by Jeanne Adams
“No, but sometimes, if I like a restaurant, I’ll pick them up so I can remember the name of it, have the number.”
“Ah,” was his only comment.
She went back to poking into the dirt with her all-purpose tool. “What does that mean?” she asked, copying his inflection and tone, “ah?”
“Nothing, just a response to your explanation.”
“Uh-huh.”
They worked hard for over an hour, dripping sweat from the humidity and their exertions, to loosen the debris blocking the door. Using their hands, they scooped it aside.
“Ready to try again?” he asked, rising and holding his hand out to help her do the same.
“Yep. Let’s. Then we should eat again. Are we going to try to go through this afternoon?”
For the first time in hours, Dav looked toward the grate. Carrie resolutely kept her eyes on the wall. She didn’t want to see the vulture’s handiwork. As it was, she saw Dav’s face change, his eyes go hard and distant.
“It’s getting pretty late. I think we worked past noon. I’d guess it’s around two or three. Yes?”
She sighed and dug her watch out of her pocket. The strap had broken so she’d stowed it away. She knew he was dreading the tunnel or cave or whatever it was. She was too, but if there was any chance it led out, she was willing to risk it.
“It’s three fifteen, California time.” She hesitated, then added, “I think we should go for it.”
“Go for it?” Dav said, trying to slow the beating of his heart, trying to face the prospect of the endlessly dark tunnel and the potential for freedom that it offered. “Yes. I believe we must.”
“Okay. I’ll get our stuff.”
Dav stayed where he was, gathering his courage just as she was gathering their things. He knew it was weak, but if he was to get through this, whatever this was, he was going to need every ounce of energy and fortitude he could muster.
“Ready?”
“No, but if we wait for that, we’ll be a hundred years dead, to borrow your phrase from the other day.”
She smiled and held out a hand. He took it and stood, but didn’t yet move forward. “Okay. So, you know a little about this culture. Will there be booby traps?”
“Ah, Indiana Jones again?”
“Well,” he said with a wry smile, “better to ask the question now.”
“I think we should watch our step; they did do shafts. They weren’t necessarily traps. Some people think the shafts were ways to talk to the underworld.”
“Not the way I want to meet Hades, thanks,” he managed, feeling sweat tracking down his back.
He turned to her. “Okay, let’s be as logical as I’m able to be right now.”
“I’m sorry this is so hard,” she said, sympathy in her eyes.
“The alternative is the gibbering we spoke of. So. I will take my coat and make a pack of it. You take your purse, wrap it across your body.” He studiously ignored the looming shadows of the chamber, the equally dark opening of the tunnel.
They’d miraculously found it. He wouldn’t pass up the chance to get Carrie to safety. Nothing was more important, no matter how much he’d like to sit, rocking in a corner as he had when he was a boy. “We’ll go slowly. Feel our way, yes?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Eh-la, good. So, I will lead. If anyone is to fall into a shaft, I will do that. Perhaps Hades will take pity on me, eh?” He knew his accent was getting more pronounced, and his fingers felt thick and clumsy as he made up the pack.
He could do this. He had to do it. Everything he was, everything he believed about himself, would be for naught if he couldn’t find the courage to face that tunnel.
“Okay. So. Now,” he said, dusting off his filthy hands and taking up the pack and setting it on his shoulders. “We will go.”
He held out his hand for hers, but to his surprise, she moved past it and embraced him.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice muffled in his shirt.
He held her in his arms, feeling emotion swamp him. It overwhelmed him. His heart hurt with it and he ached even more that he couldn’t wave a hand and make this all disappear. For her.
He realized that fear for her outweighed any fear he had for himself. The banked fires of passion were there as well. He’d never felt this way about anyone before.
It was a strange way to begin a perilous journey, with such a revelation. It would probably mean more if he could define what it was he was feeling. Admiration? He knew he admired her. This went deeper than that. Need? That was part of it too.
