Even if she did, she probably wouldn’t give me any, or would make me apologize first, or beg for it. There’s no way I’ll apologize when I’m right, and I’ll do it myself before I’ll beg. But I’m too tired to do it myself. I’ve had so many adrenaline rushes that I’m close to total burnout.
Water? Was there water in those bags? I struggle to my feet against my protesting muscles and leave Matt where he sleeps. I pass close enough to Mom and Dad to feel the warmth of the fire. They are snuggled together on upended logs, under a blanket Dad found somewhere. They appear not to notice me. I continue on to the bags and coolers where there is plenty of food, none of which is of the fast variety. There is also no microwave. There are three empty water bottles. I look up to where light marks the exit, and the sound of rushing water. Can I drink mountain water? Even mountain streams are supposedly contaminated.
So what would happen? I’d get a stomachache, or diarrhea, and without even a port-a-potty. That’s got to be better than dying of dehydration, though. I look back at Mom and Dad. They’re still into each other. The few cats that are lying about are paying no attention. I analyze the path that goes up one side and then switches back toward the light, take a breath and head out.
With a bottle in each hand I slowly walk up the path. A sabre-toothed cat is sprawled out on his side not thirty feet from the switchback. I watch him closely in the dim light as I make the turn. There is not a stir; not even a movement of his tail. He is humongous, and his head . . . my God! I move a little closer to get a better look and kick a rock. It’s just a little ‘chink,’ but the cats eyes fly open and in a split second he is on his feet. I don’t know who is more scared of who, but I do know that if not for being dehydrated and not having a drop in my bladder, I surely would have wet my pants again. He is the one to back away first, however. I’m too frozen in place with my water bottle weapons pointed at him. As if the bottles, or the scary human face, will surely do him in, he turns and limps away. I relax my death-grip on the bottles and let out a lungful of air. I find his limp curious. The other thing I find curious is that he has only one complete sabre tooth. The other is broken. What did he get into a fight with? He settles down in a dark far-off corner. I return to my intended mission.
Now I have definitely had too many adrenaline rushes. My legs are weak and shaky on the final slope toward the soft light from the outdoors. I stop near the top for a moment to get my strength back and look down at the eerie torches and fire, and the huddled figures of Mom and Dad. Guilt rushes over me. I try to bring back the notion that it is their fault for coming here but I can’t seem to get that to work again. I suddenly want to run back down there and cuddle up with them and tell them I’m sorry. I’ve sure screwed things up! Still, I remind myself, if she had not come . . .
I turn around and expect to be looking at sky and trees. Instead there is one more climb. It’s not far, like up a flight of stairs. I stop at the top and gape at a cloudless sky through a curtain of falling water. I step forward, through the opening, and into a cool mist. I shiver and move along the left wall to a narrow ledge. There is no exit; only a sheer drop to the pool below. I back up and look the other way. Again there is nothing. This is not an exit.
I can’t believe that the only way in is the way we came. I think of the coolers and bags and the work that Sam must have done to get it all in here. I can’t imagine how she did it. I’m getting wet and chilled standing here thinking. I turn around and come face-to-face with another cat. His head just brushes the overhead where I had to almost duck to pass through. I resist the urge to step back, even knowing that there is a good eight feet to the edge. He won’t try to harm me, I try to convince myself. I’m perfectly safe. I turn my head left and right. There is no place to go. I’m trapped. My only exit is through the waterfall and into the pool below. A thirty foot drop into what? What’s below the surface? He drops his head, steps forward, and stops. I step back. Although I had been averting my eyes—don’t challenge a wild animal—I suddenly find myself in full eye contact. It’s only for a split second, but I sense something old. 11,000 years old? An old cat? He turns and runs up a slope of rock that I had thought didn’t go anywhere. I rush forward and look up in time to see him disappear over the top of a rise that I earlier thought was a dead end.
Grandfather old.
I follow.
It’s another corridor which eventually exits straight into a grouping of huge boulders and trees that are even more effective at hiding this entrance, as the trees hid the other on the other side of the mountain. I step out into a huge field, and feel the warm sun on my face. It is hanging low; only a few hours until sunset.
Chapter 51
Zach
I have a desire to stretch out on the ground in front of the fire and let this all go away for a while. I’m bent forward with my elbows propped on my knees, considering that option when suddenly I’m falling. I jump to my feet.
“What’s the matter?” Tanya asks.
“I fell asleep.” I shake the cobwebs from my brain.
“Why don’t you lie down? I’m not going to sleep; at least not yet, so one of us might as well. I don’t see why two of us have to stay awake.”
I sit back down.
“Are they asleep?” she asks.
I look over her shoulder and then jump up again. “Where’s Becky?”
Tanya looks and then jumps up. “Reba!”
I run over to Matt and shake him awake. He has the, “Who’re you?” look on his face until he remembers.
“Where’s Becky?”
He looks around him. “I don’t know.”
Tanya’s screams for Reba are reverberating around the cavern. I join her with “Becky!” at the top of my lungs. There is only one cat. He’s annoyed by our noise making. That means the others have moved out of sight or have gone. Is their absence related to Becky’s disappearance? I holler again. Matt calls as well, suddenly coming alive from his depression.
