First Blood (1990) (25 page)

The spasm in his chest nearly made him drop. He could not let himself. He had no idea what was below him. His head still above the hole, he persisted in supporting himself by his arms and elbows on the rim while he shifted his feet down there to find a ledge or a crack. The funnel was slippery and smooth, and he let himself down a little more, but still there was no place to rest his feet. The weight of his body stretched his chest, ribs cutting. He heard the men shouting indistinctly in the mine, and eyes watering from the smoke of his fire, he was about to release his grip and drop the rest of the way anyhow, hoping there were no rocks down there to break him, when his feet touched something slender and round that felt like wood.

The upper rung of a ladder. From the mine, he thought. It must be. The guy who worked the mine must have explored here. He lowered himself

gingerly onto the rung. It bent but held; he stepped gently onto the second rung, it split and he snapped through two more rungs before he stopped. The sound of his fall drummed through the chamber, startling him. When it faded, he listened for the shouts of the men but he could not hear them now, his head below the rim of the hole. Then as he relaxed, the rung that held him bent, and fearing that he would crash through to the bottom, he quickly waved his torch to see what was below. Four other rungs and then a rounded floor. When it rains, he thought, water from outside must

drain down here. That's why the smooth worn rock.

He touched bottom, trembling. Looked. Followed the one exit, a wider fissure that sloped down as well. An old pick was leaning against one wall, its iron rusty, its wood dirty and warped from the damp. In the flickering torchlight, the handle of the pick cast a shadow onto the wall. He could not understand why the miner had left tools here but not in the upper tunnel. He came around a curve, water plunking somewhere, and found him. What was left of him. In the shimmer of the orange light, the skeleton was as repulsive as the first mutilated soldier he had ever seen. His mouth tasted of copper coins as he stood away from the skeleton for a moment and then took a few steps toward it. The bones were tinted orange by his light, but he was certain that their real color was gray like the silt that had gathered around them, and they were perfectly arranged. Not a bone was out of place or broken. No sign at all of why he had died. It was as if he had lain down to sleep and never wakened. Perhaps a heart attack.

Or poison gas. Rambo sniffed apprehensively, but he smelled nothing except dank water. His head was not off balance or his stomach queasy or any of the other symptoms of gas poisoning.

So what in hell could have killed this man?

He shivered again and hated the sight of this perfect set of bones and hurriedly stepped over them, eager to get away. He went farther down, and the fissure became two. Which direction? The smoke had been a bad idea. By now it had dispersed so he could not see which way it was drifting, and it had dulled his sense of smell so he could not even detect its path with that. His torch was burning low in the damp air, flickering sporadically in no particular direction. What was left to him was a kid's game, moistening his finger in his mouth, holding it at one opening, then the other. He felt the breeze slightly cool on the wet of his finger going to the right, and uncertainly he followed down, sometimes forced to squeeze through, occasionally stooping. His torch was burning lower in the damp air all the time. He came to another set of openings and wished that he had rope or string to lay out behind him so that if he became lost he would he able to find his direction back.

Sure, and wouldn't you like a flashlight too? And a compass? Why don't you go on over to the hardware store and buy them? Why don't you forget the jokes?

The breeze seemed to the right again, and as he moved along, the passage grew more complicated. More twists and turns. More offshoots. Soon he could not remember how he had come to where he was. The skeleton seemed a long confusing distance behind him. It was strangely funny to him that the moment he considered turning around and retracing his steps, he realized he was lost and could not do that. He did not actually want to return yet, he was just considering it, but all the same he would have preferred the option of being able to go back if the breeze suddenly ended. It was extremely faint even so, and he wondered if he had missed some crack in the rock where it seeped out of the hill. God, he could wander here until he died, end up like those bones.

The murmur saved him from panic, and he thought it was them coming, but how could they find him in this maze, and then he recognized the distant sound of water rushing. Before he knew, he had increased speed toward it, at last a perceptible goal in mind, shouldering against walls, staring into the darkness beyond his light.

