The B Girls (27 page)

She'd go as far as she could before the panic set
in and hope it was enough to see Jane to safety.

The stretcher slid ahead of her in fits and starts
as Lucy crawled along wishing it would move faster. No doubt, Mae was doing the
best she could and it was pretty amazing she was managing to pull it alone.

For a few minutes they moved at a fairly steady
pace with the sound of the blanket scraping over rock, the occasional groan
from Jane and her own nervous humming keeping time.

The stretcher stopped moving. Lucy told herself it
was just Mae catching her breath. She gave the stretcher a little push to make
sure there wasn't a problem and it moved forward a few inches. Okay relax,
breathe deep and wait for Mae to go back to work.

It got very quiet without the blanket scraping and
humming.

In the deep silence there was a new sound.

"Jane?"

"Well hallelujah. I thought I'd lost
you."

"Do you hear that?" Lucy said.

"What?"

"I don't know. A new noise."

"Are you sure? The damn space blanket isn't
exactly stealth transportation."

"In case you hadn't noticed we're not
moving."

At that moment Lucy recognized the sound. A
horrible whining noise came up out of her throat.

"Oh fucking hell," Jane said.
"Water. Running water and it's in here with us."

"Don't panic," Jane said as the sound got
louder.

Lucy surged forward reflexively in an attempt to
get away from the water coming into the hole behind her. Her right hand made
hard contact with Jane's shoulder, jarring her injured arm.

"Ouch! Damn it, I said don't panic."

Jane's cry of pain reached the thinking part of
Lucy's brain. Going forward would hurt Jane. Back. She had to go backward. She
shoved one foot back the way they'd come and came in contact with her pack. She
kicked at it, trying to shove it out of her way. It slid away but not far and
she was forced to fight it again. Too slow! The water was going to win.

"Lucy? You have to stay with me," Jane
called.

Lucy heard and stopped fighting her pack. Her
feeling had been right, she was going to die in this hole but Jane didn't have
to. If Lucy didn't let the panic win, she might be able to do her part to shove
Jane to safety. If only Mae would hurry.

The makeshift stretcher started inching toward
freedom again but not nearly fast enough.

Did Mae even realize it was raining? Was there
water running toward her as well?

The first trickle of water slithered up Lucy's leg.

She shrieked like a B horror movie heroine.

"Now what?" Jane asked.

"The water's running this way."

"That doesn't make any sense. There's a much
better way for it to go in the last room."

"Unless it's got another way in here with
us," Lucy said.

"I think I know how," Jane said. "A
few yards back I felt a little breeze on my face. I thought I was imagining it
but there must be a small opening to the surface."

The water rolled under Lucy's hands and slid under
the stretcher. At this point it was a paper-thin dampness. But that was bound
to change.

Lucy blocked out everything except the need to push
Jane as close to safety as she could before the water overcame her.

The stretcher picked up speed.

"Mae must have realized what's
happening," Jane said.

Lucy didn't hear her. Her world was reduced to the
feel of the water soaking more of her coveralls with each passing second and
the sight of Jane's head moving ahead of her one painful inch at a time and the
sound of water over rocks that would have been pleasantly soothing in a summer
garden.

The stretcher continued to slide and Lucy kept pace
with it.

The water was now covering her hands and still
rising. It was harder to push against the slick floor and Lucy was doing more
slithering than crawling.

Lucy saw the water trickle into Jane's ear.

"Whose brilliant idea was it for me to be
trussed up like a turkey and shoved into this fucking hole?" Fear tinged
Jane's voice.

The stretcher slowed down again. The water poured
in faster.

Lucy paused to try and pull her pack in front of
her and fell behind.

"What are you doing?" Jane raised her
voice over the sound of the water and the blanket sloshing through.

Lucy didn't bother to answer as she continued to
struggle with the pack in the small space. Finally through a combination of
lifting her body on hands and toes and pushing to one side of the passage, she
managed to get the pack in front of her and scramble double fast to catch up to
Jane.

The rising water licked at Lucy's shins. It had to
be coming in from more than one point to be filling the tunnel so fast.

Lucy put a hand on Jane's left shoulder and tried
to shove the backpack under Jane's head as she crawled. The extra effort left
her breathless but after a few clumsy tries, Jane figured out what Lucy was
trying to do and heaved her head up off the ground. Lucy shoved the pack home,
buying Jane a few extra inches above the rising water.

Gasping for air, Lucy crawled along pushing on the
pack to keep it in place under Jane's head.

The water reached her stomach. Her abdominal
muscles contracted painfully in an attempt to lift away from the cold water.

Jane's face was still above water, propped on the
pack, but Lucy was getting tired and the water was still rising.

The stretcher's slide came to an abrupt halt.

Lucy used breath she couldn't spare in a low
keening moan and mustered the effort to shove hard at Jane's shoulders.

The stretcher didn't budge but Jane yelped in pain.

"Stuck," Jane said.

Lucy raised her head to try and get a breath past
her panic-closed throat. Jane was going to drown in here with her unless she
did something. She squeezed her eyes closed, summoned the last shred of
rationality left in her brain and forced herself to take just one second to
think.

Action. She had to take some action.

Stop being
such a fucking wimp. Get it together and act like a grown ass woman instead of
some weak-minded twit.

