Charlie floored the accelerator and followed the fire truck and police cruiser. With each mile, the anxiety built inside. It seemed they were going the same way. As they approached a turning, he muttered to himself, “Please don’t turn.”
But they did.
“This doesn’t seem good,” Pippa said.
Charlie followed but hung back from the emergency vehicles. They took the exact route he had planned to get to the site. When he turned out of Cedar Drive, he saw the cruiser and the fire truck pulled up at the dig.
By the time Charlie had negotiated the rough dirt track and pulled up to the gate, police tape was already being dragged across and around a section of the clearing. Charlie leaned out of the window. “What’s going on?”
An officer came to him. “Please turn around, sir. This area is closed to the public for now.”
“I work here,” Charlie said. “I’m with Quaternary Productions. This is our dig site.”
“Not anymore, son.”
The anxiety was turning to ice inside his guts as he turned off the ignition and approached the officer. “What exactly do you mean?” He showed him his ID to prove that he was who he said he was. Pippa got out of the passenger side and joined Charlie at the gate.
“What’s happening?” she said.
The officer held the tape up, satisfied they were who they said they were. “It’s probably best if you come and see for yourselves.”
They followed him under the tape and into the clearing. Dust and dirt clung to the air, obscuring the trees. It felt like they were entering the eye of a twister. The fire truck’s lights were flashing, giving the place a surreal feel. They reflected off the flapping, white fabric of their finds tent that they had set up. Its poles were snapped, and it covered the ground. The fire truck obscured the actual trench. The police officer led them through and then stood with his arm out. “Don’t go any further,” he said.
“Holy crap!” Pippa put her hand to her mouth as her eyes widened with surprise. Charlie followed her gaze, and his jaw dropped.
The trench was gone.
In its place was a thirty-foot-wide hole. A sinkhole.
Stephanie Marks, one of the senior archeologists, was standing at the perimeter, her face against the police officer’s chest. She was crying and talking, the words coming out in a frantic jumble.
Charlie and Pippa rushed to her.
“Steph, what’s wrong?” Pippa asked.
The brunette woman turned to face them. Her eyes were rimmed with red as tears streaked down her craggy face.
“Take your time,” Charlie said.
Stephanie took a few deep breaths and wiped her face, getting control of herself. Behind her, the rest of the tent slipped into the hole, the wind pushing it over the edge.
“Oh my God. I came over early to double check the site as you suggested in your email. Luke was supposed to meet me here, but I can’t find him anywhere. He’s not answering his phone. I think he might have gone…” she broke away as tears came again. She turned to look at the sinkhole.
A group of firemen were preparing a camera on a rope to send down the sinkhole. “Are you sure he was here?” Charlie asked. “Mine and Pip’s phones haven’t had a signal all night. The cell reception’s all screwed up. He might not have fallen in. Have you tried his home number?”
Steph nodded. “No answer. It just keeps ringing.”
That was odd, Charlie thought. He knew Luke, one of the local college kids helping out on the dig, had an answering machine. If he weren’t there, surely the machine would pick up.
“You have to get someone down there,” Steph said to the officer. “He could be down there now waiting to be rescued. What if he’s badly hurt?”
The officer turned out to be Sherriff Mackelson. He’d come from the local town. “We’re doing all we can, Ma’am; we’re low on resources right now.”
“Why?” Pippa asked. “Surely you could spare more than one fire crew and yourself. There might be a kid stuck down there.”
“This isn’t the only sinkhole,” Mackelson said. “Another one opened up in Franklin’s Farm a few hours ago. Lost a cattle shed and two farmhands. I don’t know what the hell’s going on, but in all my years, nothing like this has happened before. We’re dealing with it all as best we can.”
“Where are the finds, the skeleton?” Pippa asked, her voice sounding distracted.
“At the college’s archeological department,” Stephanie said. “They were all transferred over last night. The kids and Professor Marsh are doing the cataloguing.”
“Okay, good. At least that’s one thing we don’t have to worry about. What else has gone down there?”
Stephanie looked around for a moment as if taking an inventory of things that were no longer there. “Just the tent and some digging equipment and a few trays. Nothing valuable. But I’m worried about Luke. I said I’d meet him here… This is all my fault. I should have left well enough alone. He wasn’t even supposed to be working with me this weekend.”
“Nonsense,” Pippa said, clutching the woman’s shoulder. “It was me that asked you here. If anyone is to be blamed, it’s me.”
The officer excused himself and approached the lead fireman. They had hooked up the camera to a rope and a cable. A small laptop had been set up on a temporary table about twenty feet away from the hole. Ignoring the safety tape, Charlie marched forward and joined the firemen.
“Don’t mind me,” Charlie said. “I work here… or what used to be here.”
“Sir, please, stand back. I can’t guarantee your safety.”
“It’s fine, I’ll sign a damned form if I have to, but I’m going nowhere. Now let’s see what’s down there. I don’t know about you, but I kind of want this to get a move on if there’s a kid down there. Do we even know how deep it’s sunk?”
A grizzled, grey-haired man gave him a stern look and gave up trying to be authoritative. Charlie had the demeanor that he wouldn’t be fucked with. “Well, on casual inspection, at least sixty feet. Possibly deeper. We’ll find out shortly.”
The image of the screen started to change as the camera slipped over the edge and was fed by one of the firemen down into the sinkhole. At first, the image was too blurred and dark to make out, but then the light came on, creating a glow around the center of the camera. The focus worked for a few seconds before sharpening the image. In the upper right corner of the screen, a digital readout of the depth increased in foot increments.
“Slower,” the fire chief said.
Charlie leaned in to get a look at the rock. “Looks smooth,” he said. “Is that normal for a sinkhole?”
The chief shrugged. “First one I’ve experienced.”
During his college course, Charlie had briefly covered the massive sinkhole network in Florida. Most of those were caused by clay covering a limestone cave system. When the weight on the clay cap got too much, from building works or excessive rain, it’d crack, and the material above the clay layer would fall down into the weak limestone. He knew that wasn’t the case here. The soil wasn’t rich with clay, and there was no known network of limestone erosion beneath.
The camera reached just over one hundred feet when something glinted under the light of the camera. “What’s that?” Pippa pointed out excitedly as she and Steph joined the others huddled around the screen.
“Zooming in,” the chief said. “Shit, it… it looks like the glass screen of a smart phone.”
Steph shrieked and clapped her hand to her mouth before mumbling, “Oh my God, it’s Luke’s. He must be down there. Oh my God.” Pippa took her away from the scene.
The sheriff returned after finally finishing his call. “What are we looking at?”
“A cell phone,” the chief said. “And… Wait… I can see a jacket among the debris.”