Stealthy Steps Read online

  I rolled over onto my knees and winced. Sand, dried weeds, stickers, and bits of gravel crunched under me. Getting up so abruptly might have been a mistake, because as soon as I rose onto my knees, my stomach clutched and heaved. I threw up until my ribs ached, until only acrid bile came up.

  Still I retched. I couldn’t remember when or what I had last eaten, but I was convinced that I’d thrown up everything back to the “iffy” potato salad of July Fourth a few years back. I spat to rid my mouth of acid and longed to rinse the bitter taste away.

  I didn’t want to think about the tendrils of hair that had been hanging down when I spewed.

  Ugh.

  As bad as the nausea and vomiting were, the pounding pressure in my head—and that infernal humming—were worse. I gripped my head with both hands.

  “Oh, please,” I moaned with eyes squeezed shut. “Please! The pain is killing me. Please stop.”

  I pressed harder. Under my digging fingers the torturous hum slowly dulled and retreated, as a lazy wave withdraws from the sands. I held perfectly still. I didn’t move, fearful the breakers would rush back to crash upon my fragile shore.

  I must have dozed off or passed out again because I woke with a start. I cracked open my eyes and struggled to my feet. The noises that had plagued me were gone, and I was grateful—but the night was still very deep and I was still very lost. As my eyes adjusted to the starlight, I picked out the darker shadows of rocks and boulders and a hillside sloping away from me.

  I have to be somewhere in the open space around Albuquerque, somewhere in the foothills. But where?

  I clawed at a chest-high boulder to steady myself. While my headache had diminished significantly, my skin still burned and throbbed. I could not resist resting my forehead on the rock’s cool, granite surface.

  I may have spent five minutes leaning against the boulder before I pulled myself up and tried again to take stock of my surroundings. The night told me nothing: It was dark—so very dark!—and the shadows of giants loomed near. I had the sense that I was close to a massive rock outcropping. If not for the twinkle of lights in the distance, I might have gone full-on bonkers.

  I swayed and reached for the boulder to steady myself. I shivered, looked off into the murky night, and shook my head to clear it.

  Gemma, I don’t know how you got yourself into this mess, but you’ve outdone yourself this time, I informed my inward self—as if she were completely uninformed on my current situation!

  I wasn’t ready to confront the obvious, more pressing problem: As dark as the night was, how in the world would I find my way down whatever foothills I might be in?

  “Where am I? How did I get here? Shouldn’t there be a path somewhere around here?”

  My whispers floated unanswered into the night, but they had spawned a spasm of coughing. My throat was rough. Rusty. Scraped raw. My lips were dry and cracked. A keen yearning for a sip of cool water tormented me. When was the last time I’d had anything to drink?

  My left arm, in particular, throbbed. My fingers found a tender, sticky spot, but I couldn’t see the wound or recall how I’d gotten it. The palms of my hands felt scraped and tender, too.

  Think! Think, Gemma! I tried to concentrate but it was like wading through wet cement, and my thoughts wandered.

  I need to get down from here. Get home and tend to myself.

  I closed my eyes. Made myself focus. Hikers and off-road bicyclists loved the high-desert mountains bordering Albuquerque on the east and south. The foothills were laced with well-worn trails. The agencies in charge of the “open areas” had smoothed and marked many of the trails. I only needed to stumble upon one of the trails and follow it. Eventually I would find a trailhead and a parking lot at the base of it—and my car?

  I looked down to take my first step and gasped. A moment ago the ground had been shrouded in darkness—now the softest glow illuminated the ground a foot out in front of me.

  Someone’s found me!

  I whirled to see who was casting the light—and stared into black night.

  “What in the world?” My breath got stuck in my chest; the scratchy words barely reached my own ears.

  I swiveled forward—and there it was again: that soft light. Darkness cloaked my feet, yet a tiny bit of hillside opened ahead of me, illuminated by the pale glow. I dragged one foot forward and then the other.

