Escape From Convict Cave

By Mark J. Handwerker

On a cave exploration with their Uncle Ned, Danny and Donna Davenport find more excitement than they bargained for. More dangerous than the deep caverns and sharp jagged rocks, tight suffocating crawl spaces, and bats flying free in the darkness, the twins encounter a host of unsavory, freakish characters. To save their lives, they must make an impossible ESCAPE FROM CONVICT CAVE.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mark J. Handwerker
• Release date: Jul 1, 2011
• ISBN: 9781452466774

Mark J. Handwerker

Dr. Mark J. Handwerker loves to blow up stuff! As a science teacher for more than 25 years, he has enjoyed revealing the secrets of nature to his students by repeating experiments done by the greatest scientists of the past in his classroom. He is the author of eight science texts, and has mentored dozens of educators in "the art of teaching science." He is also an author of science fiction and hopes to share those works with young readers everywhere. Since the days of the first great science fiction author, Jules Verne, science fiction writers have not only given the general reading audience decades of entertainment, they have succeeded in inspiring professional scientists to make the impossible possible. Dr. Handwerker believes that nothing is impossible.

Book preview

Escape From Convict Cave

by

Mark J. Handwerker

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Copyright 2010 Mark J. Handwerker

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be given away or resold to others. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase a copy for them. If you are reading this ebook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for you for your private use, then please go to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. The author sincerely appreciates your honest regard for the hard work that went into writing this novel.

Chapter One

Danny Davenport stepped back from the exhaust and listened to his sister cough and curse.

Phew! That stuff stinks! According to her, thought Danny, the whole world stinks. Donna waved black smoke away from her nose as the bus grumbled off with a choking sputter. They stood alone in the middle of a dirt road, the small town surrounding them no more than large boxes made of sticks of splintered wood.

Donna lugged her suitcase to the rotting wooden planks that were a sorry excuse for a sidewalk, and plopped it down with a thunk. Boy, that thing is heavy. She complained.

Danny lifted his duffle bag and followed her to the sidewalk. He set the bag down and grabbed a handkerchief from the pocket of his jeans. He cleaned his sunglasses and looked up the road out of town. He should be here any minute. Shouldn’t he? He asked, anxiously.

Donna made a gagging sound, still clearing her throat from the dust kicked up by that horrid bus. She was making more of the disgusting fumes than she had to. But that was Donna: moaning and groaning over every little annoyance.

There was no sign of Ned’s jeep anywhere. Danny plopped onto a paint-peeled wooden bench in front of the open door to the small grocery store. He recognized the store from last summer’s visit as he did the whole tiny town of Emoryville.

The place wasn’t much for size or population, but it made up thought for it in green mountain scenery and -- now that the bus was gone -- fresh, cool pine-scented air.

Emoryville -- population fifty-nine -- always made Danny feel as if he were back in the time of Mountain Men. Any minute he expected a couple of bear skinned fur trappers to come tramping out of the trees in their coonskin caps, carrying flintlocks and furry rolls of beaver pelts. The small town was far inland, north of Eureka across the border from California. There were three small stores on Main Street: the grocery store, the hardware store, and, on the other side of the road, the gas station. Distant cabins spotted the hills, each a mile or more from its neighbor. It would take that old bus nearly an hour to get back to the main highway.

What a trip! Danny huffed. The best part of the whole boring journey was getting a few camera shots of the Federal Penitentiary before turning off the main road. Danny wondered if some of the criminals Uncle Ned helped to put behind bars were serving time there. He couldn’t wait for his uncle to tell him about his most recent court cases. He was a prosecuting attorney for Los Angeles County and had gotten more than a dozen dangerous criminals locked up in the pen!

Why isn’t he here? Danny asked, disappointed. He was anxious for Ned to see how much he’d grown since Thanksgiving. Danny wasn’t a kid anymore. He was almost as tall as Donna, his fraternal twin. He was almost thirteen.

Since their father died of a heart attack two years ago, they really liked coming to visit Uncle Ned’s summer retreat. It was as close as he’d ever feel to having Dad back again.

