by JT Sawyer
“Your father had great taste. That pistol you have there is a classic 1911 similar to the one he used. How many mags did the rancher have?”
“I’ve got two spare in my pocket and a box of fifty rounds.”
“Let’s make every round count because it sure as hell does.”
“Yep, my thoughts exactly.”
They wove through the dark passageway, illuminated in sections by the dim glow of headlamps, while the faint compression of grit below echoed off the narrow confines of the chalky walls.
Jim was walking behind Becka. “Where are you from, young lady?”
She turned slightly, trying to answer while keeping from knocking her head on the low ceiling. “I used to live in L.A. I only came out to my grandpa’s ranch in the summer. My mom and I were trying to get out of the city after my dad died and the place went wild,” she said, trying to stay composed.
“Did your mom get the virus too?”
“She went like the others did, a few days ago at the ranch house. My grandpa locked her in the barn and wouldn’t let me see her towards the end.” Her voice trembled as she began wiping tears from her dusty cheeks. “Then I heard a gunshot one morning and knew what my grandpa had done.”
“What happened to the rest of your friends and family in L.A.? Did you hear about anyone surviving the virus there once they were infected?”
Evelyn interrupted, “Jim, that’s enough. The poor girl’s been through a world of pain and doesn’t need to rehash it all.” She whispered to the girl, “Becka, sweetie, I’m so sorry about your family. Nobody should have to go through something like that.” She frowned back at Jim.
Becka’s face bore a deep grimace and her breathing was restrained, with forced exhalations. She began focusing on the boot heels of the person in front of her as she pushed through the passageway.
“Don’t be afraid,” Evelyn said, placing a hand on the girl’s shoulder. “I have been with Travis in the wilds and he has been on many more grueling trips alone, I’m sure. He will not lead us astray. We’ll find our way through this maze and you’ll feel the warmth of the sun on your pretty face again, my dear.”
After a while, everyone fell silent and continued moving. The only sounds Travis could hear were their boots on the rough rock; the shuffle-walk of Evelyn, the light steps of Katy and Becka, the clumsy tread of Jim in the middle, and the faint footfalls of Pete and LB.
With only a few rest breaks woven in, they marched for three hours and then halted. The rock walls of the passageway had begun to change, showing signs of slight cracks and fissures where there had only been smooth rock. The tunnel began to widen and there was an inflow of chilled, musty air coming from the darkness ahead. After twenty feet, the passage opened into an immense cathedral-like chamber. Travis shined his headlamp but couldn’t make out the full scope of the ceiling. The rest of the group emerged from the narrow tunnel and gazed at the lofty walls and openness. About eighty feet from where they entered, they could see two passages.
“Let’s take a break here, everyone,” he said, dropping his pack on the hard ground. Pete came up alongside him. “Did you notice how we passed through another geologic layer back there,” he said to Travis.
“Yep. We’re in the Kaibab Limestone layer, it seems,” he said, looking at Pete for reassurance.
“Not bad for an old fossil of a guide like you, Trav. This is the layer in the bedrock where springs are typically found, though I’m not sure how many of those are going to be down here. It also means that we should be close to the surface.”
“Water and sunshine—what more do ya need? The menu keeps looking better. Besides, I hate caves,” he said frowning.
Katy came up and offered a drink of water. “I know you two are iron-men but the group could use some sleep. We just can’t keep going in fifth gear like this.”
Travis nodded and took a swig of water. He looked over at the group. “We’re all strung out and weary, so let’s sack out for a few hours and get some sleep. We’ll take turns keeping watch. I’ll take the first shift.” No one disagreed. With the exception of Katy, everyone quickly turned their packs into makeshift pillows and collapsed on the cavern floor.
Katy knelt down next to Travis, who was sitting cross-legged, staring off into the dimly lit cavern. As she looked over the cave ceiling he said, “Prior to running from bloodsucking mutants, something I’ve been wondering about most of our trip—how is it a jewel of a lady like yourself isn’t tied to a six-figure husband and a mansion in the hills?”
