FRAGMENTATION
The cavers made camp at the top of the ledge, the roaring waterfall below now almost comforting in its familiarity. Milo couldn’t sleep; his searching eyes were wide open to the black nothingness all around, hallucinatory flickers dancing in his peripheral vision. If not for the rumbling cascade and the rocky protrusions jutting through his thin sleeping pad, it would be as if he were weightless in the world, drifting in unfathomable emptiness.
Milo heard a rustling behind him, barely audible. Small hands smoothly ran up his spine, cupping his shoulders and sliding down to his chest. Bridget crawled into the sleeping bag beside him, clinging to his body in the darkness as she rested her chin on the back of his neck. It reminded Milo of the last night they’d spent together—an unexpected embrace in the middle of the night, though they had barely spoken in days. By the end of the following afternoon, she’d moved everything she owned from their shared apartment and left the city.
“Do you blame me for bringing you out here?” she whispered, her lips brushing against his ear.
Milo just shook his head, rustling his short hair on the soft nylon of the sleeping bag. “Of course not,” he said. “You were trying to give me a second chance at what I’ve always wanted—nobody could have foreseen what came next.”
“I didn’t know how I’d react when I saw you again,” she said, a little louder this time but still too quiet for Joanne to overhear. “Still think about you more than I probably should. When I travel somewhere amazing for the first time, or when I read an article I really enjoy, I think, I can’t wait to show Milo. Like the part of my brain with you in it never quite shut off.”
Milo took her hand in his, brought it up to his mouth, and kissed it. “Mine too,” he admitted. “After you left, I felt completely unplugged from everything—had to teach myself to enjoy life again without you. I’m not sure if I ever quite succeeded. Always found myself wondering what you were doing—if you were happy, if you had anyone, if you still thought about me.”
A silence fell between them.
“Are you?” asked Milo. “Happy, I mean?”
“Sometimes,” said Bridget.
“I feel terrible about the way we left things,” said Milo. “I always wanted to reach out, tell you I understood, that I wasn’t angry anymore.”
“If you had, I would have listened,” said Bridget. “Or at least I told myself I would listen. But that was always our dynamic—you retreating into silence, me filling the void with resentment.”
“When you put it like that . . .” began Milo.
“We really were a shitty couple, weren’t we?” asked Bridget.
There was another thick pause between them before they both burst into stifled laughter.
“We were,” said Milo. “But maybe someday we can become shitty friends instead?”
“I’d like that,” said Bridget. “I should have told you that I missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too,” said Milo. He pressed her fingers against his lips again, but this time so she could feel his smile in the dark.
For the longest time, silence once again fell between them. He could feel Bridget stiffen again, muscles tense as her fears once again took hold.
“I’m not going to die down here,” she whispered in his ear.
“We’ll make it home,” responded Milo. “I promise.” And for perhaps the first time, he felt total certainty in the proclamation.
Milo’s eyes closed. He dreamed of the eternal Tanzanian savanna, a sea of elephants, and the fertile oasis at the center of the world.
Milo stirred awake to the soft yellow light of a sunrise. Bridget had slept curled up in his arms but pushed him away as he shifted in the sleeping bag. He had little idea how long he’d slumbered, but felt refreshed, filled with new determination.
Blinking the sleep from his eyes, Milo swiveled his head toward the light. Joanne had taken her brightest headlamp, set it on the cavern floor, and smeared a dab of clear, amber honey over the plastic lens, filtering the illumination. Bridget stirred as well, stretching as she yawned, pulling her warm body away from Milo. Joanne sat on a rock staring at Milo and Bridget, watching as they withdrew their intertwined limbs from each other. It wasn’t a disapproving look on her face—it was one filled with a deep, longing sadness.
“Helps, doesn’t it?” asked Joanne, tilting her head toward the light. “A little yellow reminds the mind of dawn; makes it easier to get up. It’s a trick we use on . . . hard days.”
“Thanks,” said Milo. Bridget even managed a smile.
“Did you sleep?” asked the doctor.
“A few minutes here and there,” said Joanne as she absentmindedly picked up the lamp and smeared the honey off the lens and onto a finger, which she then licked. “But I wanted to make sure you two had your full eight. Can’t say when we’ll get the chance again. How are your blisters? Any pain or injuries beyond bumps and bruises?”
“I’ll live,” said Milo. “Still nothing on the radio?”
“I’ve been trying every hour,” said Joanne with a sigh. “There must be too much earth between us and the receiver, even at the hatch. I can’t raise anyone.”
“Or nobody’s listening,” mumbled Bridget, her brief smile long since faded.
