“Hansel and Gretel survived because they were able to predict intentions. They knew their parents were going to abandon them in the woods, so they left a trail to get home.” Roger ticked off the things he knew on his fingers. “They knew the witch was fattening them up, so Hansel let her feel a bone instead of his finger. Gretel predicted that the witch was going to push her in the oven, so she plays dumb until the witch checks it for herself. So all I need to do is perfectly predict the future so I can outsmart my captor.”
Roger smiled to himself as he walked.
He glanced up at the ceiling. “My captor is a mountain. All I have to do is figure out what it wants.”
Roger shot another look behind himself.
“What do you want, mountain? It’s going to take some work to break my spirit, if that’s what you’re after. I’ve been through a lot.”
It was an exaggeration. Roger knew people who had been through a lot worse than he had. Then again, he’d certainly met many people who were way more fortunate. Sometimes Roger thought that empathy was his greatest attribute. Other times he figured that it was the one thing holding him back. He would never force his way to the front of a line, or even really stick up for himself. There was always someone more deserving.
After all, he had a room with a bed. It didn’t have air conditioning, but it had hot and cold water. In the winter he got enough heat from his neighbors to keep from freezing. It was a decent existence compared to Sioux Falls.
“And if you believe my parents,” he mumbled, “Sioux Falls was Utopia compared to Russia. I’m not sure what’s creepier—the silence, or me talking to myself.”
Roger stopped again. His light picked up something in the distance on the floor of the mine. A deep, primal instinct told him it was a snake.
-o-o-o-o-o-
He spoke to himself as he crept forward.
“There’s a part of my brain wired to recognize and react to that type of shape,” he whispered. “Some survival mechanism from when people were little more than clever monkeys with a capacity for learning.”
The stripes on the thing made Roger search his memory. Which colors was he supposed to be afraid of?
With one more step he relaxed and picked up speed.
He put on a British accent to narrate his approach. “It’s not a deadly cave snake at all,” he said. “It’s merely a simple climbing rope.”
Roger knelt in front of the rope and let his light stray down the length. It disappeared around a corner and into the darkness.
His accent drifted from proper British announcer to cockney, or at least his version of the accent copied from movies. “I suppose that might come in ’andy, that might.” He reached for the rope. Roger jerked back from the rope when his fingers touched it. He got a small shock from the rope, like touching the toaster after scuffing across the carpet.
“Hmmm,” Roger said. The next time he touched it he got nothing. He shrugged and picked up the rope. He stood, holding the rope like it might be attached to a bomb. As he walked, he coiled it. When he got to the intersection, he put down the coil so he could mark the corner. Roger tore a scrap from a card and moved to set it down on the right side of the tunnel. He froze.
There was already a scrap there.
Roger dropped into a crouch. He whipped his head around, sending his light down each tunnel.
He still had his cockney accent. “Somebody is fucking with us, they are.”
He picked up the scrap. It was one of his. He saw a portion of a word written on the back. The scrap was a piece of one of the cards he had written as a cheat sheet for Dr. Deb’s precious procedures. Roger set it back down and put his second scrap next to the first. He turned his attention back to the rope. He half expected it to not be there when he looked again. It was there.
“So where did you come from?” he whispered.
The rope didn’t answer.
“I guess we’ll just have to see where you go.”
Roger turned the corner and resumed coiling.
“Mysterious rope, lying in a mine, in a tunnel where I’ve already been.” As he walked and coiled, he tried to imagine how it was possible that the tunnel was already marked. He could only come up with two possibilities. Either someone was messing with him, or the tunnels were curved enough that he had made a loop.
Neither option was very encouraging. If someone was messing with him, then they could be watching him right now. If the tunnels were curved, then he could loop forever.
Roger gave the rope a little tug. He wanted to get a sense of how long it was. It came freely. Roger started to reel it in faster. Something snagged and then popped free. Roger stopped and set it down when he saw the stains coming towards him on the rope. He stepped to the side and walked next to the rope, shining his light down the length.
The stains appeared closer together. Soon, the rope looked like it had been soaked in some dark fluid.
