Inhabited

by Ike Hamill

  Joy looked down the tunnel. The darkness was receding.

  Kristin caught Carlos’s shoulders and held him up.

  “Carlos? Carlos?” Kristin asked. She shook him gently from behind.

  Joy put her back to the receding darkness and looked at Carlos’s face.

  His eyes slipped shut.

  Chapter Fourteen — Mining

  “HOLY SHIT!” MIGUEL SAID. “Look at this one!”

  He cradled the piece of quartz in both hands and brought it back to Travis. They both shined their lights on it and stared as the gold vein sparkled.

  “It’s so beautiful,” Travis said. He had never given gold a second thought before that day. But he had to admit it—there was inherent beauty in that metal. It softened the light and yet made it twinkle. It looked like the definition of wealth.

  Travis stuffed it in the bag. They only had one bag between them, so Travis wasn’t taking any chances. He had one strap tied to his wrist and his other arm looped through.

  “Hey guys,” Justin said. They both rushed over to him. He had found another streak of quartz to work behind a rock. Until that moment, he had nothing to report. “Guys?”

  “What? We’re right here,” Miguel said.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Justin said. He turned his body so they could see. His light was focused on a giant hunk of gold. Travis reached forward to touch it. It was as big as his fist.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Miguel said. “How thick is it?”

  “I don’t know,” Justin said. “Let’s get it out of there. Quick.”

  The presence of the gold seemed to manufacture urgency. They still had the same amount of time until the others returned, but somehow the clock was moving faster now. They had to get this gold and hide it somewhere before the authorities showed up to take it away. Justin beat at the surrounding quartz with his rock. Chips flew every direction.

  After a few seconds, Justin backed away.

  “Someone take over. I’ve got something in my eye,” he said. Justin scurried back and Miguel took up the rock. He took over the pounding at the same frantic pace.

  Justin leaned back against the wall. “You remember when Dominic had that scheme about buying bicycles from the dump and then repainting them and fixing them up?”

  “Yeah?” Travis asked.

  “We all thought we were going to be rich. Do you remember that?”

  “Yeah, until we found out that all those frames were junk. There’s a reason they had been thrown away.”

  “Exactly,” Justin said. “There’s always that moment when everything falls through. Jordan going to Vegas and trying to count cards. He lost two-month’s rent in one night. He kept figuring out what he was doing wrong and then he’d go back and lose even more. There’s always that ‘fuck you’ that jumps up and knocks the beer out of your hand just when everything looks like it’s going to work out.”

  “To be fair,” Travis said, “those were shitty plans. Shitty plans fail. That’s why they call them that.”

  “But this was a really shitty plan, too,” Justin said.

  Miguel paused for a second and turned around.

  “No offense,” Justin said, “but you have to admit. I mean, why was there a map that led precisely to where we would find gold? How come nobody ever came down here before? It’s all a little hard to believe.”

  “You’re just mad because you were wrong,” Miguel said over his shoulder. His blows against the wall slowed down, but when Travis tried to take over, he waved him away.

  “I get what you’re saying,” Travis said to Justin. “Maybe we just got lucky this time. Sometimes you just get lucky.”

  “This wasn’t luck,” Justin said. He pushed his helmet back and wiped his forehead. “We have a map. That’s not luck. You got that map from your grandfather?”

  “Yeah,” Miguel said.

  “And he got it from a dwarf?”

  “A Duende,” Miguel said. “He bartered for it.”

  “What did he trade, a monkey’s paw?” Justin asked.

  Travis laughed.

  “I don’t get it,” Miguel said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Justin said.

  “I think I’ve almost got it,” Miguel said. He bashed the quartz with the rock. Travis went to look over his shoulder.

  “I think we’re going to have to find a way to melt this stuff down. Where do you sell gold?” Justin asked.

  “What?” Travis asked.

  With the sound of rock hitting crystal, Justin could barely hear himself talk. He waved at Travis to ignore him.