He felt tears dampen his already wet shirt and he held her more tightly. “Come, my love. You will be Persephone, the beautiful young thing, and I will play Hades in our little drama, taking you into the dark, only to lead you back out again, eh?”
“Promises, promises,” she sniffled, ducking her head and using her sleeve to wipe at her eyes.
“Ah, now, you have made it worse.” He smiled down at her. Her face was a mask of dust and sweat. And still, he felt the stirring within him, that alien sense that called him to her. From the depths of his pocket, he pulled out his bedraggled handkerchief. It was much the worse for wear, but it wasn’t nearly as dirty as her sleeves. Or his, for that matter. With utmost care, he used the cleanest corner to wipe her cheeks where the tears had tracked through the dirt. “There. It is not good, but it is better than it might have been. Let us go before I lose my nerve, eh?”
“Okay.” She offered him a watery smile. It was obvious from her deliberate attempt to square her shoulders and the deep breath that lifted her chest that she was nervous as well. “Okay,” she said again, as if to encourage them both. “You have the flashlight?”
“Right here. I think you should take it. I will use my hands and feet to feel the way.” He struggled to remember all Gates’s lessons, all the little bits of information his friend had dropped along the way about moving in enemy territory, moving with caution among land mines and traps. “If you need to shine the light anywhere but at our feet, we stop, yes?”
“Why?”
“So we don’t stumble forward into something when we are distracted. Gates has said that it is the distractions that kill, not the land mines.”
“Ooookay,” she drawled, taking the flashlight and switching it on. “That’s reassuring.”
He laughed. “Many things Gates has to say are like that. Informative, but not always easy.”
For a moment, he stared into the dark, thinking of Gates. It made him remember the weapon that loomed above them.
“Carrie, I hate to say this, to ask it, but before we go into the tunnel, I think we should try and get the guard’s weapon.” He knew what he was asking. She would have to stand on his shoulders again, cut the weapon free, since he couldn’t reach it himself. She could not bear his weight on her shoulders so he could do it and spare her the sight of the vultures’ feasting. “As horrible as it will be, it will be better to be armed than not.”
She shuddered, a visible, reflexive expression of revulsion. “I know you’re right. I know it. I think it’s smart. I just don’t want to do it. It’s ... horrible.”
“Yes, it is. I do not wish to ask this of you. However, if our tunnel does lead somewhere, and sets us free, to be unarmed against those who hunt us, when we have access to a weapon? That is unwise.”
Her tear-streaked face was taut, her lips twisted in anxiety. He wanted to pet and soothe her, to kiss it away, make it better, but he couldn’t and that was killing him.
Watching her conquer her disgust, knowing the courage it took to face their choices, made his heart hurt for her. “I will lift you again, yes? You only have to look up enough to find the strap and cut it. If you cut it, one tug should free the weapon.”
“It’s a machine gun,” she said, setting her things aside as she steeled herself to make the climb onto his shoulders. “I’m guessing that we don’t want to drop it, right?”
He smiled. Trust her to think of th
at. “No. The safety is off. He fired as he went down, so it is primed for use. I don’t know how many rounds are in the magazine, but there will be some still left or I wouldn’t ask this of you.”
“Rounds in the magazine? Does that mean bullets?”
He laughed, and it eased the tension for a moment. “Yes, it does. You see? I have been hanging out with bad sorts, like Gates, to know all that. I don’t particularly like guns, but for safety’s sake, I learned to use them.”
“He taught you a lot,” she said, holding her hands out for his, waiting for him to bend his knee and let her climb onto his shoulders. Having done it several times now, they managed it in one smooth maneuver. The edge of the door helped as well, where it had pivoted into the room, giving her a prop to lean on. “Can I just say that I really, really, really don’t want to do this?”
“Yes, you may. I’m sorry to ask it of you.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just because I can’t lift you, right? Hand me the snips. I only want to do this once.”
He handed her the all-purpose tool with the blades set to scissors. He could hear the crisp schrrrup sound as she cut through the canvas strap.