She thrust her chin up. “Is that what you think it takes to win a woman’s heart? Besides, who says I wasn’t?” She paused, taking a sip of water. “Men are a fickle breed of creature whose ambitions overrule their sensibilities. If I ever meet one who thinks logically and listens well enough, then I’d reconsider.”
“Huh, what was that last thing you said?” he smiled. She leaned over and punched him lightly in the arm.
“What about you—has the military been your life so long that you’ve forgotten how the rest of the world works?”
“The military was indeed my only world. Being deployed three hundred days a year doesn’t exactly nurture a marriage. Some couples in the special operations community make it work, but they’re the exception, I think. My wife could only take so many, ‘I love yous’ from abroad and, after the birth of our son, it always seemed like I was an intruder in our house after I’d return from a mission. My unit was the only stable family I’ve ever known.”
“Then why’d you get out?”
“Ah, the quality of food really declined and my government-sponsored vacations were growing stale.”
“Come on, I’m serious, Trav.”
He looked up at the walls. “Well, I didn’t want to show up at my son’s high-school graduation one day and say, ‘Remember me? I’m your dad.’ Now, here I am a thousand miles from him, not knowing what he’s even been going through or….if he’s alive.” He paused to rub the back of his neck. “Plus, I thought we could salvage our marriage. My wife told me a few months ago, before we separated, that I should take this trip and try something else that didn’t center on raids, kicking in doors, and shooting bad guys. Guess that didn’t pan out so well.” He lightly shrugged his right shoulder, which was stiff from an old injury. “Yeah, I was also hoping to do without any more joint and disk damage too.” Looking over at Katy, he said, “Why don’t you get some sleep. I’ll be over by the tunnel entrance and will wake you in a few hours.”
As he got up, she said in a low whisper, “For what it’s worth, I’m glad you’re good at shooting bad guys.”
Chapter 8
The dream was always the same—gunfire, barking dogs, and the acrid smell of spent cartridges coupled with the dust from shattered adobe. His mind raced back to a recurrent nightmare, seared in his mind from a nocturnal raid in Afghanistan. Most nights, the images unspooled in his head, causing his sleep to be a series of disjointed nightmares, interspersed with occasional slumber.
In his briefing that evening, the sgt. major said the intel indicated there would be little resistance guarding their target. Despite the nightly routine of doing another kill or capture mission for high-value targets, Travis never let himself sink into complacency or let his awareness lapse. The actual dynamics of a raid had certain principles in common but each mission was its own beast. The unit only had a few more weeks left before returning home, and he and his men hadn’t seen much daylight during the past sixty-eight days of constant missions. His nocturnal world was one seen through the green prism of night-vision goggles. Perpetual life in the dark made him understand how Arctic peoples were sometimes driven mad from lack of sunlight during their long winters, and he had yearned to see the sun cresting over the Rockies again.
Three units were involved, with Travis’s taking point. The infil to the quiet neighborhood that night was without incident. The scene that unfolded after the house doors were breached meant four in his unit wouldn’t be seeing their
families again, including Travis’s best friend, Doug. He was standing beside him upon entering the kitchen, at the rear of the house, when the firefight erupted. Minutes later, after the dust cleared, he stood next to the riddled body of his friend. Travis hardly felt the pain of the round that had torn through his own arm while looking at the room beside him and the staircase ahead, both of which were choked with a tangled mass of dead extremists, fallen soldiers, and nearly a dozen of the unit’s dogs.
The morphine, later given to him by a medic, did little to numb the hole in his bicep. Instead, he felt nausea and a constricting emptiness in his soul as he was evac’d to the chopper. Just hours before they left the base, he and Doug had swapped stories about their kids while enjoying a cigar. Now, the world had changed forever as another brother was gone.
“Travis, wake up. It’s OK. You’re OK,” said Katy’s calming voice as he shot upright from the cavern floor where he was sleeping. His hands were pale and he could feel sweat running down his cheek, the nightmare still fresh in his mind. Katy was kneeling next to him. The river trip had soothed his memories, but the images of that one night, years ago, muscled their way back into his being.
