Roman Ice

by Dave Bartell

  “How hurt?” asked Zac.

  “My back. It hurts a lot, but the water feels good,” said Pétur. Zac waded in as Ian paddled closer.

  “What the hell did you do, Ian? Where’s Jón and Stevie?”

  “I tried to stop it,” said Ian.

  “Bullshit. I knew you two were up to something,” said Zac.

  Ian stood in neck-deep water and moved Pétur between them. Pétur stood and tested his legs in the lower-gravity water.

  “It was Karl. I had no idea he had explosives,” said Ian.

  “You’re a fucking liar,” said Zac, now up to his waist. Ian paddled backward.

  “Ah,” said Pétur, tumbling in the water. Zac turned to Pétur and helped him stand.

  “Are you okay?” asked Zac.

  “Unsteady. Help me get to shore,” said Pétur.

  “What hurts?”

  “My low back near my right hip. I must have banged it hard.”

  Pétur looped an arm over Zac’s shoulder and they stepped out of the water. Zac lowered Pétur into a sitting position and squatted down in front of him. Zac turned toward Ian, who now stood at the opposite wall. He turned back and asked Pétur, “What happened?”

  “I don’t remember all the details, but Ian and Karl were fighting about a bomb. Ian was trying to stop him. I got in the fight, but Karl ran up the Scotland tube. I turned to get Jón out of the room but recall nothing after that. I woke up in the lake with Ian,” said Pétur.

  “Ian tried to stop Karl? Are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Zac leaned in close and whispered, “Do you trust him?”

  “No, but he saved my life,” said Pétur.

  Zac reached inside his jacket and grasped the hilt of his knife. In one smooth motion he turned and stood facing Ian, who expected the move and was already in a fighting stance, his own knife at the ready.

  “It happened the way Pétur described,” said Ian, who stepped clockwise, matching Zac’s movements.

  “Why should I believe you? Jón’s dead. Stevie, Darwin, and Eyrún are missing.”

  “I did not set off the bomb.”

  “Oh right! You’re innocent.”

  “I told you, it was Karl. Our mission was to assess the find. That’s why we brought Jón,” said Ian.

  “And then you killed him. What’s the rest of the mission? Kill us all?” said Zac, who now had Ian backed up against the lake.

  “No,” Ian said. Zac stepped forward. Ian retreated, water around his ankles.

  “Stop!” said Pétur, stepping between them.

  He then winced and put a hand to his hip. The tube was too narrow for either Zac or Ian to get around Pétur.

  “Think about where we are,” Pétur breathed. “We’re five hundred kilometers underground. The mission’s over. We need to find the others and get out.”

  Ian relaxed. Zac moved to get around Pétur.

  “No.” Pétur pressed a hand into Zac’s chest. Ian rotated his knife and held it by the blade toward Pétur.

  “No,” Pétur said again when Zac pushed forward. “Killing him won’t bring Jón back, and I’m hurt. We need him.” Pétur took Ian’s knife with his other hand and gave it to Zac, who pocketed both knives.

  68

  The Three O’Clock Tube

  Darwin pushed down a rising feeling of panic as they crawled back to the pile at what used to be the tube opening. They were uninjured, but they did not have much food and water was low. He had been in tight places before and focused on methodical breathing. One breath. One rock. One breath. One rock.

  The pile suddenly shifted. Rocks tumbled toward Eyrún. She dived left and rolled with Darwin into the opposite wall. Something sharp poked his back as he rolled. A scraping sound filled the room. He turned toward the pile and watched it shrink. The diamonds in the ceiling above him sparkled again in his headlamp. The sound stopped and Darwin rolled off his back.

  “You’re hurt,” said Eyrún. “Your left shoulder blade is bleeding.”

  “Huh?” he said, reaching over his shoulder.

  She inspected his shirt. “It’s not ripped,” she said.

  “Let’s look at it later, then,” he said and wiped bloody fingers on his pant leg.

