As Milo mentally processed the new information, Bridget retrieved the Nikon and continued taking photos. Silence fell between them again, leaving Milo feeling more than a little useless.
“It’s hard for me to see you again,” Bridget finally said, punctuating the stillness. She didn’t look at him when she said it, didn’t even put the camera down.
“Then why did you vouch for me?” asked Milo, finally uttering the question that had plagued his thoughts for hours. “Would I be here without you?”
“No,” Bridget answered after a long silence. “But when I found out that Lord Riley DeWar was the subject of Dale’s next expedition, I insisted he bring you onboard as the group historian. I know what DeWar meant to you, how he almost wrecked your career.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“I don’t know. I just wanted to keep things professional; I don’t want you to think you owe me anything. We’ve put each other through enough shit already. But I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t give you a second chance at finding DeWar.”
A heavy wave of guilt passed over Milo. He didn’t know what to say. The silence turned long, too long.
It’s hard for me to see you again.
She’d dropped the weight on him as though she’d carried it since their last goodbyes so many years previous. She clearly still cared about him despite everything he’d done. He most certainly cared for her, and no amount of time could truly erase their shared history, volatile as it was.
Another wave of repressed guilt washed over him. He’d hurt her before, and his very presence was hurting her again. It was unfair—he’d been in a position of power, her classroom instructor. Any of the comforting thoughts he’d clung to—that she initiated, that they’d desperately loved each other—was just crass self-justification. At the end of day, she was not the better for having him in her life.
“Thank you,” Milo finally whispered. “And I’m sorry—sorry for everything.”
Before she could respond, footsteps and light echoed from the passageway as the returning party crossed the natural bridge above. Soon Charlie and Isabelle emerged from the crevice, followed by Dale, Joanne, and Logan.
“They were easy to find,” announced Dale. “They were already on their way down the anthill.”
“Whoa,” said Charlie as he caught a glimpse of the body for the first time. “That guy is gnarly.”
Joanne chuckled and moved to the back of the group, stooping down to probe at the metallic objects and cloth scattered across the floor, examining them one by one.
“What’s the verdict?” asked Dale excitedly. “Have we found our missing man?”
“It’s not DeWar,” announced Bridget, wiping under an eye with one hand. “But I can’t tell much more at this point.”
“Why this room?” mused Dale. “I see no water sources, no shelter, and it would have been easy to find a way out, even in the dark.”
“Maybe the sheltering instinct,” said Logan. “Every animal tries to find a hole to curl up in when it knows it’s going to die.”
“At least it’s not a complete waste of time,” said Isabelle, though clearly unhappy. She trained her camera on the body. “That . . . thing . . . could make for some decent footage, but we’d probably have to blur the face for basic cable.”
“I could pose with it.” Charlie scratched at his prickly stubble in consideration. “Bridget—hand over the camera, I’m going to act like I’m photographing the find.”
Bridget just rolled her eyes and refused to move or hand Charlie the Nikon.
“It’s likely not a member of his party either,” added Milo. “I hope this isn’t a disappointment.”
Dale thought for a moment before responding. “But you perceive, my boy,” he finally quoted, “that it is not so, and that facts, as usual, are very stubborn things.”
“Overruling all theories,” added Logan, finishing the quote.
“To imagine that the English felt Jules Verne best reserved for children,” said Dale with a smile.
Logan returned the smile as the camera turned toward him. “I prefer this one: Enough! When science has spoken, one can only remain silent thereafter!”
Everybody visibly cringed. Logan had practically yelled out the line. Unembarrassed, Logan beamed with pride much longer than was appropriate.
“I think I found something,” said Joanne, standing with a shiny disk-shaped object in her hand.
“Toss it here,” said Logan. Joanne threw it to him, and the geologist caught it.
“What it is?” asked Dale.
Before answering, Dr. Logan Flowers wiped it on his pants and tapped it against his helmet to listen to the sound.
“Its aluminum,” said Logan. “And I’m pretty sure it’s a coin.”
“Can you still read it?” asked Dale.
