Michael Koryta - Last Words

Two people rounded the corner and headed to the entrance, fighting through the tangle of bodies. One was a deputy whom Ridley remembered well; the other was a woman who was clearly part of the cave rescue team, dressed just like Ridley. At the sight of him, they both stopped short. The woman — Rachel? Robin? He couldn’t remember — said, “You sick bastard.”

He remembered her then. Rachel. She’d been on the outside preparing to go back in when Ridley arrived with Sarah Martin’s body. She’d fallen to her knees at the sight of Sarah Martin and cried as if the girl were her own daughter.

Ridley hadn’t said anything to her back then, and he didn’t now. The deputy moved up to Ridley with his chest puffed and was in the midst of telling him that he had better get the hell out of here or he’d be going to jail when he spotted Blankenship.

“Sheriff? You want me to get this guy into the back of a car? He’s trespassing, bare minimum, and interfering with police business.”

He was right in Ridley’s face now, wanting a fight, pressing as close as he could, one of those idiots who spent hours building up their pec muscles, as if you won fights by bumping chests. Ridley thought about kissing him, tried to imagine what the reaction to that would be. The image made him smile, and at the sight of that smile, the deputy actually reached out and grabbed the straps of his backpack, like a school-yard bully.

“Step back, Dawson, damn it, step back,” Blankenship said. “He’s here because I want him here. Now get the hell out of my way.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. You want him—”

“Did I stutter? You want an explanation, you can come to my office once this scene has been handled. Until then, get out of my way.”

Ridley turned and looked up at the sheriff’s flushed face and said, “Thanks, Danny.”

“Just keep walking.”

They moved past the deputy and up to the woman, who was mud-covered and sweating. She regarded Ridley with revulsion and kept her eyes on him even when the sheriff asked her quietly, “Can you take me to the spot where they’re hearing his voice?”

“Yeah. It’s not far.” She finally broke eye contact with Ridley, turned, and started back along the passage. They followed and curled away from the bright lights of the entrance chamber, and minimal darkness encroached, allowing Ridley to breathe easier. After spending so many hours practicing, he felt as if he should be able to stay in control, but he hadn’t been practicing in Trapdoor. This cave was different. This cave was so very different.

Finally they reached full dark, and Ridley clicked on his headlamp but dimmed it down until it was only bright enough to show his boots. The sheriff had a bulky Maglite that was exactly what you didn’t want in a cave, always occupying a hand and always requiring you to aim the light instead of having the light follow the turn of your head. Ridley had given him a helmet but hadn’t outfitted it with a light because the sheriff insisted on taking the big flashlight.

They wound through the cave alongside the water for a time and then they parted from it and entered the Chapel Room. Its benchlike slabs of fallen stone resembled church pews, and a tall formation stood in the center like an altar. The woman said, “They’re in the Funnel Room,” and knelt in front of a crawling passage that led out of the Chapel Room.

Ridley said, “You’ll need to be on your belly for a bit, Sheriff.”

Blankenship didn’t answer, but his breathing changed. The entrance to the crawl was about the size of a garbage-can lid, and everything beyond it was blackness. It looked spacious enough to a caver, but to the inexperienced, it might look terrifying. Ridley didn’t glance back at the sheriff to see his face, just dropped to his knees and said, “Let’s go.”

“Her first,” Blankenship said. “You stay with me.”

“Going to have to go single file in there, Sheriff. Not a lot of room.”

“You just let her lead the way, and you stay back with me.”

Ridley shrugged, ignored another withering glance from Rachel, and waited as she dropped to her hands and knees. She was a bigger girl, wide-shouldered, and she had to wriggle a bit to slip through. Ridley could almost feel Blankenship tighten up, watching. Blankenship was a large man. Not fat, but tall and broad.

Ridley gave her a five-count to get moving so he wouldn’t be nipping at her heels, and then he slid into the tunnel, feeling more at home once the walls closed in and there was stone all around. Some said that Ridley’s unique abilities in cave exploration were a product of recklessness, of taking risks that others wouldn’t, wedging his body into any crack in the rock without hesitation just in case it might lead somewhere, but that wasn’t so. Ridley just read caves better than most. Listened to caves better than most. They told you things, if you wanted to hear. Funny, considering that caves had been used for silencing things so often in human history. As places for hideouts, secret meetings, buried treasure, buried bodies.

He listened for Blankenship, but the only thing he could hear was the scrabbling of boots and hands on stone. The sheriff was scared, which was natural enough, but he was also holding his breath.

“Sheriff? You’re going to want to take some deep breaths.”

“I’m fine.” The words shook.

“I know you are. But you also probably haven’t been in a space this tight before, and you probably feel like you could use up your air if you breathe too deeply, am I right? A sense that there’s a finite amount of oxygen in here, and we are going to use it all up?”

“Just move,” the sheriff barked. “I’m fine.”

But Ridley could hear him breathing now, deep inhalations. One of the best ways to rush toward panic was to hold your breath and worry about your air. It was a common mistake of first-timers in tunnels; they assumed that because they couldn’t see wide-open spaces, the air supply must be limited.

When the sheriff stopped moving, Ridley stopped too and said, “Rachel, hold up.”

He could tell by the way she stiffened that she didn’t like hearing him use her name. Probably didn’t like that he even knew her name.

“Sheriff? You okay?”

Blankenship’s breathing had changed again, gone faster. It took a few seconds before he responded, and when he did, his voice was soft and unsteady.

“I’m getting squeezed,” he said. “It’s getting too tight for me.”

“No, it’s not,” Ridley said. The sheriff ignored him and began to slither backward. Ridley spoke more firmly. “Stop moving.”

The sheriff listened. Silence again, except for those uneasy breaths. Edging toward hyperventilating, but not all the way there yet.

“Now, I can’t turn around to get my light on you, so you’re going to have to use your own,” Ridley said. His voice was measured and calm, a bedside manner. “I want you to do as I say, and to concentrate. Give me five seconds of focus. You going to do that?”

“Yes.” The word was a whisper full of self-loathing. The sheriff hated that he was showing fear, and he hated even more that he was showing it to Ridley.

“All right. Look to your right side.”

The beam of the sheriff’s flashlight bobbed around, casting shadows. He was doing as instructed, at least.

“Good,” Ridley said. “Now turn it to the left.”

The light bobbed again. Here the walls on each side were nearly touching Ridley’s shoulders, and the sheriff had broader shoulders than he did. So did Rachel, for that matter. One of Ridley’s greatest assets in a cave was his size.

“Those walls,” Ridley said, “haven’t done anything in hundreds of years. They’re not going anywhere. They’re solid. Now lift your head up.”