Fatalis (27 page)

Grand took in these details quickly since the saber-tooth was only illuminated for a moment. The chopper finally withdrew, throwing the mountain back into darkness.

The scientist reached the sinkhole moments before the cats did. He raced around it, stopped swinging the starbursts, and vaulted the nearest boulder. Then he turned quickly to look back. He was prepared to face the two saber-tooths if he had to.

But both cats were gone.

The Wall was stretched over Hannah, huddling her against the mountainside. When Grand landed on the ledge above them, Hannah waited and listened. When she heard nothing she squirmed from the photographer's big arms.

"You're fired, Wall," she growled.

"Good."

Grand was still crouching behind the rock and looking out at the misty mountaintop. Hannah looked behind her, down at the bright campsite, then squatted beside Grand.

"Talk to me, Jim," Hannah said in a flat, low voice. "Were they what we thought?"

"Yes," Grand said as he rose slowly. He dropped the star-bursts. He was still staring across the dark tor.

"Saber-toothed cats."

"That's right."

Hannah rose. "My god. This is amazing. But why didn't they attack? Was it the light?"

"It might have been that or it might have been my retreat. A lot of animals won't fight if they don't have to."

"Maybe it was your star-things," The Wall suggested.

"That's possible too. But there's another possibility." Grand put the rock in his jacket pocket and took the flashlight from Hannah. "The sound of the helicopter. Roaring is a ritualistic display."

"Then why didn't they attack when they first saw us?" Hannah asked.

"They weren't hungry and they didn't feel threatened," Grand said. "I think they were just up here to watch the sinkhole."

"Why?"

"I'll let you know when I'm sure. Where's your cell phone?"

"Back at the car."

Grand turned around. "Wall, do you have a cell phone?"

"Yes."

"Can I borrow it?"

"Sure," he said as he reached into his equipment case. "I won't be needing it in the North Pole, where I'm moving tonight because there aren't any monsters there."

"That we know of," Grand said.

The Wall seemed to freeze.

"Jim, what's going on?" Hannah asked. "Who are you going to call? And-shit. How can these tigers be alive?"

"Deep freeze."

"Huh?"

"One of the cats had large, healed scars," Grand said. "They were long uppercuts. The cat was in a fight with an animal that sliced from bottom to top, head bowed. Possibly tusks. Possibly mammoths."

"Prehistoric elephants?" she said. "What have we got, an entire Ice Age population?"

"I don't think so," Grand said, "which is my point. Mammoths wouldn't be hiding in caves. We'd definitely have seen them before now. Back at the university we had radiocarbon reactions from tissue that was metabolically alive. That can't be. In order to be alive, the creature would have to be processing carbon dioxide. If it were processing carbon dioxide, we wouldn't have gotten a reading."

"Okay-"

"With one exception," Grand said. "Cryogenesis."

The photographer handed Grand the cell phone.

"Wall, is Hannah's number programmed in?"

"It's number one."

"Hold on," Hannah said. "Are you telling me the cats were frozen?"

"Remember the elevated water levels in the fur samples?"

"Right," Hannah said.

"That could have come from the ice," Grand said.

"But how?" Hannah asked. "There were no glaciers this far south, were there?"

"No," Grand said. "But there may have been subterranean ice."

Hannah shook her head. "This is impossible."

"A lot of things seem impossible until they happen," Grand said. He slipped the phone into his jacket pocket, turned on the flashlight, then swung back over the rocks.

"Where are you going?" Hannah asked.

"To get some answers." The scientist walked over to the sinkhole and cautiously peered over the edge. When he was sure the cats weren't there, he shined the light down. "The cave will probably block the phone signal but I'll find a place to call you."

"Like hell." She turned. "Wall?"

"Yo!"

"My phone's in the car, in my bag. Get it and keep it with you."

Grand looked at her.

"I'm coming with you," she said.

Grand shook his head once. He sat on the edge of the sinkhole.

