Lisa Gardner - The killing hour

Over his coveralls, the man donned a pair of canvas boots, then a thick pair of gloves. Around his waist went his care pack-extra water, saltine crackers, waterproof matches, a Swiss army knife, a handheld LED light, a compass, one extra loop of nylon rope, and two extra clamps.

Next, moving quickly, he turned his attention to the girl. This one was a brunette, not that it really mattered to him. She wore some kind of skimpy, yellow-flowered dress that did little to cover her long, tanned limbs. She looked like a runner, or some kind of athlete. Maybe that would help her in the days to come. Maybe it wouldn’t.

He gritted his teeth, bent down, and hefted her unconscious form up over his shoulder. His arms screamed while his back groaned. She was not a heavy girl, but he was not a big man, and his body was already fatigued by forty-eight hours of intensive effort. Then he was standing, and the worst of the strain was over.

She got a suit of her own. For the entry. He dressed her the same way one might attend a doll. Flopping each limb into place. Tucking feet and hands where appropriate. Snapping the suit up tight.

Then he strapped her to the body board. At the last minute, he remembered her purse and the jug of water. Then he remembered her face, how close it would be to the acidic sludge, and pulled the hood as tightly as he could over her face.

He stood and the world went black.

What? Where? He needed to… He must…

He was standing in an old sawmill. He had a girl with him. He was outside his van.

The world spun again, black void threatening as he wobbled a little on his feet and clutched frantically at his temples. What? Where? He needed to… He must…

He was standing in an old sawmill. That’s right. He had a girl with him… He rubbed his temples harder, trying to hold it together through a fresh burst of pain. Concentrate, man, focus. He was outside his van; he was wearing blue coveralls. He had his survival pack. The body board was already loaded with water; the girl was strapped on. Everything was all set.

Except that confused him even more. Why couldn’t he remember getting it all set? What had happened?

The black holes, he realized faintly. They came more and more frequently these days. The future and the past, both slipping through his fingers with frightening speed. He was an educated man. Someone who prided himself on intelligence, strength, and control. But he, too, was part of nature’s web. And nothing lived forever. Everything of beauty died.

Lately, he’d been dreaming so often of the flames.

The man reached down, attached his line to the body board, swung the rope over his shoulder and started to pull.

Seventeen minutes later, he had arrived at the opening of a small hole in the ground. Not many people would notice it, just another sinkhole in a state whose limestone foundation was more hole-riddled than Swiss cheese. This opening was special, though. The man had known it since his youth, and understood even back then its full potential.

First he had to fasten his rope around the thick trunk of a nearby tree, forming a rough belay. He stationed his feet for balance, then used the rope to carefully lower the body board down through the hole deep into the bowels of the earth. Ten minutes later, he heard the small splash of the board landing. He tied off one end of the rope around the tree, and rappelled down the other, also disappearing into the foul-smelling earth. He landed standing upright in knee-deep water. Fading light forty feet above. Endless darkness all around.

Most people never looked past the sawmill above. They didn’t understand that in Virginia, there was often a whole other ecosystem far below.

He turned on his headlight, identified the cavern’s narrow passageway to his right, and got on his hands and knees to crawl. The girl floated after him, the board’s rope tied once more to the belt at his waist.

Within minutes the passageway shrank. He extended his narrow frame, body flattening carefully into the oily stream of rancid water. He was protected in synthetic shrink-wrap; he still swore he could feel the water lapping away at his skin, sluicing off his cells, eroding him down to his very bones. Soon the water would get into his brain, and then he would have no hope left. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.

The smells were richer now. The stifling decay of layers and layers of bat guano, now melted into an oozing morass that squished around his hands and knees. The sharp, pungent odor of sewage and waste. The deeper, more menacing smell of death.

He moved slowly, feeling his way even with the light. Bats startled easily and you didn’t need a panicked, rabid creature flying at your face. Ditto the raccoons, though he’d be surprised if any of them could survive this passageway anymore. Most of what had once lived here had probably died years ago.

Now there was just this rancid water, corroding away the last of the limestone walls and spreading its slow, insidious death.

The body board bobbed along behind him, bumping him from time to time in the rear. And then, just when the ceiling was shrinking dangerously low, forcing his face closer and closer to that putrid water, the tunnel ended. The room opened up, and he and the girl spilled out into a vast, expansive cavern.

The man shot immediately to his feet, embarrassed by his own need to stand, but doing it nonetheless. He compulsively took giant gulps of air, his need for oxygen outweighing his apprehension of the smell. He looked down, and was genuinely surprised by how badly his hands were shaking.

He should be stronger than this. He should be tougher. Forty-eight hours without sleep, even he was starting to go.

He wasted another thirty seconds regaining his composure, then belatedly went to work on the rope at his waist. He was here, the worst of it was over, and he was aware once again of just how fast the clock was ticking.

He fetched the girl from the mini-stretcher. He laid her out on a ledge away from the dark running stream, and quickly stripped the coveralls from her body. Purse went beside her. Bottle of water as well.

Forty feet above, an eight-inch-diameter pipe formed a makeshift skylight in the ceiling. When daylight came, she would be greeted by a narrow shaft of light. He thought that gave her a sporting chance.

He retied the board to his waist, and ready now for his exit, gave the brunette one last glance.

She was propped up near a small pool of water. This water wasn’t polluted like the stream. Not yet. It was replenished from the rain and put up a better fight.

This water rippled and surged with the promise of life. Things moved beneath the pitch-black surface. Things that lived and breathed and fought. Things that bit. Some things that slithered. And many things that wouldn’t care for intruders in their home.

The girl was moaning again.

The man bent over. “Shhhh,” he whispered in her ear. “You don’t want to wake up just yet.”

The water surged again. The man turned his back on the girl and left.

Quantico, Virginia

9:46 P . M .

Temperature: 91 degrees

KIMBERLY SAT ALONE IN HER DORM ROOM. Lucy had returned briefly, dumping one pile of books on the cluttered desk before scooping up the next.

“Wow, you look worse than you did this morning,” she said by way of greeting.

“Been working on it all day,” Kimberly assured her.

“Finding a corpse must be hard on a girl.”

“So you heard.”

“Everyone’s heard, my dear. It’s the hottest topic around. This your first corpse?”

“You mean other than my mother and sister?”

Lucy stilled in front of the desk. The silence grew long. “Well, I’m off to study group,” she said finally. She turned, her expression gentle. “Want to come along, Kimberly? You know we don’t mind.”