Acid Air

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2Shontel hadn't even wanted to come down into this wretched cave. Now she was stuck all by herself a hundred or more metres below the surface barely able to breathe. This outdoor education paper was really her last choice but a necessary ingredient for her Bachelor of Science degree. What it had to do with science was, in her opinion, practically nothing. She would rather be in the lab back at The University of British Columbia or using her tablet or laptop in her quaint little apartment in Gastown, Vancouver.

"Bruce!" she called up the vertical shaft above. "Are you there?"

There was no reply, not that she really expected one. It was almost an hour since she had fallen down the steep slope off the side of the main grotto. She grimaced. Knowing Bruce and the other instructors, this situation had probably been set up to test how she would cope being alone in the dark. She could, of course, radio for help, fail this section of the paper and have the indignity of being hauled up on a rope chair where the guys would be lined up grinning sarcastically at her. It was bad enough in the lab when she received the only A in the practical paper. Damn them all; she'd find another way out. There was a choice; otherwise she would not have been dropped down in the first place.

God, the air was bad! She took another sniff from the oxygen mask and checked the supply tank. There another two hours supply and probably double that if she used it carefully.

"Have it your way!" she shouted up the shaft. "I'll find my own way out."

She did have an electronic map of the cave on her iPad that showed her position and where the various routes went. It was quite good and showed how difficult the various climbs were. Oh well, as long as she stuck to the ones marked in green or yellow and avoided the red ones it shouldn't be too bad. She slid the backpack around her shoulders and compared the way ahead with that shown on the tablet. The route was longer than she would have liked and circled around before coming to a zigzag section that ended up at the main cave above. A shorter direct route she had originally come down was marked in red and would be avoided. She was annoyed with everyone else but not foolish enough to attempt this section that even experienced spelunkers marked as difficult.

The cave narrowed and at one point she had to crawl through, gasping and spluttering enough to place her mask on and suck in fresh air. The top of the mask included glasses and the circulating air relieved her stinging eyes. There was certainly something wrong with the air in the cave. She lifted her eyes to view the row of dots above her eyebrow. The left one that recorded the outside temperature and humidity, showed a pleasant twenty-two degrees Celsius and normal humidity but the right-eye lights flickered yellow. This meant that there was a build up of foul air. She could press a button to get more details but didn't bother.

Once through the low part, she stood up in a massive cavern where her torch beam didn't even show the ceiling. The floor sloped upwards but wasn't too steep. Also, there were no side tunnels so she didn't need to consult her iPad map. She frowned when the air lights remained yellow and actually increased in intensity as she climbed higher. There were now eight yellow ones, two more than earlier. Shouldn't the air become better as she went closer to the surface?

Perhaps the gauge was faulty. She decided to risk it and slipped the mask off. Immediately the stink like rotting eggs hit her nose, she gasped as her lungs sucked in foul air and she became disorientated. As soon as she slapped the mask back in place and sucked in fresh air her blurred vision cleared and spasms of pain across her forehead ceased. Worse though, two yellow warning lights changed to red. The air was becoming worse!

This was now more serious than just failing a paper. She took the DER, deep earth radio, out of her pocket and spoke. "Shontel speaking. I'm in trouble, Guys. Can you help?"

Normally this would trigger an immediate reply. This time though, there was no answer, not even the faint static normally present this far under the surface. She frowned, noted that a blue line showed it was on and in contact so tried again.

"Okay, I know you're there. It's no joke, you know. The air down here is bad and I need assistance."

Nobody replied.

For another forty minutes she climbed and followed the passageway around. There were now a few side passages but at least these showed on the map and the main way became marked with small fluorescent markers attached to the wall every fifty metres. She reached the zigzag section and found a wire rope dangling down. Without it, the climb would have been tricky.

Another twenty minutes went by before, sweating and tired she reached the rear of the main grotto. According to the map it was now only sixty metres to where her misadventures had begun. Her relief was tempered though by the air indicator that showed a row of red lights. Why was it still poisonous this close to the surface?

A few moments later she arrived and gasped. There, on the floor were the seven other members of the party. None wore their breathing masks and they lay in grotesque angles across the floor bathed in shadows between the beams of dropped torches. Almost in a state of panic, Shontel rushed over to Bruce, the closest person. His eyes were open but blank, lips and cheeks a ghastly blue and spittle hung from a partly opened mouth. It took mere seconds to confirm that he was dead.

"No!" she howled as she ran across to the second body, the third ... fourth! Everyone there was dead!

*

She stood back shaking as tears streamed down her cheeks beneath her mask and onto her jacket. Not willing to go back to the bodies she walked around to gather up equipment that could be useful. Her own oxygen supply was getting lower but the other tanks that lay on the ground had not even been used. It appeared that the catastrophe had happened suddenly, so quickly that the party had not even had time to put them on. There must have been a bubble of poisonous gas that burst out a c***k in the rock and killed them. It was still around, too for her mask registered only flashing red lights. She swallowed bile and attempted to call out on the DER as well as on an ordinary mobile phone. Both instruments made no contact and an attempt to send a text message failed.

