Remembering her first aid training from many years back, Anna looked around for something to act as a splint. An initial scan of the area revealed only small rocks and dirt, none of which were of any use. But, as she extended her search a little farther, she discovered a skeleton piled against the far wall of the cavern. Seeing several bones that would suit her purposes, she decided to find a way over there.
After a few deep breaths, she untied her boot and pushed it off her foot, screaming until the footwear had cleared her heel. Anna removed the knapsack from her back, stuffed the unused boot inside, and rested her injured leg on it, doing everything in her power to keep the leg as still as possible. She looped the shoulder straps around her leg to secure it in place, then returned her lit flashlight to its slot on her tool belt. She pulled the survival knife from its sheath. Taking a deep breath, she stabbed the knife into the ground pulled herself through the dirt toward the skeleton, grunting from pain and the effort the entire way.
Several minutes later, after hauling herself over rocks and mud, Anna collapsed next to the bones. With her shoulder muscles sore from pulling her weight across a couple dozen meters of rough terrain, the thought of moving again anytime soon repulsed her.
After catching her breath, Anna mustered the strength to roll over and examine the skeletal remains. Most of the bones were too small or too thin, but she did salvage a couple of long, thick bones that resembled human femurs. Lopping the bulbous ends off with her laser cutter, she set them next to her leg on the knapsack. Lacking something to tie them against her leg, she dialed down the power of the laser cutter and carefully cut her pants leg off just below the knee of her broken leg, doing her best to not look at the swelling. Slicing the material lengthwise into several strips, she created her splint, fighting the pain as much as possible by biting down on the handle of the survival knife. Despite her effort to resist, she screamed as she worked.
Anna’s pained shrieks, despite being muffled by the knife handle, echoed throughout the cavern for several seconds after she attempted to set the bone back in place and splint her leg. The agony had diminished to where she could consider putting a little weight on it, but she knew she had to get back to Kate to give herself the best possible treatment.
After returning her knife to its proper place, Anna rose to her feet, using the rock wall behind her to help support her weight. Although she could stand on her feet, the pain returned if she bore too much weight on the splinted leg. Promising to find something to work as a cane or crutch at her first opportunity, she pushed the thought aside and examined the cavern, attempting to find a way out and up to the surface. The underground chamber proved to be longer than she expected, but she did notice its gradual, upward slope. Following the wall, using it for support, she hobbled toward the higher end of the room and, much to her delight, found an exit big enough to walk through.
* * * * *
Hours later found Anna wandering the underground tunnels, searching for the path leading to the surface. Every tunnel she found just penetrated deeper.
Thankfully her improvised splint still held. The pain flared every so often, reminding her that she was still wounded.
Exhausted, Anna found a large, flat rock on one side of the tunnel and sat down to take a breather. Her feet were sore, but she dared not take her other boot off for fear of doing something that could injure her good leg. The jagged, uneven floor didn’t help matters much.
She turned her wristcomp on to try and contact Kate again, only to get a burst of static when she opened the channel. She closed the projected screen and listened for several seconds. The sound of the burst echoed away in both directions, but she heard nothing in the silence that followed.
So far, Anna hadn’t encountered any other living creatures in the underground channels, and believed luck was on her side. If caves were all over the area, it would explain where all the animals had gone after the eclipse ended. If that was the case, why hadn’t she seen any beyond the one creature by the river?
Pushing the thought aside to contemplate later, Anna forced herself to her feet to continue her quest. After a couple of steps, she heard something behind her. Whispers? She turned as fast as she could without losing her balance and directed her flashlight back down the tunnel, only to see a few rocks scattered about on the ground. Dismissing it as the remnant of the echo, she turned back and continued on her way.
* * * * *
Sometime later, Anna stopped again at the abrupt end of a natural corridor. She looked all about for any way to keep going, but all she found was a small opening in the ceiling from which water slowly dripped to the rocky floor. About as big as her hand, she immediately knew that she could not possibly hope to fit through it.
“No, there’s got to be a way out.”
She turned and leaned against the cavern wall, looking back the way she’d come. She looked up at the opening again and aimed her light inside. After a couple of minutes investigating the hole, she concluded that she would have to cut a lot of rock away to widen the hole, and her cutter would not hold enough power to complete the task. After a heavy sigh, she backtracked down the tunnel, hoping to find a missed branch – anything.
Anna reflected on the past few hours, and started to believe she might be lost. Without any kind of point of reference except for the cave where she’d begun, she had no idea of the direction she was going in or how far she’d walked. As far as she knew, she could be standing right under her ship and would never know it. She hadn’t anticipated staying away for this long and, if she had, would have brought more food.
Food? Through all her troubles, she hadn’t even thought about eating, and now realized just how hungry she was. She reached into one of her large pouches, opened the container with her rations, and plucked one of the small fruits out. She ravaged the fruit, but it was not enough. She fished a couple of crackers out and wolfed them down too. She had to stop herself after that to make sure her stores lasted a while longer. The continuous pain from her fractured leg helped to distract her.
