“The Correction” (Part 2) — Episode 5

61 / A New Path

Nehemiah and his companions trudged on silently through a long winding tunnel. He tried to calculate how long they had been underground — several hours at least — and how far they had gone. But he couldn’t get past George Felleck’s head being bashed against the rock, blood spurting out, his body spun about like a rag doll in the whirlpool. He and Saundra had tried to clamber around the protruding rocks surrounding the whirlpool, but there was no footing, and the vicious waves beat them back each time. It was clear: whatever reached the other side would not survive.

Weighed down by grief (not to mention their water-logged gear and wet clothes), they carried on. This time, Templeton led the way, swinging his flashlight from side to side as he walked. He had been the last to look at George’s map and easily found the tunnel that, they hoped, led to the tomb of Alexander LaCroix Schumann. Nehemiah and Cody followed a few yards behind, and Saundra a few yards behind them. More than once, Saundra stopped to listen. Once she thought she heard footsteps, and another time voices. At one point, she felt with certainty they were being watched. But each time she turned around, there was nothing there.

They had been walking for at least an hour when Templeton stopped. “Look at this,” he called back over his shoulder as he took a step forward. “I think we found — “ His words devolved into a shout. His arms flew up, the flashlight in his right hand sending bizarre, jagged shadows across the cave wall behind him. His body pitched forward and vanished out of sight — as though he had been sucked into the earth.

“Templeton!” Nehemiah shouted and ran toward the spot where he had vanished. He skidded to a stop just in time to keep himself from going over the edge. “Whoa, hold it,” he said, extending his arm to block Cody and Saundra who had rushed up behind him.

“What happened to him?” Saundra asked.

Nehemiah flicked on his own flashlight and sent the beam over the edge. They were standing on top of a steep incline made of loose rock and sand. Down there, everything seemed to be cast in an eerie, pale blue glow. He spotted a figure hunched on the ground about sixty yards below them. “Templeton?” he called.

The figure stirred. Grunting and wheezing noises floated up from where he was. “Yeah, I’m fine,” Templeton called back. “That drop-off took me by surprise, is all. Take it slowly.”

Nehemiah, Saundra, and Cody took the slope slowly. They ended up half-sliding down the incline, clouds of dust billowing up in their wake. They landed roughly on the sandy ground below.

Templeton was leaning against a huge boulder.

“You need to rest?” Saundra asked him.

“No. We’re here now,” he said, motioning with one hand to their left.

A few yards away was the source of the pale blue glowing light that Nehemiah had noticed earlier. A wide cavern opened up before them. Stalagmites of varying heights sprouted from the ground, glowing white and pale blue with self-contained light. Stalactites stretched like icy fingers from the high roof of the cavern, crystalline rays softly glowing.

“Wow,” Cody said.

62 / Blue Tomb

The forest of icy fingers was a welcome sight. Even though it was further underground than anywhere they had been so far, it managed to look other-worldly.

Nehemiah, leading the others, walked in silence toward the formation. Templeton hobbled in the rear, still shaken by his fall down the sandy slope. Nehemiah wanted to ask him what came next on the map, but no one wanted to break the spirit of awe that had descended on them. He thought there should be dramatic music for a time like this. But instead, there was silence and the sound of their feet on the hardened earth.

They were in among the stalagmites and stalactites now. Cody came in last, a little away from the others. He looked at a particularly long stalactite for a moment, and then touched its glassine surface. It felt dry and brittle against his skin. He tilted his head back and licked it, pausing for a moment to consider the taste — sandy and rough and weird. Not at all like he’d imagined. He tried to break the end of it off with his hands to take back to show Tonya. But the thousands of years behind the icicle did not bend beneath the boy’s fingers.

Finally, Saundra asked, “Now what? This is the place — the last place on the map.”

Templeton shrugged. “It has to be around here. This place isn’t too big so let’s spread out. Nehemiah and I will go this way. You and Cody go that way. First person to find it shouts. If you reach the end of these things without finding it, go back to the slope and wait for the rest of us.”

Saundra and Cody split off and went to the right, weaving in and out of the forest of glacial stone fingers. Cody wondered if anyone had ever been impaled on a stalagmite before.

“I found something,” Saundra said. They had reached a far wall that rose up and seemed to mark the end of the forest. The blue light was harsher here. Saundra took out her flashlight and flicked it on, aiming the beam at the wall. There seemed to be some kind of writing etched into the stone. Up close, the individual letters appeared to be English, but Saundra couldn’t make out the incoherent scrawl.

“What does it say?” Cody asked.

Just then, a shout came from the other side of the cavern. It seemed farther away than it really was.

