Sinkhole

by Deborah Jackson

  “Very good,” said Jorge, squinting at the samples. “Don’t even think about giving me the wrong organisms.” He must have noticed the remaining samples still visible in Kat’s pack, probably of the cave raft organism she’d used to help Ray. He eyed one dish that blinked neon green, then nodded, satisfied. “Put them in my pack,” he ordered, indicating the worn waterproof sack on the ground. Pete hastened over and deposited the specimens, sealing the top and handing it to Jorge.

  At the same time, Mark had ripped off the top of his coverall, removed his T-shirt, and held the white cotton against Kat’s gushing wound. She looked pale and diminished, but she nodded, biting her lip against the pain, assuring him that she was a survivor. But how were they going to survive this? The organisms were advancing, slowly but surely, like a micro army. Jorge stood ready to riddle them with bullets. Mark glanced up and caught his eye. There was a twitch to his lower lip as if he regretted his actions. It looked like he was beseeching Mark to understand that he had no choice.

  But every man had a choice, and if it weren’t for the revolver swivelling back and forth from one scientist to the next, Mark would have launched himself at the Maya.

  “Now,” said Jorge, his voice calm even though his eyes kept shifting. “You will not follow me, or I will have to shoot you.” He grabbed a rebreather along with the pack and backed toward the crawlway. Still pointing the gun at them, he squeezed through the opening. Mark watched Jorge wriggle backward, still very alert to any movement he or the others might make.

  When Jorge’s squirming form had disappeared, Mark turned his attention back to Kat. The wound in her shoulder looked painful, but not life-threatening. But it would be impossible for her to swim out of the sump now. He focused on pressure, restricting the flow of blood—the most immediate problem—and soon the stream saturating his white shirt slowed to a trickle.

  “What are we going to do?” Megan moaned. “That crazy man shot her. Oh God, what are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to get out of here,” said Kat firmly, her voice strong despite her injury.

  “But how?” moaned Megan. “You’ve been shot. Ray’s still not strong. And the microbes are moving toward us.”

  “However we can,” said Kat. “I’m not ready to die yet. Are you?”

  Megan shook her head.

  Kat coughed and grimaced, her face glistening with a thin layer of perspiration. Mark grimaced too, when he saw the fresh eruption of blood that now drenched his formerly white T-shirt. The bullet must have sliced open an artery and his pressure wasn’t enough to stop the bleeding.

  “That isn’t good, is it?” said Pete, pointing at the crimson rag in Mark’s hand.

  “No,” said Mark through taut lips. “It isn’t. Hand me my pack, will you?”

  Pete sidled over to the discarded pack and brought it to Mark. “Are you going to try to dig out the bullet?” he asked.

  “No. Not right away. I think I have to stop the bleeding first. Here, you put pressure on the wound. And get another cloth if you can find one.”

  Pete nodded, grasped the bottom of his own shirt and stripped it off. Mark was impressed. Unethical drug company rep or not, Pete clearly had a few more scruples than the man who’d brought him here. He bent down beside Kat, and they did a quick transfer of pressure bandages.

  Mark spun around and ripped open his bag, probing deeply into the padded interior. He immediately found what he sought—his “magic case,” as Jorge had put it. Withdrawing it carefully, he placed it down beside his wife. He flipped open the latches and extracted the syringe from the foam packing, holding it up to the light.

  “All right,” said Pete. “Now you have me stumped. What are you going to do with that?”

  “Surgery,” said Mark.

  Jorge backed out of the tunnel and stood up, gazing accusingly at the gun in his hand. He hadn’t wanted to shoot her, but it was the only way. They never would have complied with his demands otherwise. They thought themselves so noble and ethical. They believed that there were easy solutions to every problem, yet they had no idea what it meant to face death every day, to be stamped underfoot by oppression, disease, and maniacs in power. Now perhaps they would.