  The glow seemed to focus ahead, a little beyond me. Did it move with my feet or ahead of them? I was all in a muddle and couldn’t decide. I inched forward anyway.

  After a few steps, I staggered to a stop. The effort had resurrected the fierce pounding in my head. I reached up to massage my neck while I stared out into the darkness. The light by which I had taken those few steps didn’t reach higher than my knees. In fact, I thought the light dimmed when I lifted my eyes to look out into the night. But when I pointed my gaze toward my feet, the glow out ahead of me brightened.

  Are my eyes playing tricks on me?

  I stood still, befuddled. Getting nowhere. The only constant was the agony: Muscle and bone beat a throbbing rhythm in concert with pounding head.

  You have to move, Gemma. No matter how you feel, you have to pick up your feet and get moving if you ever hope to get home.

  The comfort and relief of my own bed, of my own pillow and covers, called to me. I shuffled ahead. One cautious step at a time, I traversed a steep, rock-strewn hillside. The ground leveled out some, and I turned left, thinking or sensing that I should follow the slope in that direction.

  My rubbery legs had taken but one step when the faint light illuminating my path dimmed—and went out. I was enveloped in darkness.

  “No!” My raw throat croaked the one-word protest.

  What dangers lay on the shadowed, sloping hillside? I couldn’t see hand in front of face—so how would I avoid unseen pitfalls in the dark? Shaking, I backed up a step and rotated—slowly—to the right.

  The glow near my feet flickered and reignited.

  “Thank goodness!” I breathed. I inched ahead.

  For another fifteen minutes, by the light of—what, my shins?—I threaded my way around cactus, rocks, and other hazards until I reached a flat, sandy ledge. Ahead, straight across the shelf, loomed a dark void.

  Perhaps because I was testing a theory—however implausible it had to be—I edged closer to what I hypothesized was the ledge’s rim.

  The light went out.

  I sank onto the loose dirt. On my hands and knees, I crawled forward and, with cautious hand extended, felt along the ground out in front of me. I hadn’t crept more than eighteen inches or so before my fingers traced the crumbling end of the ledge. I couldn’t see into the abyss beyond my fingertips, but I had no desire to find out how far I would have fallen had I kept going in that direction.

  I crawled backwards, stood, and faced the drop-off. On quivering legs I pivoted until I faced left of the ledge.

  The ground ahead of me brightened.

  I trod slowly on, but I was thinking. Pondering. Was I being guided away from danger by whomever controlled the light?

  And what of the noises? The humming, buzzing, or ticking (whatever it was!) had petered out, but every once in a while I heard a faint click or thrum nearby—weak and indistinct, but still there.

  What are those sounds? What’s making them? My delirious notions—I was convinced that I was feverish—wound round and round in my head as I tried, in vain, to recall where I’d been and why I’d been there.

  Why, why, why in the world would I be out in the foothills at night? Nothing I came up with made any sense.

  Caught up in my thoughts, I came close to stepping into a wide crack, but—scant inches from the gap—my guiding light winked out. Shaken from my trance, I stumbled to a halt. I got on my knees, felt forward, found the obstacle, and skirted it.

  When I was safely on the other side of the crack, I stood and the glow brightened. I picked stickers and grit out of my hands, slapped the same from my jeans, and conti
nued on a steady left-handed angle downhill, meandering to navigate the many natural obstacles.

  And then I was standing upon a narrow road. I looked one way and the other, confused and, again, a little anxious.

  Why am I anxious about this road?

  I had no answer, but I crossed over the road and kept moving downhill, the soft glow lighting my footsteps. I came to a waist-high, barbed wire boundary, slid between the strands, and kept to a descending course until I crossed yet another road and arrived at a wide swath of dirt.

  I hobbled, unsure, onto the broad swath. It seemed to stretch forever in either direction, but the most curious part was another fence.