  Eyrún crawled toward the opening. “Darwin… where did the rocks go?” she said, looking like someone who had just seen a ghost. He turned and saw her standing in the peaked space left by the collapse and staring into space. Raw diamonds, no longer important, covered the ground where they stood. They bellied up to the edge and looked down. A few clumps of diamond rolled off the edge, vanishing in a gray-black haze. There was no bottom. There was nothing at all.

  Darwin followed his lamp up to the lava tube where Stevie and Zac had gone and then to the bigger tubes on each side. Parts of the floor jutted out in a couple places but, no direction gave them a way across.

  “How are we—”

  “Darwin!” she said. “Where are the others?” She scooted back and sat up on her haunches. “Pétur! Stevie!”

  “Zac! Jón!” Darwin joined. “Ian! Anybody!” No reply. Eyrún shrieked. Darwin felt a wave of nausea. Her scream was like that of a dog hit by a car. He pulled her back a few steps from the edge. She pounded her fists on his arms and chest and he embraced her to ward off the blows.

  “No, no, no,” she sobbed, letting her arms fall limp. His eyes flooded. He tried to speak, but felt like he swallowed a rock. Darwin cried with her as the emotional wave crushed them. Two figures lost in a hell of despair.

  69

  The Scotland Tube

  Zac forced Ian to lead the way from the lake in the ten o’clock tube to the Scotland tube. At the junction he got Pétur in a comfortable position against the wall while Ian related his version of the events—his fight with Karl, the explosion, finding Zac unconscious, and rescuing Pétur.

  “The son-of-a-bitch took Stevie. Where else would she be?” said Zac.

  “She must have put up a fight,” said Ian, and he held out her jeweler’s loupe.

  “Gimme that!” Zac took it in a tight fist and pocketed it. Just then, a sound like a truck dumping a load of rocks echoed up the tube from the diamond room. They turned. Ian moved toward the sound.

  Zac grabbed Ian’s shoulder. “I’ll go.”

  “What do you want me to do?” asked Ian.

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing,” said Zac. “You’re staying here.” He pulled a zip tie from his pack, and Ian’s ankles were quickly tied together.

  70

  The Three O’Clock Tube

  Darwin and Eyrún split one of their remaining food bars and debated ways to get to either of the main tubes. Darwin tossed a rock into the pile they had made earlier.

  “Did you hear something?” she asked.

  “I threw a rock,” he said.

  “No. It sounded like a voice.”

  She sprang up and yelled again, “Pétur! Stevie!”

  “Eyrún!” a muffled voice came from the Scotland tube.

  “Over here,” she yelled.

  “Zac?!” Darwin yelled. A light flashed in the diamond chamber and Zac stepped in the tube mouth a few seconds later.

  “You’re okay! We thought you were trapped,” said Zac.

  “We were,” said Darwin. “What the hell happened?”

  “Zac,” she said, pushing an arm against Darwin. “Where are the others?”

  “Jón’s dead,” said Zac, looking into the hole.

  “Oh god,” said Eyrún, pulling her hands to her mouth. She then burst out, “Pétur! Zac, where’s Pétur?”

  “He’s with me. Up the tube a ways. He hurt his back, but seems okay. Ian is with him,” said Zac.

  “Ian? You left him with that asshole? How—” She stopped when Darwin placed a hand on her arm. She slapped it away. “If he hurts Pétur, I will kill him,” said Eyrún.

  “I tied him up. He’s not going anywhere,” said Zac.

  “Zac!” said Darwin loud enough to redirect the conversation
. “What happened?”

  Zac recounted the explosion from when he and Stevie entered the Scotland tube. He explained what Ian and Pétur told him about fighting with Karl, the blast and Ian rescuing Pétur from the edge. They fired questions at him. Most of which had no good answers.

  “How are we going to get over there?” asked Eyrún.

  All the options involved ropes and hanging over the gaping hole. They debated the risks of each and decided the best was to attach climbing anchors to the wall and side-step their way across. Zac would belay them from the Scotland tube. “It will be fine,” said Zac. “Just don’t look down.”

  “Lose the humor now, Zac,” said Eyrún.

