Chapter 2
Into the Pit
The next morning, I woke up at six. I had far too much on my mind to go back to sleep and crawled out of my sleeping bag twenty minutes later. After fixing coffee. I took a quick stroll around the hole. It was calling me; I couldn’t wait to climb down inside it. I headed back to camp and woke everyone up.
We wolfed down the barest of breakfasts before heading over to the crater. Kowalski helped Bill unload the portable winch and electric generator from the trailer. They set it up 15 feet back from the edge of the pit. Angie carefully connected one end of a quarter-inch synthetic rope to the winch, and Mark threw the rest over the edge.
“I selected a 250-foot rope,” Angie said. “That way, we’ll have about 40 extra once you reach bottom. Taking stretching into account, we probably could have gotten by with a 200-footer, but better to have the extra length and not need it than need it and not have it.”
I’d decided to take Mark down with me. Angie would control the winch and lower me down first. When I was down, Angie would raise the rope back up and then lower Mark. Then when we were done, she’d raise us, reversing the process and saving us the long climb back up. Meanwhile, Jill stood on the far side of the hole with binoculars and her own walkie-talkie to where she could keep an eye on Mark and me and give instructions to my wife in case of an emergency.
Mark and I strapped on our climbing harnesses, put on our backpacks, and donned hard hats. After attaching geology hammers and walkie-talkies to our belts, we pulled on our climbing gloves. I clipped a carabiner onto my climbing harness, locked it shut, and threaded the rope through my figure eight descender. Mark checked my set up and gave me thumbs up. Then, I grabbed the attached end of the rope with my left hand, took the free end in my break hand, and held it behind my back.
Angie walked up to me. “Jack, I want you to be extremely careful down there.” She glanced nervously at the hole. “The ground at the top has thawed much farther down than usual, and there’s no telling how stable the crater wall is. Try not to dislodge anything on the way down, and stay away from the side while Mark’s coming down.”
“Yes, dear. Don’t worry. This isn’t the first hole I’ve rappelled into.”
“Not like this, you haven’t. This isn’t like repelling into a Yucatan cenote. I know you’re excited about getting down there and discovering how the hole formed, but please be careful. I don’t know what it is, but the hole gives me the creeps. It shouldn’t be there, but it is.”
“I will,” I promised.
Angie leaned in, took my head in her hands, and gave me a long heartfelt kiss. “I love you, Jack Oswald.”
“I love you too.” I smiled to think that after all our years together, she could still make me feel like the lucky young college kid who’d somehow won the heart of the most beautiful girl in school.
“Okay then. Let’s do this.” She stepped back away from the from the edge, and I was ready to go.
I backed up to the pit, climbed over the low mound of loose dirt that ringed the hole, and slowly lowered myself down the short slope of thawed ground. I had to be very careful because water draining into the crater from the summer’s light rains had carved deep ruts into the soft water-saturated silt. I sank nearly to the top of my boots in the mud and was glad to reach the top of the permafrost, although my muddy boots made the footing treacherous.
I rappelled down the side of the hole, stopping every so often to take a closer look at the frozen surface of the wall. Clearly visible layers of unconsolidated marine, river, windborne, and glacial deposits soon replaced the ice and decaying plant matter. For the first fifty feet, muddy groundwater trickled down the sides of the pit, painting vertical stripes of brown ice across these horizontal layers. It made the walls look like a giant chessboard. After that, the rest of the way down was merely more of the same. I stopped a couple of times to chip out samples and place them in collection bags, more from habit than anything else. Truthfully, I didn’t see anything unusual in the frozen deposits surrounding the pit. The only remarkable things about the hole’s sides were that they were smooth and nearly vertical. Ordinarily, I would have expected to see buried tree roots and animal bones occasionally sticking out of the frozen soil. Instead, they were broken or sheared off, their ends blackened as though burned.
About three-fourths of the way down, I started to smell the foul stench of rotten eggs. Hydrogen sulfide was in the air, and that was surprising. North Slope oil contains traces of the gas, and you can sometimes see surface oil seeps farther north, but I didn’t see any on the floor of the pit and the Prudhoe Bay Oil Field was much deeper at nearly 9,000 feet.
Regardless of how it got there, hydrogen sulfide is dense enough to collect and slowly build up in low places, especially somewhere like the bottom of the hole where the wind couldn’t blow it away. It’s also toxic and can make you sick in concentrations as low as 100 parts per million. The smell became quite strong as I stepped down onto the pit’s floor. The gas was going to be a problem if we needed to stay for longer than a few minutes.