Several minutes later, Anna stepped to the middle of an intersection. The smaller side tunnel stretched down into the inky black depths, while the main channel curved to the side at a more gradual incline. She stopped and took a deep breath, hoping to regain a little strength back to continue her journey. Examining the craggy walls around her, she concluded that all the intersections looked more or less the same to her after hours of wandering.
As she prepared to move on, she heard what sounded like breathing coming from the side passage. She redirected her light down the shaft and into the face of a blue-furred predator not more than half a dozen meters away, its six legs gripping the tunnel walls. The bright light, reflected back at her by its three concentric eyes, forced it to squint and turn away for only a couple of seconds. A feral growl emanated from its throat.
“Oh, god.” Anna slowly moved the flashlight to her other hand and reached for her pistol. The beast charged her just as she pulled the weapon from its pouch, and slammed into her, throwing her against the stone wall and knocking the sidearm and flashlight from her grip. The impact stunned Anna for a second. Acting on sheer instinct, she grabbed her assailant’s snout with both hands, closing its triple jaws. It ripped its maw away from her hands and lunged for her throat. She threw her forearm up to blocked the attack. Its teeth sank into her flesh, and a gush of blood splashed onto her face.
Anna screamed as pain flooded through her arm and into her torso. Fighting the urge to pull her arm free, she punched it in its face with her free hand, but the blow didn’t faze it. She pummeled it again and again, meeting furry skin each time until her fist sank deep into something soft.
The beast yelped in pain and released its grip on her arm. Quickly pulling her arm away, Anna pushed the monster off her with her uninjured arm and roll away. Stopping after a few meters, she clamored to her feet and drew her knife. Her opponent was a fair distance up the cave, looking around for its prey with its two remaining ey
es. It located her, growled, and charged.
Dropping to a low stance, she stared at the creature as it approached, gripping her knife tight and anticipating its next move. She did not think about what she was doing, or allow her fear to inhibit her actions. At this moment, Anna acted solely on instinct.
A few meters from its prey, the predator sprang forward, diving at Anna with its three jaws bared. Anna sidestepped and, as it sailed by, stabbed her knife into it. The steel blade sank deep into its flesh and sliced down the length of its body.
The creature shrieked in pain before it hit the ground and rolled away. With the advantage, Anna dashed forward and pinned its snout to the ground with one foot. In the dim light provided by her distant flashlight, she could see she had cut through its abdominal cavity. Its breathing now sounded raspy, labored, and wet. Without another thought, Anna crouched down and plunged her knife into its torso, hoping to kill it quickly despite having little knowledge of its anatomy.
When she finally saw it no longer breathing, she shuffled back to the intersection. As she stepped next to her pistol, her surge of adrenaline ebbed, releasing her. Pain hit her like a train. Her face contorted as she collapsed to the ground and sank into unconsciousness, the cry of pain never escaping her throat.
Chapter 14
Anna opened her eyes to see a ceiling built from dark gray stones. When it dawned on her that her surroundings were much brighter than before, she sat up with a start and looked around. She was in the small room at the top of the pyramid.
Confusion set in. The room and everything outside looked exactly as it had when she first entered. Her clothes were clean and in decent repair, and all tools were properly stowed away in her belt pouches.
Looking at her arm, Anna stared dumbfounded at the unbroken and unscarred skin. She felt no pain. Curious, she pulled the leg of her pants up and saw no bruising on her skin. In fact, her calf felt fine. She ran her fingers up and down her leg, feeling the bone for any sign of a fracture, but the bone was smooth and in one piece.
Did I dream the last several hours? All evidence would indicate she had. Her clothes were undamaged. Her wounds were gone, as if they had never happened. None of her tools were out of place. Despite her stomach complaining as if she hadn’t eaten in a week, everything seemed fine.
She reached into her pouch and pulled out one of the small fruits. She took a bite, savoring its flavor as the juices tickled her taste buds. She did not know why, but her mood elevated every time she ate one.
Anna rose to her feet and eyed the lever protruding from the back wall. She moved beside it and, keeping her feet next to the wall, pulled down on the handle. But it didn’t move. Raising an eyebrow, she pulled down on it again, but it still didn’t budge.
Maybe I did dream the whole thing.
Scratching her head, Anna stepped outside and looked skyward at the scattered gray clouds passing overhead, then to the ground, where underbrush still poked out between the large stones paving the area around the pyramid. Glancing at the obelisks at the corners of the top platform, she decided to scan them before heading back to the ship.
Withdrawing her hand scanner from its pouch, she swiped it by one of the spires for several seconds and watched the screen for the results. The display was erratic, telling Anna that the spire might be exuding a high amount of electromagnetic energy. Thinking that it may explain why she had such an elaborate dream, she returned the scanner to her belt and descended the stairs.
Seconds after she reached the ground, her wristcomp signaled an incoming message. She answered the page.
“Hi, Kate! How has…”
“Where the hell have you been?”
Anna paused, taken aback by Kate’s sudden outburst. “Wh…what? I don’t understand.”
