Running Scared

by Gloria Skurzynski

  They trudged silently, Ashley’s lantern bobbing with each step and Sam’s sweaty hand firmly grasping Jack’s. Sam was one step behind, following Jack as though he were a dog and Jack’s arm the leash. The hand-holding made Jack feel slightly off balance, so after a while he tried to pry Sam free, but Sam clung even tighter until his nails bit into Jack’s skin like tiny teeth.

  “Hey, not so tight, Bud,” Jack told him. “Wait a second, Ashley.”

  His sister stopped and turned.

  “You can walk alone, can’t you?” Jack asked Sam.

  Sam shook his head. “I d-d-don’t want to f-f-f-” He took a breath, and tried again, his face twisting as he struggled to get out the word. “F-f-f-f-”

  “Fall?”

  Sam nodded.

  “Follow right where I walk, and you’ll be fine. Just don’t run. That’s how you lost your lantern.”

  “Why did you take off and run like that in the first place, Sam?” Ashley asked. “Is it because we didn’t believe you about Consuela?”

  Shrugging, Sam looked at the floor. He scuffed his sneaker into the soft earth until he made a small, moonlike crater.

  “Because listen, whatever is wrong with Consuela, I don’t think it’s drugs.”

  More silence. Jack heard Ashley’s soft breathing and heard another drip hit an invisible puddle. Sam stubbornly pressed his lips together, refusing to answer even when Ashley continued to press him. It was pointless, Jack decided. Whatever Sam had seen, they’d have to unravel it later. Right now, they needed to find the main trail and get back to the surface. He wanted to feel the burning sun on his face and breathe the clean desert air. The cool, damp air of the cave was beginning to feel suffocating.

  “Come on, we’ll talk about all that when we’re out of here. It’s been an hour since we left the trail. We need to get back before people start to freak.” Ten minutes farther, they hit a fork in the trail. “Which way, Ashley?”

  Ashley pointed with her free hand. “That way, I think.”

  They turned a corner where the pale rock looked porous, with shallow cavities that pocked the cave walls like bone, and for a moment Jack felt as though he were inside a skull. He didn’t remember seeing this part of the cave before. How far back did the other passages go? Mentally he tried to picture the map he’d seen of Left Hand Tunnel, which was filled with small offshoots that looked like roots on a tree. One offshoot connected to another. It might be possible, he realized, to wander in this labyrinth for days! He was just about to say something when Ashley touched his back and told him, “Up ahead! It’s the green reflector. See, I told you we were going the right way.

  You know, I really was getting a little bit worried, but now that I see the reflector I think we’re going to be all right. I know exactly where we are!”

  But when they reached the metal stake, Jack quickly realized that they were back at the forks in the path, either of which could be the right one. Or both could be wrong. Now what? Ashley stood, her mouth slightly agape. Arm extended, she held the lantern to each opening, the light bouncing off the strange formations until it disappeared into the blackness beyond. Nothing ahead of them seemed right. She looked to Jack, her eyes asking for help, but Jack could only shake his head in reply. With a sinking feeling, he faced the truth he hadn’t wanted to let himself comprehend. They were lost.

  “J-J-Jack,” Sam asked softly, “are we g-g-going to d-d-die?”

  “No, we are not going to die. Don’t panic. The first thing we need to do is to get some kind of plan.” He rubbed his forehead, as if the friction might get some ideas sparking inside his brain. “Ashley, put the lantern in the center so I can see. Sam, let go of my hand and sit down. I’ve got to think.”

  The three of them dropped to the coolness of the floor. Rough stone pushed into his back as Jack leaned against the cave wall. Ashley and Sam pulled their legs beneath them and looked to him expectantly, as though any moment now he’d have the answer. Except he didn’t have a clue what to do next. They were lost in a cave with no food, no water, no map, and only one half-melted candle for light among the three of them. By now, park rangers must have mounted a search party, fanning out a team into the cave to find them and bring them home. But where were their rescuers? Since Jack had first checked his watch, another hour had passed, plenty of time to pull a team together to search for three lost kids. One thought nagged him, though: If the rangers were looking for them, why couldn’t Jack hear anything except an occasional drip of water? The cave itself seemed silent as a tomb.