  Jorge slapped on his rebreather and pack, resting for a moment as a wave of dizziness choked his strength. He’d almost forgotten that he’d lain here a mere four hours ago, spewing water from his lungs and feeling his life slip away. The doctor had defeated the devil who’d come to claim him. And this was how he repaid him? Leaving him to a certain agonizing death?

  Jorge shook his head. He’d saved the doctor many times on their trek into the Underworld. He didn’t owe him anything. But the man and his kind owed Jorge. They owed the downtrodden people of this world for their greed and their ignorance—their obliviousness to any suffering besides their own.

  Jorge placed his mask over his face and took a revivifying whiff of air. He considered the other rebreather that lay by the edge of the sump where Mark had discarded it when they’d surfaced here. This would be the final nail in their casket, he knew. After Mark had had the foresight to retrieve the rebreathers from the Mayan burial chamber, it would be reprehensible to remove their one hope of escape. But surely Mark knew that neither the guide, Ray, nor his wife would be able to climb back to the surface. Jorge picked up the rebreather and heaved it into the river. He watched the current snatch it and carry it away. He was giving the doctor a chance by removing his worst option. Surely he’d see that. However, Jorge’s heart sank as definitively as the tank. He knew the doctor too well. He would never abandon his wife.

  Jorge tied up to the nylon guideline and plunged into the water. The force of the flow tried to drag him under immediately, but he wedged himself into a crack and pulled the first loop of rope through his carabiner, pinching it off with an ascender and letting the tail end trail behind him. He’d have to approach this like a climb, clamping the rope every arm’s length to keep moving against the flow. He didn’t know if he possessed the power to tackle the fierce thrust of the current, but he’d be damned if he wasn’t going to try. The prize had been claimed. Now he just had to reach the surface and spread the wealth.

  Painfully crisscrossing his arms, he passed under the first shelf of rock. The force of the current was almost too much to bear. It felt like a cat-o-nine tails flaying his skin. With his muscles throbbing and rebelling, Jorge inched along the rope, feeling the water beat against his mask.

  This was impossible. The water had defeated him going downstream. How could he possibly swim in the opposite direction? No one had ever returned before. There had been more sightings than he’d admitted to Mark of the hidden Site Q above. But the force of the third sump had foiled everyone who’d attempted to find the burial chamber. They were probably battered to pieces in the river, their bones scattered throughout the network of channels underground.

  Jorge pulled, clamped, and pulled. He gritted his teeth at the immense effort, feeling his muscles bulge and tendons strain. The roar of the water drowned out even the rasping sound of his own breathing. He clawed forward, gaining centimeters, then meters. He must be near the exit by now. The pounding on his head and body was beginning to make him lightheaded and a little nauseous. He pulled forward again and felt the flow diminish somewhat. He must have reached the fork in the tunnel where the converging torrents made the river a raging monster.

  Now he could gain ground more quickly although, with the decrease in strain against his body, the weakness of his limbs became all the more apparent. He’d used up all his remaining strength and now it was just a matter of will. Could he return from the deadly sump?

  Pull, clamp, pull. He couldn’t do it. There just wasn’t anything left. Just one more pull and he’d have to let go. He shuddered. Despite the cool temperature of the water, he felt like he was burning up.

  Suddenly there was a change in the color of the water and the dense rock overhead. He tugged one more time on the line. It seemed like the skin had been ripp
ed from the dark canopy of stone and left a clear patch. It opened up into a high-roofed cavern. He’d made it. It was too incredible to ponder. He seized the ledge and, with quivering arms, pulled himself out of the water. He sprawled on the ground, puffing and muttering tearful thanks to the gods of the Underworld and the Christian god, too. He lay still for what seemed like hours, then sat up and tore into his pack for a replenishing chocolate bar. Just as he was about to lift the mask and bite down, the tinny speaker roared to life.

  “Jorge. We know you can hear us. Jorge, talk to us.”

  He knew who it was, but he couldn’t shake a nagging feeling that it was his conscience nipping at his brain.

