Authors: Jeff Gunhus
While Jack recovered Lonetree told him about his own part in their shared adventure. Just like Jack, he had tumbled along with the current, sure that he was one lungful of air away from death. He saw small pockets of air on the ceiling but the river moved too fast for him to take advantage of them. The limestone walls were worn too smooth for him to grab hold, but it didn’t stop him from trying until the very end.
It was at the end, right when he thought his lungs might either collapse or explode that the impossible happened. When he reached up to try and grab hold of the ceiling, his hand broke the surface of the water. With a violent kick, he pushed himself up just as his lungs gave way. Instead of sucking down water, he breathed air.
Getting his wits about him, he splashed his way over to the side of the channel, swinging the light from his miner’s helmet over the rock face. It was only three or four feet high but there was no way he could climb it, not with the current rushing him past it. But then he saw the steps carved into the rock. He swam toward them with everything he had left, knowing it was probably the one chance he was going to get to save his life. He reached the steps and caught his breath in time to pull in the rope as Jack’s body floated by.
“You weren’t breathing. No pulse. You didn’t respond to CPR either. I worked on you for a while,” Lonetree looked away. “To tell you the truth, I gave up on you. I’m sorry but I thought you were gone. I had already pulled the backpack off your body and was checking my gear when you started to puke all over yourself. I pumped the rest of the shit out of you though,” he added defensively.
“Thanks,” Jack said. “I mean it. If you hadn’t fished me out of the river I’d still be floating to God knows where. You saved my life.”
They sat in the cave for a few seconds, both men alone with their thoughts. Lonetree decided to speak his out loud. “You could have let go of the rope when I fell in the river. I saw how you wrapped it around you. It wouldn’t have taken much to get out of it.”
Jack shrugged. Lonetree had made his observation the way someone might describe any commonplace thing. But Jack understood there wasn’t a question buried underneath the statement, and there was nothing else to be said about it. He couldn’t help but smile as he realized Lonetree had just thanked him for trying to save his life, even though he had failed miserably.
“I know you think you’ve got the market on crazy stories,” Jack said. “But let me tell you what happened to me. Well, what I think happened anyway.” He told Lonetree as much detail as he could remember from his near-death experience. He hadn’t decided if the label was accurate but he had to label it as something. A hallucination? A discharge of electrical impulses in his brain that created one final dream? Those rationalizations didn’t feel right. Even considering them made him feel like he was betraying Melissa Gonzales again, belittling her act of forgiveness. He wouldn’t do that to her. He had to believe that what he saw was real.
Lonetree listened to the story without asking questions. When Jack was done he said only, “She’s your protective spirit. Your guardian angel if you like.”
“But I still don’t get it. I killed her. Why would she help me?”
“She told you, didn’t she? Until she gave up her anger she could not go into the light you saw. She had to stay in the shadow world until she could forgive you. Most religions talk about such a place. Somewhere between here and…”
“Heaven?”
“Maybe. Maybe it’s the wrong word. Makes it sound like we can actually understand what it is. And just maybe we can’t understand it or describe it with words at all.” Lonetree shook his head like a dog shaking the water out of his coat. “Anyway, this is beyond me. All I know is that I hope your little guardian angel was right about one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“That we still have to find a way to beat the devil. You realize what the steps carved into the rock over there means, right?”
Jack shone his light over to the steps, then back to Lonetree. “They used this place. It means this must connect to the main cave.” He struggled to his feet. “We’ve got to get going.”
“There’s something I haven’t told you yet. But now things are…well…different. I don’t think you’re going to like it.”
Jack didn’t like the sound of that.
“Look,” Lonetree started, “I thought you were dead. Still, I was going to try and save your kid if I could. For whatever that’s worth.”
“Thanks. I appreciate that,” Jack said.
“Save your thanks. See here’s the thing. I told you how I rigged the cave with the C-4 charges, right?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, I thought you were dead. Hell, I thought I was dead at one point. The whole thing shook me up. If we hadn’t got lucky, the bastards would have won.”