She would have to get to the surface. It had taken them an hour to get this far in and would take longer to go out, as it was a steady climb. She gulped and turned off all the torches except her own. There was nothing else she could do here and the darkness at least showed a little respect for the others. With a new supply of oxygen connected and carrying another cylinder in a second backpack she began her lonely journey to the surface.

*

The sound of howling wind reached Shontel's ears before she reached the cave mouth. She moved on but stopped with a gasp at the entrance. Almost everything outside was different! Whereas she expected to see the parking area where their mini-bus had been parked, the small hikers' hut and the neatly mowed grass, now there were just pine trees. She gulped! Beyond the trees were inky black clouds. She jumped in fright as forked lightning lit up the sky beyond the trees and seconds later, thunder boomed. The treetops were bent over in a howling gale she had heard but where she stood it was eerily still.

She stepped out several metres and saw the harbour inlet below with the steep forested hills rising above the ocean. She frowned. This was different, too! When they arrived in the mini-bus she remembered one of the others mentioning how delightful the view of the tiny fishing village where they had stayed in a motel was. Now there was nothing except trees that grew down to the water edge with the sound itself looking dark and almost ominous under the dark sky.

"So I took the wrong turn somewhere inside," she muttered to herself. "The bus will probably be around the next bend."

She stepped back as torrential rain arrived and sat down on a dry rock in the cave entrance. With the others all dead, she guessed the urgency of the situation had diminished. There was no value in getting soaking wet so she might as well wait until the storm had gone. She glanced up and the first positive item came to her eyes. Her mask showed a row of green lights. With a little caution she lifted her mask off and the smell of pines and salty air filled the air. She stood there sucking in fresh air and didn't even mind the second streak of lightning and clap of nearby thunder as she lifted the mask off her face and placed in a backpack.

There was a mobile tower in the village but her phone made no connection. Probably the twisting sound blocked the signal. She guessed that the local transmission tower was only designed for the village anyway. Perhaps the DER would work. It was different in that the signal travelled through the ground and had a range of several hundred kilometres to a ground station that converted the signal and sent it out to a satellite. In theory, it could reach similar radios just about anywhere.

However like the mobile phone, it showed that a search could find no receiving station. She switched it to the emergency channel and recorded a small message that would be transmitted if the radio found a transmission site. She studied it and remembered that the instructor said it was also capable of direct contact with a satellite when they were outside. Perhaps that was the trouble, she was too close to the surface for the earth signals to work and the storm prevented signals from reaching the satellite. At home, storms often stopped the signal on her satellite television. She would try again later!

*

Over the next week, every day became worse and more futile than the one before. After spending the first night in the cave mouth Shontel had spent the second day moving down to the inlet through trackless pine forest. She found nothing familiar and the eerie conditions made her drift from being terrified to a sort of dumb acceptance. The thunderclouds and lightning never retreated and by the third day she could predict that the violent thunderstorm would come during the mid-afternoon with a variation of less than an hour. Afterwards the lightning would stop but the clouds remained, as did the howling wind in the distance. She worked out that this blew in a circle with the southern side blowing east and the north, west. She remained in an eye of still air with the temperature similar to that in the cave.

The foreshore of the inlet consisted of smooth rocks that were easy to walk along and even at high tide there was enough room to be able to stay on them. Beyond this, the pine forest grew up the steep hillside with an identical opposite shore about three hundred metres away. The nights were the worst with total darkness and the only sound being the lap of water nearby. She heard no animal or bird sounds but did see an occasional fish swimming near the rocks in the deep water.

By the third day she was annoyed because she had not bothered to take everyone's food packs. Her own food had now almost gone with only a packet of emergency food and two apples left. She had rationed herself and supplemented her diet with berries that grew along the edge of the stones but hadn't counted on being so long by herself. They were similar to blackberries but didn't have prickly stems. There were bees and sandflies but not as many as normal in the area in summer and the sight of bumble bees flying around the berries and forest flowers offered her that little company that the forest lacked.

Now the seventh day was coming to an end. She had walked ten to fifteen kilometres down the inlet with no real change in the scenery; the storm still hung above the hills, the wind still blew constantly and she was still in calm air in quite warm conditions. She found a sheltered area beneath a small bank facing west and munched a handful of berries. Her flask had been filled from a nearby stream so she had water. However, with no matches she couldn't light a fire and had to make do with cold food, not that the berries would have tasted different if they were hot, anyway.

She reached for her mobile phone and attempted with diminishing hope, to reach someone. Nothing! She grimaced and reached for the DER, watched as the green light came on to show the batteries were still charged, pressed the emergency send button and put the instrument to her ear. Her heart leaped! Instead of the faint hum she heard a ring tone. This had not happened before!

There was a faint click and heard a female voice.

"Hello. This is Nedda from Submarine K264 sailing submerged north east of Hawaii speaking. We are operating under emergency conditions. Please respond if you hear me. I will repeat this message in Russian, Chinese Mandarin, Spanish and Japanese followed by a homing signal every hour on the hour for ten minutes throughout the night. I repeat…."

