Inhabited (29 page)

“Probably,” Florida said.

Roger looked up at her. It was unlike her to show any emotion besides determination. He was surprised by her candid response. She was collecting scraps of paper. One of them was sitting on the rock next to Roger. It was a page out of a paperback book. They were scattered everywhere in the long cave. For some reason, Florida had taken it upon herself to collect them.

She had a big handful of them when she sat down next to Roger.

She sorted through them.

“We ought to make a plan,” Roger said. “I don’t want to live much longer than our lights, you know. Before this thing goes dark, I want to find a way to kill myself.”

“You could probably jump from one of those high ledges down into the white floor we found earlier.” She looked down at her hands as she spoke. Her tone was distracted and matter-of-fact. Her entire demeanor was confusing. “The fall would probably kill you. Try to land on your head if you can. Actually, I think there’s a reflex that will make you put your hands out, whether you want to or not.”

Roger raised his eyebrows.

When he looked over at Florida, she was pointing emphatically at one of the pages she was holding. Roger followed her finger. She was pointing at the word, “He.”

“What are you…” Roger started.

Florida cut him off. “I’m just trying to be pragmatic.” She moved her finger over to the next word. He read the word there. “You’ve got a good point. Maybe suicide is the only solution.”

Roger watched her finger and read the sentence she had constructed from the pages of words: “He is listening to us.”

Roger looked in her eyes. She nodded.

He covered his mouth with his hand.

Florida flipped pages and found the words she was looking for. She pointed out another sentence. “Don’t say anything.”

Roger nodded.

As Florida flipped through, Roger stopped her. He pointed at a single word: “Who.”

She raised her shoulders and then put a hand over her eyes. Roger understood. It was the man with his eyes closed—the one he had described earlier. He
was
real. Roger wanted to ask if Florida had seen the man, but she was busy constructing a new sentence.
 

It took some time. She had to rifle through her pages to find the words she was looking for. While she did, it occurred to Roger that he should be padding with a dummy conversation, so the blind man wouldn’t grow suspicious.

“I’ve never been much of a religious man, but I still believe that suicide is wrong,” Roger said.

Florida grunted her agreement.

“Still, walking around in the dark until I get dehydrated or maybe I fall into a crevice isn’t going to be my fate. I’m not going to go out like that, you know?”

Florida was ready. Roger watched her finger move from page to page and word to word.

“I want to catch him. The man knows his way around. We can make him take…”

Roger nodded emphatically. There was no reason for her to continue.

“What’s wrong with your neck?” she asked.
 

Roger understood. The man was probably attuned to even the smallest sound of movement. He would be wondering why Roger was nodding.
 

“Just a crick in my neck, I guess.”

Roger padded more as Florida spelled out her plan, word by word.

-o-o-o-o-o-

Roger continued his one-sided conversation as he ducked through the next hole. It felt eerie to talk to himself in the cave. He tried to listen between his own words to see if Florida needed help.

“And then when I moved out of the city, I couldn’t believe how hard it was to hold down a job. I’m not trying to sound like a victim. I take responsibility for my own actions, you know?”

“Roger!”

He ducked back through the hold and sprinted back towards the sound of her voice. She had chosen well. Earlier, they had found the narrow passage with the mineral deposits on the walls. The minerals smelled terrible, and they were very powdery, so they muffled the sound. It was the perfect place for Florida to split off from Roger and hide. And the trap must have worked. He could hear her struggling with someone before he even rounded the corner.

His light went out.
 

There wasn’t a flicker, or any sign that his batteries were about to fail. It just went out.

Roger could see the dancing glow of her light around the corner, but that barely helped him navigate. He had to make his way around the rocks with one bare foot and no light.
 

Roger’s knee crashed into a ledge. He ignored it and limped around the corner.

The man appeared to be much stronger than Florida, and he outweighed her as well. She had her arms looped around his chest and was clinging to his back. As he thrashed, she flopped from side to side. Her helmet flew off and bounced off a wall. Through all this, the man’s eyes remained closed.

