The Anomaly(36)

“What can you see from there?”

“There’s gaps around the ball,” she said. “But…they’re really small. What…Nolan, what are we going to do?”

“There’s only one thing I can think of,” I said. “There may be some other way out of here, but…it could take a while to find it. I’m going to have to ask you to go back down the shaft. Get down to the river. Hopefully Dylan will be back by now. Tell him what happened. And go get help.”

I turned to Molly and Ken. “Unless one of you has a better idea?”

“No,” Ken said. “There is no other idea. But Feather—be very careful. Do not rush down that shaft, or down the canyon wall once you get outside. Look after yourself. Be safe. We’re not going anywhere.”

And it was only when Ken said these words that we started to truly understand the position we were in.



Fifteen minutes later we were all in the middle of the big central room. We’d spoken with Feather a little longer, making sure she was as calm as could be hoped for, and telling her again and again to take it easy on the two descents. Then she left. I couldn’t help thinking that in an ideal world it would have been Pierre setting off to do this, as he’d be able to do it twice as fast, and more safely—but it was already evident that we weren’t living in an ideal world.

Molly and Pierre were taking inventory of what we had with us—food, water, camera batteries—getting the key stuff out of the backpacks and putting it in piles so we knew what we were dealing with.

Meanwhile I took Gemma to one side. “What happened?”

“I’m so…” She was fighting back tears.

“Gemma, it’s okay. I’m not giving you a hard time. Nobody’s going to do that. It could have happened to any of us. I’m amazed it wasn’t me. I’m the team klutz. We just need to know what made it happen so we can avoid doing it again.”

She looked at me gratefully. “There was a…Come. I’ll show you.”

Ken saw where we were going and joined us. Gemma led me to an area of wall close to one of the passages leading into darkness. There was a rectangular patch of floor, about a foot wide by two feet long, that looked different from the rest. It was now half an inch below the rest of the ground.

“I was actually trying to tell you about this,” Gemma said, indicating a portion of the wall next to the passage. Something had been carved into it. The letters D O, and what might have been an N, or part of an M.

Ken grunted. “Classy. One of the previous guys chipped his name into the site.”

“Right. It distracted me, and that’s how I ended up…”

She stopped talking. I patted her on the back, feeling awkward. “It is what it is. What happened to your arm?”

She glanced down at the smear of blood along her right forearm, thick enough that it was dripping onto the ground. “Oh, nothing. It’s the cut from when we nearly fell down the wall earlier. I must have knocked it.”

“Okay,” Ken said. “Either a couple of us need to grid-walk this room, checking there’s nothing else like it, or else we all go sit in the middle and stay very still.”

“That’s assuming there’s anything else in here to trigger,” I said. “There may not be. That ball did the job pretty effectively already, don’t you think?”

“But what job? Stopping whoever gets in here from leaving again? Why?”

“I have no clue,” I said. “And…we don’t actually know there’s no other way out.”

“We haven’t proved it, no. But why block that passage if there is?”

“Gemma, do me a favor—go tell Pierre and Molly to turn off their phones. You too. As in complete power-down.”

“Why?”

“There’s no signal in here, so they’re pointless. Except that if all the other batteries run out, we can use them as flashlights. So let’s start saving power.”

“Oh. Yeah. Good thinking.”

Ken watched her go. “That’s smart, but you just freaked her out a little, Nolan. Nobody wants to think about sitting around in this place with no light.”

“I know. But I wanted to talk to you in private. Because I don’t think we should be sitting around. What time is it?”

“Coming up for four.”

“So Feather’s not going to get down to the raft until after five. Even assuming Dylan’s ready and waiting, it’ll be hours before they can get to park officials or the police or whoever the hell they can find. Who are probably not going to immediately leap into action on the say-so of a hippie chick and a random boat guy with poor interpersonal skills—especially as we’re not even supposed to be here in the first place.”

“We’re spending the night. I understand that.”

“Longer than that, Ken. Even if they get right on to a rescue tomorrow morning, they’re going to have to source drilling equipment or dynamite. Which will likely take hours to get together and transport to the canyon. And then it’s all going to have to come up here the way we did—which will take further hours. Not to mention there could be delays from people saying no one’s allowed to blast holes in an archeological site just to rescue some assholes who got themselves stuck in it.”