David Dun - Necessary Evil

"Once you get there it's not as tight as it looks. Around the corner it opens up a little."

"It's 140 yards to daylight?"

"About that, give or take."

At first it was easy to crawl, and although it got low at the bend, it did open some, just as Kier had said. They enjoyed three feet of clearance for the next thirty or forty feet around the bend, then almost had to drop on their bellies. At this point Jessie still had a couple of feet on either side, which helped control her claustrophobia.

Because they could not risk a light near the exit point, they had to feel their way from here. Kier could do little to make it easy for her. When they stopped for a moment now and then to take stock, he encouraged her by telling her how he admired her strength and her determination.

The air tasted stale and slightly bitter in her throat. She found herself breathing more deeply without knowing if it was from exertion or fear. A choking sensation began to overtake her. Diseases like hantavirus came to mind. It became easier to imagine the ceiling caving in, or becoming trapped, or dropping into some unknown shaft because they had taken a wrong turn.

"Talk to me," Kier called out as her chest heaved with choking.

"How much farther?"

"We're about halfway."

That pierced her like a knife. The earth was crushing in on her. She yearned to stretch her arms out at her sides, but couldn't. She inched like a caterpillar, but still felt her back rubbing against the rock above her. And up farther it would be tighter still. She couldn't imagine it. She couldn't imagine surviving it. The chill of the limestone under her fingers sent the lonely cold to her mind. She couldn't raise her forearms or hands more than a few inches above her head-a constant reminder that she was locked under a mountain of rock.

At the academy they had put her in a sensory-deprivation tank that they flooded with water in the darkness. The marines used it to deter the faint of heart. It had been disturbing, but as the sound of her heart had filled her ears, she told herself over and over: They won't kill you.

What could she tell herself here?

"I don't know if I can do this."

"Listen to me," he said. "Turn over on your back and close your eyes. You can be wherever you let your mind put you. Remember the bed in the cabin. Remember the stars."

In desperation she did as Kier said, barely able to roll in the confined space. She filled her mind with the way she'd felt under the night sky. When she had calmed herself again, she listened to his voice.

"We'll be there in minutes. Just minutes. Reach and grab the rock, then pull." She did it. "Pull," he said again and again, making a rhythm for her of reaching, pulling, and sliding.

The regularity of it was calming, breaking up the terrible pictures in her mind. She found herself breathing with every reach and every pull, enhancing the rhythm. Reach, breathe, pull, breathe.

They did not stop or rest again until they came to the tightest section.

"Now don't let your hands come back past the top of your head. Stretch yourself out. Think string bean."

At that she laughed quietly. Kier chuckled back. They started again. Now she could almost kiss the rock. Her knees could scarcely rise to dig in her heels. It was so tight she couldn't imagine Kier moving. At that moment her hands touched his feet. Oh God, no.

He was stuck. She could feel him struggling. Her heart jumped. Inside her head a small, imaginary Jessie cringed at things too horrible to contemplate. The feet ahead of her still weren't moving. There was only struggle. Too much breath rushed in and out to even ask. She couldn't bear the wrong answer.

Something in her mind started pounding. Perhaps I'm coming undone. She noticed her head moving wildly side to side as if a giant hand were making her say no. She wanted to scream, but didn't. Then a voice spoke in her head. Her voice. She was back under the stars. There was something tiny inside her that wanted to reach out to something huge, something infinite.

You need to be at peace inside the mountain, she told herself, imagining herself rising up out of her body and passing into the stone. In a few moments, it no longer seemed so confining. The mountain was still above her, but it didn't contain her. She was part of it.

Then she saw the face of her late father. Before she had time to think what the tears meant Kier's voice cut through her consciousness. For a split second, she had thought it was the voice of her father.

"We're gonna make it."

The feet were gone. Calmer now, her mind urged her forward. In seconds the light of day replaced the utter blackness. A minute more of squirming and Kier pulled her hands into a wide-open world. The air tasted like her mother's fresh pillowcases. The little Jessie inside her head danced for joy.

It did surprise her that the men in white suits had disappeared like a bad dream. Kier speculated that Tillman would try to pick up their track in the morning after they had passed farther down the mountain. Tillman would want to feel in control. He would want to ensure that they kept the appointment. But he would be too shrewd to risk scaring them off by leaving men in place. Kier planned to leave no trail by following creeks, and once they got below the snow line, by sticking to rocky slopes and washes.

With the wind whipping her unprotected ears with enough velocity to make her jaw ache, the reptilian mist washing over her, Jessie needed all her faculties to step precisely where Kier did. To do this, she wore no hood or helmet over her head. When Kier insisted on some protection, she agreed to wear only the helmet. More than once (she supposed as a form of encouragement), he remarked that she had saved them on the ledge. Even so, one more freezing hike over dangerous ground on a hungry stomach meant misery on a scale she never cared to repeat.

She developed confidence in Kier's theory about Tillman's willingness to pull back only after they had traveled miles without incident. When they doubled back, there was no one following. Below the snow line now, Kier took them down then up and over a high ridge and down into a different drainage.

They walked beside a beautiful stream in the afternoon sun. To her amazement it made her forget her weariness and her hunger.

"The whisperings of the mountain are like laughter-nourishment for the soul, Grandfather says."

Jessie's senses began to catch the special feeling of this wild place. They traveled a river trail worn smooth in the verdigris granite. Around them echoed the many sounds of moving water: its murmurs, its bright tones like loose change, its pelting drumbeat, and in the distance, its cavalcade roar.

She felt the intrigue of the forest for the first time. Angled shafts of sun met the trees' hefty, gnarled old arms ending in hands of feathery, green-needled leaves. The chilly breath of the woodland on a winter afternoon left this world of light and shadow tinted with the sparkling wet of fresh rain.

On one side of them, there was a six-foot drop to rushing water; on the other, the firs grew thick, overhanging the ancient pathway.

"Watch your step." He offered a hand as if she were a porcelain princess.

She smiled, feeling foolish for enjoying the man's peculiar chivalry when they had such a sobering obligation.

"Moccasins, mules, and hard heels have worn these trails in the rock for hundreds of years," Kier half whispered, catching her eye, making it hard for her to concentrate on the history.

She wanted to stop and talk. Actually she wanted to be close to him, but the fear of being ambushed and the need to press on kept them going.

Running over bedrock ledges into shimmering pools in a series of cascades, the river became a foaming roar in this part of the canyon-known as Spirit Gate. At the end of the cascades was a pool, surrounded by lichen and moss-covered rock, and ringed with old-growth fir, hemlock, and cedar. Jessie tilted back her head, awestruck by the timeless immensity of it all.