And then I spot the open bag, and a water bottle lying on the ground. I remember hearing her rummaging around, but I had paid no attention to what she was doing. I look in the bag. The other water bottles that I remember seeing myself are not there. “She’s gone for water.”
“By herself!” Tanya starts up the path that leads toward the sound of water. Matt and I are right with her.
In only a few minutes we are looking at a waterfall from the inside. Any other time I’d be awed by it. Right now I ignore it and look for a way past it, down to the pool below, getting much closer to the edge than I’d normally allow myself. I’m rewarded with a dead end and shooting pains of fear up and down my legs by way of my scrotum. I turn my back to the drop-off and find any piece of protrusion I can to clamp onto. I then focus on the solidity of that rock wall until my feelings of fear recede and everything stabilizes. Then I inch my way back though the cold spray to where Tanya is waiting.
“There’s no way out,” I tell her. “It’s a sheer drop-off.”
“Where . . ?” she says but the rest of her words are cut off by Matt’s, “Reba!” The tone of his voice tells me he sees her and is calling to her. He is standing at the edge, not far from where I was, looking down through the waterfall. “Reba!”
“Do you see her? Is she okay?”
He nods his head and calls to her again. Neither Tanya nor I are willing to walk up that close to see.
“How do we get down there?” Tanya asks him.
He looks left and right and then shrugs his shoulders. “Reba!” It’s obvious to me that she can’t hear him over the roar of the waterfall. I shiver at the chill from the mist in the air and then turn around and start looking for a way out. Tanya goes one way and I start looking in the other. It is immediately obvious that there is nothing in my direction.
“Zach!” Tanya is standing at what appears to be a dead end. She motions for me toward her and then points. “Here! It’s up here!” She disappears.
When I find her she is standing in the sun, look
ing around.
“God this feels good,” she says.
I agree but I’m more concerned right now with finding a way down to where Becky is. I start picking my way through trees and then down a steep slope where I have to hold onto evergreen branches to keep from sliding all the way. I’m not entirely comfortable with this but I fight it and keep working my way down. Tanya is above me. I wait for her.
“Just go!” she says. “I’ll get down by myself.”
I don’t argue. In another few minutes I’m at the bottom. I turn toward the sound of the waterfall and start fighting my way through the trees and underbrush, getting more and more frantic every minute. We had agreed not to separate but here we are, each of us now alone, sitting duck dinners for hungry felines. With the waterfall masking the noise of their approach, we could be jumped from behind without fair warning. The hairs on the back of my neck rise and I whip around. There are no soft pawed animals sneaking up; just patches of Tanya making her way. I continue on. In another minute I break out onto a rock and pebble beach. There is a rainbow suspended in the mist thrown up by the falling water. Below it stands Becky looking up. She is waving at Matt who can barely be seen through the curtain of water.
“Becky!”
She turns and presents me with a huge smile. “Isn’t this beautiful, Dad?”
“What in the hell are you doing?” I demand.
The smile fades. “What do you mean? I came to find water.” She picks up the water bottles, wet and heavy.
“You can’t do that alone. You scared us to death again.”
“They’re not going to bother us. Haven’t you figured that out by now?”
“Yes, but why take chances? Being wrong about them means death.”
“If I was wrong, I’d already be dead at least three times. Sam has them programmed. We are completely off limits.”
“But what if one of them chooses to ignore her, or has a brain disorder that allows him not to receive or understand her orders?”
“Dad! What if the moon slows and falls out of orbit and crashes to the earth?”
I blink at her. How does one argue with that kind of twisted logic?
“Reba!” Tanya rushes past me toward our daughter.
“Mom!” She stops her mother short by holding the two bottles of water at her. “What is with you guys that I can’t do something without you following me around? I’m perfectly safe, a lot more safe than walking the streets of Dallas. Not only are the sabre-toothed cats not going to hurt us, but they’re protecting us. I’d have walked right into that grizzly bear if not for one of them. And those guys that shot Matt’s dad. The cats got them because they were coming after us.”
“How do you know that for sure?” Tanya demands.
“Mom. Have you been blind? They’ve been with us ever since the beginning. Two or three of them; staying just out of sight most of the time.” She drops the bottle-holding hands to her sides. “There have been plenty of opportunities to take one of us if that was what they wanted. We have personal body-guards.”
Tanya looks back at me for support. I shrug. A shift in the muscles in her face tells me she is disappointed in me. What else is new? She turns back. Becky points one bottle into the air and says, “See the rainbow!”
Tanya sits on a rock and empties half of one of the water bottles. “I didn’t know how thirsty I was.” Becky refills it and hands it back. I do the same with the other bottle and refill it myself. I sit down next to Tanya.
“I’m sorry,” Becky suddenly says.
“About what?” I ask.
“About what I said to you guys before.”
“Thank you,” Tanya says, and nothing else. I want to say that I understand what she was saying, that maybe we were rash and bullheaded. I hold my tongue, not wanting more of Tanya’s displeasure. She looks up at Matt still standing behind the waterfall looking down. “We need to bring him a bottle, too.”
