Death is Forever (31 page)

The approach to the notch was strewn with limestone boulders whose faces had been eroded into hollows and cups and bowls that, in the wet, would hold rain. But that water had long since evaporated, leaving behind an eerie black sculpture garden surrounded by sterile drifts of soil as fine as face powder. An empty watercourse snaked among stones like a dry, many-forked tongue whose source was the notch at the bottom of the hill.

Across the top of the limestone formation, lightning danced with lethal grace. Thunder came, hammering the ground.

Erin followed Cole to the base of the stone ravine, where the ground would be shaded much of the time. Someone had been there before them. Small mounds of dirt were scattered at random, connected by the same broad, flat footprints that Cole had been following across the empty land. He went to first one hole and then another, and in each he found the same thing—dry dirt for a few feet and then equally dry limestone bedrock.

“So far the little bastard isn’t having any better luck than we are,” Cole said grimly.

The footprints went from the dry watercourse to the hill itself, then vanished on the stony surface. The Aborigine had ignored the danger from lightning and climbed up to the top of the limestone formation to look for sinks or deep potholes that might hold water from one wet to the next.

Cole had no choice but to follow. Without a word he shucked out of the rucksack and began looking for the easiest way up the stone maze.

“No,” she rasped urgently. “Lightning.”

Even as she spoke, an incandescent sheet of lightning went from horizon to horizon in a cataract of violence that left the air itself smelling burned. Thunder exploded, shaking sky and ground alike.

The barrage of lightning continued until the hair on their bodies rippled and stood away from their flesh in response to the electrically charged air.

Between one minute and the next, the day darkened as if the sun had been ripped from the sky. The world convulsed, changing air for water. Rain hammered down as abruptly as lightning, as violently as thunder, an ocean turned inside out to flood land and sky alike.

Holding each other, Erin and Cole laughed and turned their faces up to the life-giving rain.

An hour after dawn Erin watched the campfire flicker beneath a sky that trembled with misty light. The sky was so thick it fairly breathed water. Before yesterday’s downpour had finally stopped, the sky had been black with night as well as clouds. Just before dawn a rain-scented breeze had begun blowing, bringing with it the sound of water running from every crack and crevice on Bridget’s Hill.

Despite the shelter Cole had rigged from clear plastic sheets, and wearing the spare shirt he’d brought for just such an eventuality, Erin was almost chilly. The novelty of it amused her, as did the fact that she was actually looking forward to the rest of the mulga Cole had killed when the first onslaught of water had driven it from a limestone crevice.

Laughing softly, she reached for a full canteen and drank as much water as she wanted.

He looked up from the fire he was coaxing into life and smiled. “Feeling better?”

“Ridiculously good,” she said, putting the canteen aside after only a few swallows of water. “We could die tomorrow or the day after, but I’m sitting here glad to be chilly and licking my lips over the idea of snake for breakfast.”

His laughter was as rich and lively as the firelight reflected in his clear eyes. “Better than seal, huh?”

“No comparison.” She stretched, shivered lightly, and sat up. “What a difference water makes! Although I have to admit, for a time there I was worried about drowning.”

He smiled slightly. “So was I. I still can’t believe a wall of water didn’t come down through that notch and wash us all the way to the Admiralty Gulf.”

“Yeah.” She rubbed her palms over her arms.

“Come sit by the fire while you eat,” he said, stepping back from it. “In an hour you won’t believe you ever wanted to.”

“Eat?”

“No. Sit by a fire. It will be as hot today as it was yesterday, but it will feel even hotter. The humidity will be higher after the rain.”

She shook her head. “God, what a climate. It’s a wonder the Aborigines survived.”

“A lot of them didn’t,” he said, handing her a chunk of fire-blackened meat.

“Do you think he did?”

“The one who followed us?”

She nodded, too busy chewing snake to talk.

He shrugged and bit off a chunk of mulga. “I didn’t find any new tracks after the rain. If he came down off the hill, he didn’t come down this side.”

Before they were finished eating, the ground began to steam as the sun got hot enough to draw moisture from the earth. Cole got up and began studying Bridget’s Hill with the aid of the strengthening light.

“Cole?”

He made an inquiring sound.

“What are you looking for?” she asked. “The Aborigine?”

