Screaming. Screaming everywhere. Every person seemed to be shouting and alarmed. Kesha tried to think of what to do. It was almost impossible. She couldn’t plan, only react. The water beneath them had not looked deep, but was it deep enough that you could drown? Kesha could swim, but was no great shakes at it. Could her classmates swim? Her teachers? As the lone flashlight beam fell away beneath the water, her last images were of a sea of flailing hands and screaming faces. Soon, the inevitable began to occur. Kesha’s own boat began to sway violently as the terrified, thrashing teens grasped for anything that might keep them above the water.
Kesha wondered: How far away was the next trio of boats? Why did they not turn on the lights? Couldn’t they hear that this was no cave thunder, but nearly thirty people calling for help? Her terror was so stark that she hardly registered the awful smell that began to reach her nostrils. A stench had invaded the tight cavern air, like a horrible combination of seafood and excrement and old rotted meat. Beneath her alarm and her own screaming, Kesha realized that the smell was growing stronger.
Moments later, something brushed against the side of her face. It was wet and cold. It did not feel like any part of Gillian, or any other student, yet the horrible rubbery touch of it seemed somehow vaguely familiar.
Then the boat beneath Kesha rocked violently, and she was cast into the chilly water below with the others.
4
Indiana state troopers Leonard and Southerly stood at the mouth of the cavern and waited. A few paces off from them stood three worried park rangers and a school bus driver. Every one of them stared down the empty gravel road leading up to the cavern. There was a parking lot and a small ranger station next to the cavern opening, but little else to see. The park rangers took turns speaking into a walkie-talkie that never spoke back.
“What the hell’s a special sergeant anyway?” Trooper Leonard asked his partner. “Special sergeant. ‘SS.’ That sounds like some Aryan Brotherhood shit to me. Straight-up Nazi.”
“I don’t think so,” replied Southerly.
“No?” wondered Leonard. “Because it sounds right to me.”
Southerly sighed. “That’s because you’re a goddamn fool who never knows when to keep his mouth shut,” he said.
Leonard wished to give the impression of remaining unbowed, and so merely spat beside his shoe.
“What I heard . . . ‘special sergeant’ means that he reports exterior to IMPD,” Southerly continued, his gaze never shifting from the empty road. “Don’t get me wrong. This guy reports to somebody. But it ain’t the police commissioner.”
“No?” wondered Leonard, genuinely doubtful.
“No,” assured Southerly. “Somebody else. Somebody big, though. You can put your money on that.”
Southerly then risked a meaningful glance over toward the empty school bus. With tinted windows. And velveteen bucket seats. And hydraulics that raised and lowered the bus whenever the students climbed aboard. He lingered just long enough for Leonard to get the idea.
“Why of course . . .” Leonard said. “Those fancy private schools up in Indy got all sorts of rich people’s kids. Powerful people’s kids. It could be any one of them. Or all of them. The mayor. The governor. The coach of the damn Colts.”
“Mmm hmm,” Southerly agreed evenly. “Could be those. Could be. Also could be the CEO of about ten corporations with names you never heard of, but which own cigarette companies and coal mines and oil wells. That’s where my money’d be, if we were takin’ bets.”
“We’re . . . we’re not taking bets though, are we?” Leonard asked nervously.
Southerly sighed. He did not move his eyes from the road.
As if in acknowledgement of this remarkable feat of self-control, Southerly was rewarded with the sound of approaching tires on the gravel drive. Seconds later, he saw a plume of dust wafting through the trees. Then the IMPD squad car came into view.
The state troopers waved once, and the IMPD car pulled to a stop in front of them. A mountain of a man got out. Tall with broad shoulders and a helluva lot of muscle. He wore black sunglasses that completely obscured his eyes.
“Damn,” Leonard whispered. “This guy’s a special something-or-other, all right . . .”
Southerly frowned at Leonard and approached the newcomer.
“You Sergeant Nolan?” Southerly asked.
The sergeant nodded.
“I’m Southerly. This is Trooper Leonard.”
“Good to meet you,” Nolan said. “Who can give me a sit rep?”
“I ’spect I can,” Southerly said. He motioned for the park rangers and the bus driver to join them.
“All I’ve been told is that some high school students are two hours late coming back from a cave tour,” Nolan added as the other men approached.
“Nothing like this has ever happened before!” gushed one of the park rangers. Nolan saw tears in the man’s eyes. Honest-to-God tears. He looked ready to start bawling.
Nolan placed a reassuring hand on the ranger’s shoulder.
“Here’s the timeline,” said Southerly, producing a reporter’s notepad. “At two in the afternoon, the kids enter the caves. Seventy-five kids in all. They’re in three groups of twenty-five. Each group has a park ranger and couple of teachers. They’re in boats. The groups are spaced far enough apart that they can’t see or hear one another, but they have special radios that work in the caverns.”
“But the radios aren’t working!” another of the park rangers interjected.
Nolan calmly nodded to signal that this had registered.
