James Tabor - The Deep Zone

Her stomach clenched at the sight of him like that. She felt not hate but horror. She watched, transfixed, as Cahner managed to bring both hands together under his chest, wild-eyed and shrieking with agony as he did so. He grasped the bottom of the stalagmite where it joined the cave floor. She saw his knuckles go white as he squeezed with all his strength. Then his whole body tensed, legs jerking out straight, as he tried to push up and off the spike. He managed to lift himself a few inches, screaming, bloody froth foaming from his mouth and nose. He stopped, unable to do more. She heard him moan something that might have been “air” or “Eric,” but it was a guttural, animal sound and she could not understand. Then a gout of blood erupted from his mouth and his hands fell free. He dropped back down, quivered, and was dead.

She took a few steps closer. Hallie had seen the results of violent death before: climbers who had fallen, divers who had drowned, cavers who had been crushed by rockfall. She had not actually watched people die from their tragedies. She felt inexpressible relief that Cahner would no longer be trying to kill her. And, in another realm of her heart, some grief. Despite everything that had happened, everything he had told her about his treachery, during their years of working together she had come to like Cahner. Those feelings had been genuine then, and she recognized them within her now.

She looked around for a place to sit, and the only place was Cahner’s pack, so she walked unsteadily to it and dropped down. Sure that he had killed her, Cahner had not bothered to dispose of Hallie’s pack back at the river camp. After she’d climbed out of the pit, an hour’s careful searching had brought her back to the sleeping spot and her pack, right where she’d left it. Before attempting to subdue Cahner, she had taken it off and cached it near this clearing, and she would retrieve it shortly. For now, she just wanted to rest. Her hands and knees were bloody, and the eye where Cahner had caught her with a punch was swelling. She was sore from shoulders to butt from the hard landing on the microbial mat in the pit, and the hand she had sliced throbbed painfully. Worst of all, she was alone. Then she thought of Bowman, and her skin tingled and her chest tightened.

You will not cry. There is still too much to be done .

But she did cry then, long and hard. For the soldiers, and Haight, and Arguello, and Bowman. And then, finally, for herself and everything she had lost along the way to this place.

Hallie awoke and realized that she had curled up in the sand and gone to sleep, but had no memory of doing so. She had not turned her light off first, and its glow was now noticeably dimmer. Hurrying, she found her pack and brought it back to the camp. She was carrying only the bare minimum now: a rebreather unit for the dive through Satan’s Anus, the Gecko Gear, a poly bottle of water, the few remaining PowerBars, her sleeping bag, her helmet with its lights, and her last backup light. Even if the headlight batteries failed, the one hand light with fresh batteries might be enough to get her out of the cave, though she did not relish the thought of diving through Satan’s Anus without light.

She dumped the contents of Cahner’s pack on the floor and found the Envirotainer. He was dead and could never threaten her again, but his corpse, impaled on the stalagmite, was only fifteen feet away. She could not see it unless she looked in that direction, but that barely lessened the horror of its presence and she wanted to get away from that place as fast as she possibly could. From Cahner’s gear she took only the flask of rum. She picked up the butane lighter from the cave floor and thought about bringing his rebreather and Gecko Gear as backups, but her strength was failing and even those fifteen extra pounds would be too much.

Hallie organized the objects in her pack, shrugged into the harness, and started back up. She had to walk by Cahner’s corpse on the way out, but she did not look at him. She was ten steps past when she remembered the map. It had not been in his pack, which, when she thought about it, was not surprising, given how often he would have had to check it.

She had traveled the route three times already and she felt fairly sure that it was inscribed in her memory. But she knew that “fairly sure” was not good enough here. With weakening batteries and failing strength, she had no room for errors on this climb out. So, though the thought revolted her, there was no choice. She walked to Cahner’s body, took a deep breath, and searched the left hip pocket of his suit, then the right. It was too soon for rigor to have set in, and through the fabric his flesh felt like cold dough. Both pockets were empty. She would have to go through his front pockets then, and if neither of them held the map, she would be forced to reach into the blood-drenched chest pockets.

Bending over the corpse, she could not keep from recalling the last frames of so many horror movies in which the supposedly dead monster suddenly exploded to life and leapt upon a lulled victim. But she pulled herself back to reality and worked her hand to the bottom of Cahner’s left front pocket. There was no way to avoid making contact with his dead thigh as she searched. The map was not there. She moved to his right side, bent over, and said a silent prayer. Please let it be here .

It was. Carefully, so as not to tear the map, she eased it out of his pocket. When it came free, she put it into one of her own chest pockets and walked quickly away.

The wonderful thing about mountain climbing was that the second half of every expedition was all downhill. The terrible thing about caving was that it worked the other way around. After two hours she had slowed to a crawl. But she kept going in a daze, one hand in front of the other, one foot after the other, wading chest-deep ponds, clambering up rock faces, squirming through squeeze tunnels, going on hands and knees and pushing her pack in front where the cave ceiling dropped to within two feet of the floor. She came out of one long, low-ceilinged passage like that, staggered to her feet, and then sat back down as her legs gave way. She rolled onto her side and passed out.

She awoke after she knew not how long. Shucking the pack, she sat up and looked around.

I don’t remember this place .

She took out the map and studied it in the light’s weak glow. She examined the cave around her, at least as far as her light beams would reach, but nothing resembled what the map showed. She made short forays in four directions, looking for features that she could match to the map or to mental images. She found none. After half an hour of searching, she went back and sat beside her pack.

She had lost the route. She had the map, but without the route, it was useless.

How long had she been plodding along, lost without even knowing it? How long since she had checked her location against the map? She could not remember. Hallie was so tired that she felt no panic, not even much fear. Just a dull astonishment and disappointment that she could have done something so stupid. And deadly. Fatal for her, of course, but not her alone. So many others. That was not going to be an easy thing to die with.

But dying would have to wait. She was too tired to die. First, she would have to sleep some more.

KATHAN WAS STANDING AT THE WEST EDGE OF THE CENOTE, his camoflouage suit all but invisible in the brush. They still had not seen narcos, federales , or savage Indians, but several times they had heard the sounds of firefights, long, ripping bursts of weapons on full auto, the heavier whoomf whoomf of rocket-propelled grenades and mortars. Once the fighting noise had come very close, no more than a half mile, but eventually it had faded and they’d relaxed as much as they ever did on missions like this.