Edge of Flight (8 page)

Finally, the
click
of the truck door wakes me up.

“Vanisha,” Loretta whispers.

I sit up. “What happened?”

“They're stone-cold drunk and sleepin' like babies,” she whispers. “Let's go find your friend.”

My legs prickle with pins and needles as I uncurl from beneath the blanket and step out. Jeb's truck looks like something hauled out of a junkyard. The windows are smashed, the doors are bashed in, the tires are slashed and the hood is dented in a dozen places.

“Hope your friend's in better shape than his truck,” Loretta whispers.

“I hope so too.”

The campfire has died down to a pile of charred embers and a few glowing logs. The two bikers are snoring on either side of it, lying on our sleeping mats. They must have stolen them from the back of the truck. The deputy, who obviously wasn't planning to stay the night, is passed out on the ground with his back propped against a tree stump.

“Did you get your evidence?” I whisper to Loretta.

“Caught the deputy-sheriff on video, smokin' a joint with them bikers. Wait till I hand that over to the state troopers.”

I grab a flashlight from Loretta's jeep and run to the top of Edge of Flight to retrieve the rope and my climbing harness. We drive the jeep a little farther away, so that if the men wake up, they'll think Loretta's gone. And we can evacuate Jeb without having to pass through the campsite again.

“Do you know how to rappel?” I ask as we pick our way through the woods toward the Chimney.

“Honey, I spent my whole life tryin' to attract men, not repel 'em,” she says.

“No, I mean like rappel down a rope.”

“Honey, I don't even know what that means.”

We arrive at the Chimney, a dark gash in the earth. I shine the flashlight down it. The rock walls seem to close in like a trap. Anything could be lurking inside. Snakes, spiders, rats.

Loretta takes one look and steps away, shaking her head. “I don't think so, hon.”

“It's not that bad,” I say. “Besides, that's where Jeb is.”

“Down there?”

“Yeah. That's where the cave is.”

I unclip a couple of slings from my harness and wrap them around the trunks of two trees close to the Chimney entrance. I gather the slings together and clip two 'biners onto them. Two trees, two slings, two 'biners. If one fails, the other will hold. Then I clip the rope into the 'biners and throw both ends of the rope down the Chimney. Now we've got a top rope to rappel down. In this darkness, it's safer thanfree-climbing. Besides, we'll need the rope to evacuate Jeb. I turn to Loretta. “Ready?”

She shakes her head.

“You can use my harness,” I say. “I'll show you how.”

Loretta looks down the black hole of the Chimney like she's trying to work up her nerve. She backs away and shakes her head again. “Sorry, hon. I'll wait for y'all in the truck.”

She hugs me and disappears from sight amid the trees. In the woods, especially at night, people vanish before you even realize they're gone. It's creepy. Something could be right behind you, and you wouldn't even know it was there.

I put that thought out of my head. There's no point worrying about imaginary danger, when Jeb's danger is real enough. I fasten my harness around my waist, loop the double-rope into my belay device and lower myself over the edge of the Chimney. The flashlight hangs from my harness, its beam jerking and dancing as I descend through the familiar sandstone crack. In the deeper reaches of the Chimney, the moonlight becomes fainter and fainter. I'm forced to rely on the flashlight, touch and memory. The rope holds me safe over boulders and into narrow, rocky gaps. Finally I land on the soft, sandy ground.

A voice, moaning and muttering, comes from inside the cliff. Hope makes my heart beat faster.
Jeb
.
He's still alive
.

I unclip the rope, drop to my knees and shine the flashlight around the Chimney, to locate the stone tunnel. At the end of the tunnel, Rusty is waiting for me in the cave. He picks me up and holds me tight against him. My head presses into his chest. His clothes smell of sweat and dirt, but his strong arms feel good. I lean against him, soaking in his warmth and strength.

“You made it,” he says. “Did you get help?”

“She's waiting outside in a truck.”

“She? Who's she?” Rusty relaxes his arms, and I step back.

“It's a long story, Rusty.” I tell him the gist of it as quickly as I can.

“So we've got to get Jeb out of here on our own?”

“Yeah,” I say. “How is he?”

“He's bad.”

I kneel beside Jeb and take his hand. It feels cold and clammy, yet his forehead, when I touch it, burns. His body shudders. He groans and mumbles something about football.