“It’s stuck,” she said, her voice choked. “I’m trying not to throw up here, but if anything falls off this guy or gets on me when I pull this strap loose, I’m going to hurl.” He heard her gulping against nausea. “Fair warning.”
“Fairly warned,” he replied, struggling to keep her steady.
“Oh, gross,” she muttered, and he heard the slither of fabric and her grunt as the weight of the weapon landed in her hands. “It’s disgusting. I hope it’ll still fire with all this ... nastiness on it.”
“I’m sure it will.” He held up a hand, still bracing her with the other, to help her down. Instead, she slapped the gun into his palm.
“Here, you take it. You know how to use it, right? So you get to clean it up.” His quads were screaming with strain, but he squatted to lay the weapon on the dirt floor, well clear of the blood pool, so he could help her down.
“Is this like the fishes? I have heard this from other men—if you catch it you have to clean it?”
She leapt down from his knee and turned to bury her face in his chest once more. He held her tightly, savoring the contact, knowing it would help them both just to hang on. His body, always responsive to her nearness, reacted, but he ignored it. Now was not the time. “My brave Carrie-mou,” he murmured, laying his beard-roughened cheek on her silky hair. “Thank you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, and he felt the race of reaction in her body. “If I never have to do that again?”
“Centuries too soon, yes?” he finished the quote.
“Millenniums. Eons too soon. Ugh. And yes, you can clean the fish.”
“Oh, no,” he quipped. “This would be why I am rich. I will pay people to clean the fish or I will go hungry. Besides, I don’t really like fish.”
“I like the sound of that. Of course, right now, I think we’d both take fish raw and wiggling if we had it.”
“True.” He took his disgusting handkerchief, ready to wipe away the worst of the blood and gore off the weapon. “Why don’t you go over by the door? I will clean this, yes?”
She nodded, and when she’d moved away, he began. He wiped it as best he could, the blood flaking away where it had caked on. As he’d been taught, he checked the trigger and magazine for blockage, but he couldn’t be sure it would fire with all the dampness to which it had been exposed. He flicked the safety on and tied the remains of the strap back to the front D-ring as best he could.
The room was darkening as the sun angled toward the west. Dav finished his grim task, and slung the weapon over his shoulder. Turning, he faced the tunnel. “I suppose it is now or never, my Carrie. Are you with me?”
“Let’s do it.”
Chapter 11
Dav took a deep breath and started into the tunnel. The light wobbled, then steadied, and he could feel the warmth of Carrie’s presence at his back. Two steps in, she wrapped her fingers in the loop of his belt. Somehow, the contact was reassuring, bracing. The palpable connection made the dark less horrifying.
Their progress was agonizingly slow. They moved forward a yard at a time, with Dav clearing cobwebs and possibly worse from their path. He estimated they’d been at it an hour, possibly two, when he felt a touch of cooler air on his sweat-soaked arm. He’d reached out to snag a hanging rope of nasty, dusty creeper—possibly a cobweb, but if it was he didn’t want to meet the spider. Carrie’s mention of Shelob, the enormous spider from The Lord of the Rings, made him shudder in memory.
“Dav?”
“I feel a draft,” he said, excusing the shudder.
“Stop then,” she said, tugging on his belt. “Let’s look around.”
They stopped and Dav put one hand on the wall at his right, making sure he was anchored where he stood.
“Okay,” he said, feeling her move up next to him. “Flash it around, baby,” he said with false cheer and a Vegas smooth talker’s drawl. He hoped it would get a laugh out of her, and it did. A weak one, but a laugh, nevertheless.
“Sure, slick, I’ll flash it around,” she joked back. He felt her stabilize herself the way they’d discussed, and she moved the flashlight to the floor on the right, then out three or four feet. The dirt was packed down, the wall rough at the base with a smooth line about four feet up the wall as she moved the light up it.
“I guess this is where you run your hand along the wall,” she murmured, “as you hurry along the passage.”
