The Devil's Cauldron (16 page)

The woman turned to look up the hillside. Becca and Wes shrank back into the trees, but not before the woman spotted them. Even from a hundred feet away, her expression spoke volumes. It was a hard, penetrating stare.

“Not good,” Becca muttered. “Not good at all.”

They’d been found out.

Meggie was stuck two hundred feet below the ground, her entire body wedged inside a frigid stone tunnel only a few inches wide. At first it was only her hips, but with every movement, her body twisted into greater discomfort. A stone band gripped her around the chest and tightened with every gasp. Her helmet light reflected off the far wall and bounced back into the tunnel to cut the blackness and she could see her fingers digging at the stone for leverage.

She tried to scream. No breath. The only thing that came out was a squeak. Kaitlyn and Benjamin were only a few yards away, climbing up the rope. If only she could get a single lungful of air. Out came another squeak, like a dying rat in the coils of a python.

Don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic, don’t panic.

She panicked.

Twisting and writhing, her movements measured in fractions of fractions of a millimeter, she made no progress. Her arms stretched ahead, shoulders bent awkwardly. Her fingers clawed at the stone. If only they could reach the outside of the tunnel, she could get a grip and pull. They brushed the helmet and it lurched forward.

She’d pushed it over the edge. The light blinked as the helmet turned end over end. It smacked on the ground with a hollow thud. Everything went black.
More
than black, it was a total absence of any sort of light, as deep and profound as death itself.
 

Another silent scream came out of her mouth. Her pulse thundered in her ears and her heart felt like it would hammer free of her chest. Spots of light flashed behind her eyes.

Deep inside, an insistent voice begged her to calm down. All this thrashing and panic would only make her muscles and joints swell. Then not only would she stay wedged, she’d suffocate. As it was, she couldn’t catch her breath, couldn’t get any air at all. She was breathing through a straw, the opening shrinking until it was no wider than a coffee stirrer.

Please, God. No. I don’t want to die. Not like this. Please.
 

Then, she touched the edge. Just barely, only the very tips of her fingers, but she felt it. During all this thrashing and squirming, she must have made actual progress.

A sob of relief bubbled up. It came out as a whimper.

Gyrating, twisting, digging her toes, knees, everything, she clawed for the edge of the tunnel like a drowning woman grasping for the surface of the water, barely out of reach. She was more than lightheaded now, she was faint, on the verge of passing out. Her nails dug at the stone. She wasn’t moving.

The last thing she felt was a final wave of panic. Then the blackness took her.

#

Meggie came to with her head pounding. How long had she been out? Maybe a few seconds. Maybe minutes or longer. Her body must have kept struggling for air even after she gave up. Once she was no longer thrashing, the sips of air drawn into her gasping lungs must have been enough to keep her alive.

The problem was at her waist. The rest of her could move a little, even her chest. Enough to keep her from suffocating, so long as she controlled the panic. At least in the short term. But Kaitlyn’s initial assessment was right—Meggie’s hips were too big. She’d advanced a little, to the point where her fingers brushed the edge of the tunnel, but there was no more forward movement. If she didn’t figure something out she would die. It didn’t matter if Duperre gathered a rescue team. Nothing short of dynamite would get her out.

The thundering headache proved that her oxygen deficit wasn’t imagined, but real. The bands of stone around her chest hurt more than ever. Her muscles and joints screamed in pain after being wedged for so long. Her arms, still outstretched over her head, felt like they’d been ripped from their sockets. She twisted her right arm and brought it down, painfully, contorting, until she was able to force it beneath her toward her crotch. That gave her other arm room to move. The relief on her shoulder joints was exquisite. But the tucked arm made any breathing impossible.

Her fingers groped at her jeans. She got the button loose, then unzipped her pants.

Meggie twisted and squirmed to get her arm out in front again. Her head pounded like it would explode. She felt faint. She only just got her arm up before she blacked out again.

When she came to, she was weaker than ever. Could barely form a coherent plan. The same deep voice that tried to calm her spoke again. It came to her from somewhere distant, more like a memory than a conscious thought.

