I roll onto my back and stare up at the high vaulted ceiling, and the light passing in around the incoming river. I feel warm now. Very comfy actually. If I sleep for a bit I’ll wake up rested and ready to move on. I may even be ready for one of those canned hams . . . or a big plate of lasagna, Mom’s specialty. Oh God, I miss Mom. I was so mean to her in my senior year of high school. I was mean to everyone, even Christi. She really didn’t deserve it. Now she hates me. Dad hates me; won’t even talk to me. God I miss him, too. I miss them all, even Sarah, my best friend, and the swim team, and Coach. I hated his work outs, but I sure do miss him. I couldn’t bullshit him like I could Dad.
Couldn’t bullshit Mom either. Couldn’t pull nothing over on Mom. It is apropos that I die right here, right where she died, right where she still is.
Apropos! I giggle. Mandi would be shocked at my use of another big word. I wonder what it means, if I used it right? I miss her, too.
I close my eyes and drift into sleep, and into dreams of big cats with long knives for teeth.
Chapter 34
I’m rudely awakened. Someone has me by the scruff of my neck or the clothing there about and is dragging me. My legs, my feet in my waterlogged hiking boots, and the backpack, which, apparently, my hand is still firmly clasped onto, bounce merrily along. Water cascades from high overhead creating a rumble in the middle of the lake, throwing spray high in the air. I hadn’t seen the spray before. From this angle the light from the far side creates a beautiful, angel-like glow in the mist. It strikes a memory, a book I read once about terrorists or something. Angels in the Mist. Wow! Now I get it!
And then I see Sheriff Dan, across the lake on the far bank. He is standing with his gun in the crook of his arm, shining his light in the water where I used to be, and up along the bank. I do not see the other guy, Deputy Dog. Deputy Dog? I giggle at that, but cannot remember where I’ve have heard that before. A cartoon, I think. Is he the one dragging me? If he is, Sheriff Dan wouldn’t still be looking for me. Maybe I’m hallucinating. I’m probably still lying where I was, half in and half out of the water, slowly sliding toward death. Or maybe I’m dead and this is just my soul being drawn toward the white light.
Where’s the white light? It is, instead, getting darker. I sense that we have passed through an opening, into a darker chamber. Who the other half of the “we” is, I still have no clue, other than maybe an angel. Sheriff Dan and the mist disappear from my sight, replaced by the barely visible walls of a cavernous room, which I recognize. The odor of the hot springs fills me again and I remember a time of enjoyment with my mother, and then a time of anger. Suddenly there is warmth, and then hot, and then stinging hot.
Too hot!
Whoever has me lets me go. I flop into the hot water sideways and then roll over on my face. All thousands, or millions, of my deadened pain-sensing nerve endings fire, and like a landed fish trying to flop his way back into the water, I flop myself up onto the bank. There is a scream echoing off the cavern walls. Did I scream?
The stinging eases and I am suddenly aware that there is a sabre-toothed cat lying next to me, and that it is he who dragged me from my icy grave. Which one, I do not know. I’ll figure it out when my body systems start clicking back on. As the frozen fog that was my brain thaws, I understand that I did in fact scream. If Sheriff Dan heard me, can he get to me?
This cat got to me so of course the killer sheriff can. What I have going for me is that he doesn’t know he can. And the more I think about it the more I’m sure he didn’t hear me. The waterfall inside the cavern is deafening, sucking in and extinguishing every other sound like a black hole sucks in and extinguishes light. Here, in the hot spring chamber, it is an annoying roar.
I struggle to a sitting position and look around. My rescuer and I are not alone. In the dimness of the chamber, very dim despite my feline sight, I can make out the black and white form of another huge cat on a ledge thirty feet away. I reach out and discover that it is Tricia, and that my rescuer is Yulya.
Hesitantly, I stand, judge my balance as barely adequate and then walk over to her and kneel down. She looks older than when I last saw her in the mountains outside of Bozeman. I cannot imagine how she made the trip back. Was she here all along or did she arrive while we were fooling with Lester and Sarge?
