Blind Descent

"Holden?" A

"Don't know," Oscar said, his voice suddenly hard. "He's fast. He may have got clear."

"Anybody else hurt?" A

"Like I said, I don't know," he snapped. Strain came across as irritation. After a moment he went on, his unspoken apology accepted. "Most of the others went ahead. They must have gotten clear. The Distributor Cap is solid. I'm betting this was a local slide."

Peter McCarty was locking his ascenders onto the rope. He had said scarcely a word since he'd pronounced Frieda dead.

"Will you be okay with… You know, here?" Oscar asked almost as an afterthought. "As soon as I'm up I can send down my climbing gear."

"Thanks," A

They left her a flashlight, and for that she was grateful. Watching them walk back up the wall of the chasm, she hugged it to her chest as if it were a magic wand.

Alone again, she crawled over to where Frieda lay. There was nothing with which to cover her face. By the light of the flashlight, A

"Sorry," A

Remembering the drop, then watching the men climb, she estimated they'd fallen close to thirty feet. Dust was thick in the air but had ceased to boil and twist like a live thing. In increments almost too small to note, the lamps were growing brighter. Sound, human notes, were discernible, but just barely. They seemed far off and impossibly lonely.

"I'm scared, Frieda," A

One of the lines used to descend began to snake up the wall. The slithering frightened A

"Got it?" came a call.

"Got it," she shouted, and continued to sit and stare as if it were an alien object for which she could not fathom any practical use.

Now that the time had come to reenter the fray, take up those burdens she had righteously eschewed abandoning, she wondered if she had the wherewithal to do so. There was an undeniable appeal to sitting in the bottom of the ditch with Frieda, unmoved and unmoving, letting emergencies be dealt with by others. For a bit she indulged this desire, finding deep wells of self-pity to justify inaction.

"Shit," she said finally, that being as close to a personal philosophy as she could muster. "I guess I'm not dead yet, Frieda." She pried herself up from the rock and retrieved the pack.

Oscar's gear was a rotten fit, but it was a short climb and it would suffice. Once she was rigged she turned back to Frieda. It was time to say good-bye. She doubted they'd be alone together again. And, soon, Frieda's soul, if such a thing actually existed, would take flight, rise effortlessly through the layers of bedrock. It crossed A

"Taco," A

9

Following the lights, A

At the end of the rift where the lights pooled, she joined Holden, Oscar, Peter, and Brent. When he saw the anchor shift, Holden had leapt from the bridge. Protected by the stone, he survived the landslide. In his Texas drawl he admitted, "The first step was a doozy." Rubble flowed into the end of Katie's Pigtail, burying the exit through to the Distributor Cap. By the time the slide was over, a mountain of dirt was between them and the way out. The fall created a stairway of rock down into the rift. Holden had been able to crawl up to the lip of the Pigtail.

Unhurt, Brent Roxbury had already started the demoralizing process of fussing over Holden. Though necessary to a degree, A

As near as Peter could tell, Holden's right ankle had been broken by the fall. As they shared their news with him, something else broke as well. Cracks appeared in his composure when he asked after Curt and Zeddie. They had been stationed along the Pigtail between Oscar and Holden. No one had seen them since the rockslide. The cracks widened, weakening the bones of Holden's face when Oscar told him Frieda was dead. Maybe it was A

She thought she was too tired and shaken to care about anything, but she watched him grappling with his devil as if she'd bet the farm on the outcome. Oscar Iverson was there and he was functioning, but Holden Tillman was of the cave itself. In some unfathomable way, she felt should he give up, the cave would take him-take them all. Even should they be freed, when they returned to the world their souls would be left behind under tons of limestone.