Rogue Angel 47: River of Nightmares (18 page)

Chapter 30

Annja heard voices as she began to regain consciousness. Charlemagne? Joan of Arc? No, those were from a dream. And it would be so good to be deep in that dream right now, walking in the forest with King Charlemagne and talking about swords and saving France. No one else in the world to bother them.

Annja concentrated and fought to clear her head. She wanted to take in the real conversation swirling around her. She recognized Roux’s voice and Hammond’s. Moons’s, too, the girl sounding panic-stricken, and then she heard scuffling.

Annja struggled to open her eyes but the memory of pressure underwater forced her down.

The noises all spun together.

She shouted at herself to wake up.

Had a punch been thrown? Hopefully Roux had thrown it; the old man was good in a fight. Another punch. A grunt. A groan. More scuffling.

Edgar was shouting. Dillon was saying something about a crevice.

“Throw them down the hole.” It was Hammond’s voice.

Just as her eyes fluttered open she felt someone kick her side...then again. Fully conscious now and flailing to grab onto something, she could only see rock and the glow of lanterns. Another kick. She was rolling and then falling. The sword was in one hand and her free hand was waving around for a purchase. She couldn’t see anyone to swing the blade at.

It was all dark.

Dark.

Oh, but she hated that word.

Falling fast, Annja caught only a musty scent of old wood. In a heartbeat she plunged and hit the ground. The impact sent the sword from her hand and tore the breath from her lungs. Every inch of her ached.

She pushed herself to her knees; there was a body under her—Moons. The girl had fallen on her stomach, and the hard hat with the light...that was where the pale beam came from. Fortunate the light hadn’t broken. It sent a beam across the stone floor that was littered with rocks, dead leaves and bones. Bones were everywhere. How many people had Dillon dumped in this hole?

From overhead came the screech of bats disturbed by all the action. Dillon had tossed them in a cave.

Down the hole, Hammond had said. This had to be below the emerald mine.

Annja gently turned Moons over, setting the hard hat where the beam illuminated the girl. Annja felt for a pulse, just as she heard voices from above.

“Please don’t do—” It was Edgar’s voice.

There was the flapping of material and a dull thud. The bats shrieked louder.

Annja, still feeling for a pulse on Moons and finding none, saw Edgar flat on his back only a few feet away. They’d dumped him down here, too. His helmet had rolled away and was rocking, its light playing shadows on the cave wall.

Edgar twitched, moaned, and his eyes closed.

No pulse on Moons, but Annja knew CPR. She wasn’t going to give up on the girl.

“Look out below!” Hammond shouted.

There was more flapping material, another body coming down. Annja had just enough time to reach over and pull Edgar out of the way. Roux, his hands still tied, landed where Edgar had been. Roux wasn’t moving, but Annja wasn’t worried about him—somehow he’d always survived.

Annja cursed. Above her there was scant light, but Annja could make out Hammond’s face leering through the hole in the floor. The hole was barely big enough for a body to pass through it. Hammond rolled something over the top, covering the hole. The bats started to settle down.

Annja swore again as she felt Edgar’s neck to make certain he was alive. She found a steady pulse. She turned all her attention to Moons.

Annja alternated chest compressions with mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. The routine became a mantra...thirty compressions, two breaths, thirty compressions, two breaths. Annja had remarkable stamina, but even she was wearing down. Such a dangerous situation was taking its ugly toll.

“Don’t die on me,” Annja pleaded. “Don’t die, Moons.” A first responder kept up lifesaving techniques until either the professionals arrived or the victim started breathing.

Thirty compressions. Two breaths.

“Don’t die.”

But Moons was dead. Annja went at it minutes longer before rocking back on her haunches, spent and furious, acknowledging the girl’s lifeless body.

