Sub-Sahara

by Ethan Arkwright

  Mike Baker rigged a winch system to lower it all to the bottom of the shaft. They worked feverishly for four hours without a break.

  ‘God, give us a break, Rebecca,’ Phil Cranmer called out as they were passing along the last of the provisions. ‘We’ll die of exhaustion before we get into the hole!’

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ Rebecca yelled backed tetchily from the edge of the well. ‘Just bloody keep going.’

  ‘Still not sure this is the best idea,’ the person next to Phil muttered.

  ‘I’m sure Rebecca knows what she’s doing,’ Tina said, her voice wavering with nerves.

  ‘Well, I need a break,’ Phil said. ‘I’m dripping with sweat here.’

  Phil moved out of the line and made to walk to the nearest chair but stopped in his tracks. ‘What the hell is that?’ he said, pointing at the horizon.

  Out in the distance, the horizon was starting to darken.

  Phil forgot his tiredness and ran to a nearby table to pick up a pair of binoculars.

  ‘Shit!’ he yelled as he focussed through them. ‘It’s the storm!’

  Everybody in the line jumped as though an electric current had passed through each of them. Phil ran back and rejoined the frenzied passing of stores into the well.

  ‘Can you feel that? The wind on your face?’ Mike said to Rebecca at the top of the line.

  ‘Yes,’ Rebecca said. ‘I can feel the first wisps of it. That’s not normal wind.’

  She looked down the line. ‘Everybody stop, we’re out of time! Climb into the well now.’

  ‘We don’t have enough provisions,’ someone yelled.

  ‘Fine. Stay out here then!’ Rebecca yelled back. ‘If we don’t get into the well now, we won’t have time to seal it.’

  She swung her leg over the lip of the well and started climbing down.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Mike called after her.

  ‘Emphasising the point,’ she said as she descended the ladder. ‘The time for debate is over. Get them to come down the ladder two at a time. I’ll help them at the bottom. Once they’re all down, I’ll climb back up to help you seal it.’

  ‘Okay,’ Mike said. He watched Rebecca’s form receding into the darkness. ‘Thought it was everyone for themselves for a second, there,’ he muttered under his breath. He looked around and saw the rest of the group running towards him. ‘Easy,’ he said, holding his hands up to calm them down.

  ‘Form into groups of two. That’s how we’ll get down on the ladder-and-harness system.’

  Chapter 3

  Once everyone was safely down at the bottom of the well, Rebecca climbed back out with Dave Harper. Mike grinned broadly in the strong wind as they climbed back over the edge of the well.

  ‘Thought you guys had left me,’ he said.

  Dave smiled back. ‘And miss the chance to give you grief while we’re buried alive? No way.’

  ‘You guys get mixing the quick-dry concrete. I need to get something,’ Rebecca said, running of in the direction of her tent.

  Both men looked at each other quizzically.

  ‘Forget about it,’ Dave said, looking at the mass of broiling dark cloud descending on them. ‘We need to mix this stuff up quick.’

  They set to work. Within ten minutes, the concrete to create the sealing cap was ready. As they began preparing to roll the capstone over and apply the concrete, Rebecca ran back from her tent with something in her hand.

  ‘Dave, this is the webcam and satellite transmitter that beams daily progress on the site back to our bases. Let’s embed it in the concrete. It sends snapshots in ten-second intervals. I don’t know how long it will transmit for, but it may be useful for somebody somewhere to get an eye in the storm.’

  ‘Sure. What the hell,’ Dave said, taking it from her. ‘I can wave goodbye to my wife before I get in. Now you’d better get in there, Rebecca. The wind is really picking up now, and the sand is starting to fly. We’ll need everyone in within the next five minutes. I’ll come in last to get the capstone across and finish sealing from the inside.’

  Rebecca nodded as she blinked rapidly from sand stinging her face and eyes. She climbed back into the well.

  Half an hour later, ten people were huddled at the bottom of the shaft, their faces eerily illuminated by glowing Cyalume sticks scattered on the floor. They had torches as well, but all agreed to conserve the batteries, as they had no idea how long they would be in there.