I stroke her neck and rub her forehead. “How did you get in here? Why did you come in here? Is this to be your final resting place?” Of course she doesn’t answer me, but I sense that I am right, or near right.
I shiver from some place deep within my core and have a hunch that hypothermia still lingers nearby. I wonder how hot the pool really is because it is beginning to look extremely inviting. I return to it and insert my hand. It stings at first and then gradually becomes comfortable. The initial pain when Yulya threw me in was from the full body shock of cold hitting hot. In some way I will probably pay for it later, but right now I’m fully alert, and fully functional, though fifteen or twenty minutes in the warm water sure wouldn’t hurt a bit. I remove my boots, prop them upside down, and then ease into the pool. No point in removing the clothes. If they’re going to be soaked, it may as well be with hot water.
It is wonderful.
My stomach growls.
The pack is still in the water where it landed with me. I drag it out and dump the water and contents. I select a couple of the sandwiches, and one of the Snapples. With only the very top of my shoulders, plus my head and hands out of the water, I eat. It is like a gourmet meal with champagne on a Caribbean cruise ship. Not that I’ve ever been on one, but I can imagine. I’m on my fourth half sandwich before I slow down. When I take the last bite I lay my head back and close my eyes.
My eyes snap open and I jerk upright. Did I fall asleep? Yes, I did. How long? Thirty seconds? Six hours? Yulya isn’t where he was. I slept long enough that he got up and moved to lie next to Tricia. No, it was just a short nap, only a few minutes, no more than ten. Longer and the hot water would have wasted me. The food and short nap have me energized, actually. The chill is gone. It may return, though, as there is no way to dry my clothes. No way around that. Got to get moving.
I step out and stand for a time letting the bulk of water drain from me before putting my boots back on. I check the GPS. It has met its expectations of being waterproof, coming alive with a glow in my face. No signal inside the mountain so I return it to its belt case. I stuff the remainder of the food—I ignore the desire to rip open a can of ham—into the pack and hang it on my back.
How do I get out of here without swimming again?
I look at Yulya. How did you guys get in here? He doesn’t answer me. I throw him pictures of the other camp, and of Roma and Nadia. Take me to them. I point in that general direction. He stands and looks between me and Tricia. He doesn’t want to leave her. I am amazed at the closeness of these wild animals. They do not abandon each other, even on their death beds, if that is what this is.
I walk over, give Tricia a hug, and place my hand on Yulya’s shoulder.
It’ll be okay, Yulya. Just lead me out of here and you can come back and hold your vigilance. I give him more pictures. I sense a communication between him and Tricia, and he steps away. She has given her nod.
I hug her one last time and follow after Yulya.
We approach the place where Dad and Matt had stood with a lantern, looking down at Mom and me in the hot water, Mom giggling and whispering about inviting them in. We were naked and up to our necks in the pool. They had gone to investigate the source of the warm air, and Mom had turned weird again. They refused the invitation, Matt seeming ridiculously shy. Dad told me later that he had an unreasonable fear of water, kind of like Dad’s fear of heights. Dad defended his refusal. Mom got angry.
There is definitely hot air blowing in from a hole in the wall. I could hang my clothes here to dry. Yulya moves past and I follow, until we come into darkness that my night vision can no longer overcome.
“Stop,” I say. Surprisingly he does. I
remove the pack and dig by feel into the side pockets until I find the small, two AAA battery flashlight. It has an adjustable lens hood to provide a narrow or wide beam. I widen it out completely and we continue.
I remember sitting out in the meadow, next to Vandermill’s helicopter, acting as his bait to bring in Sam. Sam had entered the cavern some other way, and very quickly. This had to have been how. Everything suddenly makes sense. We keep going at a steady climb until all of a sudden there is a glow of light ahead and I don’t need the flashlight anymore. A minute later we break into daylight and I blink into the face of the setting sun, and then down at the rock ledge on which I am standing, a shear drop in front of us. I do not have a fear of heights, as does my dad, but I do respect it. I back up a step.