“Yeah,” Southerly continued. “So the tour was supposed to be over by three-thirty or four. They do a circuit of sorts—the underground river has a pathway that runs in a loop—and end up at the same place they begin. At about three-thirty, the rangers up top noted that the radios had stopped working. Regular cell phones don’t work in the cave, either. Then two different pairs of rangers went in to see what was wrong. That was at about four and four-thirty, respectively. They haven’t come back either.”
“Are there other exits?” Nolan asked, adjusting his sunglasses in the late afternoon glare.
“Dozens . . . maybe hundreds,” one of the excited rangers burbled. “This countryside is dotted with little crawlspaces that lead down into the caverns. Indians used them for thousands of years. Moonshiners back in the day. Satanist cults in the 1970s. Meth gangs now.”
“That’s true,” said Southerly. “We find a few bodies in the caves every year. There are probably more that we don’t find.”
Nolan nearly wondered aloud why they let children go inside them at all. Instead, he nodded seriously. Nolan already knew that these caves had an extensive history.
“Could the rangers have taken the students out through one of the other entrances?” Nolan asked. “Like, maybe a kid got hurt and they had to evacuate him?”
The rangers were already shaking their heads.
“That wouldn’t make sense,” a ranger answered. “We have protocols in place for emergencies. They haven’t been followed. And the ranger definitely would have radioed.”
“I think it’s terrorism!” another ranger interjected hysterically. “People want to kidnap the children of all these rich people from Indy. Hold them for ransom. And they’ve got a thousand possible escape routes after we send in the ransom money. It’s perfect. It’s like out of an action movie or something. You could get away with it so easily!”
“Thought about this some, have you?” Nolan asked with a grin.
The smile was not returned. The rangers regarded the IMPD officer with solemn faces.
“Are you even taking this seriously?!” one ranger barked. His expression had changed from sad to furious. He was at least a head and a half shorter than Nolan, but looked ready to throw a punch.
Nolan adjusted his sunglasses again and stared down at the man for a long time.
“I’m here because there’s a chance that you will still have your jobs tomorrow,”
Nolan said. “A chance.”
He paused to let this sink in.
“I’m here because there’s a chance that we’re going to be able to figure out whatever’s wrong, fix it, and haul these kids back home before anybody in Indy has too much of a hissy fit. As I see it, there’s still a good shot this’ll turn out to be nothing. Hell, one day it could be a funny story that gets told by park rangers. ‘That time those high school kids came through and two boats broke at the same time and it took three hours just to get them tied together and hauled out of there.’ That sort of thing. Do you understand me?”
The rangers said nothing.
They did not know—could not know—the false alarms that Nolan had handled in his nearly ten years with the department. His special assignments that at the time had seemed of unimaginable importance, but had later turned out to be little more than misunderstandings. Blips on the radar. A kid runs away from home for a couple of days after a family fight. A wife decides to spend some time at her sister’s while telling nobody. A mistress makes some threats while hopped up on vodka and pills.
These all turned out to be fixable. To be nothing, ultimately. But because of the people involved—because of their power and connections—Nolan had been called in to make it all better. And he almost always had. So far, he was batting damn near a thousand.
And so it had become his title within the department. Special Sergeant. High-ups in the state and city government had let the police commissioner know that Nolan could have his day-to-day duties in narcotics, sure, but it would be nice to have him available whenever he was needed.
“Now, it could be that something is really wrong down there,” Nolan continued. “I sure hope it’s not, but that is a possibility. So here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to give me a boat and a radio, and I’m going to go down and find out what’s going on. If it’s serious, we will handle it. But if a kid just had an asthma attack and freaked everybody out, and then a boat tipped over . . . well, we’ll deal with that too. And then I’ll buy everybody standing here their first beers. Sound okay?”
There were general nods of agreement.
One of the rangers handed Nolan a radio, and they tried it out.
“This works fine,” Nolan said. “I can hear you clear as day.”
“Yeah,” said the ranger. “We don’t know why the others aren’t coming back from down in the cave. Let me get you a fresh battery, just in case.”
As the ranger trotted over to the small log cabin that served as the ranger station, the bus driver approached Nolan from behind.
“This ain’t the place or time,” the driver began. “But could I . . . uh . . . get an autograph? My wife’s a big fan of yours.”
“Later,” said Nolan. “When I finish up here. How about that?”
The bus driver nodded respectfully and backed away.
Moments later, laden with a radio and two backup batteries, Nolan followed one of the rangers and both state troopers down into the cave. Nolan removed his sunglasses as they traversed the lighted staircase that took them nearly two hundred feet beneath the earth. The smell of water and rock assaulted Nolan. He began ducking to avoid the low ceilings. At one point, the lights along the walkway around them flickered.
“That reminds me; I need a flashlight,” Nolan said.
The ranger handed over a heavy black Maglite.
“That’ll do,” Nolan said, thrusting it into his pocket.
“There are mounted lights every fifty feet along the cave walls,” the ranger informed him. “But we sometimes turn them off to do cave thunder—this thing where we bang on the side of the boat.”
“What about off the path of the tour?” Nolan asked. “Like if some kids go exploring in the side caves? The tributaries and such? Any lights there?”
The ranger shook his head no. The electric lights were only on the main boat path.
