Bone

by George C. Chesbro

  Hanging upside down, his arms dangling, he looked up at I he azure sky, then arched his back slightly and looked below him—at Zulu, who was very still, his head back and an absolutely disbelieving look on his features as he stared up at him.

  But it was not Zulu's voice he heard in his mind.

  "You should go to New York, boy. You like to roam around caves? Well, you should see some of the interesting shit that's under that city. I know; I've been down there."

  Caves? Climbing. Climbing up, and climbing down. He did both, Bone thought. It was what he did for a living.

  No, more than that. Climbing, exploring: these things were his life.

  His arms felt better, stronger. He reached behind him, took some chalk dust out of the cloth bag hanging "from his belt, wiped it over his hands to dry the moisture there and thus provide him with a better grip. Then he took a series of deep breaths, abruptly reached up and gripped the rim of the ledge with his right hand, kicked his legs off the ledge. He used the momentum of his swinging legs to carry him to his right, swung back again and then in a single motion grabbed the ledge with his left hand, pulled himself up and onto the outcropping. He felt something rip in his belly, a sharp stab of pain. He looked down, saw that the front of his T-shirt was stained with blood.

  There was nothing to be done about that now, Bone thought. Indeed, he could not even afford to think about his wound and the bleeding, for then he would risk losing his concentration, risk falling from the escarpment and dying. This was the beauty of free climbing, the essence of what had always attracted him to the sport. It was pure, with no room for error. Grace was rewarded, while clumsiness or loss of concentration was punished by death. More than once he had been told he was crazy by people who did not understand. All rock climbers were crazy, he had been told.

  Sure, he thought as he smiled grimly. Rock climbers were crazy. But in what other sport could one find such purity?

  On the next leg of this route there was nothing but a narrow cleft running perhaps twenty feet straight up, ending at another narrow ledge. Bone jammed his left hand into the cleft, clenched his hand into a fist. With only this clenched fist serving as a piton, anchoring him to the face of the cliff, he swung out and up, reached over his head and jammed his right hand into the crevice, clenched it into a fist. Then he planted both feet against the smooth rock on either side of the crevice, pushed with his toes as he pulled. Little by little, foot by precious foot, he "punched" his way up the face of the cliff.

  By the time he reached the second ledge the flesh on the backs of both hands was raw and bleeding, and the muscles in his arms and shoulders burned with uric acid buildup from fatigue. He hooked his legs below the knees over the rim of the ledge, released his grip and once again allowed the upper two thirds of his body to dangle loosely in space.

  Zulu now appeared as little more than a black dot on the grassy plateau below. Zulu still remained motionless in the same spot, as if he were a great black tree which had taken root, a silent witness.

  "You're a good man, Granger; a little weird, maybe, but I respect what you do, and you're certainly a free spirit. Since you explore caves as well as you climb cliffs, check out the New York City underground. I work for a company there called Empire Subway Limited; we find and map out what's down there for the utilities, subways and construction companies."

  He had started free climbing when he was a freshman at the University of Colorado. There had been a club at the university, and the instructor had started him off climbing huge boulders, using no equipment and carrying nothing but a bag of chalk powder to keep his hands dry and his grip firm.

  He had soon discovered that he had a natural talent for free climbing, possessing not only tremendous upper body strength and agility, but grace in his movements and an almost uncanny instinct for finding the "right" route to take him to the top of unforgiving barriers of stone. He had "graduated" from boulders to the buildings on campus, and from these sheer but predictable columns of brick and window ledges to the sheer and unpredictable faces of rock cliffs. Each weekend all during the school year he had driven, often with other enthusiasts, to various cliffs in the region. It soon became apparent to all that he was the best—better than the other hobbyists, better than any of the instructors. Fourteen months after his first tentative crawl up the face of a boulder, he'd been executing 5.0 climbs—climbs which were then considered at the very edge of the possible, the ultimate in difficulty.