I remembered the disposable acid gas respirators sitting uselessly back in my lab and wanted to kick myself for not remembering to bring them. Though they wouldn’t do anything to protect our eyes, they would have kept the hydrogen sulfide out of our noses and lungs. When Mark and I returned to the surface, I was going to ask Kowalski to have some full-face respirators sent down from Deadhorse.
I unhooked myself from the rope and waved up to Jill, who was standing on the far rim of the pit. “I’m down,” I said into my walkie-talkie. “You can reel in the rope and send Mark down.”
There was no sign of frozen ground or even loose soil on the floor of the hole. Instead, I was standing on a flat sheet of ice some six inches thick except for where hundreds of short mounds of dirt stuck up through its surface. I couldn’t explain this obvious evidence of recently liquid water that had refrozen to make the layer of ice on which I was standing; the ground should have stayed frozen at least another fifteen hundred feet down. I looked around for a source of the hydrogen sulfide, but didn’t see anything.
A few minutes later, Mark reached the bottom, unhooked himself, and walked over to where I was standing. “Shit, Professor,” he exclaimed, a look of disgust on his face. “It stinks like year-old eggs down here. Where’s the hydrogen sulfide coming from?”
“It’s got to be from the natural gas associated with an oil deposit,” I answered, my voice beginning to sound a bit like I was catching a head cold. Something in the hole was making my allergies act up, making my nose start to run and my eyes water. “Alaskan oil typically contains trace amounts of hydrogen sulfide. Since it’s corrosive, the oil companies sweeten the crude by removing it before they pump the oil into the pipeline.”
“Professor, take a look at this,” Mark said, squatting down and pointing at the nearest mound of dirt. He held his hand a few inches over it. “There are small holes, and I can feel gas escaping from them. That’s weird; it should be freezing, but it’s actually warm.” He leaned over and sniffed the air just above the hole. “Jesus, that reeks,” he cursed as he stood up and rubbed his eyes.
I reached down. There was a surprisingly large flow of gas coming out of the hole. I looked around at all of the other mounds of dirt dotting the ice on which we were standing. “Shit,” I exclaimed. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here.”
“Why?” he asked with a confused look on his face. “We just got here.”
“Prudhoe Bay natural gas is about three fourths methane. One eighth is ethane, propane, and other heavier hydrocarbons, while the remaining eighth is carbon dioxide. I’m not worried about the methane and ethane; they’re lighter than air and will drift up and out of the hole. But carbon dioxide, propane, and hydrogen sulfide are all heavier than air and build up in low areas.”
“Like the bottom of this hole,” Mark said as the nature of our danger dawned on him.
“Like the bottom of this hole,” I agr
eed.
Although I was breathing rapidly, it was becoming increasingly harder to catch my breath. Both were early signs of carbon dioxide poisoning. Meanwhile, my eyes were really watering, my nose was running, and my lungs were starting to burn. Hydrogen sulfide combined with the water on their moist surfaces to form hydrosulfuric acid. I had a dull headache and was becoming increasingly nauseated. Worse, the stench of sulfur had begun to disappear: a classic symptom of hydrogen sulfide poisoning. “We have to head back up and strap on oxygen tanks and full face respirators before we come back down.”
“Okay, Professor,” he replied, looking at me with concern. “You’re definitely not looking so good.”
Weak and increasingly clumsy, Mark had to help me reach the rope and secure it to my climbing harness. Then he said into his walkie-talkie, “Angela, there’s hydrogen sulfide and excessive carbon dioxide down here, and we need to get out of here right now. It’s made the professor sick, so I’m sending him up first.”
“Understood, Mark,” Angie replied, her voice indicating her concern. “Is he ready?”
“Yes, all hooked up,” Mark replied.
A second later, the rope began pulling me up. It sped faster and faster until I was practically running up the side of the hole. Soon, I was up to where the permafrost gave way to damp dirt. I slipped going over the boundary, and the rope dragged me face first over the short muddy slope. Bill helped me climb over the ridge of dirt surrounding the edge and unhooked my climbing harness.
