Anna could see that a thin drizzle had started. Cold, gray, winter rain, falling on concrete. Soft, lifeless rain. Ray Bradbury rain.
I'm past the time when horror in books or movies phase me... But, this book? I was holding my breath in many scenes... I was amazed that this story was based upon a real location... I was impressed with how she chose to write this book--essentially in two parts--the horror of this cave as an individual lost there in uncharted territory... and the mystery of death there... Her writing told exactly what was there, true, but the way she told it, readers will actually feel Anna's fear as she faces a totally new experience that she has never faced before... And if you've read other books by this Federal Ranger, you will know that she has faced many dangers during her professional career... Without fear...
But this location was some place she didn't want to be. First she was claustrophobic. And she had a fear of being underground... But you would never know about these fears except through revelation by the writer as she shares how she experiences them, without letting other people know... I have to say that this female character is one of the most badass heroines I've ever met through a books...
First, I've had the wonderful opportunity to visit nearby Laurel Caverns in Pennsylvania... It was an exciting day for me, I had already, for the first time ever, gone down the rapids of a nearby river which was so exciting! But then headed over to the caverns. I'd never seen anything so beautiful, realizing they were naturally made... The key difference, though, that you should know is that the part where the spelunkers are visiting the undeveloped part of the cave that is shown in these videos. They have lights, guide ropes, a guide with you as you go through, and, in general, are completely safe... and free of all potential problems.
Very few people had ever even seen the part of the cave where Anna will be going... She had been especially requested by a coworker to come. She had been hurt in a fall and would have to be taken out for medical help, even though a doctor was part of the small group touring at that time. She was happy to come when they had put out the call for emergency help and was first assigned to a desk to control traffic, etc. It was only after she had agreed to help that the site director told her why she was there--at request of the injured woman they needed to rescue...
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Anna mocked herself for feeling like a woman in a tumbrel, jouncing through her last glorious moments toward the guillotine and the vast unknown. Still, she rather wished the day had closed without this final hurrah of heavenly fireworks. A sunless world would have been that much easier to leave behind. After too short a ride, the pickup pulled off the rutted dirt road into a wilderness parking lot incongruously marked off with concrete curbs. Anna’d been too engrossed in morbid imaginings to recollect the twists and turns they’d made through the wrinkled landscape, but she guessed they were only three or four miles from the headquarters buildings. The discovery of Lechuguilla in the backyard had put Carlsbad Caverns National Park in the odd position of having doubled in size overnight. Oscar had likened the experience to “finding Yellowstone in your basement.” Holden Tillman opened the tailgate, and the three of them divided up the gear. As they started the hike to the mouth of Lechuguilla, Oscar filled Anna in on the team briefing. Holden Tillman was officially titled Underground Rescue Coordinator. He was in charge of all activities subterranean. The NPS had borrowed him from the local Bureau of Land Management office because of his expertise in caves and cave rescues. Oscar assured Anna he was, in caving circles, known as the Holden Tillman. A quiet person with an aw-shucks drawl, Tillman seemed half embarrassed and half amused by Oscar’s effusions. “Oscar’s going to write my eulogy,” he told Anna, a slow smile blooming beneath a brown brush of mustache. “He just wants to get some practicing in before I’m dead.” Anna liked Holden right off. She hoped nothing happened to change that. Experience taught her her first impression of people was dead wrong as often as not. This time she had a gut feeling it wasn’t. Tillman was of an age with Iverson—in his forties—but there the resemblance ended. He was a small man, maybe five-foot-eight and a hundred thirty pounds with skin that looked shrunk to fit a wiry, muscled frame. Crow’s-feet radiated from the corners of his eyes to curve down in unbroken lines along the sides of his face. His forehead, wide and slightly sloping, was cut by horizontal lines as sharp as old scars. The effect of this network of time was a wizened soul, blessed with wisdom and, possibly, “the sight.” At least that was the fanciful image that floated up from an old fairy-tale illustration buried in Anna’s memory. Despite narrow shoulders and small frame, Holden carried a prodigious amount of equipment. Though half a foot shorter than Oscar, arms and shoulders were corded with muscle where Iverson’s were mapped in bone. Anna guessed his pack was seventy or eighty pounds but it didn’t bow his back or take the spring from his step. As he walked ahead of her along the trail Anna heard sotto-voce snatches of song. She laughed. Holden sang the digging song Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs sang on their way down into the mine. Anna saw the cavern sparkling with a million lights and peopled with benevolent spirits. Despite herself she felt better than she had since Iverson had brought her the news of Frieda’s head injury. Holden and Oscar, along with CACA’s superintendent and the chief of resource management for the caverns, had organized a four-person team that would follow the two men Anna was with. The second team would carry a stretcher for the evacuation, medical supplies Dr. McCarty had requested, and a Korean War-vintage field phone with spools of wire so Holden would have telephone communications with the surface during the carry-out. The logistics were staggering, and Anna was duly impressed that the details had been hammered out in such a short time. There were people for every aspect of the rescue: cavers who would do nothing