  "You're a hell of a guide and teacher, Granger, and you've shown me one hell of a lot down there in the places you've taken me. Now I'd like to show you a good time. I'll send you some maps from the company. You walk around under New York and you'll see more than a bit of history; in lower Manhattan you can see wooden waterworks designed and built by Aaron Burr. Check it out. If you do decide to come, give me a call when you get there. I know how to show you a good time above ground, too. If you've never been to New York, it's an experience you'll never forget."

  Indeed, Bone thought—and once again smiled grimly.

  He had dropped out of college at the beginning of his junior year, for he had already discovered what it was he wanted to do with his life. He'd worked at some odd jobs to earn money, and when he had saved enough he would quit and travel, searching for new cliffs and mountains against which to pit his skills, living in rooming houses and YMCAs, wherever he could find a bed.

  His fame had spread, and soon he had found himself much in demand as an instructor of free-climbing techniques at various mountaineering schools, in Europe as well as in the United States. The pay from these free-lance assignments was very good, and he had used the time the money had bought him to pioneer new techniques and to free-climb rock faces previously scaled only by climbers with traditional mountain-climbing equipment. It was because of him that the rating scale of difficulty had to be expanded beyond the 5.0 range, to 5.5. He was constantly on the move, traveling around the world to teach and to climb. He had become friends with people around the world, and had become increasingly more famous among rock and mountain climbers. But his friends had long grown used to not seeing or hearing from him for long periods of time, for he might be camped in desolate mountain ranges anywhere from Colorado to the Himalayas; his friends had learned to expect him when he appeared, and they would never question an extended leave of absence; they would assume he was climbing somewhere in the world.

  "Come to New York, Granger. Check out what's under the streets there. If you find anything down there we don't already know about, the company will lay some money on you."

  Caving—spelunking—had somehow seemed a natural extension of his talents; instead of climbing up, he would climb down. He liked to explore and climb, regardless of the direction in which he was moving. Indeed, he had soon learned of famous cave systems, such as Fantastic Pit at Ellison's Cave in Georgia, which could be reached only by someone using mountaineering techniques. He had astounded the world of climbing by free climbing down four hundred and fifty feet into the Valhalla Pit, in Alabama.

  Once introduced to this underground world, he'd discovered that he enjoyed exploring there almost as much as he enjoyed climbing sheer cliff faces toward the sky. Caving had its own unique challenges and fascinations, and before long he had -become a top expert in underground explorations. He was an important contributing member of the Cave Research Foundation, and was on the Cave Rescue Commission—ready to fly on short notice to any site in the world to assist in the rescue of lost or stranded spelunkers. He had discovered dozens of new cave systems, helped map hundreds of miles of caverns in Carlsbad, Mammoth Caves, Shenandoah and Curry Caverns, as well as other, lesser, cave systems.

  Now he could feel the warmth of his own blood spreading across his stomach; the front of his T-shirt was stained a dark crimson and was sticking to his flesh. As he hung in space, blood was flowing down his arms, dripping off his fingertips. Strength and feeling had returned to his arms—but he knew that it was much diminished. He was in great dange
r, Bone knew, and if he did not pick up his pace he would never make it to the top; the value of the flood of images that was now engulfing his mind would be lost. Finally, he had found the stranger—but the stranger was going to die if he did not get moving.

  And if he died, Anne would die. If she was not dead already.

  He flexed the muscles in his legs slightly, pulling himself up far enough so that he could see the next ledge and rest stop; it was perhaps seventy-five yards above him. From that stop it appeared to be a fairly easy climb the rest of the way to the top—but those seventy-five yards were extremely difficult; in his present, very weakened, condition, they could prove to be deadly. He would need all of his remaining strength, will and most of all—concentration. If he was going to make it, he had to flow . . .

  He wiped blood away from his eyes, then arched and grabbed hold of the edge of a narrow crevice off to his right. Then he released his legs and once more swung out into space. He searched with his feet for a toehold, found one, lost it. Then his grip on the crevice began to loosen.

