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A FEW HOURS LATER—OR it felt like a few hours, though she had no way of being sure—Coral had no new information and no new theories. Fear had given way to acceptance of her situation, and soon that gave way to boredom. So the world is ending, and I’m bored—that’s really weird, don’t you think?
The cave’s mouth was no brighter. If anything, the light outside had faded. She flicked on her flashlight and made her way in that direction. The smell of smoke grew stronger. The air heated too, until she wanted to strip off the sweatshirt.
Just inside the cave’s entrance, she stopped. She smelled wood smoke, pungent and unmistakable. The hair on the back of her neck rose in an animal response to fire. She couldn’t see any flames, but out there somewhere, the vast forest was afire.
Her hands and face began to feel tacky with her perspiration from the heat, more than from fear—though she was afraid, terribly so, at some primal level. Her body wanted her to flee, just as those deer had done back at the beginning, but it was far too late now. Coral retreated from the heat and backed up to her packs again.
As the day passed, her spot in the cave grew warmer. More smoke drifted into the cave’s entrance until her eyes begin to water from it. She gathered up her packs and sleeping bag and moved deeper into the cave. When she could no longer smell smoke, and when the chill of the air seeped through her clothing once again, she stopped. Then she settled down against the wall, sitting on her sleeping bag.
The cave’s entrance was a couple hundred feet away now but illuminated nothing. The dark began to cling to her like a tangible thing.
Her mind drifted to the last human conversations she had had. A chat about weather and nothing of note with a convenience store clerk. Her weekly phone call to her big brother, who was worried about her being alone, a woman without a gun in the woods. A phone call to her grandmother to wish her happy birthday. She wondered how her family was, if they were watching the TV back in Ohio about—well, about whatever this event was—and going crazy from worry.
Long hours passed. Without her cell phone or watch, she had no idea how many. As the world outside did not change for the good, she decided to limit herself to drinking only the few inches of water that remained in the old bottle of water. Eventually, hunger came, gnawing at her belly. For a time, she resisted it. When her hunger had turned instead to weakness and a pounding in her head, she ate a dinner of half of the milk, the stale energy bar, and the apple, eating every bit of that but the seeds and stem. The milk slaked the thirst that had been building all day.
She bedded down early for the night—at least it felt as if it weren’t yet sundown, though she couldn’t be certain of time by looking at the dark cave entrance. She should have grabbed her phone just for the clock function.
She wriggled around, trying to find a comfortable position. The duff-covered ground of a forest had never been this hard. Within minutes, her hipbones felt bruised by the rock floor. She turned again, trying to find a more comfortable position, finally settling for flat on her back.
She lay there and let her mind drift. She remembered being a child, playing tag with her younger brother Blayne, hunting Easter eggs, playing the complicated make-believe games she loved inventing for the neighborhood kids. Memories of kids she hadn’t thought about in years came rushing forward, and memories of her parents, tinged, as always, with grief. Losing herself in the better memories, she was able to fall asleep.
* * *
A FLICKER OF ORANGE light registered through her closed eyelids. She turned away from it and felt the unyielding rock beneath her body, pressing painfully at her hipbone again. The pain woke her fully. She sat up, disoriented; then she remembered where she was.
The orange light was coming from the cave’s entrance, not the streaks of falling rock from earlier, but a steady glow. Fire had reached trees outside. The cave had grown warmer, and in her sleep she had shoved down the bag to her waist.
There was no dense smoke in her part of the cave but she could vaguely smell the fire. And the heat!—she had no idea how much heat a wildfire could generate, but it must be a lot to reach in and heat the protected space this far inside the cave.
Damn, but it was heating up quickly. She would have to move back farther still. She got up and lit the candle and left it by her camp as a marker, along with all her things, while she went exploring. The flashlight illuminated the floor before her feet in a white oval as she made her way deeper into the womb of the cave. Soon, the floor itself was no longer broad and smooth but was rising at the edges in jagged bulges of rock.
She stopped there. Turning around, she stared back the way she had come. The cave’s entrance was still visible, a fuzzy orange glow far away, maybe as much as a quarter-mile away. In the other direction, the cave narrowed, the ceiling dropping down as the floor rose. She was deep inside a long arm of a cavern carved out so very long ago by water.
As she stood still, the cold began to seep into her bones. Inside this part of the cave, she was buried under the side of a mountain, insulated from the air outside by a good stretch of rock. The sense of the weight of the rock overhead made her pull her head into her shoulders, like a turtle.
She felt cornered in here by the fire. And what if the heat reached the back of the cave too? Would she run out of space, not be able to escape being roasted?
