Beneath the Storm

[Note: This story is a follow-up on Quivira]

      A cool wind gust brought a sprinkling of cold heavy raindrops on James’ face, followed by a small warmer drier wind in the opposite direction. This was the perfect time for the night’s activities, but that did not mean it would be fun. The tornado watch was out, and the storm was going to be a big one as they always were this time of year. James checked his phone’s GPS to ensure he parked in the right spot and pulled a large toolbox out of the front seat. He was well prepared with all the waterproof gear he had on hand, but his experience out here told him that wind meant there was a thunderstorm headed for him with the intensity to sink the average rowboat.

           James left his truck parked by the side of the winding gravel road and would have to chance the fact no one would be out in this weather as there were no-trespassing signs posted all over the entire county. Those signs were mostly directed towards hunters as this was all private land unsuitable for farming, but James’ little adventure was something much worse than that.

           The barbed fence had rotted away a long time ago in this part, but it was partially intentional as apparently locals around Gelvin ventured up to this “Robber’s Cave” from time to time. He made his way up the hill and only briefly looked at the scenery obscured by the trees, this was all just an exaggerated river valley with the shallow and slow river at the top and an abandoned rail bed. Indeed, that was the reason behind Gelvin’s existence as for a time it was the local terminus during the Railroad Bubble and Gelvin was where cattle were loaded on the trains. Back in those days rail companies were racing to own the primary rails of every town in existence and homesteaders were racing to claim every bit of land in the region, even places that had no chance of becoming profitable.

           A slightly stronger gust of cool wind came, and James adjusted his load to walk faster.

This county was defined by a rocky landscape, semi-dry weather, and undulating hills so that one was constantly going up or down a slope that a tractor could not handle. However, there was something very wrong with the soil around here, and little actual farming took place except for small patches of hay and hardy animals who ate it. Gelvin collapsed completely when a shorter rail line was installed and eventually even the rail ties themselves were recycled along with almost all of the town’s buildings except for a few ruins and several townhouses turned into farmhouses with garages used as barns. The image of a brick boulevard in the middle of the dusty woods is something that made one reflect on the coming and going of civilizations.

Now near the bottom of a thirty-foot-high cliff face, James saw another no-trespassing sign and then the area of rock containing visitor graffiti including one that said “James was here” that he scratched last time he was here. This time, however, James was visiting strictly off the record.

The last time he came he learned the Robber’s Cave (so named because it was the hideout of a gang of bank robbers from Coffeetown for a time) was actually part of a larger underground network because he could hear flowing water somewhere during a dry time. There were also fissures along the length of the line of hills in this place, all connected to the science of how caves form. People didn’t associate the large prairie regions around here with caves as people associate caves with mountains and igneous rock formed by volcanoes. However, caves could form in sedimentary rock like the regional limestone, it simply needed to be eroded by slightly acidic groundwater. The natural gas deposits in this region, some of the first discovered on this continent, were more than sufficient. But Robber’s Cave was only one of a few known caves and the only one that was not actively barred from the public.

It was time for the hard part of the climb, where James had to get himself and a heavy load up an awkward climb to a ledge halfway up the cliff. However, James put down the toolbox, got out some rope, and latched it shut again. He tied one end of the rope to the box and the other to his arm and started up the usual angle to climb between two outcroppings of rock that had sufficient footholds for someone who knew nothing of climbing to mount. A stronger breeze made James check his footing carefully but there was no real danger.

At the top, James hauled up his load and carried it to the cave mouth. The mouth was almost tall enough to stand in and only narrowed farther in until it was only four feet high about fifteen feet in. This was where older descriptions of the cave differed from what was seen today because it was said that the cave narrowed to three feet and then “opened into a room” where counterfeiting tools were found and left in place.

James crawled into the cave dragging his load behind him. The dust on the floor and cobwebs on the ceiling made the move particularly disconcerting. The wind and dampness ended abruptly entering the still cave air and it seemed as though all weather ceased entering another world, underground. That was not so bad given it was starting to actually thunder and rain outside.

After half of eternity passed crawling, James arrived at the cave end. It was a peak of a monolith of limestone with a fist-sized hole in it with the ground highly smoothed with rivulets carved in it from the cool streams that formed this cave, long ago. However, James knew that he was not far underground as the top of the hill was little more than a dozen feet above him. He could not be sure, as the hill continued sloping up gradually after the cliff. What was certain was that this closure at the cave’s end did not leave any indentation in the hillside above whenever it collapsed and no one was really sure how to rectify the discrepancies.

