Gunther's Cavern

by Edward Etzkorn

  The concept was inconceivable. Oblivion. What did it mean? All his life he’d been thinking, feeling, interacting with his surroundings, living. How could all that just stop?

  He had no idea how long he lay awake before the clacking of the sticks resounded some seven or eight meters away and Teddy’s voice called them to breakfast. A voice so warm and gentle it might have been a call to prayer. The voice sizzled in Gunther’s brain like a frying egg. Whether or not Teddy was not the mastermind behind the eye thing, Gunther had no doubt he knew about it.

  He could not ruminate for long on the indignity that had been forced on him. Like fallen leaves stirred by the wind, his friends arose, ran fingers through their hair, jogged in place to drive away the cold. They looked at one another in a meaningful way. This was the last morning. Tomorrow they’d wake up somewhere else. If they woke up at all. The excitement—and the underlying fear—were palpable, like living things yearning to tear the kids apart from within.

  The light provided by the Arachnocampa luminosa provided Gunther flashes of the other kids’ eyes when they looked up at him from around the breakfast rock—mainly Hood’s and Rad’s, but occasionally June’s or Sass’s or even Rocky’s. Kara seemed to be watching over him like a mother hen—perhaps because, more than anybody else, she understood the dangers they faced near the cave entrance.

  As usual, Simon kept to himself, his eyes focused downward at the rock in front of him. Gunther thought he looked unusually tired.

  None of the children spoke. Against his better judgment, Gunther called out, “Simon.”

  Unaccustomed as he was to someone calling him by name, Simon looked up at once. Gunther nearly flipped at what he saw. Not only were Simon’s eyes red and bulging, his whole face appeared to be swollen.

  Gunther tried several sentences, but none of them came out.

  Simon nodded, and looked back at the rock before him. “I see they got you. They got me, too. Third time.”

  “Can you see okay?”

  Simon shrugged. “Fine. I don’t know what it’s for. Maybe just harassment.”

  The kids had just completed breakfast and begun the trek back to The Swamp when an unaccustomed sound reverberated throughout the cave—a sound like the blast of several badly-tuned trumpets, broadcast through the nooks and crannies of the cave like a call to arms. A cacophony of other sounds followed—the crush of running feet, the buzzing of giant wings, the swishing of fish and other water creatures breaching the limits of the stream.

  Frightened, the children stopped to watch and listen. A sharp, grating sound emerged from the catacombs, followed by the flashing of several lights that destroyed whatever night vision the kids had possessed. The flashing lights vanished, to be replaced by a greenish glow that grew brighter and brighter—so bright the kids could see the cave around them more clearly than they’d ever seen it before.

  At last, Teddy appeared on the edge of the cliff above them, looking as frantic as they’d ever seen him. His flagella raked the air, his voice emerged as shrill as a saw striking metal.

  “The far entrance has been breached. Your entrance, Master Gunther. Someone has tracked you there. Your world wants to intrude upon ours. We will try not hurting them, whoever they are—but whatever happens, they have brought this on themselves.” Without warning, his flagella slowed, and he assumed the expression that Gunther thought of as a smile. With it came the suave Frosty-Snowman voice. “Singe so scroy-o muck, Miss June.”

  Gunther’s mouth dropped open. An icy chill climbed his back. He wanted to ask questions, to acquire more information, but so unexpected was the message in his and June’s secret language, he could not find the words.

  Hood mumbled, but no intelligible words came out.

  June said, “Corly no fogga boot.” You can’t possibly understand what we say. “No, I don’t mean that.”

  “Corly yes indeed fogga boot,” Teddy returned. “So yes, Miss June, I can learn any language. So sorry again, but I must leave you to go and lead our troops.” His lower legs snapped to attention, and his upper body grew rigid, his flagella still. “Thomas will be in charge here. You will obey him and do whatever he tells you. Strict adherence to his orders is required. Any disobedience will be met with dire consequences. I apologize, but at this point instant death is an option.”

  As if he had popped out of a hat, Thomas appeared beside Teddy. He did not speak, but his waving flagella revealed his distress. Along with several other kids, Gunther jumped as a foot-long fish lurched out of the stream behind him and flapped its fins several times before flopping back into the water. The staccato squeal of a salamander echoed from halfway up the cliff before the animal—several times its normal size—leaped from above, landed on a rock beside the stream, then dived into the stream and swam away.

  Hood’s voice spoke up, louder than any human voice Gunther had heard since he and June had entered the cave. “Anybody know where the knives are?”

  “Sshh!” several voices chimed in answer.

