P Deutermann - The Cat Dancers

“Does whoever’s coming know about this cave?” she asked.

“I doubt it. There are seals on the trailer door, but I didn’t see any signs of this little zoo being discovered. But there was no lock on the hatch, so if we can get by the cats, we should be able to get out.”

“Get by the cats.”

“Yeah, well, they’ve been fed. Sort of. And I have the forty-five.”

She gave him a look.

“I’m not going to drown down here,” he said. “I didn’t domesticate two mountain lions. I’m sorry about this whole weird business, but-”

“Where’d they come from?”

He started to answer but then stopped to think. Where had they come from? The narrow passageway, the one with no airflow. On the other hand, the other passageway had an airflow, which usually meant access to the outside. No, it had been the left door he’d pushed closed but not locked.

“That one,” he said, pointing to the left cage.

“Let’s throw meat in there; if we can get them in there, we can lock the cage.”

“Damn. I hate women who can think,” he said. “I’ll throw the meat, and you lock them in.”

She rolled her eyes at him and he pointed out that it was her idea.

It worked. The cats darted into the cage after the cans of meat and she slammed and locked the cage door right behind them. They started squabbling over cans and didn’t appear to notice they’d been caught.

Cam trotted up the entry passageway to shut off that water. Mary Ellen found him standing under the bare lightbulb, looking up. The ladder was gone and the hatch was shut. There was water pouring around all the edges of the hatch, and a good bit of it was dripping down the wire and onto that bare lightbulb.

“It’s gonna get dark pretty soon, he said. “Either we get up to that hatch or we find another way out.”

“There’re all those boxes,” she said. “Pile them up. You’re probably tall enough to reach the hatch if you stand on them.”

That also worked, but the hatch didn’t move. Cam did manage to pull the extension cord down far enough to form a loop, which got the water away from the bulb. But then the watersoaked cardboard boxes began to collapse, so he had to jump down. The floor was wet, but the water wasn’t accumulating in this room. It was all flowing downhill to the cage room.

“That right-hand cage had a tunnel behind it,” he said. “There was fresh air blowing in. The other one was stagnant. I think we have to try it.”

“With no light?” she asked. Her voice betrayed a fear of enclosed spaces.

“I have this,” Cam said, hauling a tiny Maglite out of his utility belt. “In a cave, it’ll look like a searchlight. Caves are really dark.”

“Don’t I know it,” she replied. “Well, at least we know where the cats are.”

But when they got back to the main chamber, the back door to the left-hand cage was wide open and the cats were gone.

They had to crawl on their hands and knees for about fifty feet before the passage allowed them to stand up. The left-hand passage had been a more attractive proposition, except for that one not-so-minor detail. Ankle-deep water rising in the main chamber had pretty much forced the decision: Stay there and drown, or give the other passage a shot.

They made better progress once they could stand up, but Cam was pretty sure they were going down, not up. The passage was only about two feet wide, so they had to step sideways most of the time. Cam led, shining the light alternately ahead and down so that they didn’t walk off a subterranean cliff in the dark. The air smelled of old rock and damp, and the walls seemed to press in on them constantly. He could hear Mary Ellen’s labored breathing behind him, and he was pretty sure it was not due to physical exertion. He tried to make a joke about her looking to see if her cell phone had a signal, but she didn’t laugh.

They finally stepped down into a small cavern. Cam shone the light around and saw that there were three other passages leading out of it. He had no idea which way to go.

He shone the light back into the passage they’d come through. A silvery ribbon of water was pushing toward them through the dust on the floor.

“Look,” she said. “If the water’s coming down here, it can’t flood that cage area, can it? You said people are coming. Let’s go back up there. At least that’s close to the surface.”

Her eyes were huge in the tiny white glow of the flashlight. He thought about it. “They’d never hear us underground. Not unless they’d come over to the chicken coop, like I did.”

“They won’t search?”

“I was prepared to pull that trailer off its foundations because I knew you were here. They’ll see my truck, see my dogs, and think I’m out in the woods somewhere. The trailer’s still sealed. They didn’t find the tunnels the first time.”

“So which way do we go?” she asked, her voice rising. “How do we even decide?”

Her voice was loud enough to create a small echo in the surrounding passages. It was answered by a distant guttural cough. Cam put his hand over her mouth before she could say anything more and pushed her roughly back into the passage from which they’d just come. He swung the light beam across the mouths of the other three tunnels and then turned it off. He bent down and whispered in her ear that a cat was coming. He felt her tense up. He signaled with his body that she needed to back up some more, then got the. 45 out, made himself as comfortable as he could, and waited.

Nothing happened for about two minutes, and then there was another cough, louder this time. He felt in the dark for her head and bent backward so he could whisper into her ear again. “The cats probably know the way out. There was air flowing through here when the main hatch was open. We’ll follow it.”

He felt her nod slightly and then he straightened back up.

They waited. The darkness was absolute. He could feel his eyes trying to adapt for night vision, but there was no ambient light. So listen, he told himself. And be very fucking quiet. He tried to detect Mary Ellen’s breathing, but she’d already figured it out.

Those cats could supposedly see in the dark, but not in this kind of dark. But they could smell and they could sense another animal presence. He and Mary Ellen had walked down into the junction cavern, so their scent would be in the dust on the ground, if not in the air.

So turn on the light, he told himself. The cat has all the advantages right now. He had a bad thought: Could the cat be behind them?

No, that cage door had been locked, and there’d been no side passages in the tunnel they’d come through. No, it had to be in front of them.

He pointed the flashlight into the cavern and switched it on.

The cat was three feet away, staring at them, its amber eyes blinking in the sudden shaft of light. Mary Ellen gave an involuntary little squeak, and Cam swallowed hard. He didn’t move, and then, almost without realizing he was doing it, he let go the best and loudest imitation of a cat’s hiss that he could muster. The cat replied in kind but then bolted across the cavern and disappeared into one of the passages-the one directly across from them.

Cam stepped down into the cavern with shaky knees and helped Mary Ellen get to her feet. They listened for a moment but didn’t hear anything.

“I’m guessing there’s a way out, and that he went for the tunnel that would let him escape.”

“And if there isn’t?”

“Let’s try it. If it looks like a dead end or we run into more intersections, we’ll go back and do it your way.”

“What if he’s in there, setting up an ambush? That’s what they like to do, you know.”

“Maybe, but he’s the one who ran.” He didn’t bring up the fact that two cats had gone into the tunnels, but an ambush in these narrow passageways would be just about impossible. On the other hand, so would escape.