David Gilman - The Devil's breath

He was being pushed past a cave system. Cathedral-sized chambers went off to the left and right, but they only sipped away the overspill from the main flood that carried Max along. This wasn’t a sightseeing trip. As amazing and awe-inspiring as these underground caves were, he was still fighting to stay alive. His brain was back in gear, so he tried to alter the course of his journey. By dropping a leg down he could steer his body slightly, and if he combined that with an arm-dragging movement he could almost spin himself around in the water. More confident now that he had at least some control over this pell-mell ride, he peered forward into the half-light.

Sooner or later he would have to make a life-saving decision, because wherever this water went and whatever it went into, he would have only a hundred meters or so before he saw it. And judging by the smooth walls, there seemed little chance of clambering out of this underground river, especially at this rate of knots.

He tested the strength in his arms and legs, each one in turn. Sore and strained but still working OK. Nothing broken, nothing torn. Aching muscles he could deal with. He had been lucky.

The roar of the water had diminished, the deeper underground he had gone, and he realized he was not traveling in any kind of downwards direction, so it was the sheer weight and volume of water that carried him along. It still ran deep-no bottom to reach down and touch. His breathing had steadied, the giddiness was gone. He was alert, but he gulped more air when the river took him into a black spot, where no light penetrated from above. That was scary, until the opaque glow picked up the rocks and white-flecked water again.

There was a different sound now: a hum-a deep, low resonance that intruded on the water’s gurgling. Max peered ahead anxiously. The walls obviously were throwing the sound, so it was impossible to tell how close he was to the source of the hum. But he knew the generator had to be at the end of this tunnel, and hydroelectric blades spinning at the rate needed to generate enough power for Skeleton Rock were going to be the equivalent of him going through a juice extractor.

A bend ahead in the tunnel’s wall, like a fast curve on a race track, swept the water in and around, changing its direction completely. Max went with the water, trying to keep himself above the surface as the speed churned the torrent over itself. Now he faced a black tunnel-a green-hued light in the distance. A blinking eye. The water reflected no light from above; the green tinge barely registered at the end of the tunnel, and the sound was now a deep-chested hum. This was it. That fast-approaching green light must be from the machinery. He had to get off this ride in the next thirty seconds.

He pulled and pushed himself from one side of the water to the other, but all he managed to do was bump into the walls. The channel narrowed, creating extra power to hit those blades at the end. Max tried desperately to gauge the size of the generator sitting at the end of the narrowing tunnel, hoping there was a gap, a crevice, anything he could try to aim for, but the blackness was swallowed whole by the green monster.

As he sped closer, the blinking eye became more obvious; it was the blades rotating so quickly-they flickered the light. It was mesmerizing. Not only were the blades spinning at a blurring speed, but the size of the machine filled the whole cavity. It was as big as a shipping container. The light settled in a sickly reflection from the walls onto the water, rivulets of green picking up its currents like strands of weed.

There was no way for Max to fight the force of water behind him. He had only seconds left. Then he saw one of the green strands slither away to the right, as if going straight into the wall, barely four meters before it met the churning blades. Was it only a reflection? A trick of the water and light? No, the tendril of light was being snatched away into a crevice that ran from top to bottom-a tall, narrow canyon, barely wide enough for his body to fit through, but it was a chance!

He jammed his right arm into the water, felt the tug of resistance, urged his body to fight the grasping current; tried to ignore, unsuccessfully, the smashing blades that sounded like a huge ship’s propeller threshing water, and yelled as loudly as he could, sending a bolt of energy into his body. He spun crazily, felt the sharp, jarring shock of impact on his shoulder as he collided with the crevice’s wall. Then he was through.

Within moments the water calmed. The sounds behind him were blanketed by a wall of rock as the torrent became a meandering stream, and he felt, for the first time, coarse sand and gravel beneath his feet. The water became as placid as a village pond.

He scrambled onto what felt like a small beach. There was no light here, only the dull glow that barely reached him from the main tunnel. But he was out of the water. The place had a dank, wet-cellar smell but, compared to the smashing sounds still going on twenty or thirty meters back, it was a haven of peace and quiet.

He stood shakily on the crunching gravel, but his legs wouldn’t carry him. The spasm in his stomach made him retch, then he puked, mostly water. He must have swallowed liters of the stuff, at least that was how it felt. Better out than in. He sank down, rubbed warmth and circulation back into his legs and then, finding a boulder for support, pulled himself upright. This time his legs held. His shoulder hurt, but that would only be a hefty bruise. He waited, his eyes trying to penetrate the darkness, but it was almost pitch-black in there. The pool of water settled like oil once it had escaped the flowing main channel, from where the threshing sounds still reached him. The air barely moved; although slight, it was obviously the result of those blades causing a backdraft.

He looked harder into the darkness, desperately trying to pick up any fragment of light reflected from the main tunnel. Something which looked like the sharp, curved branches of a tree protruded from the narrow opening. It was obviously something spewed up from the belly of the pit he’d fallen into that had been swept along with the tide of water, finally getting snagged and jammed at the entrance to this side pool. Maybe he could use a branch as a support and probe the water for a way out. Edging around the wall, he waded back into the water. He had not noticed these branches as he was being funneled into the chamber. Had one of the tree’s points snagged him-because he could now see it was clawlike, as big as a barrel-it could have speared him right through. He grabbed hold of one of the branches and realized that the smooth surface was not actually wood but bone. He was grasping the stripped rib cage of a big animal, something like a wildebeest or a gemsbok. Obviously the animal had fallen into the Devil’s Breath and endured the same terrifying journey as Max, ending up jammed and drowned at the entrance. Only the rib cage remained, and most of the ribs were shattered into ragged points, lethal spears which would have killed him if he’d struck any of them. They might still be of use. He yanked hard at the rib with the least curve to it. It came away and, using it as a bent staff, he made his way back to the shore.

What to do now? He should explore the cave and its pool further, but the more he thought about that, the less appealing the idea became. There was no shred of light and if he fell and injured himself he was finished. His right shoulder already throbbed from the impact with the wall, and his back and side were grazed from being bounced down the tunnel.

His original idea had been to climb down to the tunnel and try to gain access to the fort. And that was still his objective, but, as long as the water turned those lethal blades, he had no chance. Well, the water had to stop at some stage because the Devil’s Breath erupted at different times, so the water surge would stop and probably leave only a shallow level of water in the tunnel. He would move back into the main tunnel and see if there was any way through the blades. Satisfied he had some sort of plan, however risky, Max was suddenly very thirsty, but the brackish water smelled too off-putting; besides, he had already vomited everything he’d swallowed, so he would just have to sit tight and wait for the water to stop flowing.