I stand up and turn back to Rusty. “We can get him out of here. Right?”

“Right,” says Rusty. “We're going to have to.”

chapter seventeen

“We need a stretcher,” says Rusty. “Where's the rope?”

“I left it hanging in the Chimney.”

“Good. Go get it.”

Back in the Chimney, the ends of the rope dangle, just touching the sandy ground. From the woods, the night song of crickets filters down, but no human sounds, no voices—no hint the bikers have woken up. The rope drops down with a smooth pull, and I crawl back into the cave with it.

“Great,” says Rusty. “Help me lay it out.”

We lay the rope out on the ground in a zigzag so it makes the shape of a rectangular mat big enough for Jeb to lie on. When we've finished, several yards of rope are left over. Rusty takes the slack end and threads it back through the zigzag, tying knots with it as he goes. Finally, he ends up with a row of loops along each side of the mat.

“Now we need a couple of long branches,” he says. “We thread the branches through the loops, here, and they become the poles on either side of the stretcher.”

“And Jeb lies in the middle?” I ask.

“Right. Like a hammock.”

“Smart.”

“Wilderness Rescue 101,” says Rusty. “Come on. Let's go find some branches.”

He checks Jeb's pulse before we leave. He shakes his head and gives Jeb a drink of water. Then he shoulders his backpack and puts on his headlamp. We leave the flashlight with Jeb, its beam casting a circle of light on the cave's ceiling. At least he won't be alone in the dark. Where there's light, there's hope.

“We'll be right back, buddy,” Rusty says. “Hang in there. We're getting you out of here.”

At the base of the cliff, the full moon shines on the pale sandstone rock face. Our footsteps break the stillness, snapping twigs and crackling through fallen leaves. We soon come to an old, fallen tree. But the rotten wood crumbles in our hands. We find another one, but the branches are dry and brittle. Good campfire wood, but it would snap under Jeb's weight. Time is wasting. Our window of opportunity to get Jeb out alive is shrinking.

“Here.” Rusty sets down his backpack at the base of a skinny tree. “We'll cut down these saplings. This one and that one just over there.”

He reaches into his backpack and pulls out a folding saw. It looks like a jackknife, only bigger, with jagged teeth on the blade.

“Have you got everything in that backpack?” I ask him.

“Pretty near.”

We saw down the two little trees and cut off their branches to make two eight-foot-long poles. Back in the cave, it doesn't take long to thread the poles through the loops on either side of Rusty's homemade stretcher. He tightens the knots on the loops so the poles are tied firmly in place. He takes two smaller branches and ties them crosswise at the head and foot of the stretcher to create a stable frame. We roll Jeb on his side and place the stretcher underneath him, then roll him back onto it. He groans. Rusty takes some thick webbing out of his backpack and ties Jeb to the stretcher.

“Ready?” Rusty says.

“Ready,” I say.

Together, we push and drag Jeb through the tunnel, until we reach the bottom of the Chimney.

Rusty shines his headlamp on the first tumbled-down boulder. I scramble on top of it.

“I'll lift the front of the stretcher up to you, and you grab it,” he says. “You pull up, and I'll push from the back.”

Rusty manages to tilt the stretcher so it's leaning against the boulder. I reach down and grab the poles, but I can't budge them. My knuckles scrape painfully against the rock. Rusty pushes from below.

“Just lift it up a bit, Vanisha. So it's not right against the rock.”

“I can't.”

“Yes, you can. If you lift it so it's not rubbing, I can push it up.”

I look down at Jeb's face, pale and sweating. I will myself to find the strength. But I can't lift the stretcher one inch.

“I can't do it, Rusty.”

“Yes, you can, Vanisha. You have to.”

“If we had some rope…”

If we had an extra rope, I realize, we could tie it to the stretcher, run it through a carabiner at the top of the Chimney and create a pulley system. In fact, the slings and carabiners I set up when I rappelled down the Chimney are still hanging there. With a pulley, it would be easy to hoist Jeb's weight. If we had a rope…

“There's an extra rope in the truck,” Rusty says after I tell him my idea.

Fear makes me hesitate, but only for a moment.

“Okay, I'll go get it.”