Then the sound was gone and he was alone again. He slowed and stopped, leaning against a wall, hopeless. There had been no sound of rushing water. He had imagined it.

But it had seemed so real. He could not believe that his imagination could trick him so completely. Then what had happened to the sound? If it was so real, where was it?

A hidden turn, he realized. In his haste to reach the sound, he had failed to check for other entrances in the rock. Go back. Look. And as he did, he heard it once more, and found the opening, on the blind side of a curve, and slipped into it, the sound louder as he went.

It was deafening now. The flames of his torch diminishing to go out, he arrived where the fissure came onto a ledge - and below him, far down, a stream was swirling through a hole in the rock, roaring down into a channel and away under a shelf. Here. This had to be where the breeze was going.

But it wasn't. The water foamed up over the shelf and there was no space for air to be sucked through. But still he felt the breeze strong here; there had to be another exit close by. His torch hissed, and he glanced around frantic to memorize the shape of the ledge, and then he was in darkness, a darkness that was more complete and solid than any he had ever stood in, made overpowering by the cascade of water below into which he might easily fall if he did not grope his way with care. He tensed, waiting to get used to the dark. He never did get used to it. He began to lose his

balance, swaying, and at last he went down on his hands and knees, crawling toward a low passage at the end of the ledge that he had seen just before his light sputtered out. To go through the hole he had to slip flat on his belly. The rock there was jagged. It tore his clothes and scraped his skin and twisted his ribs until he repeatedly groaned.

Then he screamed as well. From something more than his ribs. Because as he came blind through the hole into a chamber where he had room to lift his head, he reached out his hand to claw himself forward, and fingered mush. A drop of wet muck plopped onto his neck, and something bit his thumb, and something tiny darted up his arm. He was lying in thick scum that was soaking through his two ripped shirts streaking his belly. He heard squeaking above him, and the cardboard ruffle of wings, and Jesus Christ, it was bats, he was lying in their shit, and what were by now a half-dozen tickly things scurrying over his hands, nibbling, they were beetles, the scavengers that feasted off bat dung and sick bats fallen to the floor. They could strip a carcass clean, and they were piercing the flesh of his arms, as he wriggled insanely backward through the hole, Jesus Christ, swatting them off his hands and arms, bumping his head, wrenching his side. Jesus, rabies, a third of any bat colony was rabid. If they woke and sensed him they might attack and cover him biting while he screamed. Stop it, he told himself. You'll bring them to you. Stop

screaming. Already wings were flapping. Christ, he couldn't help it, screaming, wriggling back, and then he was out on the ledge, sweeping his hands and arms, rubbing, making sure and double-sure they all were off, still feeling their many-legged tickles on his skin. They might follow, he suddenly thought, scurrying back from the low entrance to the hole, disoriented in the dark, one leg toppling off the ledge, dangling. The fright of his near fall jolted him. He lurched in the opposite direction and bumped against a wall of rock and shook, hysterically wiping the mushy dung off his hands onto the rock, pawing at the slime on his shirt to get the stuff off. His shirt. Something was in there scratching on his skin. He shoved in a hand, grabbing it, snapping its brittle back so he felt its soft wet insides on his fingers as he threw it violently toward the sound of the cascade.

Bats. A pest hole. Disease. The putrid smell of the dung stinging his nose and throat. That's how the guy who worked the mine had died. Rabies. He had been bitten unknowingly, and days later the disease came driving him out of his mind; he wandered crazily through the forest, into the tunnel, out of the tunnel, in once more and down into the fissure, in and around until he crumpled and died. The poor bastard, he must have thought it was the loneliness that was getting to him. At the start anyhow. And when he became delirious, he was too far gone to help himself. Or maybe toward the end he knew he couldn't be helped and went down into the fissure where he could die without being a danger to anyone.

