Abandon

“If fresh air gets in, she will decay. We should seal it back up, leave her as we found her.”

SIXTY-THREE

 T

hey climbed out of the waterfall room through a blind shaft that accessed another passage, spent several hours moving through a network of tunnels that crisscrossed and dead-ended and turned back into themselves. For the first time, Abigail felt lost.

They stopped to rest in a room where the stalactites and stalagmites had merged together in the shape of hourglass columns. Abigail sat up against the cold calcite, staring at her watch—11:03 A.M. They’d been rambling through the cave for five and a half hours. She hadn’t had any meaningful sleep for twenty-nine.

“I really need to rest,” Abigail said. “I’m on fumes here.”

Lawrence said, “These daylight hours are too precious to waste. There’s no point searching for a way out at night. Suppose we walked through a room when it was dark outside that had a daylight hole. We’d never know. So we have to keep going until the sun sets.”

“But that’s another eight hours. I can’t—”

“Abby, do you understand that we have maybe three or four days to find a way out? And that after that, without water, we’ll be too weak to cover any ground? It’ll be over for us then.”

She rested her forehead on her knees and cried.

The constant motion of Lawrence’s light beam wreaked havoc on Abigail’s stomach. Or maybe it was this cold, deep, underground air, the jagged rock walls narrowing over the last fifty yards, the tunnel beginning to slope gradually down. Abigail thought, Great, we’re going deeper into the mountain. She instantly felt guilty for complaining to herself. Bad as things were, the last twelve hours had been infinitely worse to June.

“How you holding up?” Abigail asked. “We can rest anytime you want. Just say when.” June made no response. Glancing back, Abigail said, “Everything all—” Even in the paltry shreds of light that slipped back from her father’s headlamp, Abigail could see that there was no one behind her. “Lawrence, she’s gone.”

He stopped, shone his headlamp back up the empty tunnel. “How long?”

“I don’t know. Those were the first words I’d said to her in ten or fifteen minutes.”

“June!” Lawrence screamed. His voice ricocheted down the tunnel, stirred up a single echo, and quickly died away.

No answer.

“Well, come on,” Abigail said. “We have to find her.”

They jogged back up the tunnel. After a minute or so, Abigail thought she heard something.

“Lawrence,” she said. “Lawrence!” He spun around. “I think I heard—”

A scream exploded from the bowels of the mountain. It ended abruptly, but its reverberations went on and on.

Lawrence said, “What the hell?”

“Was that June?” Another scream ripped through the cave, this one farther away. “She sounds like she’s in agony,” Abigail said.

They rushed up the tunnel as the screaming continued, arrived after two minutes of hard running at a split in the passage.

A woman’s voice shouted, “WHERE ARE YOU?”

“I can’t tell which one it’s coming from,” Abigail said.

“PLEASE, GOD, JUST KILL ME!”

“This way,” Lawrence said, and he started into the larger of the two passageways.

“I’M SO THIRSTY!”

They moved through a series of grottoes, the screams getting louder.

“I’M STILL ALIVE! PLEASE! FINISH IT! KILL ME!”

Lawrence stopped.

“What’s wrong?” Abigail whispered.

He shook his head. “Thought I saw something in that room up ahead.”

“What?”

“I’m not sure. It moved fast. Forget it.“

“I don’t hear her anymore.”

Lawrence shouted, “June, where are you? Help us find you!”

The cave seemed to hold its breath.

“I hate this place,” Abigail said.

They worked their way through a forest of stalagmites interspersed with pillars of bedrock, coming at last into a stagnant room with feathery blue fungi clinging to the walls and moving in slow-motion waves, like underwater sea grass.

Three steps into the next room, Lawrence froze, and Abigail heard him whisper, “My God.” As he sank down onto the floor, his headlamp shone on the expanding pool of dark blood that flowed out of June Tozer’s head.