Rogue Angel 47: River of Nightmares (20 page)

Chapter 34

This would be dangerous and desperate, but it would be their only chance. There’d be no chance if they stayed in the cavern and hoped someone would come rescue them. Dillon and his thugs had left them there to die. Joining the tributary would be exciting and frightening, too, and Annja had to admit that she was looking forward to that.

A life lived on the edge was sweeter, and the sense of peril would help keep her awake and alert.

She took off her boots and set them at the edge of the water.

“I didn’t like these anyway,” Edgar said, pulling at his boots and kicking them aside. He gave her a weak smile. “Stiff boots from a stiff. Moons would’ve thought that was funny.” He had to work at getting rid of his socks. He declined Annja’s offer of assistance. “If we don’t make it back here some future explorer is really gonna puzzle over the shoes.”

“We’ll make it back.” Annja was hoping to have the adventurous Marsha in the film crew.

Roux kept his boots on, but Annja saw him loosen the laces, probably in case they became too cumbersome in the river and he wanted to divest himself of them later.

She stepped into the water and almost lost her balance; straight down it was an unexpected drop-off. Annja was suddenly in waist-high water. And it was cold, but after a moment she adjusted. Edgar accepted her help this time and he settled in next to her. She grabbed his hand and interlaced their fingers.

“We stay together, all right?”

He nodded.

“The current doesn’t look fast, but—”

“I know. There might be undercurrents.” Edgar frowned and stepped forward cautiously.

Roux slipped in behind them. She saw the old man shiver.

“We could walk, I suppose,” Roux said. “Shallow enough. Right here it’s shallow enough.”

“Take too long,” Edgar said. “Take too much energy. Feel like I’m starving right now. And I’m so damn tired. And my arm hurts and...oh, never mind.”

Annja certainly felt like she was starving. She hadn’t eaten in two, maybe three days, possibly four? Time was a blur. Maybe there were fish here they could eat. She’d been thinking about that, summoning her sword and spearing something, not worrying that Edgar would see the weapon appear. She’d had sushi before, could well eat raw fish to survive.

Roux seemed to have the same idea. “Maybe there are fish that we could—”

“No.” Edgar made a face. “I’m not eating raw fish. And I’m praying, actually, that there aren’t any fish in this place. Bad enough the sorts of fish in the Amazon. Piranha, to start with.”

Annja’s dream came back in full force, the piranha that had bitten at her. That hadn’t been real, though, the fish and the caiman, all in her head and nurtured by whatever she’d swallowed in the shaman’s hut. She wished she was back in that hut right now, or that this was another dream.

“Fish with teeth and—” Edgar droned on.

Meanwhile, Annja was getting used to the feel of the current and walking with it. If there were any fish here, they would probably be small, about the size of her hand...blindfish, cavefish, she’d seen them when caving in other parts of the world. They looked almost alien in appearance.

She led Edgar farther out, the cold water swirling around her shoulders now. Annja hadn’t expected it to be quite this cold. It smelled so different than the Amazon far above them. The water smelled fresh, no scent of dirt or plants and animals to compete with it. Stone, though, she could smell the stone. She breathed deep and even and started to float, tightening her grip on Edgar’s hand as she tipped her head back. He finally stopped talking; she felt the added turbulence in the water from his legs moving as he treaded lightly next to her. The light from her helmet played along the rocky ceiling and the far wall—the primitive cave paintings of the legendary mapinguari seeming to move in slow dance steps.

She shared Edgar’s joy at the discovery of this place, though the cave paintings were far more significant to her. Those paintings...and the creatures who were only rumored to exist. They were a real treasure.

Annja focused on the images here and pictured the ones she’d seen earlier that were particularly strong, the colors still reasonably bright. It was something to keep her mind occupied and away from the unfortunate possibilities of this water ride.

How old were the images?

That would take scientific means—radioactive carbon dating. Clay, charcoal and plants had probably provided the pigments in this cave. The very earliest paintings were all one color, so Annja guessed these were somewhere between twenty thousand and eight thousand BC...
old.

