Loose ends

26.

“I'm coming for you, space-girl! You can't get away from me! Give me back that case or I'll dissect you myself!"Morton's threats reverberated through the twisting labyrinth of underground chambers, the echoes making it impossible to guess just how near or far away he was. Hiding in a chapel-like grotto, carved out eons ago by seeping water and sulfurous gases, Liz kept her eye out for the telltale gleam of Morton's flashlight, which she assumed he had appropriated from Lieutenant Ramirez, who had no doubt joined the gunman's ever-growing list of victims. Periodically, over however long she had been fleeing through the convoluted caverns, she had glimpsed the leading edge of the beam falling upon a glistening limestone wall nearby, spurring her onward through yet more branching tributaries and tunnels.

The incandescent handprint upon her belly, which seemed to glow all the brighter the more frightened she became, was an extremely mixed blessing. On the one hand, it helped her navigate, albeit randomly, through this light-less subterranean realm, helping her avoid stumbling into solid walls or yawning chasms; on the other hand, it made her visible to her relentless pursuer, advertising her location like a neon sign on a moonless night.

For the moment, however, she seemed to have gained a slight lead on Morton, who must have taken a wrong turn somewhere amid the diverging corridors. Liz took advantage of this lull in the chase to do something about the sticky tape binding her wrists together. Locating a sturdy stalagmite with a notably jagged tip, she backed against the stony fang, using it as a saw to gnaw away at the overlapping strips of duct tape. Doing so meant dropping the purloined attache case, but Liz decided she needed her hands free even more than she wanted to hang onto the coveted spacecraft debris.

"I know you're in here, Tess!" Morton called out, still laboring under the false impression that that was her name. Liz wasn't sure how she felt about facing death with that particular name on her would-be killer's lips. Do I want to spend my final moments on Earth mistaken for a trampy blond homewrecker from anotherpla.net? The duct tape was maddeningly durable and hard to cut through, but she eventually succeeded in poking a hole in the tape between her wrists, then used that tiny gash as a starting point for tearing away at the gluey fibers holding the tape together. It was taking way too long, though, and Morton sounded like he was getting closer.

"Don't be stupid!" his booming voice railed at her. "It won't do you any good to get hopelessly lost down here. You're just going to starve to death in the dark!"He had a point, Liz realized, but the alternative, putting herself back in Morton's bloodstained hands, was even less appealing. She'd cope with finding her way out if and when she finally got away from the murderous gunman. Tom and Becky ultimately made it out of the caves, she recalled, clinging to that storybook happy ending for comfort. So can I.

Only a few gooey strands held together the tape confining her arms. She tugged her wrists apart with every ounce of strength she could muster, while simultaneously sawing away at the last fraying filaments. All at once, her wrists sprang apart and Liz discovered she could see her own hands for the first time in hours. At last! she thought gratefully, savoring this one small victory over Mortons brutality. Eager fingers peeled away the rest of the tape, revealing wrists that were red and chafed, yet blissfully free.

Moving quickly, to get farther away from Morton, she rescued the briefcase from the floor and headed away from the sound of his approaching voice. Feeling like some exotic bioluminescent lifeform, evolved to exist far below the Earth's surface or at the bottom of the sea, she turned her silver light upon the escape route ahead of her.

Two separate pathways-one wide, one narrow-diverged before her. Iiz hesitated, uncertain which natural aperture to take. Morton might have trouble squeezing his bulk through the skinny crevice, but what if that aisle kept on thinning until it ceased to exist? She shuddered at the thought of getting wedged into a dead end, unable to turn around and go back the way she came without running straight into Morton; all the killer would have to do is wait right where she was standing now for thirst or starvation to drive her back into his clutches. Okay, she decided, the wide door it is.

"There you are!" Before she could even act on her choice, Morton suddenly rounded a curve, less than twenty yards behind her, his flashlight beam sweeping across both Liz and the juncture ahead. Liz looked back in surprise, squinting into the glare of the flash, and spotted Mortons intimidating bulk charging toward her, only seconds away. "Give me that case!" he yelled. "Give it back, you alien freak!"Changing her plan at the last minute, Liz raced through the narrower opening. Swinging behind her at the end of her arm, the briefcase caught in the doorway, holding her back, and she had to stop and turn the case sideways before making it completely through the gate. The delay cost her precious seconds, so that Morton was almost upon her by the time she got the briefcase loose. His body slammed into the limestone walls of the skinny archway, but, just as Liz had prayed, he was too large to pass through the gap in his entirety. An arm and one shoulder squeezed into the shallow corridor, groping wildly for the escaping teenager. "Come back here! Come back or I'll shoot!"He drew back from the slender opening, aiming both his flashlight and his gun at the murky passage into which Liz had fled. Hearing his threats, and knowing from experience that Morton had no qualms about gunning down those who crossed him, Liz quickened her pace, looking frantically for a turn in the corridor. Straight lines were her enemy right now; only a more crooked path would keep her out of Morton's line of fire.