  “You mean the hobby knives?” Kara screamed, ignoring the shushing voices.

  “Whatever,” Hood replied.

  “I can find them,” she answered. In a trice, she raced back past the dinner area, toward the catacombs.

  Thomas started to run toward her, then stopped. “You will all please to wait here,” he said, in as pedantically a correct form as he could manage under the circumstances.

  “Yes, Your Grace,” Hood said as Thomas ran off after Kara.

  The children looked at each other, their eyes reflecting comprehension and incomprehension, certainty and uncertainty.

  “I’m with Kara,” Van said as she raced off in the direction Kara had disappeared.

  “Think it’s Mom and Dad?” Gunther asked June.

  “Who else could it be? No one else could have figured out where to look.”

  “Jimmy?”

  “Maybe.”

  “They’ll never make it through the tight spots.”

  “Mom will.”

  “Ohmygod. Omygod. How are we going to stop them?”

  Several tardigrades wandered toward them from the direction of the catacombs, one of them carrying a microscope in his upper-middle arm. They appeared disoriented, roaming into the dinner area, then fanning outward in several directions. Some of them returned to the catacombs, while others ran off in the direction in which Teddy had disappeared.

  Gunther grabbed Hood’s shoulders. “Let’s go. Whatever’s going on, we’ll never get a better chance.”

  “Couldn’t agree more, bro.” Without concern for who might hear him, Hood shouted aloud. “Soo-eee! Soo-eee, people! We’re out of here! Everybody gather up whatever stuff you want, and get ready to move out. We ain’t never coming back here again!”

  “The girls …” Giles began. “Kara and Van …”

  “Go and get them. We don’t need those stupid knives—they won’t even cut air.”

  “We’ve got no weapons.”

  “So we’ve got no weapons.”

  “I can get us past the Insect Guards,” Gunther said, regretting he had not managed to conceal his pocketknife from Teddy. “They’re blind. I know how to do it.”

  Giles hesitated, looking from Hood to Gunther and back again.

  “Go!” Hood screamed. His gaze followed Giles for a moment, ensuring he was on his way, then returned to meet Gunther’s. “You go on ahead, Brother G. Take the rest of the group with you. I’ll wait here for the girls and Giles.”

  “No. Our only strength is in numbers. Anybody who gets isolated is lost.”

  As they stared at each other in uncertainty, the girls and Giles returned, running as fast as they could in the dim light. Thomas trailed behind them with a contingent of several other Tardies, flagella flapping, head segments wobbling from side to side in confusion. The girls stopped every ten or fifteen seconds to jab at one or another of them with the hobby knives.

  “You will pl
ease to stop,” Thomas kept repeating. “We have no desire to hurt you. We have no desire to hurt the invaders who are breaking into our domain. You will please to stop.”

  “See you, Tommy!” Hood shouted.

  “Go!” Gunther screamed to the rest of the children. “We are all so out of here!”

  As fast as he could move in the near-darkness, he led the way out of the sleeping area.

  “We found only four knives,” he heard Kara’s voice, breathless.

  “Give me one,” Hood said. “Who else wants one?”

  “I’m keeping one,” said Kara.

  “Me, too,” came Van’s voice. “I wounded one of the Tardies in the lab with it.”

  “I’ll take the last,” said Giles.

  Gunther was grateful for the reverberation of the stream throughout the cavern. Although he did not doubt the Tardies knew where the kids were headed, their precise location might be hidden by the stream’s clamor. Pointing his headlamp ahead, then behind to allow the kids behind him to see, he led the way as fast as he could through the shaft winding upward. June followed near the back of the group, her penlight providing some small amount of illumination to supplement his headlamp.

  Fewer than half the kids proved to be good cavers, and the two lights—equipped with their last bulbs and batteries—provided only a fraction of the light required by a group of eleven. Gunther continually heard stones sliding downward from behind him, kicked loose by someone’s foot, and the cries and moans of kids tripping, bumping their heads on the low ceiling, or scraping their arms on projections from the walls.

  They’d nearly reached the plateau area where he, Hood, and Billy had shared his last nutrition bar—two hours from the sleeping area—when June’s penlight sparked out.

  Several gasps of alarm followed, along with a sob or two of fright.

  “It’s okay,” Gunther called back. “We’re almost to the spot where the ceiling gets higher. Keep your hand on the person on front of you. I’ll call back to let you know about projections from the ceiling or rocks in the way.”

  Still an occasional sob or frightened murmur assailed his ears from behind, and he sighed in relief when they reached the miniature theater and he called a five-minute break. He wished he had another nutrition bar to share, even if each person got less than a single bite.