  Its chain-link height stretched far above my head and was topped with nasty-looking razor wire. Through the links I spied the shadow of an identical fence some yards beyond. The fences ran parallel to each other down the smooth swath where they disappeared into the night.

  If these fences are electrified, I’m in deep trouble—not that I’m not already in it clear up to my neck. And even if these fences aren’t electrified? I’m still on the wrong side of them! How on earth do I get through?

  I stretched tentative fingers toward the fence, ready to jerk them back at first contact. My gesture was accompanied by a frenzy of the annoying chittering-buzzing phenomenon. A mere hair’s breadth from the fence, the clamor ceased.

  I swiped my fingers across the fence.

  Not electrified.

  I didn’t know that I’d been holding my breath until I let it out.

  One obstacle down. Now to find the gate in this thing.

  Except there didn’t seem to be a gate—or any way at all through the fences.

  But I just want to go home!

  I was starting to whine, and I detest whining. I made myself take some calming breaths. Then I started walking the fence line. I walked perhaps half a mile, growing more anxious with the passing time.

  No gate.

  I turned back and retraced my steps until I thought I was at my starting point. Then I followed the fence line in the other direction.

  Almost immediately I noticed something across the dirt road, something that seemed sort of familiar: the shadows of a three-boulder formation—a very large rock that was taller than me and, butted up against it, two rocks about half the first one’s size, but one piled atop the other.

  I stared at the rocks, clueless as to why I was drawn to them. I walked over to them and then turned toward the fence.

  You’ve heard of muscle memory? I walked in a straight line from the rocks to the fence. By the glow ahead of my feet I saw that dirt had been recently swirled around the base of a fence post. It took me a minute, but right above the brushed dirt I found a line of severed links in the fence.

  I dug my fingers into the links and pushed the section of cut fence away from me. I shoved it outward until I could crouch and scoot through. On the other side, I pushed the section back into position and, without thought, smoothed the dirt with my hands where the bottom links had scraped it. My hands paused.

  I’ve been here before. I’ve done this before.

  I was elated to recall something—anything!—if only a scrap. But the more I tried to add a “when and why” to the morsel, the harder it became to grasp the tattered threads and pull them together. I sighed and walked toward the second fence. I looked for and found cut links in this fence, too.

  Moments later I was safely outside the fence line and across another road. I started moving downhill. I encountered a road that ran in roughly the same direction I was headed. I didn’t walk on it, but I followed it, keeping it on my left. I kept moving and lost all sense of time as the night grew darker.

  I was slowing down, though. My body ached and I was weak. Growing weaker.

  Was that movement not far ahead? I sucked in my breath and stood stock still. A dark form slunk toward me. I couldn’t make it out but, by its size, it was either coyote or cougar. The predator waited, stock-still, head down, and I caught the gleam of eyes.

  I’m too weak to fight it off. Too weak to run. I shook from illness and fear.

  A wisp drifted by my cheek. I cringed and waved it away—only to jerk at the loud clack that resounded out in front of me. I can’t describe it better. It was a clack. The sound, utterly foreign to the foothills around me, startled the creeping creature, too. It turned tail and loped from view.

  I swallowed with difficulty. I was parched and fear clogged my throat. After gulping air until I calmed, I licked my peeling lips and walked on.

  My pace was slow but determined, fueled by my raging thirst and my longing to be home—home where I could collapse into bed and sleep off the sickness thrumming in my bones. I staggered on unsteady legs, and the glow out in front of my feet kept me—many times—from sprawling over obstacles.

  I stumbled upon another road. This one ran crosswise to my heading. Across the road, yet another fence loomed: one more barrier I so obviously had no business being on this side of.

  What have I been doing?

  I was scared to answer my own question.

  I searched along the fence to my left. I turned back and searched to my right. I was starting to panic again when the ground dropped down into a dry arroyo. I followed the fence line down into the dry gully and found that water had washed the earth out from under the fence. I pushed under it, crawled through the low branches of a scrub piñon tree, and scrambled back onto level ground. I kept moving, more afraid of stopping than of what lay ahead.