She placed her hand on his as he looked up into her eyes. He took a deep breath and nodded, trying to think of something humorous to say but not finding the words. She reached over and gave him the picture of his son that had fallen from his grasp while he slept. “You will see him again, Travis. You have to believe that.”
He gazed at the photograph and then raised his eyes over towards Becka, who was curled up against the rock wall, asleep. Helluva world for a kid to grow up in. Helluva world. He tucked the photo in his pack and glanced at his watch. It had been close to six hours since they had stopped to sleep. Cool air was floating over the ground, while the rest of the group lay silent.
He patted Katy’s hand and then rose slowly, working the kinks out of his legs, and walked over to where Pete was resting. “Let’s go scope out those other passages,” Travis said. They moved over to the opposite end of the cavern to examine the two routes. The one to the left was narrow with a low ceiling and a flow of warm air moving through it. The right passage was much wider and had a slight decline. Both had ceilings that were riddled with the same type of stalactites and rock knobs they had just passed through.
“Better A or B?” Travis said. “Any thoughts, my friend?”
Pete ran his forearm across his head, wiping off some dust. “Well, if you subscribe to the principle of diurnal winds, which indicate that warm air flows down-canyon during the day, then we should probably take tunnel A,” he said, pointing to the left entrance.
“Nicely put, Professor. I just hope this passage doesn’t get any tighter,” said Travis.
“A vending machine at the end with some cold beer would be nice, too,” Pete chimed. “I just finished the last of my water and everyone else is probably running on empty about now.
“Let’s get everyone moving,” said Travis. “You take the lead again. Keep Jim close—that nail-biter is the one most likely to panic.”
The group gathered up their belongings and shuffled over to the narrow entrance. Evelyn’s headlamp was flickering from low batteries, creating a strobe effect on the cavern walls. “Give yourself some space from the person in front of you,” Travis said. “Unless you’re the lead dog, the view’s all the same.” One by one, they filed past him and insinuated themselves into the wiry tunnel.
During the next two hours, their spirits rose a little with the prospect that the inflow of air meant the mouth to the outside world was nearing. The mounting curves and shallow ceiling in the tunnel required them to go from a squat to a low crawl. The serpentine passage twisted one last time before ascending, revealing a glimmer of light ahead as it opened into a small cavern, about twenty feet in diameter with a ten-foot ceiling. In the vaulted ceiling were tiny fissures that filtered in slivers of sunlight. The cavern floor was damp and gave off the smell of recent precipitation. Besides the insect tracks weaving through the wet soil, their boot prints were the only ones present. On the opposite side of the tunnel, they could see a three-foot archway with a row of tightly stacked rocks held in place with weathered cement. Lying on the ground next to the archway was a rusty shovel with a broken handle.
“Is this a prehistoric burial chamber?” asked Evelyn.
“No, it’s an old mine shaft,” said Pete. “Probably sealed up long ago to protect someone’s claim, or to keep out the local kids.”
Travis studied the entrance. Could be a single wall or a forty-foot-thick tunnel of boulders. He glanced up at the ceiling and visually probed the small quarter-sized cracks. Looks to be about two feet thick.
The shafts of sunlight flickered in the cavern, and he saw dark clouds parading overhead. The monsoon season had ended a week ago but the region still saw intermittent storms roll in from the west coast. Eighty percent of flash floods happened between noon and eight p.m. His watch indicated it was four p.m. This weather could dance around the area all day or pound us with biblical rains.
He looked back at the tunnel they had just emerged from and back at the ceiling. He thought about the half-sticks of dynamite in his pack. It might be enough to take out the ceiling, but what would it do to the structural integrity of the tunnel where we’d have to seek cover? The cavern was turning gray as the dimming sunlight was obscured by cloud cover, followed by a low rumble of thunder. Nothing like the present to make a decision for you.
“If that thunderstorm above pummels the region, this cave is going to turn into a frothing cauldron of quicksand. Our best bet is to blow the ceiling and climb out.”
“Where do you propose we go to avoid getting crushed by all the falling rocks?” said Jim.
