Jenny’s soft hand on my cheek. ‘I have some knickers in my pack. Might be a bit lacy for you though.’
Jason said, ‘I think he prefers them like that.’ So I kicked him. Then we all laughed for a long relieved moment, and the tension evaporated. Or at least it did until the next tremor.
Dennis was talking to me, ‘We’ve changed our plans for the day because of the little shake-up we’ve just had.’
I interrupted him, ‘Was that an earthquake?’
He shook his head, ‘Barely call it a tremor. Still there’s a danger of falling rocks underground even with a small tremor, and there could be others, so we’re going to cut the journey short and take the ladder to the upper level, then take the quick way out. We’ll come back again for the full trip some other time.’
Just the way he spoke filled me, filled all of us, with confidence. This was no longer a matter of life and death: it was just an inconvenience. Simply an alteration to our itinerary.
I took that moment to admire the huge, sweeping moss-covered walls of the cathedral-like cavern. They seemed to glow greenly in the sunlight, diffused through the mist, from the tomo above. Some faces were sheer walls, others were jagged explosions of the earth’s fury, bulging fists of rock.
There were boulders everywhere along the riverbank and a few that jutted from the river itself. All were covered with moss. Some were the size of small cars; others were the size of, well … large cars. I glanced up at the roof, and wondered how the boulders had got there, and thought about the tremor and shivered.
Up a ways through the cave there was a massive rock. Too big to have fallen from anywhere it seemed to have grown from the floor. Four times the height of a man it commanded the small valley we were standing in. Dennis noticed my stare.
‘The Jesus Rock,’ he said, nodding. Amazing geological feature isn’t it. We’ll go past it on our way to the ladder. Let’s move.’
We were wearing white gumboots, supplied by the expedition organisers; they looked clunky but had a sure grip as we picked our way through the larger boulders, and over the top of the smaller ones. Heading into the cave to find a way out of the cave.
I looked back at one stage at the top of the tomo, it seemed immensely far away.
‘We’re in the centre of the Earth,’ I said, feeling rather overawed by it all.
There was nodding from most but Phil said ‘Hardly. We went down a hundred metres. The Earth’s crust, just the thin crust on the surface, is at least forty kilometres thick. We haven’t even scratched the skin of the planet.’
‘Don’t be so literal, Phil,’ Fizzer said, pushing past him and striding on up the valley. He pulled his harmonica out of his backpack and blew a soulful, bluesy tune. It seemed strangely appropriate in this alien, underground world.
It took a surprising long time to reach the Jesus rock, and by the time I got there, at the rear of the party, Jason had climbed it.
I was a little surprised at Jason, because he’d usually be the last to attempt such a thing. But then again, things were different underground and there was something awe-inspiring, almost mythical, about the Jesus rock.
Jason stood upright on the flat upper surface of the huge up-cropping, or was it a massive boulder, and stared back down the valley to the sunlight dropping slowly through the mists of the tomo. He raised his hands out to either side, palms upwards, and all of us were caught by the image and the moment.
And then the second tremor hit.
‘Watch for falling stones and rocks!’ Dennis shouted. I flattened myself against the side of the Jesus rock and hoped the caving helmet would protect me. The thought occurred to me that if a monster the size of the Jesus rock fell from the roof, the helmet would be about as much protection as a wet paper bag.
There was a thunderous crash from deeper in the cave and a swirl of dust eddied down and around us. Somehow Jason was beside me, God only knows how he had managed to slither down the side of the Jesus rock so quickly.
Another rock, rather a small clump of rocks, let go of the roof a bit further down the cave valley and smashed into the riverbed, raising a huge plume of water.
‘Flea!’ Dennis and Jenny’s voices were as if one. I looked up at the shaking walls of the cave and it seemed as if half of the ceiling was about to descent on our heads.
Dennis and Jenny were crouched together by the far wall of the cave, while Tupai, Phil and Fizzer had already worked their way a little deeper into the system. It was just Jason and myself standing by the Jesus stone when the roof above it gave way.