He shook his head slowly, his whole attention on the base of the hill.

She came to her feet and went to stand by him. She stared in the same direction as him, but she saw nothing except a small, short-lived cascade coursing down rugged rock.

“I’ll be damned,” he said finally.

“What?”

“See that little stream?”

“Yes.”

“See where it leaps down between those clumps of hard spinifex and then between those stunted bloodwood trees and then into that rubble pile at the base of the hill?”

She leaned forward. “Bloodwood, huh? Yes, I see it.”

“See where the water comes out?”

She narrowed her eyes, frowned, and looked more closely. “No.”

“Neither do I.”

He bent, snagged the rucksack and shotgun, and walked toward the cascade. She went alongside, stretching her legs to keep up.

The answer to the mystery of the vanishing stream was no more obvious when they stood at the edge of the rubble pile. The cascade clearly washed down amid the tangle of boulders and scrubby trees. Just as clearly, the water didn’t come back out.

“What—” she began, only to be cut off by an abrupt gesture from Cole.

“Hear anything?” he asked.

She listened. “All I hear is the cascade,” she said after a minute.

He shrugged off the rucksack and handed her the shot- gun. “I’m going to take a closer look. See if you can find any other nearby places where water runs off the hill but doesn’t show up on the flats.”

The longer Erin looked at Bridget’s Hill, the more puzzled she became. Despite the fierce downpour, very little water was running off the huge, long rise of limestone. Even if she assumed that the pygmy trees, hard spinifex, and broken surface of the limestone concealed most rills and rivulets, she was left with the fact that only a few narrow tongues of water extended from the base of the hill to the depression beyond the big circle of charcoal left by the Aborigines. The depression itself held only a thin puddle after the heavy storm.

Cole scrambled down off the rubble pile and walked quickly to Erin.

“There’s something odd about this place,” she said.

“Damn little runoff,” he said succinctly.

“Is that what you meant by limestone being a sponge?”

He laughed, but there was excitement burning in his eyes. “Not quite, honey. It takes time and pressure to force water into the tiny spaces between particles of limestone.”

“Then where did all that water go? That’s not a small hill, Cole. There must be at least four square miles of surface up top.”

“Closer to ten. And we had at least an inch of rain, probably more like two.”

“Did it all run off during the night?”

“If it had, we’d have been ass deep in a flash flood. I’ll bet that only a fraction of the water that falls on Bridget’s Hill ever sees sunlight again.”

“Then where does it go?” she asked, hands on hips.

“Most of it runs down into joints and seams in the limestone and vanishes, working its way down through solution channels in the rock until it reaches the water table.”

“Is that what happened to the cascade?”

He nodded. “Every drop of water that fell on top is trying to work its way to the bottom. I’ll bet that limestone is rotten with solution channels.”

“Caves?” she asked, her voice rising with excitement.

“‘God’s own jewel box/Kept beneath stone locks.’” Cole’s teeth flashed startlingly white against the black growth of his beard stubble. “Come on, honey. Let’s go find the keyhole.”

The first flush of excitement had plenty of time to wear off while they searched the base of Bridget’s Hill for an opening that might lead to a cave. There were cracks in the stone where water went and didn’t return. There were crevices where more water went in than came out.

But there was no opening big enough for a hand, much less a man, to penetrate.

It started raining again, a slow, steady, warm rain that was rather like being trapped in somebody’s throttled-down shower.

After two hours Erin took off her floppy cabbage-leaf hat, mopped her face with it, and sat on the steeply sloping, stony earth beneath the thin shade of bloodwood trees. The temperature was well over one hundred degrees. Between rainstorms, the humidity was total.

“At least you have enough surplus water to sweat,” Cole said.

“I wasn’t complaining.”

He smiled and touched her cheek. “I know. You haven’t complained about anything.”

“Except the goanna.”

“You said it was better than seal.”

“So is starvation,” she retorted. “Well, almost.” She sighed again, stretched her arms over her head, and made a startled sound. “A miracle.”

“What?”

“The cool breeze.”

“You’ve finally gone troppo,” he said, wiping sweat from his face. “There isn’t a cool breeze between here and the Snowy River.”

“Sure there is.” She took his hand and held it over her head. “Right here.”

