Bridget snickered, the energy required by the slight laughter forcing her hands to her knees.
“Bend him over and pour that shit right on his Roger Rabbit tramp stamp,” continued Duck, his words slurred. “Run it down his filthy hobo butt and I’d suck it right off his leathered ballsack.”
Milo found himself laughing too. For a moment, Duck’s hilariously disgusting imagery made it all go away: the headaches, the bruised knees, the loneliness, the fear, even the fact that they were the most thoroughly fucked people on the planet.
Out of all the sufferings, the headaches were the worst, eclipsing even starvation. Every one of them suffered them in silence. The pain would always start on the left side of Milo’s head, a sharp, grinding ache centered behind his eye, like someone had taken a cordless drill to the inside of his brain. The agony radiated everywhere, snaking across his face, into his jaw and teeth, all the way down his neck and shoulders. It hurt so badly that his eyes would tear up, lids drooping and nose running. They’d last for hours before eventually fading into the general shittiness that plagued his every waking moment.
Despite it all, the trio pressed onward. Logan hadn’t taken any food with him when he disappeared, perhaps the only reason they were searching for the lost geologist and not hunting him for sport.
“Let’s keep moving,” said Duck, pointing toward the unexplored passageways. “I have a good feeling about the next room.”
“He always says that,” muttered Milo.
Duck started off, Milo and Bridget struggling to follow. They’d begun rationing power in the hours after Logan’s disappearance, and now only Duck carried a lit caving lantern, the rest had turned theirs off. The other two tried to follow his footsteps, relying on the dim, refracted light from his bobbing lamp to keep up, like trying to navigate through a room as seen through a keyhole.
“Friday, June 19th, 2015,” began Bridget. “My immediate supervisor’s retirement party. We went all out, reservations at Bacchanalia in Atlanta. Prix fixe menu. I had Kumamoto oysters, a Summerland Farm egg with raw fermented bok choi, and—”
“Whoa, whoa,” interrupted Duck with a wave of his hand. “Slow down, woman. You know that’s not how we play the game. What were the wine pairings?’
“Let’s see . . . sparkling water with the oysters,” began Bridget. “A pinot blanc with the farm egg. Followed by a ricotta tortellini with another pinot, Brie de Meaux with gelato, and poached rhubarb.”
“What was the dessert wine?” asked Duck, licking his flaking lip as he greedily enjoyed the borrowed memory. “Don’t stop now!”
“I was pretty hammered by the fifth course and drank whatever they put in front of me.”
“Eidetic memory only works if you’re paying attention,” explained Milo as he stumbled over a loose rock, barely managing to catch himself before he fell.
“I can taste it when I think about it,” marveled Bridget, not for the first time. “I can actually taste it. This will never get old.”
They’d been at the exercise for hours. Brought about by the crippling hunger, the food fantasies had become a contest to find the very limits of their ever-expanding photographic recollections. Each round brought new details, growing to precise dates and locations, attendees, even the days’ weather. Silly as the game was, it made the monotonous subterranean marching somehow bearable.
“Duck’s turn,” said Bridget, nodding toward the cave guide.
“Saturday, May 22nd, 2015,” began Duck. “I was in Dominical, on the Pacific side of Costa Rica. Roadside ceviche, heavy on the cilantro. Uncooked tilapia chunks the size of walnuts. Had an Imperial with it—you know, the local beer with the black eagle on the label. It was raining, but, like, a warm rain. Surfed all morning, met and chilled with some Australian girls on the beach, danced all night.”
“Sounds like a perfect day,” said Bridget.
“Hooked up with one of them in the nightclub bathroom,” said Duck. “And then her smokin’ hot friend for the rest of the week. So yeah, pretty much perfect. Australian chicks are ballin’.”
“Milo’s twenty-fifth birthday,” said Bridget, staring directly at him with a half-smile on her face. “He took me to meet his parents while they were on vacation in Banff, Canada.”
Milo grimaced and shook his head. “Doesn’t count,” he said. “My parents were having some kind of argument and forgot the dinner reservation. We never even got seated.”
“We still ate,” added Bridget. “So it still counts.”
“Tell it!” demanded Duck. “Finally getting the good stories outta you two. What’d you eat?”