  ‘Now what?’ someone asked in the semi-darkness.

  ‘Get as comfortable as you can,’ Rebecca replied, sitting down against the wall of the large well. ‘And pray that the concrete seal and walls at the top hold out.’

  ‘Shouldn’t we go down to the next level?’ Mike said.

  ‘No,’ Rebecca said. ‘We don’t have all the right equipment.’

  Outside, they could hear the noise of the storm intensifying.

  ‘We may as well. Beats just sitting around here for a day,’ Mike said.

  Rebecca turned her torch on and focussed the beam on Mike’s face. ‘Listen,’ she said, ‘I’m not having ten people stamp around hurriedly through a new site.’

  The torch clicked off again.

  ‘Wow, listen to that noise,’ someone said in the gloom. ‘Sounds like a jet engine winding up out there.’

  ‘It’s getting louder by the minute,’ Mike said. ‘We should at least prepare—’

  ‘Mike,’ Rebecca said. ‘I’m not—’

  ‘Whoa! Something just landed next to me!’ someone said. All the torches came on and flooded Bob Morris with light. ‘It’s a piece of mortar from above.’

  Tina Hagley burst into tears.

  ‘That’s hardly going to help, is it, Tina?’ Rebecca said. ‘Get it together.’

  There was a loud cracking sound from above, and a sliver of light appeared at the top of the shaft, quickly followed by another. Faces filled with fear looked into darkness above as beams of light slowly punctured it. Half of the group jerked their heads downwards in an involuntary reaction.

  ‘Something hit my eye,’ Phil said.

  ‘It’s sand,’ Mike said. ‘The seal’s not holding. The sand is coming in.’

  ***

  The storm and the wind were something to behold. The amount of sand being moved was colossal. In four different universities and research institutions around the globe, fascinated scientists, meteorologists, and colleagues of the people trapped in the Sahara were transfixed at monitors that loaded up the pictures sent from the camera at the top of the well.

  Nobody was sure that the well would hold or even be found again if it was buried deep under newly formed dunes. With the force of the wind still in effect, some wondered if there would even be any sand left in the region. As the hours progressed and the storm reached its peak, the pictures became intermittent.

  A new picture started coming through. It was as hazy as the others were, made grainy by the amount of sand being shifted in the air. This picture was different, though. Grey blocks were starting to be discernible in the distance. At the screen being watched at Oxford University in England, someone asked, ‘Are those…buildings? ’

  Chapter 4

  The sand fell on the trapped archaeologists like fine rain. Beams of torchlight were playing all around the enclosed space. The light dimmed slightly as sand began to cover the Cyalume sticks on the floor.

  Rebecca could smell the rising fear in the room. She could see panic in the ghostly faces as torchlight swept over them.

  ‘Now, Rebecca,’ Mike said. ‘We need to move now. We’ll die up here.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Rebecca said. ‘Fix the rope ladder so we can get everybody down and pass the equipment down. I’ll go down first.’

  Mike and Phil moved quickly, unfurling the ladder into the hole and dropping a few Cyalume sticks into it. Rebecca stood over the hole as she slung her bag over her shoulder and got ready to descend. As soon as the ladder was ready, she sat on the floor and swung her legs over the vo
id.

  Once her feet were firmly on the ladder, she transferred her entire weight to it and started going down. The room she entered held no surprises for her, as she had had a good look at the layout earlier with her torch. What interested her was the room beyond this one. As soon her feet touched solid floor in the antechamber, she moved to the entrance to the tunnel.

  Mike came down on the ladder and immediately looked back up to help the next person down.

  ‘Ten of us are not going to fit in here with our supplies,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘I know,’ Mike said. ‘We have to go through the tunnel. My question is, are you going now, or will you wait for a few more of us to come down?’

  ‘I’ll wait till Phil is down. Then the three of us can go. The rest can sort out our stuff and wait here till we call them through,’ she said.

  ‘Good idea. You don’t want to run into any difficulty in there by yourself,’ he said.

  Rebecca turned and fired her torch into the tunnel. Mike shook his head in the gloom and turned to help the third person to the ground.

  Phil was the fifth person down. The human chain for passing the supplies and equipment down was well established.

