Chapter 8 #3
And here she was, winnowing her way through tons of dirt and rubble, trying to find perhaps a nonexistent way out of here.
Being in a hole during a period of earthquakes was dangerous.
He should have thought of that. But it had been pleasantly cool in the excavated room, and the frescoes that were visible were incredibly beautiful.
Not much beauty in his life these past years. And now there was Parker and a Roman villa, and the coolness factor had been off the charts. Had he been thinking with his little head?
Not really. If they were going to take a lunch break, it would have had to be in his vehicle with the AC on or sitting out in the dust and heat. Nick opted for lunch in the excavated villa. Parker had worked hard all morning, and he wanted her to relax.
And they’d been having a good time—and he’d eaten his silly head off—until Earth lashed out. He had no idea what this quake had been on the Mercalli scale, but it was much stronger than the one yesterday.
Chances were good they were going to die here. If they didn’t find a path up and out, no one was coming to save them. They would die of thirst before they died of hunger, assuming some aftershock didn’t bring a boulder down on their heads.
Dying of thirst, encased in a dark tomb, would not be a pleasant way to go.
Nick usually could game his way out of anything. Figure out a way or two to get out of a situation, but this—he was no match for tons of rubble.
He checked his watch. Parker had been gone for a quarter of an hour. It felt like a lifetime. He made a megaphone of his hands. “Parker!” he shouted. “Are you okay?” He turned his head, so his ear was at the small opening she’d wriggled through before disappearing.
“Yes!” Parker’s voice carried faintly. No way to tell how far away she was.
Nick tried hard to keep the anxiety out of his voice.
He didn’t do anxiety, not even in the direst of circumstances, but there it was.
He was anxious. He didn’t want Parker to die.
He’d just found her. He couldn’t lose her.
She’d opened a door in his head and shown him things he didn’t know could be his.
She couldn’t die. He didn’t want to die.
But he calculated their odds at fifty-fifty, if that.
“I’m ok!”
Was he hallucinating or did her voice sound closer?
He was good at echolocation, like a bat, but her voice would bounce off thousands of angles, be distorted. No way to tell where it came from or even how far away she was. All he could do was wait. If she wanted him to move, she’d tell him.
So Nick knelt in the dirt, eyes fixed on the hole Parker disappeared into.
He didn’t pull out his own cell. The dark didn’t bother him.
Darkness was a soldier’s friend. He recognized that Parker was afraid of the dark.
Lots of people were. She’d had an unsettled childhood, and it was normal that it left her with a fear of not being able to tell what was around her.
Parker, Parker, Parker he thought. Come back to me.
Parker crawled through the opening, barely managing to squeeze her way forward and avoiding a jagged piece of metal. No way could Nick make his way through. He’d cut himself to ribbons.
Moving slowly, feeling her heart beat against her ribs, expecting a cascade of rocks and dirt to fall on her at every moment, she wriggled forward.
Somehow, every time she came to an impasse, there was an opening, all she had to do was find it.
She crawled forward in the dirt and dust, inch by inch, careful when she shifted something to make sure it didn’t precipitate a collapse of material.
She moved forward, came to what must have been the third room, and the cellphone flashlight dimmed a little.
Dread rushed through her. The idea of being caught here without light…
It messed with her head. Finally, she reached a point where she could stand up.
Sort of. Nick would be bent over but at least he wouldn’t have to be on his hands and knees.
There was something in the air… She held her hand up.
The air was moving! Very faint, but there.
Cool air, smelling of must. Aiming her cell at a wall of material, she saw an irregular hole.
Putting her hand in front of it, she felt cool air.
Moving. There was enough of an opening for her to stick her hand in.
Parker hesitated for a moment, remembering every horror movie she’d ever seen where someone stuck their hand into a hole filled with scorpions or spiders. Or snakes.
She pushed her hand through the hole and felt cool moist air and a faint breeze.
She shivered and angled her cell so it would shine into the hole. Somehow, the darkness was not absolute. There was a little light coming from up top. She tried to shine the light up but couldn’t see anything.
It was mainly empty space. She tried to look deeper but couldn’t. But clearly there was some kind of structure that held. And a little light, which meant that there was an opening to the outside world.