Annja wanted to survive as much to tell the world about these cave paintings as she did to stop Dillon. The man had to be locked up for the rest of his life. She
had
to survive, as she had work to do. Finding her way back to Arthur Dillon was at the top of her list.

It was all so eerie. For a change Edgar was not talking; the only sound was the water carrying them and lapping at its limestone banks. The noise was loud at times and distorting. Her ears filled with water, slightly uncomfortable. She wished she’d thought to ask Edgar or Roux the time when they went in, so she could tell how long the trip was taking. She could ask them now, in the event one of them had a waterproof watch...but that might only cause depression. She had a feeling this trip was going to take a while. It occurred to her that she should be more frightened than she was, that she should be contemplating death. But she wasn’t, and she didn’t.

The tunnel changed direction, angling steeply away and rising, the speed of the current increasing. It went faster still when the cavern widened to give the tributary more room and the ceiling rose so high Annja couldn’t see it. The smell was awful and she breathed as little as possible and heard Roux making a gagging sound. There were bats in here; she heard them flying. By the sounds and smell she guessed there were hundreds or maybe thousands. She tried to swim toward the edge, while still keeping hold of Edgar, figuring that the bats would have gotten in here somehow. He was dead weight, passed out and floating; her fingers ached from holding on to him.

“Edgar!”

He stirred.

“Come with me.”

“God, that smell!” He cooperated and they headed toward the river’s edge. It looked like there was enough of a ledge to crawl up on. Maybe the bats had come in through the ceiling somewhere. That possibility was something Annja wanted to explore.

“The ground is too slick to grab onto,” Edgar said, trying to climb up on the ledge.

Annja changed her mind and tugged Edgar back toward the center of the tributary.

“Okay. That was a mistake.” Annja took small quick breaths; they were all she could handle.

The stench was from the guano, a rancid, overpowering ammonia smell. Enough of it and it could rot sheetrock, and it harbored disease.

“That was lovely, Annja,” Roux said. He was treading with one hand cupped over his mouth. “Let’s not repeat that, all right?”

She leaned back and let the water carry her. It felt as if it was going slower; ahead the channel narrowed. Edgar squealed when he was battered up against one side of the rock wall. Annja was scraped, too. The channel curved abruptly, straightened for only a short distance and then followed an “S” pattern. At the same time the ceiling came lower and lower, her light brighter against the stone. The air was fresh, but close.

And then everything went dark when the batteries died.

Now, Annja allowed more fear to seep in. Her heart beat faster.

“Crap,” Edgar said. He squeezed Annja’s hand tighter. “Just crap.”

Everything sounded louder, though Annja figured that wasn’t really the case, just that she was perceiving it that way because she couldn’t see. D’jok had been right—limit one sense and the others magnify what they take in.

“Roux?” She wanted to make sure he was nearby. “Roux!”

No answer.

Again she was thrown against a rock wall and felt like a discarded doll battered by cruel elements. Edgar let go of her hand and she flailed around trying to find him.

Nothing, nothing...there! She grabbed his shirt and pulled him to her. He wasn’t moving on his own and she shielded him as best she could from the wall as they continued through the channel. Holding him with one hand, she felt his head with the other, making sure he stayed above the surface. She could feel warm blood. He’d hit his head.

“Edgar!”

Definitely unconscious, but he was breathing. Annja concentrated on keeping Edgar’s face tipped up. The blood flowed over her fingers; it was a bad wound. His broken arm floated free; the belt that had held it close to him had come undone. Nothing to be done about it, she knew, just keep him from drowning.

“Roux!” she tried once more. “Can you hear me, Roux?”

Still no answer, only the sound of the water. Annja lost her hard hat the next time she struck the wall, and her hair floated free, tangling in front of her face. Had she been foolish to talk Edgar and Roux into this? Had there been another way out of Dillon’s deathtrap, and she’d been too exhausted to see it? Should they have waited in the cavern and hoped for a rescue from some outside source... would her
Chasing History’s Monsters
crew have let the authorities know she was with the Dslala? The Dslala somehow coming to their aid? Should they have waited?

