James Tabor - The Deep Zone

HALLIE’S BRAIN FLARED WITH ONE LAST BRIGHT THOUGHT: Go left . She pushed off in that direction, legs still bound together, stumbling, clawing the cave walls with her bare hands.

She bumped the pack.

She lurched up so fast that she hit her head again, but felt no pain, felt only the inrush of cool air into burning lungs, felt the agony begin to recede from her belly and chest and groin, felt her throat begin to loosen and her eyes to settle back into their sockets.

There were only two inches of air space here, but that was more than enough for her to fill her lungs over and over again, flushing the carbon dioxide out of her system, oxygenating her brain and muscles.

“Cave almost got you, Hallie Leland,” she said.

It was as close as she had ever come to dying in a cave, and she knew it. But something strange had happened, that last flaring thought, and she was alive.

“Thank you,” she said to Chi Con Gui-Jao. “Thank you.”

When she felt able, she freed her legs from the rope. Instead of retying the rope around her waist, from then on she would haul it along with one hand or the other, so that she could break free instantly if she needed to. She retrieved a backup light from one of the thigh pockets on her caving suit and used it to find her helmet and the other light.

Half an hour later she came out the siphon’s far end. She stood knee-deep in a black lake of still water. On her right, the beams of her lights revealed a sheer gold-colored rock wall rising up to the ceiling fifty feet overhead. She thanked the cave god again and walked out onto dry cave floor. Bowman was waiting.

“That was a bitch,” he said, sounding really challenged for the first time.

“Tell me about it. I almost bought it back there.”

He looked up quickly. “What happened?”

She saw that Bowman had taken off his pack. She shucked out of hers, too. “I stumbled, fell underwater, and got my legs tangled up with the pack tow rope. Damned stupid and clumsy.”

He didn’t speak for a moment. Then he walked over, put a hand on one of her shoulders, drew her closer to him. He put a hand on her other shoulder. His jaw was clenched, brow furrowed. The air around him felt electric. It was the first time she had seen him like this. He started to speak, stopped, shook his head. Got control, then spoke.

“Hallie. You have to be careful .” His eyes were filled with concern, but his voice was sharp. “If anything happens to you, all of this will be for nothing.”

She had never taken well to being scolded. She reached up, grasped his wrists, and took his hands off her shoulders. “Who’s talking here?” she asked. “Secret Agent or Horse Man?”

She was confused. The eyes looking down at her were the eyes she knew she would have seen, had there been light, when she and Bowman had slept down in the boulder garden. But the voice had a crackling energy that made her feel afraid. It took her back to the first time they had seen each other at BARDA.

He hesitated, and she could tell that he was trying hard to find the right—the true—answer. He held his hands out, palms up, the first time she had seen him evidence anything even close to helplessness. “Both. I care about you, Hallie. You know that. You feel that, like I do. And I need you , Dr. Leland. You know that, too. You are the mission . You need to understand that. To understand both.”

Her anger dissolved. Oh hell . She pulled off her helmet, stood on tiptoe, took his face in her hands, and kissed him. Not on the cheek. Kissed him for real, sliding her arms around his neck, holding on. In for a penny, in for a pound . She felt the tension of surprise for just a millisecond, and then he softened. He put his arms around her, gathered her in, and the kiss went from her lips down her neck into her chest past her waist to her toes and all the way back up again. A breathless, giddy spinning like the first moments of a skydive free fall.

It lasted until both had to come up for breath. She laid her head on his chest, the top of it just touching his chin. What a hell of a place to fall for somebody , she thought.

She pulled back just enough to look toward his eyes, which she could see, dimly, in light reflecting from their helmet lamps, both of which had fallen to the cave floor.

“Roger that, ma’am.”

He leaned down and they kissed again, and they were more relaxed than ravenous this time, savoring rather than devouring. After a while they both leaned back and looked at each other, wide-eyed, panting.

“Roger that , sir.”

He shook his head as if to clear it, then set his jaw. “Al will be showing up pretty soon.

She took a deep breath, let it out, touched his face with one hand. “You’re right.”

They separated. He got some water from his pack and shared it with her. She peeled the wrappers off two energy bars and gave him one. They sat on the cave floor, leaning against some rocks, waiting in the dark, lights turned off. A smooth wind flowed over their skin, rockfall clicked and boomed, the river fought its way on down into the cave. Ten minutes passed, then fifteen. She could feel Bowman starting to worry. Five minutes later he stood up.

“I know he moves slowly, but not that slowly. I’m going back.”

“No.” It escaped before she could stop it.

He turned. “What?”

“Maybe wait just a little. Al gets through, in his own poky way.”

He hesitated, torn between two responsibilities, one old, the other new.

“Five more minutes.”

“If you go back, I come along.”

Bowman didn’t respond. He shut his eyes, rubbed his face, breathed.

Five minutes came and went. The cave killed him , Hallie thought. Three down, two to go. At this rate, we won’t even make it to the moonmilk . She suddenly felt a depression so crushing she pushed out with her arms, in the dark, as though warding off a living thing. Bowman took a backup light from his pack. He turned to face her.

“Hallie, if you had trouble in there, it’ll be worse for him.” He glanced at the luminous face of his watch. “Look. If anything… if I’m not back in fifteen minutes, just go on.”

She thought, If you don’t come back, I won’t be able to get out of the cave because your body will block the passage. Maybe I could haul you all the way out. But maybe not. So we’d end up staying down here together .

But she said nothing. She helped him cinch the ankle and wrist seals to keep as much water out of his suit as possible. Checked the mounts on his three helmet lights to make sure they were secure. Made sure his diver’s knife was tight in the scabbard he wore strapped to the inside of his left calf. Then there was nothing else to do, nothing more to check.

When he looked at her, there was no mistaking with which eyes. “Fifteen minutes.”

She nodded. “Be careful. For God’s sake.”

“Always. The soul of caution.”

He turned and started wading back down toward the siphon. He was three feet from it when Al Cahner stepped out. They had been so intent on each other that they had somehow missed the telltale flickering of his light as he approached. He and Bowman almost ran into each other.

“Hi!” Cahner sounded almost chipper.

Hallie was dumbstruck. Cahner made his way toward her.

“Al! We thought you were…” Hallie couldn’t bring herself to say “dead.” Some deep cautionary reflex stopped her. Bad luck, don’t do that . “We were worried about you, goddamnit!”

He hung his head like a chastened boy. “I… look, this is embarrassing, but I had to go to the bathroom.”

“In the siphon?”

“Well, I had drunk a lot of water between camp and the siphon. Should have gone before we went in, but it didn’t feel so bad. I think all that flowing water was what did it.”