Down the Rabbit Hole
There is no way out. Even though I have acclimated to the stench of decay, the stagnant air has this pit closing in on me. I have no phobia about closed in spaces, but fill them with corpses and no way out... then maybe something will develope.
I focus on the opening above us, looking for a way to climb out. Even though the bottom of this hole tapers in... which saved us from a severe impact, and the sides are covered with growth, there is nothing that will support our weight as we try to make our way to the top. This is proven time and time again by Lou, who is not giving up on the slim chance that he can find that one hand hold that... ooops, there he goes again.
Lou slips to the bottom of the pit, cursing under his breath at the hole, the natives, the heat, and the humidity. He works at it again, making it up about a third of the way before the foliage he is holding pulls out of the side of the pit.
I don't even try. If Lou can't get it to work, then my additional weight will doom any of my attempts.
"Motherfucker." He spits, hands on his hips as he looks at the side of the pit and the various holes in the side where he had worked his way up. He looks over to me, and then to packs.
"We each have line in our packs. Might be enough to make it to the top of this thing."
"And then what? I don't remember any grappling hook in my pack."
"Right... "
He looks around, like he might spot one laying agains the side of the pit or something. Then his eyes settle at our feet and the dead men in khakis.
"We need to check them... they might have something we could use."
"Oh come on, you want to rifle through these guys pockets? Hell, even if James fucking Bond fell in here he wouldn't have a grappling hook."
Lou stops for a moment and thinks... crouching down on his haunches he reaches up and turns his light on full. He is looking at something across the pit that was hidden from view behind the tree when we first fell in. When I talk to him he doesn't answer but stands and walks around the bodies.
"What are you looking at?"
Nothing.
"Lou... what?"
He walks around to the opposite of the pit and reaches down. He pulls aside some pale green vines and reveals a hole about three feet high.
"What is that?" I walk over to him and we both squat down and take a look into the dark passage.
"Maybe it is a vent?" Lou holds a handful of vine to the side and dips his head inside."
"A vent... a volcanic vent?"
"Maybe."
"There isn't a volcano around here, Lou."
"You don't know that."
"Hey... when I've watched the Discovery Channel the only volcano I have heard mentioned along with Brazil is off the coast somewhere."
Lou releases the vines and looks at me, his LED lights blinding me for the moment.
"I don't need a damn geography lesson, Jake. This is either a vent of some kind, or maybe a feed from an underground water source. Something made this pit. Hell, I don't know, it could be the asshole of Brazil. I really don't give a fuck. I'm going to climb on in and see if it gets us out of here."
When I should be at El Corazon drinking a beer and throwing darts, I am in the bottom of a huge pit in the middle of the Amazon. Marlin Perkins here has a knife in his mouth, his LED on high, and his Kimber tucked in the small of his back.
"Pull the Tracker out of my bag and that way you can see where I am going."
"Right."
I have the tracker on and watch Lou disappear down the rabbit hole. For a moment or two it is just me standing there watching the tracker dot blip on the screen give direction and distance. It isn't long before I can feel the ghosts in the hole here with me. It takes all of my concentration to not look over my shoulder at the scatter of corpses and remains to see if they are closing in on me.
The blip moves, but it is scaled in miles. I fiddle with it for a moment and get the scale in yards, then feet. Lou is moving fast and has put a hundred and fifty feet and change between us. He is also turning back toward the area from which we came... I think.
"How is it in there?" I hear no echo, just a cushioned silence returns. I straighten up and watch the blip, turning along with the changing of direction until I am facing the other side of pit, toward the spot where we dropped in. I watch the tracker read more and more distance. The hole definately goes somewhere.
It is a good ten or fifteen minutes before I see the tracking run back in our direction. It stopped adding distance at forty eight hundred and thirty feet... quite a ways. I concentrate on the tracking blip and let the rest of the pit disappear around me. The thought of nearly a mile in this rabbit hole freaks me out just a bit. But to stay in this pit with this Jone's Town reunion isn't much of an option.
"Miss me, Nancy?"
I jump.
Lou pulls himself out of the hole. He is drenched, either with sweat... like me, or with water.
"It's water. This hole winds around back toward the river and comes out under a small waterfall, on what I think is the other side of the river."
I nod.
"Well?"
I am still nodding.
"Grab your shit and let's go."
"Not to sound like a pussy or anything." I give him the chance to chime in, but he is too busy pulling our gear toward the rabbit hole. "But shit like this freaks me out."
"What? I am supposed to risk capture to come back through the jungle... that is if I can even find this fucking hole without falling back in it. No, Jake, you are going in front of me in that hole. Got it?"
He tosses gear at me and I toss it down toward the entrance.
I don't move. "But..."
