A World Below Read online

  “My feet hurt,” Ashley said.

  “Same.”

  Silvia had a track meet next week, and she didn’t want to start with sore feet.

  Mr. Baker was leading them down a narrow passage, his flashlight bobbing ahead of them, landing on every spot of quartz or nook or cranny. Silvia could hear him cheerfully explaining how Jim White and the Kid had walked in this very spot, lighting their way with a flickering kerosene lamp. She shined her own flashlight along the walls, illuminating cracks and crevices and scattered holes by the thousands. She wondered if any bats were hiding in there. She kind of hoped she would spot one, but she knew it was unlikely they would live down in this end of the cave where there were no easy exits to the outside. Cave-dwelling bats had to leave to find bugs or fruits or nectar, depending on the species, and there were none of those necessities down here in the dark. In fact, she hadn’t seen a single animal yet, which was disappointing.

  “Think we’re done soon?” Silvia asked hopefully.

  Ashley snorted. “I doubt it. Mr. Baker could probably spend all week down here. But we have to leave in a couple of hours. We’re supposed to be home at eight, and we still have to stop to eat.”

  The passage they were in was only about ten feet high and the same across, and it was small enough that Silvia was starting to feel uncomfortable. The little tingling at the edge of her mind was back again, and she felt the familiar uneasy feeling settling into her stomach. She pictured the walls cracking and the ceiling raining down.

  Just relax, she told herself. This would not be a good place to freak out.

  “You all right?” Ashley asked, looking at her in concern. “You look nervous.”

  “Fine. Just ready to get out of here.”

  “Agreed,” Ashley muttered. “Let’s go talk to Mr. Baker.”

  Ahead, the class had emerged into another chamber. Mr. Baker was checking his guide book and analyzing the ceiling and rock formations, mumbling to himself through a wide grin.

  “Mr. Baker?” Eric’s mom said, her voice echoing around the chamber.

  He looked up. “Yes, Ms. Johnson?”

  “I realized I left a few snacks for the group on the bus. Totally forgot them. I was going to go grab them now and set them up in the lunch room for when we head back that way. You mind? Figured have some watermelon and orange slices with lunch to get our strength back.”

  “Sounds perfect! We will be here for a little while, not to worry.”

  “Great,” she said. She gave Eric a pat on the shoulder. “Be back soon, sweetie.”

  He flushed redder than a fire hydrant and quickly turned away. Derek snickered.

  As Ms. Johnson hurried off, Mr. Baker suddenly gasped and held a finger to his mouth.

  “Shh,” he said, lowering his voice. “This is the Mystery Room . . . so named for an unexplained noise that occurs only here. No one knows what it is. It could be wind from far away, or perhaps running water behind the walls. Some even say it’s the ghosts of Jim White and the Kid, wandering the caverns, looking for the way out again. Fascinating, really. Listen!”

  Everyone fell silent. And then they heard it. Rumbling.

  “Is that it?” Shannon asked.

  Mr. Baker frowned. “I guess so. I read it was more like breathing.”

  The rumbling started to get louder, like an explosion echoing from far away.

  And then the cavern started to shake.

  Silvia gasped as the floor moved violently beneath her, causing her to stumble. The quiet was suddenly broken by screams. The shaking intensified, and everything started to move in a strange blur, like time had sped up and slowed down all at once. Silvia fell into the chamber wall, catching herself painfully and reaching out for Ashley, who hit the rock hard beside her, smacking her forehead. Dust and debris and rock fragments started to rain down from the ceiling in dense clouds. Mr. Baker waved his hands, trying to keep his balance.

  “Stay calm!” he said. “Follow me! We’re going to head back to the tunnel.”

  He started to make his way back when a massive crack split the air. Silvia grabbed Ashley’s hand as the whole room shook violently around them. Brian, a quiet boy who sat at the front of class, was lying on the ground in front of them, holding his head where he had been hit by a falling rock and groaning. Ahead, even Mr. Baker froze at the sound of the loud crack. And then there was another.

