"Doug, come on!" Charlie shouted over her shoulder.
The wave hit, exploding through the cave mouth as loud as a bomb.
Muddy water blasted against the walls and surged around our legs with enough force to nearly knock us sideways. The roar filled the entire cave so loudly it made my ears ring.
Water sloshed around our legs as we ran into the black. The minimal sunlight behind us faded fast and as the passage narrowed, the rough stone walls brushed my elbows.
But no back wall appeared. The cave stretched on, becoming a tunnel.
And the floor sloped upward.
Thank Christ. The incline was shallow, but it was there.
Behind me, Charlie went quiet. Not the practical, thinking kind of quiet. The scared kind. The same silence my sister Cassidy slipped into when Dad was in one of his moods.
Doug was the opposite, panting like a cornered animal with ragged, wet breaths.
The tunnel narrowed further, barely wide enough for my shoulders. Water swirled around our legs, but lower, as we trudged up the incline.
"I can't see a damn thing," Doug muttered.
"It's so dark," Charlie added.
I fished the lighter from my jeans pocket. I hoped the cheap lighter still worked after the dunking it had taken. I thumbed the flint, and the flame flared to life, trembling at the tip. Golden light danced over jagged stone walls and dark crevices. The walls wobbled as if they were breathing, but the glow was enough to see a few feet ahead.
"Oh, thank God, you have that," Charlie said behind me.
I kept the flame high, pushing back the dark, because no amount of training had ever killed that cold finger of panic that traced down my spine when the shadows got too close.
Behind us, the hiss of surging water echoed up the passage as if the damn thing was a snake chasing us.
Doug stumbled, crashing through the water like a wounded cow. "We're trapped, aren't we?" he muttered.
"Shut up and keep moving," I snapped, not looking back.
The incline increased, and we were no longer sloshing through ankle-deep water. The stone beneath my boots turned dry, then dusty.
"This is better," Charlie said, her tone lifting.
"Agreed. Hope it stays this way."
The tunnel stretched on, narrow and twisting, and it felt as if we were crawling through the throat of some goddamned monster. Doug's ragged breathing got worse, echoing off the stone, and I couldn't decide if he was still scared or just damn unfit.
I ducked beneath an overhang low enough to scrape across my hair and stepped into open space.
Another cave. Bigger than the first. My lighter flame steadied in the still air, and the weak orange glow spread out across uneven ground. The ceiling arched so high that it was lost in shadow. The floor was littered with rubble and smaller rocks, and the air smelled stale as though no breeze had ever touched it.
To my left, something sat slumped against the wall.
At first, I thought it was a rock formation or an old log. But a colorful pattern on half of it said otherwise.
Crunching over grit, I stepped closer.
The shape took form in the firelight, and my breath caught.
The body of a man sat against the cave wall, legs stretched out in front like he’d just stopped to rest and never got up again. "What the hell." I moved in, holding the lighter higher. It wasn't a body; this was a skeleton.
His denim jeans were faded. The work boots were dusty and cracked. Skeletal hands rested in his lap, fingers curled slightly as if they'd been holding something when he’d taken his final breath. The ribcage jutted through a torn flannel shirt, and the skull tilted to one side, jaw hanging slack. Empty eye sockets stared at nothing.