by Tom Leveen
He held up the book. “Here it is. It matches up, see? The other ones on the walls aren’t in the book.”
“So he had been here,”Selby said.
“Maybe,”Charlie said, and his tone reminded me of my own; now that we were here, he didn’t want to get into a shouting match with Selby. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is we have a map.”
Charlie’s eyes gleamed. What had begun as a quirky little road trip now took on a whole new meaning—I could see that in his expression.
“Isn’t it weird that no one else has been here?”Alex said. “I mean, a place this big, shouldn’t a lot of cavers come hiking around?”
“We don’t know that they didn’t,”Charlie said, putting the book away. “All we know is that it’s massive. Maybe there’re bodies down here no one even knows about, or maybe there are cavers who come all the time but don’t tell anyone else. Who knows.”
We all glanced around uneasily at the idea of explorers’ bodies being somewhere nearby. Then Charlie kept moving, and we followed him.
“Okay, listen, not to be the voice of reason or anything, but maybe we should head back,”Selby said.
“Feel free,”Charlie said.
Uh-oh. He may as well have smacked her upside the head. She half whined, half shouted his name. Charlie spun.
“Look!”he said. “You knew what we were coming here for. You knew the point. Now, I’ll admit, I didn’t think we’d find much, but I figured it was worth the trip. But this stuff on the walls and in Dad’s book, that’s not a coincidence, all right? He knew something. I’m going to find out what it was.”
“Well, whatever he ‘knew,’ it got him killed,”Selby snapped back, but like she wasn’t sure she should.
Charlie’s expression hardened until it matched the rock walls.
Alex jumped in. “How long would we be in here? And can we find our way back out?”
“I have chalk,”Charlie said, staring at Selby. “We can mark as we go.”
“We’ll probably be in here for a while,”I said. “A few hours, at least.”
“So why not take the book to the cops and show them this little so-called map you’re making up as we go,”Selby said. “We don’t have to—”
I unleashed.
“My mom’s been gone for five years,”I said with a voice that sounded like my vocal cords had been scraped with sandpaper. “But my dad’s been dead for that long. Dead to me, dead to himself. You at least know what happened to your dad. At home, I have to ask every day, is he going to get out of bed? Shower? Eat? Speak? I don’t know. I don’t know because we don’t know what happened to Mom. This is the only chance I can see to get an answer, so I’m going in that cave. I’m following these symbols, because if at the end of it is a big sign saying HA-HA, JUST KIDDING, NOTHING NEW HERE! then you know what? Then I can go home tell that to my dad, and we can fucking move on.”
I had to stop. My lungs ached. No one spoke. I dragged an arm under my nose and forced in a deep breath.
“So if you need to wait in the van, go for it. I don’t blame you. I’m sorry if this isn’t the peachy keen time you were hoping for, but I’m going.”
Selby stared at the stone wall, like she couldn’t bear to look at me, or Charlie, for that matter. Alex stood patiently waiting. I had the sense he was coming with us, that he wanted answers too.
At last, Selby nodded, gripping her big black flashlight with both hands like something out of Star Wars. “Okay. Fine, you win. I’ll go. I must be out of my mind.”
“I think maybe we all are,”Alex offered. I expected his sarcastic grin, but he wasn’t joking.
Charlie assessed us each, as if to make sure there would be no more delays. “All right. Let’s move out.”
We walked deeper into the cave.
27
Now
* * *
We drive in silence, bumping over gravel until we hit an empty road. Charlie steers us onto it. The sun begins to set, and we haven’t encountered any more creatures. Cars, too, have become rare, and then are gone altogether until we are the only ones on this road headed north.
“Looks like we might make it,”Charlie says.
His voice startles me. I’d been partly dozing while trying not to. Now that the sun is disappearing, the wisdom of being out in the dark in a world full of unknown monsters doesn’t sound so smart.
“To Henderson, I mean,”Charlie says. “Lotta traffic going away from there. See those campfires?”