Hannah crouched beside him. "The chopper has already landed at the campsite and El Gearhart is probably on his way up. He's going to close off this site and I'm
not
giving up another lead. With or without you, I'm going in."

Grand didn't think she was bluffing and there wasn't time to argue. "All right," he said. "Wall?"

"Still here."

"Your flashlight?"

The photographer climbed the boulders and ran the light over.

Grand looked at Hannah. "Step where I step and watch out for stalactites. If you knock yourself out I'm leaving you where you fall."

"Fair enough."

"No talking," he added as he shut off the phone and handed it to Hannah. He glanced over at Wall. "We'll call if we find anything."

"Just give me time to get down the mountain," the Wall said.

"And back," Hannah added. "We need pictures of the site."

The Wall groaned.

Meanwhile, Grand was moving the light around the sinkhole. The sloping passageway went down about seven feet and was lined with sharp-edged stones, most of which appeared to be part of larger, buried rocks. Grand handed Hannah the flashlight and told her to shine it down. He pushed his heel down against one of the stones and it held. He eased down, his back to the side of the sinkhole, and put his full weight onto it. Then he climbed down to the others. When he reached the bottom he had Hannah toss him the light. He considered running on without her, but knew she'd try to follow. Instead, he helped her down.

The passageway was just over five feet high and about four feet wide; the air was musty and close. The tunnel led west toward the Pacific and east; he could hear the faint sound of breakers and assumed the cats had used this passageway to go from the beach to the mountain.

Grand motioned Hannah toward the east He didn't think the cats would be going back to the sea; since this started, they hadn't seemed to backtrack. Where they were headed, whether by instinct or design, was one of the things he hoped to discover by tracking them.

That, plus the meaning of the Chumash paintings-the mountains in the upper cave and the circles and crescents in the lower cave. By virtue of what he had seen tonight, Grand believed that the paintings were more than a shaman's expressions of faith.

He believed they could be a warning.

Grand made his way through the increasingly narrow tunnel as he had made his way up the mountainside: fast and surefooted. Holding her flashlight in her right hand, at her side, and keeping her left arm up to block and shift around stalactites, Hannah struggled to keep up with him.

She had come down here hoping to pick up more information, more understanding, and more news. She hadn't expected to actually catch up to the cats, though that really seemed to be Grand's intent. Hopefully, he had something in mind for what they would do then. Despite what Grand had said, Hannah didn't think the cats would welcome them with open paws.

As Hannah walked, she watched Grand. The quiet-university-professor aspect of the man seemed even more deeply buried than it had been on the mountainside. Climbing to the tor, he had been focused. But here it was almost as though he'd become the thing he was tracking. The movement of his shoulders reminded her of a stunt pilot who had once performed off the pier. Grand's "wings" kept ducking this way and that to avoid rock projections, to turn his light into narrow fissures, to move him around stalactites. Like the pilot, he did all of this at a fast walk. His legs also moved with fluidity and confidence. It was almost as if he could anticipate the terrain, like a driver who had been along a road so often that the ride was almost a coast, even at night. Obviously, all caves and tunnels weren't the same. But maybe the senses one used were. If so, Grand was certainly using them.

The tunnel sloped down, which didn't surprise Hannah. After several minutes it turned sharply to the north and dropped away faster, nearly at a forty-five-degree angle. Grand turned so that his right side led and leaned back slightly as he continued down. Hannah did the same. Grand would frequently turn quickly to make sure that she was all right. Despite his attitude before they descended, his attention-and expression-showed concern for her.

As they walked. Grand also swung his flashlight over the floor and walls of the tunnel looking for signs of passage. Twice so far he'd stopped to examine scratch marks on the ground. He would turn and nod to Hannah that they appeared to be going in the right direction.

