Subterranean

ELEVEN

ASHLEY PUSHED HER BOARD INTO HER PACK AND crossed over to the group clustered by a grove of stalagmites. Beams of hand lanterns and helmet lamps criss-crossed the blackness like fireflies in a jar. The cavern was about the size of a football stadium, infinitely smaller than Alpha Cavern's Grand Canyon scale.

A firm breeze, balmy and moist, blew through the cavern. Linda held a handkerchief up, and it flapped like a flag in the breeze.

"Caverns breathe in and out," Ben was explaining to Linda as Ashley walked up. "A response to changes in barometric pressure. I've even flown a kite in a cavern in Belize."

Linda lowered her arm. "I love this wind. It's so… so refreshing."

"All right, team," Ashley said as she stepped next to Ben. "The next kilometer of this system has already been mapped, so we can proceed at a fast clip."

Ben raised a hand. "I'd like to make a suggestion."

Ashley nodded. "By all means, I want everyone to feel free to offer input and suggestions. We are a team."

"Before we get to the unexplored areas ahead, I think we should buddy up. Caving involves more climbing up and down than walking on flat surfaces. In pairs, we can assist each other over the rough spots."

"Sounds good," Ashley said. "I think-"

Ben continued, "Also, by buddying up, we can conserve our batteries by having each pair only keep a single lamp lit. In this darkness, even a single light casts a big spot." He grinned at her. "After a day down here, too much light hurts the eyes. Trust me."

She nodded. Turning to the rest of the team, she pointed a thumb at Ben. "Let's do it, then. Everyone pick a partner."

Ben stepped immediately toward her. "Howdy, partner."

"Whoa," Ashley said. "Did you happen to notice we have an odd number of people here? As leader, I'll join other pairs as the need arises."

By this time, Linda and Khalid had already matched up, and the two SEALs had their heads bowed together, whispering. The remaining teammates, Michaelson and Ben, stared at each other.

"Shit," the major mumbled.

"Me and my dumb ideas," Ben said with a shake of his head.

Ashley hid a grin as she adjusted her pack. "With that out of the way, let's head on. We've got a lot of ground to cover."

She nodded toward the pair of grumbling men. "Ben and Michaelson will take the point. Let's all pay strict attention to Ben for the next few miles. He's the most experienced in caving, and I want everyone to learn proper spelunking skills and safety precautions. Let's not end up like that other team."

The group shifted backpacks into place and excess hand lanterns were clicked off. The level of light, Ashley noted, did not diminish to any significant degree. She followed Ben and Michaelson. As she walked, she cast her lantern back and forth, the darkness sucking at her light.

Her mind turned to her mission-both missions. She imagined being stranded in this Stygian blackness, watching the last of her batteries drain away while the darkness enveloped her in a cold embrace. She shivered. And what about the cliff builders, those long-lost ancestors of man? How did they survive in this eternal darkness?

She shook herself from this reverie as the team arrived at the next wormhole entrance. She stepped to the front.

Ben had his notebook-sized compass open, a geopositional tool tuned to a radio transmitter at the base that allowed Ben to calibrate not only their precise position in relation to the points of the compass but also the team's depth.

"They call this a map?" Ben said. As guide, he was keeper of the sketchy diagram drawn by the previous searchers. "It's crap. Look." He shoved the paper toward her. "No compass points, no distinct cavern delineations, no depth markers… No wonder the other team got lost!"

"That's why you're here," Ashley said. "You just map our way back home. We're counting on you."

"Well…" he said, stumbling for words, the wind knocked out of his sails. "A child could have done a better job."

"Then that makes you right for the job."

He looked sharply at her, and she gave him her best innocent expression. Seemingly satisfied, he turned away, his compass in hand.

She shook her head. Sometimes he and Jason were frighteningly similar. "If everyone is ready," she said, "let's proceed. I want to be into the new territory by the time we set up camp tonight."

Ashley hesitated.

"Just a little farther," Ben called to her from below.

Sucking at her lower lip, she stared down the steep slope before her. It looked more like a mile. Greased with mud, the cliff was slick as ice. Her eyes snaked upward, following her rope. Michaelson was snugged into a crevice several yards above and secured in place with a safety rope. Above him, at the lip of the cliff, hung Villanueva, clinging to a spur of rock and secured with a safety line. It was these two men's jobs to ensure a safe descent for the other teammates.

Ashley took a deep breath and pushed away from the wall as she had been instructed, allowing the rope to brake in the carabiner bars to stop her descent. She scrabbled downward, the toe of her left boot balancing on a protruding stone. Just a little farther.

The stone that had been supporting her suddenly slipped loose and tumbled downward. She plummeted after it, the rope racing between her gloved hands. Ben had schooled them to yell, "Falling!" when this sort of thing happened, but with her breath caught in a fear-constricted grip, all she could do was let out a high-pitched whine.

