Noctuidae Read Free Page B

descent.
    The slope on this side was moderate, the handholds regular and reliable. Soon she reached Pete and Ron at the bottom, or almost at the bottom, wedged between walls only a few feet apart and tapering beneath to a terminal V too tight for traverse, both braced in position with arms and legs splayed out, an awkward pair of mothmen. She wished she’d worn her gloves for this shit. She saw Pete had his on now.
    The stagnant murk in the crease beneath their feet could only be Blossom Creek. What they saw of the stream was little more than a foot wide and all but dry, its pitiful arrested trickle of water a black coffee hue. Oily black coffee. Only hard rain or snowmelt would make it flow again. Broken branches choked the creekbed’s acute angle. She considered how much further each flash flood would propel the jumble of jagged wood, how long some of it lingered in this isolate groove. . .
    They had to chimney along from there, splayed legs and outstretched arms holding them over the creekbed’s crevice. It was a familiar caver’s maneuver, and they progressed in this peculiar style as if awkward angels.
    Below them bleached branches clogged the trench, broken ends awaiting only one missed step to punch through clothes and flesh and draw blood, or just the next flash flood to move them along. She looked upstream at what she could see of the sky. Distant rain would send a torrent toward them even when the sky overhead was blue. No cumulus clouds, no rain. At least so far as she could see.
    They made their clumsy way along, hand foot foot hand. Where the cave mouth had to be close to overhead Sue-Min saw forms below like broken rib bones protruding from the opaque water. Human ribs. Three curved gray somethings arching up from the coffee hued creek amidst more vegetal forms. And there—wasn’t that cracked rod a barely submerged long bone? Once more she took a breath to speak out, but froze.
    No way those could be human bones. No way would she give Pete a chance to mock her, think he was bonding that way. Or worse, to offer sympathy if Ron mocked her. Just funky sticks, bones of livestock or mountain goats at most, nothing to see here. . .
    Neither of the guys noticed. They pressed ahead until they estimated the cave was right above. The left slope seemed steeper now, nearly vertical. Sue-Min contemplated climbing it wearing her frame pack, how to balance. Yet the alternative was to leave the pack down here, with all her gear, likely to slip into the foul stagnant cola below no matter how tightly wedged. No way to open it here either, take out just those items she might need—and no way to tote that stuff up without a pack if she did. Going up would be all or nothing.
    Ron went first, gripping the corroded ridges of tuff, faded khaki pack bobbing on his back as he rose. Pete followed straight off. Sue-Min was ready to go second after Ron, but got no chance. It hadn’t taken long for that to become the pattern . . . Ron, Pete, her, repeat.
    Her turn came. She all but pressed her breasts against the wall as she took a grip. The rock was not so friable as it appeared, and the thin horizontal ridges cut by ancient floods and flows offered hand and footholds more stable than expected. The slope, though not as extreme as she anticipated, was still steep, and she steeled herself to flatten against it if she slid, avoid tumbling backward and losing all stability. Pressed face forward she might yet regain her grip in a slide.
    Somehow they all three made it, crawled and scrambled over a rough rock lip and into the cave. Sue-Min let herself collapse back, panting on the pebbly dusty cave floor with her pack pushed up for an uncouth pillow. Both her hands were sore and torn in several places, and she could feel the palm of her left wet with blood. Ron reclined in a position much like hers, but Pete still stood, though he trembled. She thought already of their inevitable return, whether experience would render it easier on the