Deity (15 page)

“That’s
our way out,” Lori said.

“Wait
a minute,” Peet said. “We’re not talking about a door we can just walk through
here. There’s no telling how many tons of rock were used to seal this cave. We’ll
never be able to remove it.”

“Maybe
we won’t have to,” Chac thought out loud. “As I recall the seal is, for the
most part, a slab of limestone. It might be porous enough to blast our way
out.”

“How
are we going to do that?” Lori asked doubtfully. “You got a stick of dynamite
hidden in those thigh pockets?”

“Not
quite.”

Chac
handed her the gas can. The damaged flood lamp he passed on to Peet. “Whatever
you do, don’t drop this,” he instructed. “Take your flashlights. I’ll meet you
at that end of the cavern.”

Before
the words had finished Chac’s mouth, Lori was sloshing through the water that
had already breached the dry ground. Peet followed, tenderly stepping over
shards of rock as their shadows shifted away from their passing beams of light.
She hurried forward, weighting the darkness with her silence.

Or
was that just his conscience?

Now is the time
.

“Lori,”
Peet started, struggling to match her pace over the uneven stone. “I feel I
should apologize—”

“Don’t,”
she snapped. “An apology now makes this feel like the end.”

Peet
hesitated as they came to a wall.

“This
isn’t the end,” she said determinedly as she ran her flashlight beam over an
uneven texture in the wall. “We’re getting out of here.”

“You
don’t understand—”

“I’m
not listening,” Lori warned as she examined the wall.

Peet
sighed and ran his hand over a seam in the rock, where stone overlapped stone. If
she wasn’t going to accept his apology now, he’d just have to cooperate and
find a way out of the cavern. Only then might she allow an explanation.

“It
looks like two, maybe three boulders were placed here to seal off the cave
entrance,” he offered.

Lori
found another seam in the rock. She studied it a moment, following it down to
the stone floor where a fissure in the rock created an alcove just large enough
to fit an adult’s head. There, she squatted and placed a hand in front of the
hole. “Hey! I think there’s a weak spot here!”

Peet
knelt beside her and reached for the wall. Lori snatched her hand back. As he
held his hand in front of the hole he discovered something peculiar.

The
wall was breathing!

“We’re
just inches away from getting out of here!” Lori gasped.

Peet
had his doubts. The Yucatan
forest, even in its dry season, was dense and airless. It would take a
considerable wind to move the air through the vegetation.

So
where exactly was the air coming from?

“Chac!”
Lori called. “Over here!”

The
bright wrist light bounced toward them as Chac approached with the generator’s
salvaged battery tucked under his arm.

“There’s
a weak spot here,” Lori announced, pointing out the fissure.

“Excellent,”
Chac said. “We’ll need all the help we can get.” With that, he dropped the
battery to the ground and took up the flood lamp.

“What
are you going to do?” Lori asked.

“With
any luck, I’ll blow our way out of here.”

“I’m
not so sure about this,” Peet objected. “You saw what happened with the last
bomb. Another blast could completely cave this place in on top of us.”

“We’ll
be lucky if there’s enough fumes in that gas can to light off a decent firework
show,” Chac said.

“And
if you’re wrong?” Peet asked.

Chac
unscrewed the incandescent bulb from the lamp. “If I’m wrong, one of two things
will happen. First, the explosion could be strong enough to destabilize the
seal and give us the opportunity to dig our way out of here.”

“That
sounds great,” Lori said.

“It
could also weaken the mouth of the cave and collapse this part of the cavern
that we’re standing in.”

Lori’s
face pinched with worry. “So is there a door number three?”

“There’s
the chance the bomb won’t work at all and we all get to sit here and wait to
drown.”

* * * *

Chac
didn’t like their chances any better than Peet or Lori but that wasn’t about to
stop him from trying. He’d been through tougher scrapes than this and if there
was anything he learned from them it was that there was always a way out if he
was willing to risk the odds.

Over
the years, Chac had come to realize that odds were a luxury no matter how
stacked against him they were. With them, there was still opportunity—something
to work with and manipulate. There was still wiggle room.
A
chance.
Without odds, there was only absolute certainty. Without odds
there was no gray area to control the direction of his fate, and Chac liked
control.

It was with utmost care that Chac broke the lamp’s glass
light bulb without damaging the incandescent filament inside. He handed it to
Lori who took it as though gripping a delicate egg between her fingers.

With
Peet’s help, Chac removed the light shield from the flood lamp and extracted
the wire from its broken aluminum stand. Handing the professor his dull diving
knife, he instructed him to peel the plastic coating from around the wires
while Chac turned his attention to the gas can. He shook it well, hoping to
release as much fumes as possible from the remaining liquid. Then, taking the
filament back from Lori, he laid the gas can on its side on the ground. He
unscrewed the cap, slipped the filament inside and quickly sealed it tight
again with some electrical tape he’d found atop the generator.

“Hopefully,
the filament will have enough
spark
left to set off
the fumes,” he said, squeezing the can into the seal’s limestone fissure. “How
are the wires coming?”

“All
but finished,” Peet said, giving the wires one last whittle.

He handed the copper ends over to Chac. Perfect. Chac
wound the first wire onto the battery post and not a moment too soon. The
diver’s light on his wrist was beginning to fade. “Get back and take cover,” he
ordered. “And cross your fingers.”

Without
a word, Lori tucked herself behind Peet as they backed themselves behind a
large boulder. Chac lay prone behind another rock directly across from them. The
light was fading fast. With the battery between his hands in front of him, Chac
took up the second wire and held his breath.

