Virgin (19 page)

Dan caught up
to her and put an arm around her shoulders, as much for a need to touch her as
to stop her from getting too close to the edge. The sun cooked their backs
while the desert wind dried the sweat from the climb, and before them stretched
the eastern expanse of the
Midbar Yehuda,
all hills and mounds and
shadowed crags, looking like a rumpled yellow-brown blanket after a night of
passion, sloping down to the lowest point on earth where a sliver of the Dead
Sea was visible, sparkling in the late afternoon sun.

Breathtaking,
Dan thought. This almost makes the whole wild-goose chase worthwhile.

Together they
turned from the vista and scanned the mini-plateau atop the
tav.
It ran
two hundred feet from the front lip to the rear wall, and was perhaps a hundred
and fifty feet wide.
And against that rear wall, to the left of center, was a
pile of rocks.

Carrie grabbed
his upper arm. He felt her fingers sink into his biceps as she pointed to the
rocks.

"Oh, God,
Dan! There it is!"

"Just some rocks, Carrie. Doesn't mean--"

"She's
there, Dan. We've found her! We've
found
her!"

She broke from
him and dashed across the plateau. Dan hurried after her.

Here it comes,
he thought. Here's where the roof falls in on Carrie's quest.

By the time he
reached the pile, Carrie was on it, scrambling to the top. The pile was about
eight feet high and she was already at work pulling at the uppermost rocks to
dislodge them.

"Easy,
Carrie," Dan said as he climbed to her side and joined her atop the pile.
"The last thing we need is for you to slip and sprain an ankle. I have no
idea how I'd get you back down."

"Help
me," Carrie said, breathless with excitement. "She's just a few feet
away. We're almost there! I
can feel
it!"

Dan joined her
in dislodging the uppermost rocks and letting them roll to the base. The first
were on the small side, cantaloupe-sized and easy to move. But they quickly
graduated to watermelons.

Carrie groaned
as she strained against one of the larger stones. "I can't budge this.
Give me a hand, will you?"

Dan got a grip
on the edge of the rock and put his back into it and together they got it
overbalanced to the point where it tumbled down the pile.

Dan saw even
bigger stones below.

"We're going to need help," he said, panting and
straightening up. The sun was still actively baking the top of the
tav
rock
and he was drenched. "A lever of some sort. We'll never move those lower
rocks by ourselves. Maybe I can find a tree limb or something we can use
to--"

"We've
got
to get in!" Carrie said. Tears of frustration welled in her eyes as
she looked up at him. "We can't stop now. Not when we're this close. We
can't let a bunch of lousy rocks keep us out when we're so
close!"

With the last
word she kicked at one of the larger stones directly below her--and cried out in
alarm as it gave way beneath her. Dan grabbed her outflung hand and almost lost
his own footing as the entire pile shuddered and settled under them with a
rumble and a gush of dust.

"You all
right?" Dan said, pulling Carrie closer.

She coughed.
"I think so. What happened?"

"I'm not
sure." The dust was settling, layering their skin,
mixing with their sweat. Even with mud on her face Carrie
was beautiful. Over her shoulder, down by Carrie's feet, Dan saw a dark
crescent in the mountain wall. "Oh, Jesus."

Carrie turned
and gasped. "The cave!"

Maybe, Dan
thought. Maybe not. The only sure thing about it is it's a hole in the wall.

But he knew it was the upper rim of a cave mouth. Had to be.
Everything else in this elaborate scam had followed true to the forged scroll.
Why not the cave too?

But what sort
of ugly surprise waited within?

Before he could
stop her, Carrie had dropped prone and pushed her face into the opening.

"We left
the flashlights in the car," she was saying. "And I can't see a
thing."

Quickly he
pulled her back. "Are you nuts?"

"What's
the matter?"

"You don't
know what's in there."

"What
could be in there?"

"How about
snakes or scorpions? Or how about bats? It's a cave, you know."

"I know
that, but--"

"But
nothing," he said, pulling her to her feet. "You keep your nose out
of there while I go get the flashlights."

"All
right," she said reluctantly as she allowed him to guide her down to the
bottom of the pile.
"Can't see anything anyway."

"Precisely.
So you just wait here while I go back to the Explorer."

"Okay, but
hurry." She squeezed his hand. "Don't hurry so much you fall, but
hurry."

Dan made the
round trip as quickly as he could, hugging the cliff wall all the way down,
concentrating on the path and not looking down. He did spot another cave in the
far wall of the canyon--probably where the fictional author of the scrolls
supposedly had lived. He reminded himself to check it out before they left.

The sun had
continued its slide and the shadow of the canyon's western wall had crawled
three-quarters of the way
up the
tav
by
the time he returned to the top with the two flashlights.

He stood there a moment, panting, sweating from the climb, before
he realized he was alone on the plateau.

"Carrie?"
He dashed toward the rock pile, shouting as he ran.
"Carrie!"

"What?"

Her head popped
up atop the rock pile, smiling at him, and as he clambered up the boulders he
saw her lying on her belly with her legs and pelvis inside the opening. She
looked like someone half-swallowed by a stony mouth.