  What had he learned in scouting? When you’re lost, you stay put and wait for help to come to you. But that was when you’re lost in the wilderness, right? Did they ever say anything about caves? It didn’t matter—the principle was the same. If the three of them kept going farther, that might only make it worse.

  “I have an idea,” Ashley announced. “The trail splits into three and there are three of us. I think each one of us should take a trail, since one of them has to be right. Whoever gets out to the main trail first could find the rangers and tell them where we are, and then—”

  “No!” Jack said emphatically. “We’re not splitting up.”

  He watched Ashley stiffen. “Just listen to me!”

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  “I th-th-think we should do what J-J-Jack s-says,” Sam broke in.

  “Oh, big surprise there,” Ashley snapped. “You always do everything he says. What is it, a guy thing? Why can’t you ever listen to me?”

  Sam looked at her, wide eyed.

  “Since you believe everything Jack says, maybe you should have asked him about running off the way you did. He would have told you not to do it. Then maybe we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

  “Hey, don’t be going after Sam,” Jack warned her. “That’s not going to help anything. Besides, Ashley, you’re the one who said you knew which trail to take. You’ve made mistakes, too. You’re the one who was so sure that you knew the way out—”

  “So now it’s my fault?” Ashley exclaimed, her eyes blazing in the half-light. “You’re blaming me? You’re the one who wanted to find Sam without the rangers’ knowing—”

  “That’s because I didn’t want him—any of us—to get in trouble.”

  “Well, we’re all in trouble now.”

  “Quit being such a drama queen. OK, so maybe we’re lost now, but the rangers are going to find us. We’ll get in trouble for making them put together a search, but we’ll be all right.”

  “What if they’re not looking?”

  The question caught Jack by surprise. It took a moment for the idea to register.

  “What if no one has figured out that we’re gone?” Ashley said, snapping her braids behind her back. “Have you even thought of that? I have. Consuela’s the only one in Left Hand Tunnel who knew for sure we were taking the cave tour, and she passed out. Maybe she’s still unconscious. An unconscious person can’t talk. An unconscious person can’t ask about us, or tell about us, or anything!”

  Jack began to feel sick. “So what’s your point?”

  “My point is we can’t wait. We each need to take a trail and try to find the main path and get help. We’ve got to get out of here!”

  Sam put his hands over his ears. Shutting his eyes, he began to rock back and forth.

  “Stop it, Ashley. You’re scaring Sam!”

  “I’m scared.”

  Jack could tell she was. Sometimes, when she was truly frightened, his sister would grab her sides and hold herself tight, as if she could almost turn herself inside out. She was doing that now, clutching her sides so that Jack could see the jut of her knuckles gleaming white in the candlelight. The worst thing any of them could do now was to lose control. The second worst thing would be to turn on each other.

  “Look, I know you think we should each take a tunnel, but it won’t work. We can’t split up.”

  “Why?”

  “Because we only have one lantern. You ca
n’t walk without light. Someone could fall into one of those holes. We can’t risk it.”

  Ashley was silent for a moment. She seemed to sag a little, her head falling forward as if it were suddenly too heavy for her neck. “Then what do you think we should do?” Her words were directed at the cave floor.

  “We need to stop moving and wait for them to come to us. They’ll find us, Ashley. I promise they will.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Hello! We’re here! Help!”