Coughing and unable to catch my breath, I stumbled into Angie’s arms. The caustic gasses at the bottom of the pit had set off one of my ordinarily rare asthma attacks, leaving me gasping for air. I fumbled through my pockets, found my rescue inhaler, and had to give myself three puffs before my breathing became easier. Meanwhile, my eyes were still burning and watering so heavily that I heard rather than saw Bill throw the end of the rope back into the pit and use the winch to lower it rapidly into the hole. After helping me wipe the mud from my face, Angie wrapped me a bear hug, totally heedless of the muck she was transferring to her own face and clothes.
“It’s down,” Jill said, her voice amplified through our walkie-talkies.
Bill stopped the winch, and we waited for Mark to tell us when he was ready to come up.
“Okay, I’m ready,” Mark said. “Bring me up.”
Bill restarted the winch, and the rope began winding itself back around its spinning shaft.
Feeling stronger, I let go of Angie and turned back towards the pit so I could watch Mark being raised over the edge. It was at that moment, through eyes still somewhat blurry from tears, that I saw Kowalski. He was standing near the edge of the hole, a few feet downwind so that the smoke from his cigarette wouldn’t bother us. He took a final puff and carelessly flicked the still smoldering butt into the pit.
“Stop!” I croaked, my voice raspy and painful from coughing.
Kowalski turned towards me, and our eyes met. Unaware of what he’d just done, he was completely confused by the expression of horror on my face.
After seconds that seemed to stretch into eternity, the cigarette butt tumbled past Mark and eventually reached the depth where the concentration of methane and hydrogen sulfide reached explosive levels.
There was a deafening whoosh, and a huge fireball the size of the hole erupted from the pit. Luckily, the blast from the explosion blew us backwards, away from the hole. That was the only thing that saved us from the intense heat radiating from the colossal swirling ball of fire and smoke that had roared from the crater. It felt like I was standing next to a hundred heat lamps, and I heard the sizzling sound of my hair and beard beginning to burn on the side of my head that faced the flames. Turning my back to the hole, I immediately used my hands to extinguish my burning hair before it could seriously burn me. Disgusted by the stench of a mixture of burnt hair and rotten eggs, I picked myself up and looked back towards the hole. Above us, a huge pillar of smoke rose like the ash cloud of an erupting volcano. Looking back down, we saw the burning nylon rope continue to rise until its end slipped over the edge of the hole. Only a little of Mark’s smoldering body harness was still attached to its end.
“No!” We heard Jill’s horror-filled scream coming loudly over our walkie-talkies, followed less than a second later when her anguished cry reached us from across the pit. I could just make out Jill’s wavering form through the turbulent superheated air rising up between us as she raced back around the hole.
“Get me some rope,” I demanded. “I’ve got to get a look down into the pit.”
“Jack, stop!” Angie commanded, moving to stand between me and the hole. “You can’t go over there until we get a new rope. Bill, there’s more rope in the trailer.”
Bill took off and returned seconds later with a new 50-foot length of rope, which he secured to the winch. Terrified by both the danger and what I would see, I nevertheless tied the other end around my waist and stepped up to the edge of the hole. Together, Kowalski and Bill slowly fed out the rope hand over hand until I had worked my way over the edge and down the muddy slope.
The intense heat and overpowering sulfur stench rising out of the hole formed an invisible wall that took all of my will power to push through to where I could look directly down into the hellish pit. Dozens of methane and hydrogen sulfide fires rose ten feet above the steaming bottom of the pit. Their bluish flames illuminated Mark’s blackened body, which lay motionless 50 feet back from the side of the hole. One arm and both legs were bent back at odd angles, and I could just make out the ends of broken bones sticking through his charred flesh and what little remained of his clothing. Small guttering flames licked at the blackened fabric and flesh, sending up thin ribbons of smoke.
Oddly, given the circumstances, I found myself remembering my basic chemistry, quickly working out the products produced by the burning of hydrogen sulfide and methane: sulfur dioxide, carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, and water in the form of steam. The sulfur dioxide and water would further combine to produce sulfurous acid. Between the heat and the noxious gases, there was no way an unprotected person could be in the hole and live. Beyond all doubt, my young friend was dead.
Forcing myself to look away from the horror of his body, I realized that the intense heat was melting the frozen sides of the hole. A slurry of small rocks, dirt, and melted ice flowed down its near vertical walls. Pooling around the bottom of the pit, the dirty water flowed steadily inward until it reached Mark’s body, slowly carrying it into the middle of the pit. The raging fires turned the once ice-covered floor of the pit into a hellish lake reflecting the bluish flames that continued to burn above its boiling surface.
