"You know the water is rising?" Andrea said at last.
"What?" Janie bent to hear better.
"Because of the rain."
Janie looked up. The waterfall did look bigger and water lapped at Andrea's feet. "So you think--"
Andrea gave her the Screw You stare.
"Why do you hate me so much?"
"Do you really want to drown, Janie? We need to get out of here."
"How, Andrea?" Janie mimicked her sarcastic tone. "How are you gonna climb back up, huh?"
Andrea sat shivering on the ground while Janie prowled around, stumbling on silt-covered rocks.
She got on her knees, stuck her head in a narrow fissure. The helmet fell over her eyes and scraped against the walls, so she tore it off and tightened the headlamp onto her bare head. Janie glanced back at Andrea. She'd just check it out real quick, she told herself, and crawled in.
The roar of the water receded, replaced by the sound of her own breath and the beat of her heart. Just around the next corner, she kept telling herself. Then, I'll go back to Andrea.
Time did strange things. Sped up, slowed down, spiraled, maybe even U-turned.
The ceiling rose and she found herself walking upright. Andrea would be waiting for her. She knew that, but she couldn't make herself turn around. Then she came to a dead end where rubble plugged the tunnel, floor to ceiling. Janie halted, stunned and shivering.
Maybe there was some other passage. Maybe she'd missed a turnoff. This couldn't all be for nothing, could it? She'd felt so…driven to come this way.
Chapter 54
After Ron disappeared under a heap of rubble and Pete found himself running away, Pete ran smack into Roxy in the passage.
She bounced off his belly and threw herself forward again, rushing, rushing deeper into the cave.
"What the fuck are you doing?" He made a grab for her but missed.
Only then did she seem to see him.
"Are you effing out of your mind?"
"You can't stop me!" she shouted, as she bounded into the darkness. She only wore one shoe. It didn't seem to slow her down.
"Fine. You go then. Just go," he muttered.
He should chase after her. Save her. Or not. He whirled around, took one step toward the exit, and the wall ahead of him collapsed. It almost seemed to swoon at his feet.
He stood, stunned. If he hadn't stopped for Roxy, maybe he would have made it out. Or maybe he'd be dead.
Dead or not, Jeff was trapped underground, thousands of tons of rock between him and fresh air. And because he'd made a hash of his life, no one would care too much.
It was a proper punishment for his haphazard parenting, for not paying attention. He should have protected Mel, known where to search for her. He should have torn down the wall and brought her home alive. A vision of her dying alone and scared flashed before his eyes, over and over.
"There must be another way," said Roxy.
Pete realized she was hunkered down next to him, talking. How long had she been there, he wondered?
She prattled on about her big plans. Complicated plans. She didn't seem to get that it was hopeless. She tugged on his arm, yelled in his face. Then she went away.
Pete heard echoes of clattering rock, cursing, the spill of pebbles. Why all the activity, he wondered? Where did she get the energy? And wasn't the exit by him, not way back there in the tunnel where his daughter and Ron had vanished under a pile of rubble?
He felt Roxy near him again.
We're going to make it!" she exclaimed. "Only a couple of tons to go!"
"You're digging in the wrong effing place, Roxy. Not that it matters."
"Don't you want to be as one with the universe?"
"Effing hell."
"Even if you don't want to, you could help me. I'm running out of time, and you look bored."
Pete opened his eyes. She held his flashlight. She was coated in dirt and blood. Her clothes were torn. Her hair hung in ropes.
Pete glowered at her until she went away. Then, as he sat there, he realized he might as well kill time until he died.
He straightened his aching knees and hobbled after Roxy.
The ground trembled. He heard rockfall.
Roxy shouted, "No, no, no!"
Pete forgot his pain, his stiffness, threw off the last of his self-pity and ran toward the noise. He stopped only to scoop up the discarded flashlight, still shining brightly. As he approached, Roxy's shadowed form stumbled away and into a hail of falling stones. Screaming, she dove onto a heap of debris and squirmed deeper, deeper into the devastation. It was Melanie all over again. Hands to his head, Pete danced from foot to foot, aching to run after her and pull her back, knowing it would be suicide.