“You’ll have to crawl back in the tunnel while I plant the dynamite and blast the ceiling,” said Travis.
“I’m not going back in there to be trapped in this mausoleum.”
“That’s fine; you can stay here with me. I need to stand on someone’s shoulders to place the charges anyway, and you’re just the right height.”
Jim looked back at the tunnel. “Well, actually…I’d rather be in there with the others in case they need my help.”
Travis’s lower lip revealed a disgusted smirk. “Pete, take the group about thirty feet back into the tunnel. If anything happens to me and this route is impassable, you’ll have to guide the group out to that other tunnel we saw. LB and Katy, you two stay with me. You’re going to get in a back workout supporting my weight so I can reach the ceiling. Once the explosives are set, you can join the others.”
Pete motioned the remaining band into the tunnel while Travis pulled out the weathered dynamite sticks from his pack. These were small sections about six inches long, but they would serve to destabilize the rock ceiling enough to cause collapse. He unwrapped the two sticks and placed them in the side BDU pocket of his pants.
“It should take me about two minutes to secure the sticks so you’ll have to keep me steady, alright?” Katy and LB nodded and dropped to a squat. Travis pushed off of Katy’s leg with one boot and onto LB’s shoulder with the other while anchoring his hand on a slab of rough rock in the ceiling. Both bearers grimaced and shifted under his weight while struggling to maintain their balance. He could hear the rain increasing in tempo atop the cave, and droplets began trickling down the open fissures.
With the two sticks of dynamite placed a foot apart, he retraced his footsteps down the ladder of weary limbs. The chamber had darkened considerably and more rain was starting to run in along the crevices. The fuses were long enough for Travis to light them from where he stood. He removed a lighter from his shirt pocket. “Head back into the tunnel. If this goes as planned, we’ll be climbing outta here and we can start working on our tans again. When you hear me say, ‘fire in the hole,’ cover your ears. These charges are bad enough with ear protection, let alone in an echoing cave.”
As soon as Katy and Pete were tucked away, he lit the two fu
ses, then dove into the tunnel entrance. A few seconds later there was a rolling drum-like sound as a wave of dust choked the narrow passage. Everyone was coughing as flecks of dirt and debris glinted in the light of their headlamps.
A few minutes later, after the air settled, light shone through the passageway. They retraced their steps back to the small cavern, which had a waist-high pile of rocks in the center below a four-foot-diameter hole. Travis shook his head and wiped a flour-like coating of dirt off his face. He grabbed a few stones off the ground and lobbed them up at the ceiling to make sure there weren’t any loose sections.
A driving rain was pouring in, and lightning illuminated the cavern like a wave of camera flashes. The limestone walls were glistening as rivulets of water poured down them, filling the interior at their feet.
“Let’s go. There isn’t much time. Pete, you first, so you can help everyone else up,” he shouted over the increasing din of thunder. LB and Travis climbed atop the rock pile and gave Pete a boost up as he yanked himself over the lip and then sprawled flat on the surface, lowering a hand down to Evelyn. Becka and Katy went next. The water was cascading into the cave now as LB and Travis tried to maintain a foothold on the angular heap of slippery rocks. The cavern floor had become a broth of sticky clay, causing Jim to sink in past his ankles while trying to avoid the swift-moving torrent plummeting into the tunnel. Jim unearthed his boots from the brown muck and staggered up to the rock pile as the swirl of water rose around them. They grabbed him under the arms, beneath his cumbersome pack, as he struggled to stay upright.
Jim removed his pack and attempted to hand it to Pete, but his grip was unsteady and he fell backward, dropping the pack at the water’s edge with a splash. With terror-stricken eyes, he reached for it, but missed, while Travis grabbed him by a belt loop, tugging him back. “Let the pack go, damn it,” shouted Travis, in the deafening roar of water. Jim pushed Travis’s hand away and made a desperate lunge for a shoulder strap as the pack swirled by the rocks beneath his feet. At the last second, LB shot forward, grabbing Jim’s shirt and yanking him back to the diminishing cusp of the rock pile, while Jim clutched the pack against his silty shirt.