Running Scared (10 page)

“What? What's your fault?”

“Th-th-this.”

“Nah, nobody's to blame. You just got scared. I run when I'm scared. I thought those headlamps were creepy, too. But they weren't eyes. They were not a Chupacabra. Just lights. I don't think there's any such thing as Chupacabras. They're just stories people make up, like fairy tales.”

Sam didn't say any more, so Jack tried to fill in the empty space with his own prattling. It was as if his words were tiny fishhooks that he could throw down to Sam, hooks that could grab him and lift him from danger. “Accidents happen, Sam. Things go wrong. And sometimes it's not anybody's fault, you know? I've made lots of mistakes in my life, but mostly it all works out OK. It'll be the same for you.” Jack listened for a reply, but heard none. “Hey, can you hear me?”

“Y-yes.”

“Good. I don't want to have a conversation with myself. Help me out here.”

“You d-d-don't make m-m-mistakes.”

Jack gave a loud guffaw. “Sure I do. All the time.”

“Wh-when?”

“It was a mistake to stop back there in the cave and just sit around, waiting. No one came for us—it probably would have been better to keep going. I don't know. And I get scared, sometimes over stupid things. You want to know something? When we first came here, I was afraid of the bats. That was really dumb because the bats haven't hurt me at all. In fact, if we could have followed them fast enough, they would have led us out of here. You were never afraid of the bats, were you?”

“N-no.”

“Well, see there—from the start you were braver than I was. Except now I don't think I'm scared at all anymore. I think bats are pretty cool.” Jack paused and reflected on this, since what he'd just said was true. He wasn't afraid anymore. When had that happened?

“M-my m-m-mom s-s-said….” Sam's voice choked off.

“What? What did she say?” Jack moved his face even farther over the edge, holding the lamp awkwardly so that he could get a better view of Sam. Sam squirmed, pushing back his head so that his eyes were barely visible, like two slivers of half moons, as he stared up at Jack. “S-she s-s-said…sh-she s-s-said…. I'm a l-l-loser.”

Jack felt bile rise in his throat. “Your mom told you that?”

“Sh-she al-al-always says it. All the t-t-time.”

“Well,” Jack snapped, “she's wrong.”

He could tell Sam didn't believe him. Well, why should he? He'd been told one thing for eight years, and it would take a lot more than Jack's positive thinking to undo the knots in Sam's life. Sam's experience was so completely different from his own. Jack's life was well-ordered, like his camera and lenses—everything made sense, everything locked into a pattern, everything fit. His parents needed him. His sister needed him. What would it be like to live in a world where the very people he looked at to define himself told him he was worthless? Once again, having a foster kid thrust into Jack's life brought everything else about his life into sharp focus.

“Sam, you're a Mini-Me, right? And I'm not a loser.”

“She t-t-took d-d-drugs because of m-me.”

“No, she took drugs because of her. Don't go getting yourself sucked in to stuff like that. That's a bunch of garbage. I wouldn't lie to you.”

A strangled cry escaped from the rocks beneath him. “I-I c-c-can't even t-t-talk right. I c-c-can't d-do anything r-r-right. When I b-b-bring her m-matches, she th-throws them a-a-away. She h-h-hates me. You d-d-don't know m-me. I'm n-not l-like you. That's a j-j-joke. I g-g-got us l-lost. I c-c-can't—I h-hate—”

“Stop it! Stop talking like that. I mean it, Sam!” Jack held the lamp farther down so that the light flooded over Sam. His face was invisible now. Head bowed, his shoulders shaking with sobs, wedged in between rocks, Sam seemed so small. Even though Jack was right there, he could tell Sam felt alone.

Jack felt helpless. Totally helpless.

“J-Jack!” Sam cried. “H-help me! What if I fall?”

J
ack heard them before he saw them—first the sound of people's voices, then the shuffle of footsteps and the clatter of equipment. And at last, the blessed sight of light, lots of light, coming from at least a dozen headlamps. The rescue team had arrived!