“You say you don’t want to kill anyone, Dillon? You might not have pushed her, but this blood is on you.” Tears of rage and sorrow welled in her eyes as she shuffled on her knees to Edgar. She felt his head, neck, back. He seemed to be intact, but definitely unconscious—fortunate for him at the moment. “You’re the real monster,” Annja continued to rant; she needed to vent her ire. Every profane word she knew spilled out in rapid succession. “I came to the Amazon looking for monsters, and I found one. I found the king of all monsters.”

Edgar’s arm was bent at an odd angle. Definitely broken. Maybe he’d put out his arm to stop his fall, a reflexive action. Annja stretched and grabbed Edgar’s helmet, sitting it so that it highlighted his arm.

“That’s definitely not good.” She ripped the sleeve off his shirt so she could get a better look. Gingerly feeling it, she figured it was broken in more than one place. Edgar needed an emergency room. Annja had first aid training, but this damage went beyond her expertise. She muttered another string of foul words aimed at Dillon and then took a glance at some of the bones in the cavern, finding four that looked like ribs and that would work as splints.

She began to treat Edgar’s arm when she saw that Roux was stirring. “This is going to hurt, Edgar. Please stay unconscious a while longer.” She did her best to realign the bones in his arm, the humerous first, splinting it with two ribs, tying them with the discarded shirtsleeve.

She tugged off Moons’s shirt and ripped it into strips, then took off Moons’s belt. It took Annja considerably longer to work on Edgar’s lower arm, splinted it, wrapped it with the T-shirt strips, and then used the belt as a sling to help immobilize it. Finally, she retrieved Moons’s fanny pack and looked inside for anything useful. She found a pocketknife and stuffed it into her already-overstuffed pockets. The fanny pack became a makeshift pillow she gently placed under Edgar’s head. Still, he hadn’t moved. Angling the light, she opened his eyelids; the pupils were uneven. Great, a concussion.

“Annja.” Roux had come to. “Annja—”

“I heard you, give me a moment.”

“Annja, my legs are broken.”

Annja suspected the only reason she hadn’t broken any bones was that Moons had cushioned her fall. She picked up one of the hard hats, put it on, adjusted the light and checked on her next patient, using the pocketknife to free his hands.

Roux’s legs were twisted at odd angles, not the way legs were meant to bend. A bone protruded from his skin and jeans in one spot, the denim dark with blood that continued to gush. He’d propped himself up on his elbows.

“What am I supposed to—”

“You may have to set them, Annja. I can do it if I have to, but—” A pause. “But if you don’t mind—”

Had this happened to him before? She went to work, noting that his hands were clenched into fists and an expression of pure pain crossed his face. He refused to cry out. “Do I splint them?”

“No.” His hands unclenched slightly, and then formed fists again. “Just leave me be awhile.”

She stepped away. Though she was curious, she nevertheless didn’t want to watch him regenerate or be reborn or whatever it was that happened to always save him. Let that be his mystery. Her mystery remained how Joan’s sword had come to her. The sword was still within reach, she knew, but she had no cause to call it at the moment. Now that her companions had been tended to, it was time to check out her surroundings.

Up was first, since that was where she needed to go. Up to get out of here. Her hip still bothered her where she’d been shot, but it was dull and annoying and wasn’t bad enough to stop her. The beam barely reached the ceiling, which she guessed was thirty feet up, maybe a little more. The hole had been covered, and there was no way—short of flying—to reach it. That opening, the only one that she could see, was too far from the walls, which looked impossible to climb anyway, all smooth and covered with...paintings.

Am I dreaming?

Annja literally pinched herself, thinking maybe the whole episode of falling through the hole...was another nightmare, an extension of the Dslala dreaming ritual. No such luck. This was all achingly real.

But the paintings...she’d seen them before, in a dream. Primitive, but discernible, remarkably preserved, the colors—red, black and violet reasonably bright. They depicted amazing beasts. In one the creature was on all fours, slothlike, but not sloth-sized as an almost stick figure of a man was in front of it. In the next series, it showed the creature rising up and standing on its hind legs. In the next, it showed the creature breaking something large, maybe a log or a tree. There were other creatures depicted, half-men half-fish, birds with the heads of men, jaguars with the heads of men and more.

