Chapter 20
Be Brave
Ben
THE BOOM reverberates through the cavern, bringing the world to life all at once. Rocks rattle loose, and I instinctively roll to my right where Lillian has curled in on herself. Thankfully nothing above us falls, though the sounds of rocks crashing into the floor are obvious down the way.
Another explosion echoes, and I bring myself down harder over top Lillian. I can feel her fear with each reaching breath. “It’s okay,” I say to the both of us. “I don’t think they know we’re down here in this section of the cave.”
“What the hell is going on?” Mr. Bennett yells from across the room in equal level to the explosions. There’s no time for me to answer before another boom shakes the tomb we’ve caught ourselves in.
Between the next two blasts, we’re all up and running toward the exit. All but Margaret. “Should we go into a new passageway if they’re playing with dynamite?” she asks, anxiously eyeing the stone ceiling overhead.
James comes to a grinding stop and reaches back for her.
“It’s now or never!” Lillian yells back toward her without stopping. I only pause long enough to make sure James has Margaret before I continue into the narrow passage behind Lillian. As soon as she’s passed into the craggy face of rock, her necklace glows wildly.
She freezes, and it takes me a few seconds to understand why.
The explosions are coming from in front of us, not behind.
“Oh, God,” Bruno breathes from behind me. He’s also realized that perhaps they’re trying to seal us in.
“How’d they get ahead of us?” Mr. Bennett roars, stepping past me and grabbing Lillian by the arm.
Doing my best to diffuse the situation in the midst of explosions, I step forward and place a forceful hand where his grip is tightest. “There must have been another way through.”
“How?” James asks. “She swore this was the only way.” Another accusation has been thrown in Lillian’s face, but she handles it without need for me.
Lillian whirls on us all, tearing herself from Mr. Bennett’s grasp. “No, I said no such thing.” She lifts her necklace up in front of her. “I did what they told me to do. This is the path they’ve chosen for us, and so I plunged ahead.” Her grip on her necklace strengthens, and she turns ahead.
“Perhaps they hiked over instead of through?” Diederick asks.
“Impossible,” Ademir answers.
“Not if the mudslide changed some of the geography. Perhaps the land showed them a way through just as it showed us.”
“It’s trying to keep people away! Why would it show them a shortcut?” Mr. Bennett again, but this time he does have a point. Everyone glances at Lillian to hear her counter.
“It doesn’t matter!” Lillian stutters. I can see her losing her composure. “If they’re ahead of us, then we’ve already lost, and that…” She takes a breath. “That can’t happen.” Another breath. “You will just have to trust me.” With that, she turns away and presses on.
There’s really nothing to do except to follow her. Even with the concerned glances passing from one face to another, no one questions Lillian or her necklace again. As the path widens and curves, it eventually crests and flattens out. From there we reach another fork in the road.
I helplessly watch Lillian look to her necklace for guidance while the others toe the line and question. She has her heart set on one of the paths already, I can tell. She’s scared to admit which one.
“Look, I’m going forward,” she says after another moment’s hesitation. She drops the necklace to her chest and begins to turn down the left tunnel. “I choose to trust the reasons we are here. The voices in my head would not have brought me this far if they intended on ending it right—”
She’s interrupted mid-sentence by a force that knocks us all to the ground.
Chaos erupts, all sense of organization abandoned. Coughing through the raining dust, I manage to make out Lillian on the ground next to me. If we stay here, we’ll be buried alive. Scrambling to my feet, I wrestle her from the ground and shove her forward.
There’s no time to look for the others as we run.
Lillian
Gravel peppers me as I push through toward the left tunnel.
I can feel Ben trying to pull me back, to slow me, but it’s not until another hand reaches for my free wrist that I finally open my ears to sounds other than the dynamite blasts.
Blasts that have suddenly stopped and left a ringing in my ears.
Mr. Bennett's grip tightens. He pulls me back so violently that I nearly fall onto my backside. Ben is immediately there to catch me as the unwarranted touch slips away.
“Are you mad?” Mr. Bennett bellows. “We cannot go in there! It’s half blocked off already.”
Turning wildly toward him, I shove him straight in the chest. “It’s the way through!”
Bruno says my name just loud enough for me to hear, and that’s when I realize that the ringing has subsided and that I’ve been yelling much louder than I’ve intended. Margaret gulps at the sight of the teetering wall to our left.
“Lillian,” Ben says softly. There’s no urgency in his voice, which is what gets me to finally face him.
I see his features first, full of worry but also patience for me.
“Lillian,” he says again. There’s nervousness there now.
Tearing my eyes from him to see what could be wrong, I find nothing but empty space.
Diederick, James, and Oliver have disappeared.
My eyes widen at the sight, but I retreat softly anyway.
All I know is that we have to keep moving.
“I’ll go back and get them!” Bruno states, already in motion. Panic sets in, and I grab his hand. There’s no way I could let him go, not like this. Bruno, Ben, and Ademir are here. That’s all that matters to me.
Another blast overhead releases a large boulder from the left-hand side of the tunnel. It crashes to the floor with a bellowing groan. The rest of the cave holds its breath as two more smaller explosions can be heard.
I hold Bruno’s hand tighter. “Diederick will get them through,” I say selfishly. “We need to keep moving.”
“Someone has to go back, Lillian,” Bruno whispers. His free hand graces my face, calming me at the moment he touches me. When his fingers fall away far too quickly, he leaves a line of dust across my jaw that I can feel.
“I’ll go,” Ben says, stepping up beside Bruno. “I’m quicker than you, and I’ve memorized every step we’ve taken since the underground pool.”
I immediately suck back the tears that had begun to swirl at the thought of Bruno leaving my side. “No,” I say, pulling my hand away and immediately reaching for Ben. “That–”
“Cannot happen!” Ademir has stepped between us now.