Pushing himself to his knees and then straightening his chilled body to an upright position, Jack felt surprise when he saw the rescuer in the lead. Wearing Park Service gear, this ranger had to be a grown man because he had a thick, full mustache, but he looked no bigger than a boy—in fact, not nearly as tall as Jack.

“Hi, I'm Boomer,” the man announced, “and these guys are the rescue crew.” Without wasting another word on Jack, Boomer peered down into the pit and called, “Hello down there. What's your name, fella?”

“His name's Sam,” Jack answered.

In a quiet but no-nonsense voice, Boomer told Jack, “I know that, but I want him to tell me.” And then, louder, “Hey, mister. My name's Boomer. What's yours?”

“S-Sam S-S-Sexton,” the muffled reply came up.

“Pleased to meet you, Sam. You know what? I came here to bring you out of that hole.” Boomer sounded so totally confident that no one could have doubted he'd do what he said.

He went on, “I'll be down there before you know it, Sammy.” Then, to the people behind him, he murmured, “This won't be hard, if we can just get him to stay still. But if he moves, he could drop. Start setting up the rigging.”

With practiced efficiency, looking as though they'd performed rescues like this dozens of times, the team began putting together ropes and clips, pulleys and snap links.

A uniformed woman told Jack to move back in order to give the rescue team room to operate.

“Where's my sister and my parents?” Jack asked her.

“They're waiting in the lunchroom. You'll see them soon.”

“Why didn't they come to find us? We've been lost for”—he looked at his watch—“almost eight hours now.”

She answered, “Because several people from the tour group swore they saw you three kids ride up in the elevator with the group. Everyone's been searching for you aboveground. Those witnesses were so certain, so sure they saw you going into the visitor center, that no one suspected you were still in the tunnel.” She shrugged. “Must have been three other kids. So much for the accuracy of eyewitnesses. But that's all the questions for now, Jack. Stay back, and let us do our job.” As she spoke, three of the other rangers kept laying out a complex mass of rescue equipment—ropes, carabiners, pulleys, webbing, and other hardware.

Jack moved a little bit away, but he didn't want to get too far from Sam, who kept calling to him, although Sam's cries began to quiet as Boomer kept up a steady barrage of talk. “Bet you're cold, Sam, right?” Boomer was saying. “Well, I'm going to bring you a hat to wear. It won't be a hat with earmuffs, it'll be a hard hat like I have on, like all the rest of these people are wearing. Can you see us, Sammy? You'll get to wear a helmet just like ours, with a light on it. You'll like that, won't you?”

Sam's voice drifted up. “Uh-huh.”

“I already told you what my name is, Sam. It's Boomer. Do you think that's a funny name? Bet you never met anybody with that name before.” As he spoke, Boomer was putting on a harness of nylon webbing, stepping into the two leg loops and connecting it in the front with a carabiner. “Sam, I want to ask you a question. When you went into that hole, did you fall down or did you kind of slide down?”

“S-s-slide,” Sam answered.

“You didn't just drop ka-boom, right? It was more like a real, real steep sliding board, and you went feet first?

Or did you go headfirst?”

“F-f-feet.”

“That's good. Very good.”

“He's standing on a ledge,” Jack said.

“I can see that,” Boomer answered briefly. With everyone but Sammy, Boomer's words were sharp and to the point. With Sam, he kept up that stream of cheerful chatter. “Now Sammy, you're holding on to some rocks, and that's just what I want you to keep doing. Keep on holding them.”

“OK.”

Speaking again to the other members of the rescue team, Boomer said, “He's standing upright, holding tight to rock outcroppings, and he doesn't seem to have any broken bones. I'll need a fixed main line and a prusik minding belay.” Those terms didn't mean anything to Jack, but that didn't matter because Boomer said next, “I'm going down to talk him up.” And to Sam, in that much warmer voice, “Sam, I want you to do something for me. You have to pay attention to what I'm going to tell you. I'm coming down to get you, but I want you to just stay real still till I get there. Understand? Don't move at all. Keep holding on to those rocks. When I get close to you, don't reach up to me. Don't try to jump up to me. Do you hear what I'm saying?”

“Yes.”

“That's a good boy. Will you promise me, Sam, that you won't reach up when I get close to you? You'll just keep holding on to those rocks?”