but rig the drops for hauling Frieda up the long vertical and near-vertical ascents; cavers to schlep water, packs, garbage, batteries, and food. Anna listened to the plans being rehashed by Holden and Oscar as they walked single file along a ridge above a dry creek bed, and she began to wonder what would undo her first: her fear of enclosed spaces or her fear of crowds. The sheer absurdity freed her mind, and for a time she was able to shut out the human murmurings and enjoy the hike. They were on a plateau to the north of the gypsum plains that spread down into Texas. What vegetation managed to eke out a livelihood from the parched soil kept a low profile. Little had grown to greater than knee height, and there were barren spaces between plants. With the lifting of the clouds and the dazzling clarity of the rain-washed air, Anna could see to the edge of the world, or so it seemed, and the world was all high, clean desert, burnished with gold. Even knowing she walked over limestone honey-combed with passages, she couldn’t imagine a less likely place to find the entrance to a world-class cave. She pictured the plateau cut into thin sections and placed between sheets of glass like the ant farms she’d seen as a child. Beneath her feet, creeping through those twisting tunnels, were human beings. “There it is.” Oscar interrupted her musings. They’d walked down a slope and crossed the stone bottom of a wash to climb again. Ahead of them was more of the same: low hills dotted with desert shrubs and cactus. “See that green spot?” Iverson pointed to a cluster of stunted trees poking from a fold in the hills. “That’s it.” Anna took his word for it. Within a few minutes they’d reached the trees, and still she was none the wiser. Not until they climbed down four or five feet to where the oak trees had found soil to root could she see the entrance. Back in the rocks an opening maybe twenty feet wide, thirty long, and ringed by heavy overhanging brows of rock, showed darkly. Over the years Anna had made any number of rappels from ten to two hundred ten feet. After the first step, she’d thoroughly enjoyed the trip. Suspended like a cliff swallow over lakes in the Absaroka Beartooth, dangling above a sea of dusty live oaks in northern California. There was an above and a below. Here, she noted with an unpleasant tingle, there was neither. In the theatrical light of coming evening, the entrance to Lechuguilla looked like a portal, one lacking the standard three dimensions agreed upon by the real world. She’d read of holes described as yawning, gaping, hungry—words that suggested an orifice, an appetite. The sixty-foot drop leading into Lech didn’t fit any of those adjectives. Rather than sentience, it suggested a departure from life. The last rays of the sun skimmed its surface, lighting the stone for fifteen feet or so. Below that, nothing. Night took all. “Hi ho,” Holden said happily. Iverson began checking ropes secured to bolts near a tree that showed scarring from when it had been used as an anchor in previous descents. “The climbs are all rigged. We leave them that way along the main trade routes—established routes through the cave. We’ve found it does a lot less damage to the resource to leave the rigging in place than having every expedition rerig each time.” “Me first, you last?” he said to Holden as he threaded the rope through his rappel rack. Holden nodded. Oscar leaned back and walked, spider-like, from sight. The sun slid below the horizon, and Anna felt suddenly cold. “It’s getting dark,” she said, and hoped Tillman hadn’t heard the faint whine beneath her words. “So?” “Off-rope,” drifted up from the black hole. “Good point,” Anna said, threaded the rope through her rack, pulled on her leather gloves, and unhooked the safety. “On-rope,” she shouted down, and stepped back into the darkness.
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Prepare to shudder... For in the early stages, there had been some preliminary mapping and work by teams to prepare for easier access at a later time. Much later. Soon Anna began to feel like she was buried and soon realized that there is absolutely NO light underground... And, given the type of cave that had been lost for so long--nobody knew how long--it soon hit her that there were no small cracks that allowed some bits of light where they were walking. Only blackness! Nor were there any living life that we all know on the surface or even in other caves--bugs, sounds of birds, bats moving. Nothing could live in this cave...
It wasn't long before they were in uncharted territory. That meant that the two guides/leaders had to install climbing equipment and teach Anna how to use it. Fortunately she had rappelled down rocks so was quite prepared for that task. What she was to come to dread was having to crawl through spaces with only the head light revealing what was right before her. Often, the threesome had to break up, using ropes to climb up or down, and then holding the ropes to expedite the next individual. Anna, thankfully, was placed in the middle of the experts... She felt safe--except from her own fears of being in extremely tight spaces... Oh, and just a little tidbit...because of the fragility of the environment, no human wastes were left behind, including human waste... which had to be properly packaged, depending on the type of waste it was... Yikes!
In fact, it was during a bathroom break that Frieda, a secretary at Anna's base of operations, had fallen... and now with various injuries including a possible head concussion. When the threesome finally found the location where the spelunker group was resting and waiting, Anna was quickly taken to let Frieda know that her friend was there... Frieda was still confused and dealing with the pain, but she recognized Anna, tightly held her hand and said to Anna, "It wasn't an accident..." Later, Anna saw that Freda would go in and out of full consciousness.
And, Anna found that Frieda didn't seem to remember what she had told her. However, since Anna was already a Ranger law officer, she was, thankfully, immediately on alert, knowing that this group of people could possibly have caused the accident... And, later, her murder... I'll talk about that more in the next part, coming soon...
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