POINT BLANK MOVING FULL
By the time she’d crawled the full twenty-five feet, she was shaking. At any moment, the tape would slither right through the opening back into the corridor. She stuck it in her pocket, picked up the tape and fed it out another twenty-five feet, sure she’d see the archway at any moment. She didn’t need it to make her think she was crazy. All right, she’d walked a mile, who cared? And the compass was all screwed up. She looked up again, realized that her flashlight had faded away into a ghostly beam. She was heading due west, right back toward the opening. She shone her head lamp together with her flashlight all around her. When she reached the end of it, she fed out a second twenty-five feet. She crawled on the tape to make sure she kept in a straight line. Naturally, she couldn’t see the arched opening beyond the dissipated circle of light from her head lamp. She turned and fed out the measuring tape back toward the archway. How many feet had she come? A good long ways. She’d go back out of the chamber and think things over. Another effort at misdirection, like the arched doggy door covered with a slab of limestone. Get back on track, Ruth, get back on track, that’s what Savich would say.Īll right, bottom line: The chamber was bigger than the damned map said it was. Nothing could shake her, her mother had always said, and it wasn’t necessarily a compliment. She prided herself on her focus, on her ability to keep panic at bay, on her common sense. Why was she feeling this way? She was a cop, for heaven’s sake, she’d been in much tougher spots than this. She felt fear, raw and paralyzing, crawl right up her throat.
She slowly fed out the metal strip in a line directly in front of her, into the blackness.
She stuffed it back in her pocket and pulled her hefty twenty-five-foot measuring tape off her belt. But there was no sign of a wall in any direction. She wasn’t facing west, she was facing east, the direction of the opposite wall. She pulled out her compass again and pointed it. She rose to her feet, shone her head lamp and flashlight together in a circle around her. No problem, no reason to panic.īut she’d heard something-for an instant. When she reached about fourteen feet, she stopped, stretched out her hand as far as she could, and her flashlight and head lamp cut a huge swath farther ahead of her. She knew the rough distance of a foot, not much longer than her own foot, and started counting. She was freaking herself out for no reason, she, who took pride in her control. She was alone, no monsters hanging around at the edge of her light. There was only silence, as absolute as the blackness.Īll right, she’d take silence. Her mouth was suddenly as dry as the sandy floor beneath her boots. From the moment she’d finessed the pathetic lock and begun her trek into the cave, there’d been only the noise made by bats and the sound of her own voice, of her own breathing. You can purchase the complete audio version here.
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