Lindsay Buroker: Torrent

“Whatever you say.” Simon’s phone ticked as he claimed a few more pictures.

I grabbed his arm and propelled him along with me. An uneasy sense of foreboding crept over me as we headed back for the mine shaft. “What are you planning to do with those pictures?”

“Nothing.”

“Why don’t I believe you?”

“You’re mistrustful by nature,” Simon said.

“Or I’ve known you too long. I’ve never seen you snap pictures unless it’s to gross out your brother or to post something for the company blog.” I scowled at him. “And this better not be about the latter.”

“I wouldn’t put pictures of bodies on our business site.”

“Good.” I climbed back up the slope of rubble, eager to see the sun again.

“But,” Simon said, “if we had evidence about the existence of some mutant animal or weird desert monster, it’d bring tons of traffic to the site.”

I nearly stumbled down the back side of the slope. “ Simon. ”

No way was I going to let him put something that sensational up there.

“Well, it totally would,” he said.

“We don’t need prepubescent boys who want to gawk at dead people coming to our site. They’re not our demographic.”

“You never know. Besides, any links that we can get to the site from big bloggers and newspapers will help us out. The search engines will love us and send more traffic overall. Relevant traffic.”

I waved, trying to silence him before he started explaining search engine optimization to me. Again. It’d made my eyes glaze over the first time. Nor should we be discussing marketing strategies when some guy was dead back there.

A moan whispered through the tunnel.

I swallowed. “What was that?”

“The wind?”

“Underground wind?”

“It could be blowing over a hole leading to the outside somewhere,” Simon said.

“It sounded like it came from behind us.”

I wanted him to tell me I was wrong, to convince me of this wind theory of his, but he didn’t say anything else. His fingers brushed my boot though. He was crawling along the rubble more quickly now. I picked up my pace too.

We scrambled down from the rubble pile and into the chamber where we’d found the old shovel haft. A clunk, clunk, thud sounded somewhere behind us. A rock falling. One we’d shaken free in our passing? Or had something else shaken it free?

“Go,” Simon urged, giving me a push.

“Good idea.”

He passed me and surged up the next rubble pile.

I charged after him. “Oh, sure, now you’re willing to take the lead.”

He didn’t answer. We were too busy scrambling across the rocks, our breaths loud enough to hear. Another rock fell behind us, maybe twenty meters back. One rock might have been chance, a delayed shifting after our passing, but two?

I whispered a few curses at the noises and at the scrapes my elbows and knees were taking. I skidded down another slope, glancing back before dropping below the top of the rubble. The glance was too wild-too quick-causing the headlamp’s beam to blur about. There might have been a dark shadow back there, something moving, but I couldn’t be sure. I wasn’t about to stop for a longer look.

When we hit the ground, hard rock lined with ore cart tracks, our crawls turned into sprints. How far was the exit? A quarter mile? On the way in, we’d been going slowly and exploring, so I wasn’t sure. I urged my legs to greater speed, though, hoping to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I also hoped man-slaying tunnel monsters didn’t like light. Surely the harsh Arizona sun would melt such a creature or turn it to stone or-

Another moan, this more of a growl, emanated from the darkness behind us.

I cursed again. Not only was that not the wind, but it was closer this time.

“There,” Simon panted, flinging his arm out. He was a few feet ahead of me and had seen the light first.

As soon as the tunnel entrance came into view for me, I summoned all of my remaining strength for a last sprint. My thighs burned and the air rasping into my lungs didn’t seem to do any good, but I kept running nonetheless. My eyes focused on the mottled sunlight slanting through the grass and leaves and onto the dusty rocks by the entrance. I raced toward it… then through it, ignoring the branches clawing at my face and my hair.

The mine shaft opened onto a slope, and my momentum carried me down the mountainside with huge lunging steps. It was only luck that I didn’t trip and roll headfirst down the hill. I spotted a towering pine at the base of the slope, the nearest branch more than fifteen feet up. Without slowing, I tugged my bullwhip free. With an arm lift and wrist snap that I’d practiced countless times on bottles in the yard as a kid, the popper wrapped around the branch. I’d practiced using the whip as a rope far fewer times, but with adrenaline surging through my limbs, I scampered up it like a squirrel racing up a tree. I didn’t pause to look around until I stood on the branch with my arm clamped to the tree trunk.

The mountainside lay quiet, bathed in late afternoon sunlight. No birds chirped, no cicadas buzzed, and no bears, monsters, or other nefarious predators tore down the slope toward my tree. I didn’t know if the forest critters were being quiet because they’d sensed danger or if our rapid charge out of the mine shaft had startled them to silence.

Simon was leaning against a bolder, looking at my tree. When our eyes met, he arched his brows.

“Nice move with the whip,” he said. “If you give up antiquing as a job, maybe you could get a stunt double gig in Hollywood.”

“Har har, don’t tell me you weren’t scared. I was the one trying to keep up with you .”

“My canteen was low, so it seemed like a good time to leave and replenish my supplies.” Simon smiled ruefully. “At top speed.”

“Uh huh.” I shifted my weight so I could sit on the branch. It wasn’t a comfortable perch, but I wasn’t ready to leave it yet. I might have imagined that something was following us-though I had heard those noises back there, I was sure of it-but either way, something ghastly had happened to that climber. I unwound my whip so I could coil it on my belt again.

“We should get off this mountain before dark,” Simon said. “Zelda barely made it up here in daylight.”

“Good idea,” I said, though I waited a couple more minutes before climbing down. By then, a few birds had started chattering again. Despite our jokes, we navigated through the dry brush at a quicker pace than usual. Neither of us would feel safe until we were back on a paved road close to civilization.

Our pace picked up even more when Zelda, our battered blue Volkswagen Vanagon came into view, our business name, “Rust amp; Relics” painted on the side in white with my cell phone number and our web address. I was relieved to see the van, but that relief disappeared when we rounded the back and found the side door wide open.

“Uh,” Simon said.

“Did you leave that open?” I asked.

“No. You?”

“Would I be asking you if I’d done it?”

“I thought it might be a trick question,” Simon said, considering the ponderosa pine trees around us.

Needles littered the dry forest floor, but there wasn’t much undergrowth where someone might be hiding. I peeked inside the camper to make sure nobody lurked in there either. The table was set up, as we’d left it, with Simon’s half-eaten carrot still sitting by the sink. I didn’t see anyone up front or under the seats, nor did anything significant appear to be missing. Outside, numerous footprints marked the dusty earth around the door. I knelt and probed one of the more complete prints. It’d been made by a boot. I was wearing beat-up trail-running shoes while Simon sported his typical socks with Birkenstock knock-offs. How he ran in sandals, I couldn’t guess. At that moment, all that mattered was that neither of us was wearing boots.