Night Of Knives

Chapter 37

"Lovemore," Veronica croaks. "Look."

He doesn't react.

"Look." She grabs at him clumsily. "Up."

His head slowly turns upward, towards the distant blotch of … not light, exactly, but a different shade of darkness than what they have been moving through for hours.

"What is it?" he asks dully.

"I think it's the outside."

At least the air is clean up here. That has been the only good thing about the climb. Their ascent has been far longer and more gruelling than Veronica expected. Her muscles are near collapse, her toes are covered in blisters, the skin on her hands has been ribboned by sharp rocks. Her blood- and sweat-wet fingers keep skidding away from handholds. This slanted six-foot-square shaft is far more dangerous than the smaller one they descended. Veronica's feet have slipped off footholds once, and Lovemore's twice. All three times they barely avoided tumbling to their deaths, and survival cost them several deep cuts. Her thirst is burning, ravenous, and the pebble she sucks on has ceased to help, the inside of her mouth feels as dry as paper. Lovemore seems in even worse condition. He has almost ceased to engage with the world.

"We're almost there," she promises him. "Just a little farther."

"You go."

"You first." She wants to be below him in case he faints.

He sighs, takes two shivering breaths, then forces himself to resume his upward progress. Veronica climbs behind him. She is only dimly aware of her external pain. It pales next to her all-consuming thirst.

When she looks up next the blotch seems hardly larger. She wants to cry. You can't spare the moisture, she tells herself firmly. Just climb. This will be over soon and you will forget this nightmare ever happened.

Climbing a forty-five degree slope is equally unlike rock climbing and walking erect; it requires locomotion on all fours, like an animal. Veronica tries to climb like a monkey. It actually seems to help a little. When she looks up next the the blotch is noticeably larger, and definitely a paler shade of black than its surroundings. She remembers with something like despair that the exit is probably blocked by a grate, as at the other end of the shaft. If it has been welded in place she doesn't know what they will do. Lovemore certainly doesn't have enough strength to climb back down. Veronica doubts she does either.

Nothing they can do about it now. Above her, Lovemore is moving faster, proximity to the surface seems to have lent him new strength.

"It's open," he grunts when they are only a hundred feet away.

She refuses to believe him, refuses to hope. But it's true. The shaft leads straight into open air. It isn't until they reached the edge that they realize why; the exit is in the middle of a sheer rock wall, directly above a wide river. The moon is clouded but there is enough light to see the boundary where the cliff meets the river twenty feet below. They can hear and smell the rushing water beneath them. Water. She has to hold herself back from simply throwing herself into the river and drinking deep.

"What do we do now?" Lovemore asks.

Veronica thinks a moment. There aren't a whole lot of options.

"We rest, get some strength back," she says. "Then we jump. It doesn't look shallow." She has no idea what shallow water looks like in darkness, but saying it makes her feel better. Than a horrible idea occurs to her. "Wait. Are there crocodiles?"

"No," Lovemore says. "In the Zambezi, the Limpopo, yes. But not here."

She sighs with relief.

"But I cannot swim."