“I hate to state the obvious,” said Joanne. “But we can’t simply disappear from the rest of the group. We’ll have to collect as many supplies as we can carry and rejoin our comrades. We’re no use to anybody holed up at the top.”
Milo pursed his lips in grim silence. With the hatch impassable, part of him knew it was only a matter of time until they were forced to rejoin Dale and the others. The supplies they’d bring back would be a big boost to morale, but he knew their situation would remain desperate as ever—especially for Isabelle.
“What happens when they get the hatch open again?” asked Bridget. Milo couldn’t help but notice she said when and not if—the doctor refused to give up an iota of hope.
“I’ve left a note by the door,” answered Joanne. “Told them we’re all still alive but Isabelle has been badly injured and is in desperate need of help. I included the date, of course.”
“Makes sense,” said Bridget. “I can’t think to add anything.”
“I almost told them to go fuck themselves for stranding us,” said Joanne with a smirk. “Bloody inconvenient, burying us alive.”
Milo couldn’t help but grin ruefully at the gallows humor. “Inconvenient” might well be the understatement of the century.
Milo’s heart plummeted as he rappelled back down the seemingly endless shaft, wet rope whistling through his gloved hands. Every few seconds the rappel rack would jolt, hitting badly damaged sections of rope where the sheath had come entirely apart, revealing the fraying core within. They wouldn’t get a second climb to the top again, not without a new line.
They’d been so maddeningly close to the surface, mere feet. But now he was returning to the dark, muddy hell of the deep. Last on the line, he plunged further and further through the misty waterfall, his feet finally crunching on the wet gravel below as he hit solid earth with a painful jolt.
Joanne emerged from the mist, balancing a heavy box on her back as Bridget followed closely behind.
“Never gone this long without a gonk day,” grunted Joanne, shifting the crate from one shoulder to the other.
“What’s that?” asked Bridget as she helped Milo unhook from his rappel rack, freeing the descent rope from his improvised webbing harness.
“Means a day off,” said Joanne, grimacing. “A bit of time to relax, gather strength. We could really use one. Duck is the best at throwing one—on our first caving expedition together, he waited until we’d spent four days slogging through waist-deep mud, absolutely knackered and bickering among ourselves like children. And then he pulled out his hidden stash of bourbon and dark chocolate. But before he’d give us any, he made us do the Macarena dance. Really! The Macarena, like it was 1996 all over again. Made us sing the song and everything. And then we drank and laughed until everyone forgot their petty quarrels.”
Joanne led the cavers out of the thick mists as though guided by preternatural sight, walking purposefully to the alcove where they’d first sheltered from the flood. She and Bridget had made good use out of the time it had taken Milo to follow them down the shaft. They’d already broken down most of the fresh crates abandoned by the porters, sorting and securing the contents within. But what was once base camp was now little more than a waterlogged floodplain barely illuminated by the exhausted light of the sole remaining balloon.
The guide let the final crate slip from her shoulder and slam on the rocky floor of the alcove ledge. It popped open, revealing a collection of tank tops and men’s underwear.
Milo didn’t see the point of grabbing another pair; he’d long since abandoned his own. Bridget experimentally pulled out a pair of large briefs, tugging on the elastic.
“You s’pose these are clean enough to use as dressings?” she asked, thinking out loud. “I’d really like to see Isabelle’s bandages switched out.”
“Your call,” grunted Joanne. “As for everything else—we can’t drag these crates; we’ll have to pick through and grab high-calorie foodstuffs, spare batteries, and any medical supplies. If it won’t keep us alive over the next seventy-two hours, it’s not coming.”
Milo figured any underwear would be better off applied to Isabelle’s wounds than to his ass, but packed a few anyway. Joanne took a last sweep through the supplies, spotting a few final cans and batteries to cram into their packs. The last of the resupply scavenged or packed into the alcove, the trio trudged in silence toward the entrance to the anthill.
Though burdened with an overstuffed pack and following last in line, Milo still felt as though he could have completed the brutal descent with his eyes closed. Tired and sore, he remembered each duck, twist, and bend; knew by heart every section where he had to take off his pack, loop a strap around his foot, and drag it behind him through the dark, airless passageways. Without speaking, the trio passed over the land bridge, ignoring the mummified body below it. Milo slogged onward through wet, descending passageways, past the hole to nowhere and ever deeper.
Joanne stopped cold as she reached the banks of the serpentine river, her headlamp fixed on a note hanging from the low ceiling by a long strand of parachute cord, the message impossible to miss. The cave guide yanked the note off the cord and read the message out loud.