“Who am I kidding?” he whispered. There was no mystery to this—the dark fluid was blood. In the distance, he saw where the rope ended. He saw something tangled in the cord.
Roger backed away even more as he walked down the tunnel. The rope was stretched along one wall and he was near the other. Roger felt his neck tense up as he kept his light locked on the end of the rope. The thing wrapped up in the rope didn’t make sense. It looked like a hand was coming right out of the floor.
Roger drew within a few feet of the thing before he really saw it for what it was. There were two fingers wrapped around the rope, gripping it. The fingers led down to the top part of a hand, but that was it. Beyond the first knuckle, there was no more hand. Roger scuffed the rope with his foot and the fingers tumbled over. Roger was looking at torn muscle and the ends of broken bones. He felt his stomach make a slow turn in his guts. Roger bent with an abdominal cramp, but he didn’t take his eyes off those fingers.
He took in every detail. He saw black hair on the digits. The trimmed fingernails had a little dirt under them. The finger pads weren’t calloused at all—they were either young, or hadn’t been exposed to hard work. His body shook with revulsion, but he had to know. He had to be sure these were real fingers and not some trick played on him by the college students on this research trip.
Roger reached down with an extended finger.
He clenched his teeth and touched the flesh. The fingers were real.
Roger exhaled slowly. The stakes on this mystery had been raised.
“A
RE
YOU
SURE
THIS
is right?” Kristin asked.
“No,” Joy said. “I’m not sure at all. It looks okay though, don’t you think?”
Joy looked up at the big red arrow painted on the wall. At least she was certain that they had the right shaft. The big arrow was good confirmation.
They regarded Carlos. Kristin pulled him forward so she could check the way the ropes looped under his arms. It had been hard enough carrying him—nearly impossible. Kristin had taken his legs and Joy had lifted under his armpits. They had moved him a dozen shuffled paces at a time. They stopped every time they were out of breath. Finally, they had found the vertical shaft where they had climbed up into this section of the mine.
Now they just had to get Carlos down.
“There has to be another way,” Kristin said. “You go out for help and I’ll wait here with him.”
Joy shook her head. “No. Nobody goes alone. That’s rule number one. We can’t leave him here alone and neither of us is going to try to get out alone. It’s a recipe for disaster.”
“We’re already in a disaster,” Kristin said. “I don’t know why we can’t wake him up, but it’s not good.”
“Agreed,” Joy said. “But we can’t compound the disaster. We get him down this shaft and then we only need to carry him to the exit. We’ve already proven we can do that.”
Kristin put her head to Carlos’s chest to hear his heart and breathing. She looked back up to Joy. “Okay. What’s your plan?”
“We both stay up here. We lower him down until his feet touch down. Then you hold him here while I climb down and make sure he makes it to the floor in one piece. You climb down and we’re out,” Joy said.
“Okay,” Kristin said.
They slid Carlos over to the hole and positioned his legs over the lip. With his body ready to go, Joy showed Kristin how to anchor the line. Joy then took up the slack and nudged Carlos into the drop. Kristin grunted with effort as she felt his full weight on the line.
They began to lower Carlos down.
“The rope is rubbing,” Kristin said between clenched teeth.
“It’s okay,” Joy said. “This rope can take a beating.”
It was impossible to lower him smoothly. The women let him drop a little and then struggled to arrest his fall. The result was barely-controlled chaos. They were both sweating and panting by the time they felt the tension ease on the line. Joy worked her way, hand over hand, to the edge of the shaft and looked down.
“His feet are touching,” she said. “Can you hold him here while I climb down?”
Kristin’s face was red with effort. “No.”
“Okay,” Joy said. “We’ll go a little lower to take more weight off the line.” She braced herself again and they played out another foot or two of line.
“You okay?” Joy asked.
“Yeah,” Kristin said, grunting. “I can hold him here.”
Joy let go of the line carefully, ready to reengage if Kristin couldn’t maintain. She imagined Carlos crashing down to the rock, breaking open his skull. They couldn’t afford an injury. If Carlos got injured, he would be impossible to move and they would have to violate the rule and split up. Joy didn’t want to do that.