“What the hell are you doing, wasting time with that short rope?” I heard Jill scream in anger and fear. “Get the Goddamned backup rope while I get rid of the damaged one. Hurry! I’ve got to get down there to him!”
Instead, Kowalski and Bill pulled me back up the muddy slope and helped me climb out over the raised edge of the hole. It was clear from their faces they already knew Mark was beyond saving. Standing next to them, O’Shannon looked miserable and tired as if she’d somehow aged decades since the explosion.
Then suddenly, Angie was in my arms. She hugged me tight and then drew back so that she could look into my eyes. Her expression was one of dread mixed with the tiniest spark of hope that somehow – by some impossible miracle – Mark had survived the explosion and fall. I shook my head. The hope vanished from her face, replaced by tears streaming down her cheeks. Finally, I forced myself to look over to where Jill was still frantically removing the damaged rope from the winch. She looked up. Our eyes met, and I watched her soul shatter, turn to dust, and blow away.
“No, no, no, no, no…” Jill wailed.
Angie rushed over and caught Jill just as her legs buckled beneath her. Then, Angie carefully lowered Jill until the two were sitting on the ground, Angie holding Jill in her lap, and gently rocking her back and forth, as one would a child. Speaking too softl
y for us to hear, Angie did her best to provide what comfort she could.
I looked over to where Kowalski was standing, staring in disbelief at the fiery pit his thoughtlessness had created. I was beyond furious. The next thing I knew, I had him by the jacket and was screaming in his face, “You Goddamned careless son of a bitch! Weren’t you listening? Didn’t you hear me say there was hydrogen sulfide in the pit?”
“Buh, buh, but…” he stammered as he tried to back away from me.
Without realizing it, I was slowly backing him up to the hole. I might have backed him over the edge had Bill not forced himself between us. “That’s enough!” he commanded.
Suddenly, I realized what I was doing and let go. It was clear from his expression that he’d had no idea that the gasses in the bottom of the hole were flammable, let alone sufficiently concentrated to be explosive.
My fiery rage died as I turned my anger inward. Kowalski hadn’t killed Mark. I had. I was in charge and responsible for the lives of my team. I should have spotted the danger sooner. Mark was my student, so I should have sent him up first. Worst of all, I had seen Kowalski smoking next to the hole and done nothing. I turned my back on the hole and wearily walked away across the empty tundra.
Sometime later, I realized I wasn’t alone. I heard footsteps next to me, turned, and was surprised to see O’Shannon walking silently by my side.
“What do you want?” I demanded. “Come to interview the professor whose incompetence killed his student?”
“Good heavens, no,” she replied. “I just needed to get away from the damned hole. Sometimes, solitude helps me think and distance provides perspective.” She glanced back the way we had come. “Oh my, take a look at that. Is it not strange how far we can get from where we ought to be when we only look inward instead of watching where we are going?”
I glanced back. Our tents were tiny triangles on the horizon next to a narrow column of thin gray smoke.
“Dr. Menendez is worried about you. She would have come herself were she not doing her best to comfort Mrs. Starr. Your wife and your student need you. It is time for you to head back.”
“I can’t,” I said. “How can I face them after what I let happen? Mark would be alive if not for me.”
“Nonsense. Mr. Starr was killed by an unfortunate conjunction of a huge hole, combustible gasses, and a careless spark. Did you dig the hole, supply the gasses, or light the cigarette that caused the explosion? No, you did not. What happened was a terrible accident, the final link of a chain of numerous events, the lack of any one of which could have broken the chain.”
“But…”
“Now is not the time for buts, Dr. Oswald. Now is the time for you to go back and do what must be done: comfort the living, mourn the dead, and learn from your loss so that it never happens again.”
I nodded. Then we turned around and walked back in silence.
When we got back to camp, my wife and Jill were still sitting on the ground. I sat down next to them, and Angie squeezed my hand and gave me a sympathetic smile. I put my arm around Jill’s shoulder.
“I’m so sorry,” was all I could think to say.
I half expected… Hell, I half wanted her to curse me or hit me. Blame me for getting Mark killed like I blamed myself. But she didn’t. Instead, she leaned up against me and cried on my chest while my own tears silently ran down my cheeks to drip onto her hair.