  Darwin watched Zac tie a couple climbing anchors and carabiners on the end of a doubled over cord. He whirled the metal bits and released them toward Darwin. Too far out in the room, the metal sailed past Darwin’s outstretched arm. Zac reeled in the rope. His second shot nearly took Darwin’s head off, who ducked and landed on his butt as the anchors clattered into the room. Eyrún stomped on the cord.

  “Good thing I didn’t tie a hammer on it,” said Zac.

  No shit, thought Darwin, brushing himself off and unclipping the hardware from the cord. He set an anchor inside the tube wall and attached a carabiner to the anchor, enclosing one strand of the looped cord. Zac did the same in the Scotland tube. They now had a makeshift clothesline and used it to scroll over climbing harnesses and a stouter rope. Darwin and Eyrún helped each other into climbing harnesses and double checked each other’s fasteners. Eyrún used a quick-draw to clip onto a wall anchor. She sagged backward with her full weight to test it. Solid. She unclipped herself.

  “I’ll go first,” said Darwin.

  “No,” said Eyrún. “I’m a better free climber. You admitted the other day that your skills were limited. Zac!” she yelled.

  “Yep.” He looked out from the Scotland tube. “Just testing the anchor.”

  “I’ll climb across and set a couple anchors to hold the rope closer to the wall. Then I’ll come back and send Darwin over. We’ll belay him. I’ll go after he’s there and collect the gear. I have a feeling we’ll need it later.”

  “Got it,” said Zac.

  Eyrún clipped onto the line. Zac set a second anchor on his end as insurance and clipped on the line to belay Eyrún if she slipped. The rope would stop her fall, but there was a lot of slack because of the curved wall. She stepped around the opening onto the ledge and side stepped along the wall.

  “It’s solid,” she said. “The handholds are good. Darwin, you’ll want to grab the rocks and avoid the diamonds. They’re slippery and sharp.”

  “Okay,” he replied. He stood on in the tube mouth with nothing to do but watch and look at the abyss. He swallowed hard and brought his gaze back to Eyrún.

  She moved with care as the curved ceiling forced her to bend awkwardly at the waist. She twisted her head back and forth to get light onto potential hand-holds. About a meter in, she reached down with her right hand, grabbed an anchor and placed it in a crack. She attached a carabiner and clipped the rope to it.

  She took about 30 minutes to place three more anchors before reaching a point where the shelf widened near the Scotland tube. She set another anchor a couple meters from the tube opening. “Seems stable enough,” she said stepping backward enough to stand without arching.

  “Ian said that section over there collapsed when he was moving Pétur.” Zac pointed to toward the ten o’clock tube. “We can’t rely on any of this being stable.”

  “I didn’t say jump on it,” she huffed and headed back toward Darwin. Her second crossing took just a couple minutes as she used the rope to keep upright and her feet to side-step across.

  “Darwin,” she called to him.

  “Here.”

  “You will do this just like me. You don’t need hands on the wall. The rope will hold you. Keep your weight on your toes. Use your legs to push up and down. Don’t pull with your hands. The rope is just for balance.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  She attached a Y-shaped connector to the front loop of his harness. The top arms of the Y were wrinkled like the shed skin of a snake. She explained there was a bungee cord inside that allowed each arm to stretch about a meter, but would hold the weight of an elephant. A carabiner attached to the end of each Y arm.

  “You clip both carabiners to the rope.” She walked him over and clipped him on. “Stop looking down. You’re not going there. Keep your eyes on the wall or Zac.”

  “Okay,” he said.

  “When you get to an anchor point, unclip ONE carabiner and move it to the other side of the anchor, THEN move the second carabiner. Never unclip both at the same time. Got it?”

  “Aye, aye, teacher,” said Darwin.

  “Now’s not the time to be a smartass. It’s normal to be nervous, but focus,” she scolded.

  She leaned in and kissed him. “Now, get going.”

  Darwin grasped the rope and stepped onto the ledge. He adjusted into a slight squat with his knees bent into the wall to keep his center of gravity on the ledge. The curved ceiling put his face right against the wall. He could just see his foot placements on the ledge. It was not as bad as he thought. The ledge varied between half to a full shoe length.