  My guiding light flickered and went out. I knew what that meant.

  I stopped and turned in a slow circle. When the glow brightened I was surprised and then relieved to see that I was, at last, standing very close to a manmade trail—a trail relatively free of trip hazards. I stepped onto the trail, turned left toward the lights I’d seen earlier and, with growing confidence, picked up my pace.

  Perhaps fifteen minutes later I spied lights ahead. I hurried toward them and into a parking lot above a residential area. The parking lot, too, looked familiar, and I struggled to “place” it but could not.

  The lot was empty. A sign proclaimed that the open space was closed after 10 p.m. and that hikers were subject to video surveillance. The second statement was worrying.

  What time is it? And where is my car? I couldn’t have set out hiking without first driving here.

  I stumbled down the middle of the street, searching for the familiar outline of my Toyota, but I was near the end of myself. My strength was flagging, my thirst almost unbearable. I trod forward at a sluggish pace, hunting for my car.

  That’s when I realized that the night was not quite as dark as it had been. Weary and hurting, I squinted at a dark shape around the next corner. It was my car, parked along a curb in the shade of an overgrown tree.

  I blinked, stupidly, at my aging Corolla. Why did I park down here, three blocks from the trailhead? Why would I do that? Why can’t I remember?

  I glanced around, feeling paranoid. Is anyone watching me?

  I frowned. But why would they be?

  Maybe because you weren’t supposed to be inside those fences, dimwit?

  Well, yeah. There was that.

  I tried the driver’s door and flinched when it opened with a soft scree and the interior light came on. Compared to the dead quiet of the foothills, the creak of the door could have been a gunshot.

  Gunshot.

  In my spotty memory, something sparked, fizzled, then died. I tried to revive it, but couldn’t.

  I slid into the driver’s seat and slammed the door shut, grateful for my car’s familiar feel and smell. I groped under the seat where I often hooked my keys on the seat’s frame when I went hiking. It was an automatic gesture that was rewarded by the cool, solid feel of metal as my fingers grasped the dangling keys.

  The engine turned over and I pulled away from the curb. A tree limb brushed the roof of my car and I had the strangest déjà vu moment, an almost surreal recollection: That same tree limb brushed th
e top of my car when I parked under these trees, I realized. Like it did just now.

  It was another tickling thread in my spotty memory, but that was all it was. A loose thread.

  Not knowing which direction to take, I switched on my headlights and swung the car into a U-turn and drove. Three turns later I recognized where I was. It would take me a few minutes to get to the freeway, but I felt better already. I knew how to get home from here.

  I took the I-40 exit west at Central and Tramway. From there, what should have been a simple, twenty-minute drive took an hour and a half. I mean, all I longed for in the entire world was to go home, crawl into my own bed, pull the covers over my head, and forget this nightmare.

  Except there was nothing simple about that drive.

  I came close to rolling my car around the Carlisle exit. That close call scared me—but not nearly as much as why I almost wrecked my car.

  I pulled over and onto the shoulder of the interstate then. I had to. I slammed the gearshift into park and sat, sobbing and shaking, for close to an hour.

  You see, it wasn’t fully dark anymore.

  My hand on the rearview mirror shook as I adjusted the glass this way and that way, each adjustment more frantic than the last.

  The mirror reflected my car’s back seat and back window. Nothing out of place.

  Through the rear window I studied my car’s trunk and the shoulder of the highway behind my car. All as it should be.

  And I could see the driver’s seat headrest behind my head. I could see it just fine.

  I touched the reflection in the rearview mirror and stared, bewildered, at what I couldn’t see. I couldn’t see myself. Not any part of me.

  I was standing on the crazy ledge, toes hanging far over it, no saving handhold in sight, the dark bottom a long, distant ways down. It took me a while to talk myself off that ledge.

  It took longer before I could drive on.

  Part 1:

  Into the Tunnels