"I hear you," Shontel almost screamed. "This is Shontel Kemp speaking. I am lost on the west coast of Vancouver Island British Columbia in the Clayoquot Sound near the village of Tofino." Emotions seized her and she burst into tears. "Please help. My companions are all dead and I've been alone for a week."

The voice sounded calm but also excited. "Hello Shontel. Nedda here. Can you give me more details of your situation, please?"

With her hand trembling so much she almost dropped the radio, Shontel gave an account of everything that had happened.

"So the air in the cave poisoned your friends?" Nedda asked. "You are still alive because you have a breathing mask to supply oxygen and have been alone for seven days. Correct?"

"Yes," Shontel still had trouble restraining her sobs.

"Your voice is clear. Do you have a inbuilt radio in your mask?"

"No, I'm not wearing my mask"

"Why?" came the abrupt reply.

"I don't need it now."

"You can breath the air?" Nedda sounded astonished.

"I can."

"And you're outside?"

"Yes."

"I see. Tell me, Shontel; is there anything different around you?"

"I can't find the road or even a track and must have come out of the cave into a different branch of the sound. The weather's strange, too." On Nedda's urging she described the circling wind, the clouds and constant thunderstorm.

"I understand," Nedda said. "Listen carefully. Do you have your oxygen tank and mask with you?"

"Yes,"

"Good. If the windstorm stops or the clouds move away, you must place your oxygen mask on immediately. Don't wait."

"It's that important?"

"Yes. I believe you are in the eye of a hurricane type storm that is holding fresh oxygen in. If it moves away, poisonous air will replace it. Without your emergency supply you will be asphyxiated."

"It's almost dark here. How do I tell at night?"

"Listen to the wind. If the sound stops, put your mask on."

"It's been a week with no problem. Is it likely to suddenly happen now?"

"I don't know but we don't want to lose you. If you find yourself getting tired, place your mask on. Most modern breathing equipment has an automatic mode. Can you check your one?"

"I remember that it has but I've never used it. How does it help?"

"It measures the air supply and if it becomes poisonous or low in oxygen it will automatically switch in the tank supply until the air is breathable again. You can go to sleep and know you will be safe."

Shontel heaved a sigh of relief.

"Can you contact the authorities to come and find me?"

"There are no authorities. Only us."

"Us?" Shontel gasped.

"There's only Greg."

"And yourself?"

"You could say that."

That was a strange reply but Shontel didn't bother to query the words. "So if there is nobody else, what will happen to me?"

"I have homed in on your signal and you are indeed beside a deep water sound. We will come and get you but at our present speed it will take seventy-six hours to travel the distance involved. There are no places within walking distance for you to go so please stay where you are, if that is at all possible."

"I'm in a sheltered spot overlooking the sound. It's as good as anywhere. You advise me to stay here?"

"Yes. I'll contact you every two hours. Don't worry if you drift asleep for we are locked into your position. Until then thank you for being there."

"Bye," Shontel whispered as the girl's voice went off air. Some of Nedda's words were ominous but at least there was somebody else out there. She wasn't alone any more.

*

The afternoon thunderstorm was over and steam rose off the surface of the water where Shontel stood on a protruding rocky ledge. From here, she could see beyond a sharp turn in the sound. When the submarine arrived she should see it sailing around the corner. It was three days since her first contact with Nedda and conversations with Greg every few hours as they had promised, helped to overcome the biting loneliness. Their arrival was estimated to be that evening before sunset that at this time of the year was close to ten. It was now only four so there was another six hours to wait. Somehow, the last three days had flown by but now the time seemed to slow right down.

The black clouds twisted across the sky and another streak of lightning cut down behind the far hills across the water. The wind still howled but she was so used to it her senses tuned out. But what was that different sound? She swung around towards the bubbling noise twenty metres upstream from the rock she was standing on. The water there was bubbling with tiny waves radiating out to chop up the surface.

My God, something was there!

She watched, frozen to the spot as a gigantic object with a vertical tower and short stubby wings in the middle of a black cylinder shot straight up out of the depths. Water poured off the vessel. Seconds later it towered before her while the remaining water on deck poured off and the churning water returned to become calm and silent.

"I'm here! I'm here!" Shontel screamed as she jumped up and down and frantically waved her arms.

There was a faint rumble as submarine turned slightly and began to move infinitely slowly towards her. It stopped mere metres below her rock bobbing in the water like a bath toy. A hatch at the front opened and a man pulled himself out. He wore jeans, a black jacket and a gigantic cowboy hat. He glanced up, waved and broke into a wide grin.

He lifted his hat in an almost formal fashion as he stepped out and stood on the foredeck. "Yeah, well gidday there," he shouted across the water in a broad Australian accent. "Greg Freymore's my name. You must be Shontel Kemp, the lass who's been nagging us for a ride over the last week. Must say you're a grand sight for tired eyes, Shontel."

"I am," she shouted back and brushed away the tears streaming down her cheeks.

*