A full day had passed since Kat had experienced her eureka moment and begun her experiment. She’d started with the lab work, suctioning some gel from the dish with her syringe and easing the microbial mat onto the microscope slide with the killer organism. At first she’d seen no change, just an additional blob of biofilm. But seconds later something happened. The original mesh of film had split, just as a land mass parts along a fault line. Cracks had appeared throughout the film, and the light flashes were extinguished.
“Oh, yes!” she’d cried, raising her hands in the air. Pete and Megan had shouldered in next to her, Pete thrusting toward the microscope.
“Wow,” he’d said. “This is beautiful. Like watching Hitler roll over Europe in World War II. These bastards can fight!”
Kat had been disturbed by his analogy, but not for long. She couldn’t suppress a grin. Megan had had to shake her to loosen her tongue. “What is it?”
“It’s microbial warfare,” she’d said, “at its finest. They’re cave bugs too, from the rafts where I fell into the lake. They despise our killer organism. I think we can still save Ray.”
At that point she’d decided to begin the human trials. She’d flipped a knife from her pocket and scraped some gel from the Petri dish. Then she’d hastened over to Ray, removed the gauze from his wound, which was practically black with sloughing skin, and smeared the gel over it.
Eyes riveted to the strip she’d laid, Kat had held her breath. She was using Ray as a test subject for this treatment, when she’d always denied Mark’s pleading to do the same with her. How could she have been so stubborn? Now she could empathize entirely. She would do anything to save Ray, even if it defied the strict policies of modern medicine. Even if it meant experimenting like a mad scientist in a lab full of potions. This cave was definitely a lab full of potions.
As she’d watched, some of the blisters had burst, and the sickly stench of rotting flesh had filled the air. Maybe this had been a mistake. She’d waited, one hour, two. Suddenly something changed. More pustules burst at the site of the treatment, but the torrent of blood had abruptly halted, as if the blood vessels had been pinched off. She could visualize the process on a microscopic level: the cave raft bug adhering to the deadly microbe and destroying the protein that prevented macrophages—Ray’s own defense mechanism—from engulfing the organism. Ray had moaned, but she’d hoped it was merely from the needle pricks that she’d experienced, perhaps on a larger scale.
Upon this new development, Pete had scribbled some observations, “for the boys back home,” he’d said. Kat could see the sense in it, if they ever made it back home. He’d alternated between watching Ray and examining the sample under the microscope. Finally he was being helpful.
Since they were approaching something like success, Kat had placed more of the sample on the wound tract, and hour by hour infected pus poured out and the discharge became clearer. Now they’d exhausted the sample, and the wound was still a ragged, puffy mess.
“I think it’s working,” Kat said. “But we’ll need more to give him adequate dosage.” She scrambled to her feet and grasped Megan’s shoulders. “Can you watch him? I have to go back to the cave rafts and collect more gel.”
“Sure,” said Megan, tears welling in her eyes. “Do you really think he’ll be okay?”
“I don’t know,” said Kat. “I don’t know how much damage has been done, or if he’ll be up to the task of climbing out of here. But if not, I’ll stay with him.”
“Kat,” Megan said. “Do you still think there’s a way out of this cave?”
Kat squeezed her arms and drilled a look into her tear-filled eyes. “Are you ready to give up? Because I’m not. If I were, I would have let Ray die. I would have died long ago myself. Maybe I should just accept that my life is over. But I can’t. And I don’t think you can either. We’re trapped, but we’re bright people, and we can still use our brains. We’ll find an escape hatch.”
Megan bit her lip and gave Kat a tentative nod. Kat blew out a breath and released her arms. She stalked over to where the flashlight lay on a rock, spilling light over Ray, and picked it up. Then she shouldered her pack and bolted for the breakdown hill that would lead to the lake.
“I’ll be back in a flash,” she whipped over her shoulder.
Ray moaned and Megan murmured, “Okay.” Pete didn’t say anything.
