Chapter 51.
Mammoth Cave
Kentucky
Four groups of four players have gathered in the mountains of south-central Kentucky, in what The Host calls “an unmapped branch of the Mammoth Cave system” that stretches for hundreds of miles.
Jack McHenry knows better. Mammoth Cave is mapped the way oceans are mapped: not completely, not perfectly, but thoroughly enough that anyone who says “unexplored” is trying to sell you something.
This isn’t unexplored.
It’s restricted.
The “Alpha” group is the first to enter the caves, followed by “Bravo” and “Charlie,” each from a separate location. The “Delta” group is the last to enter:
Jack McHenry—already flashing back to deployments where caves meant traps and ambushes and the ugly, stale smell of fear.
Elena Torres—who grew up visiting the Nerja caves near Málaga, and thought those were frightening until this.
Rupert Chadwick—the fourteen-year-old Brit asked now to be as adult as he’s ever been.
Conner Lynch—native of Kentucky. Former all-American receiver at West Point.
Former Rhodes Scholar. Retired Golden Boy congressman from his state once considered to be a possible presidential candidate until he became disillusioned.
He left government so publicly that half the country called him a coward and the other half called him honest.
At the age of fifty, Conner had begun hosting a wildly popular podcast, in the hope that he might do more good for the country there.
“Lyndon Johnson, a proud Texan, once said it was better to have J. Edgar Hoover inside the tent pissing out than outside pissing in,” Conner had said to Jack on the bus. “Well, I’m outside pissing in now.”
All they know in advance is that there is a surprise waiting right before they see daylight again.
“But for now,” The Host had said on their ride in, “your challenge is simple: get to that daylight without falling.
“There are more than four hundred miles officially mapped out in the Mammoth Cave system, mostly near Mammoth Cave National Park. But the only people who have attempted to map out the route you’re about to take work for me. Well, the ones who survived.”
No phones. No watches. No GPS. Only small flashlights and the hard little security earpiece in each of their ears—The Host’s voice, if he decides to use it.
“How will we know when we’ve reached the finale?” Conner asks. “Or end zone, or whatever you want to call it?”
“Oh, you’ll know, Congressman,” The Host says. “Trust me, you will know.”
They proceed slowly, without any sense of time.
They make their way carefully along the walls, feeling their way in the semi-darkness, afraid to look past the end of the short beams of their flashlights or down into the deep caverns below them.
The caves are both forbidding and beautiful at the same time.
All of them move cautiously, afraid that one misstep, one bad slip, and they disappear into the darkness.
Their flashlight beams cut through dust and darkness and make everything look closer than it is—right until you glance down and realize the floor is not a floor at all.
It’s a drop.
A void.
Jack takes point. Conner asked him to.
“All I had was an intelligence assignment after West Point,” Conner tells him. “I defer to a man who served in a forward zone.”
“I feel I’m back in the many caves during various missions,” Jack says, “almost always walking into a trap.”
“But you’re still here, aren’t you?” Conner says. “I’ll take my chances following you, Jack. We all will.”
Jack keeps one hand on the wall as much as he can, testing each step, watching for loose rock and slick mud.
“Segunda,” Elena Torres says.
Jack takes a moment to lock eyes with her. They smile at each other. The warm and familiar smile of a growing affection. Maybe even young love.
Jack tells Rupert to stay directly behind him.
“Jack,” Rupert whispers to him at one point. “I’m so afraid.”
“Hey, pal,” Jack says. “We all are.”
“You don’t understand,” Rupert swallows. “The thing I’m most afraid of in the whole world is the dark.”
Jack stops the line with a raised fist. They freeze.
He crouches in front of Rupert, close enough that the boy can see his face inside the weak cone of light.
“You’re doing great,” Jack says.
“I’m really not,” Rupert says.
“Listen to me,” Jack says, soft but steel. “The only thing you have to see is my back. You stare at my boots. You put your feet where I put my feet. You don’t think about the dark. You don’t think about the drop.”
“I just feel like my next step . . .” Rupert’s mouth trembles.
Jack puts his hands on the boy’s shoulders.
“Look at me,” he says softly, but sternly.
Rupert does.
“You won’t,” Jack says. Then he adds, because sometimes people need a lie that keeps them alive: “And if you do, I’ve got you.”
Rupert gives a nervous half-smile.
“We’re supposed to be looking for a leader,” Rupert says. “I think I already found mine.”
They get moving again.
Slowly.
Jack slips once on a patch of wet limestone, catches himself hard, knuckles scraping rock. Elena steadies Rupert with a hand on his shoulder. Conner stays behind them, sealing the rear.
A while later Elena stumbles and catches herself with both hands.
When they stop, Jack sees her palms are cut, streaked red against pale dust.
Elena leans in close. “Can we turn back?”
Jack doesn’t sugarcoat it. “Not if we want to live.”
She looks at him, breathing fast. “I can barely breathe.”
From behind them, Conner Lynch quietly says, “We’ve come too far to go back.” Pauses and adds, “Come too far in every possible way.”
Elena manages just a hint of a smile. “I can see why you made such a good politician,” she says.
He smiles back. “Hey,” he says, “there’s no need to insult me.”
A few hundred yards later, Jack steps into a hole.
They go another few hundred yards.
Jack steps onto what he thinks is solid ground.
It isn’t.
A shallow sinkhole gives under his weight. His foot drops, his balance goes, and he slides.
Unable to break his fall, he hits the ground hard. The trail is wide enough, though, that Conner Lynch moves quickly past Rupert and Elena and grabs Jack by the arm.
“I wasn’t the fastest player in the world,” he says to Jack. “But I always had good hands.”
Jack gets his footing again.
They are moving again a few minutes later, still no real light ahead of them. Just an unbearable tension, broken only by the sound of their footsteps on the rocks and limestone and occasional mud underneath their feet.
Jack really does feel he’s back on duty. There is the same quiet now, the same sense of dread, the fight to control his breathing and his heartbeat and remain alert, because alertness could mean the difference between life and death.
He then hears the roar from down below them.
The roar of a great river running through beneath them.
When he does force himself to look down, there is just enough from the flashlights that he is able to see the powerful, swirling water that seems to be yelling up at them.
In the next moment the one yelling is the English boy, Rupert, as his footing goes and he disappears into the darkness.
Jack spins.
Rupert’s arms pinwheel.
Then the boy is gone.
Not into the void—down slick rock that drops off the ledge in a steep slick chute, funneling toward the roaring water below.
Rupert’s scream trails after him.
And then the dark swallows it.
Steven Noble