Roger tripped as he raced forward to help. He tumbled down and grabbed the man around the knees. Roger’s chin came down on a rock and his teeth slammed together, radiating pain up through his jaw.

The smelly man kicked and twisted. He nearly got away when he bashed Florida back into a wall. Without her helmet, Florida’s head hit the rocks and she appeared crosseyed for a second before she got her wits back. Roger held firm.

The man in the tattered clothes tumbled to the ground. Florida landed on his chest and Roger pinned down his legs.
 

“Who are you!” Florida demanded.
 

The man didn’t make a peep.

“Get the short rope from my pack,” Florida said over her shoulder.

Roger stayed sitting on the man’s legs as he dug in to the backpack. In a few minutes, they had had the man immobilized.

“Tell us who you are and why you’ve been following us,” Florida said. She pulled the man to a sitting position on the rocks. His hands were tied in front of him.

“Fuck that,” Roger said. “Tell us how to get out of here.”

In response to the order, the man smiled.

“He understands us,” Roger said.

“Of course he does,” Florida said. “He’s been following us and listening to us for an hour, maybe more.” She turned back to him. “How long have you been down here?”

Roger went and fetched Florida’s helmet. She put it on and pointed her light at the man’s weathered face. He flinched back from the light. Roger moved to his side. Careful to stay out of bite-reach, Roger used his fingers to force open one of the man’s eyes. They saw his wild pupil dance around and take in the sight of the cave.

“NO!” the man screamed. He pulled away from Roger’s touch and slammed his eye shut again.

“You tell us what we want to know or we’re going to force your eyes open,” Florida said. “We’re going to shine this light right in your eyes. And we have brighter lights, too.”

As she spoke, he grew more and more agitated. The man began to squirm, trying to free himself of the ropes, or maybe just trying to escape from his own skin.

“She’s not joking,” Roger said. He placed his fingers on the man’s forehead.

“Okay!” the man said, letting out a foul expulsion of air. “Don’t make me look.”

“So answer me,” Florida said. “Who are you, and how long have you been down here?”

“My name is Carlos Garza. I don’t have any idea how long I’ve been down here.”

“From the portraits,” Roger said.

Florida ignored him and pressed forward with her questions. “Why are you following us?”

A look of sadness and fear settled on Carlos’s face. He shook his head back and forth. He kept his eyes closed, but he turned his head towards Florida when she spoke.

“Why are you following us?” she demanded.
 

She tilted her head at Roger and he understood. He put his hand on Carlos’s forehead again and prepared to force his eye open.

“I’m waiting for you to die,” Carlos said. “I can’t help it.”

Roger pulled his hand back when he saw a tear escape from the corner of Carlos’s eye.
 

“Do you know the way out?” Florida asked.

“There is no way out,” Carlos said.

For a second, he almost looked happy.

They marched him back to the main cave. Carlos had to take small, shuffling steps with his feet tied together. Florida picked up more of the paperback pages and spelled out a simple question for Roger—“What now?”

Roger took the tether and led Carlos away. The man’s eyes stayed closed, but he still seemed to know where both Roger and Florida stood. He tilted his ear to one and then the other. When they had moved away from Florida, Carlos seemed to relax a little. He clearly had already figured out that Florida was in charge.

“Listen, man, we’ll leave you alone if you just tell us how to get back to the regular mine shafts, you know?”

Carlos tilted his head. “There’s no sense in going back there. That’s where they hunt.”

“Who hunts?”

“The shadows,” Carlos said. “Even when you learn about them, they’ll still get you if you stay out in the mines.”

“You’re here,” Roger said.

Carlos reached up and pointed to his eyes. “Sometimes even I forget. If you peek, they find you. The only reason I get away is that I’ve been here so long. They think I’m a part of them.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Roger asked.

Carlos didn’t answer.

“You’re going to show us how to get back to the mines, or we’re going to leave you tied up,” Florida called from her position.

Roger leaned in close. The man’s smell was so strong that Roger thought he could almost see the odor radiating out from Carlos. “She’s serious,” Roger said. “She’ll kill you if you don’t help us.”