Don’t borrow trouble, she told her herself, repeating one of her grandmother’s favorite sayings. In two trips, she moved her gear back into the cave to the last flat stretch of floor and settled down again for what remained of the night—or what felt like night. Maybe, just maybe, she’d wake to a bright dawn.
* * *
WHEN CORAL WOKE AGAIN, there was still no light. Her body insisted it was morning. Far under the mountain, of course it was dark, as she expected. But in the distance, far beyond her feet where she hoped to see the light of day shining from the cave’s mouth, there was nothing but more darkness. No light of a forest fire remained. The blackness enfolded her in its dark arms.
Fending off a primal fear of the dark, she fumbled for the flashlight, happy when her fingers found the cylinder on top of her pack. She turned it on, feeling a wash of relief at having light. It was cool back here, still; she had that to be grateful for. She walked back toward the entrance with a plan to pee outside, but the heat grew and grew with every step. Not far from her original camp, there was an impenetrable wall of heat. The air where she stood was stifling, dry and oppressive. She was quick about relieving herself there, but before she was done, sweat was running down her neck and spine in irritating drops. She wanted to look outside, see if her motor home was a burned-out shell or not, but she could not tolerate this pitiless heat for one second longer.
As she walked back in the cave to her campsite, she thought about how dependent she had become on the television and radio and her computer. At home, or in her dorm room, if a thunderstorm broke, she could turn on the weather station to see how bad it was going to be and how long it would last, timing a dash to the library between lines of squall on the radar. If a jet plane crashed halfway around the world, a dozen news stations would spend the next twenty-four hours telling her the few known facts and their inaccurate speculations about the crash’s causes over and over again. If she had a wireless signal, she was connected. If the electricity went out, she could phone the power company and hear how long she’d have to wait for lights to return.
But here, she was utterly alone with her ignorance. In the dark, probably miles away from the nearest person, with no radio, television, Internet, or telephone, she had no idea what was going on out there. Had a volcano erupted? Was there some freak gigantic firestorm? Or had something else happened that she hadn’t yet begun to guess?
In one part of her mind, she was being rational and trying to work out what had happened. In another part of her mind, primitive fear was clamoring to take over. Because whatever was happening out there, it was clearly bad—very bad. An irrational animal inside her brain clamored to be let out, to run in fear, to make mewling noises.
Coral refused to let it win. Mindless panic would not help her, and it wouldn’t help the world outside. So she simply would not—could not—allow it out.
* * *
THE FEAR SHE COULD fight off, but as the day wore on, she felt more and more caged. Despite the drama and mystery of the events outside, the boredom of her confinement threatened to drive her mad—that is, until she remembered the little star guide she had kept in her frame pack. She lit a candle and flipped through the book. It was worth burning a half-inch of candle to be distracted by reading for an hour or two. What she’d give for an e-reader right now, charged up to max and loaded with hundreds of books. She vowed to buy herself one at the end of the summer, when she was flush from her summer job’s pay.
She flipped to the star guide’s table of contents. Two chapter titles, Comets and Asteroids, leapt off the page. What if that’s what had happened? An asteroid impact? She flipped straight to those sections and read.
Such an event, most scientists thought, had killed the dinosaurs sixty-five million years ago—and impacts before then had also killed millions of species at a time. The book said little more than the basic facts, so Coral dredged from her memory all that she knew. What was happening right now in the world outside only partly matched what she could remember of what she had read or seen on TV. She thought the scientists said that massive earthquakes would be triggered by the impact of a massive object, and yet she hadn’t felt any tremors. And she certainly hadn’t seen a bright fireball streaking across the sky before the black cloud began to rise.
Also, she remembered that what happened next, if the impact was great enough, was something like a nuclear winter, a terrible drop in worldwide temperatures. It was stiflingly hot outside, not cold. So all the details didn’t fit. Still, it was another possibility to add to her useless theorizing.
Like a nuclear winter: the phrase echoed in her mind. What about a nuclear war? Not some minor power like Pakistan or North Korea dropping its few bombs on a neighbor, but an all-out nuclear holocaust with bombs dropped everywhere, even in the middle of rural southern Wyoming or Northern Colorado—her best guess as to where that initial boiling black cloud may have had its origins. But who had the bombs and missiles enough to do that? She thought only Russia did. She couldn’t remember anything on the news about some new flare-up in war or diplomacy there. And the black cloud looked nothing like the films she’d seen of mushroom clouds.
Still, if it were that, a total nuclear war, then hiding in this cave would not save her from the radiation for long, that much she did know. She’d die anyway, and her survival efforts here would come to nothing. But if it were a nuclear holocaust, why would the air be black with gunk? No, that theory didn’t make any sense, either.