  Jack and Ashley took turns calling out, but their words seemed to get sucked away into nothingness, and after a while they decided to pace themselves and shout at intervals of ten minutes, no oftener than that, to keep their throats from getting raw. Minutes dragged as they waited. It felt to Jack as though they were marking time under dark, murky water. He shifted whenever his legs got numb from sitting. Even in the half-light he could tell his hands and his clothes had become encrusted with gray dust. He sighed and looked for the hundredth time at his watch, which cast an eerie green glow against his skin. 5:32. By now, his parents must have been told that the three of them were lost. In his mind he could picture their panicked reaction; his dad would insist every single ranger be sent to comb the cave, and his mother would probably call in the SWAT team. The fact that his folks would know exactly what to do to get them out of Left Hand Tunnel reassured him. Any minute now, they’d be found. Any minute. Patience was the key.

  “Hello! Help—we’re back here!”

  Shifting again, Jack wrapped his fingers around the lantern, feeling its warmth but blocking some of the light. From the shadows, he heard his sister speak. “You cold?”

  “Maybe a little, but not as much as I figured I’d be. I thought caves were supposed to stay around 56 degrees, but this feels warmer than that. How ’bout you? Do you feel cold?”

  “I was warmer when we were moving.”

  “Then get up and walk around.”

  “Maybe I will.” But Ashley stayed put, sprawled on her side. With her cheek propped in her palm, she looked more like she was sunning on a beach instead of waiting in a cave. Her voice flinty, she asked, “How long now?”

  “Two hours. Well, two hours and seven minutes and thirty-three seconds since we sat down, not that I’m counting or anything. The way I figure it, we got off the trail to look for Sam around 2:30. After we found him we walked around for about an hour, and then we’ve been sitting here for just over two. Not that long to get a rescue team together to find us.”

  “Soooo—three hours plus some minutes,” Ashley said. “Where the heck are the rangers?”

  Jack could hear the testiness in his own tone as he answered, “They’re out there.”

  “If they are, they’re sure being quiet. Listen—I don’t hear a thing. You’d think rescuers would make a little noise.” When she stopped speaking, silence enveloped them once again. Jack heard a single drop of water hit a pool somewhere in the distance, an empty, hollow note, and then it was still as a tomb.

  “I already told you, sound might not travel too well in caves,” he told Ashley.

  “Then why are we calling out if the sound won’t go?”

  “Because it’s better than doing nothing!” he snapped. At the tone of Jack’s voice, Sam raised his head, then dropped it back onto his arms. Taking a breath, Jack said, “Look, Ashley, the Park people, they’ve got to know we’re down here. They’ll find us. The rangers are probably making up a map—you know, figuring out their plan of attack. Bet they’re going in a certain order, tunnel by tunnel, one at a time. That way they won’t mess up.”

  “But what if—”

  “Hey, you OK, Sam?” Jack interrupted, deliberately changing the subject. “You haven’t been talking much.

  Not at all, really. You all right?”

  “I have to g-go to the b-b-bathroom.”

  Uh-oh. Now what? Jack wondered. “Can’t you wait?”

  “How long is he supposed to wait?” Ashley asked irritably. “Another three hours? Just take him somewhere, quick.”

  “Where? You’re talking like there’s a rest room right around the corner.”

  “I don’t know where, and I don’t want to know,” she answered. “It’s a guy thing. Just find someplace where I can’t see you or hear you and get it over with.”

  That wasn’t hard. All they had to do was walk 20 feet from where Ashley sat and she wouldn’t be able to see them, as long as Jack shielded the lantern with his hand.

  As for hearing them—he wasn’t going to worry about that.

  When he and Sam returned from their little side trip, Sam slumped back onto the ground, lowered his head, and once again stopped talking. Silent as the stone, he faced the wall, biting the edge of his thumbnail. When Ashley told him to stop, he quickly switched to biting his bottom lip instead, which Ashley chose to ignore.

  “Hello—we’re back here.”