“It says Established new camp,” Joanne read. “Follow arrows. Dale. Simple enough.”
“Looks like we’re not going to the cathedral,” said Bridget, clearing her throat to speak for the first time in hours.
Milo swiveled his light around the tunnel until he saw the first oversized chalk-mark arrow leading away from the main descending passageway. Joanne nodded toward the mark and followed it through the narrow rock corridor.
Dry, stagnant air increased with every step. Now well out of the floodplain, the walls and floor had become dusty and dry, even the stalactites and stalagmites increasingly ancient and withered. No water had flowed through the still passageways in a million years or more, transforming the maze into a subterranean desert.
The winding path ended abruptly at an open expanse, and Milo realized he was looking across the unimaginable length of a great chasm. The flat, vertical walls on either side were quite close, only twenty feet of emptiness between them, but the immense span disappeared into the darkness long before the light from his headlamp could reach the other side. With his struggling batteries, Milo couldn’t even make out the ceiling above or the distant floor far below.
Ahead, a dump-truck-sized rock with a flat top lay wedged between the canyon cliffs. It had dropped from the ceiling in ancient times, leaving deep grooves in the towering walls as it fell. But now it was wedged like a tension-set diamond, impossible in dimension. The cavers had rigged up a “nylon highway” of anchors and ropes from the passageway exit, up and along the vertical wall for a distance of thirty feet before reaching the flat-topped rock where they’d struck camp.
Joanne briefly eyeballed the ropes but ultimately ignored them, preferring to instead free climb the sheer cliff despite her heavy pack. Milo and Bridget opted to clip into their webbing harnesses in case of a fall, following slowly behind.
Dale and the others didn’t bother to get up from their thin sleeping pads as Joanne, Milo, and Bridget clambered up on top of the flat rock. Bridget went to Isabelle first, placing a comforting hand on Charlie’s shoulder as she sat down beside them. Milo joined the pair, looking down at the producer. It was difficult to see the true extent of her injuries as she lay wrapped up like a mummy atop her blanket-covered plastic backboard. Her eyes were open but unseeing, unsettling to watch.
“How’s she doing?” asked the doctor.
“The IV fluid you mixed up lasted a while,” said Charlie. “Another couple hours and we’ll probably need a new batch.”
“Good, good,” said Bridget. “No swelling, discoloration, or hardness around the needle?”
“Nothing worse than when we found her,” said Charlie as he adjusted a handkerchief to cover Isabelle’s open eyes. “Dale checked her heart rate and blood pressure every hour, just like we discussed. No change.”
“That’s the best we could hope for,” said Bridget, sneaking a glance toward Milo. The story of their journey to within meters of the surface was a terrible, burning secret to keep.
“She’s started mumbling,” added Charlie. “I can’t understand a word of it—she’s not conscious as far as I can tell.”
“There are levels of consciousness,” explained Bridget. “She may be trying to communicate—or it could just be unconscious manifestation.”
“It sounds like . . . clicking,” said Charlie. “A stream of consonants and vowels. I can’t understand any of it.”
Silence fell over the three as Milo glanced up toward Joanne and Dale. The female cave guide had taken their leader to the side, quietly whispering to him as he reddened in anger. The other cavers began to stir.
“You went where? Are you insane?” Dale shouted, loud enough that every caver suddenly turned to stare. Joanne didn’t rise to the bait, instead simply crossing her arms as she gazed across the gathering party. Milo did a quick headcount, seeing everyone but Logan.
“Well, I suppose it’s out of the bag now,” said Joanne. “We went for the surface to get help. The rope held.”
Milo and Bridget stared at each other, his mind flashing back to the gruesome find at the hatch.
“That’s good news, right?” asked Charlie, desperation entering his voice as he rocked from side to side. “They’re coming soon? When is help getting here? Did they already re-rig the main shaft?”
“We found an abandoned supply drop at the top of the shaft,” continued Joanne, ignoring Charlie’s rapid-fire questions. “But once we reached the elephant’s graveyard, we found this . . . plastic tunnel—”
“None of this makes any sense,” interrupted Duck.
“Our people on the surface were trying to build a passageway through the viral convergence zone,” interjected Bridget. “There must have been some sort of outbreak up top. We found more than a dozen bodies just inside the hatch. Marburg virus, by the look of the symptoms.”
“Get to the point,” snapped Dale. “Who’s coming for us, and when is rescue getting here?”
“Nobody’s coming,” said Joanne, her voice hoarse and solemn. “They bulldozed over the hatch. They buried us down here. We’re stuck until they open it back up again. Dale’s drone IR-scanned every inch of savanna within a ten-mile radius of the entrance—there’s no other way in or out.”