He points, and I see a few pinpricks of light out in the desert mountains surrounding us.
“My guess is they were told to evacuate,”Charlie says. “Maybe the emergency broadcast system was working, and they were able to bug out. Doesn’t look like anyone’s headed our way at the moment.”
“Okay,”I say, and open a fresh bottle of water.
“Problem is, we’re almost out of gas. We might be rolling to a stop in front of your house.”
“Okay.”
“You could get clean clothes, anyway.”
“Anyway . . . ? You mean if my dad’s not there.”
“Abby—”
“He will be. Trust me.”
Charlie seems about ready to reply, but then snaps his mouth shut and slows down. As we slow, it becomes clear why no one else is headed out of town or following us in.
There had been a roadblock here earlier. Military. We pass two of those big drab brown Hummer jeeps. One is on its side, showing us its belly. The other is bashed into rubble where it stands. Just beyond the glare of our headlights—it’s now fully dark—I see prostrate bodies in digital camouflage clothing.
Charlie hits the brakes. I catch myself on the dash, and Selby wakens with a sharp cry. Before I can say anything, Charlie, with a look of terrified determination, leaps out of the car, runs to a soldier lying half on the blacktop, and picks up his gun. Charlie rushes back to the Wrangler, shoving the rifle or machine gun or whatever it is into the back, and stomps on the gas before he’s even gotten his door closed.
“The hell?”Selby groans.
“Sorry,”Charlie mumbles.
“What’s that for?”I say, pointing to the gun.
“For whatever did that to them.”
“Right, but if those guys had guns and it didn’t help—”
“Just let me have a fucking gun, Abby.”
I shut up. I also consider asking him if he has even one clue how to shoot it, and I stay shut up instead.
“Where are we?”Selby asks, wincing.
“Almost home,”I say automatically.
I hear her fish for her pills and take one. I ask how she feels, and she grumbles, “Fine.”We leave it at that, but I suddenly get anxious to look under her bandage and verify her claim. She slept most of the day on those pills. I suppose that’s okay, but something about it doesn’t sit right with me.
We drive on through a darkness rivaling that of the cave. It feels as though the moon has taken off too, like she’d seen what’s happening down here and said, Thanks but no thanks, I’m outta here.
As we go, there seems to be a haze on the horizon, one that I should be able to identify but can’t, not right away. When we crest a hill, Charlie again slows the car, just to take in the magnitude of it.
Las Vegas has been devoured in flame.
It is destruction of Biblical proportions. I wonder if this is what happened to Sodom and Gomorrah, and have to resist taking Orson’s suggestion to pray about it. Except for the lack of a crater, the Strip looks as if it’s been struck by an asteroid. Anything and anyone within miles of the Strip has surely been blown away or burnt up.
“Abby . . . ,”Charlie says.
“No. Henderson’s that way. Keep going.”
“But—”
“Look, it’s mainly the Strip. The suburbs aren’t on fire, see? Keep driving.”
Charlie inhales deeply, then slowly accelerates again. He doesn’t mention what I’ve already noticed: while Henderson doesn’t seem to be on fire,
there are no lights on anywhere either. Not that I can see from up here.
Fortunately, I’m right about the suburbs. We manage to get into my hometown and to my neighborhood without huge difficulties, though there are burnt-out cars we need to maneuver around along the way. We’re lucky that there’s more gas in the tank than Charlie had feared, though the needle hovers on E. We don’t encounter a single living soul.
But we do pass bodies on the road. Neither of us looks closely at them. I don’t want to know how they died.
We pull up to my house, to the same old dirt yard with its yellow weeds, and that’s when adrenaline dumps into me again. With the electricity gone, my house has only starlight above to see by, and even that is obscured by dust and smoke. My house looks like a crypt.
Charlie shuts the car off but leaves the lights on, pointed toward the house. He pulls out the army rifle.
With one hand on the door already, I ask, “What are you doing?”