Pummeled by stones, still, she kept moving, inching away from him, until all he could see of her was her bloody bare foot. A second later, that was gone. The hail of stones paused. He heard her muffled shout: "Yes!" And then, "Nooo!"
A slab the size of a kitchen table crashed to the top of the debris pile. When the rockfall finally ran its course Pete crept forward and gingerly pawed at the rubble, trying not to set off another collapse.
She was gone.
"Oh, oh, oh," he said, over and over.
And then Pete heard something. He held his breath and stood stock still. He heard it again. Muffled yelling: "Roxy? Pete?"
"Hello? In here." He trotted back along the wall, stopped and swept his flashlight beam over a crevice he'd never seen before. A big crack, created by the latest tremor. Dust escaped into it.
He leaned in, heard coughing. Janie's voice said, "Thank God."
Chapter 55
As Janie led Pete back through the labyrinth of tunnels toward the waterfall, that muffled, befuddled feeling melted away from her.
Pete had told her the sad news about Ron and Roxy, and they were both subdued. Nevertheless, Janie felt a tiny spark of hope. She had found Pete, and she knew the way back to Andrea. They just had to squeeze through that narrow fissure to the waterfall, then…well, they'd figure it out when they got there.
But as they lay on their stomachs and Janie got another look at the narrow fissure, she realized they might have a problem. While Janie had been able to wriggle through earlier that day without too much trouble, Pete outweighed her by almost a hundred pounds.
Pete groaned, stuck his flashlight in the hole and panned it over the lumpy walls and ceiling.
"Turn around," he barked.
Janie looked away while Pete stripped to his boxers. When she looked back, he had already wormed in head-first.
Twenty minutes later he was stuck like a cork. Janie stared at the walls, listening to him curse, and wondered whether she was doomed to end her days trapped underground by Pete's pink, hairy body. Then the flow of expletives stopped. A moment later, she heard a muffled hoot.
His voice carried through the gap. "I made it! Effing hell!"
By the time Janie stumbled upright in the calf-deep water at the base of the waterfall, spluttering and gasping, the landscape had changed dramatically. Rising water had rushed into the fissure as she wriggled through, flooding it. There was no going back.
Andrea slumped on a boulder surrounded by water. Spray from the waterfall filled the air. Pete gestured at the waterfall. Andrea pointed to the "waterslide" Janie had tumbled down hours before.
Pete shouted over the roar. He'd give Janie a boost, he said. She would climb up the waterslide and get help.
Janie shook her head.
Pete reared on her. Janie tried to step back, tripped, fell up to her neck in cold water.
"What's with you?"
"I just don't see the point," Janie yelled as she scrambled upright, shivering. "It's not going to work. Let's say I do manage to climb all the way up, I'm still going to be at the bottom of a shaft. And then what?"
"Then I effing punch your lights out for being a pain in the ass."
She must have misheard him. Or maybe not. This was Pete she was tal
king to.
He said, "You're telling me you've come this far, and you're not willing to try because it might not work? You think we're better off drowning?"
"Why don't you do it?"
"Sure. Give me a boost."
As if. He must have weighed two hundred pounds. Maybe two-twenty. Janie rolled her eyes. Why was it always her? She glanced toward Andrea, a blood-stained ghost. Janie felt a low, panicked hum in her throat. "Fine. But it's not going to work."
Pete squatted down and Janie clambered onto his back. He straightened up as she held onto the rock wall for balance.
She got one foot on his bare shoulder, trembling, then the other. Ran her fingers over the rock, feeling for hand holds. Pete sagged and wobbled as she slowly, slowly stood straight. Pete grunted and grumbled. Her whole body shook in spasms of fear. Her fingertips just barely reached to the lip of the hole. It was time to leave Pete's shoulders. But what if she peeled off and tumbled over backward? Her breath came in short gasps. Pete shook, too. They were a trembling tower of humanity.
"Aargh!"
She crouched down and grabbed him by the forehead as she tipped over backward. He barked a curse, stumbled. She slithered down and splashed into the icy water. He tripped and fell on top of her. That was graceful. They should try out for Cirque du Soleil.
