Douglas Preston - Still Life With Crows

Hell. If he couldn’t regroup with Larssen and the troopers, he’d have to go after Lefty and the dogs alone. And that meant returning to the limestone forest, for a start.

But now, as Hazen looked back the way he had come, he wasn’t sure just which of the branching tunnels he’d come out of. He thought it was the one on the right. But he wasn’t sure.

Hazen swallowed, cleared his throat. “Lefty?”

Silence.

“Larssen?”

He cupped his hands in the direction of his backtrail and bellowed, “Hey! Anybody! If you can hear me, sing out!”

Silence.

“Anybody there? Respond!”

Despite the chilly air and the incessant wetness, Hazen felt a prickly sensation along his spine. He looked back the way he had come; looked around; looked ahead. The night-vision goggles gave everything a pale, reddish, unreal look, like he was on Mars. He checked his belt and confirmed what he already feared: he’d lost his flashlight during the chase.

The whole operation was fucked up. They’d gotten separated. Raskovich was lost, the whereabouts of Larssen unknown, the condition of Lefty and the dogs uncertain. At the very least, McFelty knew they were there. If he was dead, or injured . . . Hazen figured he had enough to deal with without dreaming up a lot of hypotheticals.

The thing to do was to get everyone back together, get a situation report, take stock.

Shit, it was hard to remember which of those holes he had come outof. . .

He examined the cave floor for footprints or marks, but it seemed as if each of the tunnels had been heavily trafficked. And that alone was very strange.

He ran over what had happened in his mind, trying to recall landmarks. It was all vague; he’d been concentrating on catching the fleeing Raskovich. Still, on balance it seemed to him that he’d most likely come from that passage on the right.

He walked down it about fifty feet. There were some broken stalactite pieces scattered here, like teeth. He didn’t remember those. Had he just run past them too fast?

Son of a bitch.

He went farther, but still nothing looked familiar. With a curse he returned to the pillared cave and took one of the other tunnels. He proceeded slowly, straining to remember, feeling his heart starting to beat a little fast. Nothing looked familiar. The dripping rocks, the feathery crystals, the banded, glossy humps—it all looked strange.

And then he heard a sound. Someone up ahead, humming.

“Hey!” He broke into a trot, turned a corner, paused at a fork in the passage.

The humming had stopped.

Hazen spun around, calling out. “Larssen? Cole?”

Still no sound.

“Answer me, goddamn it!”

He waited. Couldn’t they hear him? He’d heard the sound as clear as a bell; why couldn’t they hear him?

More humming, high-pitched and farther away, coming out of the left tunnel.

“Larssen?” He unshouldered his shotgun and walked down the left tunnel. The sound was louder, higher, closer. He moved more cautiously now, his senses on alert, trying to control his heart, which seemed to be pounding way too hard in his chest.

There was a flash of something at the periphery of his vision and he stopped and spun around. “Hey!”

He got just the briefest look before it darted away into the blackness. Brief as the glance was, it was enough to leave no doubt at all that it wasn’t one of his team.

And it sure as hell wasn’t McFelty.

Sixty-Four

C hester Raskovich turned a corner and stopped, the grotesque sight before him arresting his headlong flight. He stared, his mind reeling. Crouching in front of him, blocking his path, was a ragged, wispy-haired figure, staring up at him with hollow eyes, mouth yawning open as if to bite, teeth drawn back.

Raskovich leaned back with a neigh of terror, wanting to run and yet unable to do so, waiting for the thing to leap up and pounce on him. It was like a nightmare: his feet frozen to the ground, paralyzed, unable to flee.

He gulped in air—again, and then again—and, gradually, paralysis and fright ebbed and reason began to return. He leaned closer. It was nothing more than the mummified body of an Indian, sitting on the floor, bony knees drawn up, mouth open, shriveled lips drawn back from an enormous row of brown teeth. Placed around him was a semicircle of pots, each with a stone arrowhead in it. The mummy was wrapped in stringy rags that at one time might have been buckskin.

He looked away, swallowed, looked back again, and let his breathing slow to a semblance of normality. What he was looking at was a prehistoric Indian burial. He could see the remains of beaded moccasins on the twisted feet, next to a painted parfleche and some tattered feathers.

“Fuck,” said Raskovich out loud, ashamed at his panic, just now realizing what he’d done. He’d blown it. His first job as a real cop and he’d lost it completely, right in front of Sheriff Hazen. Running like a rabbit. And now here he was, lost in a cave, with a killer on the loose, and no idea which way to go. He felt a wave of shame and despair: he should’ve stayed at KSU, keeping kids off the water tower and giving out parking tickets.

Suddenly, he lashed out in rage and frustration, aiming a savage kick at the mummy. His foot connected with a hollow thock and the top of the head exploded in a ball of brown dust. A boiling stream of white insects came skittering out—they looked like albino roaches—and the mummy toppled sideways, the jaw coming loose and rolling a few turns across the ground before coming to a halt among broken pieces of skull. An ivory snake, hidden beneath the rags, uncoiled with a flash and shot off into the darkness like a thin ghost.

“Oh, shit! ” Raskovich shouted, skipping back. “God damn it!”

He stood there, breathing hard, hearing the sound of air rattling in his throat. He had no idea where he was, how far he had run, where he should go.

Think.

He looked around, shining his infrared lamp around the damp surfaces of rock. He had been running through a narrow, tall crack with a sandy floor. The crack was so high he could not even make out the top. He could see his own footprints in the sand. He listened: no sound, not even water.

Retrace your steps.

Giving one last glance at the now-desecrated burial, Raskovich turned and walked back along the crack, keeping his eyes on the ground. Now he noticed what had been ignored in his headlong flight: almost every niche and shelf on both sides of the crack was piled with bones and other objects: painted pots, quivers full of arrows, hollow skulls rustling with cave life. It was a mausoleum, an Indian catacomb.

He shivered.

To his relief, he soon left the burials behind. The crack widened and the ceiling came down, and he could make out cruel-looking stalactites overhead. The sandy bottom gave way to shallow terraces of water, layered in strange accretions like rice paddies. As the sand fell behind, so did the trace of his footsteps.

Ahead were two openings, one tall and partly blocked with fallen limestone blocks, the other open. Which way now?

Think, asshole. Remember.

But for the life of him Raskovich could not remember which way he had come.

He thought of shouting, then decided against it. Why attract attention? The thing the dogs had found might still be around somewhere, looking for him. The cave was far bigger than it was supposed to be, but he could still find his way out if he took his time and didn’t panic again. They would be looking for him, too. He had to remember that.

He chose the larger opening and felt reassured by the long tunnel ahead of him. It looked familiar somehow. And now he could see something else, an indistinct reddish blur in the goggles, up on a shelf of rock beside a dark hole. An arrangement of objects. Another burial?