“Parker!”
She lifted her head at the sound of Nick’s deep voice. It was dulled, sounded far away. But he was calling her.
“Here!” she called out.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes!”
A fall of dust trickled between stones. No yelling. Instead of screaming out a message, she started crawling her way back.
On the way she pulled out a stone, a brick, a piece of wood, shifted a fall of dirt, to make the passage larger. Eliminated anything that might cut him. Faster than expected, she was back to where they started, under the steel panel.
She stuck her hand through the opening and Nick grasped it, helping her through.
Nick grasped her shoulders. “Are you all right? Where did you go?”
Where did she go? She had no idea. All she knew was that it was away from here, and away from here was good.
“I found a sort of path away from here. It leads to what I think is an opening. It’s tight though.”
“And you came back? Why didn’t you break out?”
Parker’s eyes widened. She couldn’t believe he said that and scowled at him. “Nikolai Garin! Is that what you think of me? That I would find a way out and just…leave you? I can’t believe you’d think that! What’s the matter with you? Would you leave me?”
His eyes fell to the dirt floor. “No,” he confessed.
“Remind me to be really angry with you later. For now, let’s see if I have actually found a way out. Getting there and coming back I widened the path as much as I could.”
“Can I make it through?”
“I tried to clear it some. Open it up.” She tried smiling, though it cost her. She was still mad at him. “I am really good at Jenga.”
She got down on hands and knees. “I’ll go first. I hope I remember the way. If you get stuck, I’ll try to pull away some more rubble and hope I don’t bring the whole thing down on top of us.”
“Okay.” Nick’s face was grim, covered in blood and dirt. It was clear he was unhappy at having her go ahead, but it was the only way. He was extremely chivalrous, but he wasn’t stupid. She had to go ahead. She already knew the way and was smaller.
The going was slow and difficult. It was hard to remember the way in the ever-dimming light of her cell.
She’d cleared the way as best she could getting back to Nick and continued trying to clear a path.
Once she carefully dislodged a stone and got a stream of dirt and stopped.
But the way was too narrow for Nick; she tried again, slowly and carefully, and was able to pick apart a jumble to clear room for him.
Every once in a while, she looked back at Nick following her. Once, she winced when she saw him barely make his way through an opening, a section of brick bearing down on the gash in his shoulder. But he didn’t make a sound.
Ah! Parker recognized a section she’d come through and had been able to make wider. Nick could get through here easily. And they were close! The air felt a little cooler and was moving.
She had to bend low to get though a slight passageway and pulled a section of wood away.
Miraculously, it didn’t start an avalanche.
She waited for Nick to clear the section, then turned around in the small space.
Nick looked awful. He must have been in pain and was white under his tan.
He looked like a monster in a horror movie, caked in dirt and blood.
She placed her hand on his shoulder, careful of the deep gash.
“We’re close to what I think might be a way out. The air moves, so it must be connected to the outside world, and I think there’s a little bit of light. You doing okay?”
“Am I doing—whoa!” Nick suddenly grinned, flakes of crusted blood falling off his cheek. “You’re rescuing me!”
Parker grinned back. “I am!”
“I’m never going to live this down.”
“If we survive,” she reminded him, and the grin disappeared.
“We’re going to survive,” Nick said. He touched her cheek. “I promise.”
It was ridiculous. Nick couldn’t promise anything of the kind. But she felt better. He was reassurance itself. Tall and broad, radiating strength, even wounded and bleeding. She carefully turned back around, not touching anything. The last thing they needed was another massive spill.
There was a hole in the dirt wall in front of her, and she stuck her hand through again. Cooler air. Air that moved.
Parker stepped back and studied the wall in the feeble light of her dying cell’s flashlight. It appeared to be all dirt. Parts of it, at least, didn’t seem to be thick. They could possibly scrabble and punch their way through it. She pushed at the borders of the hole and dirt dribbled down.
“I wish I had a pickaxe,” Parker said, hands up against the wall, moving them around, looking for weaker spots.
“Don’t have a pickaxe, but I do have this,” Nick announced, pulling something out of his cargo pants. He opened it up. A knife! Made of some weird substance that wasn’t shiny. It was black and looked like it had time-traveled from the future.