“You can’t threaten me with death,” Carlos said. “I’m not afraid to die.”

“Then I’ll let her hold your eyes open until the shadows come,” Roger said. Carlos didn’t say anything, but Roger saw him shrink back. His threat had scored a hit. “You don’t have to go with us into the mines, you just have to lead us there.”

“It’s the same thing,” Carlos said.

Roger turned to Florida. “I don’t think he’s going to help us. I’ll pin him down while you hold his eyes open.”

Carlos shook his head. “I’ll show you. You’ll have to untie my feet. I can’t show you with my feet bound.”

“Good,” Roger said.

“C
ARLOS
!” T
RAVIS
YELLED
. H
IS
voice was beginning to sound ragged around the edges. Justin tapped him on the shoulder and took his place at the rock.

“Carlos!” Justin yelled towards the opening of the mine.

Travis retreated to the overturned Jeep, where Kristin was standing with her arms folded.

“We’re just not close enough,” Kristin said.

“We all agreed,” Travis said.

“I know,” she said. “It’s just so frustrating. I felt so bad when he was taken away. I managed to…”

“Carlos!” Justin yelled again.

“I managed to block it out until you guys said you’d seen him. I guess I figured there was nothing I could do. Now I feel so guilty again.”

“Don’t,” Travis said. “We were right with him and we couldn’t get him to leave. It’s not your fault.”

“I would have been able to talk sense into him. He always listens to me.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“Carlos!” Justin yelled. Justin turned away from the mine and walked to the others. “I don’t think we’re doing any good here.”

“Regardless, I think it’s too dangerous to try to cross the desert or walk down the road,” Kristin said. “So we might as well wait here until morning.”

Justin looked to Travis.
 

Travis was studying the Jeep.

“Maybe there’s another option,” Travis said. “There is the winch. Maybe I was too hasty when I said there was nothing to hook it to.”

“What are you thinking?” Justin asked.

“We pretty much have to winch in the direction of the mine, right?” Travis asked. He lined up his arms and judged the angles. “That’s the only way we’re going to have a shot at rolling the Jeep over or getting it back up to the road.”

Justin scratched his chin. Kristin took a step back and took it all in.

“We can’t get any closer to the mine,” Kristin said. “Ryan was several steps out when the thing pulled him back in. It was horrible.”

“The Jeep is too big to fit in the mine,” Travis said.

“So?” Kristin asked.

Justin started nodding. “Yeah. Let’s test this thing.”

“Exactly,” Travis said. He moved to the back of the Jeep and opened the rear hatch. With the Jeep on its side, the hatch opened sideways. Joy had a blanket and some tools back there. Travis found what he was looking for—there was a pillow he had sat on when they made him sit in the back of the Jeep. He removed that and shut the hatch again.

Justin worked his way around the front of the Jeep, holding onto the bumper as he slipped on the loose rocks. He figured out the winch and began pulling the cable from the spool. When he had enough, he tossed the hook up to the road and continued to play out more slack. When he had enough, he locked the winch and climbed the bank.

Travis was hooking the pillow to the end of the hook.

“What are you guys doing?” Kristin asked.

“We’re going fishing for monsters,” Travis said.

Kristin shook her head. “This is a terrible idea. We should wait for sunrise. It can’t be much longer. Look—the sky already looks brighter over there.”

“You’re pointing west,” Justin said. “The sun rises over there.”

Kristin turned around.

-o-o-o-o-o-

They had placed a rock on the path to the front of the mine. Before they started calling, they had all agreed that they wouldn’t go beyond that rock. Travis stood at the rock and coiled the winch cable in one hand. When he was finished, he took the hook in his other hand. It was attached to the pillow.

“Don’t get tangled in the line,” Justin said.

Travis nodded. He played out a little cable and started swinging it in a big vertical circle. When the hook was coming up and around, he let it fly and dropped the coiled cable. It sailed about five feet before the cable bunched and the hook dropped to the ground. Travis started reeling it back in.