“What are you trying to say?”
“I’m saying I decided I couldn’t take any more chances.” Lonetree checked his watch. “I started the timer. Less than forty minutes from now there’s going to be one hell of an explosion down here. So if we don’t make this quick, you’re going to die twice in one day.”
They made short work of the passage leading up from the river. Lonetree came to a halt and crouched to the ground, turning his helmet light off. Jack slid next to him and followed his lead by turning off his own light. The tunnel ahead of them glowed softly. They were getting close. Jack cupped his hand over his watch and pressed the light. Just the short passage from the river had already taken three minutes. Thirty-seven minutes until the explosion. He shook his head and whispered the status to Lonetree. They crab-walked forward, staying close to the walls until the tunnel opened to the main cave.
Lonetree nodded left. “We came in the first time over there. Looks like the river parallels this side of the cavern.” He pointed to the lights on the right. “Our friends are already here.”
Two halogen lamps set up on tripods bathed the area in stark white light. Although the lights were pointed the opposite direction from Jack and Lonetree, they still cast a faint circle of illumination across the rows of stone cages nearest the stone structure. Just as when Lonetree had first thrown the parachute flare into the open space of the cavern, Jack was shocked by the sheer enormity of the space. Even moving quickly, it would take them five minutes just to reach the lights.
“I don’t see any movement,” Jack whispered.
“I thought I saw something when we first came in, but I’m not sure now.”
“Either way, we’ve got to go. Let’s do it.”
“Right, follow me through the cages. There might be traps. Once we get close, hand signals only. I don’t know what we’ll find so we have to improvise. “Remember, if you have to shoot--”
“Head shot or multiple to the chest. Got it. Let’s go.”
Lonetree grabbed Jack by the arm and pulled him close. “We can do this.” Before Jack could say anything, Lonetree was gone, a dark shadow picking his way through the maze of stone cages.
Jack followed quick behind as a thousand skeleton sentinels silently marked their progress. He found himself wondering how many of the poor souls laying in these cages were the same creatures he’d seen in that dark in-between place where Melissa Gonzales had guided him. Had those who died here learned to forgive as Melissa had? Or would they stay in that dark place forever, caught up in their hatred and anger? Even with the adrenaline and the exertion of keeping up with Lonetree, Jack still felt a cold chill cover his skin. The skeletons all seemed to be watching him, as if they
expected
something.
As they closed in on their brightly lit objective, Jack searched for any sign of the men. They took care to block their movements by keeping a stone cage between them and the lights whenever possible. By approaching from directly behind the lamps, there was little chance of them being spotted by anyone within the circle.
But that was the problem. As they approached the lights, they couldn’t see anyone around the stone structure. No voices. No movement. Nothing. It seemed as if they were alone in the cave. That was one contingency they hadn’t thought out.
Lonetree crouched in the dark shadow of a cage and waved Jack to come in close to him. He broke his own rule against talking. “I don’t get it,” he whispered close enough to Jack’s ear that he could feel hot breath on his skin. “I’m almost sure I saw movement under the lights when we first came in. Did you see it?”
Jack shook his head that he hadn’t.
“OK, let’s split up and meet here in five. Careful, maybe they heard something and they’re looking for us.” He removed his gun, pointed Jack to go right and then headed left himself.
Jack slid the safety off his gun and took a deep breath. Keeping close to the stone cages, he ran to his right until he came to a break in the cages where a wide swath of light lay across his path. He dropped to the ground and spread out flat on his stomach. He leaned his head around the corner to look into the open space.
He had a clear view of the round structure, the Source. It was only sixty or seventy feet away from him. Seeing no one, he took the chance to stretch his head out farther to get a better look.
He froze. There were two men crouched on the ground on the opposite side of the stone structure from where he and Lonetree had stood a minute before. Jack was looking at their backs but if either of the men turned around they would be staring right at him. He knew he should scramble backward and get out of sight, but he was fixated by what they men were doing.
