The Maw

by Taylor Zajonc

  Pulling the Velcro straps off his kneepads, Milo winced as blood flowed back into his beleaguered legs. He unsnapped his helmet, rubbing at the raw, chafed lines across his neck and ears. Reaching inside his tent, Milo dropped his excess gear and lights, stretching and enjoying the brief sensation of weightlessness. He couldn’t help but think of the leather-bound journal inside the laminate bag and wonder what secrets lay within.

  “Milo my boy,” called Dale from his tent. “Would you mind finding Charlie for me? Isabelle, too—would like to tell them about the glow we found, help them strategize for the upcoming shoot once we’re back.”

  Milo nodded, trying not to feel irritated. Sure, he’d find Charlie and the film team, no doubt so they could swoop in and take credit. Legs stiff and aching, Milo trundled up toward the waterfall, following sounds of laughter. Headlamp in hand, he shone a light toward the grotto at the base of the shaft, clouds of cold mist obscuring his vision.

  Bridget stepped out of this waterfall, wet hair sticking to the side of her face. She’d stripped down to a pair of shorts and a drenched college T-shirt that clung to her skin. Milo’s stomach churned as he flashed back to his unwanted dreams.

  Seeing Milo, Bridget’s first expression was one of pure shock, which she recovered from almost immediately as she stepped barefoot into her open hiking boots.

  “You’re back!” she exclaimed, unconsciously crossing her arms over her chest and giving him an awkward smile.

  “Yeah—Joanne came to get us,” said Milo, backing away as his face visibly reddened. “She says the weather is getting pretty messy up there. Where are Charlie and the rest?”

  Bridget looked around the virtually empty chamber. “They should have been back by now,” he said. “Joanne told them to stay close. I think they were doing some more filming.”

  Milo turned around and looked across base camp.

  “I don’t think they stayed close,” he said.

  The third call over the radio went unanswered, as did the fourth, fifth, and sixth. Joanne had become visibly frustrated, shooting angry glances between Duck and the radio.

  “I don’t know what happened!” Joanne said again. “They said they’d be just around the corner!”

  “If they went in a new passage, they didn’t chalk it,” Duck said. “I have no idea where they went.”

  “Goddamn it!” shouted Dale. “What’s our timeframe?”

  “We should have left the moment we reached base camp,” said Joanne. “The storm has already hit the surface; we could start feeling the effects at any moment. They’ve already missed two scheduled drops—we don’t need the supplies, but it’s concerning that they can’t send anyone to the top of the shaft.”

  Dale shook his head angrily.

  “This is my fault,” Joanne said. “I wasn’t clear enough that they should stay put while I went searching for you.”

  “Can’t change the past,” said Dale, irritated. “But we need to find them and get ourselves out of here immediately.”

  “How bad is it going to get?” asked Duck. “How worried should we be?”

  Dale swore as he yanked off his helmet and threw it almost halfway across the chamber. The blue plastic hit sharp rocks and bounced off into a dark corner. “This shouldn’t even be an issue,” he shouted. “This is why there are protocols . . . we had plenty of time to evacuate; now we have to spend it looking for people!”

  “This doesn’t help us,” Joanne said, clearly on the verge of becoming angry herself. “Let’s start moving—what’s the plan?”

  “We don’t have time to do this search the right way.” Dale’s intelligent eyes darted back and forth as he thought, his frown still deeply etched. “And we won’t have time to move any of our gear to higher ground.”

  “Then let’s do it the wrong way,” said Bridget. “I’d rather have wet equipment than drowned friends. Please tell us what to do.”

  “Listen to her,” said Joanne. “You know she’s right.”

  Logan nodded in agreement.

  “Everybody pair up and pick a tunnel.” Dale pointed to the myriad of dark passageways around the one leading to the anthill. “Bring chalk—red chalk—and mark your path.”

  Everyone nodded.

  “Keep light on your feet,” continued Dale. “That means make a best guess every time you hit an intersection. If you reach a passageway that’s too small for a camera, turn around and try another one.”

  “Got it,” said Duck, already turning to grab his pack and chalk. The young guide still hadn’t put his socks on.