After a heartbeat, the whistling rope snagged in her carabiner and her descent jerked to a halt. A grunt of protest echoed from above as Michaelson caught her weight.

"Hey, careful up there," Ben yelled. "You damn near gave me a rock facial."

"Sorry," she said to the muddy wall swinging inches from her nose, both hands clamped on the rope.

"C'mon, relax, kid," Ben said. "Just get those feet back on the wall and finish the descent. You're almost on solid ground."

It was the solidness of that ground that concerned her. She had pictured her head slamming into that solid ground as she was falling, but she wasn't about to remain hanging here. There was only one way out of this predicament. Pulling into a squatting position, she got her boots up on the wall and straightened her legs out, pushing from the wall. With a jump, she rappelled down two yards and caught the wall with her boots. Not hesitating this time, she shot outward again and dropped another couple of yards. After two more hops, she felt Ben's arms around her waist.

"There you go," he said in her ear. "Piece of cake."

She settled her legs on the rocky floor, her knees wobbling a bit. "Yeah, no problem."

"This is good practice. Luckily we came across this bunny slope the first day. I'm sure there's hairier cliffs ahead of us."

She craned her head back. Villanueva was just a blur of light at the edge of the cliff above. She suppressed a groan, leaning on a stalagmite. And this was only day one.

Ashley rubbed her back, lowering herself slowly onto her air mattress. She could hear Michaelson mumbling into the radio several yards away, giving his final report of the day. The team had discovered signs of the previous party's passage-discarded items, boot tracks in silt, scruffs on rock-and were sticking close to their trail.

She let out a long sigh, stretching. A sharp jab in her lower back protested the motion. Their progress today seemed more like a battle. Slippery mud covered most of the walkways; sharp gypsum crystals clung to her entire body like sand on a beach, and grew more abrasive with each step; steep slopes and sharp inclines impeded their forward movement, slowing them to a crawl.

Worst of all, though, was the heat. An omnipresent wet blanket that grew heavier as the day's journey wore on. She took off her headband and twisted it, wringing out a stream of sweat. She now understood how risky dehydration was in caving. She unscrewed the top of her canteen, almost empty now. Tipping it back, she swallowed the last warm drops.

"You'll have to watch your water," Ben warned. "We can't count on finding a water hole every day." He nodded toward the small lake pooled in the back half of the cavern, half hidden by an outcropping of rock.

"I knew about this water hole," she said. "It's on the map."

"True, but this is the last cavern marked on the map. From here, it's to points unknown."

"I know. I'll be more conservative tomorrow. We should remind everyone in the morning. Especially Linda. She ran out of water at lunch and has been borrowing from my canteen."

"Yours too, huh?" Ben said with a smile. "She finished the last of mine an hour ago."

"Clever girl," Ashley said. "By the way, where is she?"

"Over at the pond… getting a drink of water."

She shook her head. "Tomorrow we'll need to be more strict with rationing."

"Oh, just leave her be. I was just joking. She's over there doing a water analysis. Besides, she's having a tough time of it."

"We all are."

Ben gestured toward the two SEALs, who were setting up the campstove a handful of yards away. Light pooled around them from their lanterns. "They barely broke a sweat."

She watched as Villanueva stripped off a khaki T-shirt and wiped his face and armpits before slipping into a green vest. With a small pop, Halloway lit the butane for the campstove. Both appeared as refreshed as if today's journey were nothing more than a Sunday walk through the park, while everyone else dragged as if just completing the Bataan death march, haggard, bone-tired. Her stomach rumbled audibly.

Ben raised an eyebrow. "I'm hungry too. But there's nothing except freeze-dried beans and franks."

"Right now, that would fit the bill."

Ben grinned. "Though a beer to wash it all down… now, that would be heaven." As he sat down on his own mattress, he suddenly swatted at his arm. "Hey, something just bit me!"

"What?"

He shined a light on his arm.

She leaned over and looked at the spot. "Looks like a mosquito."

"Bloody large skeeter. Just 'bout took a chunk out of my arm."

"Quit exaggerating."

He poked her with a finger. "Wait until you get speared. Don't come crying to me."

"That's odd," she said, scratching behind an ear. "What's a mosquito doing in Antarctica? Way down here?"

Ben's expression became serious. "Good question. You don't often find insects down here. Crickets, a few spiders, centipedes, that sort of thing-but I don't think I've ever seen a mosquito."

Ashley wondered at the significance of such a discovery. "Maybe we'd better ask our biologist."

"Thanks for sharing your water today, Khalid," said Linda. "I couldn't have made it without your help."

"Anytime," he said, breathing in the dank air. He sat on a rock, watching Linda scooping water into small glass vials. He appreciated the wide furrow of moisture down the middle of her back, pasting the cotton T-shirt to her body. The clasp of her bra was visible through the thin fabric. He bit his tongue to control his rising lust.