“Oh fuck,” mumbled Charlie, looking up from Isabelle’s side. “Oh fuck, this is a nightmare. They bulldozed over our only way out? What the fuck?”
“I’m certain it was temporary; just until they can get a handle on the pathogen,” added Bridget, trying to inject some cold rationality back into the conversation. “Joanne left a note—she said we were still alive, told them our situation. They’ll see it when they open the hatch.”
“Might be a hundred years until they open it again,” sputtered Charlie. “They must think we’re dead down here. How do you even know you didn’t bring the virus back?”
“Because we’re not bleeding from our eyeballs,” snapped Bridget. “I do this for a living, Charlie.”
“Who was dead?” demanded Duck. “We have friends up there, man!”
Joanne shook her head. “I only recognized a couple of them,” she said. “We didn’t open up the bags. The bodies lying out were mostly porters. But it got Kylie too. She’s dead.”
Guilt washed over Milo as he remembered the blonde logistician’s name. Charlie started moaning again, his guttural tones piercing the stillness, filling the echoing subterranean canyon with grief and fear. Milo allowed himself to slowly look from caver to caver, trying to ascertain their reactions.
Charlie was already useless, lost to his fear and shock. Joanne and Bridget had slipped into dispassionate professionalism, focused wholly on immediate, solvable problems. Milo couldn’t tell if Dale was more upset at the fact that they were buried alive or that his orders had been flagrantly ignored. Duck was only afraid.
Finally, he looked back to Dale. And all he could see was anger.
“I told you not to go up there!” shouted Dale, red-faced and furious. “Why would you risk your lives like that?”
“To organize a rescue,” hissed Joanne through clenched teeth. “For all of us.”
Dale swore loudly as he reached into the interior breast pocket of his khaki vest, removing a small piece of crumpled printer paper. Milo caught a glance of it as Dale passed the paper to Joanne, recognizing the printout as a supply drop inventory list.
Joanne held up the inventory to her headlamp, close enough for Milo to sneak a look over her shoulder and catch the timestamp. It dated from the final scheduled drop, just before the deluge hit. Joanne flipped it over to read the handwritten note on the other side.
Milo’s heart sank. Dale had known all along. By all appearances, the note was written not long before the situation on the surface turned critical. His mind spun through a web of potential scenarios, trying to piece together what had happened. Milo figured Dale wouldn’t have had time to respond to the note before the flood hit. And it would have been easy to assume the worst when people started dying at the surface camp; they had no way of knowing how bad the flooding had become. After all, the dozen plus bodies dumped in the cave entranceway could have been a mere fraction of the total death toll.
“You knew.” Joanne’s voice had turned icy cold. “You knew and you didn’t tell us.”
“I didn’t know it’d gotten that bad,” admitted Dale. “There was nothing we could do about it from down here. I didn’t see any sense in worrying the group. I told Duck; he disagreed. The flood hit before we could work it out.”
“Are you serious?” demanded Duck. “Does this mean nobody’s coming for us?”
“I could have expected this from Dale,” Joanne snapped at Duck, pointing a single accusing finger. “But not you.”
With that, she slammed down her backpack, spilling the looted supplies all across the flat rock. Duck dove to his knees, saving a box of dehydrated beef stew from plunging over the edge and into the chasm. By the time he looked up, Joanne had already hopped onto the rope line, swung herself down to the entranceway, and disappeared into the anthill.
“What’s the big deal?” protested Dale. “We sit tight—just like the note said. They’ll get things at the surface under control soon enough.”
Duck glanced toward Milo and Bridget, shooting each a rueful, resigned smile. “I’d better go,” he said. “Make sure Joanne is okay. She looks pretty pissed.”
Bridget and Milo stood in silence, watching Duck as he easily down-climbed the sheer rock wall after her.
Without another word, Bridget turned away, walking across the long flat rock toward Isabelle. Charlie was beside the patient, fast asleep on a thin foam pad.
Milo walked over to Dale, who had begun sorting through the salvaged supplies from the aborted drop.
“You have anything to add?” asked Milo, sitting down.
Dale just shrugged. “You know everything I know.”
“Getting rations ready?” asked Milo.
“Yeah,” answered Dale. “Hope you’re ready for a thousand-calorie-a-day crash diet. We’ll need to make this last. Once we’re out of food, all we’ll have is each other.”
“I really hope you’re not talking about cannibalism,” grunted Milo.
Dale just chuckled. “So you three made it all the way up the shaft on Prusik knots and a web harness?” he asked.
“We did,” confirmed Milo. “My balls will never be the same.”