  Justin wandered over to the powdery deposit on the wall that he had uncovered. While they worked on the gold, Travis had used the leg bone to uncover more of the skeleton. He was almost certain that it was human. The curve of the skull and the eye socket didn’t look like any animal skull he’d ever seen. Of course he had only seen pictures of animal skeletons. He could be wrong. Regardless, Joy had been right to go after help.

  The bones made his skin feel tight. He didn’t want to be in their presence.

  Justin swept his light around the room. There were other circles of powder packed into the walls. He wondered if they all contained bones. Once the idea entered his head, he had to investigate. One of the bones on the cave floor would be pretty good at scraping powder, but he didn’t want to touch it. Instead, he found a flat rock that was the right shape. He walked to the next circle of white powder. He crouched in front of it and began at the center.

  It didn’t take long.

  “Keep going!” Travis yelled. Justin glanced over his shoulder and saw Miguel’s light bouncing as he wailed at the quartz.

  Justin uncovered a hard lump in the powder. He scraped a circle around it and then dug into the powder. The thing in there wasn’t white like the bones. This thing was gray and black. It had a sharp edge. It wasn’t a bone. The edge was too straight.

  Justin tried to worm his rock under the lip of the thing, but he didn’t have enough exposed yet. He went back to work on the powder. He scraped a line into the surface of the powder and then worked at making it wider. With enough of it excavated, he saw a crack forming in the powder along the edge of the object. He tried prying again. This time, it popped out. The metal bounced on the rocks. Powder scattered.

  Justin dried his hand on his shirt and then picked up the object between two fingers.

  He walked it back to Miguel and Travis.

  The bones could have been from any time. They could have been from before white people even settled the land. This piece of metal was made by a modern machine. Its presence in the cave made Justin uneasy.

  They had switched positions. Travis was taking the last blows while Miguel cheered him on. Justin arrived to see the chunk of gold liberated from the quartz in the wall.

  Miguel picked it up and turned it in the light from his headlamp. Travis worked on picking up the quarts fragments. They had dug a small hole in a patch of sand and they were hiding the quartz there. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but they had felt the need to hide the evidence of their amateur mining.

  “I found something,” Justin said. They looked over to him. Justin held out the object, pinched between his fingers.

  “Hey,” Miguel said. He reached. His hand slowed as it got closer to the thing. “That’s mine, I think.”

  He took it carefully from Justin’s grip. Miguel used his fingernail to scrape a patch of powder from the side. In the metal handle of the knife, the initials, “M. P.” were carved.

  “Where did you get this?”

  -o-o-o-o-o-

  “It was embedded in that stuff. I found it over there,” Justin said.

  “That’s impossible,” Miguel said.

  “I don’t understand. What’s the big deal?” Travis asked.

  Miguel held up the knife. “This is my knife. It was in the bag that I lost.”

  “And it was buried in one of those powder deposits over there,” Justin said.

/>   “That can’t be. Maybe it just looks like your knife,” Travis said.

  Miguel held it up in front of Travis’s face. He pointed at the initials.

  “There are a ton of people named Mike, and Matt, and Mark. Somebody else has the same initials as you. Big deal.”

  Miguel held out the knife for Travis to take. “Open it up. I put a dent in the blade when I was a kid. I accidentally shot it with a BB gun. Take a look.”

  “You look. I’m going to bury this quartz and then we can get out of here,” Travis said. He scooped up some of the chips and began walking them towards their debris hole.

  Miguel and Justin looked at each other.

  “Let me see,” Justin said. He took the knife from Miguel. His hands shook as he pulled the blade out and snapped it into place. He smiled and exhaled.

  There was no dent.

  “Turn it over,” Miguel said.

  Justin narrowed his eyes. He almost didn’t want to know for sure. He flipped the blade and saw the circular indentation. It was the size of a BB.

  “Yup,” Miguel said. “That’s it.”