Smiling at him, Linda stood up and sat on the boulder beside him, shaking the vial in her hand. "That last ridge was brutal. I'm glad we're done for the day."

He could feel her body heat pulsing across the hand span of space between them. They sat in silence, Linda studying the crystal surface of the pond, Khalid studying her.

"My god!" she suddenly exclaimed, jumping to the edge of the black water. "Khalid, look over here." She crouched on her knees, waving him toward her.

He crossed to her, inhaling her scent, a hypnotic perfume in the moist air. "What is it?"

She lifted a curled shell, dripping and luminescent in the lamp's glow, that had been partially hidden by a rock in the shallows. Khalid cocked his head to the side. It looked similar to a snail's shell, but it was huge. Almost the size of a watermelon.

He asked again. "What is it?"

She rolled into a seated position, cradling the large shell in her lap. "If it's what I think it is…" She shook her head and placed a hand on his knee. "If it wasn't for your insistence that we stay a little longer, I may have missed it."

Her hand was a burning ember on his knee. He fought against pulling her into a hard embrace. A tightening in the crotch of his coveralls protested his restraint. "What's so special about an empty shell?" he asked in a strained voice.

Before she could answer, voices intruded.

"I'm telling you, the damned skeeter bit worse than a snake with broken fangs."

Ben spotted Khalid and Linda crouched by the shore of the pond. He noticed Linda slip her hand from the geologist's knee just as they rounded the rocky escarpment. Ben raised an eyebrow.

Ashley cleared her throat, announcing their presence. "Linda," she said as she approached, "Ben was just bitten by an insect that looks a lot like a mosquito. We wanted your opinion."

"Oh, sure, no problem. Did you catch one?"

"Well, kind of," he said, pointing to the smashed bug still smeared on his forearm.

She smiled, taking his forearm in her hands and rotating it into the light. "You didn't leave me much to go on." She leaned in closer. "I can't say for sure. There are hundreds of species of blood-hungry midges, flies, and mosquitoes. This could be anything." She released his arm.

"I was curious," Ashley said. "Ben told me there are seldom any biting insects in caves."

Linda scrunched up her eyebrows. "That makes sense. What would they feed on? No warm-blooded species down here." She shook her head. "They must gain sustenance in some other manner, but this individual was taking advantage of a new source for lunch." She shrugged. "These caverns just get more and more curious."

She clasped one arm around a large shell. "Look at this, for instance." She held up the shell for Ashley and Ben to examine. "Do you recognize this?"

Ashley took it from her and held it up, rotating it to view it from all angles and running a hand along its spiral loop. "Looks like a mollusk shell, but I'm unfamiliar with the species. Besides, you're the biologist."

"And you're the archaeologist. If it wasn't for my study of evolutionary biology, I wouldn't have recognized it."

"Well, what do you think it is?" Ben asked, lifting the shell into his hands, curious what all the commotion was about.

"It's the shell from an ammonite, a predatory squid," Linda said. "Species Maorites densicostatus."

"What?" Ashley snatched the shell back from Ben. She examined it again with keener interest, now holding it like it was the finest porcelain. "That's impossible. This is an actual shell. Not a fossil."

Ben stared at his empty hands. "What's the big deal? What's so bloody exciting about it anyway?"

Both women ignored him. "Are you sure?" Ashley asked. "Paleobiology was not a specialty of mine."

"Yes," Linda said. "Look here, at these striations. No modern mollusk has this conformation. And look at the chambering inside. Only one species has this unique shell. Definitely an ammonite."

Ashley leaned in closer. "But what's it doing here? Ammonites died out with the dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous period. This is an old shell, but I don't believe it dates back sixty-five million years."

"Let me take a look," Ben said, lifting the shell. "Many caves have preserved fossils, protected from the weather. Maybe this shell is just well preserved."

Linda nodded. "Perhaps. But before the expedition, in preparation for the trip, I read up on Antarctica's wildlife. On Seymour Island not far from here, scientists discovered many ammonite fossils. Remains that dated later than the Cretaceous extinction."

"Cretaceous extinction?" Ben asked. "What're you talking about?"

Ashley answered, "About 65 million years ago, at the end of the Cretaceous period, a great cataclysm wiped out huge numbers of species, including the dinosaurs. Some researchers theorized a massive asteroid struck the earth at that time, blowing up clouds of dust that blocked the sun and chilled the planet."

"Right," Linda added. "And the paleontologists studying Antarctica now believe that Antarctica's polar vortex may have stirred the winds enough to keep the asteroid's sky-darkening particles clear of this area, sparing this continent the great extinction."