“We don’t know what’s in there.”
“We don’t care. Put that thing away.”
“No.”
“Fine, then stay here with Selby.”
“I’m not letting you—”
“Shut up,”I say, and climb out of the Jeep, marching toward the front door.
Which, before I can reach it, opens by itself.
Despite my bravado in front of Charlie, I freeze in place, sucking in air, thinking it might be my last breath.
“Abby?”
Dad steps onto the porch. He wears jeans and a long-sleeved turtleneck against the chill. I run full speed up to him and surround him with my arms.
“Come in,”he says after a second. “It’s not safe out—who is that?”
“Dad, it’s Charlie.”
“Charlie Prinn?”
“Get Selby,”I say to Charlie. “We should get inside.”
Charlie helps Selby climb out of the car. She isn’t moving any faster than she did this morning.
“I’m so glad you’re okay,”I tell Dad as Charlie and Selby come toward the front door.
“Of course I am,”Dad says. “Come on. Come in.”
Still clinging to him, we sidestep with each other into the house. I don’t let go until we reach the kitchen. I look back as the door closes, and watch Charlie setting Selby down gently on the couch, where she lets out a pained sigh. Charlie joins me and Dad in the kitchen tentatively, clearly not sure what kind of reception to expect from Dad.
He still carries the rifle.
28
Then
* * *
“Did the rescue teams make it this far?”Alex asked as we continued down through the cave.
“I don’t know,”Charlie said. “There were, what, ten options back there? No telling how far they snake out, or come together and double back. This isn’t someplace you want to get lost.”
“Brilliant,”Selby muttered. Her old snarkiness actually made me feel a bit better about being however deep into this cave we were.
We moved carefully down the passage, shining our lights in all directions but paying close attention to our feet.
“What kind of cave is this?”Alex asked. “I mean, do you know what formed it? Water, I assume?”
Charlie shrugged. “Don’t know. That’s probably a reasonable guess.”
“So smooth,”Alex muttered, tracing his fingers along the wall for a moment. “And dry. I don’t even hear any water dripping. Isn’t that kind of weird?”
“Whatever caused it must’ve just dried up over a long period,”Charlie said, but I could hear the uncertainty in his voice. It occurred to me then that the others sensed it too: that this cave was wrong somehow.
“What time is it?”Selby asked suddenly.
I checked my phone. No service, of course, but the clock worked fine. “Almost eleven.”
“We’ve been in here an hour,”Alex said. “How close are we?”
“To what?”I said.
We aimed our lights toward Charlie’s back. He seemed to sense the attention and answered, “I don’t know. I don’t have a destination in mind. We’ll know it when we see it.”
Twenty minutes later, we stopped to take a break, eat warm Lunchables, have some water, and listen. We didn’t talk much. What would we have said? Seen that new horror movie? Feeling slightly better but not exactly refreshed, we pushed on.
We reached another chamber with spider-leg tunnels branching off from it. These, too, had distinct cave art beside them. Charlie consulted the book, chose a tunnel, and on we went. After that, we encountered branching tunnels more often. We’d find a side tunnel with no markings, and go past it, then a three-way split with drawings or carvings. They were becoming more and more frequent, and it became clear how search parties couldn’t have checked out every passage.
We kept trudging through, deeper into the labyrinth and farther under the ground. We saw dozens of branch tunnels leading in all directions, all of them large enough to at least crawl through. At one point, I got the unsettling impression we were in a giant ant farm. Charlie kept referring to the book and matching up symbols and drawings on the walls with things his father had written down.
“Stop!”Charlie said.
We did.
“Hold on a sec. It looks like there’s a drop-off up here.”
He let his bag slide to the ground, then got to his hands and knees and inched forward with his flashlight.
“Well, that was close,”I muttered.
“Alex,”he said with a sort of enforced calmness to his voice. “Hand me your bag.”
“What—”
“Just do it.”