“No one saves us but ourselves. No one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path.” The words had been attributed to Buddha. One of the caretakers at the orphanage in New Orleans had been Buddhist. Annja had found comfort in those words as a child, and that quote in particular had always stayed with her. “No one saves us but ourselves.” The river had been their best opportunity. Waiting for any help could have meant waiting to die.

She couldn’t judge the time; it felt like hours had passed, maybe more...maybe days. She felt numb from the cold and lack of food, the water seeming ethereal as it carried her. She’d managed to angle herself so she was floating on her back and didn’t have to tread; her legs had gotten too tired. All her effort was directed at staying awake and keeping her and Edgar’s heads up. He floated limp next to her. Sometimes water filled her mouth. It was fresh and clean, cold, and she gulped it down. Let it fill her belly and trick her body into thinking she’d had something to eat. Wasn’t that a dieter’s trick? Drink water before a meal so you don’t eat as much? Your stomach thinking it’s already sated? Annja had been blessed with a metabolism that made counting calories unnecessary.

Her mind started to wander, images of the orphanage popping in, some of the children morphing into miniature Buddhas. “No one saves us but ourselves,” they chanted in unison. Then Charlemagne and his army thundered on horseback through the streets of New Orleans and chased the little Buddhas away. Hallucinating. Delirious.

“Stay with me,” she whispered to Edgar. “Stay—”

Annja’s face scraped hard against rocks directly overhead and she had just enough time to suck in some air. The space above the river had vanished. Keeping one hand on Edgar, she floundered around with her free hand, hoping to find a pocket of air. Desperate, she started treading, trying to reach what might pass for the bank, praying to find a ledge to pull them up on, mounds of guano be damned.

But there was nothing, and the channel only tightened. It felt as if they being pushed through a garden hose. Once more her dream rushed back, being pulled down by a caiman, down and down. But this time there was no down, only being tossed about by water. Like the tributary had become angry and was lashing out. There was life in the ink; she felt things brushing up against her and guessed they were fish.

Then abruptly Annja felt herself flying, and she wrapped her arms around Edgar in a vise grip. Air was all around her and she took in great gulps of it. She could still hear the water, thundering, a recognizable sound—a waterfall. She and Edgar plummeted, striking water again and going under, the gushing torrent of the falls thrusting them to the unforgiving bottom.

No. No. No,
her mind shouted.
Don’t—

Annja blacked out.

Chapter 35

Annja tasted blood. She ran her tongue around inside her mouth and discovered she’d broken a tooth—fixable. She was probably fixable, too; she was alive. The waterfall had wedged her between two rocks. Her face felt as if it was on fire. Maybe she’d broken her nose. She gingerly touched it. Yes, a broken nose, a gash on her cheek, another one above her right eye.

Pain was the body’s way of letting you know you’re alive...hmm.

She’d expected to drown, maybe meeting Joan of Arc face-to-face, but not this, not...nothingness. That part of the very rocky tunnel the channel flowed through had opened up to provide a miracle. Air, and lots of it. Fresh air.

“Roux.” The word came out too softly to be heard over the rushing water. The tributary sounded like thunder, and it surged past her. She didn’t want to go any farther into the abyss, wherever this current traveled to. There was real fresh air here, and that meant it was coming in from somewhere.

Everything was black. “Roux!” she tried again, rewarded with a mouthful of cold water. “Edgar!”

Had they been carried ahead? Had they been crushed by rocks? Or had they drowned? Rather, had Edgar drowned?

“Edgar!”

She could only hear the water.

Annja felt weak, battered by the rocks and river, no food for days. How long had she and Edgar and Roux been at this? More than a day at least; she didn’t need a watch to tell her that. But how much longer?

Her arms felt practically useless, yet she managed to wrap one around a rock to anchor her and stretch out the other to do a little exploring. The current threatened to dislodge her, but Annja was persistent. Doug had once complimented her on it. That was one of the few days she hadn’t argued with him over something.