“Yeah,” said Logan, nodding as he scraped the last bit of grime from the glinting object.
“A coin?” repeated Charlie, confused.
“Definitely Japanese,” added Logan.
“That cannot be right,” said Dale.
“I think it’s a wartime coin,” said Logan, continuing to examine the shiny object. “It’s dated 1938.”
Baffled silence fell upon the group as they tried to make sense of the evidence, to come up with any other explanation than the obvious. Milo started to speak but cut himself off.
“Did we just find a lost Japanese caver?” demanded Dale.
CHAPTER 15:
CHRYSANTHEMUM
Dale reached over and practically snatched the coin from Logan’s hands. Frowning, Dale examined the prize, turning it over with his gloved fingers and squinting for a closer look. Isabelle had already shouldered the camera to film. Behind them, Charlie shifted from foot to foot whenever the lens wasn’t aimed in his direction.
“I don’t see where it says 1938,” Dale said, irritated. “And this script could be from any Asian alphabet. But it’s definitely aluminum—I suppose I could agree with our esteemed geologist on that point.”
Bridget, Joanne, and Milo all glanced at each other, not sure what to make of Logan’s assertion.
“Look at the chrysanthemum flower on the front,” said Logan patiently. “That’s the Japanese imperial symbol.”
“What the fuck were the Japanese doing down here?” asked Charlie in complete disbelief. “Did I totally miss something?”
“And the year 1938?” asked Dale, still unconvinced and visibly ignoring Charlie.
“Written in kanji on the reverse,” answered Logan. “Below the bird image—it’s a crow, by the way.”
“Huh,” said Dale, dropping his intense scrutiny of the coin and passing it to Bridget.
“You read kanji?” asked Bridget, giving the coin to Joanne after only a cursory examination.
“Not much more than numbers and a few words,” admitted Logan. “Never formally studied it, picked up a little between anime and a few MMORPGs.”
“Ugh, anime?” said Joanne, handing the coin to Charlie. “Those Japanese cartoons with all the weird sex? Tentacles and the like?”
“You’re thinking of hentai,” said Logan, defensively crossing his arms. “It’s actually very different.”
Charlie tried to stifle a snicker, but it came out as a snort. “Heads or tails?” he asked, flipping the coin in the air and catching it again.
“Languages are one of my many hobbies,” said Logan, increasingly annoyed. “I’m fluent in French and Italian, and I read a bit of Russian and Arabic, and I’m currently learning the foundations of Thai.”
“I didn’t know that,” said Bridget, her soothing tone a transparent effort to de-escalate. “You’re a man of many talents.”
“I started with Italian,” said Logan, “so I could collaborate on papers about the Castelcivita cavern system in Salerno, Italy. From there, French was a natural progression. My grandmother is from Toulouse. Russian and Arabic came later.”
“And Thai?” asked Joanne, still a bit u
nconvinced.
“That’s for a website,” admitted Logan with a mumble. “A, um, dating website.”
Joanne shook her head and whispered something like so dodgy as the coin passed to Isabelle and finally to Milo. Small and smooth-edged, it couldn’t have weighed more than a gram, even with the clinging dirt and corrosion. One side displayed a chrysanthemum-topped cloudburst surrounding a single Japanese character, the other a crow ringed by kanji script.
Milo gave the historical context of the find serious thought. Aluminum was once so precious as to comprise Napoleon Bonaparte’s personal dining set, but by 1938 it was little more than a cheap base metal. Such coinage wouldn’t represent the wealth of a nation, but rather its wartime desperation. But even aluminum would eventually fail as currency—in the waning days of World War II, the Japanese central banks had resorted to minting clay.
“Japs didn’t hit Pearl Harbor until ’41,” said Charlie, scratching his head. “I thought you said this was a wartime coin.”
“The Japanese had been fighting since 1931, starting in mainland China,” said Milo, a little surprised that he needed to explain the well-known fact. “They’d been at it for a decade before Pearl Harbor.”
Dale nodded, again frowning. “Well,” he finally said. “We’ve found what we found.”
“One man, alone,” said Joanne. “I presume there were others with him?”
