“Something they’ll do when they reach their destination,” I pointed out.
“I’ll try to guess when they’re getting close, and I’ll stop our engine before they do. Hopefully.”
“We’re novices at tailing people,” I told Temi.
“Yes, as far as I can tell, your business is expanding into new territories by the day.”
By the hour, I thought.
The road forked and we turned into a dry valley clogged with scrubby brush. Pine trees rose to either side. The ride grew even bumpier, and I squinted suspiciously at the leaves beating against Zelda’s fender. “We’re not on a road anymore, are we?”
Simon grinned, though he didn’t take his eyes from the route ahead. “Nope.”
“It looks like a dried river bed,” Temi observed.
We splashed through a trough filled with mud and water.
“Mostly dry,” Temi amended.
I compared the topo map with what the GPS map on my smartphone offered. The cell had a couple of bars of reception, but the maps were slow to load. Not surprising. We weren’t on-or close to-any official roads. “We’re not far from Mount Union and Hassayampa Lake.” The trees blocked the view, but I waved in the general direction.
“What’s down here?” Temi asked.
“Uh, nothing.”
“There must be something.”
“Maybe those two were just looking for a private place to-oomph.” The ceiling was higher in the van than in a car, but my head almost cracked it anyway. If not for the seat belt I’d wisely put on earlier, it would have. “Get busy,” I finished weakly.
“They did seem to be sharing the one bed,” Simon said.
“Their faces were similar,” Temi said. “I took them for siblings.”
“Which makes it all the more likely that they’d look for a private place if they wanted to get busy,” I said.
My joke met with pitying stares, and I went back to studying the map. We rolled out of the riverbed and onto a road with brown grass and weeds sprouting from the center between the ruts. They were tall enough to slap at the base of the windshield. They also-as we discovered when my head nearly hit the ceiling again-disguised big rocks.
“If we get stranded out here, I’m going to pummel you,” I told Simon.
“Noted.”
The road dipped back into the riverbed, then out the other side. It never detoured far from the dusty banks, and we occasionally splashed through water, a rare find in the desert mountains this late in the year.
“Oh,” I said, “this must be the Hassayampa River.”
“Anything significant about it?” Temi asked.
“Well, it’s kind of an interesting river. The name is Native American and means the river that flows upside down or the upside down river. We’re not far from the headwaters, and some of it is obviously above ground, but it flows beneath ground for a lot of its route, a good hundred miles if I remember correctly.” As I’d spoken, I’d plugged the name into Google, but the reception had grown too pitiful for the search.
At that moment, we splashed through a clear pool framed by granite boulders. Water sprayed the windshield.
“Oops,” Simon said and veered to the left. It took a few tries before he managed to coerce the van up the bank and into the dryer shrubs on the side.
“If Zelda were a really cool van,” I said, “she’d be equipped for aquatic operations.”
“Oh, like one of the Ducks from World War Two?” Temi asked.
“I hardly think that’s necessary in Arizona.” Simon shot me a dirty look. “And Zelda is really cool. You can start sleeping outside if you don’t think so.”
“My apologies. I was obviously mistaken.” I nodded toward the windshield. “Are we stuck? I don’t wish to offend Zelda, but I notice we’re not moving.”
“We stopped because they stopped.” Simon turned off the engine.
The soft calls of birds and the rustling of grasses stirred by the wind replaced the noise.
“Anything else interesting about this river?” Simon asked. “Old mine shafts or caves full of rusty treasures?”
I poked at my phone, but that didn’t make the reception any better. “I wish I’d known we were coming here; I could have looked it up before. From memory… there is some folklore about it. An old saying about how if you drink the water, you won’t be able to tell the truth again.”
“Good thing the fridge is full of Mountain Dew,” Simon said.
“I think I’d rather take my chances with the river,” I said, drawing another dirty look from Simon, though Temi was nodding behind me. I hadn’t seen her drink anything more deleterious than a tea latte. She’d probably gotten used to a strict diet as an athlete.
“They’re definitely not moving.” Simon rolled down his window and stuck his head out. “I don’t hear the engines either.”
“It must be hiking time,” I said.
We did that on occasion, so we had packs in the back with first-aid kits, flashlights, munchies, and the usual supplies. I threw a couple of bottles of water into my sedate tan pack, an old REI model I’d found at Goodwill. Simon tossed cans of Mountain Dew into his denim sack, an item he’d also found at Goodwill, though he’d taken it upon himself to decorate it. Now it was adorned with patches that endorsed everything from Metallica and Savatage to the Serenity and Stargate Command.
After packing his bag, he took his MacBook to the front of the van, set it up on the dashboard, and started fiddling. I fastened my whip onto my belt and, after a moment of consideration, grabbed the bow and arrows too.
“I’m afraid I didn’t come prepared for a hike,” Temi said. “Or a hunt.”
I dug a canteen out of a cupboard and filled it from a five-gallon jug. “That’s all you need. We’re not going to be out here long.”
“How do you know?” Simon asked. “They might be heading off on a sixty-mile pack trip.”
“Good for them. We’re not going that far.” I pointed skyward. “We’ll follow for a while, but we’re getting out of this forest before it gets anywhere near dark. I don’t want to see our genetically engineered whatchamacallit again.”