  Chapter Forty-six

  After programming the submarine, Mark slid the syringe into Kat’s subclavian artery, where the force of the blood flow would drive it into the axillary—the artery the bullet must have severed. He signaled Megan to put pressure on the tiny insertion site until the fibrinogen in Kat’s blood clotted around the entry point. Using Kat’s arterial flow meant that he wouldn’t need his bacteria-powered propulsion system until he reached the gap, when he would throw the bacteria’s flagella into gear to try and prevent the sub from being expelled along with the blood.

  Mark donned his virtual reality glasses and glove, activated the ultrasonic transducers, and watched the submarine’s progress through the branch from the subclavian into the axillary and down through the stream of blood to the breakage. It loomed before his eyes, its ragged arterial walls and the explosion of fluid through the gap resembling a broken dam. Mark jammed on the bacterial brakes and directed a claw to grab hold of the arterial wall.

  Now came the hard part. He’d have to grab the tissue on the other side of the gap and reseal the rupture. Mark anchored the sub against the wall and instructed the remaining claw to extend over the rip and latch onto the arterial wall opposite, reaching past the background medium of muscle and tendon. This time he couldn’t fail. Kat was losing blood far too quickly. The arm spanned the gap and the pincer opened, but it wavered past the target. He moved his hand with the directing glove just a fraction and the claw clamped onto the other wall.

  Mark sighed softly, although not enough to jiggle his hand. He pulled the pincer back and lined the torn tissue in its grip up with the near wall. Now the gap was closed, but hardly sealed. Mark keyed in an instruction to shoot a sealing solution, something like organic cement, into the gap between the two juxtaposed arterial walls, and the process of reattaching the artery with minimal surgical intervention began. Gradually the sub worked its way around the interior circumference of the blood vessel and united the riven walls.

  Mark sat back when the last section had been repaired and heaved a sigh. “It’s done. You can ease up on her shoulder now,” he instructed Pete.

  Pete tentatively lifted his hands. He studied the circle of blood on his T-shirt. It had ceased its outward progression. Meanwhile, Mark directed the sub to the brachial artery and then to the ulnar so that he could retrieve it with a new syringe at the palmer arch. As he packed away the miraculous vehicle, he couldn’t help a brief triumphant smile.

  His treasured sub worked. Of course it worked. The bullet was still lodged in Kat’s arm, but it could be removed by conventional means once they escaped the cave. At least she was out of danger now. And he wasn’t through with his invention either. For the present they had to focus on restoring Kat’s strength so they could fight their way back through the sump. But later . . . Mark gathered up some sterile gauze from the case, applied a liberal amount of antibiotic ointment, and turned back toward Kat. Her face was flushed with color again, and she was eyeing him with intense scrutiny.

  “I’ll just dress the wound and then we can discuss what we’re going to do.”

  She nodded and watched him work with interest. After he’d applied a pressure gauze to the puncture wound at the subclavian and wrapped her shoulder, she struggled to sit up.

  “What are you doing? You need to rest.”

  “I need to do this first.”

  “What?” he asked. “There’s nothing you need to do but recover.”

  “No.” Kat shook her head and sat up, ignoring his protests. She leaned toward him, touched his cheek, and rested her forehead against it.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “For what? For getting shot? You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  “Yes. Yes, I do. I couldn’t trust you as my husband, but you gave me reason for that. What I’m sorry for is not trusting you as a doctor. I always knew you were brilliant, but I had no faith in your visions.”

  Mark closed his eyes and held her against him. “It’s okay. Not many people have.”

  “But I should have known. You saved me, and I know you’ll save thousands more.”

  Mark felt awash in warmth, thrilled by her confidence, but suddenly he was hit with a reverse tide. “And what about those I can’t save?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This is a very expensive device. That means limited access for anyone but wealthy people and nations.”

  Kat pulled back and nearly tipped over, still weak from blood loss. Mark caught her and gently lowered her to the ground. “You need to rest.”

  “You need to stop trying to save everyone. Obviously you’ve been listening to Jorge too much, and look at what he did. Look at what he’s going to do. I don’t think you should wait for me to get better now. I think you should go after him. You can’t let him get to the surface with that organism.”

