It was dark inside the cave, she saw as she hoisted herself through the opening, but not so dark that she couldn’t see, at least for the first few yards. After that the cave was black as pitch.
It smelled faintly of earth and various other not unpleasant things she couldn’t identify. There at the entrance it was still cold, but it was many degrees warmer than it was outside and she was out of the wind and snow and relatively safe and that was all she cared about for the moment. As Gina looked out, though, she discovered that there was a problem, or at least there would be from Cal’s point of view: she could see nothing but a nearly impenetrable wall of blowing snow and heavy fog turned deep purplish-gray by the coming night. She couldn’t even see the lights of the buildings at the camp, which she knew had to be on and shining through the windows.
Unless there was no one left in camp to keep the generator running, of course. Unless the bad guys had gone, and all that was left behind were corpses.
She shivered and did her best to push away the horrifying images that accompanied the thought.
Having crawled well out of the reach of the wind and snow, she sat, knees bent, resting against the wall with her head tilted back against the worn-smooth stone, and watched as Cal levered himself inside, then stood up to tower in the entrance.
“I can’t see anything,” Cal complained. He was looking out toward the camp, so she knew he was worried about their ability to watch for the plane that was presumably going to arrive at some point. Or maybe it already had arrived. She felt sure that they would have heard any plane flying low enough to land, but maybe she was wrong about that. Maybe they’d missed it, she thought hopefully. He added, “Not that there’s a chance in hell a plane landed in this.”
Another hope dashed. Since she didn’t feel like arguing about his plan right then, she made a noncommittal sound.
He turned away from his unproductive contemplation of the deepening darkness to walk over to where she sat. She didn’t glance up as he stood there looking down at her.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yes.”
He shrugged out of the backpacks. There was the slightest of twin thumps as he dropped them on the ground beside her, then hunkered down to unzip one. Her mouth was dry, and she thought about searching through one for water, but she was too tired and dispirited to move. They’d each eaten a second protein bar on the long march to Terrible Mountain, but the effects of that had worn off and she was hungry.
“You haven’t been up inside here before?” He was looking at her. She could feel rather than see his gaze on her.
“No.”
“All right.” Twisting the cap off a bottle of water, he handed it to her and stood up. Just because he’d assumed she wanted water didn’t mean he could read her mind, she told herself. It simply meant that he could add two and two, as in, long walk coupled with arduous climb equals thirst. “I’m going to go check it out.”
“I’ll be right here.”
He was holding a flashlight, she saw when he switched it on. Only the smallest sliver of light escaped, and she realized that he was taking care to mask it with his fingers, not that, given the weather, there was any real chance that so insignificant a light could be seen beyond the cave. The gun was in his other hand. Seeing it, she shivered.
“I won’t be long,” he said.
Gina didn’t reply. Instead she took careful sips of her water and watched the receding narrow stripe of light as he headed down what seemed to be a long passage before hanging a left and disappearing from view. As she sat there listening to the wind and snow and puffins, she suddenly regretted not going with him. Alone in the dark, it was much harder to keep the ghosts at bay.
She thought of sunny California, her cheerful, comfortable condo, her mother, who lived with her second husband just a few miles from her. Her calm, sensible, unadventurous mother had been her father’s second wife (he’d been on his fourth at the time of his death) and, while Gina had had an older half sister from her father’s first marriage—Becca, another natural-born adventurer who’d died in the plane crash—Gina was her mother’s only child. She knew that if she didn’t make it back, her mother would grieve forever.
The thought of her mother grieving made her chest tighten.
Just don’t think.
Keeping her mind blank was a useful way to avoid being overwhelmed with emotion, she had learned.
An image of Arvid in his Day-Glo coat floating facedown in the river slid past her defenses.
Her stomach twisted. Had she left him behind to die?
Save yourself.
Her father’s last words to her echoed through her head.
Once more, that’s exactly what she had done: saved herself.
Gina’s throat closed up. She scrunched her eyes shut, but it didn’t help.
Hot tears slid down her cheeks.
Stop it, she ordered herself fiercely.