“By the time we got back to the hotel they’d stopped room service,” Bridget continued. “Milo and I drove a rental car into town, no idea where we were going. Finally found a closed minimart, Milo made them open back up so they could sell us some granola bars and a bag of corn chips—”
“And then we went back to the hotel and drank the entire minibar,” continued Milo with his own half-smile. “I didn’t tally the bill until the next morning. I’ve never sobered up so fast in my life.”
“It was a small fortune,” said Bridget solemnly. “But Milo was a complete gentleman and covered it all.”
“But what I remember most is Bridget stealing a stale donut from the minimart,” said Milo. “Right from under the clerk’s nose.”
“They were going to throw it away!” she protested.
“And then once we were back in the room, she stuck a candle in it,” said Milo. “Made sure I got my birthday cake after all.”
Duck stopped to turn around and consider Milo and Bridget. The light was too dim to blind them, but Milo covered his eyes nonetheless.
“Dude—you for real fucked up when you let this one go,” declared Duck. “Stealing for her man? That’s some straight ride-or-die shit. You nerds were meant for each other.”
“His loss.” Bridget smirked at Milo.
“Milo’s turn,” said Duck, nodding as he started walking down the passageway again. “Favorite dish. I want details, man. Details.”
“I was about a year and a half old,” said Milo, following closely behind. “Was in a hotel room for a family reunion in Colorado Springs. Had cookie dough ice cream for the first time. Finished it and then put the plastic bowl on my head like a hat. Seemed logical enough at the time.”
“Hold up,” demanded Duck. “You remember something from when you were less than two years old?”
Milo paused for a moment before answering. “I remember being born,” he finally said.
Duck stopped again and stared up at the ceiling. Processing a flood of newly accessed memories, the cave guide’s face went through six different contortions, beginning with visible confusion before swiftly transitioning through curiosity, surprise, confusion again, and horror before finally arriving at a measure of acceptance.
“I can remember my birth too,” he said, eyes wide. “That’s so heavy.”
“I think I’m done with this game for a while,” said Bridget, her face scrunched up into a frown. “Let’s keep going.”
Duck, Milo, and Bridget rounded the next turn and came to an abrupt stop. Any further progress was prevented by a ceiling-high breakdown pile; the passageway had collapsed centuries ago. Bridget stepped up to the rocky avalanche, briefly flicking on her own light to closely examine some of the larger gaps in the rock.
“Shit,” said Duck, shaking his head. “I really had a good feeling about this section.”
“You suppose he tried to crawl through?” asked Bridget as she stuck an arm through the rocks and wiggled it to see if she could fit between them.
Duck just shook his head. “No way his thick ass made it through there,” he said, already retreating from the dead end.
As Bridget turned off her light and followed, Milo sat down on a flat rock on the edge of the pile and pulled a small sketchpad from the waistband of his tattered pants. He took a pen from behind the left arm of his dusty, fingerprint-stained glasses and
began to sketch. The last mile of passageway came easily to his mind’s eye as he drew the long, intersecting routes by memory. He’d left his other hand-drawn maps back at camp. Maybe some of the laser data had survived, but the scanner itself hadn’t; they’d found the shattered remains of the waterlogged, football-sized head days ago. Besides, the data was trapped on a useless hard drive, all intact laptop batteries having been rewired to feed the lanterns.
Drawing was a talent he’d never possessed, but Milo easily managed a meticulous three-quarter perspective view of the cave, each winding passage and sharp ledge drawn with complete accuracy.
“At least we found some grub along the way,” said Duck, patting the granola bars in the breast pocket of his shirt that he’d dug out of the mud. It took everything Milo had to not tackle the cave guide right then and there, rip the smashed, waterlogged bars out of his pocket, shove them into his mouth, and lick the plastic wrappers for what few calories might remain.
An hour later, the retreating trio had made their way back to the top of the route’s biggest drop, a sheer cliff demarking the final stretch of the branching tunnel system they’d just explored. It was a negative slope, the topmost edge hanging over a void of empty space. A fist-width crack ran up the middle of the seventy-foot length, just enough of a grip for Duck to climb and set anchors for the other two. Maybe a week ago it would have felt like a towering, impassable obstacle, but now it was too small to even bear a name on Milo’s wrinkled sketchpad.