“Let’s go,” Saundra said. “They found something.”

What Nehemiah and Templeton had found was a tomb — a gray stone box topped with a lid, about the size it would take to hold an average man.

“Is it the one?” Saundra asked.

Nehemiah nodded, pointing at the single line of text engraved on the side — ALEXANDER LACROIX SCHUMANN, 1742–1789.

“Let’s hope nobody got here before us,” Templeton said. He gripped one corner of the stone lid and started to pull. “A little help, here,” he grunted.

Nehemiah made a lasso out of some rope and tied it around the opposite corner, and started to pull. Cody climbed up on the other side and started to push. Little by little, the lid began to budge sending up shivers of dust, eliciting coughs from the two men and Cody.

“Should… be… it…,” Nehemiah said, grunting as he pulled the lid one last time so that half of it hung off the edge of the ossuary.

“There’s a skull! There’s a real skull in here,” Cody said.

“At least there’s not a smell,” Templeton said. Actually, there was a whole skeleton in there, complete with bits of torn, tattered Revolutionary-era clothing. The man’s arms — or the bones of his arms — were crossed over his chest. Clutched between them was a rectangular leather box. Templeton reached in and tugged it out gently. “We found it,” he whispered. There was a tangled leather string at one end of the box. Templeton began to tug at it slowly.

“Where’s Saundra?” Cody said.

Everyone turned around. “She was just — ,” Nehemiah started to say, and then he heard the distinctive click of a gun.

“Get down!” Nehemiah shouted as he jumped off the tomb edge and reached for his gun. It was stuck in his belt and he had to wrestle it out. When he looked up, Saundra was standing limply a few feet away. Her eyes were closed. She was being held up by a man with a cowboy hat, a short grizzled beard, and a round, boyish face.

63 / Like Lambs to the Slaughter

The serpent soldiers — that’s how Tonya referred to them in her head — marched Titus, Abby, Kamare-Scott, and Tonya up the steps into Hermann’s house. They separated the four of them, one soldier led Abby and Titus into the kitchen and sat them down across from each other at the table where they had eaten lunch a few hours earlier.

“Put the kids over there,” one soldier who seemed to be in charge said. Kamare-Scott and Tonya were led into the living room and made to sit on the floor. Two soldiers went into the kitchen and began talking to Abby and Titus.

“What do you think they’re saying?” Tonya asked quietly.

Kamare-Scott shrugged and looked glum, hating the feeling of being helpless. He perked up momentarily as four soldiers clamored down the stairs and went out the front door. They all carried long, deadly-looking guns and wore hard helmets with visors. They seemed disciplined and efficient, going about whatever it was they were doing with quiet certainty. They bore no insignia that Kamare-Scott recognized. Certainly not U.S. military.

Tonya touched his arm. “Sorry about your bo,” she said. “It seemed very…special.”

“It was. My mom got it for me when she went to Japan,” Kamare-Scott said. “Just before she died. She was going to give it to me on my seventeenth birthday, but she gave it to me sooner. Somehow she knew she wouldn’t be here to give it to me then.”

“Oh,” Tonya said. She studied Kamare-Scott’s face. His afro was significantly flattened from when she had first seen him. But his face was hard, his eyes darting back and forth, probably calculating a way of escape. He couldn’t have been any more than eighteen; the pain of his mother’s death was still fresh. He jerked forward suddenly.

“I need to call Dad. I need to warn him,” he said.

“Umm,” Tonya said, remembering she had a phone in her pocket. She reached for it, but just then one of the soldiers spun around the corner and looked at them. Tonya froze.

The soldier marched over and ordered her to stand. He searched her pockets quietly, found the phone, and took it. Then, he searched Kamare-Scott who only had a bit of paper with writing on it in his pocket.

“Sorry,” Tonya murmured when the soldier turned away to put their things on a table out of reach.

When the soldier turned back around, he was holding plastic cuffs. “Hands,” he said.

Tonya hesitated. Kamare-Scott looked at the cuffs warily, took a deep breath and raised his arms.

At that moment, gunshots rang out outside the house. The soldier forgot all about cuffing them. He turned sharply and rushed back to the door, followed by several of his comrades.

“What’s happening?” Tonya whispered.

“I don’t know, and they don’t know either,” Kamare-Scott said. “Confusion is good. Let’s get Abby and Titus and get out of here.”

He grabbed Tonya’s arm and started pulling her toward the kitchen. But before they could get out of the living room, there was a loud bang — less like a single gunshot — more like a grenade had went off in front of the house.

“Get down!” Tonya cried, her ears ringing from the explosion. The floor shifted beneath them. The front door of the house tore from its hinges and flew back through the hall.