“Probably two,” said Pete. “You slept a long time.”
Mark didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t argue. He must have realized that there was an outside chance they could catch the Maya if the other route was more easily navigated, but not if they waited too long. Since they were already clothed in drysuits and coated with the nanobacteria, it was now time to test Kat’s theory. Mark shouldered his pack and took one of the rebreathers. Pete cinched on his own pack, leaving Kat without a burden to carry, since she’d given her pack to Megan and two had been left behind in the burial chamber.
They retraced their path along the lake and veered into the middle between the columns, finding no luminescent flicker to hint at the presence of the killer organism. But when they crested the breakdown hillock, this changed. The cavern was alight again with tiny emerald stars. Mark clutched Kat’s hand tightly. Pete swallowed audibly. But neither was deterred by the sight, only respectful of the danger. Kat felt revulsion and fear, yet there was an inkling of something more. Something she dared not even mention to Mark, because he would consider it lunacy, but she couldn’t suppress the feeling.
They plunged down the embankment and set foot on the first mat of green. The reaction played out so effectively Kat couldn’t contain her excitement.
“Yeah!” she yelled as the organisms met with the thick screen of gel and broke apart, no longer a solid carpet of biofilm but a mesh that gradually disintegrated. This battle continued throughout the long hike to the archway of the other exit. With each step they took on the microbial mat, their protective paste rebuffed any attempt the organisms made to latch onto the humans. They stood before the tunnel, their hearts burning with hope.
“Well,” said Mark. “This is it. The question is, are there enough nanobacteria on our bodies to combat all the organisms in this passage?”
“Only one way to find out,” said Pete. He surprised them by pushing past and taking the lead.
“Are you sure you want to go first?” asked Mark.
Pete turned back and looked each of them squarely in the eye. “I know you think I’m a coward. You think that’s why I wouldn’t take Ray into the sump. You think I care only for myself and have little regard for you, Kat, or the others. But did it ever occur to you that I didn’t want to go because I knew it would end badly? I was considering all our options, and this still looked like our best one.”
Kat felt Mark stiffen and gave his hand a squeeze.
“I’m not criticizing you, Mark, for the choice you made. On the advice of everyone, including Ray, the sump seemed your best bet. But I want it to be clear that I’m not just a self-serving bastard. I want all of us to pull through. And if anyone should risk taking this passage—my idea—then it should be me.”
Kat couldn’t help but feel skeptical, but Mark seemed willing to accept Pete’s explanation.
“Okay,” he said. “You lead. But just to get the record straight, I wasn’t judging you back there. What happened with Jorge makes it pretty clear that I’m not a very good judge of character.”
The corners of Pete’s mouth curled briefly, then straightened. He pivoted and marched through the archway, heading upward and out of the graveyard. Kat began to follow, but Mark held her back.
“Wait until we see how he does.”
Kat paused, watching Pete’s light expose the fractured rock, then gradually fade as he made his way deeper into the tunnel. “He’s fine,” she said. She didn’t care if he wasn’t anymore. They had no other option but to test microbial warfare to its limits. She ducked and stoop-walked through the green-smudged pipe. She could hear Mark’s labored breathing right behind, his body nearly pinioned to hers. His concern was like a shield, but it wouldn’t stop the bacteria from invading. Only the barrier of slime on her body could do that.
Farther in, the passage contracted, bringing the flashing lights closer to the ground, nearer to her head and shoulders. Soon they’d have to belly-crawl. The prospect of having to slither through the microbial soup curdled the gruel in her stomach. But Pete continued, undaunted. Kat sank to her knees and slashed through the bacteria, which Pete’s passage had parted like the Red Sea. The ceiling shrank down. Soon she was on her belly, shedding the layer of slime little by little, but still she felt no nip from the deadly organisms. But as the bioluminescent mass slid toward her, the hazard-free path narrowed, and she knew her active protection had been scaled back too much. A yelp from Pete confirmed her suspicions.
