Creepers

Vi

"Do you feel my left arm?"

"Yes." Vi

"Turn your body. Keep sliding your hand until you grab my arm."

"Do it! You're almost out of there!"

Balenger felt Vi

"Got it," Vi

"You're doing great. You're almost out. Now I'm going to shift my left hand up the strap on your knapsack. I have to do it slowly so I can keep my grip on it. Okay?"

Vi

"At the same time, move your hand down my arm. At one point, our hands will touch. Grab onto my wrist."

"Wrist."

"You're almost out of there, Vi

"Got it. I've got your wrist."

"Hang on tight. I need to let go of the strap so I can grab your wrist."

"Holy Mary, mother of…"

Balenger felt Vi

For an instant, Vi

"No!" Vi

"It'll stop. It'll stop!" Balenger said. His right hand felt tortured as it continued to grip the knapsack.

Vi

"Hold my wrist as hard as you can," Balenger said. His right hand could no longer bear the strain of the awkward angle that Vi

"No."

"We can do this, Vi

"I…"

"You'll soon be up here with me. Ready? It's going to happen on three. One. Two."

"Three," Vi

Balenger's right hand shot from the knapsack and drove under Vi

"Bob!" Balenger yelled. "Can you pull us up?"

The professor tried, breathing heavily. "I… No. Not two of you. I don't have the strength."

"Vi

"Can't."

Balenger thought frantically. "Okay, we'll do something else." Keep it positive, he thought. His voice was hoarse. "I'm going to roll sideways to the right. That'll pull up our arms on the left. Get your elbow over the rim of the hole. I'll keep rolling sideways while you squirm up."

"I'll try," Vi

"No," Balenger said. "You're going to do it. You're getting out of there!"

Racked by the effort of holding Vi

"Yes," Vi

"Higher." Balenger gasped. "Get your knee over."

"Can't."

Suddenly, headlamps and flashlights charged at them.

"Holy…" The voice was Rick's. He grabbed Vi

Thank God, Balenger thought, his heart pounding with relief.

"We heard noises from the walkie-talkie, but we couldn't figure what was happening!" Cora yelled. "We ran up here as fast as we could!" She tugged at Balenger, pulling with the professor's help.

Five seconds later, Vi

"We all did," Balenger said.

"Thank you." Vi

Balenger continued to lie on the floor, catching his breath. He pulled a water bottle from his knapsack, took a long drink, and handed it to Vi

"My throat's so dry, I don't know if I can swallow." But once Vi

"What happened?" Rick shifted carefully toward the hole. He gripped Cora's outstretched hand so he'd have support if the hole opened wider. He aimed his flashlight into the crater. "There's a faint light down there."

"My flashlight," Vi

"Every floor collapsed," Rick said. "The furniture's in a heap all the way at the bottom. Smells awfully damp."

Rick stooped and pulled a chunk of wood from the edge of the hole. He eased away, returning to the group. "The wood's soft and pulpy." He raised it to his nose. "Smells like an old basement."

"From rot," the professor said. "The roof must have a leak. When it rains or snows, water seeps down through this column of rooms. After more than thirty years, one step from Vi

"Maybe it's a good thing we can't get into the locked room," Cora said. "It's next to this room. Maybe the floor in there is rotten, too."

"Still didn't find a key?" Balenger rose to a crouch, then stood. His arms, shoulders, and legs ached.

"No key," Cora said.

"You're a handy guy to have around," Rick told Balenger. "You know about locks."

Balenger started to say "Not really," but Rick continued.

"You have quick reactions. The height didn't bother you."

"Because I couldn't see the bottom. Anyway, when I was a teenager, I did a lot of rock-climbing."

"Me, too. Where'd you go?"

"Wyoming."

"The Tetons?"

Why is he asking so many questions? Balenger thought. Does he suspect I haven't been telling the truth? "They're out of my league. The Grand in particular scares me. No, I took a course from a wilderness survival school. It's in Lander near the Wind River range."

"Sorry, everybody." Vi

"Sorry about what?" Balenger was glad to change the subject. "You couldn't have known the floor was rotten."

"What I meant is…"

Their lights showed a wide, dark stain on his jeans, all the way from his crotch to his left ankle where he'd urinated on himself.

Embarrassed, Vi

"In your place, I'd have done the same," the professor said.

Vi

"Speaking of that problem…" Balenger took the empty bottle from his knapsack. "In all the excitement, it almost happened to me. If you can bear to be away from me for a while, I'll find some privacy down that corridor."

"Not too far," Conklin said. "We've learned a lesson about separating. Stay close enough so we can see your lights."

"After you're finished, maybe we'd all better do the same thing," Rick said.

Balenger picked up his hard hat, adjusted the light on it, and put it on. He walked to the corridor, sca

As he screwed the cap on the bottle, he heard faint conversation from around the corner. Then he heard a slight thump in the opposite direction and aimed his headlamp toward the gloom at the end of the hallway. Doors stretched along each side. The angle of his light created shadows that made the doors seem slightly open. He set down the bottle with his left hand and used his right to lower his Windbreaker's zipper. He reached under the fabric and circled his fingers around a Heckler & Koch.40-caliber pistol in a shoulder holster.