How long you’ve got to live when a rock falls from thirty or forty metres above your head, I don’t know. I did know that I had to get out of there and fast, and that there was no way I was leaving Jason behind.
All my life I’ve had ability to move fast when I want to. And when I say fast, I mean really fast. I have no idea what causes it or how it happens. When I was younger I used to call it my ‘Thing’. I can’t explain it but I can describe it. It takes a couple of blinks and suddenly the way I see the world, and the way the world sees me, changes. It’s like one of those slow-motion replays you see in football games on the tele. I somehow keep going at normal speed, while the rest of the world turns to slow-motion.
Jason has a theory on what it is, but just at that moment theories seemed a little less important than the practical application of the technology, so to speak.
I blinked into the ‘thing’ and grabbed Jason by the scruff of his neck, leaping, and hurling both of us as far away as I could from the Jesus rock.
Several small boulders crashed down where we had been, then one massive hunk of cave real estate toppled slowly thirty metres onto the Jesus rock.
The Jesus rock, that incredible lump of solid rock, blew apart. Or at least the top part of it did, as did the destroyer, the rock that fell. The entire Jesus rock slumped forwards, its flat top now angling steeply towards the light of the lost world tomo.
Dust storms raged around us, choking us, and the crashing, crushing sounds of rocks falling and bouncing their way down the valley echoed off the harsh walls of the cavern.
Then the tremor stopped and nobody moved, and slowly, very slowly the dust began to settle across the rocky floor of the Mangapu cave.
It had been terrifying. Chokingly, heart-stoppingly terrifying, yet, as bad as it was, it was just a shimmy compared to the earthquake itself that was yet to come.
‘Is everybody OK?’ Dennis was still in charge. That’s the kind of competent, capable person he was. We’d just been to hell and he was still calm, cool, unflappable. I was glad Dennis was here.
A few ‘OK’s echoed out from various points of the cavern. I added mine, then glanced at Jason. His face was a little distant, as if he had just witnessed a miracle, but it was probably just shock. He was staring at the base of the Jesus rock. I grabbed his chin and pulled it towards me, looking as deeply as I could into his eyes. Looking for damage or pain. He nodded, indicating he was OK, then wordlessly turned back to the Jesus rock.
‘Ok, double time.’ Dennis was still calm, but his voice was no longer so reassuring. Neither were his words. ‘These tremors may be the prelude to a proper ‘quake. And we don’t want to be down here if that happens.
‘Come on Jason,’ I tried to help him to his feet, but he was still staring, and after a moment I followed his gaze.
‘What the … Sensei, Dennis. Have a look at this.’
Dennis picked his way through shards of broken rock and joined us. At first he didn’t say anything.
The Jesus Rock was not an upcropping, an extension of the floor of the cave. It was a massive boulder, we could see that now. We could see that because at the base of the rock, lifted off the cave floor by the massive impact, there was a gap, nearly a metre high.
The remnants of the destroyer rock, I mentally christened it ‘Judas’, were angled up against the rear side of the Jesus rock, forming a kind of a rocky lean-to. Below that was the gap. But the light from our h
elmet torches lit up the area underneath the Jesus Rock. I don’t know when human eyes had last peered into this place, or when torches had last, if ever been used to throw light into this darkness of all darknesses, but what was clearly visible underneath the Rock was a deep hole in the rocky floor of the cave. To call it a hole does not describe it properly. It was, if anything, a deep wound in the bedrock. Concentric ridged circles of different colours sloped inwards in a kind of unworldly funnel shape.
How deep it went it was impossible to tell. Certainly the possibility opened up in all of our minds of another cave below this one, deep into the Earth, or it could have been simply a crater, formed when the Jesus Rock fell to the floor of the cave thousands of years ago.