The toxic bacteria now filled the entire bowl she wriggled through, weeping over her neoprene-clad body and neutralizing the last remnants of the protective organism. She felt the first bite in the narrow slit between her glove and cuff.
“Fuck!” Pete yelled up ahead.
Behind, Mark muttered and grumbled.
But Kat kept going, ignoring the prickling at her wrist, even though she knew that they’d lost. Soon her body throbbed with light and pain. How excruciating! Maybe it would have been better if they’d drowned. Up ahead she heard a wail, and then a loud splash. She wondered if Pete had found the next open chamber, and whether it even mattered anymore.
Megan glared at the empty ledge on the other side of the cascade. The man was a pig, a cold-hearted psychopath, every bit as evil as the man who’d betrayed her trust when she was in school. She could not let him win.
The water washed down over the rock, eroding her courage. How the hell was she supposed to climb through that deluge without a rope? She sat down on the rock and rubbed her forehead, fully aware that she had no choice. There was no going back. The chamber beyond the third sump was a death trap, assuming she could even get back there alive. And there was no other way out except through the waterfall to the tunnel on the opposite side. Crampons for hiking boots were wrapped up in the pack Kat had given her, something used for the steepest pitches, but to free climb through a waterfall . . . Had it ever been done?
Didn’t matter. She had to do it. Do it or die.
She fished out the spikes and attached them to her boots. Then she looped a rope through her pack so she could haul it up afterward. The rebreather would have to stay on her back, supplying her with air while the water surged around her, but it would be a terrible hindrance. The water drumming on it might be enough to capsize her. The facemask could also be peeled off, so she tightened the straps until they pinched her face painfully.
Megan set her jaw and jumped onto the rock wall, burying her spikes in the soft stone. She stopped in the swirl of mist, testing the stability of the crampons before she tackled the falls. Like a fly on a wall she crept upward, retracting and slamming the spikes back in with each step. She felt for the next slippery crevice, then jammed an anchor into the rock and attached a rope. Now came the challenging part. Megan moved sideways and upward, right into the crashing column of water. It drove her down, her knees buckling at the force that slammed onto the rebreather and at the pressure on her head. But she thrust upward again, playing blindly for another handhold, another anchor point. She found it and ratcheted upward. Gradually, meter by meter, she rose through the falls. It was impossible, but somehow she was doing it—beating the miserable bastard at his own game.
She reached up, found a crevice, dug her fingers in and pulled. But the rock was too soft, the snag too thin. It crumbled in her hands.
“Oh no!” she shrieked as she fell backward right into the torrent. The water washed her down and the first anchor popped. She was going to join Ray.
But when the rope hit the second anchor, through some miracle it held, and she snapped back in the middle of the falls. Winded and terrified, she hung there, while the water bashed into her body. But soon she realized that she was still alive, that this war wasn’t over, and that weak little Megan wasn’t going to be beaten. She straightened, clutched the rope, and shinnied upward, using her lockable cam to clamp and hold her on each segment. Perhaps it was only minutes before she reached the second anchor, but it seemed like hours of backbreaking labor. Finally she found
the rock face and ascended once again, methodically, resolutely, on fire.
Jorge sank onto a bed of crystal snow, sloughing his pack and rebreather and heaving a great sigh. Time to take an eight-hour nap before he braved the steepest pitch and Breakdown Hall. Since leaving the waterfall behind, he’d scurried through half a dozen crawlways, winched around a corkscrew pitch, and forded five streams. It was three days since he’d left the doctor and his friends beyond the reach of rescue, in the graveyard of his ancestors. Eight hours since he’d severed the rope at the waterfall and halted the chubby archaeologist in her tracks. He was free to distribute or sell the latest in biological weapons at his leisure, without any hindrance from men of supposed conscience.
Of course he had once been a man of conscience, a man of principle and compassion. The thought of what he was about to do would have been abhorrent to him. But men were driven to do the unthinkable when pushed hard enough. When they had seen enough babies die, enough women wail, enough men blow their brains out in utter despair, something curdled in the guts of these men of principle. Something rattled their stoic hearts. When they saw innocent lambs gunned down in the street . . .