“We don’t have time to argue about this,” Ben barks. He’s already moving around us.
“Our deal!” Ademir hisses, digging his nails into Ben’s arm.
I have no idea what he’s talking about, but it’s enough to get Ben to plant his feet.
At the hesitation, Mr. Bennett shakes his head and turns around without us. I hardly believe he knows the best way to backtrack and then find us again.
“Enough of this,” Bruno says, briskly walking past me.
“Ademir, Ben, get her out of here. I’ll get Diederick and we’ll find a way out.
” He braves looking at me only once. “Don’t wait for me.
” He disappears back into the tunnel before I can thank him, before I can tell him how much he means to me, before I can do much of anything at all.
Another rumble and then Ben and Admir are hauling me forward. If Margaret follows, I can’t seem to care.
We make it about 50 meters before a force so powerful knocks us to the side. Margaret screams, and then Ben is pushing himself down on top of me once again. His hands dig into my head, forcing me down, down, down.
As the sprinkling sound of pebbles washes down over us, Ben attempts to pull me up to run again. My palms sting and I can feel the thick warmth of blood pooling where I’ve been cut, but I don’t dare look. All I can focus on is Margaret lying beside us, unmoving.
My heart thuds against my chest as I scramble the short distance between us. A sharp bellow from behind us has Ben leaving my side immediately. He never chooses to leave my side. I hear Ben utter a prayer, and then that’s when my world keels completely over for the second time in my life.
In one blink, I see my m?e lying on the ground, drowning in her own blood; the next, it’s Ademir buried alive right in front of me. “No, please,” I gasp as I leave Margaret’s side and sprint to Ben and the pile.
Ademir’s boots jut out from the bottom of the slide; groans of pain are audible from within.
I join Ben in the dance of digging him out. But with each shift, each rock removed, the pile slips, and new sounds of pain escape Ademir’s lips. Ben leaves me at the bottom and moves his way up the torso. He’s moving frantically enough now that I know he’s deeply worried.
“Please,” I repeat again. I say it over and over and over as I pull rocks from the pile one by one. Even as my hands slice against the sharpest rocks and the surviving torch beside us flickers, I don’t give up the hope of reaching him.
I feel a hand on my shoulder a moment later.
Margaret has thankfully come to and is watching on.
She doesn’t lift a finger to help. I’m about to confront her when Ben rolls a large rock out of the way.
His hands drop to his sides and his head lowers in respect.
“No!” I cry out. Digging into the earth, I scramble up the newly formed mountain of rubble to reach him.
Ademir rests with his eyes open; his rising chest would be indistinguishable if it weren’t for the wheezing breaths. “Don’t stop!” I demand Ben through my sobs. “Help me!” Another sob escapes me when I go to lift the rock crushing his chest, but it doesn’t budge.
“Pare, minha flor.”
My struggling ceases at the usage of a long-forgotten nickname.
“Você precisa ir embora.”
Stop, my flower. You need to leave.
Even now, I can feel the war within Ben. He’ll be thinking about how to get the boulder removed, how to get him to safety. I know by the way he punches the solid wall beside him that he doesn’t see a way out of it.
In the midst of inaction, Margaret calls from the bottom of the pile. She still has done nothing to help. “They’re getting close,” she says, looking off into the distance.
I shake my head and dig my hand down between chunks of rock. I manage to reach Ademir’s hand right as another softer boom carries its way through the tunnel.
“They’re going to catch us if we do not move now!” Margaret’s worry overtakes her voice, but she couldn’t possibly know how close they are in relation to us in this labyrinth. It’s merely her fear talking. We have time. We must have time.
Ben presses an unwavering hand against my back, reassuring me that yes, I can take my time here.
I know he will be here to protect me and will allow me every courtesy until it is absolutely necessary to abandon Ademir.
I also know that he would never let anyone get in the way of a goodbye, especially one as important as this.
Holding Ademir’s hand I try to pretend I don’t hear what I do next. There are voices. Indiscernible, but voices nonetheless. The pressure on my back hardens, and Margaret clucks with nerves down below. I block it all out as I look down at Ademir for what will be the final time.
Even as his strength fails him, I grip his fingers tightly. Anything to keep him here with me for a moment longer. He hasn’t spoken since calling me his flower, but as the voices grow louder, he grips my hand with one last flicker of strength.
He finds the words to comfort me. It’s a low yet sweet sound that I lean toward in order to savor. “Estou indo ver sua m?e. Esperaremos por você.”
I’m going to see your mother. We will wait for you.
Tears threaten to blur everything as his strength fails. Through my sobs and the pain he is in, I doubt he hears my final plea. “Por favor, n?o me abandone.”
Please, don’t abandon me.
“Seja corajoso, meu cora??o sensível,” he says with his final breath. “Seja corajoso, meu cora??o sensível.”
Be brave, my soft heart. Be brave.
The echo of Ademir’s final words is replaced by the shifting of rubble and then the horrifying click of a gun’s hammer near my ear. I’m immediately forced from grief back to survival mode as the voice at my back tells me to raise my hands in the air.
Ben stiffens beside me, and his arms slowly rise away from his holster by the next demand of the assailant, who surely has another weapon trained on him.
He wouldn’t dare risk anything while there’s a gun at my head.
From the corner of my eye, I try to pick up a sign from him on what to do, but the tears and low light ruin any chance of that.
From one horror to another, I slowly turn. I’m met with the cold of that gun tight against my head in protest to my movement.
“Don’t do anything that I wouldn’t do,” Margaret’s cold voice says with a laugh. It’s enough to freeze both Ben and me to the spot. “I’m glad you could have your little moment, but there are things I need to take care of before company joins us.”