“Undoubtedly,” said Bridget. “Their presence would also explain the wall anchor Milo found.”
“The wall anchor he lost,” added Logan. “But I suppose we can now have a working theory for the collapsed entrance . . . Japanese cavers of that time period would have had access to suitable explosives. Again, I’ll need to run some samples up top to be certain.”
“Whatever happened, they didn’t retrieve or even bury his body,” said Joanne. “I wonder why not? Maybe he was lost down here? Ran out of light, fell like Milo?”
“More likely someone bashed his skull in,” added Charlie. “Went cave-crazy.”
“Excuse me, but ‘cave-crazy’ is not a thing,” interjected Joanne.
“Perhaps he was the last one left,” said Bridget. “The rest were already gone—or dead.”
Dale sighed and dropped to a cross-legged position, back against the wall, almost mirroring the posture of the mummified body.
“Milo,” said Dale, “do you know anything about a lost Japanese caving expedition? Or any caving expedition to this region?”
“No,” said Milo, shaking his head. “I mean, Japan conducted a number of field projects over the prewar decades . . . mountaineering, jungle treks, Antarctic exploration . . . I don’t know of any Japanese caving expeditions in this area, certainly no missing or dead cavers.”
The group’s discussion almost immediately devolved into three separate debates, each entertaining their own theories. Eventually, Dale cut the entire group off.
“Here’s the bottom line,” said Dale. “We don’t know a goddamn thing.”
Interrupting the following silence, Logan cleared his throat. “We do know one thing,” he said. “One lost expedition is eminently explainable. Two . . . is not.”
The cavers made their way back to camp in silence. Fatigue hit Milo like a hammer, the hours of darkness and exertion, lack of appetite, and bruising fall joining forces in brutal harmony. The base camp chamber felt warm and inviting. Not for the unvarying temperature, but for the homey overhead lighting and the prospect of a meal and a sleeping bag.
Milo shed his pack by the entrance to the tent. Logan did the same. Everyone took a moment to draw clean water from the long, deep drainage crack. Pausing, Milo wiped off the worst of the mud and crystal fragments from his coveralls. He didn’t make much progress with the muck before giving up—trying to stay clean was a losing proposition.
Walking back past the supply depot, Milo glanced at the weather report taped to the largest plastic case. As Dale had announced, it called for unseasonably heavy rains over three consecutive days, along with accompanying travel advisories. Milo looked up at the massive waterfalls, wondering if they’d grow. It was difficult to imagine them pouring with any greater ferocity.
As he made his way across camp, Milo’s thoughts drifted to Bridget.
It’s hard to see you, she’d said.
Milo tried to think of something to say. Maybe I’m sorry things got so bad between us.
Or Let’s start over, learn to be friends again.
Or I still think of you every time I close my fucking eyes.
The last one hurt to admit. Worse, it still might have the power to hurt Bridget as well.
Milo almost stumbled over a glint on the ground a dozen feet away from the muddy latrines. Bending down, he picked up a glinting bolt anchor. He turned it over in his hands, brushing clinging dirt free of the corroded metal, seeing the faint imprint of an imperial chrysanthemum flower on the neck.
He shook his head incredulously. He’d personally searched every inch of the floor; so had Bridget and the others. But now the missing anchor bolt was lying in plain sight.
Milo struggled to come up with an explanation but could only think of one—now that it was confirmed that a modern expedition reached the cave, whomever first found and concealed the bolt had placed it back out again.
CHAPTER 16:
THE PIT
2,150 feet below the surface
Milo made his way toward the gathering cavers, anchor bolt jangling in his pocket. He wanted to kick it into the latrine trench, bury it, throw it into the lake, or melt it to nothing. Holding it only reminded him that someone had hidden the truth from the group.
Last to sit, Milo was handed a plastic cup of wet, starchy noodles and tough, rehydrated beef. The meal wasn’t half-bad; the sun-dried tomatoes dotting the mixture were a pleasant surprise, though a bit over-salted for his taste.
“We cooked this time,” said Joanne. “But the duties will ultimately be shared among all.”