What is...there!
She grabbed onto a rock sticking up and out of the water like a stalagmite. She pulled herself toward it and wrapped her arms around it. Her face pressed against it; its odor was strong. It was indeed a stalagmite. She stretched out again, fingers brushing another. Annja pushed off against her post, and with hands outstretched caught another one and held on with every ounce of power she had left.

“Roux!” No reply. Nothing. “Edgar!”

Stretching out, she found the next stalagmite much closer this time. Annja didn’t know where she was going, but it felt good to be out of the current for now.

Another stalagmite, and then she felt a rocky ledge. She pulled herself up on it, and crawled farther away from the water. The farther she went, the better she felt.

Annja stretched out on her back and shivered, listened to the water and thought about Edgar and Roux, Moons who’d died before they even reached the underground tributary. Mostly she thought about Dillon; wanting to bring him to justice gave her strength. She must have dozed for a while because she was dry now, although her hair was still damp.

She got to her feet, shaky, the muscles in her legs feeling like noodles. Wobbly, she took a few steps, small and shuffling, not wanting to end up back in the river if she could help it.

“Edgar!” Her voice had more power now and it came back at her, reflecting off a wall she could see. “Edgar! Roux!”

She thought she heard something.

“Roux?” She took another step forward and strained to hear anything besides the waterfall. “Edgar!”

She did hear something, a moan. Her name? Someone said her name.

“Roux!”

“I’m here. You don’t have to shout.”

“Where are you?”

A chuckle. “Don’t know. Can’t see a damn thing.”

“Keep talking.”

He did and she carefully walked in that direction, realizing the ledge she was on was more than a ledge, the size undeterminable. Annja slipped in guano, picked herself up and continued on. Her limbs ached and she felt so empty inside.

Finally, she bumped into the old man. He was seated, back to a stalagmite.

“You stink,” he said.

“Thanks.” She had to admit the guano-smeared clothes smelled awful. “Edgar?”

“He’s not here.”

She crouched down next to Roux.

“Seriously, you stink.”

“I had a hold of him,” Annja said. “Then we went under.”

They didn’t say anything for a while. She listened to the river and the gentle flutter of the bats moving overhead.

“I’ve felt around every inch of this spot, as much as I could,” Roux said. “Searching for you. For Edgar. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. You were going to ask me that next, right? I lost my watch in the river. Edgar got lost in the river.”

“I had a hold of him and—”

“Not your fault, Annja. It was a miracle he hadn’t died earlier, when Dillon’s man pushed him through the hole. He should have died then, when the girl did. Would’ve been more merciful.”

Roux sounded thoroughly defeated, and Annja imagined a sorrowful expression on his face. He was probably thinking that she would die here, just like Moons had, and like Edgar most certainly had. If she didn’t die of starvation...she’d passed the point of feeling ravenous. Now she just felt weak and numb, her fingers and lips trembling; serious hunger, her head dully pounding.

“I’m not going to die here,” she said to herself as much as to Roux.

She’d been listening closely to the bats, and they were leaving.

And she was going to follow them out of this place.

Annja had a hard time standing, her legs not cooperating. She pulled herself up by finding breaks in the rock. Listening to the shrieking bats, she followed them, hands out in front of her like a mummy in an old black-and-white film. She found another stone wall and could hear no more flying bats. However many there had been, they were all gone.

And they’d left through a hole very high up.

The moon must be full and bright for it to shine down. It was a spotlight that didn’t reach her, and yet it reached far enough to give her hope.

“I’m not dying down here, Roux. Do you hear me?”

He mumbled something. Sounded like swearwords, but in German.

“I’m climbing out. You can come with me if you’d like.” At least, Annja hoped she was climbing out. She felt the wall, searching for dry spots and other good places to hold. So much was too slippery, but she persisted, keeping the faint overhead light in view. Finally she found a deep enough niche to wedge her fingers into. She started up. “I’m serious, Roux, I’m getting out of here.” She heard some shuffling, the sound of him cracking into another stalagmite, heard him fall.

“Verdammt!”

Annja wasn’t fluent in German, but she knew that word.