With Rusty's headlamp, it's easy to climb the Chimney. Adrenaline and guilt drive me forward. I feel guilty for not being strong enough to lift Jeb. For failing to bring a better rescue team. If I'd asked the hunters in the woods for help, we'd probably have Jeb safely to the hospital by now. Instead, he's stuck at the bottom of a crevice, and our emergency evacuation team is a waitress in a pickup truck.

What was I thinking?

At the top of the Chimney, I pause but don't see or hear anything suspicious. A few quiet steps along the trail take me to our campsite. The bikers and the deputy are still slumbering around the remains of the campfire. I keep to the edge of the clearing, ready to duck into the woods if one of them wakes. But the men don't stir.

I creep around to the back of the truck, turn the handle and open the hatch. As it swings up, pieces of glass from the shattered windowpane fall in a shower into the back of the truck. I crawl over them carefully and reach back to close the hatch in case someone wakes.

The inside of the truck is a mess of clothes, sleeping bags, backpacks—all the stuff the deputy pulled out during his search and we tossed back without bothering to sort it. Glass shards cover everything. I crouch, not wanting to kneel on a splinter, take off my headlamp and shine it around, keeping the beam low so it won't be visible outside.

A red sock lies in a corner. I pick it up carefully, using my thumb and index finger as tweezers, and shake it to get rid of the glass sticking to the outside. It's a thick wool hiking sock. It's a little crusty on the inside, but that's the least of my worries. I pull it over my hand so I can search for the rope without getting cut.

I sift through sweatshirts, football magazines, nylon stuff sacks. It's got to be here somewhere. Finally, through themuffle of the wool sock, I feel the bumpy ridges of a coiled rope. I yank it out from under the heap. The rope is beautifully coiled and tied. Probably Rusty's work. Jeb would have left it in a tangle. I sling it over my shoulder and crab-walk to the hatch door. But just as I'm about to open it, a bulky shape rises beside the campfire.

One of the men is getting up.

I shut off my headlamp and duck down.
Lie flat
, I tell myself. But the glass shards are everywhere. I huddle in a ball, arms crossed over my face.

The man stumbles toward the truck. He's singing a Johnny Cash song. “I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die…”

Oh god.

I squeeze myself tighter into a ball, shut my eyes.
Please don't open the truck.
What would I do if he did? Nothing. Stay still. No. I would jump down and make a run for it.

Something rustles outside. It sounds like water trickling from a hose.

He's pissing against the truck.

I'd laugh, if I wasn't so terrified.

Eventually, the biker stumbles back to bed. I count to five hundred to make sure he's asleep, grab the rope and run back to Rusty.

chapter eighteen

We set up the pulley system as planned, tying the rope to Jeb's stretcher, then threading it up the Chimney, through the carabiners at the top and back down to the ledge eight feet below the Chimney's opening. As an extra safety measure, we anchor a GRIGRI to the ledge and thread the rope through it. The GRIGRI's a kind of belay device that will lock the rope in place, even if I accidentally let go. I take my position on the ledge and give Rusty a nod. We've agreed not to speak for fear of waking the bikers. He disappears down the chimney, and I'm left with no company but the full moon shining through the lattice of tree branches.

Waiting for Rusty's signal to begin pulling, I can't help remembering my thoughts when Jeb first discovered the cave.
Sleeping there would feel like being buried alive in a tomb.
It could have become a tomb for Jeb if the bullet had hit an artery. If he had bled to death. If I had fallen into the river. If I had failed to return with help. It could still become a tomb, I think. But I push the thought away. Somehow, we'll get out of this. Somehow, we'll claw, scrape and scratch our way out of the darkness, into the light. Out of the underworld, into the land of the living.

The rope jerks three times—Rusty's signal to start the evacuation. I pull on the rope and feel the weight of Jeb's stretcher inching upward. I want to shout in excitement and relief. I want to call down to Rusty, “It's working!”

But we can't risk waking the bikers.

I pull on the rope, and the stretcher rises, inch by inch, foot by foot. Every gain is locked in place by the GRIGRI. Then there's a pause, and the rope goes slack. Rusty must have reached a ledge and stopped for a break. I shake out my hands and let the GRIGRI hold the rope. Overhead, the treetops make dark, intricate shapes against the sky.