I thought of Mark and of how much I was going to miss him. Mark, the student who always came to class with a question that made it clear he had really studied and was not just memorizing facts for a test. Mark, the grad student who could not only use all of the equipment in the lab, but could also diagnose and fix most of it when it broke. I remembered Mark and Jill’s wedding the first weekend in June when we’d all driven over to Denali Park and stayed at the beautiful Denali Princess Wilderness Lodge. I remembered their vows to share their lives ’til death do them part. The inseparable couple was now forever separated.
Eventually, I got up and walked over to Kowalski, who was still standing at the edge of the pit. His crumpled pack of cigarettes lay crushed into the muddy ground. His grief-stricken expression turned fearful when he realized I was approaching.
“I’m… I’m sorry… so God damned sorry,” he said, his eyes bloodshot and his ashen face still wet with tears. “I didn’t think. I didn’t know. How could I have known?”
I stopped well back, raising my hands palms upwards to indicate I was over my anger. “I’m sorry I lost it, Kowalski. I know you didn’t mean to harm anyone. Hell, I didn’t even think of the danger until after it was too late.”
“It’s the damn stress. Headquarters is demanding I tell them what’s going on. Reporters are demanding answers, and the execs don’t have any. Everyone’s pressuring me to tell them everything’s going to be okay.” He looked up into my eyes, pleading for forgiveness. “And I quit smoking; you know I did. And I’d never smoke within a hundred feet of an oil well or pipeline; you know I wouldn’t. How was I to know a damned sink hole would explode?”
I nodded. Still, how could I forgive him when I couldn’t even forgive myself? O’Shannon was right. Somehow, I had to find the strength to continue and do what must be done.
“Kowalski, you didn’t pack any fire suits and breathing masks with compressed air like the ones used for fighting oil fires, did you?” I asked.
“What?” Kowalski asked, an expression of shocked surprise on his face. “You can’t be thinking of actually going back down into that hellhole, are you? That’s crazy.”
“Believe me, going back down into that damn hole is the last thing I want to do, but I have to. Mark’s body is still down there, and somebody has to go get it. He was my student; he’s my responsibility.”
“We can call the Air National Guard,” Kowalski argued. “They rescue lost hikers and injured climbers all the time. Let them do it.”
“There’s still doesn’t address the problem of finding out what’s causing the holes. You hired me to discover the cause, and I have to go back down to do that. I’ll bring Mark’s body back up when I return.”
“Forget about the damn job! Somebody’s dead! I already have one life on my conscience; I’m not going to have you on it too. You’re not going down. It’s too dangerous.”
“Kowalski, somebody’s going to have to do it. If not me, your company is just going to hire someone else. No, Mark wasn’t a quitter, and I neither am I. I have to do this. I need to do this so that Mark’s death won’t have been for nothing. Did you, or did you not, bring any fire proximity suit?”
“Of course, I didn’t bring any. Why would I? There was no way I could have known we’d need fire proximity suits and breathing apparatus. The closest place I know that has them is our facilities in Deadhorse.”
“How about Pump Station 2?” I asked. “It’s only about five and a half miles away. We could probably get there, grab the equipment, and be back in less than thirty to forty minutes.”
“I’m not sure,” he replied. “It’s inactive and has been on standby since 1997. I suppose it’s possible there’s a skeleton security or maintenance crew there. If so, then there’d be no need for us to go there ourselves. I’ll call them on my satellite phone and ask them to bring their fire gear and a couple of new ropes if they have any.”
While Kowalski was making the call, I looked around. Angie was still consoling Jill, and Bill was sitting in the Raptor with his head in his hands. Then out of the corner of my eye, I saw a flash through the hot hazy air that continued to boil out of the hole. Our reporter was slowly walking away along the edge of the pit, looking down, and occasionally taking pictures. I hurried after her. She was almost to the far side of the hole by the time I caught up with her.
“Can’t you wait a while to do that?” I asked. “At least until Angie walks Jill back to camp so she won’t have to see you taking shots of Mark’s body.”
She put her camera down. “What now, Dr. Oswald?” she asked.
“We’ll have to recover Mark’s body,” I replied sadly. “Kowalski is trying to get us some protective firefighting suits and breathing gear from Pump Station 2.”
“And your research here?” she asked.
“We still need to discover what’s causing the holes and determine the degree to which they put the oil wells and pipelines at risk. There’s too much at stake to quit now. Once we’ve recovered Mark’s body, we’ll send it with Jill up to Deadhorse. Did you know they were married only a couple of months ago? She’ll undoubtedly want to stay with him.”