Now, the water was to Janie's hips.
Janie and Pete faced each other, panting. Then Pete turned back to the wall. Janie took a deep breath, clambered up on his back again, stood on his shoulders, wobbling. Janie reached for the lip, wrapped her fingers around a sharp edge that she hadn't noticed before. Before she could talk herself out of it, she swung up a leg, hooked her heel on a ledge, scrambled onto her knees.
Half elated, half terrified, she peered upward, and in the yellowish beam of her headlamp, she saw a winding, narrow chute. Water poured on her helmet and scoured her eyes. Shit. Now came the hard part. She straightened gingerly, reached up and ran her hands over the slimy walls. Nothing. Slick as snot. Janie closed her eyes and imagined she was someplace else. Back at home with Lacey. Sitting on the sofa. Watching home improvement shows. The panic subsided.
Then, before common sense got ahold of her, she started clawing her way upward.
Something draped down the shaft, water running over it in a torrent. Janie squinted. It was Charlie's climbing rope.
A plan started to form in Janie's head: grab the rope, haul herself up, scream for help. It could work, if she could only reach the rope.
Janie's legs trembled with exhaustion and her fingers had frozen into claws. If she didn't move soon, she'd fall no matter what. She lunged for the tail of the rope, her fingers closed around it, then she fell. And fell. The plan was not panning out. She cannonballed into the pool at the base of the waterfall. Icy water embraced her. The back of her head crunched into something hard. Upward, she floated. Her face broke through the surface of the water. As she sipped a tiny taste of air, the rope snaked down and slapped her in the face.
She heard shouting. A blurry figure made its way toward her.
Janie started to sink again, and as she drifted down and the roar filled her ears, she thought of the upside-down topsy-turvy. Maybe she would go there. Maybe it would be groovy. She started to giggle and it made bubbles that tickled her eyelids.
Aunt M's voice jeered and wailed in the receding roar: "All this time. All this work. And you throw it away?"
Silence.
Janie shivered. Something dug into her back. Her head pounded. Everything hurt. Janie inventoried her body. No, there was a spot on her shoulder that didn't feel too bad. Kind of warmer than the rest of her. She fought to get her eyelids open.
"This is bullshit," she mumbled.
The warm spot left her shoulder. A moment later, a dull glow illuminated the cave. Then the warm spot was back.
"Janie? It's me, Pete." He shook her gently.
She took that in. "Where's Aunt M?"
"She's not here, Janie. Remember? The cave collapsed."
"I was just talking to her."
Pete patted Janie's shoulder.
"Do you think it was a dream?" she asked at last.
He took a shaky breath and shrugged.
"Aunt M said I don't have to die. That bliss is always there, everywhere."
He clicked off the headlamp.
"Do you think that's true, Pete? 'Cause I don't feel like it's true."
He said, "Do you think you can swim a little?"
Jesus, it was never ending. "I already swam."
"You need to try," Pete said quietly. "The water is still rising."
A thought occurred to Janie: "Where's Andrea?"
"She swam out, under water."
"And you stayed with me?"
"It's a small crack and I'm a big guy."
He turned on his headlamp again. Shined it below them. The cavern was filled wall-to-wall with black water. Somehow, he had dragged her up on a ledge. Water lapped at their feet.
Janie pulled herself upright. The jagged ceiling grazed the top of her head.
The waterfall and the waterslide had vanished under the surface.
Janie drew in a sharp breath. How long had she been unconscious?
"I wouldn't even know which way to go."
Pete aimed the light at a hank of orange rope wrapped around a horn of stone.
"You just follow the rope, and there's kind of a current. It pulls you through where I got stuck earlier."
"And how do you know it's any better on the other side? Did Andrea come back and tell you so?"
He shrugged again.
"So she might have drowned, then?"
"I've been thinking about this for awhile," he said. "You have to try."
He handed her the headlamp.
But she didn't want to go. Not with Pete's hand on her shoulder, the rumble of his voice nearby.
"I'm not going unless you go," she said.
So it was that they plunged back into the frigid water, each took a painful last breath of air, and dove under.