The deeper she and Grand went, the more the tunnel turned and twisted, sometimes in a tight S-shaped pattern. There were thin, deep ruts here and there. They looked like cracks but Hannah realized that they were probably caused by water dripping from stalactites and dribbling downhill over the millennia. Hannah tried to picture lava being forced up slowly to create these passageways, burning through the softest strata of stone, the path of least resistance. It probably piled up in these lower caverns until the pressure became so intense that the magma just blasted through the upper sections of rock. Hannah imagined heat so intense that higher areas of the tunnels, areas that weren't submerged as long, were liquefied, then solidified into the oddly shaped bubbles she saw around her. It was strange. The bubbles looked so new, ready to pop, while the stalactites-which were formed much later-appeared vastly older.

As Hannah thought about these awesome natural forces, she realized that she had been at this newspapering game for too many hours of her life, far too intensely. She was actually writing the antediluvian volcano story in her head, as if she were publisher of the
Ice Age Gazette
.

Hannah had no idea how far they'd gone. A half mile? Maybe more?

It certainly felt like more. The tunnel became tighter-

Grand was ducking now, and she had to as well in spots- and Hannah began to feel closed in. The air was cool and wet and it was scary, the idea that it was probably longer to go back than to go forward. Her legs had been weak after the climb and they were getting wobbly now. Blisters were forming on her heel and big toes. But she pushed herself on, then on some more, because she had asked for this. And she was actually glad she had exhaustion and claustrophobia in the front of her mind. It was something to think about other than what they were searching for. If she thought about the cats for too long she might freak or freeze, the way she did when she first saw them back on the mountaintop. They were frightening, yet so overpowering in their form and hypnotic in their movement that she couldn't look away.

There were no turn-offs from the tunnel, no side-tunnels. Hannah didn't know if that were unusual or not, but she was glad about that. At least there was no question which way the cats had come.

After what had to be another quarter mile or so-some of which they had to walk bent over, since the roof of the tunnel was less than five feet high-Grand stopped suddenly. Hannah stopped too. She listened. She heard nothing except Grand breathing deeply through his nose.

She breathed through her nose too.

And tasted fresh air.

Grand started up again. When he could finally stand up straight he ran, weaving and moving through the stalactites and outcroppings and getting well ahead of Hannah. She wasn't worried about losing him. The air was getting sweeter. The tunnel was coming to an end.

The ground leveled off and then rose slightly. The final leg was about fifty feet up a steep slope, which she took on her hands and knees. Though the rock scraped her knees and the heels of her palms, it was the quickest way up.

She reached the top and climbed out. She stood beside Grand.

There were near the base of a mountain and looking across a wide gully. Hannah couldn't place where they were or even what direction they were facing. There were more hills beyond the gully and peaks on either side of them.

Hannah looked straight ahead, where Grand was looking.

"This isn't good, is it?" she asked.

"No," he replied gravely. "It is not."

The Bell chopper touched down lightly on the mountaintop, in the center of the clearing. Gearhart climbed out, not lightly but with a clear sense of purpose. That purpose was to find the animals the pilot said he saw. Find them and kill them before the night was over.

The rotor-blown grasses whipped around Gearhart's feet as he approached the edge of the mountaintop. The Wall was taking pictures around the sinkhole. He stopped as Gearhart approached. The sheriff didn't see Hannah or Grand. He didn't like that. He didn't like it at all.

Snapping on his flashlight, Gearhart removed the point-to-point radio from his belt. After debriefing the pilot back at the campsite, Gearhart had spoken to Chief Deputy Valentine and given him his instructions. As soon as the chopper lifted off Gearhart called him again.

"What's the status on Dr. Thorpe?" Gearhart asked.

"I spoke with her and she's pulling her charts together," Chief Deputy Valentine informed Gearhart. "I've sent a deputy to the house. She should be here by the time the second chopper arrives."

"Good. What about the rest of the team?"

"Felice is calling everyone in now. Frank Lyon has begun organizing squads and putting together gear."