  It looked like he might not make it, Bone thought dreamily as he swung back and forth, his fingers slipping. One mistake-usually meant death. He had not climbed for more than a year, and he was growing very weak from loss of blood.

  He reached up and out with his left hand, jammed it into a crevice; that served to stop his side-to-side motion, and he braced himself with his feet against the rock. He released his right hand, reached back into his chalk bag. He chalked his right hand, then his left. He had to increase his pace, Bone thought. But he mustn't struggle against the rock, only flow faster over it . . .

  Now!

  He reached up with his right hand and found a grip. He surged up, found another grip, scrambled with his feet, pushing, pulling up again. Flow; pull, push, swing, grab hold, flow . . .

  Blood, warm and sticky, was running down his legs now. Still he kept going, his ears ringing with distant, dissonant music. One slip . . . don't think about it. Keep moving! Flow!

  And then he reached the next rest stop. Panting with exhaustion, he hooked his legs over the ledge, lay back and struggled to breathe. His arms and fingers felt as if they were on fire, but he knew that he could not afford to rest for long; not with his blood draining out of him at an ever-increasing rate.

  Then one day the maps had arrived, sent by the New Yorker whose party of amateur cavers Bone had guided through a little-known section of Carlsbad Caverns, forwarded to him at the Utah mountaineering school where he had been teaching. He had studied the maps, and had indeed been intrigued by the strange world, part natural and part man-made, beneath the streets of New York City—especially the borough of Manhattan. He had never been to New York; indeed, he generally avoided big cities altogether, preferring the mountains and open country of the West. Almost as a whim, he had decided to visit New York City, perhaps to do some exploring of its subterranean world on his own. He had told no one where he was going, and had not contacted the man who had sent him the maps, for he was not certain how long he would stay.

  In New York he had checked into a YMCA, paid a couple of days in advance, and then proceeded to go out on his own to walk the streets and see the sights. He'd been impressed by the incredible energy of the city, regretted that he had not come before.

  And he had begun to use the maps to explore underground.

  He had started in the Wall Street area, where there were underground structures dating back to the times of the earliest Dutch settlers who had colonized the tip of the island of Manhattan.

  He had been fascinated by what he found, and he had decided to branch out, to try to go beyond the routes indicated on the maps. Eventually, by repeatedly daring to crawl into very narrow, natural fissures in the limestone and granite, he had discovered an ancient, natural cistern into which wells had been drilled hundreds of years before. There were natural tunnels radiating out from the cistern, and he had explored them—eventually finding the unmapped, dry bed of a river that had carved its way through the bedrock of Manhattan in prehistoric times. Excited by his discovery, he had spent day after day exploring the riverbed and its narrow tributaries, traveling south to north, heading further and further up this dark artery beneath the island.

  Almost a week after he had begun, when he estimated that he had worked and mapped his way almost halfway up the island, he had been thoroughly startled to hear what sounded like muted chanting. Someone was in the darkness ahead of him—and with his own lights off, he could now detect a faint glow from that direction. Using the glow as a beacon, he had cautiously gone forward, feeling his way in the darkness. He had groped through a narrow channel, then suddenly found himself standing at the entrance to a vast, stone rotunda that the swirling water of the vanished river had carved from the surrounding soft, almost pure, limestone. Coleman lamps anchored in the walls at the four points of the compass cast an eerie, flickering glow throughout the chamber, and he had suddenly realized that he was standing in the center of a field of bleached bones that were not only beneath his feet, but jutting from the walls and ceiling of what appeared to be a geological anomaly—a small core, or pocket, of earth veining the stone; an ancient burial ground that had steadily sunk over the ages.

  From this surrounding thicket of bones he had found himself staring out over a horrifying tableau. In the center of the chamber was the dark, shimmering surface of what Bone thought was almost certainly a quicksand pit, another oozing anomaly which would be deadly for the casual and unsuspecting explorer, probably fed and lubricated by fresh springs even further beneath the ground. On the opposite side of the pit a man knelt; the man was dressed all in blood-streaked, orange rain gear, open at the front to reveal what appeared to be a brocaded purple priest's chasuble. Bone had watched in horror as the man had reached into a black plastic garbage bag and drawn out the severed head of an old woman whose long, white hair was matted with blood.