  ‘Phil, Mike, let’s go,’ Rebecca called out.

  ‘Wait,’ Bob said. ‘You’re leaving us? Why are you splitting up the group?’

  ‘This room isn’t big enough for everything. We may need to move again,’ Rebecca said.

  ‘What about traps?’ Tina asked. ‘You could get killed in there.’ Tina was visibly shaking. Tears slid down her face in the gloom.

  ‘We all could,’ Rebecca said. ‘That’s…why we’re going now, to check if it’s safe for all of us. We’re losing time. This room is soon going to be full, and the one above will be full of sand—’

  ‘Unless we find a way to plug that hole,’ Mike said nervously, pointing at the fine stream of sand coming through the hole.

  ‘We’re now in the bottom of the hourglass,’ he said.

  ‘Oh God,’ Tina said, looking at the entrance to their new sanctuary in horror.

  ‘Time to go,’ Rebecca said, turning on her torch and spinning on her heel. She crouched down and headed into the blackness.

  The tunnel was about five feet high. Mike and Phil, being bigger men, had to crouch down a lot further. Rebecca could hear them huffing and puffing behind her in the enclosed space.

  ‘There’s nothing remarkable about the walls here,’ Rebecca said. ‘I think it’s just an entranceway.’

  ‘Go slow,’ Mike said behind her. ‘Keep an eye out for any undulations or slits in the wall or floor that may be traps.’

  Rebecca continually had to stop herself from speeding up. They had calculated that the tunnel was twenty five feet long, which was what they could see with their torches before the walls ended. From the antechamber, their light had been too weak to penetrate the inky black hole at the other end.

  Rebecca’s hands were shaking with adrenaline as she drew closer to the black hole.

  ‘You see anything in the main room yet?’ Mike asked.

  ‘No, it’s still too murky,’ she said, continually playing her beam into the blackness.

  As she got closer, she forced herself to stop and let the two behind her catch up, in case anything went wrong at the entrance.

  ‘You two caught your breath?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s all this frigging crouching,’ Mike said behind her. ‘We almost have to duck walk here.’

  Rebecca rolled her eyes in the darkness.

  ‘Hang on for a second, guys. Need to catch my breath here,’ Phil said, wheezing in the darkness.

  ‘You don’t get out into the field much over there at the University of Michigan, do you?’ Mike said. ‘Just imagine there’s a doughnut at the end of this tunnel.’

  ‘Screw you, limey prick!’ Phil said, his raised voice booming in the tunnel.

  ‘Cut it out,’ Rebecca said sharply. ‘Five more steps. I think we’re there.’

  They stopped at the end of the tunnel.

  ‘I can see a central casket chamber,’ she said breathlessly. ‘And pillars all the way around.’

  ‘Look around the edge of the tunnel exit before you—damn it,’ Mike said.

  Rebecca had already stepped off into the darkness.

  Mike quickly shuffled up to the edge and searched with his beam to find Rebecca.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Rebecca said. ‘I’m fine. Come in.’

  Mike and Phil quickly stepped off the edge into the main room. Light played everywhere from the three beams.

  ‘Square supporting columns all around,’ Phil said.

  ‘The outer walls are all small funerary niches, all empty,’ Mike said.

  ‘There’s no decoration anywhere,’ Phil said. ‘Why is there no decoration on the walls?’

  ‘It’s worse than that…’ Rebecca said.

  Both men turned to find her with their lights. They put a spotlight on her as she stood over the central burial slab in the middle of the room.

  Rebecca was shaking.

  ‘There’s not a single coffin in here,’ she said. ‘There’s nothing. This place is an unfinished building site.’

  She was shaking with anger.

  After a few minutes of investigating the room further, the other two agreed with her.

  ‘For whatever reason,’ Phil said, ‘they left it unfinished. It’s still a great find, Rebecca.’

  Rebecca stayed silent in the gloom.

  ‘Well, it’s safe,’ Mike said. ‘I’m going to call the others to start coming down. We can all fit in here easily enough, and the sand is not going come all the way down that tunnel.’