  “I need you back here in one hour regardless of results,” said Dale. “That means you do an about-face at the thirty-minute mark, no exceptions. We could be in for a world of hurt with this flood—they may have to fend for themselves. I’ll go with Joanne. Duck, take Bridget. Logan and Milo are together. And above all—don’t make the situation worse by taking a spill.”

  Milo could barely keep up with Logan as they half-ran down a narrow, winding passageway. It was as if the geologist had found some hidden reservoir of strength Milo did not possess, and used it to fling himself through the darkness. Every intersection, Logan would briefly eye the fork without stopping, scrawl a thick red chalk mark against the more promising of the two, and slip back into his punishing cadence. As the pair clambered across a breakdown pile, Milo slipped, dropping to his knees, wishing he’d put the pads back on before leaving camp.

  “Keep up,” Logan insisted. “We do not want to be in this section if it floods.”

  In an instant, Logan was beside him, helping him up, but then back to moving an instant later. Every few moments they’d belt out “CHARLIE! ISABELLE!” to a lonely, echoing response.

  Looking at his watch, Milo clocked twenty-eight minutes of the exhausting search. The idea of turning around in a hundred and twenty seconds held no relief. Milo knew they’d have to return at the same pace, maybe even faster, to have any hope of reaching base camp by Dale’s deadline. He tried to imagine the consequences if they weren’t able to locate Isabelle and Charlie—would they be leaving the pair to drown?

  Again, they reached a fork. Milo barely considered it before almost bolting toward the larger of the two, but Logan held up a hand for him to stop.

  “Do you smell that?” asked Logan, tilting his head toward a small, rounded opening dwarfed by the one Milo had selected.

  Milo checked his watch with impatience. “We have to get back.”

  “I smell . . . gas.” Logan pointed toward the smaller hole. “I think it’s coming from there.”

  Time ticking out, Milo and Logan both shouted Charlie’s name but heard no response. But when Milo held an ear toward the hole, he heard the distant thumping of tribal drums.

  Logan and Milo looked at each other for a moment before Logan crossed off the mark to the other chamber and together they wriggled into the hole. It opened within a few meters to standing size, the smell of gas and drumming growing ever louder, now joined by the flicking glow of firelight.

  Rounding a turn, Milo stopped dead to stare. In the small, room-sized chamber before him, Charlie Garza danced nearly nude in front of a camera, his body covered with tribal makeup and illuminated by flickering gas-soaked torches. Isabelle filmed as a small portable music player belted out the tribal beat.

  Behind Charlie was a long, smooth wall filled with cave paintings, crude men with long spears hunting animals. Milo’s heart jumped into his mouth for the fraction of a second it took him to tell that they were all fake. Even from the distance, Milo could see the supposedly ancient paintings were made of lipstick.

  CHAPTER 20:

  EVACUATION

  2,225 feet below the surface

  Logan led the charge back to base camp, Charlie close behind, Isabelle trailing with the heavy camera equipment. Milo brought up the rear, helping her through the tightest passages. Would-be television host Charlie hadn’t had time to put more than his boots on; he’d hastily stuffed his clothes into Isabelle’s pa
ck and stomped along wearing little more than improvised paint and flesh-colored briefs.

  The party was bunched up enough to where Milo could catch glimpses of Logan’s clenched, scowling face at every bend. His frown deepened each passing second until the geologist could no longer contain himself.

  “It’s—vandalism,” he finally spat. “It’s all just vandalism.”

  “What?” demanded Charlie, wholly confused.

  “It’s just a little decoration,” Isabelle said, defending her lipstick paintings. “In a thousand years, archaeologists will think it’s just as important as the paintings in the gallery.”

  “In ten thousand years,” retorted Logan, “it’ll still be shit.”

  Milo felt compelled to agree with Logan, sharing his irritation as the group burst out of the last stretch of passageway—and into a maelstrom.

