Chapter 10
It was midday and the buzz of flies and
worse added an annoying accompaniment to their labors. They’d
already snapped at one another twice or three times. The growing
heat and the omnipresent smell of death wore on the nerves like
nothing Carrie had ever experienced.
She ran a ragged, scraped finger over
yet another cloud whorl in the stone, feeling despair creeping into
her heart.
“Shit!” Dav cursed in English, then let
fly with a string of curses in Greek, Italian and what sounded like
French. She spun around, to see him shaking his hand, then pressing
on his fingers.
“Dav?”
“Set my fingers in a gap in the stone,
then moved wrong and caught them there.”
“Ouch,” she empathized, then jumped as
a raucous screech sounded above them. The body shifted violently
and the machine gun swung wildly on its strap, spinning around as
buzzards or vultures came to rest on the dead man.
“Oh, my God,” Dav said, his voice
echoing the revulsion she felt. Turning back to the wall, she
continued to run her fingers along the carving. She had to focus.
She had to find the key so she could get away from the wet tearing
sounds, the squabbling squawks and shrieks as more birds came to
rest above them.
“Keep looking, Dav,” she said sharply,
knowing that she was going to go mad, or throw up or something if
they didn’t get a break soon. She bent down to peer into a deep
crevice of a whorl and saw something. “Dav, do you have my
all-purpose tool?”
“Yes,” he said, but she didn’t look at
him or at anything but the deep hole in front of her. She couldn’t
bear it. She wanted to throw her hands over her ears and howl. It
was awful.
Instead, she held out her hand. Dav set
the tool in it and went back to his side of where they thought the
door might be. She opened the longest blade and used it to probe
down in the curl of the stone design. She pressed inward, and
wiggled the blade. Why was there a hole here, in this design, in
this place?
There was the faintest movement. The
barest shift in the stone. She’d felt it in her hand, hadn’t
she?
There! A quiver of movement. Faint and
nearly imperceptible.
Had she imagined it? She stuck the
blade farther in, pressed harder.
“Carrie?” Dav’s breathless use of her
name made her look his way. He’d stepped back from the wall. In
front of him was the faintest lip of stone, the minutest shift
making a vertical line on the wall.
“Dav!” she squealed, “it
worked!”
“Whatever you did, keep doing it,” he
said, striding to her side.
“I put the blade in here, and pushed,”
she explained, doing it again. Another whisper of sound and
movement and the pivot of the door became more obvious. Instead of
a typical hinge, it was shifting in the middle, like an upright
paddle, spinning on a central pin.
“What if I push here?” he asked,
pointing at the back edge of the shifting panel. “Do you think that
would work?”
“Can’t hurt. Let’s do it at the same
time,” she said, excited enough to grin at him. “Oh, my God, I
never thought this could work. It still might not, but—” She
stopped, not sure what to say.
“But it might,” he said, returning the
grin. His white teeth made a startling counterpoint to his warm
skin tone and dark, beard-roughened face. “I would love to not be
here when my unlamented brother comes to check on us.”
Her heart clenched. “You think he’s
coming?”
“Oh, yes. He was planning to come—they
indicated as much when they put us down here. They were waiting for
him.”
“Then who killed them?” she asked,
totally puzzled.
He shook his head. “Who knows? This
area—Central America or Mexico—is rife with rival gangs and drug
lords in certain parts of it. Much of it is only recently settled
into democracy, or semiregular government. There’s plenty of greed,
graft, corruption and general lawlessness in a lot of the
countries. Some are better than others. Let’s hope we’re in one of
those.”
He braced his feet, putting his hands
firmly on the shifting wall panel. “Ready?”
“Let’s do it,” she agreed. “On three.”
She counted it off and pressed in on the blade as he shoved at the
panel.
“It moved,” he exulted. “Really moved,
look.” Five inches of the wall panel had shifted outward on the
outer edge and inward where Dav had pushed at it. “Let me get the
flashlight.”
He skirted around the edge of the room
to their belongings, taking up the flashlight. She saw him wipe it
off on the edge of his coat before he came back to where she stood,
studying the wall.
They moved together to the open side,
and Dav turned on the Maglite flashlight, pointing its powerful
beam down the dark corridor.
“Ugh.” Dav was the first to comment.
The view was dusty, dark and cobwebby. At least she hoped the
stringy things hanging in the space were cobwebs. Old ones. Unused
ones.
“It reminds me of that movie,” she
whispered. “The Lord of the Rings, where
Frodo goes into the spider’s place.”
“Shelob.” Dav’s voice was terse,
sharp.
She looked at him, surprised. Lines of
strain were carved into his forehead. She remembered his confession
about the locked room, the insects and rats. His fear of the
inhabited dark.