“P-promise.”

In a low voice to the woman who'd moved Jack out of the way, Boomer said, “I'm checking the rescue rigging, ready to rappel.” As he moved to the edge of the pit, he asked, “On belay?”

“Belay on,” she answered.

“On rappel,” Boomer said, and began his descent over the edge, telling Sam, “Here I come. Keep holding those rocks. You're doing so great! I'm real proud of you. Real, real proud.”

Very quickly, Boomer disappeared into the hole. From where Jack was standing he couldn't see a thing, and when he tried to move forward, one of the rescue team shook his head and signaled for Jack to move back again. But he could hear everything as Boomer kept chatting up Sam: “Just look how you're holding on to those rocks, Sammy. That's really good. You could be a mountain climber. Or you could be a caver, which is even more fun.”

As he dropped lower, he became just a bit harder to hear. “Now I'm right behind you, Sam.” The words came up slightly muffled. “See this thing I'm snapping around you? It's a harness, sort of like the one I'm wearing. And I've got a piece of rope that will clip our two harnesses together. Know what the rope is called? It's called a cow's tail.”

And then Jack heard a sound he'd never expected to hear. Sam was laughing! “C-c-cow's tail,” he repeated.

“Yeah, as in moooo. How old are you, Sam? About 15?”

“Eight,” Sam answered.

“No kidding! You're doing such a great job, I thought you were much older. Here's a hat for you to put on. Do you like it? It fits you pretty good, doesn't it? See, it's got a light on it just like mine. Now, we're going to go up. I want you to put your hands and feet exactly where I tell you to. See that rock right there? Grab it with your right hand.”

“I'm a l-l-lefty,” Sam told him.

“Hey! Really? I'm a leftie too. Lefties are usually very smart people, so two smart lefties like us won't have any trouble getting out of this hole. On belay?” he called up.

A crew member at the top responded, “Belay on.”

“Grab that rock up there with your left hand,” Boomer was telling Sam, “and your right foot goes…right…there!”

Jack watched a crew member keeping tension on the line to Sam's harness, but he really wished he could see Sam and Boomer ascending the rock wall. Hearing Boomer's words was the next best thing. “This rope will hold 6,000 pounds. You don't weigh more than that, do you, Sam?”

“No!” Another giggle from Sammy. Minutes later, he was being lifted into the waiting hands of the rescue team members, the yellow hard hat tilted a bit askew on his head.

“You made it, Sam!” everyone congratulated him. “What a brave boy! Now we're going to get you out of here.” As they spoke, they were wrapping Sam in blankets.

The woman who'd kept Jack away from the edge seemed more relaxed now, so Jack asked her, “Can I go to him?”

“Not yet,” she answered. “The EMTs—emergency medical technicians—need to check him. If he slid down into that hole like he says he did, he's probably got a lot of scraped skin on the front of him. We'll get him up to First Aid right away. And you, too. You need to be checked at First Aid.”

“I'm all right,” Jack told her. “I just want to see my mom and dad.”

Jack was amazed at how quickly they reached the lunchroom—it was all a matter of knowing which path to take, he realized. He and Sam and Ashley had been a lot closer to safety than they knew when they were lost in the blackness, running scared.

The wooden door swung open to reveal a whole crowd of people waiting anxiously in the brightly lighted lunchroom. “There they are!” Olivia cried, and almost in a single leap she caught Jack in her arms, asking, “Are you all right? We were frantic! Is Sam all right?”

“Looks like everyone's fine,” Boomer answered. “Cold, no doubt, and hungry for sure, but nothing that a few Band-Aids and a bowl of hot soup won't fix, I bet. But I'm no doctor, so the kids need to be checked over.”

Boomer didn't ride up in the elevator with them; it was the EMTs who took charge, counting the seconds as the elevator quickly rose 754 feet, then hustling them into the First Aid room right next to the elevator lobby. Once inside First Aid, Sam was examined thoroughly. “I d-didn't g-get to say good-bye to B-B-Boomer,” he complained.

