. Without the proper protocols, any contact with bat remains, powdered guano, or a deceased elephant presents an unacceptable risk.
“Once the local Ugandans found out about Kitum and Marburg,” Bridget continued, “they put a machine-gun nest above the entrance and shot any elephant that approached. Reduced a herd of 2,000 down to just seventy. The few survivors scattered across Uganda and joined other herds; the tusks disappeared into the ivory trade. The elephants won’t return to Kitum. ‘Mining’ behaviors are learned, not instinctual.”
“Two thousand elephants?” repeated Charlie. “That’s horrible. Did anybody try to stop it? My father’s foundations deal with exactly this sort of—”
“Bottom line,” interrupted the doctor, “if I wanted to catch Marburg, I’d have jumped into that crevasse with Charlie. Doesn’t matter that the cave was sealed for decades—a dormant virus won’t die because it was technically never alive to begin with.”
“How was I supposed to know?” griped Charlie, more irritated than embarrassed.
“That’s the problem,” mumbled Logan. “He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.”
“What’s that?” asked Dale. “I couldn’t hear what you said.”
“Just keep Charlie away from me over the next couple of days.” Logan shimmied between two rock walls, his headlamp gently bumping against rock. “Especially if he starts barfing up congealed blood. It’s one of the first symptoms.”
“Seriously?” A note of fear entered Charlie’s his voice for the first time.
“He’s messing with you,” said Bridget. “But even so, I want everybody to remain cautious. Marburg isn’t the only thing to worry about down here. We’ll need to keep an eye out for histoplasmosis as well. It’s a fungal infection of the lung tissue that can be fatal if not treated promptly. Then you have your run-of-the-mill bacterial infections.”
“Rather have histo-whatever than Ebola,” said Charlie, still far from consoled.
“Dead is dead,” said Logan. “And histoplasmosis is a pretty ugly way to go.”
“Again—infection r
isks should remain low,” said Bridget, “so long as everybody avoids the worst concentrations of fecal residue and osseous matter.”
“Stay out of shit and dead bodies.” Isabelle laughed as she put her camera down. “Don’t have to tell me twice.”
“Ivory may pose a temptation,” mused Milo. “Assuming there are porters or other support personnel coming in after us.”
“It’s a good point,” said Logan. “Once we establish supply lines, there will be a steady stream of diggers, riggers, and Sherpas. If it was up to me, I’d burn it all—but I’m a geologist, bones are not my area.”
“That’s enough of that,” said Dale, stopping dead to turn around and address the entire line. The party came to a jolting, awkward halt. “Nobody’s burning anything. You can trust my people without reservation. Even if there wasn’t a disease risk, they all know they are not to touch anything.”
“Milo does bring up a good point,” said Bridget. “I didn’t even think about the tusks—somebody might see ivory and think dollar signs—”
“Dollar signs? Not these days,” interrupted Logan. “Stacks of Chinese yuan, more likely.”
“I said, that’s enough,” snapped Dale, waving the group to follow him further down the tunnel. “Nobody in the support team is going ivory-hunting. So drop it already.”
The rushing roar in the far distance gained in strength with every twist. Dale turned the final corner, exiting the passageway with the team shortly behind. As the party entered a massive chamber, the surrounding sound level exploded in volume. The wet, mist-filled room dwarfed the elephant graveyard in every dimension and sensation; with a distant, angled ceiling overtop a narrow lip ringing an oblong, 250-foot-wide shaft. Looking down, Milo felt a little dizzy, as though he were standing at the edge of an ancient, impossibly deep well, the lights of their headlamps unable to permeate the gargantuan, churning depth.
Though the top of the shaft far above them was dry, the first waterfall burst through the wall just fifty feet below. More waterfalls joined every hundred feet as the pit pierced older and older geologic levels, eventually pouring incredible volumes of white, foamy water into the abyss.
“Those aren’t just waterfalls,” said Logan to Milo, shouting over the noise. “They’re artesian springs—the uppermost falls are siphoned right out of the topsoil, may have fallen as rain just a few days ago. Further down are fossil water tables, trapped thousands, even millions of years ago as the geology of this region changed.”
Milo nodded, amazed. Duck and Joanne had beaten them there, and were busy setting up piles of ropes and equipment at the far side of the shaft where the narrow lip was the widest. Seeing the rest of the party, Dale waved them over. Everyone followed, side-shuffling along the wall and being careful not to step too close to the slippery edge.
Inspecting the new arrivals, Dale grinned as he reached into his pack. He withdrew a taped bundle of eight road flares, the grouping resembling dynamite but missing the Looney Tunes wires and Acme wind-up clock. Flipping open a Zippo lighter, Dale held the flame to the end of the flares. The first flare touched off with a hiss, dripping flames as the others burst to life. A flickering red light grew to an overpowering, molten white core in his hand as he held it over the edge. The frothing water below turned blood-red in the harsh illumination.
Milo shielded his eyes against the onslaught of liquid light, the interior of the misty chamber now bright as daylight.
“Duck—Joanne,” said Dale. “You ready?”
“Yes.” Joanne held her finger to her wristwatch in anticipation. Duck picked up a bowling ball-sized rock and nodded as well.