He would see the end of injustice, or he would see the end of the world.
It was this thought that would carry him to the top, although his energy reserves were sorely depleted. It was this message that he must send. But as his eyelashes fluttered on the opaque darkness of the cave, it wasn’t the pile of bodies in the ravine, nor the solemn funeral procession that he saw. It was the shattered look in the eyes of a friend.
Chapter Fifty-one
As Kat thrust through the tunnel, she felt stinging sensations all over her body, as if a swarm of wasps had just attacked her. She didn’t know if she could keep going. Suddenly the ceiling peeled back, as the tunnel opened into an airy chamber with a large pool directly in front of the crawlway. Cave rafts with a smooth skin of milky ectoplasm dotted the pool. She dove headfirst into the water, feeling the gel encase her like amniotic fluid. The stings intensified, but now she knew they held a different meaning. The battle had begun again at this new juncture—another guard station.
Slowly she surfaced and let the gloppy substance drip down her face and spread over her prickling torso and limbs. She felt Mark plop into the water beside her. As the gel cleared from her eyelids, she could dimly distinguish Pete sitting on the other side of the pool, grinning like a fool.
“Told ya,” he said smugly. “We’re going to make it.”
“We almost didn’t,” Mark muttered as he wallowed in the gel.
Kat swam to the other side and let Pete help her out. “But we did,” said Kat. “These organisms really are holding the others at bay. Maybe they’re the only reason we haven’t had a deadly plague on the surface.” It rankled her to say it, but she had to. “You made the right decision, Pete. This is probably the best way to the surface.”
He beamed.
Kat gave him a tentative smile. Then she thought of Megan, and her lips began to tremble. “I hope Megan doesn’t give up, but frankly, I don’t know if she can climb out alone. She relied on us quite a bit to get her down here.”
“She can do it,” said Pete. “You don’t give us casual cavers enough credit. Right, Mark?” He winked at Mark, who picked up his cheery mood and grinned.
“Right,” he said. “Blood and guts, that’s all you need.” He hoisted himself from the pool and tossed his pack on the ground. “I guess we refuel and start climbing.”
Kat nodded, although she already felt wasted from the hike through the cavern and the short crawl through the tunnel. The climb ahead would be grueling. She zipped open Mark’s pack and removed some containers of crackers and cheese, handing them out to her small party of survivors. They wolfed down the snacks, then slugged half a bottle of water each before standing and surveying their surroundings.
The chamber was small, but a fairly large passage opened on the far side into a steep but walkable incline. The Mayan route to the surface. Hopefully there would be no impassable cliffs and no sumps to worry about. But Kat wasn’t sure they could make up for Jorge’s head start.
Megan stared at the dangling rope, a hundred meters up the cliff face, a precipitous climb that would tax her under ordinary conditions. But she hadn’t survived the treachery at the waterfall, the deadly current of three sumps, and countless shorter climbs to be halted at this new challenge. She donned her gloves and attached her halter.
Accompanied by the clinks of clips and buckles, she began the rolling climb up the rope. At least Jorge hadn’t severed this one. Of course he probably never dreamed that she would wrestle her way through the waterfall, let alone be right behind him. He thought she was just a weak, overweight woman. He had no idea what kind of crises she’d faced, what torment she’d endured, and what would make her restraint snap.
She shinnied up the rope, edging the darkness away as she aimed her headlamp up through this crack in the earth. Finally, after what was likely an hour or two, she flipped over the brim and faced the monstrous mound of breakdown. She took a brief rest, then attacked the pyramid, scampering over the slick boulders like a muskrat over river rocks. She was hot on the trail, nipping at the bastard’s heels, and when all her strength had been sapped, she drove onward on sheer will alone.
Jorge slithered through the last meter of The Itchy Passage and slapped on his mask as soon as he stood up in the toxic chamber. The air hung thick around him, rife with sulfur dioxide and carbon dioxide. He dialed his rebreather to recycle scrubbed, safe air and plodded forward, so close to the surface now he could smell it. Spiders skittered forward to be crushed under his boots—or was it something else that made them retreat? Did they sense the deadly organism he was transporting, something that carried more toxins in its microscopic girth than all the poison in their venom sacs? He smiled, savoring the power he now possessed after a lifetime of impotence.