Carrie rested a gentle hand on his arm.
His elegant shirt, now tattered and dirty, was wet with sweat, but
the fine material was still smooth under her fingers.
“Dav.” She waited until he looked at
her. “We’ll do it together.”
He looked away, staring into the dark
passage for a long time. Finally he nodded. “Thank God you’re
here.”
It was all he said before handing her
the flashlight and taking up his position on the back side of the
stone again, bracing his feet and shoving with all his might. The
door pivoted another six inches.
“Let me brush off the floor here,”
Carrie said, stuffing the flashlight in the back of her pants, like
a gangster would stow a gun. Like Dav, she skirted the edge of the
room to get to their belongings. She riffled through them until she
found the rough sack their food had been lowered in. Hurrying back,
she dropped to her knees to use the sack like a broom or dust mop,
brushing at the crackling dirt, moving it from the path of the
heavy stone. At least three inches of soil had come up where they’d
shoved the stone around, so she used the pliers on the all-purpose
tool to dig at the packed earth, jabbing it up and scraping it
away.
Once he saw what she was doing, Dav
retrieved her purse. “Do you have anything else in here that’s
strong enough to dig with? I could break one of the bottles, but
I’d rather not do that yet.”
“I have no idea,” she said, squatting
on her haunches. “Maybe.” Rummaging inside, she pulled out her
makeup kit, then set it aside. Nothing in there would help. “Credit
card?”
“That would work, but it’s small. What
else?”
She laid out a bottle of nail polish,
her wallet, a small comb, a case that held her business cards, an
empty cell phone case, and her iPod. “Wonder why they left me my
tunes,” she said, baffled.
His gaze sharpened on the item. “That’s
weird. At least you can put the tunes on, block out the noise while
we work,” he offered.
“Good idea,” she said, “but no. If you
have to listen to it, I do too.” She surveyed the pile on the floor
in front of her. “I may have some matches in one of the zipper
pockets.”
“Really?” That seemed to excite him.
“Those might be useful. Could you see?”
“Sure.”
“Meanwhile, I think I will destroy your
card case,” he said with whimsical humor. “It seems to be the only
metal thing here that might be large enough.”
He opened the silver case and slid her
cards free, tidily tucking them in an inside pocket on her purse.
She had opened the zippered part, and he neatly zipped it closed.
When she looked at him, he smiled. “You never know, we may need the
paper.”
Shaking her head, she laughed. “Save
everything, right?”
“Right.” He was watching her intently,
that smile still playing about his firm lips. She saw the change in
his eyes, saw the moment he saw her again, as a woman. As Carrie.
It was thrilling to see the intensity rise in his features, heat
his gaze. With sudden passion, he leaned in, kissed her deeply.
“Carrie,” he began, but she stopped him, pressing a dusty hand to
his cheek.
“Shhhh. Don’t say anything you’ll
regret, Dav.”
He shook his head, began to speak.
“No,” she stopped him again, laying a dusty, gritty finger on his
lips. “There’s time enough to say whatever you need to say when
we’re out of here. Deal?”
With another quicksilver turn of
emotion, he smiled again. “Deal. Remember,” he said as he turned
back to his work. “I am very good at deals.”
Laughing, she unzipped the innermost
pocket and hit paydirt. “Hey, I was right!” she said, pulling out
not one, but two books of matches.
“So,” he said, using the unfolded card
case to chip away at the cement-hard dirt. “You collect
matches?”
“No, but sometimes, if I like a
restaurant, I’ll pick them up so I can remember the name of it,
have the number.”
“Ah,” was his only
comment.
She went back to poking into the dirt
with her all-purpose tool. “What does that mean?” she asked,
copying his inflection and tone, “ah?”
“Nothing, just a response to your
explanation.”
“Uh-huh.”
They worked hard for over an hour,
dripping sweat from the humidity and their exertions, to loosen the
debris blocking the door. Using their hands, they scooped it
aside.
“Ready to try again?” he asked, rising
and holding his hand out to help her do the same.
“Yep. Let’s. Then we should eat again.
Are we going to try to go through this afternoon?”
For the first time in hours, Dav looked
toward the grate. Carrie resolutely kept her eyes on the wall. She
didn’t want to see the vulture’s handiwork. As it was, she saw
Dav’s face change, his eyes go hard and distant.
“It’s getting pretty late. I think we
worked past noon. I’d guess it’s around two or three.
Yes?”
She sighed and dug her watch out of her
pocket. The strap had broken so she’d stowed it away. She knew he
was dreading the tunnel or cave or whatever it was. She was too,
but if there was any chance it led out, she was willing to risk
it.
“It’s three fifteen, California time.”
She hesitated, then added, “I think we should go for
it.”