  "What the hell?!"

  The man in blood-streaked orange had looked up and seen him, then once again reached into the plastic bag and drawn out an object which had glittered in the flickering light cast by the Coleman lamps; the man was already halfway around the quicksand pit, running toward him, before Bone had realized that the object the man held was a straight-edged razor. He had snatched one of the bones from the earth wall to his right, hefted it; the femur he had drawn from the earth had felt as heavy and hard as stone.

  The man had slashed at him with his razor, and he had jumped back, away from the deadly steel. Then he had leaped forward and swung at the man's head, missed, but hit the man's arm. At the same time he had used his other hand to turn on the flashlight and shine the beam straight into the man's face; he had seen, beneath the floppy brim of the rain hat and above the upturned collar, a pair of bright green eyes which had glittered with madness, panic and rage. The man had slipped and gone down, but had immediately picked up a bone and flung it at him. The stone-hard bone had hit him over the left temple, stunning him. He had dropped the flashlight, heard it smash on the stone floor. His vision blurred, hands to his head, he had known only that the man with the razor would be coming at him again, and he had staggered backward to his left, into the mouth of a narrow channel which was not the one he had come through. He'd continued to back up, left foot, right foot—and then he had stepped into nothing. Suddenly he had been falling away into darkness, colliding with stone walls on his way down, banging his head again, listening to what sounded like the roar and whistle of a freight train rushing through his skull, threatening to crush him. Pain had exploded somewhere behind his eyes in a blinding white flash that had abruptly blinked out, leaving him suspended in a void of nothing and nowhere.

  He did not know how long he had been unconscious, but he realized that it couldn't have been more than a few seconds, or he would have drowned. As in a dream that he'd known was not a dream, he had found himself immersed in icy water that chilled him to the bone and was moving very swiftly. He'd desperately wanted to close his eyes,
to somehow shut off the pain in his head and the cold in his body; the dissonant music in his mind seemed to be playing in counterpoint to the boiling hiss of the water that roiled all around him, sucking him along. But he knew that if he closed his eyes to darkness in darkness, if he allowed himself to give in to it, to sleep, to pass out, he would surely die. Then the will to live surged through him, and he struggled to turn over on his back, coughing, spitting water, arching his back, kicking slightly, treading water with his hands, fighting to stay afloat in the foam of the hissing water. Just as he had done countless times when dangling by his fingertips from some tiny ledge hundreds of feet in the air, he struggled to concentrate on just one thing—what he had to do to stay alive. Keep his head above water, and not worry about where this gelid underground journey would end.

  He'd lost track of time and space, had no longer even known who he was, where or what he was; all that was left in the pain and the wet and the darkness was a terrible will to live, to conquer this new peril. For what had seemed an eternity he had ridden the surging water on his back and fought against the blackness threatening to engulf his mind.

  And then, finally, it gradually came to him that he was no longer moving; he was in mud, and he was sinking. He'd twisted and floundered, struggling to keep his head above the clinging ooze, and had caught a glimpse of a sliver of light above him and to his right. Blue sky. And then he'd realized that he was still clutching the femur. He'd used the bone to dig into and pull himself through the mud, slowly inching forward, up an incline that was part muddy earth, part stone. He'd come to the narrow opening, used the femur to dig at and widen it even as the narrow tunnel through which he had crawled had begun to melt and collapse around his body, threatening to bury him alive . . .

  And then he had surged forward, toward the sky, out of the ephemeral tunnel that had opened and closed so quickly. He had crawled through more muck until he had come to a concrete wall, then a wooden ramp that led up and out of the pit. He'd continued to crawl, pulling with the bone, scratching with his fingertips, pushing with the bone, up the rough wood . . .