Moments later, the staircase they traversed terminated at a small jetty where the cave’s visitors were normally loaded into rowboats. Huge CFL bulbs cast their grim light down from fixtures mounted to the roof of the cave. Though there were tie-ups for many different boats, only one metal vessel remained.
“We started the day with twelve boats,” the ranger explained. “The tour groups took nine—three groups with three boats apiece—and then the rangers who went in after them must have taken the other two.”
“Let’s check the radios again,” Nolan said. He called for the rangers left topside to pick up. They did so immediately.
“Works fine,” Nolan concluded brightly.
The ranger looked up into Nolan’s face and shook his head. His expression said that nothing was fine. That seventy-five school kids and several adults were missing in a subterranean river deep under the ground.
Nolan’s good humor remained intact.
“We’re gonna get to the bottom of this,” Nolan told the ranger. “You just mark my words.”
“You’ll want to start in that direction,” the ranger said dutifully, indicating a beckoning waterway with a shaky index finger. “The tours begin there, and then circle around. You keep following the lights, and you’ll end up right back here again.”
Nolan walked down the jetty and eased himself into the remaining rowboat. It was made for two to row at once, but it was obvious that Nolan would have no problem handling both oars. The ranger untied the boat and kicked it away from the mooring.
“If I’m not back in one hour, call 911,” Nolan said.
He began to row away. The ranger and the state troopers watched the boat glide around a large stalagmite and into the silent darkness beyond.
“I sure hope he’s right,” said Southerly.
“About what, exactly?” Leonard asked.
Southerly waved his hand across the entire cavern like a wizard casting a spell.
***
The state troopers and the park ranger climbed back up the long rock staircase to the mouth of the cave. All three were wheezing by the halfway point. Soon the cool underground air gave way to a warm fall wind. They neared the top of the staircase and looked out of the mouth of the cave. The early evening sun now cast a beautiful glow on the trees, just beginning their change from green to ocher and fiery red. It was the time of day that moviemakers called the magic hour, when the entire expanse before you seemed to resonate with sunlight.
And nobody was there.
Their cars were there. The fancy school bus was there. The little ranger station was there. But there were no people. Nothing stirred.
The three men looked around, then at one another.
The ranger turned and called to the ranger station: “Hello? Fellas? Marty, you there?”
There was no response.
Leonard looked at Southerly and said, “Now what in the world? Where did everybody—”
Before he could finish his sentence, both men fell silent at the sound of an explosion several miles away.
“What in the hell was that?” Leonard shrieked.
The men turned in the direction of the noise. Far in the distance, a plume of black smoke was already curling into the air.
“I don’t know—maybe the power station?—but I’ll tell you what it means,” Southerly said. “Any ideas you had about not working a triple shift today are damn-straight over. I hope you got your sleep last night.”
Leonard, who had actually been looking forward to sleeping off an eight-beer hangover as soon as possible, swallowed hard.
“What’s that?” the park ranger shouted. He was not looking at the plume of black smoke rising into the distant sky. Instead, his trembling finger pointed to the trees beyond the parking lot.
The troopers turned and saw a quick flicker of denim disappear into the foliage.
“Was that . . . the bus driver?” Leonard asked.
Southerly nodded. It was the bus driver. Running like hell into the forest. Why? Running to something? Or away?
Southerly’s police radio barked to life. The first calls ha
d already come in. An explosion at the power plant. All available units to respond.
The trooper didn’t move.
“You gonna answer that?” Leonard asked, looking at his partner.
Very slowly, Southerly reached for his hip and turned off his radio. Then he carefully drew his gun.
“What’s going on here?” asked the ranger.
Southerly nodded toward the tiny ranger station.
“Jesus,” said Leonard, drawing his sidearm as well.
“What?” asked the ranger, still confused.
The troopers said nothing. The ranger kept looking around. After a moment, he saw it. A long, wet smear of blood down the side of the wooden ranger station.
“I think you should get back into the cave,” Southerly said without taking his eyes off the building.
“The cave?” the ranger responded. “Near a hundred people are missing in there!”
“Friend,” Southerly said, his gaze intensifying. “I don’t think it’s any safer up here. If you’re smart, you’ll take my advice. I think you can tell I’m not fuckin’ around.”
The ranger nodded and crept back to the mouth of the cavern.
Southerly took three steps toward the ranger station and stopped.
“Somebody inside,” he said softly to his partner, then raised his voice. “Come on out! Indiana State Police! Come out of there!”
A figure began to emerge. Because it wore the uniform of an EMT, both troopers were momentarily confused. Had someone already responded to an accident here at the entrance? There was no ambulance or emergency vehicle that they could see.
The figure lingered in the doorway of the cabin. It was a woman. She was Caucasian, with long black hair that fell just past her shoulders and ruddy red cheeks as though she’d been exerting herself. (Had she been tending to an injured person, perhaps?) Her eyes, though, were all wrong. A strange, milky whiteness clouded both pupils like an impossibly advanced cataract. Perhaps in this connection, she seemed not to see. She sniffed the air like a blind dog. A thin sliver of red drool trickled down from her mouth. Her head lolled back and forth as though she was exhausted . . . or maybe drunk on the job.
Zombie, Indiana Page 3