  “We have to figure out what this means,” Justin said.

  Miguel nodded.

  Travis returned. There were still scattered flakes of quartz on the cave floor. He scuffed these around with his foot to further obscure their digging.

  “I think we’re good,” Travis said. He pulled the bag from his shoulders. He took the gold nugget from Miguel and dropped it in.

  “There could be something in here with us,” Justin said.

  Travis shook his head. “Who cares? Forget about it. We’re in the wind.”

  “No, man,” Miguel said. “He’s right. We have to figure out what this means. Something stole my bag, took the knife out, and packed it in one of those powder cocoons. That’s some weird shit. What if the same thing did that to old boney over here?” He gestured towards the skeleton. “Then it could do that to one of us, right?”

  “What’s the difference?” Travis asked. “You could just freak out and it turns out that Ryan has been fucking with us all night. But what’s the difference? Either way, we have to get out of here. You want to freak out and then what? You run into the dark and fall down a shaft?”

  “Hey, man,” Justin said. “Settle down, okay?”

  “He’s not wrong,” Miguel said. He moved his light around the cave, chasing the darkness away with his headlamp. “Whatever is going on, I don’t want to be around for it. We’ve got some gold. Let’s get out and cash it in while we’re young.”

  Justin moved his eyes between Travis and Miguel.

  “Fine,” Justin said.

  -o-o-o-o-o-

  “Careful,” Miguel said. “You’re going to get that stuff all over your neck.”

  Travis was trying to look behind himself while he crawled through the powder-encrusted hole. Justin had chipped away more of the powder before attempting the passage. Their hole had looked smaller when they found the exit.

  “Someone is back there,” Travis said. Miguel grabbed his arm and helped him the rest of the way through.

  Justin was climbing down the slope to the path that led to the ledge.

  “You guys need to keep up,” Justin called.

  “Stop running ahead,” Travis yelled back. “This bag is heavy.”

  “Give it to me then,” Justin said. “It’s not that heavy.”

  Travis and Miguel scrambled down the slope. When they got to the bottom, their lights moved nervously up and down the long cave. The shadows were deep and they danced as the lights shifted around.

  “Give me the bag,” Justin said.

  “I’m good,” Travis said.

  “Maybe we should add more water to our lamps. They seem like they’re getting a little dim,” Miguel said.

  “Let’s wait until we get back to the mine,” Justin said.

  Justin led the way. Their winding path reminded him of an old stream bed. It made sense, he supposed. The caves must have been formed by water erosion. The rocks swept through curves. He heard the sound of dripping water from off in the distance.

  “You guys remember that earthquake a few years ago?” Miguel asked.

  Justin whipped around and flashed his light across Miguel’s face. “Shut up. There’s not going to be an earthquake.”

  “No,” Miguel said. “That’s not what I was saying. I was just thinking that maybe the reason the miners never found that gold is because it wasn’t there when the mine was open.”

  “These caves must be thousands of years old,” Travis said.

  “Right, but not that crack,” Miguel said. “That crack that led from the mine to the caves could have opened up in that earthquake. Maybe the mine was close to the caves the whole time, but nobody knew. Then the earthquake comes and suddenly they’re connected.”

  Justin shrugged. “It still doesn’t explain why you have a map to gold that nobody took.”

  “We worked hard for that gold,” Travis said. “Maybe they didn’t know they had to look for quartz and then smash it out of the wall.”

  “First, everyone knows that. Second, Miguel had a piece of quartz with gold in it. Third, it was a map to gold. They knew gold was here but they didn’t come get it? What sense does that make?”

  “This is it,” Miguel said.

  “Are you sure?” Travis asked. He turned and looked back the way they had come. He made angles with his arms pointing at the far points of the cave.

  “Look down,” Miguel said.

  Justin did. There was some sand scattered on the rocks. It was disturbed in a trail going to the right. The trail disappeared into a crack.

  “Where’s the ledge?” Justin asked.

