Blind Descent

In the long and crushing passage that linked the Cocktail Lounge with Tinker's Hell, their shouting at last elicited a response. Standing upright in the chamber where Sondra and Peter had argued, they froze, willing the sound to come again. Just beyond was the belly-crawl where A

"Sondra!" Curt shouted.

Moaning from hearts of stone dripped into their ears.

The chamber where they stood was not so much a room as an irregular void left behind by the shifting of immense blocks imperfectly mortared with lime. Walls were not smooth, not unbroken. The floor was not flat. The ceiling was dizzy-making with fractured planes. Cracks gaped from every angle. More were hidden by shadows. The one, true, going lead, the exit that would take a traveler to the Lounge and on, was one of these. A

No wonder Sondra hadn't made it out. Without tape she was lost. Without light she was doomed. Her batteries wouldn't have lasted four days. The miracle was that they had heard her through the rooms and passages between this forsaken rent in the earth and Katie's Pigtail. Either there was a crack somewhere high in the rock that carried sound, or Frieda had indeed been whispering, trying to summon help.

Whimpering oozed from all directions. Curt pointed with his light to a triangular opening five feet up and slanting away to the right. "I'm guessing that one. What do you think?"

"We've got to start somewhere."

Ten minutes in, the lead dead-ended. No room to turn, the two of them backed out. Curt gathered up the tape as they retreated. Sweat ran from A

Despite renewed shouting, the whimpering came no more.

Curt marked the failed lead, and methodically the two of them began following the others, moving counterclockwise around the room. To save time, they split up, each leaving a trail of tape. On A

Before she'd squirmed twenty feet, the smell met her, a vile odor of excrement and human despair, the odor of prisons, hospitals, and madhouses. A smell that can be masked but never completely expunged. Fighting nausea, A

Trailing a lifeline of surveyor's tape, she heaved herself over a fall of flowstone. Stench hit her in full force. Her light shone into a room more spacious than any they'd found since leaving the Lounge. Twelve to fifteen feet high and twice that long, it stretched into the darkness. Blocks of limestone broke it into a maze. Piles of human waste dotted the flat areas. Paper and foam cartons were scattered around. A sidepack and helmet, cast off as in anger, hung precariously on an abutment halfway down the room.

At the far end, a wall glistened with water. Seepage formed a pool at its base. The body of a woman was beside it, curled into a fetal position so tight her head was hidden. All A

"Sondra?"

The fetus began to unwind with painful slowness, limbs like sticks, stiff as a puppet's, unfolding. Matted hair was pushed back by skeletal fingers to reveal eyes as devoid of humanity as any A

Hunkered down on her heels so she would present a less alarming figure, A

With a sudde

In an instant, Sondra was upon her, hands clawing, the growl becoming a staccato bleat.

Though moderately painful, the assault turned out to be friendly in nature. The tall, once haughty young woman held on, trying to burrow into A

A

Just as A

"Mind if I join you? Or is three a crowd?"

A

"My lead dead-ended. I followed the bellowing." He slid down beside them and looked around, his lamp raking over the filth. "Not exactly the Hilton."

"She found water and stayed with it. Good girl," A

"Hi, Sondra. Everybody's been missing you," Curt lied without a hitch.

Pulling her face away from A

Opportunity was knocking. Aiming Mrs. McCarty at Curt's broad chest, A

"Thanks a heap," Curt said dryly, eyeing A

"Don't mention it." Rubbery legs took A

Affixed to Curt, Sondra made gurgling noises and hid her face. A line from an old Travis McGee novel came to mind: "You girl, do you dither? Do you bleat and snuffle and carry on?" A

Turning her back on what had become a prison for Sondra, A