Maybe nothing. What in hell do you know about it? If he had rabies, then he would have hated water, even the smell of it, the idea of it, so he would never have gone down into the dampness of the fissure. You're just imagining that it'll be you who dies that way. If they don't eat you first.

What are you talking about? The bats can't eat you. Not the kind around here. No, but the beetles.

He was still shaking, struggling to calm himself. The breeze had been strong in the chamber. But he could not go that way. And he did not know how to return to the upper tunnel. He had to face it. This was it. He was stuck.

Except that he could not let himself believe that he was stuck. He had to fight panic and pretend there was a way out; he had to sit against the wall of rock and try to relax and maybe if he thought long enough he might actually discover an escape. But there was only one escape and he knew it: toward the breeze into the bats' den. He licked his lips and took a sip of iron-pipe tasting water from his canteen. You know you have to go in there with the bats don't you, he told himself. It's either that or sit here and starve and get sick from the damp and die.

Or kill yourself. You were trained to do that too. If things became too much.

But you know you won't. Even if you're passing out and you're positive you're going to die, there's always the chance they'll search these fissures until they stumble into here and find you unconscious.

But they won't. You know you have to follow the breeze into there with the bats. Don't you. You know that. 12

Then go on, get started, get it over with, he told himself.

But instead he sat in the dark on the ledge, listening to the roar of the water below him. He knew what the sound was doing to him, its monotonous rush dulling his ears, little by little pressing him to sleep. He shook his head to keep awake and decided to go in with the bats while he still had the energy, but he could not move; the water rushed on, dinning; and when he woke, he was by the side of the ledge again, one arm dangling. But he was groggy from the sleep, and this time the danger of falling off did not disturb him as much. He was too tired to care. It was so luxurious resting stretched out, arm over the edge emptily. Lulled by the sleep, his body had no sensation, his ribs did not even bother him anymore, numb.

You'll die here, he thought. If you don't soon move, the darkness and the noise will leave you too weak and stupid for anything. I can't move. I've come too far. I need to rest.

You went farther longer in the war.

Yes. And that's what finished me for this.

All right, then die.

I don't want to die. I just don't have the strength.

'God damn it, go on,' he said out loud, and in the water's roar, his words were flat and echoless. 'Do it quick. Just get in there quick and charge right through where they are and the worst will be done.'

'Goddamn right,' he said, waited, then repeated himself. But if there's anything worse beyond this, I won't be able to stand it, he thought. No. This is the worst. There can't be anything beyond this.

I believe it.

Slowly, reluctantly, he crawled in the black toward the entrance to the chamber. He paused, gathered strength, and squeezed his body in. Pretend it's tapioca pudding that you'll touch, he told himself, mustering a smile at the joke. But when his hand reached out and grasped the muck, grasped something scabby in the muck, the hand shot back reflexively. He breathed in the sulfurous stench of dung and decay. The gas would be poisonous; once he was fully in, he would have to hurry. Well, here's batshit in your eye, he told himself, pretending another joke, hung back a moment, then charged into the slime, scrambling to his feet. Already he was dizzy and nauseous from the gas. The muck rose up to his knees, and

things rattled against his pantlegs as he wallowed through. The breeze went straight ahead.

No. He was wrong again. The breeze came from straight ahead. This was a different air current. The one he had been following must have blown out a different way.

He was wrong about something else too. No matter how much he wanted to hurry, he remembered that he should not. There might be drops in the floor. He had to test each part of the floor ahead of him with his feet, and with each shuffle forward, he expected not to touch more muck and crud, but open space.

The sound in the chamber was changed: before there had been squeaks and the ruffle of wings, but now he heard nothing except the liquid slush of his legs through the deep mire and the dim cascade of water droning on the other side of the entrance. The bats must have gone. He must have slept longer than he knew, until it was night and the bats had gone to hunt and feed. He slogged forward toward the breeze, sick from the stench, but at least they were gone and he relaxed a little. A drop of rotten goo pelted his nose.