Let this work. Please
let this work.

Chac
closed his eyes and just as he touched the wire to the battery, the light went
out.

Through The Darkness

There
was a pop, a gentle spark, and a fraction of a second later a flash of light
penetrated the darkness with an explosive crack. Peet ducked instinctively but
it seemed just as Chac’s makeshift bomb went off, the Mayan was tugging urgently
on his arm.

“GogoGO!”

Peet
scrambled to his feet, spotting the only thing he could see—a patch of filtered
daylight ahead. Instinctively, he ran toward the light as more rock and debris
began to rain down around him. Encouraged by the sounds of Lori and Chac clambering
beside him, Peet pressed forward, ducking beneath the invisible onslaught. He
covered his head with his arms to which he was rewarded with a glancing blow
off his elbow, setting his funny bone into a numbing frenzy. But it was his
feet, protected only by the fabric of his
wetsuit, that
took the brunt of the pain as he stumbled over loose shards of rock in his
blind pursuit of the light.

The
hole, he happily realized, was just large enough for a man to squeeze through. Chac
had done it! The seal had been punctured. Their escape was within reach!

The
glow that gave texture to the ground-level stone around the hole was only
meters away and closing fast when Peet heard the crack above his head.

“Dr.
Peet!”

Two hands shoved him from behind. Peet collided with
Chac’s solid frame and together they fell in a heap at the base of the stone
seal, landing face first into the fresh air venting through the hole. But that
taste of pending freedom was immediately overshadowed by the dull thud that
trembled
the ground behind them. Another boulder had fallen.
The unstable cave was collapsing.

“Lori!”

Peet
struggled to gather himself, but Chac was tugging on him again. “We have to get
out now!”

Peet
wrenched himself free and lunged back into the darkness only to smack face
first into a wall of limestone…a wall where he’d stood just moments before.

“Lori!
LORI!”

Peet
groped the darkness but there was no getting around the collapsed earth and
limestone. More rock fell in the wake of the collapse, clipping Peet on the
shoulder and pelting his face with dirt. The ground rumbled violently beneath
his feet. There was the deafening, eerie whoosh of an earthen avalanche.

Chac
grabbed his arm in an inescapable grip. Against his will, Peet was flung back
toward the hole. “Get out of here!” Chac ordered.

“But
Lori—”

“There’s
no time!”

Chac
frantically ushered Peet into the hole. There was no turning back. With Chac
hot on his heels, Peet belly-crawled his way out of the cave. The sunlight
would have been blinding had it not been for the tree canopy filtering it into
tiny specks on the choking vegetation. A tangle of twigs and leaves greeted
Peet on the other side of the hole. It was a barrier as nearly impassible as
the stone seal they’d just blown a hole through but that didn’t deter Chac who
continued to claw along Peet’s legs as though determined to be the first to get
through.

Until the ground fell out from under them.

Like
the ripple of an earthquake, the ground dissolved beneath Peet, starting first
at his feet and then immediately giving out at his knees and then his hips. Tangled
within the brush, Peet didn’t even realize the earth had given way beneath his
chest until he suddenly found himself dangling over the edge of a giant
sinkhole, held only by the vegetation that had snared him.

His
arms burned as the very limbs that had saved him now threatened to cut his
circulation off. But it wasn’t just his weight that tested the endurance of the
jungle roots. It wasn’t until Peet vainly attempted to pull himself up that he
realized Chac was still with him, dangling with an iron grip around his ankles.

The
plants began to give from the thin soil. Peet clawed for a more solid grip but
Chac’s weight was pulling him down. Straining with everything he had, Peet
desperately clung to the limestone ledge as a jolt of pain shot through his
right wrist.

“Do
something, Chac!” he groaned. “I can’t hold on much longer!”

* * * *

Chac
could hardly see through the blood and dirt running in his eyes. His head
throbbed where he’d been clipped with the final collapse and now he dangled
with flecks of sunlight above a pool of water that had just devoured the
remains of the cavern’s ceiling ten meters below. His burnt forearm seared with
pain, his own flesh bright and angry, but the agony didn’t stop there. Pain
coursed up the entire length of his arm right up to his shoulder which had been
dislocated from a falling rock - his arm now held in place by straining muscle
and tendon.

He
cleared his watery eyes of dirt on a bicep and suddenly realized their
precarious situation. The cavern had collapsed completely, leaving a tremendous
hole, a cenote, in which he was now suspended over at the end of Peet’s legs. The
walls of the cenote were abruptly vertical, as though a giant drill had just
bore a fresh hole in the earth. If they fell into the water below, there’d be
no climbing back out.

There
was no escape, and Peet’s strength was giving out fast.

“Chac,”
Peet howled desperately.

There
was no time to think. Chac had to move fast. He had to…let go.

“Chac!”

With
a deep breath, Chac plunged into the water. The liquid echo of his descent
flooded his ears. He kicked for the surface and with the first stroke of his
arms he felt a pop as his shoulder relocated itself.

When
he surfaced again, he found Peet pulling himself over the lip of the cenote,
anxiously looking down at him and tenderly cradling his right wrist. “You all
right?” the professor called down.

“I’m
fine,” Chac replied. “There’s a rope in the back of my jeep—”

Peet
needed no further prompting. He immediately sprang to his feet and disappeared
through the brush. Chac took a deep breath and dove back under.

The
water was murky, gritty. He could hardly see. He hadn’t gone far when the
darkness closed around him again - a grim, haunting darkness. Every nerve
fought to return to the surface, to forever rid
himself
of the crushing darkness, but Lori was still down there and she needed him.