Holding on to the theories, as inadequate as they seemed, was some sort of comfort. Massive new volcano...nuclear holocaust...asteroid impact...crazy big wildfire. It could be any of those, or perhaps something she hadn’t yet guessed. She wondered, whatever it was, how wide the devastation was, wondered how many other people had survived, were sitting just as she was, wondering what the hell was going on. Was her family worried for her? Or had the thing, whatever it was, stretched all the way to Ohio to get them too? How many had died? How many would?
The cave might be a cage, it might be boring to sit alone in it for hours upon hours, but it was, she knew, also keeping her alive.
* * *
ALL THE SECOND DAY, the searing heat continued outside. On the morning of the third day, or what she counted that after she had slept another long while, she resolved to suffer through the heat and go outside, forcing her feet along no matter what. She tried to do just this, but it was impossible to get as far as a hundred feet from the cave’s entrance. Within seconds of trying to push through the wall of heat, her skin felt scorched and her throat and lungs felt flayed. Her eyes burned to painful dryness. She retreated back into the cave’s recesses, frustrated that she could not overpower the heat with the force of her will.
She was starting to worry about water too. The milk was gone now, and she was out of all but half of the last bottle of water, despite taking only the smallest sips yesterday. And she was hungry. The hunger twisted her belly, but the thirst was maddening. The thought of water nagged at her every waking moment. She fantasized about juice, soda, and tall glasses of iced tea with lemon twists along the rim, condensation beading on the glass. The image of a clear, cool waterfall began to haunt her thoughts.
She used a full candle that day, burning it until it had turned to liquid and letting it burn until the liquid wax had burned entirely away, reading every word of the one book she had. When the day’s candle sputtered out and the star book was tucked away again, she spent more time remembering.
She remembered her father leaving her mother once, then coming back less than a month later. Remembered her little brother coming to her, bruised and miserable, after an encounter with a bully. Remembered her big brother, James, getting arrested for drunk driving when he was 16 and the family arguments about that. Remembered the last time she saw her grandmother, who had given her “mad” money for this trip. She thought of the old woman’s independence and spunk, which Coral hoped she had inherited.
She wondered what her grandmother would do right now. Coral could use a healthy transfusion of the old woman’s toughness.
Whatever had happened outside, her grandmother would feel lucky to have survived it. Coral was lucky, she knew, not to be at ground zero of The Event, wherever and whatever that might be. She also had been fortunate to have decided to grab the food and backpacks when she could, because she sure couldn’t get out there now to gather supplies. But now her luck seemed to be running out along with the water.
She napped again and woke a short time later. At the end of what she was guessing was the third day, she was out of food, and the level of the last half-bottle of water sank lower and lower, despite her trying to resist drinking. The cave, which had at first been her luck, her sanctuary, could easily turn into her grave.
* * *
THE FOURTH DAY IN THE cave, she woke to the reality of less than an inch of water in her bottle and no food. She took just enough water to wet her dry and cracked lips and held it in her mouth as long as she could before swallowing. Her throat still felt shriveled, her gums tacky. The cells of her body were all clamoring for moisture. Soon, she knew from her physiology studies, systems would begin to falter. In another day or two, they would shut down. A week without water was the most an unmoving person had ever survived, she had heard, but she’d be in bad shape by tomorrow, disoriented and incapable of saving herself.
She had to find more water now, and there were only two possibilities: brave the heat outside for a mad dash and find the motor home water tanks intact, or find water somewhere in this cave. Somewhere, there might be a water source. Water certainly carved out the cave in the past, but all the surfaces she had touched were dry now.
She’d never be more alert or energetic than she was today. The time to do it was right this minute. Again, she tried to leave the cave, and again, was met by a wall of heat too powerful to cross. So she’d have to find water here, in the cave.
Back at her packs, Coral loaded her pockets with her knife and a bandana. She wished for a headlamp so her hands were free, but she had only the flashlight.
She took cautious steps into the uneven floor of the deepest part of the cave. As the footing got worse, she braced her left hand against the wall. The rock was rough there too, porous and full of tiny sharp edges. Bits of it flaked off, leaving her palm gritty.
She lurched and fell to one knee. Her hand scraped down the wall as she fell. She fought to keep the flashlight raised and safe from the rocks. Falling to both knees, she decided to stay there. She shuffled forward on two knees and a hand, but even through her jeans, the rocks bit into her. She kept on, inching forward, shining the light around the walls and ceiling, hoping to see the glint of water.
The ceiling was closing in now, as the cave narrowed and all the walls became a rough cylinder barely larger than Coral herself. The walls remained dry.
