Out of the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page A

the egg sandwiches none of them had thought to buy for him.
    â€œI’m sure it’s this way.” Pete sounded too uncertain for Luke’s comfort. “I’m sure of it. See, I marked the wall right here.”
    He tapped the wall. Luke leaned forward to peer more closely at it. In the light from his flashlight, it was possible to make out what looked like some sort of scratches that might have been the marks Pete claimed he’d left, but after five hours in the dark, Luke wasn’t sure he trusted his eyes. He definitely didn’t trust Pete’s memory.
    â€œShit. Shit, shit.” Jeff slid down with his back against the wall to sit with his knees bent up to his chin. He buried his face in his hands. “Shit.”
    It was the first time he’d spoken in the past hour. Always the most taciturn member of the team, he could also always be the one counted on in a crunch. If he was losing it, Luke thought, they should all be worried. The fist of unease punched him in the throat, leaving him sick. He covered it by swigging from his canteen, but the water tasted gritty and made him cough.
    â€œI left it right here! I swear to Jesus, it was here.” Pete stabbed at the spot on the wall. His headlamp swung wildly, making the shadows dance and turning Luke’s stomach even more. “I left it right there. You can see where it was.”
    â€œHow the hell would it get erased?” Terry honked into his handkerchief again. “We’re the only ones down here!”
    Adam had been lingering a few feet away in the passage they’d just come out of, but now he pushed past Luke to search the wall. He looked hollow-eyed and grim-faced when he turned around. “Someone else is down here. I’ve thought so for about the last hour or two. Someone’s messing with us, guys.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, someone’s messing with us?” Luke took off his helmet long enough to rub his forehead with a bandanna. This cave, like every other he’d ever been in, maintained a steady cool temperature year-round, but they’d been pushing themselves hard to get back to the surface and the exertion had made him sweat.
    â€œJust what I said. I think it’s those bastards from GeoCom.”
    The team had been “lost” for only the past ninety minutes, when one of Pete’s marks had led them in the wrong direction down a corridor they hadn’t explored. Then another. Pete had been the one to notice it when the space got drastically smaller and tighter, leaving room for only one man to get through the tunnel when every other passage they’d been in today had been big enough for at least two of them at a time. All of them had been trained in cave safety, but none of them had been prepared for anything more than the most casual of explorations. They were there to check out the area, take some samples and make a simple map for the survey team that would come later to go deeper, explore more, if it were determined this cave held anything of value.
    â€œHow would they even get down here before us?” Luke asked.
    Terry snorted. “Like I said, if you hadn’t been late—“
    â€œTerry,” Luke said evenly, “shut up. Okay?”
    â€œShh.” Adam whirled, his light sending white flashes across the blackness. “Listen. You hear that?”
    Luke hadn’t heard anything but Terry’s disgusting snot-blowing, but Jeff got to his feet to face the dark corridor they’d all come out of fifteen minutes ago. “I heard it. Shit, Adam. You sure it’s GeoCom?”
    â€œWho else would it be?”
    â€œMaybe not who,” Jeff said, voice quivering. “Maybe…what.”
    That busted the rest of them up into guffaws, even Pete, who could be notoriously without a sense of humor.
    â€œC’mon, Jeff. We’re no more than forty, maybe even thirty, feet under the surface, and I guarantee you once we figure