Rattled

by Kris Bock

  Camie wiped her face with a flame-patterned bandanna and said, “Kind of muggy today.”

  She frowned toward the western horizon. Erin followed her gaze and saw low clouds building up above the distant mountains. Hopefully the clouds would stay above the mountains, like yesterday. But the air did feel humid, for New Mexico. Normally their sweat would evaporate as quickly as it formed.

  Camie shoved her water bottle back in the pack and grabbed The Finder. “Let’s go.”

  Erin sighed and trudged after her, trying to appreciate that her arms only ached from fatigue and no longer from carrying The Finder’s weight.

  Finally they reached the search site. Erin collapsed against a rock outcropping where it angled enough to provide a tiny sliver of shade. Her legs still stuck out in the sun, and the shade didn’t feel much cooler, but at least she wasn’t moving. “I’m melting,” she wailed in her best Wicked Witch of the West voice.

  Even Tiger looked limp as he found his own patch of shade and settled down, grumbling. Camie poured water into a dish and set it next to him, then crouched in front of Erin. “You okay?”

  She managed to nod. “But what I wouldn’t give for a tall, icy glass of lemonade. Or a swimming pool.”

  “Greenhorn. Give it another five or six years and you’ll adjust to the heat. Just be glad we’re not doing this in August.”

  “I am. But right now, I wish we were doing it in Alaska.”

  Camie grinned. “Have some more water and imagine yourself standing on a glacier.”

  Erin had already finished off one water bottle and now understood why Camie had insisted they take three each. Even with all the water she’d been guzzling, Erin had only had to pee once that morning. She started her second water bottle and ate a granola bar. She wasn’t hungry but hoped it would give her an energy boost.

  Camie squatted, elbows resting on her knees, looking disgustingly healthy and cheerful. “We’ve got a couple of options. Wander randomly, of course. We could get lucky, but probably not.”

  Erin shook her head. “I’m not counting on luck these days.”

  Camie raised an eyebrow. “From the sounds of things, you could have gotten lucky the other night.” When Erin just gave her a look, Camie chuckled and went on. “We could make a grid. Start on one side and work our way back and forth. Make passes every twenty feet or so.”

  “That sounds very proper and scientific,” Erin said. “And time consuming.” She sighed.

  “There is one more option,” Camie said. “We could start at our best guess of a location and work out from there. It’s a little trickier to keep track, but it means we start where we have the best chance of finding something.”

  Erin scowled. “Why didn’t you say so in the first place! You know darn well you’d already made up your mind.”

  Camie gave her a pat on the shin. “I wanted you to feel included. Anyway, I didn’t think you were in any hurry to get up.”

  “There is that.” She pushed herself up with a groan. “Well, we didn’t come all the way out here to nap in the shade, so let’s go.”

  Tiger looked at them, muttered something, and closed his eyes again, making it clear that he personally intended to nap in the shade for as long as possible. Erin couldn’t blame him. At least she wasn’t wearing a fur coat.

  “All right,” Camie said, “you spent the last year researching this treasure. You probably know more about it than any person alive. So where do we start?”

  Erin closed her eyes, letting all the bits and pieces of information slide through her brain. She ignored the ones she thought were misleading, like Doc Noss’s first-person account of his find, which she had decided was either a different cache or an outright lie. But she’d seen the petroglyph map, she’d compared it to a topographic map and the landscape itself. She’d delved into dozens of old books, not just about the Victorio Peak treasure, but about Spanish mining techniques, Chief Victorio, bandit hideouts.

  “The Finder works best if it’s looking straight down, right?” she asked.

  “Yeah. Theoretically it will work sideways as well, but that would make it harder to manipulate. It’s designed to find changes underground, like the difference between bedrock and empty space. It could be thrown off by hills or other ups and downs in the landscape.”

  “I don’t think the cave will be underneath the canyon floor. Most likely, the opening is in one of these cliffs. The cave opening may have collapsed, though, or been intentionally covered up. Let’s start by going along the top of the cliff on the south side. We can make a couple of passes and if we don’t find anything pretty close to the edge of the canyon, try the other side.”