The instant Cole felt the cool current of air, a wave of adrenaline slammed through him. He scrambled past Erin, forced his way through a tangle of hard spinifex and scrubby trees, and stopped short. There, all but hidden by vegetation and rubble, was a dark, narrow opening in the limestone.

“Cole? Is that what I think it is?” Erin stared past him. “It’s so small. How big was Abe?”

“Smaller than me.”

“Who isn’t?” she retorted.

With a supple movement, Cole unslung the shotgun and set it aside. The rucksack thumped to the ground.

“I’m going inside,” he said. “Stay here.”

“Not a chance.”

“Caves are dangerous,” he said flatly.

“The most interesting things in life usually are.”

He slanted her a look, then smiled crookedly. “At least let me make sure there aren’t any traps around the entrance, natural or otherwise.”

“Good old Abe, King of Lies,” she muttered.

“Something like that. Although there’s no guarantee this is Abe’s cave. Like I said, the entire hill could be riddled with holes.”

“But this particular opening,” she said, deadpan, “rather resembles a woman’s ‘map of Tasmania.’”

After a startled instant, Cole gave a crack of laughter, grabbed Erin, and kissed her hard.

“For luck,” he said, releasing her as suddenly as he’d taken her.

He soon found that the opening wasn’t as narrow as it seemed, because it was offset slightly from right to left. Between one breath and the next he pushed from tropical sun into seamless darkness.

A swift movement of his hand ignited one of the matches he’d brought with him. He shielded the fragile flame within the circle of his hand. The first thing the flickering light picked out was a mound of thick, creamy candles. The second was a row of miners’ carbide helmet lamps and fuel.

The third was a rusted candy tin.

With hands that trembled, Cole picked up the old tin. Something rattled inside. He stared at the tin while the match burned down to flesh. Swearing at the bite of flame, he reached for another match.

“Cole?” Erin called from outside. “Are you all right?”

He let out a long, ragged sigh and remembered to breathe. “I’m fine. Can you drag the rucksack and shotgun as far as the entrance?”

When she retrieved the shotgun and rucksack, the weight surprised her. Not the shotgun—it always felt heavy to her. It was the rucksack that felt like it was full of lead. The thought of him carrying it through the killing heat while she walked unburdened made her mouth flatten.

Carrying the shotgun and dragging the rucksack, she scrambled over rock and through brush until she could look inside the slit in the limestone hill. Cole was lighting one candle from the flame of another. He held out a candle to her with hands that had a fine tremor of excitement rippling just beneath his control.

Erin didn’t notice anything but the passageway itself, a cool darkness that absorbed light and gave it back from unexpected quarters, where wet stone reflected flame. The sound of falling water came distantly. Nearby was a steady dripping, sliding, gliding rush of rivulets that was like a tremulous sigh expanding through the cave’s endless night.

The limestone was alive with water.

“What’s that?” she asked, spotting the candy tin in Cole’s hand for the first time.

“Something Abe left.”

“Is it empty?”

“No.”

“Is it diamonds?” she asked eagerly.

Cole pried the lid from the candy tin. “No. But in a cave, it’s more valuable than diamonds. Matches.”

There was a folded piece of paper inside, riding atop a nest of loose wooden matches and waterproof containers holding more matches.

“Take it,” he said. “Like everything else that Abe left behind, it’s yours.”

Gently she removed the paper and opened it. The faded, elegant lines of Abe’s handwriting took shape in the flickering candle flames.

“Looks like you were right,” Erin said, glancing up from the paper. “Bridget was carrying Abe’s child when she married my grandfather.”

Cole grunted. Working in darkness, he bent and started sorting through the rucksack, removing everything but the small flashlight. “Like he said, ‘Queen of Lies.’”

“‘Damn their hot cries,’” Erin added quietly. She folded the paper and put it back in the tin. “He wasn’t a forgiving sort, was he?”

“Would you have been?”

“So far, so good,” she said with a shrug.

She removed a waterproof container of matches, checked its contents, and stuck the container in the pocket of her shorts.

“Does that mean you’ve forgiven Hans?” Cole asked as he took the shotgun and propped it against a rock near the entrance.