“Go for it?” Dav said, trying to slow
the beating of his heart, trying to face the prospect of the
endlessly dark tunnel and the potential for freedom that it
offered. “Yes. I believe we must.”
“Okay. I’ll get our
stuff.”
Dav stayed where he was, gathering his
courage just as she was gathering their things. He knew it was
weak, but if he was to get through this, whatever this was, he was going to need every ounce of energy and
fortitude he could muster.
“Ready?”
“No, but if we wait for that, we’ll be
a hundred years dead, to borrow your phrase from the other
day.”
She smiled and held out a hand. He took
it and stood, but didn’t yet move forward. “Okay. So, you know a
little about this culture. Will there be booby traps?”
“Ah, Indiana
Jones again?”
“Well,” he said with a wry smile,
“better to ask the question now.”
“I think we should watch our step; they
did do shafts. They weren’t necessarily traps. Some people think
the shafts were ways to talk to the underworld.”
“Not the way I want to meet Hades,
thanks,” he managed, feeling sweat tracking down his
back.
He turned to her. “Okay, let’s be as
logical as I’m able to be right now.”
“I’m sorry this is so hard,” she said,
sympathy in her eyes.
“The alternative is the gibbering we
spoke of. So. I will take my coat and make a pack of it. You take
your purse, wrap it across your body.” He studiously ignored the
looming shadows of the chamber, the equally dark opening of the
tunnel.
They’d miraculously found it. He
wouldn’t pass up the chance to get Carrie to safety. Nothing was
more important, no matter how much he’d like to sit, rocking in a
corner as he had when he was a boy. “We’ll go slowly. Feel our way,
yes?”
“Sounds like a plan.”
“Eh-la, good. So, I will lead. If
anyone is to fall into a shaft, I will do that. Perhaps Hades will
take pity on me, eh?” He knew his accent was getting more
pronounced, and his fingers felt thick and clumsy as he made up the
pack.
He could do this. He had to do it.
Everything he was, everything he believed about himself, would be
for naught if he couldn’t find the courage to face that
tunnel.
“Okay. So. Now,” he said, dusting off
his filthy hands and taking up the pack and setting it on his
shoulders. “We will go.”
He held out his hand for hers, but to
his surprise, she moved past it and embraced him.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice
muffled in his shirt.
He held her in his arms, feeling
emotion swamp him. It overwhelmed him. His heart hurt with it and
he ached even more that he couldn’t wave a hand and make this all
disappear. For her.
He realized that fear for her
outweighed any fear he had for himself. The banked fires of passion
were there as well. He’d never felt this way about anyone
before.
It was a strange way to begin a
perilous journey, with such a revelation. It would probably mean
more if he could define what it was he was feeling. Admiration? He
knew he admired her. This went deeper than that. Need? That was
part of it too.
He felt tears dampen his already wet
shirt and he held her more tightly. “Come, my love. You will be
Persephone, the beautiful young thing, and I will play Hades in our
little drama, taking you into the dark, only to lead you back out
again, eh?”
“Promises, promises,” she sniffled,
ducking her head and using her sleeve to wipe at her
eyes.
“Ah, now, you have made it worse.” He
smiled down at her. Her face was a mask of dust and sweat. And
still, he felt the stirring within him, that alien sense that
called him to her. From the depths of his pocket, he pulled out his
bedraggled handkerchief. It was much the worse for wear, but it
wasn’t nearly as dirty as her sleeves. Or his, for that matter.
With utmost care, he used the cleanest corner to wipe her cheeks
where the tears had tracked through the dirt. “There. It is not
good, but it is better than it might have been. Let us go before I
lose my nerve, eh?”
“Okay.” She offered him a watery smile.
It was obvious from her deliberate attempt to square her shoulders
and the deep breath that lifted her chest that she was nervous as
well. “Okay,” she said again, as if to encourage them both. “You
have the flashlight?”
“Right here. I think you should take
it. I will use my hands and feet to feel the way.” He struggled to
remember all Gates’s lessons, all the little bits of information
his friend had dropped along the way about moving in enemy
territory, moving with caution among land mines and traps. “If you
need to shine the light anywhere but at our feet, we stop,
yes?”
“Why?”
“So we don’t stumble forward into
something when we are distracted. Gates has said that it is the
distractions that kill, not the land mines.”
“Ooookay,” she drawled, taking the
flashlight and switching it on. “That’s reassuring.”
He laughed. “Many things Gates has to
say are like that. Informative, but not always easy.”
For a moment, he stared into the dark,
thinking of Gates. It made him remember the weapon that loomed
above them.