James opened his box and retrieved several large zip-lock bags full of a wet powder he hardly dared touch. In each of them, he punctured into them a primer made from a bullet casing with a fuse hanging out of the opposite end. After priming each bag he quickly and carefully stuffed it as far as he could down the hole while trying to manage his heart rate. After all that was done, he zip-tied the end of the long fuses together and was in too much of a hurry to close his box and get out of the cave. After the long crawl, he removed the rope from his arm and threw his box out the cave mouth and heard it thud on the ground below.

Then it occurred to James he still needed to light the fuse. He went back, the crawl did not seem as long but James was finally getting over the fact he would be covered with cobwebs for the foreseeable future. James took stock, drew his lighter, and reviewed his master plan.

Violent crime scenes often have more witnesses than realize it. Mainly because the sounds of gunshots are generally mistaken for other more mundane sounds. In this case, thunder.

James lit the lighter and carefully made sure to light all the fuses at the same time. Redundancy was the key to safe success when working with explosives, and James really did not have any experience blowing stuff up. With a great sense of urgency, now sped by the clarity of the dangers, James executed a perfect army crawl to the cave mouth. Upon exiting into the now pouring rain, the drop down suddenly did not seem so far and James did not want the bomb going off while he was climbing down. James jumped, trying his best to absorb the impact correctly bending his long legs when he hit the ground intending to land in a squatting position.

This resulted in much of the force of impact being transferred from James’ knees into his chest which really, really, hurt. But James shuffled into the bushes to hide from any onlookers and the blast.

Now was the waiting game. It occurred to James that he allotted plenty of fuses and that the last maneuver was probably unnecessary. After 20 seconds James wondered if the fuses were all wet a burnt out. No use checking now, since if they were lit he didn’t want to be in the cave. After another 20 seconds that now seemed like much longer James realized he definitely had more than enough time to make the climb down correctly and now the adrenaline had worn off and his ribs felt either bruised or cracked. Some time later it occurred to James that his life stunk as he was laying in the mud under a bush while a harsh wind blew more and more rain through every crack and down his shirt and for what? To solve a riddle that no one asked and would not believe even if James found what he was looking for?

A thunder rang out that hurt James’ ears and he felt in the air and through the ground. The bomb had worked, and now to see if it revealed anything.

James’ hands hurt from the cold, wet, and muddy footholds he had to grab onto on the way up, but he could wait out the worst of the storm inside the cave. When he was up there he got inside and was immediately enveloped by the dry and warmer still air. The daylight lighting had faded from the storm and inside was darker, so James used his cellphone as a flashlight and saw the end of the cave was indeed a broken mess. He crawled forward and reached the pile of rubble and cracked bedrock. He hoped the cave would not collapse on top of him as he picked up heavy rocks and threw them behind himself but soon had removed enough that was once a fist-sized hole leading to deep darkness was now bigger than a head and James bent forward with the light to see what was beyond it.

Inside, past the bedrock, James saw a room full of antique and rusted gear of unknown purpose. Beyond that, was a hole in the bottom corner of the room, leading to a deeper dark. In the quiet, ages distant from the pouring rain and heavy thunder, James heard the distinct sound he had heard before like leather dragging on stone. Then, from the hole in the cave room, a pair of eyes reflected the light and drew back with a cry of pain before a swifter sound went away.

James felt the gun in his coat pocket but did not draw. He had used all his explosives and his inexperience made him think the first blast would do a lot more damage. He would have to return again with another plan for clearing up the hole, and James pulled his face away from the hole and seated himself against the cave wall to think. The wind outside was dying down, and the worst of the storm had passed, but James’ work was still no closer to being done. James now more slowly crawled back, and by the time he reached the entrance, he found the rain had suddenly stopped and only a trickle was coming down. This was not a good sign, and James checked his phone for a tornado warning. There was none, but as if he needed any more prodding to get himself off this land which he had just illegally vandalized, James moved to quickly climb down.

James grabbed his box and half ran down the slope minding his footing and his load. As he moved he listened, and heard no vehicles on the road. As he approached the road he saw his truck and without minding anything threw his box into the back with his heart beating quickly again. He ran to the front seat and sat his soaked self on the seat and started, cranking it into drive and accelerating faster than intended.

He forced himself to settle down again. The locals would consider an unfamiliar vehicle on this road noteworthy, but not suspicious. He passed by the farmhouse that definitely should have heard the blast, but then saw there were no cars parked there anyway so the owner probably wasn’t home. James reflected on what he saw, or what he thought he saw, and thought that now James must have someone underground investigating him too.