Nevada Barr - Blind Descent

"Sondra!" Curt shouted.

Moaning from hearts of stone dripped into their ears.

The chamber where they stood was not so much a room as an irregular void left behind by the shifting of immense blocks imperfectly mortared with lime. Walls were not smooth, not unbroken. The floor was not flat. The ceiling was dizzy-making with fractured planes. Cracks gaped from every angle. More were hidden by shadows. The one, true, going lead, the exit that would take a traveler to the Lounge and on, was one of these. Anna had recently crawled through it. She stood with her back to the bib of stone camouflaging it, yet she couldn't say with absolute certainty she'd find it again without the orange flagging.

No wonder Sondra hadn't made it out. Without tape she was lost. Without light she was doomed. Her batteries wouldn't have lasted four days. The miracle was that they had heard her through the rooms and passages between this forsaken rent in the earth and Katie's Pigtail. Either there was a crack somewhere high in the rock that carried sound, or Frieda had indeed been whispering, trying to summon help.

Whimpering oozed from all directions. Curt pointed with his light to a triangular opening five feet up and slanting away to the right. "I'm guessing that one. What do you think?"

"We've got to start somewhere."

Ten minutes in, the lead dead-ended. No room to turn, the two of them backed out. Curt gathered up the tape as they retreated. Sweat ran from Anna's hairline in blinding streams. Her shirt hinted at a life of wet tee-shirt contests and mud wrestling. Humidity and exertion were as deadly as the dehydrating sun of the Trans-Pecos. Every time she thought of it, she drank. Every time Curt told her to, she drank. Fortunately, with Lake Rapunzel and several other designated watering holes, getting enough liquid wasn't a problem.

Despite renewed shouting, the whimpering came no more.

Curt marked the failed lead, and methodically the two of them began following the others, moving counterclockwise around the room. To save time, they split up, each leaving a trail of tape. On Anna's third solo crawl she found Sondra McCarty.

Before she'd squirmed twenty feet, the smell met her, a vile odor of excrement and human despair, the odor of prisons, hospitals, and madhouses. A smell that can be masked but never completely expunged. Fighting nausea, Anna pulled the neck of her shirt over her nose and mouth, Joe Bazooka style, and crawled on. Sweat soaked through the rip-stop covers on her elbow and knee pads. Mud formed, creating minuscule dams that broke and reformed as she moved.

Trailing a lifeline of surveyor's tape, she heaved herself over a fall of flowstone. Stench hit her in full force. Her light shone into a room more spacious than any they'd found since leaving the Lounge. Twelve to fifteen feet high and twice that long, it stretched into the darkness. Blocks of limestone broke it into a maze. Piles of human waste dotted the flat areas. Paper and foam cartons were scattered around. A sidepack and helmet, cast off as in anger, hung precariously on an abutment halfway down the room.

At the far end, a wall glistened with water. Seepage formed a pool at its base. The body of a woman was beside it, curled into a fetal position so tight her head was hidden. All Anna could see were arms, legs, and butt. Having lowered her feet into the room, she slid down till she stood on the floor.

"Sondra?"

The fetus began to unwind with painful slowness, limbs like sticks, stiff as a puppet's, unfolding. Matted hair was pushed back by skeletal fingers to reveal eyes as devoid of humanity as any Anna had ever seen. They closed against the unbearable brightness of her lamp. No spark of recognition had registered, no gleam of incipient sanity.

Hunkered down on her heels so she would present a less alarming figure, Anna said, "Sondra, it's me, Anna. One of the cavers who came down to help carry Frieda out. Do you remember?" She kept her light just off Sondra's face. No intelligence was burgeoning. The vague, soulless stare continued. "You've been lost down here for four days." She spoke softly, easing Sondra back into the world of the living. "I see you found a water source. I'm impressed. You've kept yourself alive. That took courage. We're here now. We're going to take you home. Can you get up? Can you do that for me? Are you hurt?"

With a suddenness that caught Anna off guard, Sondra uncoiled, rose to feet and hands, and charged. Guttural cries rumbled behind bared teeth. Anna tried to stand, to jump clear, but legs too long without rest had cramped in the crouching position. She fell, rolling helplessly onto her back.

In an instant, Sondra was upon her, hands clawing, the growl becoming a staccato bleat.

Though moderately painful, the assault turned out to be friendly in nature. The tall, once haughty young woman held on, trying to burrow into Anna's arms, crawl into her pockets, hide in the warm safety of her.

Anna held her and muttered a slightly profane version of "there, there" till Sondra's hysterical flailing ceased. Bit by bit the grunts began to form into words, an ongoing litany of "Oh, God. You're real. So long. God. Don't let go."

Just as Anna began to think she would soon be able to form complete sentences, Sondra dissolved in racking sobs, her body jerking as if an electric current surged through it. Any attempt on Anna's part to pull away triggered such a fit of violent grasping that in the end she just hung on to the quivering mess that was Sondra McCarty and waited for the storm to blow itself out.

"Mind if I join you? Or is three a crowd?"

Anna looked up from where Sondra had her pinned in the dirt to see Schatz's most-welcome face.

"My lead dead-ended. I followed the bellowing." He slid down beside them and looked around, his lamp raking over the filth. "Not exactly the Hilton."

"She found water and stayed with it. Good girl," Anna said in that peculiar voice usually reserved for dogs and horses.

"Hi, Sondra. Everybody's been missing you," Curt lied without a hitch.

Pulling her face away from Anna's chest at the sound of her name, Sondra stared at Curt. Face streaked with tears, hair in dreadlocks from sleeping and living in the mud, she looked every inch the tragic refugee. Momentarily her hands loosened their grip.

Opportunity was knocking. Aiming Mrs. McCarty at Curt's broad chest, Anna gave her a shove. Neat as a flying squirrel, Sondra let go of Anna and smacked into Curt, fingers, toes, every prehensile inch of her reattaching to the new savior.

"Thanks a heap," Curt said dryly, eyeing Anna over Sondra's head where it wedged between his jaw and neck.

"Don't mention it." Rubbery legs took Anna's weight. Rubbing clutch marks from her arms, she tried to shake free of the insanity if not the stink of it.

Affixed to Curt, Sondra made gurgling noises and hid her face. A line from an old Travis McGee novel came to mind: "You girl, do you dither? Do you bleat and snuffle and carry on?" Anna looked away. The woman had earned the right to a breakdown. Batteries would have gone dead on the first day. Food run out on the second. Without water Sondra would have died on the third. Carlsbad's volunteers were going to have fun cleaning up after this adventure.

Turning her back on what had become a prison for Sondra, Anna knelt. The younger woman's shoulders grasped between her hands, she gently pulled her several inches away from her human rock.

"Time to go. You've been here plenty long, don't you think?"

Childish in extremity, Sondra nodded and pawed away tears with one hand. The other had a fistful of Curt's tee-shirt and looked in no way ready to let go.

"You must be real hungry," Anna said coaxingly. "I've got a whole bunch of food in my pack. If you can come just a little ways, back out to the real trail, we'll eat something. Then go home." To Curt she said, "Take her hand. The one on your shirtfront if you can get it. Hold it till you can't anymore. I'll be right behind you with her gear."