This is it. One last chance. Then you die.

Meggie groped for the end. Couldn’t reach it. Either she’d slid backward (impossible), or she simply couldn’t extend her arms as far as before. Instead, her fingernails clawed at the stone. Her pants slipped down from her waist. She moved a fraction of an inch. Her fingertips found the end of the tunnel.

With one final, heroic effort, she yanked on the end of the tunnel with everything she had. She squirmed out of her pants, leaving them behind. Then she had her hands out entirely, grabbing the end of the passage in a death grip. Then up to her elbows, then her head emerged.

A tight moment when she tried to get her shoulders free, but they popped out with a painful shifting of joints. Finally, her chest, but only when she blew out all her air. She stuck again at the hips.

But by then her lungs were free. She took in ragged gasps, huge lung-fulls of air. A wave of nausea penetrated the pounding headache, and she leaned forward and threw up.

She found her voice. “Help! I’m stuck! Benjamin! HELP!”

There was no answer. The only sound in the blackness was her own gasping. They must be on the surface already, or at least up beyond that first landing. Unless they heard her and simply refused to answer.

Meggie slumped forward, wanting to dangle there, half in, half out of the squeeze. Regain her strength and try to figure out how badly she’d injured herself coming through.

“Not yet you don’t. Get out now or die.”

Meggie got her hands in position and pushed, while digging her toenails in. She twisted her body, wriggling back and forth like a snake squeezing out of its skin. The stone clawed her flesh. At last it let her go, tearing her underwear in half as she came out. Meggie collapsed in a heap on top of her backpack.

She lay there for several long minutes, weeping in relief and pain. She knew she had to get up and keep moving. She groped until she found her helmet, verified that the light had broken on the fall—stupid, unreliable safety equipment—and unzipped her pack. Her hands found the flashlight.

The light was blinding after so long in complete darkness. But a fresh wave of gratitude poured over her when she could see around the chamber. She looked herself over. It was awful.

The crawl through the squeeze had left her hands bloodied, her fingernails broken off. The skin had torn off at her hips where she’d shredded it and lubricated her final passageway with her own blood. Her ribs throbbed and as she pulled up her shirt to poke at the darkening flesh, she guessed she’d cracked two ribs and bruised several more.

She was trembling now: cold, injured, and fighting shock. She had to retrieve her pants and boots. That’s right, her boots. She hadn’t even thought about them, but they’d come off too, yanked off, tied laces and all. Maybe that’s why her ankles hurt so much. One sock was missing; it must be in there too. Shining her light in, she found her pants, dragged up to the edge. She grabbed them and pulled them on. That was better, but she needed her shoes, too. And her missing sock. Shining the light inside, she spotted the boots, deep enough she’d have to lean back in to get them. No sign of the missing sock.

The hole had become like a living thing, and she was afraid to stick any part of her body back inside, lean in far enough to grab them.

“What’s it going to do, bite you? Swallow you alive? Get hold of yourself.” A shudder worked through her. “Oh God. I don’t want to do it. I can’t.”

Then what? Sit and wait? No, she needed to get the hell out of here and back to the surface. And that meant the vertical ascenders. And she needed boots to wear those.

Meggie set the flashlight carefully to one side so she wouldn’t step on it and break it. Then she felt for the hole and the stone that radiated bone-chilling cold. Before she could work herself into another terror, she lunged in up to her shoulders, with one arm outstretched. Her shoulder ached. She brushed the lace of one boot, grabbed it, and yanked it out.

“There you are,” she said, as she found the missing sock down in the boot toe. She put on the sock and boot, then steeled herself for a final lunge into the hated squeeze for the other boot.

This time she had to get her shoulders all the way back inside. Her heart was pounding to match her headache, her body hurt all over, and she was terrified. As her fingers groped for the shoe, which she had seen with her own eyes, but could not feel, she imagined a hand reaching in from the cavern on the opposite side. A clawed hand, covered with scales. It would seize her wrist and drag her in to die.

She found the boot. Grabbed it. Pulled it out.