  “That sounds downright scientific,” Camie said.

  Camie turned on The Finder and showed Erin how to understand the readout. They were looking for empty space under the ground, and The Finder would show differences in the subsurface down to a hundred feet. “If it’s a large cave, we should get a really obvious reading,” Camie said.

  “Some of the reports suggested a narrow tunnel leading into the cave,” Erin said. “And of course, there’s the danger that some or all of the tunnel will have collapsed. Will we be able to see anything like that?”

  Camie scrunched up her nose. “Hard to say. This is still in the testing phase. I checked it out over some of the old mineshafts near town, and it will definitely show a large tunnel, but anything smaller than about four feet in diameter....” She shrugged.

  “So we should work back from the cliff. If we miss the tunnel, we might still find the main cave farther back.” Erin suppressed a moan. It wasn’t like they’d expected it to be easy.

  They drank some more water and left their packs in the shade, then got to work. They carried The Finder between them so they could hold it flat to the ground and moved slowly over the cliff top to the south side of the canyon. “I should have built some kind of off-road rolling cart,” Camie grumbled. “What was I thinking?”

  Erin ducked her head to wipe her sweaty upper lip on her shoulder, since her hands were full. “It doesn’t get high points for user friendliness.”

  “But it’s working. The data is great. I hope we find that tunnel so I can figure out how detailed this gets.”

  “Uh huh. That’s the main reason to find the tunnel.”

  “Hey, I’m not saying I’d ignore the treasure. But The Finder could be my key to fame and fortune, or at least a good government grant if I can prove it would find smuggler tunnels at the border. Plus, if the images are detailed enough it could help find trapped earthquake victims.”

  “You’ll get there.” Erin’s hurt finger started to ache, even more than the rest of her body. “I have to get another painkiller. They’re in my backpack.”

  Camie shifted The Finder into her own arms so Erin could let go. “Take your time. You’re looking pretty flushed.”

  Erin nodded and turned toward the outcropping where they’d left Tiger and their gear. The air seemed to shimmer with heat. She paused by the edge of the cliff, scanning the ground below to see if the sun had dropped enough to offer any better shade. She hated to leave Camie to work alone but thought she might be sick if she didn’t cool off for a while. She felt lightheaded and a bit dizzy just from looking down the slope, and it wasn’t even that steep here, where flooding had collapsed the wall into a 45 degree slope that spilled partway across the canyon. Was this the first stage of heat exhaustion? Or maybe even the second?

  A sound caught her attention—a faint hum that might have been a motor. She scanned the sky, wondering if a plane were flying overhead. Should they try to hide? She couldn’t see anything, but with the sun so bright, she knew she might not notice a speck in the distance.

  “Erin!” Camie’s voice was shrill with excitement—or fear?

  Erin swung around, her heart rate soaring. The sudden movement made her stomach lurch. Her vision grayed and her limbs felt suddenly limp. The thought ran through her head—if I’m not careful, I could fall right off thi
s cliff.

  Erin tried to sit down so she wouldn’t fall. The world seemed to spin and she hit the ground with a jarring bump that sent her sprawling onto her back.

  The ground seemed to shift beneath her.

  Then she was sliding, rolling, with dust clogging her nose and lungs and her tangled limbs scraping rock. The memory of the accident sliced through her, the feel of falling, smashing against the ground, skin scraped raw. A scream built in her throat but she couldn’t choke it out.

  She skidded to a stop sprawled face down. The dizziness receded as she felt the solid ground underneath her. She rolled onto her back. Dust swirled around her and she blinked, trying to bring the world back into focus. Had she really just slid down that whole slope into the canyon? She couldn’t quite believe it, but her aching body and the blurred sight of the cliff wall rising beside her seemed to prove it. In fact, she’d apparently rolled down the slope and across the narrow canyon, nearly to the other side.

  As Erin’s head cleared, she noticed a strange noise. A kind of dry rattling. She turned her head toward it.

  A shaded hollow cut into the base of the cliff. Inside it, three feet from her head, Erin saw a writhing mass of rattlesnakes.