  Miguel moved around him. He approached carefully and dropped down to all fours as he got closer to the place where the floor fell away. Miguel hung his head over the edge and pointed his light into the crack. “There’s a gap, but the ledge is there.” He looked down again. “There’s some rocks stuck down there. I think maybe part of the ledge broke off. Yeah, see here? There’s a spot where the exposed rock looks fresh.”

  “Fresh?” Justin asked. “Rocks can look fresh?”

  “Maybe we should set up a rope?” Miguel asked. “Help each other over.”

  “We don’t have ropes,” Travis said. “In the one pack we have left, all we have is carbide, water for the lamps, baggies, and a couple of flashlights.”

  “And gold,” Justin said.

  “Right,” Travis said.

  “Okay, so one of you guys hold my arm,” Miguel said.

  Justin came forward. He glanced at the ledge they were going to try to reach and then he found a place where he could grab the wall to anchor himself. He offered his other hand to Miguel. Using Justin’s grip for safety, Miguel stretched his foot out as far as he could to step on the other side of the ledge. He was at the limits of his tendons and the fabric of his pants by the time he got his toe to the other side. With that foot secure, he braced himself on the opposite wall of the crack.

  “Okay, let go,” Miguel said.

  “You sure?” Justin asked.

  Miguel nodded. He pushed off with his trailing foot and pulled with his arms. Justin was certain that Miguel wasn’t going to make it. His heart pounded until Miguel finally landed his second foot safely on the other side.

  “You go next,” Justin said to Travis.

  “Fuck you,” Travis said.

  “I’m taller, and I can make it easier. You’re going to need me to push you off from this side.”

  “Oh.” Travis moved around Justin.

  He tried to execute the same maneuver that Miguel had accomplished. It didn’t work for him. Travis stretched his leg to its limit and Justin reached as far as he could to give him more slack.

  “Just take my hand,” Miguel said. “I can haul you up.” He reached out from the other side. They brushed fingers a couple of times before they closed their grip. As soon as Travis tried to pull, Miguel realized that he wa
s over balanced. He didn’t have enough to pull on to get them both to safety.

  “You’re pulling me down,” Miguel said between clenched teeth.

  Travis relinquished his grip on the wall and dedicated both hands to holding onto Miguel.

  Miguel grunted with the effort.

  “I’ll boost you,” Justin said.

  When Justin grabbed ahold of Travis’s leg, Travis yelled, “Hey! Get off.”

  Justin shoved. With the extra momentum, Miguel was able to fall backwards, pulling Travis to the unbroken part of the ledge. Travis hauled Miguel back up to his feet.

  “You stay there,” Miguel said to Justin. “We’ll go make sure help is coming. Maybe we can get some ropes from one of the other bags.”

  Justin shook his head. “No way. I’m going to jump.”

  “Don’t jump,” Travis said. “You’ll just hit the corner. You don’t have a straight shot.”

  “Then you guys can catch me,” Justin said.

  “No man,” Miguel said. “Seriously. It’s not worth it. Wait there, where you’re safe.”

  “Safe? What makes you think I’m safe. I probably only have an hour of light left,” Justin said. “If they’ve gone to get help, then you’re not going to have any ropes until Joy gets back with the Jeep.”

  “She’s smart,” Travis said. “She probably left somebody behind with the gear in case we got out, you know?”

  “I’m going to jump,” Justin said.

  “No!” Miguel said. “We’re going. Don’t jump. We won’t catch you.”

  “You guys are assholes. At least give me a flashlight,” Justin said. He waited and watched their lights turn towards each other. They whispered something between them before Travis turned so Miguel could dig in the bag.

  “Here,” Miguel said. He tossed something and tracked it with his light. As the object came down, Miguel’s light shone in Justin’s eyes and he barely caught it. It was a candle.

  “Heads up,” Miguel said.

  Justin looked up in time to see a small box of matches flipping through the air. He caught that with one hand.