But that wasn’t why we were staring. Rocks and caves and holes in the ground were one thing. But neatly carved into the side of the shaft that dropped away beneath the Jesus Rock were footholds. Foothold, handholds, steps, a ladder, I am not sure which is the right word, but they were clearly man-made. Obviously very, very old, and surely had no right to be there.
And that’s how it all started.
Some people wonder about the meaning of life. I have never had a single doubt in my mind about it. Life is about friendships. It is about the bond that forms between people from different backgrounds and different circumstances. Everything else is just window-dressing.
I believe that the bond of friendship is a sacred bond, held together by a glue called loyalty. Certainly the friendship I have with Daniel, Jason, Fizzer and Tupai, even Phil, is a shelter that I know I can take refuge in, in the times of trouble in my life.
- from the Journals of Jenny Kreisler
2. Trek
By Daniel Scott
I think it is appropriate that I should dispel some of the myths about my friend Jason Kirk, just so that you understand. It’s important that you understand.
It’s true that Jason, shall we say, did not attain desirable levels of achievement in his fifth form year. It is true also that he left school in the middle of the next year and got a job as a labourer on a building site.
But it’s not true that he was an idiot, as certain tabloid newspapers are fond of promulgating. He was one of the smartest people I knew. Jason’s problem was not a lack of intelligence but rather of severe dyslexia. I challenge anyone to go through this country’s schooling system successfully when just the simple acts of reading and writing are major battles in themselves. True, some of Jason’s early teachers did think him a slow child (although were polite, or more probably, politically correct enough not to say so). But his later teachers were brilliant, and I especially need to mention Elaine Hardy, who has since received more than a little attention in her own right.
Slow of speech, but eloquent of word, I think it was always an incredible sadness in Jason’s life that his dyslexia, this minor twist in his brain, had stopped him from pursuing many paths that would otherwise have been open to him. He never spoke of it, he never complained, but I know the wounds were there, the eternal mourning for a life that might have been.
Jason shook rock dust from his hair and got slowly to his feet. ‘Judas Frigging Priest,’ he said, not particularly eloquently.
‘It’s not what you think.’ Dennis crawled closer to the gap, mindful of loose rocks still balanced precariously on the A-frame formed by the remains of the two massive boulders. His helmet light flooded the hole, throwing the carved steps into sharp relief. ‘They look artificial, don’t they, but they’re certainly not.’
Jason said ‘They look like steps to me.’
‘No.’ Dennis was emphatic. ‘Some kind of natural rock formation. Quite unusual, I’ve never seen anything like it. But not artificial. Not man-made. They say there are no straight lines in nature, but it’s not true. Nature is full of weird and wonderful things that seem to defy explanation, but turn out to be merely quirks of mother earth.’
The others had gathered around us now, looking in wonderment. I shook my head, unconvinced. ‘They’re too neat. Too even.’
Dennis smiled, a little patronisingly at me, which was not like him. ‘Your eyes tell you one thing, logic tells you another. That boulder’s been there for ten thousand years. Mankind simply hasn’t been around that long. Unless you want to talk about little green space aliens, or intelligent dinosaurs, that is simply a strange natural shaping.’ He stood up. ‘We’ll come back and investigate it in a few weeks, after we’re certain the area is safe again. For now, we’ve got to get out of here. I have a bad feeling we could be in for some more tremors.’
He was wrong of course. He was wrong about the little green men, and the intelligent dinosaurs. He was wrong about how long that boulder had been there. But most of all he was wrong about the steps being a natural formation. The only thing he was right about was the tremors.
It was a strange feeling, going deeper and deeper into the caves when our every instinct was to get out of there. To be back above ground where the sky couldn’t fall on your head.
Tremors or no tremors, fear or no fear, the world underground was truly beautiful in a stark, minimalist kind of way that the world above could never be. We trod carefully past cave-lilies, odd shaped flowers of rock, seemingly growing out of the floor. We passed strange bird shaped stalactites that seemed to glow in hues of orange and red, in the light of our lamps.