  They were too late. The booming waterfall had transformed into a howling, deafening barrage of water. Having already flooded most of the subterranean lake, the aqueduct crack was now a rooster-tail geyser of water, spray shooting out intermittently down the length of the base camp. Waters surged down into the main anthill passageway as growing rivulets escaped from the channel and lake, steadily encroaching the camp.

  Milo, Logan, and the television duo were the last to arrive. Joanne and Duck were already leading efforts to save equipment. Duck had stopped trying to take down the tents, and was instead yanking them out entirely, aluminum pegs already lost to the first waves of encroaching water. Joanne grabbed at the ropes and carabiners, hurling them across the chamber with all her strength, desperately trying to get them to higher ground.

  Logan sprinted into the chaos as Milo and the other cavers jogged toward the supply depot, grabbing and dragging plastic cases and aluminum crates through the now ankle-deep water. Behind him, Charlie slipped, landing in the shallow, rushing foam, but quickly rebounded to his feet. The small plastic crate he’d been carrying washed away, disappearing into the anthill.

  Milo felt a tap on his shoulder and turned around to see Bridget. She shouted something at him from just inches away, but he couldn’t make it out over the roar of the flash flood. Frustrated, she just pointed toward the largest crate. Together they seized it by the handles, Milo barely able to keep pace with the doctor as she marched the equipment over toward the high ground that Dale had staked out.

  Duck had secured a narrow shelf overlooking the illuminated chamber, safely above the gathering waters but up a steep slope. As Milo and Bridget struggled against the rocky incline, Milo noticed the shelf’s manhole-sized window in the rock wall behind it, a passageway to an unexplored chamber.

  Sliding the large crate onto the shelf and into Dale’s hands, Bridget and Milo turned again and bolted toward the floodplain, passing the others as they struggled with as much gear as they could carry.

  Milo instinctively knew there wouldn’t be enough time. The waters were rising too rapidly and they’d only moved a third of the supplies, maybe less. Both Milo and Dale watched in horror as the tripod-mounted laser scanner tilted and slammed into the froth, its still-attached cable yanking a laptop computer off the rocks and into the torrent. As the mists grew, it was becoming hard to see more than a few meters away. As Milo’s vision obscured, he began to lose his sense of orientation.

  A snap echoed out from the shaft, loud enough to ring throughout the entire chamber. Milo looked up in horror as a truck-sized boulder swung like a clock pendulum in the shaft, colorful descent ropes tangled in its jagged teeth as it slammed against the walls. Another snap rang out and the hundred-ton rock tumbled into the froth, dragging with it thousands of feet of cascading rope, the fragile descent system all but destroyed.

  Dale grabbed Milo’s shoulder for support as the two waded through the roiling, knee-deep flow, determined to save one last pack before they were washed away forever.

  “Does this explain why we didn’t find DeWar’s camp?” shouted Milo, leaning toward Dale, his mouth inches from his ear.

  “It just might,” responded Dale, his voice lost to the roar. Together, they reached a Pelican case far downstream of the now-obliterated supply depot. The rugged plastic box was snagged between two boulders along with a backpack, the currents bashing both ferociously into the rocks.

  Milo heard shouting from the narrow ledge above—the guides were now pointing and yelling. He swiveled toward the waterfall. Even through the mist, he could see that the waters had gone from a clear, foamy white to a muddy brown. An earthen dam had burst far above, turning the downpour into a sediment-laden tsunami.

  Dale dropped the Pelican case and began furiously wading back toward the ledge, the deluge around them turning swirling and dark. Milo reached back to grab the last pack and chased after him. He could feel rocks and debris churning in the current, ripping and bashing against his legs. The water was almost waist-deep by the time Milo reached the ledge. The men dragged themselves up the rocks. Charlie reached down from the ledge, using almost inhuman strength to pull Dale and Milo, soaked and exhausted, to safety.

  Milo slumped to a sitting position as the guides shouted at each other. The muddy waters had cleared the mists, and the dull globes above still illuminated the entirety of the chamber. But something was desperately wrong—below and no more than thirty feet away, Isabelle clung to a partially submerged boulder as the raging dark surge swept by. Growing waves leapt ever higher, threatening to knock her from her fragile handhold. The boulder shifted, and Isabelle lost her grip, almost yanked downstream by the current before she caught hold of the rock again. Her sacrificed camera vanished into the muddy froth.