She turned her back on the shaft and reached her foot down to find the iron rung on the side of the shaft. Mentally, she was already three steps ahead. Once they were all down in the lower tunnel, it was only a couple of turns before they would find the exit. She would leave Kristin with Carlos while she and Ryan went to call for help.
Suddenly, the rope sang as it was pulled over the lip. Kristin’s grip was firm, but she was being dragged towards the edge of the shaft. Joy saw how it was going to play out. Kristin would be pulled right into Joy and the two of them would tumble down the shaft and collide with Carlos on the mine floor. They would all three be injured.
“Let go,” Joy said.
At this point, Carlos slumping to the rocks was the least of her concern.
Kristin didn’t let go. She was leaning back, trying to dig in her heels, but she was still accelerating towards Joy.
Joy braced a foot against back of the shaft and put her arms out. She was ready to catch Kristin and keep her from knocking them both down the shaft. Joy caught Kristin’s legs with her hands. Kristin stopped sliding forwards, but began to crumple. Joy saw the problem.
Kristin had looped the rope around her midsection, and it had tightened and caught. Kristin couldn’t let go if she wanted to and the rope was pinching her in half.
Joy shone her light down the shaft to see if Carlos had fallen. He was no longer directly below the shaft. Joy leaned forward to grab the loose end of the rope. She put more pressure on Kristin, so Kristin tried to push her away.
“Just let me get this,” Joy said.
Kristin barked out a cry as Joy leaned down.
She came up with the rope. She looped it around Kristin the other direction and then pulled on the snag that was pinching Kristin in half. The bind pulled free. Kristin’s hands were jerked forward as the rope ran down the shaft. She let go.
Joy threw the loose end around Kristin. She feared that it would bind again.
As the rope accelerated, Joy began to wonder why. This was more than gravity. Something was pulling on that rope. She pushed away from Kristin and looked down the hole again. Maybe Carlos had regained consciousness and was confused? Maybe he was trying to run?
While there was still some slack above the hole, Joy didn’t want to lose an opportunity. She took the end of the rope, crouched, and looped it around the rung of the ladder. She barely had time to loop it into a simple knot before the slack ran out.
The rung was jerked down by the rope. The rusty metal bent and Joy dropped with it. Her feet were on either side of the loose knot. Now she hoped that the rope would pull free, or else she would fall as it tore the rung from the stone.
It jerked again. Joy tried to prop herself up on the sides of the shaft. Her hands slipped and she dropped. She tried to climb and the rung gave out. One side snapped and Joy fell. The rope slipped off the end of the rung. Kristin caught her hand.
Joy was too heavy for her. Maybe if Kristin hadn’t exhausted her strength, she would have been able to hold on. Joy slipped in stages. Kristin’s grip gave her enough time for her foot to find the next run. When she pulled free from Kristin’s grip, Joy’s foot slipped and she began to fall again. Her hand caught the lip, but that grip didn’t hold either. Joy fell and one of the rungs smashed her elbow and bounced her into the back wall of the shaft.
She looked up and saw Kristin’s head appear at the top of the shaft as Joy’s feet hit the floor. Her ankle turned and snapped. As she fell backwards, her helmet tumbled off and the flame snuffed out.
She was alone with her pain in the darkness.
-o-o-o-o-o-
Joy’s arm was so numb that it felt like maybe her forearm and hand had been ripped off. Her foot was on fire. She saw Kristin’s light disappear and then begin to leak down the shaft again. She heard Kristin’s feet on the rungs.
Soon, Kristin dropped from the lowest rung and landed on the ground. She stepped over Joy and picked up her helmet. She re-lit Joy’s lamp from her own and set it next to Joy.
Joy looked up at Kristin and puffed out her cheeks with a frightened exhale.
“Ankle?” Kristin asked. Her light pointed down towards Joy’s foot and then back up. Joy nodded. She didn’t like the fact that Kristin already knew where she was hurt. That meant that the injury was bad enough to see.