A shudder ran through him, too, even though it was quite humid in the cave now that he was near the surface. He should be thrilled that he finally had the means to make a difference, to sway minds and manipulate policy. But his stomach churned. How far would he have to go? Would anyone be able to stop him? Should they?
He ducked beneath a low-hanging snottite and watched a droplet fizz on the carbonaceous ground. As he sidestepped another, his elbow jabbed the holster at his side. The snap opened and his revolver tipped out. The splash made him spin around.
His gun lay in the small pool of snottites. As he watched, it sank into the cushion of acid. The casing already looked warped. It was useless now, and he had no intention of burning his hands in an attempt to pull it out. Besides, he wouldn’t need it anymore. He turned back to the sloping passage, the next rappel, and the crawl that would take him to the sinkhole. Freedom and release lay ahead.
But as he slid down the rope that he and the doctor had climbed up nine days ago, doubt burrowed into his brain. What if the woman still followed? It was impossible—that overfed cow would never be able to climb through the waterfall. But what if she did and retrieved the gun? Or even more unlikely but still at the verge of possibility, what if the dogged doctor had abandoned his precious wife and was closing in on him even now?
He landed at the bottom of the pitch with a shake of his head, dismissing such a remote scenario. The gun was useless anyway, and so was the woman. The doctor was another story, but he would never leave his wife. Jorge clipped himself off-rope and dove into the last crawlway.
No more obstacles. No more doubts. The road ahead was clear.
Mark couldn’t believe the ground they’d covered in twenty-four hours. The path was easier, with fewer belly crawls, a gentler slope, and no sumps to worry about. When they came to the first pitch, though, he’d thought they were done for. It was a thirty-meter climb straight up. The remnants of an ancient Mayan rope ladder still clung to the cliff wall, but it was hopelessly decrepit. Moldy, rotting sections had dropped off and littered the ground at their feet. But a
mere thirty meters wasn’t going to stop Kat. Despite how wasted she looked, she slung a rope over her shoulder, attached crampons to her boots, and crept up the wall as easily as a spider. At the top she tossed the rope down, smiling at them as if she’d just run a marathon and expected to climb Mount Everest next. But as she stepped back, Mark heard her resonant sigh, and pictured her slumping to the ground as soon as she was out of sight.
He scrambled up after her, relieved to see her snacking and smiling when he reached the ledge, and not sprawled on the ground unconscious. They tackled two more “short” thirty-meter pitches which, according to Kat’s meticulous mapping and recording of angles and distance, brought them halfway to the surface.
“No wonder the Maya had no trouble getting to the deepest burial ground on earth,” she said when they curled up for a much needed sleep. “This cave is a dream.”
“Except when it’s a nightmare,” Mark couldn’t help adding. “Remember that most of them didn’t get out alive.”
“Well, that’s because they didn’t shower with guardian snottites,” she remarked with a grin.
It was amazing how optimistic she seemed. After all they’d been through, and especially after losing Ray, he expected her to be dejected, weary, and snappish—typical traits of someone at the end of their rope. But Kat had incredible stamina and, although it was probably a front right now, a bubbly outlook on life. Even in the most dire circumstances, she maintained a fierce, unshakable hope. Maybe some of that had rubbed off on him. That’s why he’d trusted a blatant terrorist—he had the same sort of faith in humanity. Although this time he’d been wrong.
Though numb with weariness, Mark had a hard time drifting off to sleep. They’d made progress today, covered a fair distance to the surface. But would it be enough? And in the end, would it even matter? Kat lay beside him, her slender chest rising and falling, seemingly at peace despite the inexorable growth of the killer cancer inside her. How long would it be before he lost her for good? And here he was, pushing her beyond her limits to stop a plague and save the world, when the only thing in the world worth saving was right in front of him.
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