“I concur,” Temi said before Simon could sputter out a protest.
I eyed her with new speculation. “Oh, I like this. With an odd number of people, we suddenly have the ability to settle disputes with a vote, a vote that can’t end up in a stalemate.”
“Wait a minute,” Simon said. “We need to discuss this. As a new member, her vote shouldn’t count for as much as mine.”
“It only needs to count for a hundredth of yours, so long as it can be added to my full vote.” I smiled and opened the van door.
“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all…”
Still smiling, I shoved him out the door. “You should have thought of that before arguing to have her join the team.”
I stepped outside after Simon. The quiet of the forest reminded me that we weren’t alone out here, and it wouldn’t do to be overheard. We didn’t have a fire extinguisher this time, and I wasn’t about to start shooting at people with my bow. I didn’t like the idea of facing the two riders in another brawl anyway. Eleriss had been pleasant enough, if odd, when I’d talked to him the night before, but I didn’t think that politeness would last if he found us stalking him.
We dropped our chitchat for the hike to the motorcycles, each of us scanning the path ahead and the surrounding trees, watching for movement. Fresh tire prints dented the earth between the rounded rocks that dotted the riverbed. Tracking them was easy; following the men after they dismounted would be more challenging, especially since we wouldn’t want to get close enough to be seen.
After ten minutes of walking, a glint in the brush caught my eye. I pointed, and we found the black bikes hidden there. I wondered if the riders had known someone was following them, or if they’d simply taken a precaution.
“This is as far as I can track them.” Simon waved his phone-we’d caught up with th
e little dot that represented the device he’d glued in one of the tailpipes.
Given that my reception had disappeared a while back, I wondered if he’d been guessing a little as to their location in the end. Or maybe his app simply required less juice than a web browser. We hunted around for a moment, our faces toward the dusty earth.
“Found their prints.” I pointed to the ground and led the way. With brush clogging the riverbanks, there wasn’t much chance of the riders leaving the bed, but I kept my eyes open for the possibility anyway. Other than the footprints, the pair traveled lightly over the earth. I didn’t notice any broken branches or snapped twigs such as one expected in the wake of large animals and careless humans.
As we continued down the dry riverbed, I grew more conscious of the passing of time. I checked the clock on my phone often. My willingness to be out here was predicated on the monster’s history of nocturnal attacks. For all that I wanted to solve some of the mysteries around Eleriss and Jakatra, I wasn’t willing to die to do so.
“What’s that?” Temi whispered, pointing ahead.
Something dark lay between some rocks. I crept forward, pausing to note the fresh cup of a boot in the dust, then stopped. A bunch of weeds had been cut back, revealing a hole in a stretch of granite, its edges worn smooth. The sound of rushing water drifted up from within.
“Our underground river,” I said.
Simon peered into the hole. About two feet in diameter, it would be an unpleasant space to crawl into. I doubted the cold water waiting at the bottom would be pleasant either. The sun was still out, but it had moved behind the trees, and I didn’t fancy the idea of air-drying my clothing. Arizona or not, it was October, and we were five thousand feet above sea level.
I tried to pick up the tracks on the other side of the hole, but the earth there didn’t hold any footprints. I circled the area in case the riders had climbed out of the wash. Nothing.
“Why do I have a feeling they went down there?” Temi asked.
Simon looked to me.
“Because… I think they have.” Shaking my head, I returned to the hole. “How could they know if there’s air to breathe down there? You can’t tell from here. The water might fill the entire space.”
“A river should be low at this time of year,” Simon said.
“Maybe so, but I don’t relish the idea of plopping down there and seeing where the flow takes me.”
“It could be a trap too,” Temi said. “If they knew we were following them and wanted to… get rid of us, they could lead us to believe they’d gone down there when all they’d truly done was hidden their tracks and continued on.”
“That’s true. I’ve only tracked animals.” And not that many of them, I admitted to myself. “They don’t do things like sweeping branches across the sand to rub out their prints.”
Simon dug into his pack and pulled out a flashlight. He flopped onto his belly and peered into the hole.
“Still,” I added, “I didn’t get the impression that they wanted to do us any harm. The chatty one warned me to leave town.”
“This hole looks like it opens up before it hits the water,” Simon said. “Though I don’t know if there’s anywhere to walk on the sides.”
“Perhaps if we had some rope, we could lower him down,” Temi said.
“Me?” Simon drew back and knelt by the edge. “I didn’t volunteer for that.”
“Oh, you were volunteered,” I said. “We even voted on it while you were hanging over the side there. Due to our superior numbers, we easily obtained the majority.”
He pointed the flashlight at me. “We are going to have a discussion about voting procedures soon.”
“Of course,” I said. “In the meantime, why don’t you get out our rope alternative and see what kind of harness you can fashion for yourself?”
“Fine, but if there are any tarantulas down there, we’re switching places.”
“That’s fair,” I said.
As Simon dug into his pack again, Temi pointed at my bullwhip and said, “Can’t we use that like a rope? It might be long enough to lower someone down.”
