First Chapter to my first Book in a series

No – I am not publishing the entire book for free, I am just putting it out for folks to see some of the beginning material.

Chapter 1

Destination Unknown

 
Ryan Riverton shuffled through his bedroom, gathering up clothes and stuffing them into his suitcase. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so excited. Today, his family would leave for their first summer vacation in years. Two whole months away! he thought, plopping down atop his stuffed suitcase and struggling with the zipper.
“Everyone get ready!” Dad yelled from downstairs. “And I mean now! We have a plane to catch.”
Ryan’s heart leapt as he finally managed to pull the zipper shut. He wrenched his suitcase from the bed, making his way for the hall. Being that he was a rather lanky fourteen-year-old, he struggled mightily with the weight of what he carried, heaping it clumsily onto his waist as he trudged one step at a time down the stairs.
Dad, an imposing six-foot-six with twinkling blue eyes and a dash of thick, unruly dark hair, met him halfway down the staircase. “Let me help you with that.” With a warm but harried smile, Dad took the suitcase and effortlessly carried it the rest of the way down. “Go find your brother and see that he gets his stuff to the car,” he called back over his shoulder.
“I think he’s in the garage,” Ryan said, bounding past his father and through the living room. There’s no way I’m missing this vacation for that slacker, he thought. This vacation had been a long time coming, after all. Dad was an engineer for a major manufacturing company, the kind of hard worker who rarely took time off during the summer. By now, he had saved up a full eight weeks and had decided that it was time he used them. Ryan felt practically giddy as he thought about how wonderful it would be to enjoy nearly a full summer away.
“Tell your brother his suitcase is ready,” Mom said as Ryan passed her by. “And hurry, we’re going to be late.”
Mom, brown haired, slender, but a little on the short side, sounded somewhat less enthusiastic than Ryan felt. Ryan could guess why. No one but Dad knew exactly where they would be heading on this vacation. Dad always was one for surprises. No matter how often anyone in the family pressed him about the destination, he would merely wink and say that it was “Top Secret.” Ryan loved the rush of not knowing, but it only seemed to frustrate his mother.
Mom had good reason to be leery, he supposed. The last family vacation hadn’t exactly been her cup of tea. It had been four years ago, but the memories still felt close to Ryan as he trotted through the kitchen toward the door leading out to the garage. They had spent two weeks exploring Japanese ruins and learning about samurai sword making. Ryan and his brother, Aaron, had been in heaven, given that both of them had been involved in martial arts almost since the day they could walk. Mom, on the other hand, had found the trip rather underwhelming. She had made it clear to anyone who would listen that she would have much preferred to remain in the United States, maybe passing the time away at a pleasant resort.
But for this year’s trip, Dad had promised no passports would be needed. Ryan reasoned that they couldn’t be traveling too far away, given that Dad had granted the okay to bring Silver, the family cat, along with them. Even so, Ryan could hardly contain his excitement as he poked his head into the garage, where he found his brother rummaging through the shelves in front of the car.
“Mom says your suitcase is upstairs.”
Aaron, a diminutive but athletic twelve-year-old, rolled his blue eyes and groaned. “I’ll get it in a minute.”
“What are you doing, anyway?” Ryan said, his anxiety rising as his brother clanked and rummaged through the cabinets beneath the shelves.
“Trying to find clues,” Aaron said, scoffing as if it should have been obvious.
“Clues to what?”
Aaron stopped what he was doing, looking blankly at his older brother. “To where we’re going.” He got back to rummaging. “Dad’s been planning this trip for months. He has to have left clues around here somewhere.”
Ryan grumbled, wishing his brother would just hurry up and get his suitcase like he was told. “Anything Dad was hiding is probably with him now. Either that or he’s just always kept it in his head.”
“How can you be so sure?” Aaron said, scowling.
Ryan stared sheepishly at his feet. “Because I looked in there yesterday. Couldn’t find anything.”
Growling with frustration, Aaron finally stood and made his way back into the house. At that moment, Dad strode into the garage, bearing Ryan’s suitcase. He dropped it into the trunk with the others.
“Your brother’s getting his?” he asked.
Ryan nodded.
“Well then, could you come help me shut down the smithy?”
A little hesitantly, Ryan followed his father out of the garage and toward the shed that had become Dad’s workshop. Recently, dad had purchased and installed a blast furnace, converting the workshop into what he called his “smithy.” Ryan had always thought his father was a little nutty when it came to working with that smithy. Sure, Ryan had enjoyed learning about the history of metal smithing, but after having spent countless hours banging away on the anvil and working with red-hot metal, it was definitely not one of his favorite things to do. He’d always struggled with getting the metal to the right temperature. Then he would get frustrated whenever he accidentally ruined something he’d spent hours working on.
Dad passed through the door to the smithy with Ryan following tentatively behind. Once inside, Ryan looked immediately to the chisel hanging on the wall above the small black furnace. Aaron had made that chisel on his first try at smithing, and so it always served as a reminder to how annoyed Ryan felt about this whole enterprise. While Ryan always struggled mightily to form what he intended to make, his little brother had gotten that chisel perfect on his first try. In fact, everything Aaron made turned out well, while Ryan usually ended up with a pile of malformed junk.
“There,” Dad said, sliding the furnace closed. “That should do it. Thanks for your help.”
Ryan rolled his eyes playfully, knowing he hadn’t helped at all. He could sense that his father, wise as he was, had simply wanted to involve him in something that would take his mind off the anxiety he felt about being late. Unfortunately, it hadn’t worked. Ryan felt more anxious now than ever.
“Why is he always the last one to be ready?” he asked his father.
Dad laughed heartily, tussling Ryan’s hair and then heading back toward the garage.
Ryan followed, careful to lock up the shed behind him.
“Aaron!” he heard his mother call from inside. “Stop dragging your suitcase all over the house. Pick it up or ask for help.”
Despite the reprimand, Ryan could hear from the garage the sound of his brother dragging his suitcase down the stairs with a resounding thump…thump…thump.
Once everyone had finally assembled in the garage, Mom addressed them hurriedly, running through one of her famous last-minute checklists.
“You have everything you need?” she asked.
Three heads nodded.
“Ryan, you remembered to pack your toothbrush?”
“Yes, Mom,” Ryan said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and back again.
“And we have the cat?”
Aaron groaned. “Yes.”
“And all the lights are off?”
Throwing his hands up, Ryan stalked around the car and plopped into the backseat. By now, he figured if he didn’t get things going himself, they would never make it out of this garage in time. He couldn’t blame his mother for the way she liked to be so thorough. She was a schoolteacher, after all, and had basically run her life in a highly regimented, organized manner. But when time was of the essence, checklists were little more than frustrating.
Taking Ryan’s lead, the rest of the family piled into the car.
“I can’t believe the only thing you’re telling us about where we’re going is that it’s ‘warm and wet,’” Mom said.
Dad grinned like a child, flashing another trademark wink back at Ryan and Aaron.
“Well, I don’t think it’s funny, Jared,” Mom insisted.
Without further word, Dad backed slowly out of the garage. Ryan felt overjoyed to be finally away.

~~~

At the airport, the family hustled through the chaos of the crowds and security checks. Silver meowed in protest whenever he was jostled in his carrier, so Dad took him from Ryan and held him above the banging of the crowd as they made their way toward their departure gate. Just before they reached the gate, Dad handed everyone their boarding passes. Finally, they would be allowed to see where they would be heading.
“Arizona?” Ryan said, his curiosity piqued. “What are we going to do in Arizona?”
Dad winked. “You’ll see.”