Milo and Bridget put on their harnesses as Duck checked the short rope anchor he’d tied to the nearest thick stone column. Linking their climbing harnesses to a single carabiner, Duck next attached a heavy rappel rack in preparation for descent. At eighteen inches in length, the rack somewhat resembled an aluminum ladder, with removable rungs designed to slide up and down the metal frame. The cave guide ran a rope in and out of the rungs before throwing the long end over the ledge, the line uncoiling silently in the air before flopping at the bottom with a wet smack. There was no safety line anymore; every other rope was lost, damaged, or otherwise employed.
Once attached to the line, the rappel rack acted like a seizing pulley. With the rope snaking through the rungs, even a little tension drew the metal bars together, tightening their grip against line until friction brought the climber to a dead halt. It was the safest possible option, and would stop even an unconscious climber from falling. Keeping the rungs separate and the rope moving took a lot of muscle and attention; as Milo stepped over the side, he was forced to continually pry the bars apart with his gloved hand to keep the slick nylon sliding through during his descent.
For a single caver on a dry rope, the rappel rack was an oversized, heavy, and wholly redundant pain in the ass. With a full load on a wet rope, the system might just save a life. Two of the racks had been lost in the flood and a third dropped by accident during the search for Isabelle, tumbling end over end until it disappeared into the darkness of a deep, inaccessible chasm.
Attached to the single rack, Milo and Bridget’s position was one of utilitarian intimacy, their legs intertwined and arms encircled as they descended. The surgeon had become frighteningly thin; Milo’s hand clutched over the atrophying muscles that once so clearly defined her back and shoulders.
A few jolting drops later, the pair touched down at the bottom of the steep cliff, lost together in the darkness. Blind, Milo fumbled with the carabiner, freeing their waists from each other. He whistled into the void, and the faint glint of the rappel rack disappeared as Duck reeled the rope back in.
Milo sighed and leaned against the wall, feeling the early pangs of the next round of headaches.
“Christmas morning, 1993,” whispered Bridget. Even through the dark, Milo could hear her smile at the memory. “Dad brought home cinnamon rolls—”
Milo glimpsed the flash of Duck’s headlamp as the caver leaned back into his harness at the top of the cliff, the anchored rope taking his weight. It held for a fraction of a second before a sharp ping rang through the vertical chamber as the rappel rack gave way. Duck gasped a breathless “whoops” and then he was fully airborne, freefalling down the shaft.
A rush of air filled the chamber as Milo launched his body at Bridget, tackling her out of the way an instant before Duck slammed into the muddy floor beside them with a sickening crunch.
He lost his voice to speechless horror as Bridget screamed with angry, helpless fury. Dragging herself to her feet, Bridget flipped on her light and stumbled to Duck’s side.
Duck had landed square on his back, empty eyes blinking at the darkness above. Milo threw himself to the ground next to the stricken man, preparing to bind broken bones, start CPR, any action that might save his life. Twitching, Duck struggled to breathe, his ragged inhalations shallow and gasping. He was conscious, but blood had already begun gathering at the corners of his mouth, coating his teeth.
“I fucked up, I fucked up,” mouthed the cave guide, no sound leaving his lips.
Milo looked to Bridget with desperate eyes, a look she returned with equal impotence. Duck convulsed, trying to cough, spit up blood, breathe, but he couldn’t.
“Help me get him on his side,” ordered Bridget, stabilizing Duck’s neck and upper spine and pointing toward his legs. Milo slipped his hands underneath his pelvis, feeling a spongy mass of pulverized bone and spasming muscle. He withdrew his hands, the sticky wetness of fresh blood clinging to his fingers, the smell of iron in the air.
Bridget shook her head, closing her eyes as she withdrew her hands as well, silently rescinding her previous order. There was nothing left to do but wait as Duck struggled to suck in a last few gasping breaths, clinging desperately to the dwindling few moments of life.
Milo leaned over Duck, one hand on the guide’s chest, the other cradling his cheek as they stared into each other’s eyes.