Alex frowned and unshouldered his large, square bag. He eased his way to Charlie and set it beside him. Charlie rummaged through the bag and pulled out an EMF reader. He turned it on, and we all watched the needle instantly jet to the far right. A red indicator button lit up like an evil eye.
“We’ve got something,”Charlie said. “There’s a big electromagnetic field.”
“That’s not possible,”Selby whispered. “Not down here.”
I didn’t have to ask what they meant, because Mom had explained EMF meters to me a long time ago. Ghost hunters used the meters to locate and measure energy fields, but they were designed to be used to find problems in power lines. Ghost hunters claimed spirits generated their own energy fields, which the meters could detect.
And Selby was right: this far into an underground cavern, there should not have been anything for an EMF meter to pick up. Not that strongly.
Charlie gently set the EMF down and picked up a small camera. He opened the viewfinder and pointed it down the dark, sloping tunnel. The rest of us strained to see what he was looking at on the screen, but none of us wanted to move from our sure footing.
“Something’s moving down there,”Charlie whispered. “But it’s . . . it’s cold. The thermal is just barely picking them up. . . .”
“They?”I said, and my voice sounded as taut as a spiderweb.
Charlie put the camera into the bag and crept farther along the floor on his stomach. The drop was so steep, we couldn’t see his head as he shined his heavy flashlight down the tunnel.
Charlie’s voice sounded as if it came from the bottom of a pit of quicksand.
“It’s them!”
Selby, Alex, and I traded looks, then shuffled over to Charlie. He lay grasping the edge of a steep drop into darkness, shining his flashlight down. We gathered around him, pointing our lights.
The first flash of red nearly made me scream, except at the same moment, I recognized it. A shirt I’d seen before. On at least one episode of The Spectre Spectrum.
My mother’s shirt.
We’d found our parents.
Alive.
29
Now
* * *
My house is dark but for a single lit candle on the kitchen table. I could have cried; the smell of the house, the feel of it . . . Being home takes on an entirely new meaning, no matter what’s happeni
ng outside.
Dad pours a mug of coffee. “Does your friend . . . ?”he asks, gesturing to the living room with the mug.
“Selby?”I call. “There’s coffee.”
“No.”
Dad hands the mug over to me. “It’s not too hot. The power went out a few hours ago, and I had this pot going. Better than nothing, I guess.”
Dad hands another full cup to Charlie. Dad’s eyes seem recessed into his head, concealed by shadows thrown by the candlelight as he stares at Charlie. Charlie obviously feels the scrutiny. He takes the cup and stands against one counter, resting the rifle on top of it. It looks like a demon in its own right.
Dad sits down at the table and I join him, taking a sip of the coffee. Unbelievably curative, like the sun was yesterday.
“Have you seen what’s happening out there?”Dad asks.
“Yes. We’ve seen . . . a lot. You’re sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine.”
His head turns toward Charlie. “So, Charlie. How have you been?”
All of us, I’m sure, hear how much he does not care what the answer is. Charlie sets his cup down with a sigh and says, “Mr. Booth—”
“We found Mom,”I say.
Dad turns slowly around to me. “What?”
“Daddy, listen to me.”I take one of his hands in both of mine. His fingers are chilly, as if he made the coffee specifically to keep them warm. The lines of strain and age on his face deepen in the flickering candlelight, which smells of pine.
“We found Mom,”I say again. “We found all of them.”
“Not all,”Charlie says.
“What?”
Charlie’s eyebrows shoot upward. “You didn’t . . . ? Abby, they weren’t all there. There was one missing.”
I scan that awful memory and come up blank. “Who?”
Charlie gapes, then snorts, then shakes his head. “Gotta use the bathroom,”he says, and walks out of the kitchen.
Dad’s hand is limp in mine. “What are you two talking about?”
“Dad, listen. I lied to you about going to a conference. And I’m really sorry, but that’s not what matters right now. Charlie and I and two other people went to the cave. One of them was Marcia Trinity’s son.”