"You got nothing to worry about. I crawled many a Viet Cong tunnel, Nancy, and there were men with guns and Punji stake pits. This is a cake walk. So shut the fuck up and let's get moving."
With headlamps blazing, we start down the rabbit hole. We have to drag our gear behind us because there is no clearance with it on our backs. It takes twice and long to cover the distance. The air is extremely stale and we both pant at the lack of oxygen.
"Don't stop moving, Jake. I don't think there is enough air in here to keep a match lit."
Near the end of this crawl I feel light headed and have tunnel vision... no pun intended. I can feel Lou literally pushing me and the gear to get us out into the fresh air. It is a timeless scramble to the opening, like trying to make the surface from a sinking ship, only this time we have the stale air from centuries past to coax us along. Once we had made the wide arc around the pit we made a laser straight line toward the waterfall opening. It starts as a pinhole of light beyond the reach of our LEDs, then grows into the hope of fresh air and open spaces.
I shoot out of the hole as if fired from a cannon, powered by my own desire to live and Lou's knowledge of our limited air supply. We splash through the curtain of water and end up on the far bank of the Amazon. Our exhaustion makes us vulnerable to attack, but it doesn't come. We lay there and breath the sweet air for several minutes.
Lou comes back to his senses and turns off his LED, rising to his knees to survey the area. He motions to me to turn off my headlamp and I too get to my knees. Following Lou's lead, I stand and we gather our packs. The sun is still up, but its position lost to the surrounding jungle. On the banks of the Amazon we can see the sky above, but once we step into the jungle the light of day will barely filter through the triple terrace foliage.
But step into the jungle we must. After our breathing has normalized and oxygen replenishes our bodies, the drums beating in the jungle can be heard now over the beating of our hearts and rasping draw of air into our lungs.
The fact that we are not being prodded at the end of a spear means that our pursuers are no longer worried about us. They are in the middle of some type of communication... a ceremony perhaps. We do a weapons check. Lou pulls a small canister out of his pack and dips a finger into the green paste within it. He daps it on his face in spots, then offers the camo paste to me. I follow his lead. After two different cans we blend in with our surroundings from the neck up.
A blood curdling scream makes its way from the heart of the jungle beyond, riding in on the sounds of the drums. Whatever is happening out there it involves hurting someone.
Without a word we start into the dense foliage, trying to make our way with as little noise as possible. Even though we have a machete, we don't use it. We don't want to draw attention to ourselves in any way. We have to make it to the source of those drum beats, to the source of those screams, without being detected.
I focus on the opening above us, looking for a way to climb out. Even though the bottom of this hole tapers in... which saved us from a severe impact, and the sides are covered with growth, there is nothing that will support our weight as we try to make our way to the top. This is proven time and time again by Lou, who is not giving up on the slim chance that he can find that one hand hold that... ooops, there he goes again.
Lou slips to the bottom of the pit, cursing under his breath at the hole, the natives, the heat, and the humidity. He works at it again, making it up about a third of the way before the foliage he is holding pulls out of the side of the pit.
I don't even try. If Lou can't get it to work, then my additional weight will doom any of my attempts.
"Motherfucker." He spits, hands on his hips as he looks at the side of the pit and the various holes in the side where he had worked his way up. He looks over to me, and then to packs.
"We each have line in our packs. Might be enough to make it to the top of this thing."
"And then what? I don't remember any grappling hook in my pack."
"Right... "
He looks around, like he might spot one laying agains the side of the pit or something. Then his eyes settle at our feet and the dead men in khakis.
"We need to check them... they might have something we could use."
"Oh come on, you want to rifle through these guys pockets? Hell, even if James fucking Bond fell in here he wouldn't have a grappling hook."
Lou stops for a moment and thinks... crouching down on his haunches he reaches up and turns his light on full. He is looking at something across the pit that was hidden from view behind the tree when we first fell in. When I talk to him he doesn't answer but stands and walks around the bodies.
"What are you looking at?"
Nothing.
"Lou... what?"
He walks around to the opposite of the pit and reaches down. He pulls aside some pale green vines and reveals a hole about three feet high.
"What is that?" I walk over to him and we both squat down and take a look into the dark passage.
"Maybe it is a vent?" Lou holds a handful of vine to the side and dips his head inside."
"A vent... a volcanic vent?"
"Maybe."
"There isn't a volcano around here, Lou."
"You don't know that."
"Hey... when I've watched the Discovery Channel the only volcano I have heard mentioned along with Brazil is off the coast somewhere."
Lou releases the vines and looks at me, his LED lights blinding me for the moment.
"I don't need a damn geography lesson, Jake. This is either a vent of some kind, or maybe a feed from an underground water source. Something made this pit. Hell, I don't know, it could be the asshole of Brazil. I really don't give a fuck. I'm going to climb on in and see if it gets us out of here."
