Massed in the thousands, this group of beetles formed the image of an artificial river of blue in the cathedral vault high above, steadily flowing outward — to their freedom.
Sam said, “Follow them!”
“Sounds good,” Ben replied, starting to stroke arm over arm across the surface of the water, following their flying guides on their way out of the grotto. “I’m freezing!”
The width of the vaulted cavern alternated as they progressed through the subterranean river, sometimes getting bigger and other times getting smaller.
In the darkness of the first cavern it was impossible to tell whether or not the water was flowing, but with the radiant blue light of the fireflies, Sam noticed for the first time there was a small drift in the same direction as the glowing creatures.
He smiled at his good fortune.
They were all going the same way.
Sam continued swimming for several minutes before having to pause for a beat to regather his strength. The icy cold water was stripping him of his stamina. Stretching out on his back to increase buoyancy and conserve his energy, he realized the flow of the river started to noticeably pick up its speed.
The cavern was coming to another choke point up ahead and all the water was being squeezed through a narrow gap. He ran his eyes across the swarm of fireflies. They were branching out at the narrow section and bulging like a torrent of flood water churning and overflowing an obstacle in its path. Their wings whipped together to create a high pitched whir that resonated throughout the cavern like a diesel engine under strain. It was a deafening sound that seemed almost impossible to have originated from any number of beetles.
Sam dropped his gaze until it reached the empty void between the surface of the water and the swelling banks of the artificial, glowing blue river of bioluminescence. There was a new color mixed in together, too. It was a deep orange, the sort of color one would see reflected from a full moon through dense smoke. Wind howled through this section.
His pulse quickened.
With it, so did the speed of the river.
They were about to reach the opening to the outside world. The question was, where did the water come out?
Twenty feet ahead of him, Ben tried to turn around and swim backward. Something had frightened him. But there was nothing Ben could do about it. The man was now fully trapped in the powerful current. The walls of the crevasse were slippery and the tug of the flowing water too powerful. Despite Ben’s best effort, he continued to progress toward the pinch point at the opening.
And a moment later, he was sucked through and disappeared.
Sam felt the uneasy rise of fear in his throat.
He toyed with the idea of trying his luck at out-swimming the current, but dismissed the idea immediately. He was a strong swimmer, but it was unlikely he’d be able to beat it, and besides, where else would he go? Sam knew he had to get out of the water soon or hypothermia would kill him as surely as any disaster that could be waiting for him on the other side.
Sam relaxed and drifted, letting the current take him to greet whatever had startled Ben Gellie so much. There was a sort of peace that comes with a decision that is a certainty. There were no other options left for him, which meant that he needed to work with the decision to travel through the opening, and deal with whatever might be waiting for him.
The current dropped him down a shallow cataract before whipping him toward the opening.
Sam held his breath and opened his eyes.
An instant later, he felt his heart lurch with impending doom. He gritted his teeth and readied himself for death, because in that moment, he realized that he was wrong about the fireflies making the roaring sound. He had been wrong all along. Even a thousand flying beetles wouldn’t make that sort of sound. As soon as he spotted it, he knew where the vibrating sound originated — a giant waterfall!
Sam felt the water beneath him disappear.
He was free falling, more than a hundred feet off the ground.
Game over…
There was nothing he could do to save himself!
Chapter Twenty-Two
Time moved slowly.
They say it does when you see your own death race toward you. Like some type of primal part of the brain recognizes a threat that can’t be beaten and therefore decides to plaster the dying images, frame-by-frame, across the visual cortex.
Adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol rushed through his body at infinitesimal speeds and Sam Reilly’s internal video recorder started to feed him each image of his impending death, in that frame-by-frame manner.
He was no longer frightened. No reason to be. There was nothing more he could do about it. He’d played every last card he’d been dealt and lost.
But there was something someone else could do about it.
The recorder inside his brain stopped running.
A firm hand gripped his wrist hard. His descent stopped with a jarring force in his right shoulder that threatened to rip his arm from its socket. The motion swung him toward the side of the mountain, beneath the waterfall.
His wet shoes were the first to hit the rock wall with a thud.
Sam’s lips curled with incredulity as his eyes leveled at Ben Gellie, who was hanging precariously by one arm from the branch of an oak tree that appeared to be holding onto the edge of the mountain with even less likelihood.
Ben pulled his arm backward and Sam reached the rock face of the mountain.
“Thank you,” Sam said, “for saving my life.”
“You’re welcome. Without you I would have never jumped from the helicopter and I’d still be sitting inside its charred remains.”
Sam shrugged. “Forget about it. The question now is, where do we go from here?”
Ben pointed to a dilapidated iron chain, bolted into the side of the mountain a few feet above them, leading to the entrance of the subterranean river. “Over there! It looks like someone’s previously tried to explore that waterway.”
Sam ran his gaze over the rocky climb to the chain. It was difficult, but not impossible. His wet shoes would make things more dangerous, but it could be done. Everything seemed possible now that he’d survived what should have been his certain death.
“Okay,” he nodded. His vision turned to the valley below. “The question is, where is here?”
“The Shenandoah Valley,” Ben replied without hesitation.
Sam studied the valley in the gray light of predawn.
Surrounded by ancient mountains, the Shenandoah River cut a gentle and incredibly flat valley into the landscape. From memory, he recalled that part of the valley was a National Park, and the pastoral scenes are framed by a lush deciduous forest growing on the hills.
“All right, that’s something,” Sam said. “At least we know where we are. Let’s try and reach that chain. If we don’t get warm soon, hypothermia will properly set in and we’ll die.”
“Agreed.”
Ben scrambled up the short crack in the rock to reach the permanent chain above. Despite the cold, he moved with the agility of a seasoned rock climber.
Sam gritted his teeth, focused on each individual hold, trying to forget he was still a couple hundred feet off the ground, and scrambled to the chain. His left hand reached it first, followed an instant later by his right — both hands locking with the strength of fear.
Ben didn’t wait to discuss their next plan. Instead, he followed the chain as it led across the rockface, before finally ending at a narrow ledge approximately two feet wide. It wasn’t much, but Sam noticed it was enough for someone like Ben, who appeared to have no fear of heights, to walk freely.
Sam on the other hand, who had a pathological fear of heights, knew it would cause trouble. Such an experience would ordinarily render him to a crawl, but he was driven to walk across the ledge — driven by the thrill of a second chance at life and a need to get warm.