Ben tightened his grip and a moment later, Sam slipped into the deep chasm of the void below.
The rocky crevasse angled eighty-five degrees downward. It was formed by two giant stone walls placed at an angle, some two feet apart, and less than a dozen feet wide to form a massive slide. Sam frantically swung his arms outward trying to find something to perch his hands and grip to arrest his fall. His fingertips connected to the smooth wall of stone, slipping freely.
Sam bent his knees and tried pushing upward to form a wedge between the two rocky structures. He was dealing in seconds and microseconds to stop his descent, before speed and momentum would make it impossible.
Those seconds passed and Sam kept sliding.
His speed raced toward a lethal velocity.
Sam bent his knees slightly and angled his toes outward, ready to absorb the violent end to his downward progression.
Seconds went by.
For every one of them, he knew his speed was becoming closer to terminal.
By the fourth second the ground on his back disappeared completely and for another millisecond he was free-falling into a great expanse of a pitch-black void.
His toes were the first to strike the icy cold water, followed immediately by his entire body and head. Sam heard the whoosh of water rushing over his body, followed by the emphatic thumping of his heart in the back of his ears.
Sam’s feet hit the rocky bottom without warning.
His bent knees took the worst of the jarring impact and a moment later he straightened them again, pushing up from the rocky riverbed.
He kicked hard and prayed he was swimming in the right direction. In the darkness it was hard to orient himself to the water’s surface. His lungs started to burn and his legs stung with exertion as lactic acid built up.
An instant later his head broke the icy surface of the alpine, subterranean river.
He took in a deep gulp of fresh air.
The icy water stung him all over. But at least he could still move everything, which meant that he couldn’t be that badly injured. It was the cold that would get to them. They would freeze to death if they didn’t find a way out soon and get dry and warm.
That thought reminded him of his unwanted companion.
“Ben?”
No response.
The place was eerily silent.
A hidden river, an ancient passage of icy water through the subterranean depths of an alpine mountain. No light and almost no movement.
Was this to be his final resting tomb?
“Ben Gellie!” Sam shouted.
The words echoed, revealing the chasm was much larger than he’d first expected.
Still no response.
He gently swam to the edge of the cavern. There was no bank. Only a vertical stone wall. Sam turned, and mentally tried to begin drawing a map of his surroundings. The only light he could muster was the backlight of his dive watch, which did little in the way of allowing him to visualize his new surroundings.
The dive watch showed that he was still at an elevation of 3,723 feet. He recollected from his younger days hiking the Appalachian Trail that most areas of the Shenandoah Valley were roughly 3,000 feet above sea level. That meant that despite falling some distance from the mountain’s original peak of 4,397 feet, they were still high up in the mountain range.
He continued swimming across the water until he reached the edge of the river. This section also led to a vertical wall of stone, impossible for him to climb. Sam marked the location in the mental diagram that he’d formed, and turned ninety degrees. It took him a couple minutes to the next wall. This time, it was less of a vertical wall and more of a narrowing tunnel, where the roof seemed to progressively shrink to the height of the river, before disappearing completely.
He swallowed as he imagined this could possibly lead to the only way out.
There was a chance that he might be able to hold his breath and dive through it, but there was no certainty that it didn’t lead to a submerged body of water that lasted hundreds of feet. In the dark, it would be impossible to make such a dive.
Sam marked the location and turned to commence his swim to the opposite end of the subterranean cavern.
“Ben!” Sam shouted. “You alive?”
Again, no response.
The only sound in the cave was the gentle lapping of water as he swam across the stilled river.
This was the longest swim he’d had to do so far.
The longer it lasted the more his gut twisted with fear and hope — that deadly combination. If it went far enough, he might be able to swim his way out of there to freedom. If not, he was just swimming farther away from all hope.
Already, his body no longer felt cold.
That wasn’t a good sign. It meant he was entering the early stages of hypothermia. If he wasn’t going in the right direction, there was a good chance he wouldn’t have enough energy to turn around and make it back again.
Up ahead he heard the sound of water splashing.
“Sam!” came Ben’s voice in the dark. “Are you still there?”
“I’m here! Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m good,” came Ben’s cheerful reply. “But you’ve got to get over here quick; you’re never going to believe what I’ve found!”
Chapter Twenty-One
Sam kicked his legs, swimming toward Ben’s voice.
He opened his eyes and spotted a faint light coming from a narrow choke point up ahead. Two broken rock pieces leaned on each other to form a natural arch no more than a foot above the waterline, through which a pale glow was radiating, at the edge of which was the distinct outline of Ben’s face.
For a split-second Sam thought he could just make out Ben’s grin.
“What did you find?” he asked. “An opening?”
“No,” Ben replied. “But I think we’ve found a guide to show us the way.”
Sam was too tired to ask any more questions. “Show me!”
Ben nodded. “Through here.”
Ben ducked under the narrow rock arch, dipping his head underwater and disappearing below. Sam took a couple deep breaths and followed after.
The slender opening was no more than a foot wide and Sam had to swim through with his hands held far ahead until they gripped the edge of the rock wall, allowing him to pull the rest of his body through.
On the other side of the choke point he found his arms able to reach freely into an open body of water. He kicked his legs and swam toward the surface.
Surfacing in the new cavern, Sam wiped his face to clear the moisture from his eyes. The new grotto was somehow larger than the previous one, only narrower and much longer. A blue haze shined down and reflected on the crystal-clear water. Sam’s gaze traced its way along the vertical granite walls toward the cathedral vault high above — settling on more than a thousand stars.
Only they weren’t stars.
They were moving with purpose and at a speed much too fast.
Their scientific name was Lampyridae, a family of insects in the beetle order Coleoptera. They were winged beetles, commonly called fireflies or lightning bugs for their conspicuous use of bioluminescence during twilight to attract mates or prey. The little beetles produced a cold light, with no infrared or ultraviolet frequencies, by using chemicals to produce light from the lower abdomen often yellow, green, or pale red, with wavelengths from 510 to 670 nanometers. Sam recalled from his early science classes that the Eastern US was home to the species Phausis reticulata, which emits a steady blue light.