They were hunched over, working hard on something lying on the ground between them. The man closest to him, the smaller of the two, was doing most of the work. His back was moving back and forth in a steady rhythm matching the forward and backward thrusting of his right elbow. Even from the distance, Jack could hear the man grunting from his exertion.
The man paused to drag the sleeve of his shirt across his face, like he was mopping sweat from his brow. He lifted a small object and handed it to the other man. This larger man then inserted the object into a small hole in the round structure. The object disappeared into the stone wall.
The smaller man decided to stretch before he resumed his task. As he stretched both arms into the air Jack saw the instrument the man held in his hand.
A saw.
He wore yellow gloves. They were covered up to the forearms with blood.
It was the ritual, just like Max had described. The men in front of him were cutting up a victim and feeding it through the hole in the structure.
A cry escaped Jack’s throat. Both men stood and looked in his direction but Jack didn’t care. It wasn’t the blood on the man’s gloves made him cry out. It was a flash of color on the ground. Yellow. No, not yellow. Blonde. Blonde hair.
Oh God. It’s Sarah.
The men were cutting up his little girl with a saw.
Stuffing her body piece by piece through that little hole in the rock.
The world closed in around him. His periphery blacked out and he was looking through a tunnel. At the end of this tunnel stood the objects of his rage. Scott Moran and Jim Butcher, both frozen in place by this sudden intrusion from the outside world.
Without thinking, Jack crawled to his feet and ran screaming at the two men. He slowed enough to steady his gun. The first shot ricocheted off the rock structure behind Butcher. The second blew up a puff of dust ten feet in front of him.
Butcher stood dumbly in the line of fire, as if his brain couldn’t quite process Jack’s appearance. He stood with his mouth hanging open at the charging intruder.
Jack closed the distance fast. Nothing registered in his brain except his need to kill the men in front of him. The need to avenge his little girl’s death.
His third shot hit its mark. The slug tore into Butcher’s chest. The next one caught him in the throat and his neck erupted in a gurgle of blood.
Still Jack charged forward, shifting his fire to Moran. The smaller man had reacted faster than Butcher and was crawling on the rock floor away from the spray of bullets. Jack was merciless. He emptied his weapon into the man. Then he was on top of him, beating Moran’s face with the gun while blood and bits a flesh sprayed over his chest and face.
Slowly, cautiously, sanity climbed back into Jack’s mind. Exhausted, he gave into it and slid off Scott Moran’s disfigured body. He didn’t want to look at what was left of Sarah, but he knew he had to. Maybe there was some way to restore dignity to her body. A few words of prayer before they were blown up together in this underground hell.
He dried the tears that clouded his vision and then turned to look at his poor, little girl.
A sob wrenched out from his body as he realized the impossible.
It wasn’t her. The body was too large. It was a young woman. Maybe a teenager. The legs were gone but the torso was there. And the face. Covered with a mop of blonde hair.
Jack grimaced as he looked over the girl’s body. Dark sores covered most of the pale white skin. Gingerly, he reached out and pushed the hair off her face. Her eyes bulged out as if she were still capable of being shocked. A wet trickle of blood ran from her nose and covered her lips.
Lonetree slid into a crouching position beside him. “You O.K?” His gun was drawn and his eyes darted back and forth. He looked down at the bodies and then at Jack. “Who’s the girl?”
Jack recognized her. The last time he had seen her was in a photo. She had been younger then, but not by more than a few years. In the photo, she had been standing next to her horse. Smiling. Happy to be alive.
“It’s his daughter. The bastard killed his own daughter.”
“C’mon,” Lonetree said. “We have to get out of the light.”
They both tensed at a sudden noise next to them. Like someone crawling over loose rocks. Lonetree started to move away, but Jack reached out and stopped him. The sound came again, closer this time. He turned in the direction of the noise. It took another movement before it registered where the sound was coming from.
Both of them stared toward the dark hole in the stone structure. Something was inside. And it was moving toward them.