“I bet you'll see him again,” Olivia assured the boy, and then went on to tell Jack how worried they'd been when they learned that Consuela had collapsed and the three of them had disappeared, a worry that escalated into panic and then desperate fear as the hours passed and they weren't found.

“Can you believe it!” Steven exclaimed, “At the end of the tour, not two but three different people—two women and a man—swore you three kids went up on the elevator with them. They must have mistaken you for other kids on the tour. Because of that, the searches were concentrated up here, aboveground—in the visitor center, the staff offices, the parking lot, the trails…. No one thought to look in the cave because the witnesses—three of them!—had been so positive. With all the excitement over Consuela, it's easy to see how people could become confused.”

“And then,” Olivia broke in, “just at the time the search team decided they really ought to check Left Hand Tunnel, at that very moment, Ashley appeared.” Her voice breaking, she reached for her daughter and murmured, “And Ashley told us where you were.”

Jack wanted to ask about Ryan, but he thought he'd better not, not with all those law-enforcement rangers around. Instead, he asked, “What happened to Consuela? Was she really on—” He hesitated to use the word “drugs.”

“Oh, you haven't heard about that part, have you,” Steven answered. “We told Ashley, but I forgot that you didn't know about Consuela. She's a diabetic, Jack. From the way we reconstructed it, she took her insulin injection the way she was supposed to before lunch, but then she never got to eat her lunch because some tourists kept talking to her. That's what led to an insulin reaction.”

“You mean—just because she didn't get enough to eat?” Jack could hardly believe that medicine that was supposed to help someone could cause that person to act the way Consuela had. “That's what made her talk funny? And then faint?”

Steven nodded. “It's what can happen to people with diabetes. Consuela had a bracelet that identified her as a diabetic—she wore it for emergencies. She felt awful when she got back to normal and realized that she'd left you kids without supervision. And when it turned out that no one knew where you were, she was devastated.”

One of the EMTs came up to Olivia then and said, “The little boy seems fine, but we still want to drive him to the hospital in Carlsbad for x-rays, just to make sure he didn't sustain any internal injuries when he fell. He's got a good-size bruise on his stomach.”

“Of course,” Olivia answered. “Are you taking him in the ambulance? Shall I ride in the ambulance with him?”

“I want Jack,” Sam declared, dangling his legs over the edge of the examination table. He still wore the hard hat. Reaching up, he kept switching the headlamp on and off. The insides of his bare arms showed a multitude of red scratches where the jagged edges of the rock formations had dug into him as he slid into the pit. Fortunately, the fake-leather jacket he'd worn had protected him from worse cuts. The jacket lay across a chair, its sleeves and front in shreds. On top of the jacket sat a single shoe. Jack wondered how long Sam's other shoe would stay in that dark pit. Forever? It was like a reunion the next morning in Dr. Rhodes's office. “I really wish I had more chairs,” she apologized. Consuela stood leaning against a wall, Boomer sat on the edge of Dr. Rhodes's desk, the three kids were cross-legged on the floor again, and as the only guests who'd been given chairs, Steven and Olivia looked a little sheepish.

“Sammy, I like your new shoes,” Consuela told him.

“They're Air J-Jordans,” Sam answered, brushing an invisible speck of dirt from the toe of one of them.

“Well,” Dr. Rhodes said, “since you Landons will be leaving New Mexico tomorrow, there are lots of things we need to clear up before you go. First, just as a matter of interest, Consuela got a letter from her cousins in Mexico. Consuela, why don't you tell the Landons what your cousin wrote in that letter.”

Almost shyly, Consuela answered, “I hate to use the words, because I don't want Sammy to be scared again….”

“He won't be. Sam's a brave boy,” Boomer declared, reaching out to tap lightly on the top of the yellow hard hat, which Sam still wore. The rangers were allowing him to keep it.

“The letter was about…vampire bats,” Consuela told them. “In Mexico. There aren't so many of them, but the farmers and ranchers hate them because even though their numbers are small and the bats themselves aren't very large, they feed on the blood of cattle and sometimes cause rabies. So the ranchers in my cousins' area have been searching out all the caves where the bats roost. Then they drag old tires into the caves and set them on fire.”