Blind Descent

Feeling mildly insensitive, A

Blood had become toxic waste. Paper trail: if she played out the paranoia, there'd be reports and doctors' offices visited to leave a record in case she tested positive for HIV after the incident. Every class, every lecture drummed precaution into the brain. The greater danger of being mowed down by a drunk driver did not worry the public. Maybe because it did not carry with it the horror of death by inches.

A crack of sound and the sting of needle-fine pieces of stone sown into her cheek jerked her back to more imminent danger. What with one thing and another, she'd overlooked the obvious. The shooter was not necessarily gone, nor was he necessarily finished. Not daring to look around for the rifleman, she flattened herself on top of Brent Roxbury. Blood, warm as bathwater, drenched her face and neck. He couldn't have been dead more than a minute or two. A second shot cracked, then sang high and angry off the rock inches beyond A

She had two choices for cover: behind Roxbury's corpse or down through the rusted bars wiring the jaws of Big Manhole. As tempting as Brent's company was, a wall of flesh and bone would scarcely slow a bullet down. Unpleasant images of WWII executions clicked behind her eyes.

Quick as a wounded snake, she writhed over to the iron-barred trap and dropped through. The black enclosed well of the cave held no terrors for her. She figured the fall would kill her before claustrophobia could set in. Knuckles wrapped around the grid, she looked down expecting to see nothing but darkness. Today the gods were kind-or in a playful mood. The neck of the immense limestone bottle was not neat and sheer but a ragged crevice with plenty of ledges upon which a small and determined woman could find footholds.

Where A

Two more shots rang out, lending the scream of lead and limestone to the shriek of the wind. Both times A

As near as A

That train of thought derailed. She loved the novels of Thomas Hardy and was a great believer in coincidence. But never when one needed it. Two members of the survey team meeting untimely ends from unrelated sources was highly unlikely.

Brent had been with them when Frieda died. He had been much distraught by her death. He'd wanted to speak with A

Lost in thought, A

Options skittered through her mind. They were few in number and low on appeal. She could remain in her chimney and wait to be shot. Slim possibilities occurred to her: the would-be attacker might make a mistake, create an opening she could parlay into an escape. A mistake of that magnitude would require a gunman both unbelievably stupid and a tad psychotic. Judging by the deadly efficiency with which Brent had been dispatched, this fellow was probably neither. There would be no long cinematic tortures or lengthy rationalizations. Chances were he'd not poke the rifle barrel through the bars to prod his caged quarry so she could wrest the weapon from him in a moment of glorious heroics. He'd point, shoot; she'd fall, die; a crumpled, dead, middle-aged lady on a heap of antique bat shit. No glamour there.

"Shit," A

Now whoever it was would be closer, know precisely where she was, where she could and could not go.

A

Still, there was nothing but to do it, and she tensed up, gauging the distance with the concentration of an Olympic gymnast: eighteen inches, a jerk, a push, a scramble. Readying her muscles, she shifted her weight and flexed her fingers, mimicking the tiny nervous movements of a cat preparing to pounce. On three, she told herself.

Before she'd begun her countdown, a glittering ruby detached from the sky and fell to a narrow shelf of white limestone. The red was unreal, luminous. Blood, Brent's blood, dripping through the bars with mesmerizing slowness.

A second drop, perfect and beautiful in the harsh light of the winter sun, formed on the underside of the iron, quivered, sending thousands of microscopic reflections across its scarlet surface. Caught up in this minuscule drama, she watched as it grew too great to support its own weight, then fell three feet to explode in sudden and sparkling splendor. In this brief life and death of a droplet A