“And risk having it drop into the water and float away? I took a special class so I could make it myself. It’s priceless.”
“Note, she’s perfectly willing to let me drop in the water and float away,” Simon said.
“Well, I didn’t make you by hand in a special class.”
Simon pulled out his trusty roll of duct tape. “Rope alternative, coming up.”
In an impressively short time, he’d braided strips of tape into a twenty-foot length and had fashioned the equivalent of a rappelling seat for himself. He found a sturdy stump to tie the end around, then handed the loose coils to us. He stuck the flashlight into his belt and crouched beside the hole, placing his hands on either side.
“Lower me down, ladies.”
Temi and I gripped the “rope,” and I took a wide-legged stance, ready to lean back to help with the weight while she found a bolder to brace herself against. Sometime I’d have to ask her if she wore a knee brace, which would account for the limp, or if she favored the leg because it hurt to put weight on. It’d be a drag either way.
“Ready when you are,” I told Simon.
He lowered himself, using his legs to slow his descent. At first, there was no pull on the rope, but his head dropped below the hole, and he must have run out of rock to brace himself against, for we soon had his full body weight.
“Should we start lowering you?” I asked, not sure if he’d hear me in my normal tone of voice, but not willing to shout in case the riders lurked nearby. Temi’s observation that this might be a trap hadn’t left my mind.
A couple of quick tugs came in response.
“Guess that’s a yes,” I said.
We let our rope slide a foot, then a foot more. When we didn’t receive any more feedback, we kept going. I wished I’d taken a closer look inside so I’d have an idea as to the depth, but it couldn’t be more than ten feet to the water. All right, maybe fifteen, I decided as more and more rope played through our hands.
Something jerked at the end of the line, and my gut lurched.
“Simon?” I asked, forcing my voice to stay low, though I wanted to shout.
Words floated up. I couldn’t decipher anything except a few curses followed by, “Cold!”
“He must have let himself drop into the river,” I said, not certain Temi had heard. She was farther away from the hole than I was.
“There’s probably not a bank or anything to stand on,” she said.
A couple more tugs came, and I let out a little more line, but it grew slack. He must be standing on the bottom. I knelt beside the edge of the hole. I couldn’t see Simon but a flashlight beam was waving back and forth down there.
“Anything promising?” I asked.
Simon stepped-no, waded-into view beneath the hole. Water lapped about his waist. “As far as I can tell, there are no tarantulas.”
So that was what all the flashlight waving had been about.
“That’s the most promising feature?” I asked.
“Actually, no. I can see… I don’t know. It might just be some natural caves, but I bet you’ll be interested.”
“Interested enough to warrant standing in freezing cold water?”
“I think so. There’s enough headroom for walking.”
I leaned back, facing Temi. I considered how fragile our duct tape rope was-it would be easy for someone to come along and cut it. I wasn’t sure about climbing back out again without it either. If Simon jumped, he might be able to reach the bottom of the hole, but those smooth stone walls didn’t offer any handholds.
“You want me to stay up here?” Temi asked.
“Would you? I’ll leave my bow in case… in case.”
“Because the handful of times I shot one as a kid will serve me so well if a monster blazes out of the trees,” she said dryly.
“You can use the staff as a club if you hav
e to.” At her skeptical expression, I added, “You can serve a tennis ball at a hundred miles an hour, right? You ought to be able to crack a monster on the head hard enough for it to see stars.”
“A hundred and thirty-two,” she said.
“What?”
“My fastest serve. It was a record, actually.”
“There you go. Add some adrenaline to that, and you should be quite lethal with a club.”
Temi eyed the bow, perhaps trying to decide if it had as many nice merits as a club, at least insofar as blunt instruments went. “I’d rather have a fire extinguisher.”
“We’ll add that to our arsenal in the future. Given the suspicious smells that come out of Zelda’s air conditioning vents, the ability to put out fires might come in handy one day.”
“I heard that,” Simon called up from below.
I left Temi my pack as well as the bow, in case she got hungry and wanted my munchies. “We’ll be back shortly,” I said with a parting wave.
Now that we knew there weren’t rushing rapids or anything else dangerous below the hole, I climbed down the sticky duct tape rope without help. It was darker than expected at the bottom-Simon had moved farther down the river with his light. I hissed when my feet hit the cold water, the damp chill penetrating my shoes immediately, and I almost yanked them out again. I knew the river flowed out of that lake and wasn’t glacier water, but it was a degree of cold I could only appreciate when the outside temperatures read in the 100s.
Simon was moving farther away, clearly drawn by something, so I gritted my teeth and dropped the rest of the way into the water. I managed to keep from cursing, but only because I remembered those two riders were around there somewhere. And also because Simon was doing this in his socks and sandals.
I pulled out my flashlight and let go of the rope. Smooth continuous stone lay beneath my feet rather than small, shifting rocks and pebbles. I slipped within the first two steps. Copious amounts of flailing kept my head from going under-barely-but I had to bite back curses again. I groped my way to the nearest wall to brace myself. Damp cool rock met my fingers. The lack of vegetation growing out of the cracks made me wonder if the passage flooded regularly. Hopefully not while intrepid explorers were visiting.
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