Going Where It's Dark by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor

Author:Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2016-01-12T05:00:00+00:00

He had to concentrate on getting out, but he couldn’t even pull up a knee. No way in the world he could try to sit up and twist himself around so as to get his legs behind him and start the crawl back again.

Think, he told himself. How far back was that space where he had stood up and climbed over the rock pile? Twenty minutes back? Forty minutes? An hour? How wide was his helmet? Nine inches…ten? Maybe…if he took his helmet off, just for now, he could edge himself sideways….

Just thinking about it made sweat trickle down his face. This was the way cavers died sometimes, getting wedged between rocks. And this was the worst place of all to be trapped because he was at a dead end. Rescuers, if anyone found his note at home, could only come from one direction—behind him. If he couldn’t even bring a leg up past his body—well, perhaps they could drag him off by his feet, but what if his head got stuck?

No, he would have to crawl backward, which would probably take twice as long, and he hoped he wouldn’t miss the arrows he had placed along the way.

His chin scraping the rock beneath him, Buck turned his head in the other direction and, with the hand that was holding the flashlight, took one final look around, as much as he could see beyond his backpack. Definitely a second rock slide here, jamming the passageway in front of him, but he knew for sure that there was more on the other side.

Now, instead of pulling himself forward on his forearms and elbows, he had no choice but to slowly, awkwardly, dig his arms, his hands, into the rock and clay beneath him and push himself backward, dragging his backpack in one hand, flashlight in the other. And rather than focusing on keeping his head and shoulders down to fit in the space before him, he had to concentrate on keeping his bottom low enough with each push that it wouldn’t scrape the roof of the passage.

With no light to guide his way back, his blind feet had to kick out at each side to determine which direction the passage was winding, but a heavy boot could not detect each sharp angle of rock, and now and then in the slow progression, Buck felt a stab on his leg, a prick on his arm, a long scrape against his shoulder. What he did not want to do was to kick off a loose rock and block his way out.

The light was getting dimmer, and he quickly switched off the flashlight. No use studying the way he had come, but he didn’t want to miss any arrows he might have left along the way, either.

STUPID, STUPID, STUPID, David would tell him. Buck used to jokingly call David Mother sometimes, when he worried too much about safety. David even had one of those cheap survival blankets in his backpack that had been there

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