Ben interrupted. "That's all old history. So these snails survived longer than anyone thought. So what? I mean-"

"Linda!" Khalid called. He had wandered off and knelt by the edge of the pond. "Here's another shell." He reached into the water, immersing his arm almost to his shoulder. "I can't reach… wait, no… there… I got it." He pulled his drenched arm out, his hand clasped around a shell larger than the first one. He straightened up, holding the shell above his head like a trophy.

Ben shook his head. Showing off big-time, he thought. He opened his mouth to make a comment when suddenly, from the shell, a flurry of thrashing tentacles sprouted. Linda gasped.

The tentacles latched onto Khalid's arm.

Khalid tried to shove the squid off his arm, but it clung tenaciously. Tears welled at the corner of his eyes, and he grimaced with pain. "The damned thing is biting me." Rivulets of blood could be seen beginning to trail down his arm. Groaning, Khalid swung his arm, cracking the shell against the rock wall beside him-to no avail.

Ben pulled a knife from his belt. "Hold still!"

Khalid froze, then a spasm of agony contorted his face. "Just get the thing off," he said between clenched teeth.

Ben slipped the blade between tentacle and skin. It was a tight fit. The creature's appendages clamped tightly to the flesh of Khalid's arm. Ben sawed through the meat of one tentacle, and greenish black ooze spurted from the amputated end. The thing tightened its other appendages, eliciting a groan from Khalid.

The monster's strength was fierce. If it constricts much more, Ben thought, it'll crush bone. He cautiously worked the knife under a second tentacle and cut. This time the thing twitched and loosened. After slicing through two more appendages, the creature released Khalid's arm, dropped to the cave floor, wobbled, and sucked its remaining tentacles back into its shell.

Khalid dropped to his knees with a low moan, a hand clasped over the wound, blood seeping between his fingers.

Ben kept an eye on the shell, black ooze dripping from its opening. With a scowl, he swung a boot and kicked the shell in a high arc over the pond. With a splash, the creature sank from view.

Ashley yelled at him, "Why the hell did you do that? We could have studied it. My god, it's an extinct species."

Ben pointed to Khalid's bloody arm. "Extinct, my ass."

"He'll live," Major Villanueva said.

Ashley watched him apply the bandage to Khalid's arm with a piece of waterproof tape. The SEAL, with his advanced training as a field medic, had taken over as soon as they had arrived back at camp. After cleaning the wound, he treated Khalid with topical and systemic antibiotics.

"Can he continue on with us?" she asked.

Villanueva shrugged one shoulder. "Nothing more than a deep puncture to the muscle of the forearm and some bruising. He'll be fine."

She nodded and turned away. Good. She'd hate to lose a team member before they had reached uncharted territory. As she passed the campstove, Halloway offered her a bowl of lukewarm chili and beans in a tin pan. She accepted it with a curt word of thanks and settled onto her air mattress with the pan balanced in her lap.

Ben had already scraped his bowl clean and looked greedily toward her plate. "So how's Khalid's arm?" he asked.

"Fine. They shot him full of antibiotics and painkillers."

Ben set down his plate. "That was one bloody weird creature."

She shrugged and spoke around a mouthful of beans. "I was talking to Linda. She said their main food source was a type of prehistoric lobster, and these waters are teeming with crustaceans of various types. So I suppose, in this isolated environment, the squid survived on similar food."

"Makes you wonder."

"About what?"

He nodded across the camp, where Michaelson had disassembled his rifle into small metal parts and inspected and cleaned each item. "What else has survived down here?"

That night, Ben had the dream again. He was walking through the cavern of his childhood nightmares, full of columns that sprouted fruit-bearing limbs. Light suffused from all directions, and as he wandered through the grove, something seemed to be drawing him forward, calling to him.

"Hello," he hollered into the empty cavern. "Who's there?"

Drawn toward the north side of the cavern, he tried to follow the song of the invisible sirens, but the trees crowded closer, blocking his passage. Unable to squeeze between the columns any farther, he could only peer past the trunks.

The north face of the cavern glowed with a soft light, except for a single black hole in the wall. A small cave, like the dwellings found near Alpha Base.

"Is anyone there?" he called, his face pressed between two trunks.

No answer. He waited, pushing against the trunks as if he could shift the rocky columns. As he watched, someone crawled from the small cave, on wrinkled hands and gnarled knees. The old man stood into the light, dark face painted with yellow and red stripes, dressed in a loincloth. The figure waved him forward.

Ben stretched out an arm, struggling to pass between the trunks of stone. "Grandfather!"

With a start, Ben jolted awake, bathed in sweat. He sat up on his air mattress. Only a single lantern illuminated the sleeping camp. Villanueva, who sat on a rock, raised a glance toward him. The SEALs had insisted on posting guards; after the squid incident, no one had argued.

Settling back into bed, Ben rolled over, his back to the light. The dream echoed in his mind, as if bouncing off the rock walls around him. He still felt a vague pull, a drive to continue deeper into the maze. He squeezed his eyelids closed.