She watched as Sam moved a giant stone, which teetered at the bottom of the well and then disappeared inside a secret opening. A moment later the stone returned to its original position, but between the stone and the sand was Sam’s glow stick. She reached the secret passage and immediately moved the stone as Sam had explained to her earlier.
The opening wasn’t very big, and she wondered how Sam had slid through so quickly. She felt her heart race as she slid inside. It felt small and she instantly felt a panic attack coming on. The sort she used to have as a child after she’d become stuck inside a mine shaft she and her father were exploring. She had never forgotten the feeling. The walls felt like they had moved and were closing in on her. Squishing all sides of her body until she could no longer expand her chest enough to breath.
She couldn’t move forward and there was no point trying to go back. She had to make it through. Ordinarily, she would have forced herself to breathe slowly and calm herself.
But I can’t breathe, can I?
I’m more than forty feet beneath water and a hundred and sixty feet underground!
Rationally, she knew she had to make it through the tunnel to escape. There were no other choices. A rational person would make it through. If Sam Reilly could do it, so could she. Heck, if Tom Bower, the giant of a man, was going to get through after her, she must be able to make it. Even so, the walls simply closed in on her.
She started to fight them by wriggling her torso and pulling and scratching the walls with her hands. It wasn’t helping. All it did was make the walls close in. She was certain she’d wedged her chest between the two walls and could now feel the entire weight of all forty feet of water above her, crushing her lungs.
But the pain was too much. She wanted to open her mouth and scream!
Instead, she felt something push on her feet from behind her. She slid further forward and her right hand struck something. Another human being’s hand. It gripped hers and she squeezed it back, hard. A moment later, the hand pulled her through until the tunnel opened to a large submerged void.
The sudden relief was quickly squashed as the glowing light shined off the surface of the cavern. It was large and sloped in a generally upward direction, but there was no sign of air. Logic suggested that if she had dived forty or fifty feet downward, she must ascend that much again to find the surface again.
It was her worst nightmare. She’d survived her momentary feeling of claustrophobic sheer terror, only to discover herself trapped in an underwater subterranean water shelf. Before she could truly take in her new environment, she felt someone pull her hands and throw her forward through the shallow tunnel.
Her head finally broke the surface. She gasped. Her hands and legs felt numb. The world was dark. She’d dropped her glow stick in the struggle to reach the surface. She breathed deeply. The cold air soothed her. She’d entered a massive subterranean void. There was no natural sound, but her rapid breathing echoed throughout the cavern.
Where am I?
“Are you there, Sam?”
She heard the echo of her own voice, but no other response.
There’s no way I made it and Sam didn’t?
“Tom? You around?”
Again, there was no response.
Zara considered the possibilities. There was a high chance that she was the only one to make it through. Perhaps Sam had passed out in the process of trying to rescue her? Or possibly he’d gone back to help pull Tom through the secret passage? Either way, she’d been on the surface long enough to allow her breathing to settle into a normal pace. And that meant Sam and Tom had both been underwater for a long time.
Too long to survive?
Her nightmare never seemed to end. The thought of being stuck in the dark void, with no light and no chance of retracing her route out again told her rational mind there was only one outcome for her — she would die here.
Zara waited a couple minutes and then shouted for anyone who could hear her. She waited another thirty seconds and tried again. Somehow, her words sounded even more distant and crippling as they were the only ones to return.
She forced herself to take in a slow deep breath before exhaling even slower in an attempt to settle her mind. One thing was certain, no one could survive five or more minutes beneath the water without SCUBA equipment. Which meant only one thing. She was all alone, in a dark world — a sarcophagus of her own making.
Sam had said at the center of the lake a small island existed.
Once there, she might at least climb out of the water and get dry. Even if Sam and Tom never returned, she could rest, collect her thoughts and plan for the future.
She swam into the darkness. Slow, careful and quiet strokes. If she didn’t make much noise, it stood to reason, that she would hear if anyone came for her. After about five minutes her hand struck something, hard. It was like a stone wall. She ran her hand along it and then reached the top. The surface was flat.
Zara carefully pulled herself out of the water and onto the subterranean island. She laid down, closed her eyes and relaxed. It was the first success she’d had since entering the well. Nostradamus had told her she was going to have a difficult time escaping, but she would survive. Right now, she had no idea how she was going to make that prediction come true.
But she was still alive! She grinned and relaxed. Rest first and then work out how I’m going to live long enough to find the Nostradamus Equation.
Chapter Forty-Two
Sam took in a deep breath as he surfaced. It wasn’t quite a gasp, but the distance seemed further in the dark. The place seemed smaller. There was no way of knowing for sure without light, but he knew it was. The way a termite instinctively knew the precise amount of wood to eat so that a house doesn’t lose its structure and collapse, Sam knew the air pocket he’d come up inside was smaller than the one before it.
In the process of helping Zara reach the surface he’d dropped his glow stick and had swum back toward the secret tunnel to make sure Tom could find his way. Tom had grabbed his leg and then followed his movement toward the surface.
Next to him, he heard Tom surface and take a casual breath, as though he’d been out for a morning dive at the beach.
“You okay, Tom?” he asked.
“I’m all good. How’s Zara doing after getting stuck?”
“I have no idea. She’s not here.”
“Christ!” Tom said, “You let her drown?”
“I don’t think so. I took her to the surface. I know her head broached the surface. I even heard her take in a deep breath. She seemed all right. I didn’t wait to see though. It was dark, I’d dropped the glow stick and was worried about you.”
“Zara!” Tom yelled. “Are you here?”
The echo ricocheted quickly as though they were in a small cavern. Almost no delay between the sound going out and returning again. There was no response other than Tom’s voice and the two of them didn’t wait for one. Instead the two of them swam around the room in opposite directions.
“We’re in a large dome,” Sam said. “If you keep your left hand on the wall, and I keep my right one on the wall we’ll meet somewhere back in the middle.”
“Got it!” Tom said.
Sam quickly swam around the dark room, cursing his mistake of losing the glow stick. He should have carried the only remaining one, but he didn’t want to carelessly use it when it was the only spare light they’d have down there. His right hand dragged along the smooth wall.
He didn’t yell out again. Instead he listened. Waiting for the sound of breathing or any evidence that Zara was still alive. It was a large subterranean lake, and might take some time to reach the other side.