Cat joined her friends at the entrance.
“It goes pretty far in. I just checked out the first two chambers, but there is at least one more beyond that. Someone was living in the second chamber a long time ago. His skeleton is there and it looks like he killed himself. Here’s what I suggest: we bring the horses in here and try to close up the hole we made in the entrance. It won’t stop them for long, but they might not see it at night, and even if they do, they’re not going to risk entering it in the pitch black and getting picked off. That will buy us some time. We can explore what’s beyond the second chamber. If it’s a dead end, then we make our fight here, take them one by one as they come into the cave.”
She continued. “But I don’t think we’ll have to. I could feel the air blowing. There’s another entrance somewhere back there.”
“I’m convinced,” said Wade. “Let’s do it.”
An hour earlier, their future looked bleak. Now there was hope, and the teens had a renewed spirit. They called Yuki in, and she brought the horses inside, leading them into the second chamber. They heard her give a gasp.
“She’s found the skeleton,” said Cat.
Wade and Simon chuckled, not at the thought of Yuki finding the skeleton, but of Cat’s matter-of-fact interpretation.
The other three entered the second chamber and shone their lights on the piles of empty food containers and then on the skeleton.
“What do you think?" asked Wade.
“I think he was afraid to venture out. I think he stayed in the cave until depression got the best of him, then he killed himself,” answered Simon.
“Do you think he was exploring the cave when the event hit?” asked Cat.
Simon shone his light around the roof and sides of the cave.
“I don’t think so,” answered Simon. “I don’t think this is an old cave. Look up at the ceiling. It’s not smooth like a normal cave. It’s almost like two gigantic rocks came together to form the cave. Look at all the debris in here. It’s relatively new. I think the earthquake formed it. Maybe the dead guy found it and moved in.”
From the third chamber came a cry from Yuki. “Oh my God! You’ve got to see this.”
Cat, Simon, and Wade rushed through the entrance to the next chamber, and then stopped short.
Sitting in the middle of an enormous cavern was a town.
Chapter 28
It was really a part of a town, one street about two blocks long. Most of the rest of the cavern consisted of rocks—rubble that had poured down from crumbling mountains. Under the rubble was the rest of the town, but the two-block section of a main street was remarkably clear of debris. Some of the buildings were partially caved in and rocks littered the street, but a few of the buildings were intact. Cat could tell by the style of the buildings and from what was left that it hadn’t been a large town to begin with. The two-block section that survived seemed to be the center of town, but only consisted of a half dozen stores.
It was light in the cavern, and Cat looked up to see a space in the rock that allowed the sun to shine in. Less than a mile in the distance was an opening with light shining through it, telling them it led outside.
Nobody said anything at first, all of them trying to comprehend what they were seeing.
“How did it get in here?” Cat finally said.
Simon, who was also looking at the roof of the cavern, came up with the explanation.
“I think the town was built in a small valley between two mountains. When the earthquake hit, the mountains shifted. I don’t think this is a cave at all. I think the mountains fell in on themselves and created a roof at the center point. In the shifting, a lot of the rock fell away, crushing everything that was not in that center point.”
“Do you think it will eventually collapse in the center as well?” asked Yuki.
“I would think so. Maybe not anytime soon, but yes, eventually. If another earthquake hits, it will probably collapse. If I had to guess, I’d say our skeleton friend in the cave came to the same conclusion, which is why he lived in the cave and not the town.”
“Do you think he closed up the cave entrance and planted the bushes?”
“If I had to guess, he had no idea what had just happened. He was either from this town or came upon it. All he knew was that everyone he ran across was dead. It must have been a real shock.”
“Like it was to our parents,” said Cat.
“Exactly. The difference is, they eventually found other people in the same boat. Being out here in the middle of nowhere, this guy probably didn’t even have anyone to talk to about it. He was probably scared out of his mind. Then after the earthquake hit and he found the cave, he was probably too scared to leave it, other than to get supplies from the town. He didn’t know who was out there, so he planted the bushes, then blocked the entrance. After a while, he probably went crazy. That’s when he killed himself.”
“Or herself. We don’t really know.”
“That’s true. I don’t know the difference between a male and a female skeleton.”
They walked the horses down a gentle slope to the valley floor (or cave floor—they weren’t sure what to call it). They walked slowly down the main street, dodging boulders in the road and looking at the establishments. The first one they came to was a small grocery store. They shone their lights into the doorway and the window frames that were once glassed in. Many of the shelves were almost bare.
“This is where skeleton man found his food,” said Wade.
“And this is where he found his booze,” said Simon, shining his light into a liquor store across the road.
“Notice the skeletons?” asked Wade. “You don’t see them very often.” He looked at Simon. “Because it’s a cave, or almost a cave, and it’s cooler?”
Cat noticed that they were all looking to Simon for information on a more frequent basis. Because of having spent his early life indoors reading, he tended to be more knowledgeable on certain subjects.
“I think so. It’s cool in here and it doesn’t get any direct sun. I think the bones are preserved better.”