  Chapter 18

  Erin felt her heart pounding, but wasn’t sure if she was breathing. Sweat dripped down her face even as an icy cold started in her belly and slid out to numb her limbs. She wouldn’t have said she had a fear of snakes, but the sight of that writhing mass and the hoarse rattling sound scratched some primitive part of her. Instinct told her to leap back, while her conscious mind knew she should move slowly. Her body refused to take any directions at all.

  A snake two inches thick rippled its coils and slithered closer. Its tongue flicked out. The tip of its tail stayed high, a blur of movement, the sound a sickening threat.

  Erin wheezed in a breath, trying to move her chest as little as possible. Her body tingled as if some poison already coursed through her veins.

  “Erin! Are you all right?”

  Erin realized she’d been hearing Camie’s shouts, a muted distraction in the background. Erin didn’t try to answer. She heard scuffling behind her as Camie skidded down the hillside. Erin prayed she wouldn’t slide too close to the snakes.

  Dust billowed over from Camie’s descent, choking Erin’s lungs, but she didn’t move. Erin sensed her friend stop a few feet behind her. Tiny pebbles stung Erin’s back and sent the snakes shifting angrily.

  “Erin—” Camie’s words broke off in a gasp, then she whispered. “Don’t move. I’ll get something to distract them. A stick or—damn!”

  Erin knew how barren the bottom of the arroyo was. It might take Camie precious minutes to find a stick long enough to keep herself safely out of reach while she poked at the rattlers.

  “All right,” Camie said, “I have a rock. You back up very slowly. If they get more aggressive, I’ll throw the rock in the middle of the bunch, and hopefully they’ll attack it and forget about you. I don’t want to stir them up more, though, except as a last resort.”

  Erin was lying on her back, her right side toward the snakes. She could roll away, except she couldn’t bear to take her gaze off the snakes and have her back to them. Instead, she eased her butt a few inches over, then her shoulders, then her feet. A few inches, then a few more, her eyes always on the snakes.

  The closest snake edged forward, seeming to follow her. Its coils slid over each other, hypnotic brown diamonds on a paler background. Erin stared at the slitted black eyes, the flicking tongue. The snake was mesmerizing, beautiful, terrifying. Erin heard a whimper and realized she had made the sound.

  A drop of dusty sweat slid into the corner of her eye, stinging and half blinding her. She wanted to keep her breathing slow and even, but she couldn’t control the rapid rise of her chest or the faint keening cry that seemed to come with each gasping breath. Her mind screamed at her to flee, get away. She eased over another few inches.

  The snake moved forward too.

  It unwound from its ball, sliding forward in a tightly coiled S. It reared up and hissed, its mouth open wide to show curved fangs that looked an inch long.

  Erin couldn’t take any more. With a wild cry, she flung up her arm and rolled away. She felt a blow on her hand. The pain shot down her arm, a jolt so severe it gagged her.

  Camie screamed.

  Erin rolled to a sitting position and scrambled backward, away from the snakes. An orange blur moved across her vision, between her and the rattlesnake nest.

  Erin didn’t stop moving until she hit the wall at the other side of the arroyo. She pressed back against the rock, shaking and gasping. Tears flushed the sweat out of her eyes. Across the arroyo, 15 feet away, a rock as big as two fists now lay among the tangled mass of angry snakes. Tiger’s attack had carried him and the snake a good five feet past the nest. Camie stood nearby, hands pressed to her mouth, while Tiger wrestled with the snake.

  Erin thought she might pass out or throw up. Before she could decide which, Tiger dropped the snake with a shriek of triumph. He stood with his fur bristling and tail held high.

  Camie scooped up Tiger, rushed toward Erin, and collapsed next to her. The women hugged and cried while Tiger muttered and tried to wriggle free.

  Finally Camie pushed hair out of her face and gasped, “Are you all right? Did it get you?”

  Erin’s whole body felt numb and she couldn’t stop trembling. Her right hand ached, but she’d been hugging it to her chest, afraid to even look at it. She knew if she’d been bitten it would take hours to get to a hospital. People survived rattlesnake bites, but they didn’t enjoy it. The flesh rotted off your bones.