Janie followed the rope, hand over hand, down, down, through water as thick as Jell-O. Her body begged for air. Her head spun. The current picked her up. She lost her grip on the rope and plunged forward. The pressure crushed her ear drums. The darkness was total.
The current sucked her into a hole, raked her against the walls while the world sparkled and popped, then suddenly she was free, drifting to the surface.
She brought a leaden arm out of the water and flailed for something solid while she gasped and choked. Her lungs felt full of sand. Her mind told her there was something wrong. She had to do something.
Oh, God, Pete! She tried to shout his name. It came out a mewling little kitten cry.
She took several deep, gurgling breaths, then dove back into the current, fought against it to the source, reached out and brushed something: Pete's hand?
She came up for air. Only time for one big breath, then she dove and kicked and fought and found that hand again and pulled with everything she had, with strength she didn't know she had, and she felt as if the rock, the current, the gravity of the earth pulled with her, and suddenly she was above water again, hacking and wheezing and whimpering Pete's name as she shook him and hammered at his chest. Under her hands, he heaved and spewed water. Then he coughed, and it was the most beautiful sound she had ever heard.
She patted down her pockets, brought out the headlamp he'd given her, flicked it on to illuminate a familiar passage. They'd made it through.
Like zombies, they staggered through the tunnel. Where the tunnel dead-ended near the Crypt they found Andrea, curled in a ball on the floor. Together, Janie and Pete rolled boulders aside and scooped shattered rock, digging down into the Crypt.
By the time their last light faded to nothing, they had cleared an opening. Janie wriggled in, and on the other side, she heard scraping and falling pebbles.
"Help," she whimpered, and started to cry. The scraping sound paused.
"Gaaa!" she sobbed. Well, it wasn't a word, but at least it was loud.
Then there was a flurry of scraping and pebbles, and ahead she saw a light.
Janie wriggled toward the light, through the corkscrew crevice that she and Roxy had fallen out of that day so long ago. Helping hands dragged her up, up to the fresh mountain air.
Back above ground, near the cave's upper entrance, Janie sprawled on wet grass under the starry sky. An icy wind whooshed around the valley, but where she lay, it just barely nipped at her runny nose.
Next came Pete, then Andrea. They huddled together in the cold as Gary the artist and Jeff spoke in low, urgent voices. It turned out Roxy was still alive, but she was in bad shape. Down below, Charlie struggled to remove her from the cave.
An ambulance rocked and creaked up the rutted road, lights flashing and sirens off.
Andrea cried silently next to Janie. She could hear the sniffles, could feel her shuddering breaths where their elbows touched. Janie put a gentle hand on her shoulder. Andrea flinched away. Janie wracked her brain for words of comfort.
"I'm sorry," she said at last.
"What for?"
"About your dad." About Mel and Roxy and Aunt M. About all of their suffering and what a shitty place the world was. All of it. But mostly she was sorry about Ron Essing.
"It's not your fault," Andrea choked.
"It's just what people say."
Most people. But not Aunt M. Aunt M had talked big about the void, about celebrating death rather than being sad. She had wanted to go to that happy place, and maybe Aunt M had finally got what she wanted. Maybe. But the cost to the rest of them had been huge.
Suddenly, a paramedic was at Janie's side, checking her over. He wanted to bandage her up. He wanted to take her to the hospital. She shook him off.
Andrea's mother, Nancy Essing, arrived, puffing uphill, wrapped Andrea in her arms and rocked her back and forth. Mrs. Essing asked after Aunt M, wanted to know whether Janie was okay, put a warm hand on Janie's shoulder. Here she was, comforting Janie, when by all accounts her husband was dead.
Then Janie remembered something that hadn't made sense when she and Roxy had explored the cave for the first time: "Roxy knew," she whispered to herself.
Janie remembered how Roxy had wanted to tear down the rock wall, had wanted a jackhammer. Roxy had been ranting, something about someone being trapped, and Janie had blown her off. Perhaps, if Janie hadn't been so closed-minded, she could have prevented some of this destruction, some of this heartache. Perhaps.