“You have been gone for over a month.”
Anna fell silent as confusion set in again. A month? “Are you sure?”
“Look at the time on your wristcomp.”
She glanced at the time displayed at the bottom of the screen. “It shows that it’s been only a few hours.”
“Synchronizing now.”
Anna waited for the update to complete, and stopped cold. According to the display, over thirty-two days had passed since she left the ship.
Her eyes widened. “What the hell?”
“See?”
Anna looked over her shoulder at the top of the pyramid for a long moment. How can this be? What happened while I was out? “Let me get back to you.”
“Anna, what are…” Anna closed the channel before Kate finished.
Marching back up the steps, Anna entered the upper chamber again and moved straight to the lever on the wall. She pulled her hand scanner out again and turned it on. Static. Replacing it in its pouch, she knelt next to the tapered beam where it joined with the wall, and examined the spot where the two met. The seam, still present, didn’t appear to be any different. She attempted to move it again, in different directions, but it remained frozen. Half tempted to cut into the lever to gain access, she took her laser cutter in hand. She held it for several seconds, running her thumb along its smooth casing while calculating the consequences of either defacing the device to learn how it worked or leaving it unscathed as a significant archaeological and anthropological find. Unsure as to how the race that built the pyramid, if they still existed, would react if she cut into it and not wanting to go down in history as the one person to ruin any possible relations between their races before they have a chance to begin, she decided to leave it alone and put her laser cutter away.
Anna rushed back outside and circled the building, looking for any kind of entrance or opening other than the one she had already used. Although her initial search gave her nothing, she located a small window on the second tier during her second lap. The opening provided little help for her quest to regain entrance, for it was only about as big as her arm and seemed to only allow air and light to pass through.
Frustrated, she gave up and called Kate back as she walked toward the tree line.
“Okay, I can do nothing more here, Kate. I’m coming back to the ship.”
“Good. Maybe we can finally get back to the business of your extended survival.”
“Hey, I told you that this was something I needed to do.”
“You also said that it wouldn’t take too long, which reminds me. Where have you been for the past month?”
Anna stepped into the woods toward the river. “Honestly, I don’t know. I explored the pyramid, and I’m sure I fell through a trap door to a cavern somewhere underground and got lost. But, I woke up just now and found myself inside the pyramid again. I don’t know what happened or how I got there, but I have no knowledge of what happened to me during most of that month since I last spoke with you. I couldn’t have fallen into a coma. I would have atrophied from starvation and died. I don’t recall encountering anyone else, so being abducted is out.”
Could the energy from the obelisks have placed her in a hypnotic state? It seemed plausible at first, but she would have succumbed to starvation that way too. Something was amiss, and that much of her life being missing without explanation gnawed at her mind. She had to find out what happened, and why.
As she walked downstream toward the crash site, Anna discussed various matters with Kate, including the task she had placed as top priority: restoring the engines on the ship. Kate pointed out that she had sent half a dozen drones to the gas giant to harvest hydrogen and return once the canisters were full. Using the drones as her access to the physical world, Kate had filled fourteen canisters with hydrogen gas during Anna’s hiatus, leaving fifty-four more to be filled before reaching maximum capacity. The avatar also mentioned she’d had the drones search the local area for possible food sources, and work on patching the breach in the fuel tank.
“How does the tank look?” Anna asked.
“At this point, the fuel tank is mostly patched, but a few small holes are still present. It appears some fragments were lost when the st
ation debris hit it. If we can find some metal plating to seal the hole, then we should have a repaired fuel tank.”
“That’s good news. What about the engines themselves?”
“I have not even looked at them. A lot of the damage to the engines, according to the visual feed I have received from the drones, tells me that more than the manifold may be in need of repair. If my assessment is correct, the fuel injection system may be damaged.”
Anna frowned, and her shoulders slumped. “I guess I’ll have to look into that when I get back.”
The ship was a welcome sight. Anna was thankful she’d made it back to familiar surroundings without further incident. She was quite surprised to see the level of activity in the clearing, though.
All of the drones were performing some sort of task. Some were gathering and storing food in the storage containers they normally used for the gas they had previously mined. Some were using their manipulator arms to till soil in square plots near the ship, for what she assumed to be crops. A couple flew around the perimeter of the clearing as if on patrol. She counted them and, coming up four short, assumed the rest were away on some sort of mission.
Wasting no time, Anna jogged up the nose of the ship and climbed into the airlock. As the internal door opened, Kate faded into view by the pilot seat with a smile on her face.
“Welcome home, Anna.”
Anna returned the smile. “Thank you. It’s good to see you again.”
“Likewise. I assume that you will want to rest a while. Right?”
“Yeah.” Anna set her knapsack on the floor next to its wall locker and traipsed to the lone chair on the bridge. Flopping into the comfortable seat, Anna pulled her boots and socks off and propped her bare feet up on the control panel, wiggling her toes. “I feel like I haven’t taken those boots off in weeks.”
Alone in Paradise (The Chronicles of Anna Foster Book 2) Page 10