“Three . . . two . . . one . . . mark!” Dale dropped the flares to the simultaneous beeps of Joanne’s watch and the release of Duck’s rock. Though the stone disappeared, the light from the flares plummeted into the shaft to the sound of a faint, echoing whoosh as the flares tumbled end over end, never hitting the sides, the hissing lost in moments to the bellow of the angry waters. In the initial seconds, Milo saw that the massive shaft below them actually increased in width, like the inside of a Coke bottle, growing to over four hundred feet in width before he lost all sense of dimension. Milo expected the flares to disappear, but they didn’t—the light seemingly hung in midair as it fell ever deeper.
After an eternity, a ringing boom rang out from below, louder than even the waterfalls, the sound of Duck’s rock impacting the bottom of the shaft. Milo backed away from the edge, not brave enough to peer into the depths a moment longer.
“What’d you get?” asked Dale to his guides. His voice was almost lost in the awesome noise.
“Thirteen-point-five seconds.” Joanne grinned as she looked up from her digital watch.
“What does that make for depth?” asked Duck.
Dale and the two guides huddled, mumbling and interrupting each other. Milo caught bits and pieces about air resistance and falling objects as Duck furiously scribbled numbers into a waterproof notepad.
“Puts us at about . . . fifteen hundred feet,” said Duck.
Milo felt a wave of incredulity wash over him. Fifteen hundred feet—the sheer height of the shaft was almost impossible to visualize. He tried to put it in terms he could understand. Fifteen hundred feet? That was longer than a quarter mile, higher than one-and-a-half Eiffel Towers. Milo felt a little nauseated just thinking about it.
Dale nodded. “That’s about what we expected,” he said. “We spooled out about the same for the Rover.”
“Better be right,” said Duck with a bit of a frown. “Rope lines are sixteen hundred feet. Wouldn’t be good to come up short, get left dangling above the bottom.”
“True, true!” Dale nodded enthusiastically. “But we’ll have to make a note to come back with a laser survey—we’ll set the African record for pit caves for certain.”
“Probably not the only record we’ll set today,” added Duck.
“Think we might find any bodies at the bottom?” asked Charlie. “In some cultures they performed human sacrifices into pits like this.”
“That’s revolting,” said Joanne, wrinkling her nose.
“Pick six independent anchor points for the descent ropes.” Dale pointed his guides to a set of massive stone columns. “We’ll set up three systems—each one with a main line and a backup line. Duck, Joanne, and I will each take one or two people and as much gear as we can carry per trip. Logan can rappel on his own if he wants.”
“As long as I can use my own gear,” said Logan.
“You got it,” said Dale, only halfway listening as he tied off the first of six ropes to a mammoth stone column.
Isabelle broke away from the rest of the party, moving over to another part of the ledge, getting a better shooting angle as the camera panned back and forth across the entire troupe, zooming in and out under the illumination of a portable floodlight.
Finished, Dale looked at his guides, to the group of inexperienced cavers, and back again. He nodded curtly and stood up to formally address everyone for the first time since they entered the cave.
“I suppose this is as good as time as any to set some ground rules,” boomed the CEO. “You may know me as Dale, but down here I am God Almighty. My word is scripture. And if you listen to me about footwear, I’ll even save your sole.”
A chuckle rippled throughout the group and Milo caught a knowing smirk flash across Dale’s face.
“But unlike God,” shouted Dale, an edge entering his voice, “I will not forgive you if you fuck up. So don’t. This is a phased mission. The two-week first phase will, if possible, establish the location and circumstances of Lord Riley DeWar’s disappearance. Listen to your guides; follow their instructions and you’ll be fine. Then the geeks go home and the second phase begins—where my team spends two months mapping and diving the entirety of this cave. With a little luck, we’ll officially establish this system as one of the largest in the world.”
Nearby, Duck crossed his arms and nodded with pride.
“Expect suffering,” continued Dale, his voice rising. “Caves are not for wimps. We will easily lose a pound or more of bodyweight every day. You have two weeks ahead of you, two weeks of rappelling and climbing, difficult drops while wearing heavy packs, extended crawls, malnutrition, light deprivation, sleep deprivation, and the very real potential of hypothermia.”
“And diarrhea,” added Duck. “Don’t forget diarrhea.”
Milo glanced over to see Bridget frowning. He knew for a fact she’d worked for each and every pound of hard-earned muscle and didn’t relish the idea of losing any of it.
“We’re going to do this slow and steady,” said Dale, looking up from his first completed anchor-point, the thick nylon rope secured to a massive column with a series of knots and carabiners. “Duck will need two of you to accompany him. Don’t kick anything loose, but if you do, yell rock as loud as you can so anybody further down can get out of the way. Who’s first?”
Charlie Garza took a step back from the rim and sucked in a deep breath as Isabelle’s camera trained toward him.
“I’m first,” he said, winking at the camera.
And then he threw himself over the edge, plunging headlong into the abyss.
CHAPTER 10:
CONTROLLED DESCENT
725 feet below the surface
Chaos erupted. Bridget stifled a shriek and grabbed Milo’s arm. His vision went dizzy and sickness welled in the pit of his stomach. Nearby, Joanne turned away, burying her face in her hands as Logan and Duck dropped to their stomachs, aiming their powerful flashlights into the shaft. Adding to the confusion, Isabelle swept back and forth with a camera, blinding everyone with a floodlight as she filmed.
Far below, an audible poof sounded just as a flashlight caught the edge of a colorful parachute disappearing into the misty abyss. Charlie’s joyful whooping and hollering echoed throughout the chamber.
The Maw Page 7