No! Not again! she thought, unable to hold back painful recollections of the first and only time a bullet tore through her body. The jarring impact, the searing agony, rose like restless phantoms from the memories lodged in her flesh and bones. The handprint upon her stomach, where the mortal wound should have been, flared all the brighter for her terror. Please, no! Not again! At the last minute, the confining wall fell away to her left, and Liz ducked into the much-needed detour, only an instant before the blast of a gunshot disturbed the sepulchral quiet of the caverns. Jagged chips and flakes exploded from the end of the improvised shooting gallery she had just abandoned, followed by the dancing beam of Morton's flashlight as he feverishly sought to see if Liz had been hit or not. A volcanic curse erupted from the enraged killer when he discovered that no humanoid body, alive or otherwise, lay in the path of the searching beam.

(Liz had to wonder just how Morton had expected to retrieve his precious attache case from the far end of the skinny corridor, in the event that his angry shot had killed her instantly. Then she realized that the bad-tempered gunman was beyond reason at this point; as his behavior at the Crashdown had proven years ago, he was more than capable of shooting first and dealing with the consequences later.) "Where the hell are you?" he roared in frustration. His hate-crazed voice echoed through the winding catacombs. "Don't think you're getting away from me for good, space girl. I'm not leaving this godforsaken hellhole until I've got that briefcase-and your alien hide!"The side-tunnel she had so luckily discovered was no wider than the narrow passage she had just escaped, and it continued to constrict inch by inch, until Liz had to turn sideways just to squeeze her way forward. Increasingly afraid that she had trapped herself with no way out, except past Morton, she was forced to slide with excruciating slowness between the unyielding cavern walls, which, she recalled from her science courses, consisted mostly of the petrified remains of prehistoric mollusks and coral. Would her lifeless bones, she wondered, also become part of this vast prehistoric mortuary, buried for eons away from the light of day? She felt horribly sorry for her parents, who might never find out what had befallen her. Would Max or Maria explain to them about Morton and his deadly schemes, or would that risk exposing Max's and the others' alien roots? She hoped that, somehow, her mom and dad could receive some sort of comfort or closure. Surely, Max would make sure of that, in her memory.

Max. She couldn't believe she might never see him again. There was so much that she still wanted to share with him, so much of their future yet to be written. At least Romeo and Juliet died together, she thought mournfully, not separated by hundreds ofjeet of solid rock.

It occurred to her that, in a sense, she had been living on borrowed time ever since that fateful shooting at the Crash-down. Perhaps death, once again in the form of Joe Morton and his ready pistol, had finally caught up with her.

Claustrophobia added to other fears plaguing her mind, but just when she was half-convinced that the dwindling corridor was destined to become her eternal tomb, the aisle opened up and, expelling an enormous sigh of relief, she stepped into what appeared to be a spacious underground grotto, perhaps the size of a high school classroom. Gnarled stalagmites sprouted from the stony floor while towering columns reared up toward a ceiling whose full altitude and dimensions were hidden by the all-encompassing blackness shrouding the roomy vault.

Liz listened anxiously for the sound of Morton's heavy footsteps, not at all certain how many separate routes or entrances might lead to this particular grotto. She didn't hear anyone approaching, but something else caught her ear: an unusual rustling coming from high above her, accompanied by occasional high- pitched squeaking and chittering.

Bats, she realized with a shiver. The grotto sounded as though it were home to a great many bats, all roosting overhead. The air smelled like a zoo, she swiftly noted, while the floor of the chamber was slick with accumulated bat guano, causing Liz to wrinkle her nose in disgust. Glancing at the lighted face of her watch, she saw that sunset was still three or four hours away; the bats would not be flying forth in search of their evening meal for quite some time.

Liz emitted a frustrated sigh. In theory, the bats' nightly departure might have pointed her toward a way out of the confusing maze of caverns. Was it possible she could stay put here until dusk, she speculated, or would Morton catch up with her before then? Tired of carrying the awkward briefcase around with her everywhere, and remembering how it had almost slowed her down fatally back at the juncture between the two corridors, she looked around for something she could use to break open the lock. A slender stalagmite, about the size of a model rocket, attracted her eye, and she grabbed onto the tip of the tapering calcite formation with both hands, trying to break off the top. Might make a decent weapon, too, she thought, admiring its jagged point.