  Jack’s cry hung in the air, like words in a cartoon bubble. A thick, black silence settled over them, dark and heavy. No one seemed to want to say much. After half an hour Jack told them they should get a drink, since it was important to stay hydrated. Following the sound of the drips, he led them to a cave puddle a hundred feet from where there were sitting, a clear pool invisible except for the candle’s golden reflection. Ashley was the first to try, squatting down on all fours and lapping the water like a dog. Raising her head, she said it tasted fine, and Sam drank it without comment. When the cool water slipped down his own throat, Jack realized how thirsty he’d become. From years of scouting he knew that the problem in staying healthy when lost wasn’t lack of food, but liquid. It took a month to starve but only hours to dehydrate. Shaking his head, he drove the thought from his mind. They’d only be here a little longer, at the most. Any minute now they’d be found.

  “Hello. We’re back here. Anybody?”

  Silence. The cave was silent as a—tomb! That phrase kept coming back to haunt Jack’s brain, like a gong that wouldn’t stop ringing. He needed to get some real conversation going here, especially with Sam, who seemed to be shrinking deeper and deeper inside himself.

  “Come on, Sammy, talk to me,” he urged. Sam didn’t respond when Jack prodded him with questions, when he brought up stupid things Ashley had done at school, or talked about their visits to other parks. Nothing worked. Sam stared off in the darkness, his eyes vacant, his shoulders hunched, hands limp, and after a while, Jack gave up. Sam would be OK once they were out of Left Hand Tunnel, which would be any minute now. Things always seemed worse when wrapped in darkness.

  “Hello—we’re back here. Help us.”

  6:41. Leaning against the wall, Jack let his mind wander. Formations that looked like giant mushrooms seemed to sprout from the walls, and his thoughts began to connect in patterns as crazy as the cave ornaments. In his mind’s eye he could almost see the Elk Refuge, 50 acres of flat marsh bristling with cattail and wild geese where his mother worked with wild animals. The Refuge was ringed by low mountains, not the majestic Tetons but smaller, plainer hills that seemed to hold the marshes in the palms of their hands. A few shallow caves had been carved by the howling Jackson Hole wind, nothing like the deep, twisting caverns of Carlsbad, but little caves that seemed to pockmark the yellow stone. A family of cougars was said to live in one of them, and the smaller ones were supposedly filled with snakes, although Jack didn’t believe either story. He remembered pointing out the caves to Sam, telling him he’d take him on a hike someday, but Sam had resolutely shaken his head no. Later, the social worker, Ms. Lopez, explained that Sam had hardly ever been out of his cramped apartment, that he’d been left in front of the television set for hours and hours, which was one of the reasons he was so fearful of new things. Now, as Jack looked at Sam’s round head, he wondered how much more skittish Sam would be after all this time lost in the underbelly of Carlsbad. Sam seemed to be getting lost, too, but in a different way. He was disappearing inside himself.

  Where were the rangers?

  By the ti
me Jack’s watch beeped 7:00, he knew something was definitely wrong. Ashley knew it, too. She kept looking at him from beneath lowered lashes, as a kind of wordless shorthand passed between them.

  Where are they? Ashley seemed to ask, to which Jack replied, How should I know?

  Do you want to try to leave? to which Jack answered, No, not yet. Stay put. Don’t panic.

  Neither one of them wanted to upset Sam by saying it out loud, but they had to face the possibility that they might not be found before nightfall, which was a strange thought since night was endless here. The cold fact remained that they’d been gone close to four and one-half hours, and no one had found them. How was that even possible? Jack raged inside his head. Left Hand Tunnel wasn’t that big, was it? Jack couldn’t understand it, but his not comprehending didn’t change a thing. They were lost, and they were alone. This could get serious.

  As his empty stomach gave a rumble, Jack realized he was hungry. “Clean out your pockets to see if there’s anything in them we can eat,” he told Ashley and Sam.

  None of them found much. In addition to a dried-out granola bar shoved in a corner of his jacket pocket, Jack found an old cherry cough drop and 11 cents, while Ashley produced a pack of gum, warmed from her sitting on it, which they agreed to leave unchewed for a while, just in case. Sam, though, gave them the best find—a book of matches from the Carlsbad airport.