There weren’t, however, a lot of skeletons, further adding to the theory that the town was very small. There were two pickup trucks parked on the road. One had a boulder where the cab used to be, but the other was in reasonably good shape. It was rusted, but not as badly as most of the others they had run across.
In all, the town, like most they had seen, was eerie, and they weren’t comfortable sticking around. They were anxious to leave, but Cat stopped them.
“We have a decision to make. We can continue on and leave this place, but if we do, we haven’t helped our situation. Eventually the men out there will storm our little hiding place behind the rocks and find us gone. It won’t take them long to discover the cave entrance. If we’re gone, they will come through and continue chasing us. But we have the perfect opportunity to better our odds if we stay in the cave and wait for them. They can only come through the entrance a couple at a time. We wait at the beginning of the second chamber and pick them off as they come in. We can keep the horses down here. When we feel we’ve whittled down their numbers enough and they become too scared to enter the cave, we leave.”
Simon was nodding.
“It’s not perfect, but it will help our situation. We only need two of us. Why don’t Cat and I stay in the cave and the two of you explore what’s outside the opening at the end of the road?”
The plan agreed on, Cat and Simon left their horses tied to a post in front of one of the buildings and headed back up to the cave, while Wade and Yuki continued on.
“Will it work?” asked Cat as they climbed the slope.
“Your idea. You tell me.”
Cat looked at him with a shocked expression.
“Just kidding. You really have to work on your sense of humor. I think it will. Once they know they can’t get in without getting massacred, they will either turn around and go home, figuring we are not worth the trouble, or they
will wait and wait and wait, not knowing what to do. Then we can slip out knowing we’ve killed some of them and the rest of them might take days to venture in again. As I said, not a perfect plan, but probably the best option we have at the moment.”
They walked into the cave carefully, just in case the men had already entered, but it was dark and quiet. They entered the first chamber and listened through spaces in the rocks. Somebody was calling to them to come out from behind the rocks. They promised no one would be hurt.
“Right,” said Simon. “Like we’d believe that.”
“Are you thinking they’ll attack at night?”
“I think so. It’s the most logical time and I’d bet they don’t want to wait out another day.”
The sun was going down. They talked to keep the nervousness at bay.
“Do you think the others made it?” asked Cat.
“I hope so. If the men chasing us comprise the whole group, then there’s a good chance they did. Even if some of that group were left behind, I’d like to think all of our friends got away. After all, like us, they were on horseback and these guys aren’t.”
“The trip sure didn’t turn out the way we planned.”
“No, but maybe it’s good that we ran across this group. Maybe they would have attacked Yellowstone. If we can make a dent in their numbers, it has to be a good thing.”
They could see through the cracks in the stones at the entrance that darkness had fallen.
“Soon, I would think,” said Simon.
A few minutes later, they heard a commotion outside the entrance. Men were yelling and swearing, and they could hear rocks falling as they climbed the rock pile looking for Cat and her friends.
“What the fuck?”
“Where the hell did they go?”
They heard the bushes being moved.
“They’re in here. There’s a cave behind here.”
“Tricky bastards. They piled up the rocks.”
“They think we wouldn’t notice? Pull down the rocks and let’s go in.”
“Yeah, and get ourselves shot up? You’ve got shit for brains.”
“They’re long gone. They wouldn’t stick around.”
“We don’t know that. You saw how that black-haired girl shot. She was good.”
“Yeah, I want to get me a piece of that.”
“A bullet?”
“The girl, you asshole.”
Suddenly there was quiet. Cat heard the men moving away.
“They’re coming up with a plan,” said Simon.
“We’re ready.”
They weren’t.
It was the one thing they didn’t plan for. They moved back to the second chamber, one on each side of the entrance to the chamber, and waited. After five minutes of silence, suddenly an explosion ripped through the rocks in the entrance, sending them flying in all directions. The noise was deafening, and smoke and dust filled the first two chambers. Cat was holding her ears and coughing. She looked for Simon, but couldn’t see him through the dust.
The men were smarter than Cat had given them credit for. They knew it was foolhardy to come in one or two at a time. She also never considered that they might have explosives. This way, they could charge in as a group.
As the dust began to clear, they heard movement in the front chamber. It suddenly occurred to Cat that the men had to be careful. If their purpose was to kill the men but not the women, they couldn’t shoot randomly. Now she could see Simon. He nodded.
Cat aimed at the closest shape she could make out and fired. The man screamed. She heard Simon shoot, and it was followed by a grunt. She heard his target hit the floor. The cave had cleared a bit and she could see men more clearly. She fired one shot after another until her rifle was empty. She pulled out her pistol and continued the barrage. The men in the first chamber were all down, but there were others at the cave entrance firing steadily into the cave. It no longer seemed to matter who they were shooting at.
Cat looked over at Simon and mouthed the words, “I have to reload.”
He mouthed back, “Me too.”
The attackers sensed a pause in the action and knew what was happening. They chose that moment to storm the cave, hoping to get Cat and Simon before they had a chance to reload. Cat looked at Simon in panic.