  Silvia looked down in horror. It was coming from underneath them.

  “Run!” Mr. Baker yelled. “Come on!”

  He ran to the back of the group, gesturing for them to follow, and then started for the tunnel. He never made it. The ground split open beneath him, and with a last shout, he was gone.

  Terrified screams filled the cavern, mixed with sobs and shouts of “Mr. Baker!”

  Silvia pulled a stunned Ashley forward, trying to escape the Mystery Room before it was swallowed up by the spreading rift in the floor.

  “Watch out for the hole!” Tom shouted, heading around the edge. “Mr. Baker!”

  The class started for the tunnel, with Eric, who had been far behind the others, now in the lead. He was white with fear as he tried to keep his footing and head after his mother. The class had almost made it into the tunnel when another horrendous crack erupted through the Mystery Room. Silvia stumbled forward and saw the ground violently wrench itself open like cracking ice, falling away beneath them.

  She screamed, still holding Ashley’s hand, and plummeted into the darkness.

  The Fall

  * * *

  FOR A MOMENT, ERIC FELT as if he was dreaming. There were echoing screams and wild lights and a cold, enveloping darkness, but he was oddly calm. And then the water hit him like a truck.

  The air rushed out of his mouth in a whoosh. He tried to shout, but water flooded down his throat. He could feel the freezing water like stabbing knives on every inch of his skin. Eric flailed desperately for the surface. It was so black that he couldn’t even see his own grasping hands in front of him.

  One thing was for sure: He was moving. A powerful current was whipping him along, causing him to spin and thrash and roll. He lashed out in all directions, desperate for air. Finally, he broke the roiling surface, gasping for oxygen. The air was full of pounding water, as loud as a hurricane, but above it, he could hear the screams.

  “Help me!”

  “What’s happening?”

  “Mr. Baker!”

  The frantic words bounced off one another and jumbled together. Eric realized that the river was driving them away from the Mystery Room . . . and water never ran upward. The grim realization sunk in: They were being dragged deeper into the Earth. He fumbled blindly for his flashlight, but he must have dropped it.

  His mind was spinning with fear. His arms were tiring from fighting the raging current. He coughed up more water. He knew he was in trouble. If his muscles cramped and tired, he would surely be killed.

  Eric tried to focus. His body was still aching from the impact and the freezing cold water, but he couldn’t panic now. He tried to think back to every survival story he had ever read. The hero always stayed calm and thought logically. Slow down. Come up with a plan. His brain stopped firing off its warning klaxons just long enough to think. He had to get out of the water.

  The last thought finally connected. Something he could do.

  He wasn’t a great swimmer, but he at least knew where to aim: either side of the current that was relentlessly pulling him along. He pushed with everything he had, driving through the water and trying not to choke. Finally, his right hand connected with a rock before it slipped back into the water, and he clung to it, gripping its sharp edges with both hands and heaving himself forward until he was perched atop it like a coiled snake, unwilling to let go.

  He heard more frantic screams as his classmates were dragged past him one after another.

  “Swim for the sides!” he shouted. “Swim! I found the shore!”

  “Eric!” a familiar voice replied, just audible
over the rapids. It was Silvia. “Eric!”

  “I’m here,” he called, reaching out wildly with one hand to try and catch her. “Grab me!”

  “Where are you?” Her voice was already growing fainter. “Eric!”

  “Silvia!” he stretched out even farther, almost tumbling back into the water.

  Her voice was gone. They sped past him in haunting, echoing waves: Tom, Naj, Joanne, Brian. Each time he shouted and tried to reach out to grab them, but he missed them all. Soon the shouts were only echoes at the edge of his hearing, and then they vanished down the river.

  Eric lay on his rock, surrounded by pitch blackness and roaring water. He was alone.

  For a minute or two he just stayed there, clinging to the freezing, slick surface of the rock and letting the river pound against his legs, too scared and stunned and cold to even think.

  Get out of the water.

