Her voice was calmer now.
"Look," she said. "I could take the car and go for the police. You
and Steve could stay here and do whatever you can. I can drive as fast
as either of you and I'm a lot more persuasive. But I'm telling you, I
don't like the look of that hole. Not one bit. I don't think you
should try to go in there."
"We've got to."
"What else can we do?" said Steven.
"Stay here. In case she comes out again. You are not heroes for
Christ's sake! I want you to promise me you won't try."
"But what if she..."
"What if she NOTHING! You don't know what's in there; you don't
knowifthedamnthingcavedinonher! Jesus! Could we please stop arguing?
We're wasting time."
"Okay," I said. "Go."
"Promise me."
Steven hesitated, glanced at me. I nodded.
"I promise," he said. "All right."
"Clan?"
"We'll be here. You know the way all right? You can find the way back
to the car?"
"I'm already there.
I put my flashlight beam on the staircase for her and watched her run
up the stairs and disappear around the corner through the kitchen. A
moment later we heard the front door open and then slam shut again.
The house was silent.
"I'm sorry, Steve. I mean it."
"It's okay. I... care for her too."
We stood there together listening, hoping for sounds behind the wall.
Woman sounds. Alive sounds.
There weren't any.
It seemed as though a longtime passed. But in the rational part of me!
know it wasn't longa tall It was the standing there that made it seem
so, listening to our heartbeats pulse down into something a little more
like normal, staring into the dark corners of the room, everywhere
seeing Casey.
But Kim was as good as her word. In a while we heard the car start up
outside and two long blasts on the horn. They sounded very far away to
me.
"What are we going to do?" whispered Steve.
"What do you want to do?"
He stared at me a moment and then bared his teeth, the best
approximation of a smile he could manage at the time. I gave him one
back that had to be just as bad. My guess is we looked like a couple
of wolves in feral display.
"I'm not going to like waiting," he said.
"Neither am I."
"It's a half hour into town."
P "Twenty minutes if you push it. So what do you think? "I think we
should have a look inside." "I was hoping you'd say that." He
shrugged. "I know you were. I'd been very much hoping I didn't." We
went through the stuff on the floor.
It was good to do that. It gave you a sense of purpose, of something
leading to something, of potency and judgment. We were quiet and
thorough and very content to be rooting around in there.
Personally I liked the pitchfork.
There were two tines missing on the left side but the head fit soundly
into the shaft, so it didn't wobble, and the shaft was long enough to
keep whoever we were liable to meet a good few feet a way. Steven
found an axe handle. It was sturdy, with about five pounds of weight.
The knives were all rusty and useless. We decided to go with what we
had.
We stood there looking ready.
We weren't ready.
I knew what he wanted to say to me because I had the same thing to say
to him: are you sure about this?
Neither of us uttered it.
There was no way to feel good about it, no way at all, but jesus, it
was Casey in there, the girl I'd made love to and listened to and
watched with growing pleasure for a long time now. The woman who'd
told me, finally, some of the reasons for what she was, who saw me as
friend and lover. Sothatthehookwassunkdeep. Iwasn't about to abandon
her.
As for Steve, I suppose he had his reasons too.
I know he did.
I'm trying to explain this now.
Because it wasn't very smart, what we did.
When you're whole and unharmed, no matter how scared you are there's
always thefeelingthat nobody's going to touch you, really. It's only
when the pain begins that you realize you're vulnerable. By then it's
too late. By then it's a matter of getting out alive, that's all. But
before that you jerk yourself off a little. Your mind does a little
survey and there you are, strong, intact. So what's to worry? Your
body gets insulted: have I ever let you down in a pinch? Guess not.
And, knees knocking, you plunge right in. Thrilled. Invulnerable. To
get strafed by the firepower of your worst nightmares.
People are idiots, basically.
HYoung people worst of all.
Because kids don't believe in death. They have to be taught in order
to believe- and the teacher is always disease or gaping holes in the
flesh. Wounds. Pain. That usually comes later in life, but it comes
eventually.
All the heroes are children.
So we two, playing with makeshift bats and sharp objects, went
inside.
Just a little at first. In that first passageway there was only room
to go one at a time, so I led the way, pitchfork always leading me a
little, flashlight in my other hand. I could always feel Steven right
behind me, crawling up over my ankles half the time, in fact, keeping
contact. It felt really good having him there too.
When we turned the corner the passage opened up a bit. But there still
wasn't room to gu two abreast. So when he started to move up on me I
waved him back again. I didn't want to feel cramped in there any more
than I had to.
Casey's flashlight was up ahead. I knew when Steven saw it because I
heard him groan a little. It sounded very loud in there.
The wind was colder but not so forceful as before. The stink was still
bad, though. I wondered what Steve was thinking, encountering it full
blast for the first time. I wondered if it was making him sick. You
think weird things at times like that, irrelevant things really, as
though your concentration can't handle the sudden strain. I found
myself wondering how his whites were holding up. Actually thinking
about laundry. It was stunning to me.
one
kne mis; awa
I put my flashlight down and tried Casey's. It was dead. I put it in
front of my own beam and saw that the clear plastic head was broken,
splintered with tiny webbings. Just behind the plastic the aluminum
backing was deeply dented in two places roughly opposite one another.
As though gripped by a powerful hand or pair of jaws.
I handed it back to Steve. There wasn't any need to speak. I knew
he'd find the same things I had- the dents were impossible to miss. So
was their meaning. Somebody had taken the flashlight away from her.
And they did not do it gently.
I heard him put it down beside him. I picked up my flashlight and
started to move on. Just ahead a seam of lighter-colored rock
IDE AND SEEK
caught my eye. Most of what we were crawling through was a grayish
black. But this was white. Sandstone or something. Flecked with red.
Tiny dots of red no bigger than the head of a pin.
Glistening.
I put my finger to it and it scraped away. It was thick and moist and