Mildly disturbed by his lack of response, she turned to look back one more time. Megan was sitting quietly by Ray’s quivering body, and Pete was looking through the microscope again, crooning to it and stroking its sides. He sat up and his eyes held a strange light, a wild glee often seen in drug addicts once they’d procured their next fix. Or psychopaths after they’d chosen their next victim.
Kat shuddered and turned away.
Chapter Forty
Mark silently descended the last pit before the dreaded sump. He hardly knew what to say to the guide anymore after these five days of rappelling and wriggling through too-narrow shafts, climbing over breakdown mounds, wading through swift-current streams, and swimming through two of these treacherous sumps.
As he slowly reeled to the bottom, Mark felt his muscles groaning, his entire body throbbing with fatigue. Perhaps he had no reason to worry about Jorge. It seemed doubtful that either one of them would make it out of this cave alive. But if they did, whatever action the man took would be on Mark’s head too. How could he live with himself if he just let Jorge go out and kill or maim, or whatever it was he intended to do? Yet it seemed that through the trials of this journey, Mark had developed a bond with the Maya. It was awkward, reluctant, but still, it existed. They had an understanding born of mistrust and conflict, but somehow nurtured into a genuine respect. It wasn’t something he relished destroying.
His feet touched down on the smooth, water-carved flowstone at the bottom of the shaft. He hurriedly unclipped his carabiner and stepped away for Jorge to rappel down beside him. There was a thump as the man hit bottom at speed. Casually he disconnected from the rope, laid a hand on Mark’s shoulder, and said, “Almost to the end.”
Mark sighed and tried to conjure up a smile, but it felt more like a grimace. A flutter of fear developed in his belly.
“What do you mean by ‘the end’? When we get past the last sump, and hopefully find Kat, we’re just halfway through. We still have to get back up.”
“Yes,” said Jorge. “And going up will be harder.” He looked at Mark intently, as if he wanted to tell him something without actually voicing it.
“You don’t think I can climb back up. You’re going to leave us down here when this is all finished, aren’t you? Why? Would it give you some perverse pleasure to see us starve and suffer like your people? Do you really think that will solve anything?”
Jorge smiled sadly and shook his head. “No, doctor. That would not give me pleasure. Not now, anyway. Nor would it solve our problems. I’m merely letting you know that the return journey, if there is one, will be even more difficult. But if you’re as determined as you’ve shown me, maybe you will survive. Let’s go.”
Jorge trudged through the chamber into another convoluted tunnel, and motioned for Mark to follow. Mark removed his water bottle and sloshed a mouthful down his parched throat before he trailed after Jorge. They slogged through knee-deep streams in the tunnel and ducked archways of incredible stalactite latticework. After an hour, Jorge halted in front of a torrent of water that plunged into the rock.
“The final sump?” asked Mark.
Jorge grunted. “It seems like a storm drain into a sewer,” he said. “If you get caught in it, you’ll think you’re about to be swept out to sea. But instead, this one swirls downward, perhaps into the Underworld itself. I wonder if demons are waiting for us on the other side.”
Mark chuckled. “Sometimes you seem ruled by logic as neat and tidy as statutes of law. Then this other side of you appears. The Mayan side, religious and superstitious. Which Jorge is the real one?”
“Both,”
Jorge said, locking Mark’s gaze. “I’m an educated man, but religion is necessary because it gives man hope. It also instills fear. We would not survive without both. Hope gives us the strength to go on, to seek understanding and trust in the good, even when the world is a dark and merciless place. When that fails, then we need to fear what we don’t understand, or it will consume us.”
The water raged in front of them, and Mark wondered if Jorge was referring to the sump. Certainly he understood the dynamics of moving water, but this was something more. This journey was a test, and whether he passed or failed depended on trust and fear. Perhaps he’d trusted too much what he should fear.
Jorge knelt beside the river, examining a piton in the rock and the nylon rope attached to it. It had to be another leftover from Kat’s team. Mark bent down and touched the peg, feeling her somewhere beyond the swirl of water.