  The thought struck again, and Eric snapped into action. Reaching blindly, he crawled onto solid ground, testing with his fingers. The water slipped away past his knees and then vanished altogether. He crawled onto a ledge, cold and slippery, and kept moving until he felt a wall. Then he huddled against that, drawing his legs in and hugging them to his chest, shivering violently. Eric tried to think. Should he go after the class? What if the river plunged into a hole farther down? What if it ran on forever until it emptied into some molten lake in the Earth’s core?

  No. He had to stay out of the water. Maybe he could find a way to follow them on land.

  And to do that, he needed light.

  His flashlight was gone, but he dug his cell phone out of his pocket and tried it, hopefully. His case, a gift from his mom last Christmas, was supposedly waterproof. But when he hit the power button, nothing happened.

  “Come on,” he pleaded, stripping the case off.

  He took out the battery and put it back in, working only by feel and memory with trembling hands. He nearly dropped the phone several times, he was shaking so badly, but he got it back in.

  Then he tried it again. “Please, please, please . . .”

  The phone flashed blue, and Eric felt his eyes water, he was so relieved. When the home screen loaded, he flipped on the flashlight app and climbed to his feet. He was in a tunnel carved by the furious river. He could barely believe he had survived the fall. He hoped the others were as lucky.

  Eric shone the light to either side of him and saw that the narrow bank ran along for another fifty feet or so. He started walking, his shoes heavy with water and his toes numb and stinging. He tried to piece the events together. His mother should have been well down the tunnel by the time the chamber collapsed, but that didn’t mean she was safe. Eric thought of her pinned under rocks and felt sick to his stomach.

  She’s fine, he told himself. You have to focus.

  How long could he survive on this riverbank? Would they ever find him? He could have been dragged half a mile from where they’d fallen, for all he knew. He thought of Sam Gribley living up on the mountain alone, facing storms and starvation and cold. Sam never let despair take him—to do so would have been certain death. He had to be as strong and stubborn as the mountain itself, and only then did he survive it. Eric would have to do the same down here.

  I am not going to die, he thought.

  He walked along the shoreline, shining his light on the treacherous footing until he finally came upon a welcome sight: a short, natural opening cut into the stone, dry and still. A tunnel. If he had been stuck beside the river with the constant freezing spray, he would likely have frozen to death. The tunnel gave him a chance.

  Eric ducked inside of it, leaving the raging water behind him. Then he stopped, thinking.

  Most survivalists said it was smartest to stay where you were. Traveling in unfamiliar terrain was dangerous, and you were supposed to conserve energy. But this was an unusual situation.

  Rescuers would have no idea where to find him, and even if the class did survive the river and washed up farther down in the caves, they would never come looking for him. He was on his own, and he didn’t feel like sitting here in the dark until his phone battery ran out and he froze to death.

  No. He was going to find his own way out.

  Five Minutes After

  * * *

  THE MAD DESCENT OF THE river seemed endless, and Silvia wondered numbly if she was going to die. She had stopped struggling after the first few minutes, feeling her limbs tiring and her breath growing short and halting in the bitingly cold water. She had quickly learned to float on her back as close to the surface as possible with her legs pointed downstream. Before that, her legs had been battered by the rocks beneath the surface and she had smacked her shoulder off something as well. There was a break in the violent current, and she heard frantic screams and shouts and pleas for help all around her. She wasn’t alone, and that gave her hope.

  Finally, when the cold had begun to numb her body so much that even the small effort required to float on her back seemed impossible, the deafening roar of the white water began to fade away behind her. She felt herself drift out into motionless water, and she finally allowed her feet to sink down below the surface again so she could tread water.

  “Ashley!” Silvia called, her teeth chattering so much she worried they might chip. Now that the current had stopped, the cold seemed even worse; a mixture of burning, tingling, and most dangerously of all, a deep and aching numbness. “Where are you?”

  “Here,” Ashley called back. Her panicked voice sounded only about twenty feet away. “I’m here! What happened? Where are we?”