“I’m not waiting, Roux.” But she was, climbing slowly, talking as she went—about the river and the cave paintings, staying away from the depressing subject of Edgar and Moons. She heard him climbing below her. Despite his age—real or otherwise—she knew him to be athletic. Roux probably didn’t share her total exhaustion; her legs felt like lead as she pulled one up over the other, searching for spots to wedge her toes in. Too, Roux had kept his boots on. She could hear the scraping sound of the leather against the rock.

He fell once, and she hung suspended, waiting for him to start again. “I could come back for you,” she offered. “Find ropes, people to help, old—” She stopped herself from calling him “old man” again.

“Just climb.” She could tell his words came out between clenched teeth. His cursing continued, louder and with more variation.

After many minutes, Annja found a wide enough ledge to rest her knees; her face pressed against the stone, she took several deep breaths. She was starting to doubt this route; giving herself to the river and seeing if she’d survive the rest might have been the better route. If she fell from this height...she’d be done.

Annja waited. The fates had smiled on her so far, giving her a rock wall with plenty of hand-and footholds. Otherwise, she never would have been able to attempt this climb. It felt like forever before Roux joined her. She pulled him up to her perch. His breath was ragged and he didn’t talk. After a short while, she broke the silence.

“I need to rest,” Annja said. “Before I start up again. Is that all right with you?”

“Yes.” It was a whisper.

* * *

A
NNJA
AWOKE
TO
the sound of bat wings flapping, the air rushing against her face. Maybe it was almost daylight above. She didn’t feel any better for having rested; her legs still felt like weights when she managed to stand. Looking straight up, she thought she saw a hint of light...or rather less black.

Annja consoled herself, took a deep breath and began climbing again. One hand, one foot, over and over again. She still couldn’t hear Roux; for now, she would go on alone. But then she heard...thunder? Rain, she didn’t need. Wet rock would make the climb even more difficult, and it had been difficult enough.

“Move. Move. Move.” She gritted her teeth and increased her rate of ascent. The spot of light she’d seen above only a few minutes ago was gone; no doubt the sky—however high up—had gone dark with clouds. What were those curse words Roux had used? Her stomach, legs, every inch of her ached. Her fingers and feet were bloody from cutting them on the rock. Annja let anger fuel her; an image of Dillon flashed in front of her eyes. “Move. Move. Move!”

It was raining.

She’d poked her head out of the hole like a rabbit, and scrambled topside. She lay on her belly, peering down into the darkness, listening for Roux. The hole she’d climbed out of wasn’t large, and she used her body to shield as much of it as she could, trying to keep the hand-and footholds dry for him.

“Roux?” She risked after a minute or two. “Are you there?”

There was silence. The tempo of the rain increased, drumming against her back.

“Roux! Roux! Roux, are you—”

“Of course I’m here,” he hollered. His voice sounded distant. “Where else do you think I would’ve gone to?”

Annja shut up and waited, listening to the thunder, dozing, and then waking when Roux’s hands reached up and out of the hole. Reflexively, she grabbed him, holding as tight as she could manage.

“Pull harder!” Roux commanded. “C’mon, Annja!”

She heaved and got him halfway out, and he struggled himself the rest of the way. He rolled onto his back and she took stock of him. His clothes were shredded, his face and hands crisscrossed with cuts. The rain pelted down on him.

“The next time—” he began. “The next time I worry about you I am staying in France.”

“Probably a good idea,” she said. Annja lay at a right angle from him, too worn out to move. In the time since she’d inherited Joan of Arc’s sword, she’d been shot at, chased, attacked with all manner of weapons. Someone even tried to do her in with explosives. She’d never been tossed down a hole in a tropical rainforest before with the intent of letting her die there.

Dillon had almost succeeded.

“Do you want to stay here, Roux? Mend or whatever it is you do while I go for help?”

“No,” he answered curtly. “I’m going with you.”

But he didn’t. He remained flat on his back, the rain pattering against him.

She struggled to her feet, picked a direction, and struck out. Annja would come back for him later, after she figured out where in the world she’d just arrived.