~~~

At the car-rental counter in the Tucson airport, Dad arranged to rent a large SUV, and so it was in this SUV that the Rivertons trundled toward their ultimate destination. As they made their way southeast through the scenic landscapes of southern Arizona, Ryan watched his mom check the weather forecast on her phone.
“Ugh!” she grumbled. “I swear, Jared, I don’t know what you were thinking…sending us to Arizona in the summer. It’s supposed to be over a hundred and ten degrees today. We’re going to melt!”
Ryan couldn’t help but nod in agreement. He had grown up in the cool climate of the Pacific Northwest, after all. He couldn’t imagine what one hundred and ten degrees would feel like. Dad looked a bit crestfallen, as if he had suddenly come to realize that nobody else in the family was as excited about this trip as he.
Perhaps sensing her husband’s remorse, Mom put on a smile. “I’m sure we’ll have a good time as long as we’re together,” she said, sounding as if she was trying to convince herself as much as anyone else.
Ryan gazed out the window at the vast expanse of the Sonoran Desert all around. The only signs of life he recognized were the occasional prickly plants that resembled creosote bushes, and the easily identifiable saguaro cacti that towered over the desert floor.
“Um…Dad,” Aaron said. “Is there going to be shampoo where we’re going?”
Dad perked up again. “We’re going camping. So, no, there won’t be any shampoo.” He turned to Mom, smiling. “There won’t be any room service or electricity, either.”
“Oh.” Mom sighed. “This should be an exciting new experience.”
After nearly two hours of driving, the family arrived at a ramshackle lodge next to a river. The large sign outside the lodge read “Canoes for Rent.” Dad got out of the car and entered the lodge.
Ryan, meanwhile, made straight for the river. “Maybe Dad knows of a secret fishing hole,” he said to his brother, “and we’ll have to canoe down the river to find it.”
Aaron, Ryan knew, had never been in a canoe, so the look on his face was one of trepidation. “Do you think Silver will freak out on the water?”
Shrugging, Ryan went back to the SUV and let Silver out of his travel carrier. With his gray and black stripes, the cat tended to blend into the shadows wherever he went. As the cat surveyed his new surroundings, he slinked between Ryan’s legs and pounced on a grasshopper near the river’s edge.
“There’s your answer,” Ryan said. “Silver will be fine with the river. He’ll have lots to distract him.”
Silver followed the grasshopper as it leapt from shore to a floating log. The moment the cat landed, the log rolled and dunked him into the river. The boys cackled as the cat came up yowling and wet.
Less than a minute later, Dad returned from the lodge, carrying one armload of backpacks and another armload of life jackets for everyone.
“Aw, do we have to wear those?” Aaron whined.
With a stern nod, Dad handed a backpack and life jacket to each member of his family. When Ryan received his, he put on his life jacket dutifully, then slung his backpack over his shoulder.
“All right, folks,” Dad said, once he had finished passing out the supplies. “Time to get ready. I’ve rented some lockers for most of our stuff.” He motioned toward the shore. “We have two canoes. Ryan, since you’ve been in a canoe before, you take the first one with your mother and that soaking wet fur ball of a cat.”
Aaron giggled.
“I’ll go in the other canoe with Aaron.”
As the family prepared their pair of canoes, Ryan cracked a smile. “If we get too hot, we can always flip the canoes.”
“Don’t you dare,” Mom said, her eyes running wide as she stepped into the canoe and allowed her son to launch it from shore.
When Ryan took his seat in the back of the canoe, he couldn’t help but laugh at how his mother seemed uncertain where to put her hands on her paddle.
“Race you guys to the turn in the river up ahead,” Dad announced as he and Aaron launched and immediately took the lead.
Ryan watched them pull ahead at an alarming pace. But then, once they had gotten about a canoe’s length downriver, their canoe began to veer left, then right, then left again. In their vigor to win the race, they weren’t keeping pace with each other.
“Mom!” Ryan whispered conspiratorially to his mother. “When I say ‘stroke,’ put the paddle in and stroke as hard as you can. But only do it once. That way, we can keep the same pace and stay on a straight line.”
Mom nodded and gripped her paddle.
“Stroke…stroke…stroke…,” Ryan started to chant.