Exhausted and hurting, but relieved, Meggie sank down with the flashlight. She steadied her breathing while she put on her second boot.

“
Now
you’re safe. Now you can wait for rescue.”
 

That was stupid. Sit here and wait? For hours and hours and hours? The hell with that. Her injuries were not crippling; she could get her own damn self out. And the first rope was only a few yards away.

Meggie drained one of her remaining water bottles, ate an energy bar, then climbed shakily to her feet and pulled on her pack. She strapped on her helmet, wishing the light wasn’t broken. There was no way to hold the flashlight and climb at the same time; she’d have to go up the ropes in the darkness.

That was if they were still there. She wouldn’t put it past Kaitlyn to yank the ropes up after them to make the rescue all that much more difficult. And Benjamin would be too spineless to tell her no.

So Meggie was relieved to get to the lower landing and find the rope still dangling, and her ascenders and harness still there. A small miracle, and she was grateful. She harnessed herself, hooked the ascenders on her shoes, threaded the rope through the pulleys, and put on her gloves. Reluctantly, she turned off the flashlight and put it away. She tightened her grip on the rope.

“Straight up. That’s it. Up to the next landing, then straight to the surface.”

She started to climb.

Climbing this way was exhausting under the easiest of circumstances. But Meggie had now been on the road, hiking, or in the cave since early that morning. It must be dusk by now. She was injured and exhausted. The climb went on and on, her breathing growing labored. A dull ache spread from her calves into her thighs.

When she finished climbing the first, easiest stretch, only 80 feet, compared to 120 in the upper segment, she disconnected from the rope, fished out the flashlight, then lay on her back, breathing heavily for several minutes.

“Get up. One more to go. You can do it.”

She started climbing the last, most grueling stretch. For the first fifteen minutes or so, she made slow but steady progress. That probably took her a third the way up. She stopped to rest, slumping in place, swaying back and forth on the rope while she regained her strength.

A hint of gray cut the blackness. It must still be daylight. Could it be that only a couple of hours had passed since the others abandoned her?

That light, or rather, hint of light, was enough to send her adrenaline surging. She redoubled her effort.

Twenty minutes later there was no doubt. There was definite daylight filtering into the depths. She could see her gloved hands on the rope above her face. Then, the sides of the cave. Then, the bend of the shaft itself.

Finally, she spotted the jutting boulder. That was only fifteen feet from the end, she realized with elation. Get over that and she’d see the surface. Bushes, rock, dirt. The sky.

She was spent. Three pumps with the vertical ascenders, then stop to rest. Three more. Rest. The last ten feet to the boulder took several minutes. At last, she grabbed it and used her arms to help her pumping legs get up and over. She looked up and caught a glimpse of blue sky. So beautiful.

A face looked down at her.

Meggie was so startled that she screamed and let go of the rope. The ascenders and the harness caught her, and she swung back and forth in the shaft. She grabbed at the wall to stabilize herself, then looked back up toward the surface. The light was behind the speaker’s head, washing the face out with contrast.

“Benjamin, is that you? You left me, you jerk.”

“Try again,” a woman’s voice said.

It took Meggie’s eyes several seconds to pick out the other person’s features. It was Kaitlyn, lying on her belly and peering down into the shaft.

Meggie bit back a snarling retort. Assholes, leaving her down in the cavern, trapped.

Instead, she forced calm into her voice. “So I guess you waited for me, huh? Didn’t decide to abandon me to die? Bet you were tempted.”

“Is that blood on your clothes?” Kaitlyn sounded pleased. “Looks like you’ve had a hell of a time. The squeeze was pretty tight, huh?”

“Yeah, how do you like that? Some trip leader you are, leaving one of your team behind. Wait until . . . ” Her voice trailed off.

“Until what?”

Wait until I tell the forum what you did. You’ll never go caving again.
Again, Meggie forced herself to shut up. Inside, she was boiling with anger, but only an idiot would keep talking back now. Kaitlyn was still on the surface, and Meggie in the shaft. One of them had all the power.
 

“Where is Benjamin?”

“He went back to the truck to get help.”