“I don’t think anybody’s going to want my cooking,” grunted Logan through a mouthful of soupy pasta.
“Everybody takes a turn,” Joanne repeated. “And don’t worry—most of the meals are of the just-add-water variety. No need for a Jamie Oliver-type chef down here.”
“Let me know if you change your mind,” said Isabelle, smiling dreamily. “Because I could really use a Jamie Oliver.”
“Just be careful with the stove,” said Duck, barely looking up from his meal as he ignored the producer’s double entendre. “We cook with isobutane cartridges. Gets pretty hot pretty quick.”
Dale let silence fall before changing the subject. “We’ll probably need to turn in before too long,” he said as he absentmindedly stirred his noodles. “No sense in overdoing it on the first day.”
“Agreed,” said Duck with a smile. “Everybody ready for the deepest sleep they’ve ever had?”
Joanne led the cavers in a hearty groan over the pun. Eventually, everyone slowly got up from their rocks, turning their cups over to Duck for washing.
Duck cracked his knuckles and looked up at the ceiling, watching the glowing orbs gently roll across the ceiling in the slight breeze. “The light is nice,” he finally said. “But I kind of liked the old way better.”
“How’s that?” asked Bridget.
“We would always turn off the headlamps and flashlights to save power,” said Duck. “Eat in total darkness. It was pretty cool . . . you’ve never really enjoyed a sandwich until you eat one in the dark after fifteen hours of busting sumps. In the right chambers, there’s no wind, no noise, no light, no sound. Just you and your sandwich. The sandwich becomes, like, your entire universe.”
“That was almost poetic,” said Joanne, laughing.
“Cave sex is awesome for about ninety percent of the same reasons,” added Duck, wistfully lost in his own memories. “Especially if you have a sandwich afterward.”
Using his remote control, Duck set the illuminating globes to slowly fade over thirty minutes, dimming
the ambient light until the gargantuan chamber was shrouded in complete darkness. Milo adjusted his sleeping bag in the tent he shared with Logan. Though he felt some natural fatigue as the light diminished, Milo couldn’t help but tuck under the lip of the sleeping bag with his e-reader, speed-reading the first eighty pages of Jules Verne’s Journey to the Center of the Earth. The updated translation was better than he remembered; he found himself smiling and highlighting passages, resolving to include himself the next time Dale and Logan started spouting quotes. But soon his eyes grew droopy. He clicked the reader off and fell asleep.
Milo found himself kneeling alone in the vast Tanzanian savanna, dark starlit sky above, alone on the eternal plains. The edges of the land curled up at the furthest reaches, as though the sphere of the earth had inverted, the ground beneath him no more than the thin surface of a bubble in the endless stream of the cosmos.
Milo silently followed a game trail into the long, dry valley before him. The winding path soon revealed the yawning maw of the cave in its most ancient form, unencumbered by collapsed rock or the fragile man-made edifices of Dale’s camp.
Then he saw them—ghostly elephants threading through the distant trees from every direction of the compass, both colossal and ethereal, as, trunks clinging to tails, they slipped into the mouth of the cave like sand through an hourglass.
Milo looked down, watching as his unclothed limbs and torso elongated like the painted figures in the gallery. He strode over the plains, sliding through the grass, his naked feet padding over the billions of tiny holes, pinpricks in the membrane between worlds. A splinter stuck his foot, and when he bent down to pick it out it became a long, obsidian-headed spear in his hand, the length taller now than himself. The holes beneath his feet widened as albino locusts emerged to swarm around his feet. One bite, two bites, a dozen, a hundred, he felt their pincers pull at his skin. As he looked up, he realized the entire breadth of the landscape had transformed into a swarm of crawling insects, so vast in numbers they threatened to consume the very world beneath him. The pain of their pulling bites grew greater with every moment until Milo began to run, slowly at first, their fragile, brittle bodies crunching beneath his feet, and then faster and faster until he lost sensation of any speed, lush grasslands passing in a blur. Their prey having vanished, so too did the locusts, retreating into their shrinking holes.
The Maw Page 11