  Dale swore and threw a rope across the chamber. Yellow-helmeted Isabelle grabbed onto it, holding tightly as the flood swept her underwater. Every person on the ledge grabbed onto the rope as it whipped and snapped under frenzied tension. Yanking hand over hand, they drew in the line—until it suddenly went slack.

  Isabelle never surfaced.

  Milo dropped the rope, looking at every member of the remaining party. Charlie was too shocked and battered to speak; Logan just buried his face in his hands. Dale and Joanne scanned the flood for another few moments before turning their attention to what little gear they’d rescued. Tears welled in Duck’s eyes. Milo felt Bridget’s hand slip into his, squeezing it. He couldn’t bear to look at her.

  Still dressed in his comical tribal costume and smudged makeup, Charlie turned to Milo with bafflement. In the confusion, Charlie seemed to not fully grasp what had just happened.

  “Why’d you save that?” asked Charlie, pointing to the pack Milo had nearly lost his life retrieving.

  Confused, Milo opened the satchel’s top flap. Inside, he saw the soft, colorful fabric of Charlie’s parachute canopy.

  “Can I have it back?” asked Charlie.

  Milo stared down the bigger man for a full ten seconds before hurling the pack into the flood.

  CHAPTER 21:

  IN A BAD WAY

  2,150 feet below the surface

  It took almost ten hours for the waters to recede. Milo stood silent sentry as the cold mists slowly retreated, the main shaft waterfall transforming once again from a muddy brown to clear, white water. Below, the collected pools slowly shrank along the length of the floodplain, once again revealing the glistening floor. Only one of the six ropes had survived, but there was no way of telling how much damage it had suffered in the vicious flood.

  The ledge barely had standing room for the seven cavers. The small alcove behind them was little larger than a hotel bathroom, allowing only two sleepers at a time. The rest of the tiny chamber was stacked floor-to-ceiling with salvaged equipment. Milo supposed the tight quarters were fine; they’d only managed to save a single soggy sleeping bag anyway. One of the guides had fully unzipped it, stretching the bag over plastic sheeting as a makeshift mattress.

  The cavers took turns on the ad hoc bed; each was allowed a three-hour shift. Milo hadn’t slept during his; he felt like he’d been up and moving for a
hundred years. He finally gave up trying to sleep after about a restless hour.

  Duck and Joanne congregated on the ledge beside Milo, whispering in low tones as Logan and Dale joined them. The foursome parted easily to accommodate Milo as well. He did a quick headcount and realized Joanne had left Bridget to sleep in the alcove by herself.

  “I’m going in after Isabelle,” said Dale, jutting his chin toward the anthill and the floodwaters still draining within.

  “Good,” said Duck. “I’m coming too.”

  Dale started to protest but was interrupted.

  “This needs to be a fully manned search,” interjected Joanne. “Ropes, whatever medical gear was saved, and as many of our people as possible—or else you’ll be utterly useless should you find her.”

  “She’s right,” said Logan with a grunt. “Though I imagine we’re essentially looking for a body at this point.”

  “We don’t know that,” Dale snapped.

  “Sure we do,” said Logan with lackadaisical certainty. “She probably lasted all of thirty seconds in the rapids. Even in the best-case scenario, she would be well into fatal hypothermia territory by now.”

  Milo glanced from the others back to Dale, whose expression was fury tinged with shock. Milo felt only guilt for so easily sharing Logan’s cruel assumption.

  “We don’t leave people behind,” said Duck, sharing Dale’s glare. “What if it was you down there?”

  “Then I’d be dead,” said Logan with a shrug. “And I wouldn’t give a shit. Because I’d be dead.”

  While the anthill was difficult before, it had now transformed into a slick, muddy river. All seven had abandoned virtually everything at the alcove save for lightweight packs that held only what they’d require for the next few hours. Joanne had carefully roped all seven to each other, forming a tight human chain as they traversed down the underground rapids.