“Hmmm, yes. Keep going up the wall. I felt the draft when my hand was up.”
She ran the flashlight up, and at first it showed only more rough wall and dirt. As the light rose higher, however, there was an empty space that went on, up and up into the dark clarity of the night sky.
“Switch off the light for a moment,” Dav said, clenching his gut at the thought of the endless darkness. Nevertheless, it was important to discover if they could see out the shaft.
The inky black was completely unrelieved when she clicked off the light. Faintly, far above, he could discern stars.
“I see stars,” she said, moving closer to him, even though her hand was still linked through his belt. He felt her all along his body, a warm, supportive presence.
Had he ever had such support in his life? From anyone?
“It’s a hole to the surface,” he said, smiling into the dark.
“Good. Holes to the surface are good. One that’s a bit more accessible would be better, but we’ll take it as a good sign, right?”
“Right. Switch the light back on before the gibbering begins.”
“Always with the gibbering.” She put on a fake New York accent and punched the button on the flashlight. They both waited to let their eyes adjust. She raised the beam to the edge of the shaft and then moved it on down the ceiling. Nothing but more webs and more darkness beyond them.
“This is slow going, but it is progress, I guess,” he commented, beginning the forward process again. Step, feel the way; step, clear the cobwebs and creepers, step again.
“It’s a nasty job, but it’s better than sitting in the cell waiting to die,” Carrie pointed out. “I don’t think I could have taken that much longer without doing some gibbering myself.”
He smiled, though he knew she couldn’t see it. “I’m glad we avoided that. It’s so embarrassing for both of us, yes?”
“Exactly,” she joked. “Nothing like a little abject terror to put you off your feed for a week or two.”
“Off your feed?”
“Farm term,” she explained. “If something spooks cows or horses very badly, they stop eating for a bit. If they don’t eat, they don’t gain weight, and in the case of cows, that’s less beef.”
“Oh. That makes sense in a mercantile kind of way,” he said, trying not to think about the continuing slow pace.
All of a sudden his forward foot met clear air and he shoved backward, knocking them
both into the wall.
“What? What is it?” She gasped the words, bobbling the flashlight.
His heart was pounding as if he’d run a mile, but he said, “I believe I found the first of the shafts to hell.”
“Oh, crap,” she said, angling the light to the floor only to have it disappear into the endless darkness of a deep pit. The shaft was only two feet wide, easily stepped over, but the yawning maw would trap the unwary and a running man or woman, or even one inching along in the darkness would drop down, breaking a leg, or falling in to be wedged there for all eternity.
“I think I need to sit down,” Dav managed, his heart racing, and sweat pouring from him as he contemplated the terrible consequences of a foot wrongly placed.
“No,” Carrie disagreed. “We have to get past it, then we’ll rest. The longer we stay here in the dark with that before us, the worse it will be.” He heard the quaver in her voice, and made sense of the words, but it was like a buzzing in his ears, a ringing that wouldn’t stop.
“I don’t think I can,” he said.
“You made your first million before you left college,” Carrie insisted. “You can do this.”
She tugged at his arm, pulling him upright. He’d bent over, hands on his knees to pant out his fear.
“One step at a time,” she said through gritted teeth. “This one’s just a bigger step, right?”
He thought his lungs would burst, or his heart would explode with fear of crossing the pit. Only Carrie’s insistence that he move prodded him forward and over it.
“Now,” she said, and he heard the exhaustion in her voice. “We rest.”
Ten feet beyond the pit shaft, they sat down, their backs to the walls, legs touching. He could feel his knees shaking with reaction and thought hers were, as well. “I think we should drink some,” she added, digging into the pack he’d set down next to them. “We’re using a lot of energy and the dust is just awful. We need to stay hydrated.”
“The way I’m sweating, you’ll need a bigger canteen than they provided, Carrie-mou,” he managed, eyes closed, head back against the cool stone. He could have easily chugged liters of water and still have been thirsty.