  Mark frowned, smoothed a stubborn tendril of hair from her face, and shook his head. “I’m not leaving you. I’m not leaving anyone behind.”

  “I’ll go after him,” said Pete.

  Everyone turned to him, even Ray, his eyes wide.

  “What? I can do it. Don’t you think I’ve learned from you guys? I followed you all the way down here, even though I know you doubted I had the experience. I can swim out through the sump and catch up to him.”

  “Pete,” said Ray in a strange monotone. “Do you even know the way out?”

  Pete swung toward him. “Of course I . . .” His voice petered and he looked down. “I think I do.”

  “You never back-checked,” said Kat. “We could give you our maps, but some tunnels are nearly adjacent and look identical. Only if you remember certain details will you know enough to choose the right one. You’ll get lost, Pete. It’s not a good plan.”

  “Then it isn’t for me, either,” said Mark. “You know how few times I’ve been caving. We need you and Ray. So we’ll just have to wait until you’re in better shape.”

  “I suppose,” she said, accepting reluctantly.

  “And that depends on whether Jorge left us the rope,” added Megan.

  “My God, you’re right,” said Mark. He hadn’t even considered that the man would take away their sole means of escape. But Jorge hadn’t thought twice about shooting Kat. Mark leaped to his feet and raced toward the crawlway. As he dove in, he heard Pete calling and scrambling behind.

  Slithering through tunnels seemed almost second nature now, and Mark reached the smaller sump chamber in a matter of minutes. He dashed to the ledge and squinted at the peg where he’d latched the rope. It was still there.

  “Thank goodness,” he sighed.

  Pete came alongside him and squatted down to examine the nylon lifeline. “At least the bastard left us this much.”

  “Yeah,” said Mark. He swept his helmet light around the rest of the chamber. But what hadn’t Jorge left them? Mark’s heart sank. “But he didn’t leave the rebreather.”

  Pete spun around and scanned the chamber. “It figures,” he said. “After you went back for the others. Now we have to leave someone behind.”

  “No we won’t,” said Mark sternly. “We aren’t leaving anyone. There has to be a way that we can work this out. Two people could share one tank.”

  Pete eyed him with a cocked eyebrow. “Uh huh. Against the current. That should be easy.�
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  “Dammit,” said Mark. He stamped his foot and headed back for the crawlway. “That miserable Maya.” Again he squirmed through the passageway. When he reached the other side, he shook his head at the questioning looks. But before he went on to explain, the remaining rebreathers caught his eye. An idea sprang to mind. He picked up the mask and settled the mike from the intercom over his face.

  “Jorge. We know you can hear us. Jorge, talk to us.”

  Jorge gathered up his equipment, preparing to remove the mask. But then the resonant voice of the doctor came again. “Jorge. You’ve left us without a rebreather. We can’t all reach the surface. You’ve condemned us as surely as your people were condemned by the paramilitary.”

  Jorge clenched his fists. He shouldn’t answer. He should just rip the mask from his face and leave it at that. But he couldn’t. “Now you know how they felt.”

  “We weren’t there,” said Mark. “We didn’t participate in their slaughter. I know you associate us with what happened to them, but we didn’t know anything about it.”

  “Would you have done anything if you had?”

  “I don’t know. Before meeting you, I would have been outraged, but I don’t know if I would have acted on your behalf. I was too caught up in my own world. But now I see things differently. Yes, I would have done something.”

  “Are you saying, doctor, that you will now work on our behalf?”

  The response was quick and unexpected. “Yes.”

  Jorge grimaced and chewed on his lip. It was all a trick; he knew it. Maybe the man had developed a conscience, but he would never allow Jorge to move forward with his plan.

  “I don’t believe you.” He stripped the mask from his face and threw it on the ground. “I don’t believe you,” he said to the echoing chamber.

  He could still hear Mark’s voice pleading with him, so he switched off the intercom.

  “No, doctor. I can’t help you now. You mean well, but I know you’ll interfere.”