O’Shannon turned and headed back towards camp, leaving me alone to keep silent vigil over the body of my graduate student and friend. Eventually, I heard the sound of footsteps behind me.
“Jack,” Angie said softly, wrapping her arms around my waist and leaned her head against my shoulder. “Are you okay?” she asked.
“No,” I answered. “This should never have happened. I should have recognized the danger sooner. He was my student and my responsibility. I should have sent him up first. If I had, he’d still be alive.”
“And you’d be dead,” she answered. “Besides, you’d been down there longer and the gases were affecting you more. Mark made the right call sending you up first. None of us considered the possibility of an explosion. Sometimes bad things happen, and nobody’s to blame.”
I heard what she said, but it didn’t make me feel any better. “How’s Jill,” I asked.
“Not good,” she answered. “She’s stopped crying for the moment. Now, she’s mostly in shock. She’s just lying in her tent, holding on to Mark’s pillow, and staring off into space.”
“Do you think she’s okay alone?” I asked.
“Frankly, towards the end, I don’t think she realized I was even there. Still, she did tell me one thing before she quit crying.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“She’s pregnant. She missed her last two periods, and her home pregnancy test came back positive. She was going to wait until her gynecologist confirmed it before telling Mark. Now, he’ll never know he was going to be a father.”
“Damn, that’s hard,” I said angrily. “No child should ever have to grow up without a parent. When this is over, I’m going to talk with the University and Kowalski and make sure Mark was covered by their insurance. With her student loans, Jill’s going to need a lot of money if she’s going to be raising their child alone.”
Angie nodded sadly. “I think I’ll head back to camp and check in on her, see if she wants company. Are you coming?” my wife asked.
“Not yet,” I answered. “I think I’ll stay for a while longer. Even if Mark can’t hear me, I still need to talk to him, tell him how sorry I am, and that we’ll find some way to make sure Jill and the baby will be taken care of.”
Fifteen minutes later, Kowalski walked up and said, “I tried calling Pump Station 2, but couldn’t get an answer. So I called our office in Deadhorse, and they told me that Pump Station 2 only has regular firefighter suits, not the specialized breathing gear we need. They’ve sent someone to get the equipment, and they should be here with it in a couple of hours.”
Eventually, we all made our way back to camp. By now, it was long past lunch, but nobody felt like eating. Jill was still in her tent. The rest of us pretty much just sat there silently waiting, thinking about Mark and the horrific way he died.
Almost four hours later, a truck arrived bringing the fire proximity suits, breathing apparatus with several spare air tanks, and three long lengths of rope. Kowalski talked to the driver, while we unloaded the equipment. He walked over as Bill and I were replacing the singed rope with a new one.
“It’s not just happening here,” Kowalski said. “The driver told me that it’s happening all over the North Slope.”
“What’s happening?” I asked, realizing for the first time that the unexplained behavior of this hole might not be unique.
“All of the holes they’ve checked have methane and hydrogen sulfide concentrating at the bottom, and at least a dozen have exploded. New holes are forming all along the coast, and one just opened up directly under a well in the Kuparuk River Oil Field. In addition to the well, it swallowed three workers, a couple of vehicles, and a midsized oil storage tank. Apparently, there was also some ignition source, maybe pieces of metal banging together, and the gases ignited, setting the oil ablaze. So far, there’s been no way to see into it, and the workmen were presumed dead, their bodies incinerated.” Kowalski paused for a second to gather his thoughts. “That’s why the driver couldn’t stick around to help us. The whole North Slope is going to hell, and we need every one we can spare up there to deal with it.”
I lost sense of time. At some point, the sun had started to sink towards the western horizon. It was dinnertime, and Angie and Bill started making sandwiches. Everyone went through the motion of eating, though for the life of me I can’t remember what kind of sandwich it was. Afterwards, I walked back to the edge of the hole. The fires were still raging, hydrogen sulfide in the gas painting the bottom of the pit an unearthly shade of blue. I hoped that the flames would die down soon, or at least by tomorrow morning. I certainly didn’t like the idea of descending into the hole to retrieve Mark’s body, but I liked leaving it down there even less.
Everyone was physically and emotionally exhausted. I called it a day, and we crawled into our sleeping bags, hoping tomorrow would be a better day. Holding Angie, I fell asleep listening to Jill crying softly, alone in the tent she’d shared with Mark.
Hell Holes: What Lurks Below Page 4