“It means I’ve forgiven myself for being stupid and trusting the wrong person.” She closed the tin and set it on the floor. “I don’t think old Abe got that far. I think he drank a river of beer rather than face himself.”

Cole’s pale eyes flashed in the candlelight as he turned toward her. “What about me? Have you forgiven me for not closing my hand and crushing Lai’s throat?”

“You’re asking the wrong person.” Erin scooped up several fat candles and stuffed them in her other pocket.

“What does that mean?”

“You should be asking yourself, not me.”

For the space of several breaths there was no sound in the cave but that of water seeping through cracks in cold stone.

Cole shrugged the rucksack into place and turned away.

The sound of his footsteps grating over stone blended with the distant murmurings of water. He worked over the familiar carbide lamps, then tried lighting one. To his surprise, it worked. A clean flame burned steadily, multiplied many times by the mirrored dish. He closed the tempered glass shield, protecting the flame.

He snuffed out his candle and tried another lamp. It didn’t work. Neither did the third. The fourth one did. He took off his bush hat, strapped one of the miners’ helmet lamps on, and walked over to Erin with the other helmet light burning in his hand.

She learned real fast not to look directly at either light.

“Take off your hat,” he said.

She did, waited while he strapped the helmet on, and then turned her head. The helmet wobbled wildly.

“Too big,” he said. He adjusted the webbing of straps. “Try again.”

This time the helmet stayed in place.

“Stay at least ten feet behind me,” he said. “No point in both of us falling through the same hole.”

Her eyes narrowed. She hesitated before blowing out her candle. “Are you trying to frighten me into staying here?”

“No. I’m simply telling you the truth. We could be walking on limestone that’s as thick as a mountain or as thin as summer ice. There’s no way of knowing until the floor either gives way or it doesn’t.”

Uneasily she looked down at the ground beneath her feet. It was uneven and felt as solid as the stone it was.

“Maybe we should hold off exploring until we can come back with ropes and things,” she said.

All Cole said was, “Wait for me at the entrance. You’ll be safe there.”

“No.”

“Then follow me and walk where I walk. If the floor holds me, it should hold you.”

She blew out her candle and started after him, leaving ten feet between them.

The passageway quickly closed down until they were forced to duck-walk. To keep her mind off the darkness and the massive weight of limestone that was between herself and the sun, she thought about Crazy Abe Windsor.

“How old did you say Abe was?” she asked, breathing heavily from the strain of the unnatural walk.

“Old enough to be your grandfather, why?” Cole retorted.

“Maybe there’s more to beer and raw croc liver than I thought.”

He laughed, then swore when the ceiling came down even more, forcing him onto his hands and knees. Water seeped from every surface, making the stone clammy and slick. Long horizontal stains ran the length of the smooth walls. As the floor slowly dropped, the stains rose.

“There’s something wrong with this cave,” she said after a time.

“Like what?”

“It’s little and narrow and ugly. Caves are big and grand and gorgeous.”

“Only the ones you hear about. Most caves are small muddy wormholes that never get decorated.”

“Why?”

A knob of limestone stabbed Cole’s kneecap. He swore again and muttered, “Conditions aren’t right.”

“Why?”

“Because I said so,” he retorted.

She took the hint and shut up. As she crawled, she turned her head slowly, playing the lamplight over the narrow passage, trying to reason with the cold fear that was whispering to her, telling her that Bridget’s Hill was going to settle on her shoulders and crush her flat. She saw several shadows in rapid succession off to her right. When she turned her head, the light couldn’t penetrate their depths. The openings were big enough to hide a man. From somewhere in their darkness came the sound of falling water.

Shivering, she pressed forward. Water dripped and gathered and twisted into thin streams, pulled by gravity through cracks in the limestone. The water was cool, almost secretive, sliding away into black crevices and vanishing or flowing in thin channels along the edges of the tunnel. The stain marks on the wall had disappeared. Puddles collected in small, shallow depressions in the uneven surface. The floor looked like it had been scalloped by running water.

The passageway pitched down at an increasing angle. Erin thought about the alternate openings that had been revealed in the glare of their helmet lights.

“How do we know we’re in the right wormhole?” she asked.

“Arrows.”

The floor pitched downward more steeply. A limestone ripple gnawed on her kneecap, sending pain lancing through her leg.

“How far have we come?” she asked.