Her space to navigate shrunk. She dropped to her belly. Her shoulders scraped the rock, her skin felt the sharp rocks poking at her, but she kept going, pushing herself along with her toes. Her hands groped ahead, hoping to feel moisture. Water was life, right now, and well worth a few—or even a few dozen—scrapes.
The tiny space spooked her. She could feel her heart thudding in her chest, harder than the physical effort warranted. Her dry throat felt painfully swollen, painfully dry, and yet she couldn’t stop herself from compulsive swallowing.
The space kept shrinking until she was worming her way along a tunnel barely larger than her body. She seemed to be ascending steadily. Suddenly she realized that the flashlight was illuminating a different sort of rock just ahead—smooth rock a darker color than the rough bits. She felt the rock beneath her move. It was loose here, like gravel—very sharp gravel.
Reaching forward, she felt the rocks ahead. Still no moisture, not anywhere. She held her breath and listened hard, hoping to hear a trickle of water. But there was no sound except the deep rapid thump of her own heartbeat. She sniffed, hoping to somehow smell water, but she smelled only a faint metallic smell. The hole ahead was too small now to push through. The last thing she needed was to get wedged in there.
Maybe with the rock beneath her being loose, she could widen the hole. She wriggled her hand down until she could fish the bandana out of her pocket. Wrapping it around her left hand as padding, she began to dig one handed, pushing the loose rocks back behind her hips and kicking other rocks away with her feet. She made slow progress, but she kept at it, an inefficient mole.
Suddenly, she heard a snap, her hips slipped backward several inches, and a pile of rubble came skittering down into the hole ahead. Fast as she could, she wormed her way back, her sweatshirt riding up as she went, leaving her belly exposed to the rough rocks. More rocks fell in front of her head, bouncing back toward her. The flashlight went out as she lost hold of it.
She scooted back faster, feeling her hips catch in a narrow space. Her hands scrambled for purchase, for some way to push herself back through the obstruction. She felt true panic rising, heard herself whimper. The sound of falling rocks got louder.
She was on the edge of panic when the sound of the rockslide stopped.
She took deep breaths, trying to slow her racing heart. She was lucky the rock fall hadn’t buried her entirely. Worse, her light was gone. With great care, she felt around in the darkness for the flashlight. The last thing she wanted to do was start up the rockslide again, but without light, she had even more problems.
For long minutes she patted the ground around her, searching for the familiar cylinder shape. She pressed her palm systematically into the newly fallen rock, hoping to feel the flashlight poking up through it. Stretching as far as she could, she went over the area twice, blindly feeling. She started again, trying to be more thorough, feeling every square inch of rock. Nothing.
She couldn’t risk more digging. She really could bury herself alive.
Coral wormed backward until she could get on hands and knees again, and then she groped until she found the left wall and turned around, standing. Feeling her way along the wall in the blackness, it took her a long while, nearly an hour, to get back to her sleeping bag. The whole time, moving blindly, she fought back her fear, a fear of the dark that was childish, she kept telling herself, but that got no better for her knowing it. When her shin finally touched on the folds of the sleeping bag, she let out a long, shuddering sigh of relief.
She fumbled for a candle and lit it, then went back to the rock fall again, using the candle for illumination. As she wormed her way forward through the tunnel, every ping of sliding rock froze her. But she went on anyway, inching forward, hunting for the damned flashlight.
She must have spent another hour looking, burning the candle nearly through, but she finally had to admit that the flashlight was gone, buried under rock, or rolled away somewhere that she couldn’t see. Frustrated, disheartened, she returned to her gear and took another precious sip of water.
She had to have more water to live. But she was stuck in the cave with only a few more scant mouthfuls. And there was nothing she could do about it. As she thought that, the candle guttered out and died.
* * *
OVER THE REST OF THE day, Coral lay in the dark and thought of water every moment. She dreamt about water that night. She woke the next day and upended both water bottles and the milk bottle, getting no more than a half-dozen drops. As she swallowed them, she knew it might be the last drink she ever had. At least she was no longer hungry, though that was small comfort in face of the burning thirst.
That morning, she burned her last candle. As it sputtered out, she knew she was going to be left alone in the dark, with not even the little star guide to distract her from her fears.
At the last flicker of light disappeared, Coral felt bereft, as if she’d lost a friend. Every abandonment of her life added together was not as bad as this. With one exception: the death of her parents. She closed her eyes and rested her head on her knees, trying to talk herself out of despair. There was no logical reason she shouldn’t despair, but she knew that to give into it would mean her certain death.
As long as you’re breathing, she told herself sternly, there’s hope. She raised her head again and opened her eyes.
And saw light. Literally a light at the end of the tunnel.