Yulya moves off to my left and I scramble after him. A short narrow ledge and a tangle of thorny bushes later we open out and then climb another thirty or forty feet. I look back. Without knowing it was there, I could never have found that opening.
Yulya takes me to the creek. It is running high and fast. I have no desire to attempt a wade so we follow it until it appears to dead-end in a pool. I skirt around several huge boulders to find where gravity sucks it into the opening above the cavern. There is enough spring runoff that a good ten percent breaks between the rocks and continues for another sixty feet to drop off the cliff edge and join itself far below. It is narrow enough along here that I’m able to hop scotch the rocks across.
We follow the creek upstream for a time until it heads up into a ravine. We split off to the left and before long start a descent through the thick trees, skirting around drifts of snow. Suddenly I recognize where we are. This is where I stood watching the helicopter coming in when it dropped off the crates, where I called Mandi a bitch. I should feel bad about that, but I don’t. Two minutes later I’m looking down at my rock. No one is around; no people, no cats, not even a backpack or an energy bar wrapper.
It is near completely dark, but with the three-quarter moon hanging high in the sky, and with my super cat vision, I can see like daylight, and what is most visible to me is that I’ve been abandoned.
Chapter 35
Or maybe they’re in the cave! I scurry to the opening and rush inside.
Edik is awake and sitting up, totally alone. Even Nadia and the youngsters are gone. I reach into Edik’s mind. Where are they? He does not answer. I throw him pictures of Nadia and the kittens. He generates his own pictures of them. He is no help.
My backpack is right where I left it. I drop Lester’s and start pulling dry clothes out of mine. I layer up with the sports bra, a long-sleeve under shirt, a short sleeve T-shirt, sweatshirt, and then my jacket with a thin layer of down. I pull a pair of heavy socks over my feet and slip them back into the soggy boots. Except for a couple more changes of socks, that’s all the extra clothes I have. The wet clothes I drape over rocks. I set a pair of gloves and a stocking cap aside—thank you Mandi for making me buy the cap—and dig into Lester’s pack for a canned ham.
The first one I pull out has a hole in it, actually two holes. The second one has one hole. “Holy shit!” My legs suddenly become shaky and I sit on the ground, the bullet riddled hams in my lap.
It is a long time before I lift my head from my hands. I am only now beginning to understand the seriousness of what I have gotten us all into. Once again, because of my decisions, someone I care about is probably going to die. I may be angry with Mandi, but I truly do care about her, as well as Matt and Sharon. I really like Matt and I sure don’t deserve him. Mandi is right for him. Not me. They could make good children. I shouldn’t be angry or jealous of them. I should be happy for them. And I really have come to like Sharon.
I point my nose to the ceiling. “Shit to hell!”
Mandi, Matt, and Sharon haven’t abandoned me. I sense it at my core. They’ve gone after me, and because of me they may now be in the hands of Sheriff Dan.
Yulya comes in and lies down next to me. I thought he’d left, gone back to Tricia. I stroke his forehead and look at the hams that saved my life, still resting heavy in my lap. Sheriff Dan tried to shoot me in the back; an unarmed girl running away from him. What a bastard. If not for Lester’s hams I’d be in the hereafter talking to my mother now.
I stand, my anger surging strength into my legs. “Sorry Mister Dan, but I’m not ready to be with my mother yet.” Yulya comes to his feet with me and stands at the ready, awaiting my command. Yes, that’s what he’s doing. He knows we are going to do something and he’s awaiting my command.
I open the two shot-up hams, cut out the lead from where it stopped in the second ham and analyze it. My death bullet . . . stopped by sheer luck. I give the ham to Edik. His is very happy.
I open a third ham and give that to Yulya. He sniffs it and paces, eventually coming back to it. He knows something is wrong and he wants to get on to correcting it. He eats the ham with great enjoyment and returns to pacing.