Simon yelled, “We’ve gotta go.”
They ducked down and started toward the cave exit. Bullets were flying around them as they ran. As the men were able to see better, they focused their aim on Simon, with obvious plans for Cat, if they could catch her.
How Simon avoided getting hit was a mystery to Cat, but just as the attackers poured into the second chamber and capture or death were imminent, the popping of M-16s came from the rear of the chamber. Wade and Yuki stood, shielded by the sides of the exit, shooting rapid fire into the crowd of men. Behind them, Cat and Simon heard screams and moans. Wade and Yuki lifted their weapons so Cat and Simon could get past, then continued their barrage of bullets.
They stopped shooting. Cat and Simon reloaded and joined them as they surveyed the scene. The chamber was heavy with smoke and the smell of gunpowder. Some of the men were lying motionless, while others were writhing in pain crying. If there were any others alive, they had retreated back to the cave entrance.
“Time to go,” said Wade.
They ran down the slope, nobody saying a word. They retrieved the horses and galloped down the road until they reached the end of the town. A bright moon could be seen shining through the crack in the cave ceiling. It was so bright, it illuminated the whole town. When they felt they were out of range, they dismounted and looked back at the cave.
“How did you end up back there?” asked Cat, still out of breath from the gun battle.
“We were on our way back,” said Wade. “We saw something that would take your breath away and we wanted to share it with you. Besides, just in case you needed help, we wanted to be close by. When we heard the explosion, we knew things hadn’t gone as planned, so we got there as fast as we could.”
“Your timing couldn’t have been better. I thought we were dead.”
Cat looked over at Yuki, who was shaking uncontrollably. She walked over to her friend and hugged her. “Thank you. I know that was especially hard for you.”
“It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. The two of you—two of my best friends in the world—were going to die if I wasn’t willing to kill. The decision turned out to be easy. But I’m feeling it now.” She sat down in the dirt and began to cry. Wade sat with her and held her.
Simon came over to Cat and gave her a hug. The two of them kissed deeply. Suddenly, Cat found herself crying. She looked at Simon and saw tears running down his cheeks.
“Well, we’re in good shape,” said Wade, trying to lighten the moment.
It worked. The tears turned into a laughter of relief that they all had made it out alive.
Cat looked back at the cave and saw by the light of the moon three men standing at the entrance. The men lifted their arms in the air, turned and headed back into the cave.
“They are giving up,” said Cat. “They’re not going to follow any longer.”
“You don’t think it is a trick?” asked Yuki, now somewhat composed.
“No. It’s like a wild animal accepting defeat. Instead of going belly-up like an animal would, they are walking away. I think we’re done with them. Besides, there can’t be many of them left.”
“And we’ll never know who they were,” said Simon.
“I don’t care who they were,” said Wade. “They’re gone. And now, we’ve got something to show you.”
Chapter 29
The exit from the town and the earthquake-created cave was larger than Cat had originally thought from a distance. It was half the width of the road that ran through the town. They threaded their way carefully through a field of boulders and loose rock, finally coming out on the other side into the moonshine. It was so bright, it seemed almost like daylight.
Th
ey halted their horses and sat in awe at the panorama before them. In her life in Yellowstone, Cat had seen some beautiful sights, but she wasn’t sure anything could top this. Spread out before them was a long wide green valley between the mountains. Roaming the valley were hundreds of buffalo, not yet settled down for the night. Some were enormous in size with thick horns, and others were smaller, without horns. Cat assumed the smaller ones were the females. Dodging in and out of the legs of many of the females were calves.
“Whoa,” mouthed Simon.
“Incredible,” said Cat.
“We couldn’t experience this alone,” said Yuki. “We had to come back and get you.”
They rode down a long slope until they reached the valley floor. They stopped their horses next to a large rock formation, dismounted, and climbed up onto the rock. They dozed, one person always staying awake, just in case they were still being pursued. But deep down, they all felt the men were done. They would head back to where they came from or find a new place to call their own. Either way, they were sure they had seen the last of them.
Cat woke up to a brilliant sun. Whereas a day earlier they were doing everything possible to avoid the sun, this sun was different, almost healing. The buffalo, most of whom had laid down for the night, were now back on their feet and grazing.
“I have to touch them,” said Cat.
“Um, probably not a good idea,” said Simon. “I think they can be pretty ornery. It might be dangerous.”
“I’ll be fine.” She slipped off the rock and approached the herd. She walked quietly among them, talking to them as she walked and reaching out and touching them. The buffalo barely acknowledged her presence. A little one came up to Cat and nuzzled her. The mother cast a wary eye on the situation, but didn’t interfere. Cat continued on into the sea of buffalo. She was in heaven. She felt so at home with them. Some of them towered over her with their enormous heads and chipped and well-used horns. A couple seemed annoyed by her presence, but most of them accepted her without a thought. Finally she turned back and made her way to the rock. Her friends were awestruck.
Eden's Legacy (Eden Rising Trilogy Book 3) Page 18