“Fifty feet, max.”

She hissed a word beneath her breath.

“That’s not shit, honey. That’s cave mud. Takes a hell of a long time to collect. In fact—
don’t move
!”

She froze. “What’s wrong?”

“No floor,” he said succinctly.

He turned his head slowly, playing the light around the roughly circular shadow that had appeared in the floor a few feet ahead. Narrow streamers of water glittered and twisted from an invisible opening in the ceiling and disappeared through a hole in the stone floor of the passage. Stretching out on his stomach, he inched forward over the slippery, scalloped surface until he could point his light straight down the narrow vertical tunnel.

Water danced and spun away into blackness. About twenty feet below, the disturbed surface of a pool returned the light in random flashes. A more orderly pattern of light came back from a pile of what looked like a tangle of flexible chain.

Cole picked up one end of a heavy aluminum ladder and shook it out over the hole. As the flexible ladder descended, water splashed and slid over the thick metal surfaces. The top end was bolted into stone a foot from the lip of the hole.

He spent a long time shining his light on the huge bolts that anchored the top of the ladder to the mouth of the shaft. There was some sign of wear on the metal, but not much.

“Is it safe up ahead?” Erin asked.

“I’m thinking about it.”

Just when she was certain he wasn’t going to say anything more, he did.

“Abe was a good miner. The shoring in all the Dog mines is still sound.”

“So?” she muttered.

“So he probably bolted that ladder into place well enough to take my weight, not just his. Besides, those bolts could hold up the Brooklyn Bridge.”

“There’s a ladder?”

“After a fashion.”

Cole grunted as he jackknifed his big body around and lowered his legs into the hole, supporting himself on his braced forearms. To Erin it looked as though he was trapped in stone up to his waist.

“Shine that light somewhere else than in my eyes,” he said.

“Sorry.” Hastily she tilted her head down.

He found one of the aluminum rungs with his right foot. Slowly he shifted more and more of his weight from his arms to his foot, ignoring the water falling on his face and shoulders.

His foot slipped.

He caught himself on his forearms.

“Cole.”

“No worries. The rungs are just wet.”

This time he jammed his foot all the way to the rock wall before he put on any pressure. The metal took his weight without complaining or giving way. The bolts didn’t even quiver. He shifted his weight quickly, repeatedly, bouncing up and down, testing the bolts that held the ladder.

Nothing moved.

“That old bastard wasn’t entirely crazy,” Cole muttered. He looked up at Erin. His light made the water falling over him sparkle and shimmer. “I’d just as soon you didn’t try this, honey.”

“Into each life a little rain must fall.”

“I’d settle for a little, but it’s the wrong damn season.”

He tilted his head and looked up at the black opening that was drooling thin streams of water over him. As he watched, he slowly realized that the volume of water falling down had increased just in the few minutes he had been there.

“This could be bad news,” he said.

She followed the direction of his lamp, adding her own light. Despite the fugitive glitter of reflected light, the thicker streams of water appeared more black than silver or transparent.

“Right now it’s running enough to be annoying,” he said. “In a few hours it could be a gusher. Depends on how much of the surface water this is a collection channel for, and how long it takes for the rain to get through the limestone above us into this channel.”

“When Abe talked about swallowing black and drowning,” she said uneasily, “I thought he meant claustrophobia.”

“Doubt it. The deeper the mine, the better he liked it. Besides, he was a literal bloke, for all his metaphors. If he said drown, he meant drown. In water.”

“Black water.”

“No other kind in a cave.” Cole eased his left foot onto the ladder. “We’re under a high-water mark right now.”

“What?”

“The horizontal stains on the wall on the way in. High-water mark.”

“Very comforting.”

“If you want comfort, go back to the entrance.”

She took a slow breath and bit her tongue.

“The scallop marks we’ve been crawling over are proof that water ran through the tunnel at some time in the past and could run again in the future,” he added.

“Could or will?”

“Once the limestone below gets saturated, the water level will rise and rise and rise until it overflows through places like the crevice we came through. If the level rises slowly, we’ll be able to get out. Or if there are enough outlets lower down for the water to escape, we’ll be safe.”

“And if there aren’t?”

“Then we’ll find out how much black water we can drink before we drown.”