"My God,
Carrie, couldn't you wait? Get out of there!"

"I'm
fine." She reached a hand out to him. "Flashlight please."

"I'll go
first."

"No way.
You didn't even want to come."

Dan was tempted
to withhold the flashlight, make her climb out of there and let him flash a
light around inside that hole before she crawled in. But the excitement, the
childlike eagerness in her eyes weakened him. And after all, this was her show.

He flicked one
on to make sure it worked, then slapped the handle into her waiting palm.

"Be
careful. And wait right there. Don't go anywhere without me."

"Okay."
Another smile, so confident looking, but Dan noticed the flashlight shaking in
her hand. She pushed herself backward and slipped the rest of the way inside.

A chill of
foreboding ran through Dan as he saw Carrie disappear into that hole, swallowed
by the darkness. God knew what could be in there.

"Carrie?
You there? You okay?"

Her face
floated back into the light. "Of course I'm okay. Kind of cool in here,
and dusty, and it looks . . . empty."

I could have
told you that, Dan thought, but kept it to himself. He'd give anything to make
this right for her, but that was impossible. So the least he could do was be
there when the hurt hit.

"Stand
back a little. I'm coming in."

Dan slid down
onto his back and entered the opening feet first. A tight squeeze but he
managed to wriggle through with only a few minor scrapes and scratches.

Carrie stood a
few feet away, her back to him, playing her flashlight beam along the walls.

"You're
right," he said, coughing as he brushed himself off. "A lot cooler in
here. Almost cold."

Quickly he
flashed his own beam around. Not a cave so much as a rocky alcove, maybe a
dozen feet deep and fifteen wide, with rough, pocked walls. And no doubt about
its being empty. Not even a spider. Just dust--dry, powdered rock--layering the
floor. Only Carrie's footprints and his own marred the silky surface.

What do I say?
he wondered. Do I say
anything
--or let Carrie say it first?

As he stepped
toward her, Carrie suddenly moved away to the left.

"Look,
Dan. I think there's a tunnel here."

Dan caught up
to her, joined his flash beam to hers, and realized that what he had thought to
be a pocket recess near the floor of the cave was actually an opening into
another chamber.

Carrie dropped
to her hands and knees and shone her light through.

"See
anything?" Dan said, hovering over her.

"Looks
like more of the same. Tunnels only a couple of feet long. I'm going in for a
look."

Dan squatted
behind her and gently patted her buttocks. "Right behind you."

Carrie began to
crawl through, then stopped, freezing like a deer who's heard a twig break,
then quickly scrambled the rest of the way through.

"Oh,
Dan," he heard her say in a hoarse, quavering voice just above a whisper.
"Oh-Dan-oh-Dan-oh-Dan-oh-
Dan!"

He
belly-crawled through as fast as his elbows and knees could propel him and
bumped his head on the ceiling as he regained his feet on the other side.

But he
instantly forgot the pain when he saw what lay in the wavering beam of Carrie's
flashlight.

A woman.

An elderly
woman lying supine in an oblong niche in the wall of the chamber.

"It's . .
." Carrie's voice choked off and she cleared her throat. "It's her,
Dan. It's really her."

"Well,
it's somebody."

A jumble of
emotions tumbled through Dan. He was numb, he was exhausted, and he was angry.
He'd been preparing himself to comfort Carrie when she discovered she'd been
played for a fool. Entering the cave was supposed to be the last step in this
trek. Now he had one more thing to explain.

The scroll, the
careful and clever descriptions of this area of the Wilderness were one thing,
but this was going too far. This was . . .
ghoulish
was the most
appropriate word that came to mind.

"Look at
her, Dan," Carrie said. "It's
her."

Dan was doing
just that. The woman's robe was blue, its cowl up and around her head; short,
medium build, with thick strands of gray hair poking out from under the cowl.
Her wrinkled skin had a sallow, almost waxy look to it. Her eyes and lips were
closed, her cheeks slightly sunken, her nose generous without being large. Even
in the wavering light of the flash beams, she appeared to be a handsome,
elderly woman who might have been beautiful in her youth. She looked so
peaceful lying there. He noticed her hands were folded between her breasts.
Something about those hands . . .

"Look at
her fingernails," Carrie said, her voice hushed like someone whispering
during Benediction. Obviously she shared his feeling that they were
trespassing. 'They're so long."

"I hear
they continue to grow . . . the nails and the hair . . . after you're
dead."

Carrie stepped
closer but Dan gripped her arm and held her back.

"Don't. It
might be booby-trapped."

Carrie shook
off his hand and whirled to face him. He couldn't see her face but the anger in
her whisper told him all he needed to know about her expression.

"Stop it,
Dan! Haven't you gone far enough with this Doubting Thomas act?"

"It's not
an act, and I wish there was more light."

"So do it,
but there isn't. I wish we'd brought some sort of lantern but we didn't. This
is all we've got."

"All
right," he said. "But be careful."

Dan fought a
sick, anxious dread that coiled through his gut as he watched her approach the
body. And it
was
a body. Had to be. Too much detail for it to be
anything other than the real thing.