“Speaking of Matt,” I say, “what’s with him? You two seem to have a pretty good connection.”
“He’s a complete mess,” Becky says. “And it started long before any of this.”
“What happened?”
“When he was four, maybe five—it’s just a guess because I have no way of knowing for sure—he played a prank on his parents and hid under a rock, or in a small cave covered by rocks. While his parents and brothers looked for him, he fell asleep. When he woke up it was dark and there were animals trying to get to him. They were wolves I think.”
“He doesn’t know how old he was?” Tanya said.
Becky rolls her eyes. “I read his mind, Mom.”
“Well how should I know? I have no idea what you’re doing anymore. You’re weirder than your father.” There’s a few seconds of tense silence. “Does he talk about it at all?”
Becky shakes her head. “No. He hasn’t told me anything. As best I can guess—I only get bits and pieces—he was under there for nearly twenty-four hours before searchers came by. I don’t know how they spotted him. I think he cried or something. Anyway, he now has an intense fear of the dark and tight spaces. Add to that coming face to face with the sabre-toothed cats yesterday, watching his dad get murdered, running through the pitch dark, spending the night in the cave, and all the rest and you have a mental disaster. When it’s too much for him to handle, his mind shuts down and he becomes a walking vegetable.”
“That’s when he latches onto one of us like a puppy dog.”
“Right.”
“That’s how he got through the mountain with us. His mind went into neutral so that he didn’t have to face the fears.”
“Exactly. When that happens I can’t read anything at all. It’s like he takes all his thoughts and memories, throws them into a barrel and puts the lid on so that they can’t get out.”
“Sounds kind of nice,” I say.
“It seems similar to split personalities,” Tanya says. “Those who create a another person in order to avoid some kind of mental trauma. Dissociative Identity Disorder. In this case he produces a nothing.”
“A black hole,” Becky says.
Chapter 52
Zach
We wait until it turns dark, and then we wait some more. Matt is with us again, although still leery of the cats. He stays close to the fire. The cats act as though we aren’t there. They have all left except for a pregnant female. She goes out once and then comes back. Probably a bladder control problem—a pregnant thing. Or maybe they have some fresh kill stashed somewhere that she is feeding on. “Hey guys, I’m in the mood for venison, with a side of pickles. Oh! Wait a minute. I’ve changed my mind. Goat sounds really good right now. Get me one of those, and a side of rabbit. Throw in a half dozen squirrels.”
“What are you thinking about?” Tanya asks me.
“Nothing. Just wondering what they eat.”
“As long as it’s not us, I don’t care.”
“This is how they stayed so well hidden for eight years. They went underground.”
“Literally.”
“Why doesn’t anybody know about this place?”
“Looks like someone did at one time.”
“Probably some miners who were afraid of claim jumpers.”
“Do you think there’s gold in here?” Becky is suddenly interested in the conversation.
I shrug. “I don’t know. Silver maybe. Or was this as a hideout for outlaws?”
“Still,” Tanya says, “you’d think someone would have run onto it. Hunters, hikers, someone.” There is silence for a bit, and then Tanya asks, “Why is it so warm in here?”
“We’ve got a fire going.” I say, stating the obvious.
“No. It was warm when we first walked in here, or at least not as cold as in the tunnel.”
“Yeah,” Becky says. “Why is that? Caves are supposed to be cold.”
“There had to be a ten degree difference.”
“I don’t know,” I admit. Becky stands and walks toward the darker end of the cavern.
>
“Reba!” Tanya says. “Don’t go exploring alone again.”
“I’m not going very far, Mom. Just looking.”
“I’ll go with her.” I stand and hear a cacophony of cracking joints. My muscles complain as I catch up to her at the beginning of a path that leads out of the pit. “Wait. We need light.” I retrieve and light the lantern, and then we navigate into the deep, dark reaches of the cavern.
It becomes obvious very quickly that there is something giving off heat. Both the temperature and humidity level rise even more as we enter an offshoot of the main cavern, and there is a movement of warm air against my face. This is what is keeping the main cavern warm.
“It’s over eighty degrees in here,” Becky says.
“Almost like a sauna.” There are two more torches, one on each side of a pool of water.
Becky bends down and puts her hand into the water. “Oh, wow! A hot tub!” She stands and starts unbuttoning her shirt.
“What’re you doing?”
“I’m getting in. This is like a wish come true. I can’t believe it!”
“No! You don’t know what’s in that water, or how deep it is.”
“Daaaad! This is your daughter. State champion in the 200 meter breast stroke. I have doubts the depth of the water is going to bother me. These torches tell me this is used by Sam. She looked mighty fine to me the last time I saw her, unless you saw something that I didn’t.”
“But you can’t just take your clothes off with me standing here.”
“Then leave.” By this time she has her shirt and her undershirt off and is standing before me in her bra. She’s kicking off her shoes and is working on the buckle to her jeans. “Go! You’re right. I can’t strip in front of you.” She doesn’t stop. She pushes her jeans down past her hips and I turn around. “Go get Mom. She needs this. Tell her to bring those towels.”
“Becky! You shouldn’t do this.”
Sabre-Toothed Cat Trilogy Page 69