When I should be at El Corazon drinking a beer and throwing darts, I am in the bottom of a huge pit in the middle of the Amazon. Marlin Perkins here has a knife in his mouth, his LED on high, and his Kimber tucked in the small of his back.
"Pull the Tracker out of my bag and that way you can see where I am going."
"Right."
I have the tracker on and watch Lou disappear down the rabbit hole. For a moment or two it is just me standing there watching the tracker dot blip on the screen give direction and distance. It isn't long before I can feel the ghosts in the hole here with me. It takes all of my concentration to not look over my shoulder at the scatter of corpses and remains to see if they are closing in on me.
The blip moves, but it is scaled in miles. I fiddle with it for a moment and get the scale in yards, then feet. Lou is moving fast and has put a hundred and fifty feet and change between us. He is also turning back toward the area from which we came... I think.
"How is it in there?" I hear no echo, just a cushioned silence returns. I straighten up and watch the blip, turning along with the changing of direction until I am facing the other side of pit, toward the spot where we dropped in. I watch the tracker read more and more distance. The hole definately goes somewhere.
It is a good ten or fifteen minutes before I see the tracking run back in our direction. It stopped adding distance at forty eight hundred and thirty feet... quite a ways. I concentrate on the tracking blip and let the rest of the pit disappear around me. The thought of nearly a mile in this rabbit hole freaks me out just a bit. But to stay in this pit with this Jone's Town reunion isn't much of an option.
"Miss me, Nancy?"
I jump.
Lou pulls himself out of the hole. He is drenched, either with sweat... like me, or with water.
"It's water. This hole winds around back toward the river and comes out under a small waterfall, on what I think is the other side of the river."
I nod.
"Well?"
I am still nodding.
"Grab your shit and let's go."
"Not to sound like a pussy or anything." I give him the chance to chime in, but he is too busy pulling our gear toward the rabbit hole. "But shit like this freaks me out."
"What? I am supposed to risk capture to come back through the jungle... that is if I can even find this fucking hole without falling back in it. No, Jake, you are going in front of me in that hole. Got it?"
He tosses gear at me and I toss it down toward the entrance.
I don't move. "But..."
"You got nothing to worry about. I crawled many a Viet Cong tunnel, Nancy, and there were men with guns and Punji stake pits. This is a cake walk. So shut the fuck up and let's get moving."
With headlamps blazing, we start down the rabbit hole. We have to drag our gear behind us because there is no clearance with it on our backs. It takes twice and long to cover the distance. The air is extremely stale and we both pant at the lack of oxygen.
"Don't stop moving, Jake. I don't think there is enough air in here to keep a match lit."
Near the end of this crawl I feel light headed and have tunnel vision... no pun intended. I can feel Lou literally pushing me and the gear to get us out into the fresh air. It is a timeless scramble to the opening, like trying to make the surface from a sinking ship, only this time we have the stale air from centuries past to coax us along. Once we had made the wide arc around the pit we made a laser straight line toward the waterfall opening. It starts as a pinhole of light beyond the reach of our LEDs, then grows into the hope of fresh air and open spaces.
I shoot out of the hole as if fired from a cannon, powered by my own desire to live and Lou's knowledge of our limited air supply. We splash through the curtain of water and end up on the far bank of the Amazon. Our exhaustion makes us vulnerable to attack, but it doesn't come. We lay there and breath the sweet air for several minutes.
Lou comes back to his senses and turns off his LED, rising to his knees to survey the area. He motions to me to turn off my headlamp and I too get to my knees. Following Lou's lead, I stand and we gather our packs. The sun is still up, but its position lost to the surrounding jungle. On the banks of the Amazon we can see the sky above, but once we step into the jungle the light of day will barely filter through the triple terrace foliage.
But step into the jungle we must. After our breathing has normalized and oxygen replenishes our bodies, the drums beating in the jungle can be heard now over the beating of our hearts and rasping draw of air into our lungs.
The fact that we are not being prodded at the end of a spear means that our pursuers are no longer worried about us. They are in the middle of some type of communication... a ceremony perhaps. We do a weapons check. Lou pulls a small canister out of his pack and dips a finger into the green paste within it. He daps it on his face in spots, then offers the camo paste to me. I follow his lead. After two different cans we blend in with our surroundings from the neck up.
A blood curdling scream makes its way from the heart of the jungle beyond, riding in on the sounds of the drums. Whatever is happening out there it involves hurting someone.
Without a word we start into the dense foliage, trying to make our way with as little noise as possible. Even though we have a machete, we don't use it. We don't want to draw attention to ourselves in any way. We have to make it to the source of those drum beats, to the source of those screams, without being detected.
posted by Jake Allen at 11:12 AM
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