Into the Badlands. Caron Todd

I’m all alone down here.” Black widow spiders and rattlesnakes liked the damp coolness of sinkholes.

      It was a narrow hole, irregularly carved by rainwater that had soaked in from the top and chiseled through the rock until it forced its way out somewhere along the hill’s sides. The inner walls were layered in the same distinctive way as the outside: there were beige and ocher seams of sandstone, gray mudstone, black coal and whitish-gray volcanic ash. She could even see the reddish K-T Boundary, the layer of sediment that was like a lid closed on the dinosaur world. No dinosaur fossils were found above it.

      “This is creepy. That’s my scientific conclusion. I’ve observed, I’ve gathered data, and I’ve concluded that sinkholes are creepy.”

      She decided to check the floor to make sure there were no soft spots that might cave in to a deeper hole. Sometimes seeping rain carved out a series of openings until the water reached an underground stream. She had almost finished her inspection when her injured foot twisted on a damp rock, sending waves of pain up her leg. She gasped and dropped the flashlight. It went out.

      “Oh, no.” Susannah eased down onto her knees and felt the ground for the flashlight. She found it and flicked the switch. Nothing. She twisted its head to be sure it was tight. She shook it. It shone faintly for a moment, then went out. And stayed out.

      She sat still, her breathing audible, her senses instantly alert. The sudden darkness seemed endless and full of threat. Sitting in the middle of the sinkhole floor, she felt like a target. Slowly she crept along the uneven ground until the rock wall was at her back.

      It was so dark. There was nothing like the darkness of a hole in the ground. It was different from the darkness of night. Blackness thick enough to pick up by the handful. She turned her face to the opening far above her. She would keep her eyes on the small circle of light.

      “It’s just the same place it was a second ago,” she whispered. “No more holes, no snakes, no tyrannosaurs. Darkness is a good thing. Nature’s protection. Of course there are predators, like owls, that hunt very successfully in the dark. Not that there are any owls here. And not that I’m a rodent.”

      Alex Blake would understand…she never would have thought that could happen. In one of his articles—the one about finding a Paleolithic cave by accident, while hunting for fossils—he’d mentioned the dank darkness only found underground. The words flowed back to her…blackness before and behind us, pressing against our eyes, creeping into our lungs, cocooning us, or entombing us…the monsters that politely stay under the beds and in the closets of modern children knew no rules here.

      He’d had company, though, and he and his friends hadn’t been trapped. Curious and hopeful, with a sense of adventure rather than fear, they had climbed through a winding passage until they were delivered into a large, high-ceilinged cave. Red and yellow ocher and black charcoal figures had flickered in the beams of their flashlights, appearing to move as the light played over them.

      Even though she disliked Blake’s pop paleontology approach, the story had excited her. She had seen the glowing pictures in her mind’s eye. She had wanted to be the one who first held up the flickering light to see a painted aurochs galloping toward her. Was is possible she was a little jealous of the man? It was an unpleasant idea. She wasn’t used to feeling petty.

      It seemed like a very long time since Matt and Melissa had left for the quarry. “With his sore knee, Matt might be slow,” Susannah said. “They’d have to explain, and James would have to take down a tent to get the poles, then find his way here. It could take an hour and a half, maybe more. They won’t be much longer, though, and when they get here, I’ll scurry up the rope like a chimpanzee and that will be that. Teatime.”

      She tried not to think about the other possibility—that James might not find her before nightfall. If that happened, he’d have to put off the search until morning.

      CHAPTER THREE

      THE LIGHT AT THE MOUTH of the sinkhole was fading. Susannah shivered. A chill had crept into her bones. She wished she were at home, in her bed, with soft blankets around her. Books and sweet-smelling flowers on the bedside table. Music—something slow and tragic? Billie Holiday? Something calm and balanced? Bach, Pachelbel? Chocolate bars…

      She went still. There were scraping, dragging sounds overhead. Bobcat? She sprang to her feet, setting off a new wave of pain. “James?”

      A head blotted out the light, and a familiar, teasing voice drifted down to her. “Whatcha doin’, angel?”

      “Oh, bit of this, bit of that.” Her voice shook. “What about you?”

      “Nothing much. I’ve been out walking.”

      “The flashlight died, James. I’ve been here in the dark.”

      His tone changed. “We’ve brought the tent poles. We’ll get the rope secured right away. It has knots every couple of feet…can you climb a rope, Sue?”

      “Sure.” It had sounded like a good idea a while ago, when she was still awash with adrenaline from jumping in after Matt. Now it seemed ridiculous.

      “It’s all yours.”

      Susannah felt for the rope and reached above her head for a knot. Stifling a groan, she pulled herself up until her feet clasped a knot, too. She waited for protesting nerves to stop yelling, then, trying to keep most of her weight on her good arm and leg, she felt for the next knot and pulled with her arms and pushed with her feet again.

      Getting out of the hole was worse than staying in it. The rope dug into her hands, scraping her skin. Sharp pains stabbed through her ankle and shoulder with each push and pull of the climb.

      Her face drew closer to the light. She could feel fresh air tantalizingly close. One more knot, then the poles. All I have to do is grab them and swing. Up and out. She knew she couldn’t do it. If she let go of the rope to reach for the metal tent poles, she would fall.

      “James?” Her voice wavered. “I can’t—”

      A pair of strong arms reached toward her and grasped her securely. Her right arm hooked around his shoulder, but the left, weakened by the climb, dangled. She felt his muscles flexing under the soft cloth of his shirt as he pulled her over the edge. They both fell to the ground, and she half lay on a pair of denim-clad legs. She kept still for a moment, feeling the burning of her muscles and the firmness of the ground beneath her. As she rested, she realized this couldn’t be James, unless a massive dose of steroids had transformed his build in the past few hours.

      She looked up, knowing whose face she’d see, but needing proof. The eyes were the clincher, intensely blue—too blue to be real, she’d always thought. His arm was firmly around her. When she drew away, he let go.

      Cobalt-blue? She didn’t really know what shade cobalt was, but that was the color that occurred to her. Those eyes had emptied her mind thirteen years ago. She’d seen them while she carefully chiseled and brushed. She’d seen them while she waited to fall asleep in her tent at night. Then the field assignment had ended and she had forgotten all about them. Not true. She’d seen them in the pages of her textbooks that first term back at the university. Eventually, she had forgotten all about them.

      He hadn’t changed…hardly at all. Sandy hair, traces of red highlighted by the evening sun…she had always wanted to touch it, slide her fingers through it. An outdoor face, tanned, with laugh lines in the corners of the eyes…the lines were new. She had forgotten what it was like to be near him. Magazine photographs, showing him three inches tall and frozen in two dimensions, only hinted at his energy and strength.

      She realized she was staring. Aware of his hard, warm body half under hers, she moved sharply, grimacing when pain shot through her shoulder.

      “Hang on. I’ve got you.” His voice was kind. That was new. He’d sounded different in Australia—edgy, intense. He untangled his legs from hers and his arms came around her again as he helped her sit up. “You’re chilled through.” He pulled a blanket from his backpack and wrapped