Lucy opened her eyes, did a push-up, and swept her
light around the edges of the stretcher looking for the snag. She found the
problem. One of the straps they'd used to tighten the blanket around Jane's
thighs was caught on a small knob of rock on the left side if the tunnel.

"Hold on," Lucy said.

"Like I have a choice."

With the extra bulk of the helmet, Lucy couldn't
find the room to slither over Jane to reach the snag. She yanked the helmet
off, propped it on Jane's right shoulder.

Jane was going to have to lower her head to make
room for Lucy. "Take a deep breath and don't move."

Lucy took a breath of her own then rolled to the
left and inched over Jane. She could feel the water running faster under her
legs, climbing higher in the tunnel at an exponential rate.

Reaching as far forward as she could, she managed
to slip a finger between the strap and the rock and pop the strap free.

The makeshift stretcher began to move again with
more speed, sliding out from under Lucy. The water was now only six inches from
the ceiling. She grabbed her helmet and light, shoved it back onto her head and
started crawling again.

Every few ghastly feet, Lucy had to stop, tilt her
head around toward the ceiling and take a gasping breath. Each time she
wondered if the next time she'd find only water.

The stretcher continued to slide through the tunnel
just ahead of Lucy's face. In between her own breaths Lucy crowded close to the
stretcher and lifted Jane's head up above the water so she could get a breath
as well while the stretcher slid forward stretching Lucy's arm to the limit.

Each time it was harder to muster the strength to
lift Jane. Each time there was a smaller pocket of air at the top of the
tunnel.

Lucy's arm quivered with the strain of letting
Jane's head down gently. She'd lost count of how many times she'd repeated the
maneuver but said a mental thank you to God and the cosmos that she managed it
again.

She pushed the last air out of her lungs and
levered herself up for another breath. Her hardhat scraped the top of the
tunnel and she turned her head, straining for every fraction of an inch. The
corner of her mouth broke the surface and she managed to sip a thin stream of
air before the water finished filling the gap.

This was it. The last gasp. The last chance to save
her friend.

Praying there was still enough of an air pocket for
Jane to get a breath or two, Lucy pushed forward with her toes and her right
elbow while she pushed Jane's head up with her left hand.

In seconds her lungs started to burn. She struggled
forward a few more inches her left arm trembling with the strain of holding
Jane's head up.

Lucy exhaled a puff of air to relieve some of the
pressure on her lungs. The maneuver bought her a few seconds. Her toes slipped
and Jane started to move away from her.

She let out more air as the stretcher moved out of
reach and tried to dig her toes harder into the floor.

She didn't have any strength left.

Going limp, she fought the overwhelming urge to
take a breath of water. Her mind and her lungs screamed for relief. Water would
be better than the emptiness.

Her toes scraped uselessly on the floor.

She slammed her head into the ceiling searching for
an air pocket that wasn't there.

Colored lights danced behind her closed eyelids.

She gave in and risked sucking in just a tiny bit
of water. The lights disappeared and the world went dark.

Ryan's face appeared out of the black.

Lucy smiled and reached for him. The one good thing
that had come from a life of playing it safe.

A hand closed around the wrist of her outstretched
arm.

Lucy tried to grab on but her hand slid free.

The hand clasped her wrist again and pulled.

In her struggle to hang on, the need for air beat
out the rational part of her brain that screamed no. She sucked in a mouthful
of water and Ryan's face disappeared.

A sharp, wet, smack landed between her shoulder
blades.

Lucy gasped and choked and fought for air. Air that
magically appeared to replace the water she retched up.

Why wasn't she dead?

Mae sat back on her heels. "Thank God. I
thought you were dead."

Lucy flopped onto her side, propped herself up on
one elbow and proceeded to hack, cough, spit and snort in an effort to finish
clearing her lungs and airway of water.

Mae crawled over to check on Jane.

"Don't worry about me," Jane said when
Mae came into view. "Make sure Lucy's going to be okay."

Lucy rolled onto her back and wheezed. "This
time I know I'm dead."

"Not funny," Mae said. "I thought we
lost you."

"I thought so too," Lucy said and let out
a shuddering sob.

The water in this wider section of the tunnel was
only a few inches deep and didn't appear to be rising.

"Let's get out of this tunnel before this one
starts filling up too," Mae said.

"Untruss me," Jane said. "My arm's
numb from the cold I can walk the rest."

They shuffle-walked through the last stretch of
tunnel and back into the room at the bottom of their first rappel and scrambled
back around and over the boulder obstacles. Jane hit a couple of rough patches
but kept saying she didn't feel a thing.

They reached the rope dangling from the opening in
the ceiling and collapsed, giving themselves five minutes to cry and breathe,
get oxygen back to all their vital parts and bleed off some of the horror at
what they'd just been through.

"I've never been so scared in my entire life
as when I saw that water start to run out of that crack," Mae said.

"You should've tried being in there with the
water," Jane said. She looked awfully pale but seemed to be stable and
alert. Mae helped her get a little more comfortable and put a pack behind her
to prop her up. "Lucy saved my life."

Lucy shook her head. "Don't get all dramatic
about it. Mae's the one who saved both our asses."

"We did it together. All three of us,"
Mae said.