  ‘Though it will restrict our air again if the antechamber fills up. We’ll be down to this one room again,’ Phil said.

  ‘Let’s get everybody in. Then we’ll go back and see if we can plug that hole with something,’ Mike said.

  Rebecca sat slumped in a corner.

  Mike looked at her, shrugged, and turned to head back up the tunnel.

  Soon, the entire party was set up in the incomplete tomb. Mike and Phil were the last people back through. ‘We managed to brace a piece of tarpaulin over the hole with two poles. Hopefully, it holds and stops the sand coming in,’ Mike said as he dropped his backpack by the tunnel and looked around for somewhere to sit.

  ‘What now?’ Tina asked.

  ‘Get as comfortable as you can and try to relax. Maybe even get some sleep,’ Phil said. ‘We need to conserve the air in case the sand keeps coming in.’

  ‘Then what?’ Bob asked. ‘They’ll never get to us in time. Ignoring the irony of being entombed in a tomb, we’re screwed here.’

  ‘Well, it’s better than being up top at the moment,’ Mike said. ‘Everybody just needs to stay calm. We’re still alive; that’s something pretty positive. We need to give it enough time for the main part of the storm to pass over. It was howling in the main chamber when we were trying to plug that hole. Then, we’ll figure out how we can help ourselves.’

  ‘He’s right,’ Rebecca said from her corner. ‘Turn the torches off and keep quiet for a few hours.’

  One by one, the beams of light were extinguished, putting each scared face into darkness.

  Chapter 5

  ‘How long has it been?’ someone asked in the darkness.

  Rebecca turned on the torch beside her and wearily looked at her watch. ‘About twelve hours,’ she replied. ‘I think it’s safe. The winds must’ve died down by now.’

  They could hear nothing from the outside. The most unnerving part had been the silence while knowing a huge storm was boiling above them.

  Rebecca’s body ached from being on the hard floor all night. She desperately wanted out of the tomb. The place stank from sweat and the bucket in a corner in which people had been relieving themselves. She had spent most of her time in the Sahara trying to avoid contact with the sun. Now she would give anything to feel it on her skin.

  She played the torch a
round the room. Everyone looked terrible. Some had managed to get a few hours of sleep, but most hadn’t and looked like harrowed spectres in the pale light.

  There was a scratching noise coming from the corner farthest away from the tunnel entrance. Rebecca shifted the torch beam to where it was coming from.

  The light illuminated Phil, who appeared to have a metal bar about an inch thick inserted into the mortar of the wall next to him.

  ‘Phil…what are you doing?’ Rebecca asked.

  Phil turned and smiled. ‘I needed to keep my hands moving,’ he said. ‘Something’s a bit weird here. They didn’t carve this place out of the stone. All the walls are mortar. I wanted to test how far the mortar goes back before it hits rock. I’ve been grinding away at this section whenever it was getting too much for me. It was just a distraction, but I think I’m almost through now.’

  Rebecca was annoyed. ‘Phil, we’re still on the job here. I’m not happy you’re chipping away at an ancient site because you got a bit stressed. It’s been incredibly stressful for all of us.’

  ‘Wait…wait…’ Phil said, giving a final few twists and shunts on the metal bar. A small ‘dink’ was heard as Phil’s hand shot forward and hit the wall.

  ‘Yes, I’m through,’ Phil said. ‘Sorry, Rebecca; once I start something, I have to finish it.’

  ‘Well, that’s no…’ the words died in Rebecca’s mouth.

  Phil had pulled the metal bar out of his hole in the wall. Rebecca turned off the torch, and every head swivelled to fixate on the inch-wide beam of light that was coming out of the hole to the outside.

  Everyone soon clustered around the small shaft of light lancing the darkness.

  ‘How can we be looking at light?’ Rebecca asked. ‘We’re one hundred metres down. Can you see anything out there, Phil?’

  Phil had his eye up to the hole. He was looking directly into the light. ‘No, it’s too bright.’ He turned away from the hole to look at Rebecca.

  ‘There is only one possible explanation,’ he said. ‘This tomb, or whatever it was, wasn’t underground when they built it, and the dune that covered it is gone.’