Ryan and his mother kept a steady pace, carving a much straighter line down the river. Quickly, they passed Dad and Aaron. By the time they reached the next bend in the river, Ryan and his mom had gained such a lead that they could stop to turn around and look back. Dad seemed to be struggling, the sweat pouring off his brow as he paddled. Aaron had worked himself so hard so early in the race that it looked as if he could hardly lift the paddle anymore.
Ryan lifted his paddle and cheered. His mom turned around, and smiling brightly, gave him a high five.
“Remember what I told you about the tortoise and the hare, Aaron?” Dad said sheepishly as they finally came up alongside. “Just because you can do something quickly doesn’t mean it’s really faster.”

~~~

Ryan wiped the beads of sweat from his forehead, hoping for a breeze to offset the sun’s scorching heat. As his canoe snaked down the river, propelled by the slow current, Ryan looked up to see a huge brown cliff climbing into the sky ahead. As the two canoes neared the cliff, Ryan noticed that a large section of the otherwise barren rock sprouted with a forest of greenery near the waterline.
“Okay, guys,” Dad announced. “Everyone dig into your backpack. You should find a headlamp in there.” He pointed toward the cliff. “I had us race here because if you look toward that cliff where the river turns, there’s a cave system. We’re going to explore a bit of history.”
Aaron was awed. Ryan smiled. Mom shook her head incredulously.
“The natives of this area,” Dad said, “natives who lived here for thousands of years, mind you—claim that this is where they went to commune with the spirits. If you believe their stories, they say that the veil between the worlds is thinnest here. I am not sure what that really means, but I expect us to find lots of very interesting petroglyphs.” He turned to wink at Ryan. “We might even find a spirit or two if we’re lucky.”
“Uh, Dad, what’s a petroglyph?” Ryan asked as they guided their canoes toward the shore beneath the cliff.
“A petroglyph is a carving or painting on the stone,” Dad replied. “The natives used them to tell stories or communicate ideas. Typically, paintings like these would depict a person’s daily life. If we’re lucky, we might find some that are really old.”
“How will we know if they’re really old?” Aaron asked.
“Native Americans have been on this continent since the last ice age at least,” Dad said. “We might stumble into carvings that show extinct animals, for instance. If you see any pictures that look like mammoths or tigers, that means the carving is very, very old.”
Moving slower now, the Rivertons paddled closer to the cliff. The closer they got, the clearer it became to Ryan that they would be able to paddle their canoes directly into the cave. Dad paddled ahead and led the way through, pulling back the canopy of hanging vines covering the cave’s mouth.
As Ryan’s canoe moved between the leaves, Mom swatted a vine that grazed her face. “Jared!” she hollered. “You just led us through a bunch of poison ivy! Kids, don’t touch your eyes, mouth, or anything.”
Aaron started to whimper a bit. “I think my feet are itching.”
“You have shoes on, Aaron,” Mom said. “If your feet itch, it’s all in your head. The only thing that could itch right now is anything you don’t have covered in clothing.”
“My arm itches,” Aaron whined.
“Then dunk it in the water,” Mom said.
Ryan began to laugh, imagining his brother covered in red, itchy splotches.
“In fact,” Mom added, “it might be a good idea to find a place to park our canoes so we can all take a dip in the water. Might help. A quick swim would be nice anyway, Jared.”
A spot on Ryan’s knee suddenly felt as if it needed scratching. He did what he could to distract himself from the urge, scanning the walls of the cave for a place where they might moor their canoes. He found it in a bank of sand up ahead and to the right. “Dad, are we camping in these caves? If so, that might be the perfect spot up there.”
“I couldn’t agree more,” Dad said. “In fact, since it looks like there’s plenty of driftwood scattered around here, I’ll gather it up and make a fire for us.”
“Why would we need a fire in this heat?” Mom asked.
“To dry our clothes,” Dad said simply.
“Why would we need to do that?”
Aaron and Dad’s canoe reached the shoreline. Dad immediately popped up and began to pull its nose onto the sand. “Because if we want to make sure we wash off all that poison ivy, we’ll need to swim in our clothes.”
Mom groaned. Ryan and Aaron chuckled.