“That’s because they just turned to brass,” said Dale, stopping the count to stare at Milo for an uncomfortably long time. “Welcome to the fraternity. If that feat doesn’t make you a caver, nothing will. I had my doubts about you. No offense, but you come across as kind of an indoor kid.”
“Thanks,” said Milo, though not certain he entirely accepted the premise of the compliment.
Dale just nodded and cleared his throat. “Got something for you,” he said, moving a few feet to the left and rifling through his pack. His hand withdrew an object carefully wrapped up in a small fleece blanket.
Milo unconsciously gulped as the blanket fell away, instantly recognizing the leather-bound journal he’d discovered atop the altar.
“I’m sorry we didn’t have more time to discuss this or the masks,” continued Dale, eyeing him intently. “Logan and I discovered the book in your bag as we left the cathedral chamber. You can imagine our surprise . . . it doesn’t exactly look like the sort of thing you would have brought with you. Is this what I think it is—Lord DeWar’s honest-to-God personal diary?”
“It would certainly appear so,” said Milo, masking his own uncertainty. “It was completely waterlogged; I was in the process of preserving—”
“It looked pretty dry, so I went ahead and opened it, couldn’t help myself,” interrupted Dale with a knowing smile before Milo could try and convince Dale he’d planned to tell him about it all along. “Almost can’t believe it’s in such good condition, considering . . . they must have made diaries pretty durable back in the day. I read as much as I could. Starts out like you’d expect. Travel notes, observations of exotic animals and cave geology. All noblemen of that era seem to have considered themselves citizen scientists of some variety or another. They found the golden glow, Milo—same as us. We were following in their footsteps the whole time!”
“That’s incredible,” breathed Milo. “And then what?”
“And then the writing becomes . . . different. He’s excited, almost euphoric. DeWar and his team start digging, trying to break their way into the next chamber. They’re just about to make it through when everything changes.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. The normal entries end, and the rest is pages and pages of complete gibberish. I can recognize words here and there, but can’t make heads or tails of it otherwise. I need someone who knows the man—really knows him—to take a crack at it, see if there is anything there or if DeWar just lost his goddamn mind.”
“Did anyone else try?”
“Logan. He got pretty excited, said he had to zip out for a few minutes and that he’d be back shortly. Tried to take the book from me. I wouldn’t let him. At this point I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“I’ll read it,” said Milo as he reached out to take the book. Dale didn’t let it go, leaving Milo to struggle in an awkward tug-of-war until he finally looked up and locked eyes with Dale.
“I’m not goddamn stupid,” said Dale, holding Milo’s attention hostage. “Should I think it’s just a coincidence that suddenly all of us have developed photographic memories at the same time? DeWar went on and on about memory anomalies too, at least until he stopped making any goddamn sense whatsoever. There’s something happening to us down here. Duck suddenly remembers the name of every one of his childhood classmates. Charlie looks like he’s quiet, but if you look closely you can see his lips moving. I caught him whispering—the man is going through every Godfather movie line by line. And did you see him move that boulder off Isabelle? It must have been eight hundred pounds if it was an ounce; I’ve never seen anything like that before. I don’t know Bridget as well as I’d like, but Joanne’s a million miles away and as quiet as I’ve ever seen her.”
“And what do you remember?” whispered Milo. “Do you have it too?”
Dale nodded as he let go of the journal, allowing Milo to take it and hold it close to his chest.
“Yeah,” said Dale. “I have it too.”
Milo sat in silence, watching Dale’s impassive face break down, tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. Whatever he remembered affected him deeply.
“I don’t know what’s happening,” said Dale. “But what I do know is that there are things down here I’ve never seen before. Including ourselves. Three well-equipped expeditions went into this cavern, and as far as anybody knows, nobody made it back out. If Logan and Joanne are right, it’s now twice that somebody has tried to permanently seal up the entrance.”
A chill went down Milo’s spine.
“Whatever we’re up against, I have a feeling it’s only going to get worse,” continued Dale. “DeWar may have left the only warning of what’s to come.”
Milo gingerly opened the front cover of the leather journal. He’d done well with the formerly waterlogged tome—the rough hemp pages opened easily, barely sticking to one another. He ran his fingers down the elegant insoluble inking of the interior inscription.
JOURNAL OF LD. RILEY DEWAR
SUBTERRANE EXPEDITION 1901
Again, Milo shivered; he bridged the distance of more than a century with the simple brush of a finger, his mind swimming with the secrets that might lie within.
“I’ll read it,” promised Milo.
“Good man,” repeated Dale. “Read fast. I don’t know how much time we have left.”