As before, actually doing something, taking positive action, helped to keep her post-traumatic fears at bay. Her desperate struggle to survive was proving excellent therapy, if nothing else. Go figure, she mused, wondering what Alex would make of that.

The twisting stalagmite was denser than the inverted icicle it resembled, but she eventually succeeded in snapping off the top six inches or so. She dropped to her knees next to the briefcase and pounded its shiny bronze clasp with the wide end of her improvised hammer. Every noisy blow made her wince and look about her nervously, afraid that the clamor had alerted Morton to her whereabouts, but, after about half a dozen savage strikes, the clasp broke apart and she yanked open the lid.

Inside, the salvaged Crash materials were just as she'd last seen them, back at room #19. Grateful for their amazing properties, she wadded up the mysterious silver foil into an easy-to-carry ball, which she placed in the pocket of her jeans, along with fragments of that strange tan plastic. Then she hid the looted attache case in a crevice in the wall, so that it would not inform Morton that she had passed this way. Fortunately, the case's stylish black-leather appearance rendered it virtually invisible in the obsidian darkness of the cave.

That's better, she thought, hefting the stalagmite tip like a dagger. It wasn't much compared to Morton's semiautomatic, but it was something. At this point, anything that made her feel less like a defenseless victim was of incalculable value.

Now the question was, stay where she was or keep moving? Listening again for Mortons menacing voice or footsteps, while keeping a close look out for even a flicker of light from his flashlight, she thought she heard a slow, steady dripping coming from the far end of the grotto. She licked her dry, dehydrated lips, suddenly realizing just how thirsty and hungry she was. Stepping cautiously between the scattered stalagmites, taking care not to hurry beyond the radiance of the silver handprint, she made her way across the chamber until the eerie glow was reflected by drops of clear water, falling beat by beat, from some unseen stalactite high overhead.

The muddy floor, coated with wet bat dung, got more and more slippery as she neared the dribbling water. Cupping her hands, she caught the falling droplets and lifted them to her lips. The captured liquid had a funny taste, like mineral water, but was refreshing nevertheless. In time, she realized, thinking like the scientist she wanted to be, the calcium in the water would gradually build a new stalagmite or column, right where she was standing now. Liz hoped to be long gone before then.

Distracted by her successful quest for water, she was caught by surprise when a harsh white spotlight illuminated her from behind, throwing her distorted shadow onto the floor of the cavern. She spun around in a panic, almost slipping on the slimy rock beneath her feet, to see Joe Morton standing in an open archway not far from where she first entered the bat cave. His flashlight shone in her face, forcing her to shield her eyes with her hand. Morton himself was visible only as a looming black presence behind the blinding glare. "Don't move a muscle, freak!"he growled, then chuckled cruelly. "Bet you thought I'd given up!"Not really, Liz thought, searching futilely for some way out. She felt exposed and vulnerable, like an escaping convict caught by the watchful eye of a prison searchlight. Many feet above her, the bats, perhaps disturbed by Morton's bright light or bellowing voice, rustled and screeched unhappily.

Inspiration struck, and the imperiled teenager hurled the pointy stalagmite tip at the ceiling, while simultaneously throwing herself onto the slimy floor. Not surprisingly, Morton fired his pistol, the explosion sounding like the big bang itself in the vaulted underground chamber.

Facedown in the muck, Iiz couldn't tell whether it was her calcite missile or the answering gunshot that most upset the bats, but the net result was the same: Hundreds of Mexican free-tail bats abandoned their roosts and began flapping madly for the quickest route out of the grotto- which just happened to be the wide-open archway where Morton was standing. The gunman screamed in fear and agony, his horrified cry almost lost amid a chorus of high-pitched squeaks and the frantic flapping of hundreds of leathery wings. The beam from his flashlight zigzagged wildly over the uncaring walls of the cavern as he flailed hopelessly at the unstoppable deluge of bats.

Iiz scrambled to her feet and dashed in the opposite direction. The ground sloped steeply ahead of her and she ran downhill, following a trickle of water that she prayed led to another exit. The deafening sound of the bats' mass exodus had only just begun to lessen in volume when she gratefully spotted a gap in the wall ahead. She plunged into the shadowy void, even knowing that her downward trajectory was only taking her farther away from the surface, away from the sun.

Behind her, Morton howled in pain and fury. "I'll kill you, you witch! I'll shoot you full of lead!"Won't be the first time, Liz thought.