~~~

The fire crackled merrily as Ryan lay next to the flames and tried to dry off along with his clothes. He noticed Silver sitting back on his haunches with what he imagined to be an amused look. The cat was now fluffy and dry while his human companions were all soaking wet.
After taking inventory of her backpack, Mom glared at Dad. “You didn’t pack any hairbrushes?”
Dad sighed. “Aubrey, I promise you that the next phase of this will be much more to your liking. For now, nobody can see us. I wouldn’t worry about your hair. It looks fine.”
Mom huffed with frustration as she dug around a bit in the front pocket of her wet pants. She seemed pleasantly surprised to find a folded silk bandanna within. Ryan watched his mother tie her hair back out of the way, then survey their surroundings. They sat about fifty feet from the vine-covered entrance.
“How much farther back do these caves go?” Mom asked.
“I have a map in my backpack,” Dad said, “but it looked like several miles. I figure we’ll spend a day or so in this cave. Then we’ll return the canoes and move on to our next stop.”
When Ryan’s parents shared a silent stare, he could sense that his mother wasn’t pleased with the prospect of spending more than a day in this dank enclosure.
“Come on, boys,” Dad called, breaking the tension. “Let’s try some hand fishing in the stream. I’m sure there’ll be something to catch.”
Silver woke at the mention of fish. Ryan laughed at how eager the cat looked about the plan.
In his backpack, Ryan found fishing line, weights, hooks, and bobbers designed for fishing with a handline. When he had gathered his supplies, he sat cross-legged in the sand and began to assemble them. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Aaron doing the same.
Just as Ryan managed to thread a weight over his line, a deep rumbling reverberated through the cave. He stopped what he was doing and looked wide-eyed to his father. For the first time he could ever remember, Dad looked genuinely scared.
Dread rising within him, Ryan waited for a moment to see whether the rumbling would continue. When a minute passed without further sound, he finally took a breath and got back to threading his line. But by now, his hands shook so much, he could hardly get the bobber to hold in place.
Then, all at once, the rumble returned—this time louder and deeper than before. The earth began to shake. The walls of the cave echoed and cracked. Waves formed on the water. Large clouds of dust blew forth from the depths of the cave. Rocks tumbled down from above, crashing and rollicking in all directions. The Riverton family fell to the floor of the cave, huddling together as the world collapsed around them.