  Silvia looked around, trying to find the source of Ashley’s voice, but it was so dark that she couldn’t even tell the water from the air.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Anyone else?”

  A chorus of voices greeted her, shrill or sobbing or quivering from the cold.

  “We need to get to shore,” Silvia said, treading harder to keep her head out of the water.

  If she slipped under, no one would ever find her.

  “Spread out!” she heard Jordan call. “Shout if you find something!”

  Silvia began to swim, reaching out with every slow, measured stroke. The blindness amplified her other senses, so that she could hear the others’ splashing and shallow breathing and feel the cold on every inch of her body like a million stabbing pins. She just had to hope that her eyes would adjust—maybe enough to at least pick out shades and silhouettes. The water smelled clean, though faintly metallic, and with the amount she had swallowed in the tumble down the river, she knew it was fresh water.

  Silvia picked up her pace, swimming frog style. Just as her mind was starting to slow from the cold and the despair was starting to creep through her, her right leg kicked ground. Hard, rocky ground. She put her feet down and grinned . . . she could stand. Silvia took a few more steps and realized the bottom was heading steadily upward. Soon the freezing water was falling away from her knees, and then she stepped out completely.

  “Hey!” she shouted. “I found the shore. Over here! Follow my voice!”

  The sounds of frantic splashing followed, and soon the first of the students started to make their way up the shore. Silvia couldn’t see them, but she could hear them as they sloshed onto land. Derek was first, sniffling and hoarse. Then Mary and Marta, still at each other’s side. Then Jordan, Brian, Naj, and Joanne. More students emerged from the lake, and they huddled together on the shoreline, sopping wet and freezing. When Ashley came out Silvia wrapped her in a fierce hug, and Ashley sobbed freely into her shoulder.

  “I thought I was going to die,” Ashley murmured. “I thought I was dead.”

  “We’re out now. It’s okay,” Silvia said, trying to hold back her own tears.

  “What are we going to do, Sil?” she asked. “It’s so dark. And I’m so cold.”

  Silvia paused. “I don’t know yet.”

  “Help me!” someone cried out from the water. It sounded like Shannon. “He’s unconscious!”


  “Who has a flashlight?” Silvia asked, looking around. “See if it works!”

  Everyone started to rummage in their bags or adjust their flashlight batteries, frantically trying to get them to work. Silvia looked to where she thought the lake was and tried to spot Shannon in the heavy darkness, but it was useless. She couldn’t see an inch in front of her.

  “Shannon?” she called. “Where are you?”

  “Greg’s not breathing!” she said. “Help me!”

  Behind her, there were relieved gasps as a flashlight suddenly burst into life. It cut through the darkness like a laser beam, shooting upward some thirty yards but fading before it found a ceiling. The huge cavern must have dwarfed the Big Room a thousand times over.

  “It works!” Jordan exclaimed.

  “Find her!” Joanne said.

  He pointed the light out over the lake, and they soon saw Shannon swimming toward the shore, struggling as she pulled an unconscious Greg along behind her with one arm. Joanne hurried out into the water and helped pull him in, while Shannon collapsed on the ground.

  “I ran into him on the way,” Shannon managed, struggling to catch her breath.

  Joanne leaned over Greg, feeling his chest. “He’s not breathing!” she said shrilly.

  “Greg!” Jordan shouted, blanching. “Someone help him!”

  “Does anyone know CPR?” Tom asked.

  Everyone looked around for a moment. Silvia was stricken by fear and cold and panic, and hoping desperately that someone, anyone else could help. They all stayed quiet.

  “Get out of the way!” Silvia said.

  She had to try. She had taken a CPR course with her mom last year—her mom thought it might make Silvia feel better about her own issues. She knelt beside Greg, reaching to check for his pulse and then remembering that her instructor said not to waste any time on that step—it was difficult to feel a pulse sometimes, especially right out of the water. Instead, she opened Greg’s mouth, stuck her ear against it, and listened for breathing. There was nothing.