The Anomaly(28)

Chapter

16



Ken was trying to sound nonchalant but not carrying it off. “How far up did you go?”

“About twenty feet,” I said. “The steps kept going as far as I could see.”

“So what’s your thinking?”

“Maybe Kincaid wasn’t dicking around with the height thing after all, or could be this opening isn’t the one he was talking about. It’s a lower one, a second way to access a structure way up above. Maybe even the cavern he described.”

“So we’ve got to go look, right?”

“You mentioned something about needing a burger.”

“Don’t be a twat, Nolan. I’ll have two tomorrow.”

“It’s just a few steps at this stage, though, right?” This was Gemma.

Feather stared at her. “Is that not enough, sweetie?”

“Food will become an issue,” Molly said. “If we end up staying in the canyon for another night.”

“Half rations,” Ken said breezily. “Only eat half our lunch, save the rest for tonight.”

“And tomorrow morning?”

“We sup on clean air and sunshine and call ourselves renewed in the eyes of a beneficent God.”

“I get it,” I said. “You’ve got a secret stash of food, haven’t you. Hand it over.”

“More like a thick winter coat to draw upon,” he said. “Plus I’ll have extra fries tomorrow. And onion rings. It all evens out.”

“You play the long game, my friend. I admire that.”

“It’s got me to where I am today.”

“And yet you still do it?”

“Or,” Dylan interrupted, from below in the boat: Molly had him on the short-range walkie-talkie, though the sound kept breaking up. “You check this thing out. I’ll take the dinghy downriver. There’s a spot a few miles down where there’s usually a little phone signal. I’ll call from there, get a mate to bring another cooler of food. Or worst case I fetch it myself, which just means you’ll have to hang around the cave until late afternoon.”

“Sounds good,” Ken said. “But do not tell anybody. Not a word. Got that? This is ours.”

We recorded a brief to-camera with me explaining what we’d found, and then gathered together.

“Okay,” Ken said. “Nolan, you’re going up first, so Pierre can shoot you heading into the unknown. Also because you’re not fit enough to go at a stupid pace. The rest of you can go in whatever order you like, but I’m at the end again. So I can take a break every now and then without someone sticking their head up my arse.”

“But wait,” Molly said. “Can you even get up to where the steps start, without someone…well, without assistance?”

Ken opened his mouth, looked at the obstacle, and shut it again. “I’ll go last,” Molly offered. “I promise I won’t stick my head in your ass even once.”

And so, individually, we scrambled up to the higher level and then, one by one, we started up the shaft.

I had a headlamp and once in a while looked up to check what was ahead. Gemma—right behind me—had a lanyard light that was left on the whole time, as everyone agreed that while we wanted to conserve batteries, it might get a little weird and claustrophobic climbing in the dark.

Once you were in the shaft, full-body, it was impossible to deny it was man-made. It was about three and a half feet square. Even if it only went up fifty feet, that was many hundreds of cubic feet of rock chiseled out and carried through the fissure and, presumably, thrown into the river below.

To me that was an inconceivable amount of effort unless something important was involved, though people in ancient times measured time and effort differently. Once they’d caught or picked dinner and made sure the youngsters weren’t being eaten by marauding pandas, there wasn’t a lot to do except sit around the fire passing deep ancestral wisdom back and forth. And, as I had tellingly observed in The Anomaly Files’ episode about Stonehenge (conducted via stock footage and diagrams and a terrible 3-D model some cocaine-addled friend of Ken’s had concocted), ideas of mobility were different, too. These days if you grow up in town A and are halfway motivated, the first task of postadolescence is getting the hell out to city B, or country C, even if you eventually wind up back near town A a couple of decades later because you’ve realized there is no Magical Other Place and you’re going to remain the same asshole wherever you go—so you might as well be somewhere it’s not a pain for the kids to see their grandparents once in a while.

But back in BC? Families stayed in the same place for thousands of years, and so it doesn’t seem such a big deal to spend thirty of those years shuffling huge rocks around—because you do it on the unspoken assumption that every conceivable descendant will benefit from your efforts.

Likewise, maybe, this shaft.

After what felt like a pretty long time I paused and turned my head down toward Pierre in the middle of the pack.

“How far have we come?” I was panting pretty hard.

“There’s about two feet between each foot-or handhold,” he said, not remotely out of breath. “And I’ve done a hundred and fifteen. So call it two hundred and thirty feet.”

“Okay,” I said. “Everybody down there okay?” There were murmurings and grunts of assent. “You okay, Ken?”