“We will follow the rope. But I doubt it will lead us to your wife.”
“Why?” asked Mark.
“Because, if she still had the rope, she should have been able to dive out again.”
Mark closed his eyes and nodded. Something had gone horribly wrong somewhere in that sump. Would they find Kat and her fellow cavers’ drowned bodies there? Could he face that? But then, maybe he’d be adding his own to the mix.
Jorge silently donned his drysuit and rebreather, gesturing for Mark to do the same. There didn’t seem to be anything more to say. The tension was building. What lay beyond this vanishing river was revelations or death.
The suit and apparatus had become more and more cumbersome through each dive, and Mark could hardly wrestle the thing on. After the mask placed a chokehold on his face, he turned to Jorge and watched him attach another line to the bolt anchored in stone. Before Jorge plunged into the water, he turned and grasped Mark’s hand in a surprisingly warm gesture.
“This is it,” was all he said.
One smooth motion into the stream and he bobbed up immediately, clinging firmly to his line. Mark clipped on his own connector to the dive-line and entered the foaming water just behind Jorge. The current gushed around them, even more forceful than the one before. Jorge battled with it, letting himself drift slowly to the center, and playing out the line with studied caution. He directed the beam from his headlamp onto the other bright orange line as he descended, using it as a beacon to guide them to the lost team of explorers.
Mark’s biceps bulged as he gripped the rope, let it slip, and gripped again. This was excruciating, to say the least. The last thing he wanted was to let go and be caught in the deadly current. They continued for what seemed like an hour, Jorge gradually unfurling the coiled rope in his hand, Mark right at his heels. They came to a sharp bend in the sump, and Jorge halted. He pointed to Kat’s orange guideline.
Mark nearly wept when he saw the severed edge, the raw end of the rope fluttering like seaweed in a tide. It had happened. The rope had snapped and she’d plunged down the river. To make matters worse, a second stream joined the first at this spot, coming from the right.
“I think she tried to go up this branch,” said Jorge, pointing. “She realized the flow was too strong in this sump and thought they’d find a cavern or tunnel, at least to rest, maybe to continue on. But it must have swept them back into the main current and torn their line.”
Mark gulped. “Do you think they’re still alive?”
“Only one way to find out.”
Jorge let himself turn the corner into the deadliest current. Mark slipped the line and nearly lost his grip, but firmly clamped again. They churned through the thundering water, feeling it sap the strength from their arms. Mark didn’t know how much more of this he could take. Just when he wanted to scream, Jorge gave a yelp and let go of the rope.
“No!” yelled Mark, unable to believe that his guide had failed first. “Jorge!”
The man flailed through the water, his guideline floundering in the current behind him. Mark played the line as quickly as he could without losing his grip, but there was no way of stopping Jorge’s momentum. Soon his helmet light had faded down the long corridor of rock.
Mark swallowed, forced himself to focus on moving along the line methodically. Suddenly he was flung from the water into a gap, his mind registering stalagmites, an outcrop above the water line. The sump malevolently tried to tug him back down, but he fought against it, kicking with all his might, and somehow grabbed a pillar of rock. He hoisted himself out, still feeling the suction of the water and the pull from Jorge’s body farther downstream.
“Jorge?” Mark gasped. “Are you still alive?”
There was no answer on the PA system. But that didn’t mean the man was dead. He couldn’t be dead. Mark slammed his feet down into a crack in the surface of the stone and began to haul on the rope. He didn’t think he had any strength left, but somehow the rope retracted, centimeter by centimeter. Sweat beaded his already drenched body. His muscles were on fire. He bit down on his lip, hard, tasting blood, yet he continued to haul more coils free of the river. Just when Mark thought his heart would rupture, Jorge’s body broke the surface. Gasping in relief, Mark tugged Jorge over the edge of the embankment and flipped him onto the ground. But the relief was soon flushed away. Jorge seemed entirely too limp. His mask had been battered off in the river, and it dangled from its straps. He must have swallowed water.