  He reached the first anchor and unclipped the first carabiner on the Y with his left hand. He stretched across his face to move the second when he felt himself going backwards. He quickly thrust his left hand out wide and grabbed the rope. His heart pounded. He could feel it in his temples where the helmet squeezed. Breathe. Breathe.

  “You’re all right, Darwin,” said Eyrún. “Deep breaths. The ropes won’t let you go anywhere.”

  He closed his eyes and sucked in deep belly breaths. His heart rate settled.

  “Try using your left hand to move the left carabiner and your right hand to move the right carabiner. You’ll have better balance,” she said.

  “Okay,” said Darwin. He moved his right hand in from its wide position and unclipped and reattached the right side of the Y. He moved easier and clipped around the next two anchor points. Two more to go he thought. Also the ledge widened in about three meters.

  “My legs are killing me!” he shouted. “Ahhh.”

  “Zac! Can you help him?” yelled Eyrún.

  “Darwin,” said Zac. “Let’s give your legs a rest. Put your arms out wide on the rope… Yeah, that’s right. Now sag down until your body weight is on your arms… Good, just rest a minute.”

  “Ugh, that’s better,” said Darwin, trying to focus on the diamonds inches from his face.

  “You’re almost here. When you get to the shelf, it will be easier. Let me know when you’re ready,” said Zac. Darwin waited another half minute, then said, “I’m ready.”

  “Okay. Push up with your legs. Put only a quarter of your body weight on your arms.”

  Darwin moved back to a standing position. A crack rang out and his legs shot out from under him. The ledge under his feet had snapped and two large chunks tumbled into the hole. His body dropped, hands slipping off the rope. A sharp pop sounded as the anchor broke from the wall causing the rope to twang like a bowstring.

  The bungee in the Y harness lessened the force on Darwin, but not enough to prevent the wall anchor from breaking free. He dropped to the left as the carabiners holding him slid down the loosened rope. He ducked just as his head reached the wider shelf and his helmet made a sickening thud, snapping his head back on impact.

  71

  The Diamond Chamber

  “Darwin!” screamed Eyrún.

  “Can you see him?” yelled Zac. He followed the twin lines of rope from the wall anchor in the room over the ledge.

  “Yes. Darwin! Can you hear me?” yelled Eyrún, watching Darwin swing in an oval around the ropes hitched to his mid-section. His limbs splayed like an upside down crab. “Zac, he’s knocked out. What do we do?” She slid around to the first wall anchor on her side.

  “Stay the
re. You don’t have enough rope. I’ll get him,” said Zac.

  “I can’t just sit here,” she said.

  “I need your eyes. I can’t see him.”

  “Okay, but hurry.”

  “I am,” muttered Zac, grabbing a second rope and attaching it to separate anchors in the wall. Most of what he needed was already clipped to his harness. He stepped onto the ledge and worked his way to the first anchor, where he attached another anchor in a different crack.

  Darwin moved his head, then flailed his limbs in panic.

  “He’s moving!”

  Oh God. I’m falling. The room swirled. He sucked in deep breaths to stem the nausea. His right leg hit rock. The wall? He swung his arms to the right, desperate to hold on to something.

  “Darwin! Darwin! Stop!” came Eyrún’s voice from behind him. He braced his boot against the wall and twisted his head toward her. “Darwin. Reach your hands to the rope,” said Eyrún. “That’s good. Now, drag yourself upright.”

  He followed her instructions. As he did so, a warm sensation flowed down his right temple, and he touched two fingers to his cheek. They came away red. Oh shit! He hugged the rope for dear life and steadied himself with a toe hold on the wall.

  “You’re okay, Darwin. It’s not bleeding badly. Zac’s right above you, and we’ll get you up. How do you feel?” she asked.

  He laughed. “How do I feel?” he mocked. “I’m bleeding and hanging over the entrance to hell itself. I feel—ahhh…” he gasped.

  “Darwin! Easy. Just keep your head level,” she said.

  “Okay,” he said and put his head against the rope. He steadied his breathing and tried to ignore the bottomless pit. The rope stopped swinging, and the dizziness passed. He heard footsteps scraping the rock above and Zac’s familiar grunts.