  She held her hand up in front of her face. She could see the marks on the silver brace where the fangs had scraped.

  Erin gasped and sank back against the rock. “It’s all right,” she whispered. “It hit the finger brace.” The pain had been from jarring her broken finger, not from a bite. Relief flooded her, leaving her limp.

  “Thank God,” Camie murmured, hugging Erin close. “I threw the rock but I was sure I was too late. And then Tiger—”

  “Yes. I had forgotten about him completely.” Erin stroked her hand over his smooth head and Tiger gave a satisfied purr.

  “I’m sorry for what I said earlier,” Camie said, “about finding you a rattlesnake.”

  Erin managed a weak laugh. “You never do things by halves, do you?” She pushed herself into a more comfortable position, moving stiffly. She felt as sore and exhausted as she had after the bike accident. She didn’t know how much was from new bruises and how much just from the adrenaline overload.

  She rested her head back against the rock wall and closed her eyes. As the cold fear left her, the pounding heat of the sun made her feel like she was melting. She wanted to be farther from the snakes but couldn’t make herself move. She didn’t know if she had the energy to do anything more that day, even hike back to camp. She didn’t want to be in the desert. She wanted a cool shower and an air-conditioned room for a long nap. She felt like crying, but forced back the urge. She reminded herself that she was all right. She hadn’t been hurt. She hadn’t panicked—outwardly, anyway. She should feel proud. Maybe someday she would.

  “I want you to promise me something,” she said.

  “What?”

  “When we’re done with this whole treasure hunting thing, we’re going away for a spa weekend. Someplace luxurious, where the most dangerous thing I have to face is the temperature of the sauna.”

  Camie chuckled. “I’ll buy the massage.”

  Erin tried to gather her strength, at least enough to get her water bottle. The thought of over-warm water wasn’t appealing, but she knew she needed it. The desert air echoed with the buzzing of insects, an eerie sound, but almost comfortable after the snakes’ rattle. Then another sound grew louder, becoming dominant. The thrum of an aircraft.

  Erin opened her eyes and sat up straighter, remembering the sound that had distracted her be
fore her fall. “Someone’s coming.” She prayed she wouldn’t have to run and hide. She didn’t know if she could.

  Camie cocked her head, listening. She smiled. “Drew’s helicopter!”

  Relief flooded Erin. She wasn’t even sure why she was so happy—the thought of seeing him again, of having a possible escape, of not having to deal with a new enemy, all swirled together, her joy only hampered by nagging anxiety. “You’re sure it’s his?”

  Camie nodded. “I recognize the engine. It’s his or one just like it, which seems unlikely out here.”

  But why was he here now? They weren’t expecting him for two more days. “What does it mean?”

  Camie shook her head. “He could have news for us, or maybe he’s just checking up on us.” She grinned. “Maybe he couldn’t wait to see you again.”

  “Ha,” Erin said, though the idea pleased her. “I just hope it’s good news.”

  Camie braced herself on the cliff wall and got to her feet. “Do you think you can move in order to see a handsome man who’s crazy about you? Or shall I bring him down here?”

  Erin sighed. She didn’t want to move yet, but she didn’t want him to see her there looking weak and fragile, tear-stained and covered in dust. Plus, she wanted to get away from the damn rattlesnakes. “Where’s my backpack?”

  They spotted it a few feet away, where it had rolled down the slope after her. Erin had a baggie of damp baby wipes and decided this was a good time to use them. She handed one to Camie and they mopped their faces.

  “Don’t forget to reapply sunscreen,” Camie said. “I’ll run up and wave to Drew so he doesn’t miss us. Take your time.” She scrambled up a sloping side crevice a good distance away from the rattlesnake nest.

  Erin dragged herself to her feet and tried to dust off her clothes. She used another baby wipe to clean her hands, smoothed her hair back, and put on sunscreen and lip balm. She couldn’t do much more to make herself presentable. She was glad she didn’t have a mirror, as she didn’t really want to know what she looked like. At least the simple grooming tasks had left her feeling steadier as well as a little fresher.