“Jorge,” Mark called, shaking him gently, bending near his lips to feel for a breath.
Jorge was unresponsive.
“Dammit,” said Mark, shaking Jorge again and feeling for a pulse at his throat. It was thready, but he wasn’t breathing. “You can’t die on me now. Don’t you know that? I can’t lose someone else I care about.”
Mark hardly realized the words had slipped out, but they were true. It wasn’t the thought of being buried alive in this hellish cave. It wasn’t the thought of being left alone that terrified him the most. It was the thought of seeing this intelligent, principled, fearless man slip away. His friend.
Mark ripped the mask from his face and bent toward Jorge’s lips.
“The hell if I’m going to let you die.”
Chapter Forty-one
Kat had thought that the climb would be impossible in her weakened condition, but adrenaline pumped through her legs now. She practically skimmed the surface of the breakdown and dodged boulders like she was skiing along a slalom track. Over the mound and zigzagging around columns; in a matter of minutes she reached the lakeshore. Now she’d have to backtrack to the crack leading to the site of their memorable sump surf and the thick jelly between the cave rafts. She ran full tilt and arrived in less than an hour at the gentle slope that led to the flowstone-encircled pool. She stood, trying to catch her breath, then bent down and began to remove thick segments of slime from the water.
A thump gave her pause, and then another sound. The sound was muffled, hardly audible, but it tickled her cochlea nonetheless. It was like a voice, deep, resonant, coming from beyond the crack in the wall. It almost sounded like—no, it couldn’t be.
Kat straightened and deposited her precious harvest in her backpack, then left it zipped and prepped for departure on the slick rock platform. She tightened her grip on the flashlight, dropped to her belly, and began to snake through the crawlway as quickly as possible. The bursts of sound were different now—no longer voice-like, but rather harsh puffs of air. She dug in her elbows and plowed the stone with her feet, propelling ever closer to the deadly sump where it had all started.
Kat jumped to stooped position as soon as the tunnel allowed, and raced forward, her light clashing with another bright arc—a sure sign of human presence. The rescue team had arrived! Relief and joy threatened to burst from her chest, but as she entered the chamber she stopped cold.
A man was bending over another, giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. As she watched, the inert man twitched a couple of times and then spewed water from his mouth. The hunched man on the ground turned him over on his side so more water could drain from t
he lungs. She couldn’t see the face of the rescuer, but she knew the contours of his body intimately. She recognized the thin dark hair and the wide set of his shoulders.
“Mark!” she gasped, unable to believe it possible that he was in a cave, let alone two thousand meters deep. This man who hated caves, would never set foot in a cave . . .
He turned and scrambled to his feet, nearly pitching into the sump in his surprise.
“Kat?” he managed to whisper. The man on the ground gasped and sputtered and he remembered his patient, falling back to his knees beside him. He took the man’s rebreather mask and attached it to his face, dialing up the oxygen.
“It’s all right, Jorge,” he said. “You’re going to be fine.” Mark checked to see whether the man’s skin had begun to pink up in his nail beds, then turned back toward her.
“Kat,” he said a little more forcefully this time, springing back to his feet. “Thank God you’re alive. I can’t believe . . .” He fell silent as he closed the slight distance between them and pulled her into his arms.
Kat sucked in a shaky breath and pressed her face into his shoulder. “You came,” she said. “You actually came for me.” Waves of emotion churned through her—joy, relief, sadness, and fear. She’d practically given up on him, yet here he was. It almost bridged the gorge between them, almost erased all the distrust and disloyalty.
“Of course I did.” He stroked her hair, kissed her tenderly on the forehead. Then he stiffened, held her at arm’s length, and spoke a little harsher. “But you were supposed to be on a minor trek through some sinkholes. What the hell is this?”
Kat shrugged. “You know me. Devil may care . . .”
“Well, the devil’s the only one who does down here. What were you thinking? You’re sick again. You need treatment.”
“There is no treatment that can save me, Mark. You know it.”
He shook his head, clenched his jaw. “You still don’t trust me.”
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