She sat between her son and the man she loved, with her back to the fire, looking toward the front of the cave, watching the shadows and the reflections of the flames as they danced a frantic gavotte upon the walls. With one part of her mind she listened for unusual sounds, and with another part she monitored the respiration of the man and the boy, afraid that one of them might suddenly cease breathing.
The loaded revolver was at her side. To her dismay, she had learned that Charlie had no more spare cartridges in his jacket pockets. The box of ammo was in his backpack, which they had abandoned at the rocky overhang where she had patched his shoulder. She was furious with herself for having forgotten it.
The rifle and shotgun were gone. The handgun was their only protection, and she had only the six shells that were in it.
The totem bear glowed on the wall.
At 8:10, as Christine finished adding fuel to the fire, Charlie began to groan in his sleep and toss his head on the pillow she had made from his folded jacket. He had broken out in a greasy sweat.
A hand against his forehead was enough to tell her that he had a fever.
She watched him for a while, hoping he would quiet down, but he only got worse. His groans became soft cries, then less soft. He began to babble. Sometimes it was wordless nonsense. Sometimes he spat out words and disjointed, meaningless sentences.
At last he became so agitated that she got two more Tylenol tablets from the bottle, poured a cupful of water, and attempted to wake him.
Although sleep seemed to be providing no comfort for him, he wouldn't come around at first, and when he finally did open his eyes they were bleary and unfocused. He was delirious and didn't seem to know who she was.
She made him take the pills, and he greedily swallowed the water, washing them down. He was asleep again even as she took the cup from his lips.
He continued to groan and mutter for a while, and although he was sweating heavily, he also began to shiver. His teeth chattered.
She wished they had some blankets. She piled more wood on the fire. The cave was relatively warm, but she figured it couldn't be too warm right now.
Around 10:00, Charlie grew quiet again. He stopped tossing his head, stopped sweating, slept peacefully.
At least, she told herself it was sleep that had him. But she was afraid it might be a coma.
Something squeaked.
Christine grabbed the revolver and bolted to her feet as if the squeak had been a scream.
Joey and Charlie slept undisturbed.
She listened closely, and the squeak came again, more than one short sound this time, a whole series of squeaks, a shrill though distant chittering.
It wasn't a sound of stone or earth or water, not a dead sound.
Something else, something alive.
She picked up the flashlight. Heart pumping furiously, holding the revolver out in front of her, she edged toward the sound. It seemed to be coming from the cavern that adjoined this one.
Soft as they were, the shrill cries nevertheless lifted the hairs on the back of her neck because they were so eerie, alien.
At the entrance of the next chamber, she stopped, probing ahead with the beam of the flashlight. She saw the waxy-looking stalactites and stalagmites, the damp rock walls, but nothing out of the ordinary. The noises now seemed to be coming from farther away, from a third cavern or even a fourth.
As she cocked her head and listened more intently, Christine suddenly understood what she was hearing. Bats. A lot of them, judging by their cries.
Evidently, they always nested in another chamber, elsewhere in the mountain, always entered and exited by another route, for there was no sign of them here, no bat corpses or droppings.
Okay. She didn't mind sharing the caves with them, just as long as they kept to their own neighborhood.
She returned to Charlie and Joey and sat down between them, put the gun aside, switched off the flashlight.
Then she wondered what would happen if Spivey's people showed up, blocked off the entrance to this cave, and left them no option but to head deeper into the mountain in search of another way out, a back door to safety. What if she and Charlie and Joey were forced to flee from cave to cave and eventually had to pass through that chamber in which the bats nested? It would probably be knee-deep in bat shit, and there would be hundreds-maybe thousands-of them hanging overhead, and a few of them or even all of them might have rabies, because bats were excellent carriers of rabiesStop it! she told herself angrily.
She had enough to worry about already. Spivey's lunatics. Joey.
Charlie's wound. The weather. The long journey back to civilization.
She couldn't add bats to the list. That was crazy. There was only a chance in a million that they would ever have to go nearer the bats.
She tried to relax.
She put more wood on the fire.
The squeaking faded.
The caves became silent again except for Joey's labored breathing and the crackle of the fire.
She was getting drowsy.
She tried every trick she could think of to keep herself awake, but sleep continued to close in on her.
She was afraid to let herself go under. Joey might take a turn for the worse while she was dozing. Or Charlie might need her, and she wouldn't know.
Besides, someone ought to stand guard.
Spivey's people might come in the night.
No. The storm. Witches weren't allowed to fly on their brooms in storms like this.
She smiled, remembering the way Charlie had joked with Joey.
The flickering firelight was mesmerizing.
Someone ought to stand guard, anyway.
Just a quick nap.
Witches…..
Someone….. ought to.
It was one of those nightmares in which she knew she was asleep, knew that what was happening was not real, but that didn't make it any less frightening. She dreamed that all the caves in the valley wall were connected in an elaborate maze, and that Grace Spivey and her religious terrorists had entered this particular cave from other chambers farther along the hillside. She dreamed they were preparing a human sacrifice, and the sacrifice was Joey. She was trying to kill them, but each time she shot one of them, the corpse divided into two new fanatics, so by murdering them she was only adding to their numbers.
She became increasingly frantic and terrified, increasingly outnumbered, until all the caves within the valley wall were swarming with Spivey's people, like a horde of rats or cockroaches.
And then, aware that she was dreaming, she began to suspect that Grace Spivey's followers were not only in the caves of the dream but in the real caves in the real world beyond sleep, and they were conducting a human sacrifice in both the nightmare and in reality, and if she didn't wake up and stop them, they were going to kill Joey for real, kill him while she slept. She struggled to free herself of sleep's iron grip, but she could not do it, could not wake up, and now in the dream they were going to cut the boy's throat. And in reality, beyond the dream'?
When Christine woke in the morning, Joey was eating a chocolate bar and petting Chewbacca.
She watched him for a moment, and she realized tears were streaming down her cheeks. This time, however, she was crying because she was happy.
He seemed to be returning from his self-imposed psychological exile. He was in better physical shape, too. Maybe he was going to be all right.
Thank God.
The swelling was gone from his face, replaced by a better though not really healthy-color, and he was no longer having difficulty breathing.