We passed out of the huge cavern and into a series of smaller caves and tunnels. All made good time. Dennis led the way, followed by the indomitable bulk of Tupai. Fizzer was next, then Jenny and Phil who walked holding hands, although for whose comfort I don’t know. Jason and I formed the rearguard, both of us constantly scanning the ceiling and walls for loose rocks or dangerous looking cracks.
The roof got lower and the walls got narrower and when we ducked beneath a low overhang to enter a narrow chamber it was single file from then on. No holding hands. I was secretly, if a little immaturely, rather glad.
Dennis had been in constant radio contact with Reiko on the surface until we entered the chamber. Radio couldn’t penetrate that far into the earth.
He had given her a clear picture of our intentions, and instructed her to send the other ten expedition members, still waiting on the surface, tramping out. Reiko was to stay by the abseiling platform in case things got serious and they had to call in a helicopter to winch us out through the tomo.
It was good to have a back-up plan.
Dennis stopped by the torn remains of a rather modern and brightly painted ladder. A rock, the one that had done the damage, lay innocently nearby. The message to me was clear. ‘Don’t mess with Mother Nature,’ it was saying, ‘you don’t know who you’re picking.’
Dennis said ‘Stay here. We’re going to have to take the long route out. I’m just going to backtrack for a short way to get radio reception and let Reiko know.’ He disappeared back through the chamber.
The rest of us just stood there and looked at each other. There was a silence for a while. I guess we were all a bit lost in our own private thoughts. The abseil, the tremors, the steps in the side of the shaft. It was quite a lot of information for our brains to process.
Phil broke the silence eventually, as I had suspected he would. ‘Anyone else feeling slightly uncomfortable with fifty tons of rock hanging over our heads and the prospect of another tremor imminent?’
His voice was small and unsteady, and that was a sign that things were deeply wrong in his world. We all have many voices, whether we realise it or not. We have our speaking voice, that we use for everyday conversation. We have our tender voice, that we use in private moments with a loved one, or when speaking to a favoured child. And we have our Important Voice, that we use for announcements, or to command, or to demand respect from the listener. There are other voices of course, some people have more than others. Phil Domane said everything he said, and I mean everything, in his Important Voice. He didn’t say things, he announced them, and it grated on my nerves. The others didn’t seem to notice, and Jenny didn’t s
eem to mind, but it annoyed the hell out of me. Then again, I had my own reasons not to like Phil, so maybe that was part of it too.
But this time his voice was small. That of a frightened child.
Tupai said mildly ‘Don’t think about it then.’ And his inference was: ‘don’t make us think about it either.’
Then Dennis was back and the trek continued. It’s hard work, caving, or spelunking as the enthusiasts call it. It’s not simply hiking underground. There’s a lot of climbing, a lot of crawling, swimming, squeezing through holes barely wide enough for a human body. The trick there I learned was to put your head through first. If your head could fit then your body could follow.
We entered a low, water-filled cave and before Dennis could open his mouth to warn us, Fizzer cried out and snatched down at the water. He came up holding one of his boots.
‘This is the boot room,’ Dennis said, a smile starting to return to his voice. ‘So named because it has a tendency to suck your boots off your feet.’
There was a peculiar way of walking through the suctioning waters that seemed to prevent this occurrence and the rest of us kept our footwear attached.
The turbine was a small waterfall, cascading colours in the lights of our helmet lamps. We were under a rocky ledge, having entered actually behind the waterfall. There seemed no way ahead.
‘Just follow me.’ Dennis said and disappeared into the solid wall of water. Tupai followed, his size seemed to almost stem the flow of the waterfall for a moment, then he was through. I was dead last and followed Jason into the flow, forcing my way through the unbending sheet of water from above. I emerged into the pool at the base of the waterfall and swam across to the ledge where the others were waiting.
Through another tunnel and into a small cave with an inky deep pool of water taking most of the floor space. A movement caught my eye and something black and oily slithered under the surface of the pool in the light from our lamps.
Cave Dogs (Pachacuta Book 1) Page 2