“Carrie, I hate to say this, to ask it,
but before we go into the tunnel, I think we should try and get the
guard’s weapon.” He knew what he was asking. She would have to
stand on his shoulders again, cut the weapon free, since he
couldn’t reach it himself. She could not bear his weight on her
shoulders so he could do it and spare her the sight of the
vultures’ feasting. “As horrible as it will be, it will be better
to be armed than not.”
She shuddered, a visible, reflexive
expression of revulsion. “I know you’re right. I know it. I think
it’s smart. I just don’t want to do it. It’s ...
horrible.”
“Yes, it is. I do not wish to ask this
of you. However, if our tunnel does lead somewhere, and sets us
free, to be unarmed against those who hunt us, when we have access
to a weapon? That is unwise.”
Her tear-streaked face was taut, her
lips twisted in anxiety. He wanted to pet and soothe her, to kiss
it away, make it better, but he couldn’t and that was killing
him.
Watching her conquer her disgust,
knowing the courage it took to face their choices, made his heart
hurt for her. “I will lift you again, yes? You only have to look up
enough to find the strap and cut it. If you cut it, one tug should
free the weapon.”
“It’s a machine gun,” she said, setting
her things aside as she steeled herself to make the climb onto his
shoulders. “I’m guessing that we don’t want to drop it,
right?”
He smiled. Trust her to think of that.
“No. The safety is off. He fired as he went down, so it is primed
for use. I don’t know how many rounds are in the magazine, but
there will be some still left or I wouldn’t ask this of
you.”
“Rounds in the magazine? Does that mean
bullets?”
He laughed, and it eased the tension
for a moment. “Yes, it does. You see? I have been hanging out with
bad sorts, like Gates, to know all that. I don’t particularly like
guns, but for safety’s sake, I learned to use them.”
“He taught you a lot,” she said,
holding her hands out for his, waiting for him to bend his knee and
let her climb onto his shoulders. Having done it several times now,
they managed it in one smooth maneuver. The edge of the door helped
as well, where it had pivoted into the room, giving her a prop to
lean on. “Can I just say that I really, really, really don’t want to do this?”
“Yes, you may. I’m sorry to ask it of
you.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just because I can’t lift
you, right? Hand me the snips. I only want to do this
once.”
He handed her the all-purpose tool with
the blades set to scissors. He could hear the crisp schrrrup sound as she cut through the canvas
strap.
“It’s stuck,” she said, her voice
choked. “I’m trying not to throw up here, but if anything falls off
this guy or gets on me when I pull this strap loose, I’m going to
hurl.” He heard her gulping against nausea. “Fair
warning.”
“Fairly warned,” he replied, struggling
to keep her steady.
“Oh, gross,” she
muttered, and he heard the slither of fabric and her grunt as the
weight of the weapon landed in her hands. “It’s disgusting. I hope
it’ll still fire with all this ... nastiness on it.”
“I’m sure it will.” He held up a hand,
still bracing her with the other, to help her down. Instead, she
slapped the gun into his palm.
“Here, you take it. You know how to use
it, right? So you get to clean it up.” His quads were screaming
with strain, but he squatted to lay the weapon on the dirt floor,
well clear of the blood pool, so he could help her
down.
“Is this like the fishes? I have heard
this from other men—if you catch it you have to clean
it?”
She leapt down from his knee and turned
to bury her face in his chest once more. He held her tightly,
savoring the contact, knowing it would help them both just to hang
on. His body, always responsive to her nearness, reacted, but he
ignored it. Now was not the time. “My brave Carrie-mou,” he
murmured, laying his beard-roughened cheek on her silky hair.
“Thank you.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she said, and he felt the
race of reaction in her body. “If I never have to do that
again?”
“Centuries too soon, yes?” he finished
the quote.
“Millenniums. Eons too soon. Ugh. And
yes, you can clean the fish.”
“Oh, no,” he quipped. “This would be
why I am rich. I will pay people to clean the fish or I will go
hungry. Besides, I don’t really like fish.”
“I like the sound of that. Of course,
right now, I think we’d both take fish raw and wiggling if we had
it.”
“True.” He took his disgusting
handkerchief, ready to wipe away the worst of the blood and gore
off the weapon. “Why don’t you go over by the door? I will clean
this, yes?”
She nodded, and when she’d moved away,
he began. He wiped it as best he could, the blood flaking away
where it had caked on. As he’d been taught, he checked the trigger
and magazine for blockage, but he couldn’t be sure it would fire
with all the dampness to which it had been exposed. He flicked the
safety on and tied the remains of the strap back to the front
D-ring as best he could.
The room was darkening as the sun
angled toward the west. Dav finished his grim task, and slung the
weapon over his shoulder. Turning, he faced the tunnel. “I suppose
it is now or never, my Carrie. Are you with me?”
“Let’s do it.”