“You’re back in Dominical,” whispered Milo, his face mere inches from Duck’s as Bridget softly cried behind him. “You taste the sea salt in your mouth.”
Duck stopped breathing, his eyes widening as he took in Milo’s words, blood gently trickling through his facial stubble, disappearing beneath the back of his broken neck.
“Tilapia the size of walnuts,” repeated Milo, tears gathering in his eyes. “The Australian girls are waving for you to come back. Your ceviche is ready. You raise your beer. It’s time to go to them.”
As the last glimmer of life faded from Duck’s eyes, the corners of his mouth imperceptibly lifted, the memory more powerful than the pain. He never took in another breath. Milo ran a gentle hand over Duck’s eyes, closing them as he and Bridget silently sobbed.
CHAPTER 28:
LONG PORK
Milo and Bridget sat slumped against the cliff, Duck’s motionless body illuminated by the fading glow of Bridget’s headlamp. She leaned against Milo, her head on his shoulder, clinging to his arm. He knew it was his imagination, but felt as though he could still see the faintest hint of a smile on the cave guide’s pale face. Duck seemed at peace, despite the still-seeping blood pooling on the muddy cavern floor like red oil.
The climbing harness was undamaged, the carabiner clip still securely locked to the heavy metal rappel rack. But there was no line clutched within the sliding rungs; they’d all popped free, hanging open like jack o’ lantern teeth. Duck had run the nylon rope backward, and every rung popped free the moment he’d put his weight on the system. He’d never had a chance.
Milo’s eyes drifted to Duck’s hands. His gloved palms were raw and bloody from where he’d desperately grabbed the rope. Even if he hadn’t been starving, no man possessed the strength to catch a thin nylon rope in freefall. It was just too sudden—a mistake born of fatigue and hunger, a high-pitched ping as the rack gave way, weightlessness, barely enough time to sputter a “whoops” before slamming into the rocky floor seventy feet below.
He pointed toward the rack, directing Bridget’s eyes. She caught sight of the loose rungs and shook her head in disbelief.
“He’d threaded that rack a million times,” murmured Bridget.
“Doesn’t matter,” said Milo. “He did it backward this one time. That’s all it takes down here.”
Bridget buried her face in her hands, pulling her hair back and shaking a few flecks of mud from the long, dark strands as silence fell.
“This is so fucked up,” whispered Bridget. “Why were we even looking for Logan? He literally told us not to.”
“Doesn’t matter anymore—we’re done searching,” said Milo as he absentmindedly tapped the back of his head against the cliff wall. “We can’t continue after what happened to Duck. It’s time to go back to the camp, tell everyone the bad news. All we can do now is hunker down, hope someone comes looking for us.”
Bridget started to try to get up but collapsed, closing her eyes as she leaned back against the wall. Milo tried to sneak his hand into hers, but she snaked it away.
“I’m going to disappear for a bit,” said Bridget, eyes still closed as she massaged the bridge of her nose. “Bring me back when we need to leave.”
“Where will you go?” asked Milo.
“I don’t know,” answered Bridget. “A time when I was happy; a time when I felt fed and loved and safe. Anywhere but here.”
“I’ll bring you back,” he promised. But it was too late for her to hear; Bridget’s eyes had already glassed over as she vanished into her memories.
Milo watched her for a few minutes before returning to his drawing, filling in details and relief to the interminable subterranean system. His hand hesitated over the tunnel—he hadn’t intended to name it, but now felt as though he had to. He finally penned Duck’s End Passage in a hasty scribble in the corner.
Milo tucked the pen back behind his ear and dropped his chin, staring at the ground between his knees as he pressed his back against the base of the cliff. His churning, grief-stricken consciousness incessantly reminded him of all the times he’d seen something terrible. Memories flashed in his mind’s eye—the family veterinarian euthanizing his childhood dog as he pressed his fingers into her fur, feeling her heartbeat slow to a stop as she faded away. The funerals of all his grandparents. The live mouse he’d found in a basement spring-trap, entrails spilling from its split belly. A sudden motorcycle accident in Georgetown, the rider flipping over a BMW’s hood before slamming helmet-first into the asphalt. Duck’s slow-motion fall, perfectly seared into his perfect memory.
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