“The River Styx,” I whispered.
“What?” They all turned to look at me.
“It looks how I always imagined the River Styx would look.”
“Isn’t that the river that takes you to hell?” Sukey asked.
“Yeah.”
“That is not a helpful comparison, Kit,” Zander told me. “Who’s going in with me?”
“I’ll try it.” M.K. stepped into the river.
“I hope there aren’t any piranhas or crabs in there or anything,” I said nervously. In the dim glow of my vest light, M.K. turned around and gave me a mean look.
“I’m just saying.” I shrugged. “It’s dark. We can’t really see anything.”
“Shut up, Kit.” Zander stepped into the water, too. “Come on, M.K., how deep is it?”
“I can’t—” One second she was standing there and the next she had disappeared beneath the surface of the water. Pucci called out, “M.K.! M.K.!” and Zander reached down and came up with her, then lost his own footing. Sukey and I had to reach down into the cold water and haul them back up onto the rock by the side of the river.
They sat there shivering in the dark. “It was slippery and the current’s really strong,” Zander said. “And it’s pretty deep. There’s no way we could all get across.” He shivered. “Wow, that water was cold. You okay, M.K.?”
She tried to nod, but her teeth were chattering so hard she just sort of vibrated. Sukey took off her flight jacket and put it around M.K.’s shoulders.
“Are you okay?” I asked her. “Do you want my vest?”
“I’ll be fine,” she said, but I could tell she was trying not to shiver. I took off my vest and put it over her shoulders.
“What are we going to do?” We all sat there for a moment, staring across the river. The light on my vest flickered and Sukey handed it back to me. A minute later, it died.
“The solar batteries,” I said. “They’ve run out.”
“Quick,” M.K. told Zander, “shut yours off. We’ll use mine and save yours, whatever’s left of it.”
He did as she said. Now that we had only the light from her vest, the cavern was darker than ever. We sat there for a long time, not sure what to do.
“I’m hungry,” M.K. said finally.
“We all are.” My stomach gave an involuntary growl and I looked halfheartedly through the pockets of my vest on M.K.’s shoulders, hoping for a candy bar, but finding nothing. The food we’d bought at the top of the canyon was still in Sukey’s pack in the cave. Dad had provided us with all the utilities we might ever need, and now we had all the water we could ever drink, but at that moment, I would have killed for a chocolate bar.
“We need to get warmed up and we need to eat something,” I said. “Otherwise we’re not going to be able to go any further, much less get back to Drowned Man’s Canyon. And we’re not going to be able to do those things down here.”
“You think we should just give up?” Zander turned to look at me. “Go back and turn ourselves in to Foley? Give the Nackleys the map so they can find the treasure?”
“No, but I don’t know how we’re going to… There’s no way across that river. And there’s no food or firewood in these caverns.”
“But why would your father send you all the way into this cavern if there was no way across?” Sukey asked. “That doesn’t make sense.”
There were lots of explanations. Maybe it hadn’t been much of a river when Dad was here making the map. Maybe he hadn’t intended for us to come here at all. But I didn’t want Sukey to think I was scared so I said, “You’re right. There must be a way across the river, a tunnel under, or stairs in the wall, something like that. Everyone, look carefully.”
We did our best, but we couldn’t really split up and look with only one light, so the four of us just kind of stumbled around on the side of the river and finally gave up. We sat down on the cold rock. “I better switch off my light,” M.K. said. “Save it.”
I didn’t like the darkness at all.
“I don’t feel right,” Sukey said. “I’m so tired all of a sudden.”
“I know what you mean.” The little bit of exertion had exhausted me, too. “It must be because we’re so hungry. Keep drinking water. We won’t run out of that.”
In the last six months, ever since Dad had disappeared and we’d lost our Explorer rations, I’d been really hungry. A few times, we’d gone a couple of days without meat or milk, but there’d always been something, a box of stale crackers, a couple of apples from one of our trees, a piece of cheese traded for copper at the markets. This was different. There was absolutely nothing to eat down here.
“We ate yesterday,” M.K. said, as though she was trying to convince herself.
“We had a few bites of beans and beef jerky yesterday.” Sukey sighed. “It feels like it was a year ago. We should have gone back to get my backpack.”
“If we’d gone back to get your backpack,” Zander told her, “we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
Sukey was silent for a moment and then she said, “You’re right. We’d be sitting in some BNDL prison somewhere.”
“That’s a little melodramatic, don’t you think?” I asked her.
“I don’t think so. Lazlo wasn’t lying. BNDL is ruthless. I once heard my mother talking to a friend of hers about someone they knew. He went on an expedition to China, looking for a mountain pass or something. And he disappeared. Just never came back. Some of his friends, including Delilah, flew out there to see if they could find him. They found some people who said he had been seen talking to a man and a woman wearing black Explorer’s uniforms with red patches on their jackets.”
“BNDL,” I said. “What happened then?”
“I don’t know. They stopped talking about it.”
“But… they couldn’t have… killed him. Could they?” I don’t know why the thought was so shocking to me.
“You’d be surprised. I heard…” She hesitated. “Forget it. It’s just gossip.”
“What’s just gossip?” Something in her voice made me think she’d been about to tell us something important.
“Nothing. Nothing definite. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
I think we were all too tired and hungry to press her. “We have to think,” Zander said after a minute. “There must be something to eat down here.”
“There’s nothing down here but those slugs,” I said.
“They are protein,” Zander said after a minute.
“What?” Sukey’s face was shocked in the low light. “You wouldn’t…?”
“Hold on.” Zander switched his light back on and we saw him searching the walls of the tunnel. A minute later and he was back, holding one of the slimy slugs. He put it on the ground and we all watched as it writhed on the cold stone. Its flesh was plump and green. I felt my stomach turn.
“No,” I said. “No way. I’m not eating raw slug.”
“We have to have protein,” Zander said. “And it won’t be raw. We’ll figure out a way to cook it. I’m sure there are lots of cultures where they eat slugs.”
“Zander,” Sukey said in an exasperated tone, “in case you hadn’t noticed, there’s no wood down here.”
“Hang on.” M.K. was rummaging in Zander’s vest and she came up with the flame thrower she’d used to start the fire. She pressed the button on the top and a flame shot out of the box. She directed it at the slug and it writhed for a few seconds and then was still. A hideous odor of burning flesh filled our noses.
“Aghhhh!” I pinched my nose, trying to keep the awful smell out, but nothing helped. M.K. closed the flamethrower and we all stared at the smoking slug.
“No,” Sukey said. “Just, no.”
“Yeah,” Zander said. “You’re right.” He kicked the slug into the river, where it hissed as it hit the cold water and was sucked below the surface.
We all stood there, dejected, staring into the darkness.
M.K. spoke up. “Is this it? We can’t go any farther.”
Sukey went over and kicked the wall of the cavern. “Ow,” she said.
M.K. gave Sukey her jacket back and started rummaging around in her vest, taking out a couple of utilities.
“I was just thinking,” she said. “Dad made it across the river somehow and Dad left the vests for us.”
She fiddled with one of the utilities and some fabric shot out of one end. “I don’t know what that is. Maybe it’s another tent.” She shoved the fabric back in, replaced it, and fiddled with another gadget box, pushing a button on top. “I wonder what—”
Suddenly there was a loud whoosh and we couldn’t see M.K. at all as a huge expanse of gray plastic ejected from the utility and inflated almost instantaneously.
In a little under a minute, M.K. was standing next to a large boat.
“Wow,” she said. “I thought it might be a rope or something.”