The bones. She padded closer to a pile and moved them around with the toe of her boot. Some were human, or at least similar to human—she couldn’t be certain without closer examination. But a couple of the skulls were abnormally large and shaped oddly, like the combination of a cow and an ape. Perhaps the beasts depicted on the wall. She sensed that this place was ancient, though people had been down here recently. Annja saw that some of the smaller bones had been shattered, as if someone had walked on them. And a callous soul had dropped a chocolate bar wrapper. Dillon’s men, or maybe Dillon himself had come down here to make sure there were no emerald veins.

Emeralds were found closer to the surface.

She explored further, certain that she’d been here before—or rather it felt like that, familiar, yet discomforting, too.

“I dreamed this.”

“Pardon?” Roux was on his feet, brushing off the dust and dirt, scowling at the blood on his jeans. She watched him shift his weight from one foot to the next, testing each leg. “Annja, did I hear you right? Did you say you dreamed all of this?”

“Yes. No.” She shook her head and continued to prod the bones with her foot. “The Dslala dreaming experience, it is supposedly a mystical mind-expanding thing. I guess it was for me. Charlemagne, Joan of Arc. You were there, too. And there was this monstrous caiman. But I’m thinking the caiman represented Dillon. I felt like I was drowning, fighting him...fighting the caiman. I got free and found this cave.
This cave.
” She pointed to the paintings and turned her head so the light on her helmet showcased them. “I’m not kidding, Roux. I saw these exact paintings in that dream.” She dropped her gaze, the light falling on the bones.

There were several of the large cow-ape looking skulls. She waded in and picked one up. It was heavy. Her thumb rubbed across the surface, smooth and the shade of eggshells. “I’m taking this with us.”

“With us?” Roux snatched up the other hard hat and put it on. He walked around the cavern, and then looked up. “We’re not getting out that way. Not unless we can sprout wings or magically levitate.”

“You’re funny, old man. But we are getting out.” Annja carried the skull over to Edgar and checked on him again. “We’ll have to wait until he comes round.” She shivered. This far down, it was a little cold. She’d seen some decayed plants and retrieved them, putting them in a pile. Next, she found broken roots. Then back to the wall. She waded through the bones and hunted for small rocks.

“What are you doing?” Roux had taken his rain jacket off and respectfully placed it over Moons’s face.

“I want to keep Edgar warm. I’m starting a fire.” She sat next to the pile of broken roots and plant matter, rock chip in one hand. Annja opened her other hand and the sword appeared. “This blade is steel, and this is a piece of flint.”

“Yes. Very clever.”

Annja carefully arranged all the bits and pieces. Flint in her left hand, she awkwardly held the sword and struck it down on the edge of the rock. It took only a few tries for a spark to fly and catch the tinder. She leaned over it and blew gentle puffs until a flame grew, and then added her kindling.

“You could’ve managed it, too,” she said, warming her hands over it.

“But I, dear Annja, didn’t have the steel.”

“This won’t burn all that long unless we can add to it. We need to keep it small anyway, don’t need smoke choking us.” She saw Roux scanning the ground and coming up with more roots. “Great. Hey, you stay with him all right? I’ll be back.”

“You going to find us a way out?” Roux broke up the leaves and sticks he’d found and added them to the fire.

“That’s my plan.” She looked at him for a moment. He turned the light off on his helmet, letting the light from the small fire suffice. “For whatever reason, when I’d snuck into their camp yesterday I stuffed my pockets with batteries. I’ve got a dozen.” The flashlights on the helmet required two, and that’s how many she passed Roux. “Maybe some little voice in my head told me to take them.”

“Joan heard voices, too,” Roux said softly.

Annja didn’t have anything to say to that. She turned and struck out toward where the shadows were the thickest, a niggling memory of her dream tugging her.

