“They’ve been leading us in that direction the entire time,” Cavenaugh whispered. “They’re waiting for us.”
***
Cavenaugh led them through the pitch black, slowly, silently. The ground began to slope upward ever so slightly. Once they reached the point where the flare had died, they halted and closed rank.
Gabriel heard a rustling sound behind him and turned. Something warm and wet slapped him across the face. A salty, metallic taste filled his mouth and he had to swipe the fluid from his left eye. He froze. His mind raced in an effort to comprehend what had just happened. His first thought was that Kelsey had stomped into the stream, but there hadn’t been a splashing sound to match.
Gabriel spat out the foul substance, then whispered, “Kelsey?”
There was a scraping noise mere feet away from him, but he couldn’t see a thing.
“Kelsey?”
“Gabriel,” Cavenaugh whispered. “Flare. Now.”
Gabriel pointed the blunted gun back in the direction from which they had come and pulled the trigger. The tunnel bloomed orange as the fireball streaked away into the darkness with a shriek and collided with the wooden pallet where the corpses still rested, and burned, hot and fast.
The ground at Gabriel’s feet was sloppy with blood, and, as he could now see, so was he. A wide smear led back down the tunnel, terminating in a pair of boots. Kelsey was sprawled on his stomach, his head and shoulders under the water, arms pinned beneath his chest.
Jess ran to him, rolled him onto his back, and cradled his head to raise it out of the stream. The laceration across his neck opened like a second mouth into a soundless scream.
A shadow darted along the wall to Gabriel’s left in the dying light, but by the time he turned, there was no sign of movement.
The flame fizzled and extinguished, stranding them in the impregnable blackness.
There was the clatter of rock on rock and the soft sound of footsteps, and then nothing at all.
Jess whimpered and started to cry.
Gabriel spun in a circle. It felt like he was surrounded, as though there were people so close he could feel their breath on his face.
“Fall back,” Cavenaugh whispered.
“What about—?” Jess whispered.
“Leave him. There’s nothing any of us can do for him now.”
“But I just saw someone—”
“I said fall back.”
Gabriel felt a hand shove him between the shoulder blades from behind and started walking. He could no longer tell if his eyes were open or closed.
There was a splashing sound from his right. A few seconds later, a wet rifle was thrust into his abdomen. He shoved the flare gun into his jacket pocket and cradled the rifle across his chest, sweeping it in front of him in jerking motions.
“Jess,” Cavenaugh whispered. “Fire another flare.”
Light exploded from the barrel and hurtled away into the living quarters. The flare struck the mounded rocks and bounded back toward them. The area was momentarily illuminated by a wavering peach glow, casting shadows from every object like black flags, before the ball of flame bounced into the stream and darkness raced back in with a hiss.
“Give me the flare gun,” Cavenaugh whispered.
A dozen more echoing footsteps and the light blossomed again. With a scream, the flare flew into the corner of the dead end, ricocheted from the boulders and then from the wall, and came to rest beside the bed. Cavenaugh passed the smoldering pistol back to Jess and walked directly toward the lantern on the ground.
“What are you doing?” Gabriel asked.
“What we should have done from the start.” Cavenaugh picked up the lantern, removed the glass housing, and held the broad wick to the flare until it lit. After dialing up the flame, he replaced the top and held it up to light the room. “I thought we’d make easy targets walking with the lantern. Apparently we did a good enough job of that without it.”
The dancing flame and the refractions through the glass brought the furthest reaches of the lantern’s light to life with shifting shadows.
“How many flares are left?” Cavenaugh asked.
“I have one,” Jess whispered.
“Same here,” Gabriel whispered.
“Then we don’t have much margin for error,” Cavenaugh said in a normal tone. The lantern was a handheld bull’s-eye. It didn’t matter now if their voices betrayed their location. “Jess, do you think you can carry that red canister?”
She lifted the container easily by the handle and sloshed the fluid. It sounded like there was maybe half a tank. Cavenaugh passed her the lantern, which she held aloft in her free hand.
“Gabriel,” Cavenaugh said. “You stay in the rear. Walk backwards. I’ll lead. Jess, stay between us and keep the lantern raised high enough that we can see.”
He started walking back toward Kelsey’s body.
“What are you doing?” Gabriel asked.
“I just told you.”
“We need to get out of here. I thought that’s what we were doing.”
“No,” Cavenaugh said. He turned. The expression on his face was frightening. “This ends here and now.”
“You’re out of your mind. Think about what just happened to Kelsey. We need to get the hell out of here while we still can. Let the police and the FBI come in here after them.”
“We leave now and they’ll be gone before reinforcements arrive. If we don’t do this now, we’ll never know what happened here.”
“It’s pretty obvious,” Gabriel said, gesturing to the corpses on the other side of the stream. “What more do you need to know?”
“I need to know why!” Cavenaugh shouted.
Gabriel retreated a step. Cavenaugh’s eyes were wide and wild, his red face contorting awkwardly with emotion. Gabriel was debating the merit of turning his rifle on Cavenaugh when the man spoke again, this time more softly.
“I’ll be dead inside three months. The cancer’s metastasized to my stomach and lungs. In a matter of weeks, I won’t be able to breathe without oxygen or swallow anything solid. Radiation will just prolong the process. There’s nothing I can do to change that. And I can’t go back empty-handed. There isn’t anything for me to go back to anyway. All of this equipment? These guns? You’d better believe someone’s noticed they’re gone by now. The department’s probably pretty anxious to have a little chat with me, one that starts with ‘You have the right to remain silent.’ So, as you can imagine, this is my last chance. My little sister died here. She never had a chance to get married or have children, to find happiness. All I want from the time I have left is to make sure that Jenny’s life mattered, that it counted for something. I don’t care if you come with me or not. Run away. That’s fine by me. But there’s something I want you to think about before you do.”
Gabriel looked at Jess, then back at Cavenaugh.
“Whoever killed Kelsey snuck up on him from behind. From the direction you want to go,” Cavenaugh said. “We probably walked right past him in the dark.”
Gabriel felt a sudden chill at the thought. Neither option appealed to him in the slightest. He wanted to just sit down and wait for someone to come rescue them, but he knew that if none of the search parties had found this tunnel before, they weren’t about to any time soon.
Cavenaugh turned away and struck off deeper into the mountain. After a moment’s hesitation, Jess followed.
Gabriel glanced back at the mound of rocks and the passage over them that led to the spring one final time