Ned had become real special. Even though the twins saw him only two or three times a year, each time they had more fun than the last. Mom wouldn’t be up until the end of the week. At the last minute, she’d been rescheduled to work at the hospital for the next four days. She promised she’d be up as soon as she could. Being a nurse, she worked weird shifts. Sometimes the twins didn’t see her for days, hearing her come home in the middle of the night, exhausted, practically dead on her feet. But they were mature enough to take care of themselves. They cooked, cleaned, and made sure their schoolwork was done before spending the rest of the evening on the phone with friends.

You know Uncle Ned. Donna lifted her suitcase and set it on the bench under the window of the grocery store. He probably got buried in one of his law books and forgot what time it was.

Danny looked through the window of the grocery store and saw an old man standing behind the counter. The stranger stared at them suspiciously, glaring at Danny as though he and Donna had come from another planet. Danny turned away avoiding the man’s probing eyes. The old man coughed, pretending to clear his throat as he squinted through a pair of thick bifocals.

He should be here by now. Danny looked up the road again.

Stop whining. Donna snarled. You’re worse than Mom.

Danny ignored the comment, realizing that Donna was still upset.

She’d had another argument with Mom last night. Donna had raised her voice at their mother for coddling Danny too much. Mom sent her to her room and started fussing over him again, worried that if she didn’t give him a lot of attention he might turn into a juvenile delinquent or something. She was always moaning over the fact that Danny didn’t have a … good male role model around all the time.

Danny wouldn’t admit it to Donna, of course, but he did wish that Mom would lighten up. She was still treating him like he was nine-and-a-half and, after all, he was hardly five minutes younger than Donna -- a fact his big sister rarely let him forget.

Since they weren’t identical twins, they didn’t look exactly alike. Donna was about two inches taller. She had reddish hair like their Mom and freckles decorating her nose and cheeks. Danny had light brown hair like Dad and Uncle Ned. He was definitely from the men’s side of the family.

Donna dusted off her flannel shirt and jeans, and reached down, grumbling, to tie a loose sneaker lace.

Both of them were dressed for action. The kind of action and excitement Uncle Ned always treated them to when they came to visit.

In addition to his jaw-dropping tales of the criminals he encountered in his job, he was an avid spelunker. Danny loved that word. All it meant was someone who liked to explore caves, but Danny liked the way people wrinkled their nose when he told them about their uncle’s favorite sport. Ned loved to go caving. And that was the part of their vacation Danny enjoyed most.

Spelunking was similar to mountain climbing, but it was a lot more mysterious and exciting. Danny got goose pimples at the thought of hiking, crawling, and climbing into dark crevices and slippery underground caverns. He liked the idea of going where ancient Indians had once sought shelter from the bears and wolves, primitive ages ago.

On the bus, Donna complained she didn’t want to go with them this time, but Danny explained that she’d have to. Safety demanded that there be at least three explorers to a caving party in the event someone got hurt. One person had to stay with the injured explorer while the third went back for help. Four cavers made for an even safer party, since two people could go back for help, leaving no one alone in the caves at any time. Last summer, they’d hiked several easy underground trails. But, Danny hoped Uncle Ned would take them into some of the darker, tighter crawl spaces this year. We’re not kids anymore, thought Danny. He was sure he could handle just about anything! He was looking forward to a fantastic two-week vacation. Even Donna wouldn’t ruin the fun this time.

Without Mom around, Uncle Ned would let them stay up late: practically until dawn if they wanted. They’d be able to take short hikes on their own into the wilderness -- as long as they took along a watch and a compass and promised to follow the usual safety rules. Ned trusted them a lot more than Mom did. Their Dad had once told the twins that Ned was the more adventurous of the two brothers. He joked that Ned, despite being a responsible lawyer, was … really just a kid in a grown-ups body.

Danny took off his denim jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his sweatshirt. It was a warm day, a mild mountain breeze keeping it from getting really hot. With his mouth still tasting of bus exhaust, Danny decided he needed a soda and a snack to munch.

Before they left San Francisco, he’d dumped a load of change from the top drawer of his dresser into his pocket. He dragged out a handful of quarters and counted out more than two bucks in coins. You want anything? He asked his sister as she wiped beads of perspiration off her forehead with a hanky.

Uncle Ned is going to be here any second, Dork Dome. He might have prepared lunch for us already.

Right. Danny laughed. "You said yourself he’s probably buried in