Chapter 26
A young man will fight a bear, but a wise man will hang the camp meat in a tree.
' Worm's Way? I don't like the sound of that,' Jessie said. 'Why not go back the way we came in-at Tree Cave?'
'It'll be okay.'
'Exactly how small is it? How long is the tunnel?'
'Tight for maybe forty feet. But I can fit. For you, it'll be easy.'
She stared at him.
'You aren't normal, Kier. You're not afraid of things that scare the piss out of most people. So when you say it's tight for forty feet, what about the rest?'
'You crawl for a hundred yards, then lie flat on your back for probably thirty yards. Then comes the tight part. Hopefully not much rock has fallen down. I haven't been through in a few years.'
'Do the kids go there?'
'No.'
'Why?'
Kier started to walk and decided to change the subject. There was no point in having her frightened out of her mind before they even arrived at the tunnel.
It took almost a half-day's hiking through the darkroom-black caverns until they stood before the telescoping rock passage that Kier called Worm's Way. They had used up two lights and were on their third, but they had several more lights from incapacitated or dead enemies.
Stooping to look, Jessie would have sworn the passage petered out just beyond the first bend sixty or seventy feet away.
'Can't be.'
'It's an illusion,' he replied.
Bending, she looked again.
'Once you get there it's not as tight as it looks. Around the corner it opens up a little.'
'It's 140 yards to daylight?'
'About that, give or take.'
At first it was easy to crawl, and although it got low at the bend, it did open some, just as Kier had said. They enjoyed three feet of clearance for the next thirty or forty feet around the bend, then almost had to drop on their bellies. At this point Jessie still had a couple of feet on either side, which helped control her claustrophobia.
Because they could not risk a light near the exit point, they had to feel their way from here. Kier could do little to make it easy for her. When they stopped for a moment now and then to take stock, he encouraged her by telling her how he admired her strength and her determination.
The air tasted stale and slightly bitter in her throat. She found herself breathing more deeply without knowing if it was from exertion or fear. A choking sensation began to overtake her. Diseases like hantavirus came to mind. It became easier to imagine the ceiling caving in, or becoming trapped, or dropping into some unknown shaft because they had taken a wrong turn.
'Talk to me,' Kier called out as her chest heaved with choking.
'How much farther?'
'We're about halfway.'
That pierced her like a knife. The earth was crushing in on her. She yearned to stretch her arms out at her sides, but couldn't. She inched like a caterpillar, but still felt her back rubbing against the rock above her. And up farther it would be tighter still. She couldn't imagine it. She couldn't imagine surviving it. The chill of the limestone under her fingers sent the lonely cold to her mind. She couldn't raise her forearms or hands more than a few inches above her head-a constant reminder that she was locked under a mountain of rock.
At the academy they had put her in a sensory-deprivation tank that they flooded with water in the darkness. The marines used it to deter the faint of heart. It had been disturbing, but as the sound of her heart had filled her ears, she told herself over and over: They won't kill you.
What could she tell herself here?
'I don't know if I can do this.'
'Listen to me,' he said. 'Turn over on your back and close your eyes. You can be wherever you let your mind put you. Remember the bed in the cabin. Remember the stars.'
In desperation she did as Kier said, barely able to roll in the confined space. She filled her mind with the way she'd felt under the night sky. When she had calmed herself again, she listened to his voice.
'We'll be there in minutes. Just minutes. Reach and grab the rock, then pull.' She did it. 'Pull,' he said again and again, making a rhythm for her of reaching, pulling, and sliding.
The regularity of it was calming, breaking up the terrible pictures in her mind. She found herself breathing with every reach and every pull, enhancing the rhythm. Reach, breathe, pull, breathe.
They did not stop or rest again until they came to the tightest section.
'Now don't let your hands come back past the top of your head. Stretch yourself out. Think string bean.'
At that she laughed quietly. Kier chuckled back. They started again. Now she could almost kiss the rock. Her knees could scarcely rise to dig in her heels. It was so tight she couldn't imagine Kier moving. At that moment her hands touched his feet. Oh God, no.
He was stuck. She could feel him struggling. Her heart jumped. Inside her head a small, imaginary Jessie cringed at things too horrible to contemplate. The feet ahead of her still weren't moving. There was only struggle. Too much breath rushed in and out to even ask. She couldn't bear the wrong answer.
Something in her mind started pounding. Perhaps I'm coming undone. She noticed her head moving wildly side to side as if a giant hand were making her say no. She wanted to scream, but didn't. Then a voice spoke in her head. Her voice. She was back under the stars. There was something tiny inside her that wanted to reach out to something huge, something infinite.
You need to be at peace inside the mountain, she told herself, imagining herself rising up out of her body and passing into the stone. In a few moments, it no longer seemed so confining. The mountain was still above her, but it didn't contain her. She was part of it.
Then she saw the face of her late father. Before she had time to think what the tears meant Kier's voice cut through her consciousness. For a split second, she had thought it was the voice of her father.
'We're gonna make it.'
The feet were gone. Calmer now, her mind urged her forward. In seconds the light of day replaced the utter blackness. A minute more of squirming and Kier pulled her hands into a wide-open world. The air tasted like her mother's fresh pillowcases. The little Jessie inside her head danced for joy.
It did surprise her that the men in white suits had disappeared like a bad dream. Kier speculated that Tillman would try to pick up their track in the morning after they had passed farther down the mountain. Tillman would want to feel in control. He would want to ensure that they kept the appointment. But he would be too shrewd to risk scaring them off by leaving men in place. Kier planned to leave no trail by following creeks, and once they got below the snow line, by sticking to rocky slopes and washes.
With the wind whipping her unprotected ears with enough velocity to make her jaw ache, the reptilian mist washing over her, Jessie needed all her faculties to step precisely where Kier did. To do this, she wore no hood or helmet over her head. When Kier insisted on some protection, she agreed to wear only the helmet. More than once (she supposed as a form of encouragement), he remarked that she had saved them on the ledge. Even so, one more freezing hike over dangerous ground on a hungry stomach meant misery on a scale she never cared to repeat.