I open the last one for me. I cut off chunks and eat, slugging down a bottle of water with it. After a third of the ham is gone, I am completely satisfied. There is no way to store the remainder so I hold it out toward Yulya. “You want this?” I sense that he does, the ham I’d already given him barely touched his appetite I’m sure. I toss it at him and he snaps it out of the air.
I put the tins in a pile to haul out of here with us, if we live through this that is, clean up my hands as best I can, and turn to Edik. Eating has done him some good. He has changed his position, looking much more relaxed. In human terms, he has his color back. “You up to going to work, big guy?” I ask him. He stands. “Good. Let’s go.”
The three of us step out into the night air and stand together, Yulya on my left, Edik on my right, while I put on my gloves and cap. The moon and stars are amazing, like something out of a movie. I could lie down and stare up at it all for hours.
Another time.
I place my hands on the shoulders of the big cats, like I did Roma and Vadik before they were shot with drugs. I felt it a little then, and feel it even more now. It is as though I am drawing my strength, my newly developed feline talents, directly from them. The very fibers of my muscles hum with anticipation, a combination of animal steel and cat-like agility. We step out and move together as if of one mind. Someone watching may see nothing more than two sabre-toothed cats and a human female walking through the woods. What I see, what I feel, are three big cats moving fast and silent, barely disturbing the grass they walk on, the animals around which the world was built. We are many . . . we are one.
We are Smilodon.
Chapter 36
As we near the meadow where the Helicopter still sits like a giant sleeping cockroach, I pick up a mental sense of Roma, Vadik, and Gosha. I do not pick up Nadia, or the youngsters, but then I’ve never been able to pick up the youngsters. It is as though they haven’t developed that part of themselves yet. Like me, it probably doesn’t kick in until adulthood.
Lester and Sarge are gone. I wonder if they’re awake or if the sheriff has carried them into the cave? I call to the cats. In a few minutes I have all five of them around me, and we’re talking, if you call receiving images from the point of view of a sabre-toothed cat as talking. It’s as close as we’re going to get.
There are too many of them, images coming at me left and right, bits and pieces that disturb me. Roma and Vadik are agitated and it takes me some time to hush them, settle them down. When they quiet I turn just to Roma. I ask about Nadia first, even though I am more interested in my friends. It takes some starts and stops before I can convert my human terms to his sabre-toothed cat terms, and then get him to rewind to the beginning; but we get it done and, gradually, the movie starts.
I am on my knees, sitting back on my heels, my eyes closed, one hand on Roma’s huge paw. It is like when he showed me Edik getting shot, and then their escape through the mountains. The images are surreal, flashes of Vadik hissing and growling, a brief picture of Mandi, Matt and Sharon, stopped, looking
fearful. At first I’m thinking that one of the cats is threatening them, then I realize that it is Vadik’s action that has them concerned about some other threat. They run into a thick stand of trees and then we are moving in a different direction, very fast. Vadik is ahead. He vaults over a stand of bushes around the rotten stump of a long ago fallen tree. I follow and then swing to his right and come up next to him. We stop in the shadow of a huge Douglas fir and look across a short break, into a gouge in the side of the mountain. There is Nadia, fifty yards away, her kittens behind her. The three of them are backed into a corner snarling at two men. They have guns at their shoulders . . . pointing.
No! I want to yell, but I remember that this is not live, that I am only seeing, experiencing, what has already happened. We start forward again, heading directly at the men. It is too late. There is a pop. One of the men has fired, but none of the cats drop. The man who fired reloads, while the other keeps his gun at the ready. My human self figures out that Nadia was just shot with a sleep dart, that the other man is loaded with real bullets, just in case.
The reload finished, he turns the gun on the kittens. Another pop. Nadia starts to attack, stops, sways, and then falls.
We are not stealthy enough. The man with the sleep dart loaded gun looks and then brings his gun around in front of his startled face. He has not reloaded after his last shot. Vadik hits him straight on and I hit the other just as he starts to turn. We roll only once. The man is screaming, trapped beneath me, and then I taste blood . . .
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