Chapter 31

Annja was an experienced caver, and well aware of the rules...take nothing but pictures, well, she didn’t have a camera, leave only footprints, and kill nothing but your own time. She had no intention of harming the cave’s inhabitants. Bats, there were a good number of them, evidenced by the squeaks and rustling. She saw a few large spiders, a salamander-like creature and tiny insects.

The bats were what intrigued her. They might not have come in the same way she did. In fact, she prayed they hadn’t. They might be able to show her a way out. There were more paintings along the wall, showing more versions of what Annja guessed was a mapinguari. She wished she had a camera, but maybe...if she could get through this, she could come back and record these for
Chasing History’s Monsters.

Take nothing but pictures?

Annja hoped to break that rule and take out one of the unusual skulls.

There was no way to judge the time, her watch gone in the trade; she hadn’t thought to see if Moons or Edgar had one for the borrowing. Exhaustion couldn’t serve as a measure; she was already past the point of exhaustion and knew if she wasn’t moving, she’d be sleeping soundly. The floor of the cave sloped down dramatically now and there were no more paintings or bones in this section.

She walked through a stony corridor now, the ceiling higher than the beam of her light would reach, the walls steep and smooth and fifteen feet apart. If they were narrower, she could climb them with her legs and arms extended and sort of walk up the walls. There were no handholds that she could see. The place had been formed by a river.

Her footfalls echoed eerily, and she could hear her breath. She wondered if Edgar had come to. It would be better for his own health and well-being if he did; however, he’d then be faced with his friend’s death. Annja was glad she was away from the situation—she had enough of her own emotions to deal with.

Annja had to brace herself against wall when the floor sloped down at an even steeper grade. She almost stopped and turned back, needing to go up, not down. But she heard more bats ahead, and that presented more possibilities. She also noticed more paintings.

The archaeologist in her would have spent as much time as possible reveling in the discovery. These paintings were more intricate than the others, but in the same style and colors, suggesting the same relative time period, but more accomplished artists. No bones in here, but there were shaped rocks—primitive tools, a great find. She couldn’t help herself to take a brief look, her practiced eye noticing stone awls, scrapers, hammers and spear heads. They must have hunted game in the area and processed it, ground grains with some of the tools. Some were large. She’d seen enough Paleolithic relics to place these in the same area, about ten thousand years old when they’d likely went after large prey such as mammoths.

And maybe smaller game like mapinguaries, she thought.

She estimated she’d traveled two or three miles from Roux and Edgar, through the twists and turns it had taken. Now she stood at a wide point, roughly egg-shaped and with three tunnels leading away and looking to stretch ever downward.

“I shouldn’t be here alone.” It was the first basic rule of caving that she was violating. Two cavers were barely adequate—one to spot for and aid the other; but three should be the minimum, as well as three sources of light. Annja had one light, and it was fading. She replaced the batteries. Eight fresh batteries remaining.

She had no gear, no ropes, no jacket, and it was beyond chilly. She was cold. Annja could climb without ropes, provided she could find some hand-and foot-holds, but Edgar? The situation was starting to look more desperate.

Fatigued, hungry and with her optimism fading, Annja nevertheless pressed on.

Three tunnels, all pointing down.

“I need to go up.” She needed to get back to Roux and Edgar. But when she looked up again all she saw were walls that had been washed smooth by a river a long time ago and darkness.

She selected the tunnel to her right. Annja had no idea what direction she traveled, other than down. She’d gotten turned around in the number of curves the corridor had taken. West, she guessed, but ultimately the direction didn’t matter.

Down and down and down, an abrupt turn to the right and down so steeply now that she slid.

“Wonderful. Now how am I going to get back up? How in the—”

Then she heard it. The fluttering of wings and rushing water.

But the river was farther below, not above where the Amazon flowed.

A river under the river?

Down to go up.

Somewhere below was a way out.

Please,
Annja thought,
let there be a way out.