  He wiped the sweat from his face. “Two more hours to the surface,” he announced.

  “One more hour to the giant insects,” Kara added.

  Thank you for that, Kara, Gunther thought.

  As expected, several gasps followed Kara’s announcement.

  “It’s okay,” Gunther said—knowing that it was not. “We can make it past the insects. Remember that they’re all blind. They’ve got sharp hearing, but they can’t see a thing. You’ve just all got to do like I say.”

  Rad’s voice was barely audible. “Turn off the light, Gunth.”

  “You’re right, Rad.” He hesitated, then spoke aloud. “Okay, guys. It’s going to get pitch black in here. I’ll turn it on again when we’re ready to go.”

  “Giles, my man, tell us when five minutes is up,” Hood said.

  Gunther flicked the light switch off. Instead of the panicky gasps he’d expected, the room grew almost completely silent. He heard but a few sounds of movement—ragged breathing, the shifting of feet, the rustling of clothing.

  “If you need to pee, this is the time,” Tiff said.

  The burst of laughter that followed was far more exuberant than the remark required.

  “Thank you, Mama T,” came Rocky’s voice.

  Five minutes passed too quickly. Gunther hung on every sound, alert for any noise from behind them that might signal that the Tardies were trying to follow. He hoped they had all headed back to their laboratories or followed Teddy toward his and June’s entrance to the cave.

  “Time,” Giles said.

  “Okay,” said Gunther. “The going gets less steep from here on, but there are a few places where the passages look the same, so we’ve got to be careful to stay together.”

  “Everybody stick close,” Hood added.

  Gunther flicked the switch, and a beam of light, feeble in comparison even to this small room, illuminated the path to its far right.

  “Head count,” Hood said. “G, shine your light up to the ceiling. Let me count and make sure everyone’s here.”

  Gunther did as Hood requested.

  Hood counted aloud. “G and me—two. Rad, Sass, Van—five. Tiff, June, Kara—eight. Giles and Rocky—ten. G—shine the light back down this way.”

  Eyes shut or turned away as the headlamp swung toward them.

  “There’s only ten of us here. Who’s missing?”

  “Simon,” said Rad.

  “Simon? Where the …?”

  “Did anybody see him?” Gunther asked.

  “I think I saw him follow Kara and Van into the catacombs,” June said. “But everything was happening so fast, I’m not sure.”

  Hood spoke up again. “Kara, Van—you see Simon?”

  “No,” the girls chimed together.

  Hood grew more agitated. “So what do we do—send someone down after him?”

  “We can’t,” Gunther said. “We’ve got to go on. He’ll have to find his own way.”

  “He may have defected to the Tardies,” Giles pronounced.

  “Then that’s his choice,” said Hood. “Wherever he is, Simon made his choice. If he wants to follow, he knows which way we went.” He nodded to Gunther. “Lead on, Brother G.”

  Gunther swung the headlamp beam toward the passage ahead. Just as he remembered, the route grew less steep after the mini-theater area, but more difficult to follow. With only one light, he had to slow his steps and listen to make sure the rest of the kids were following. Slowly he picked his way amid the curtains of stalactites and stalagmites, squeezing between pillars of rock that forced him to mold his body into the contortions demanded by the cave. Here and there alternate passages presented themselves and he had to struggle to remember which way would bring them to the cave’s exit. He suspected they all ended in the same place, but did not want to take that chance.

  “Stop!” came a voice from the rear—a mere twelve meters away, yet almost lost in the maze of rocks.

  Gunther stopped at once, afraid someone had lost his way or become caught in one of the convoluted passages.

  A moment of silence followed, then the voice again, which Gunther now recognized as Van’s. “Guess it’s okay. I thought I heard something. Just my imagination playing tricks, I guess.”

  “I heard it, too,” said June.

  “Simon?” Sass called out.

  No answer.

  Gunther waited a full sixty seconds, during which he heard nothing at all above the roaring of the stream.

  “Don’t hear anything,” Hood said. “You, Van? June?”

  “No.”

  “Onward and upward, Brother G.”

  Gunther proceeded forward with an increased feeling of trepidation. If no one but Van had heard something, he could have attributed it to nervousness. But he’d grown up with June’s intuitions and her ability to hear sounds that no one else heard. He remained dogged with the feeling that something—or someone—was following them.

  He stopped at the sight of the squat pillar that he remembered from his previous trip. As he remembered, either way around the spiraling rock wall led to the same upward passage.

  Kara called out from behind. “Either way, Gunth.”

  “Thanks, Kara.” For no particular reason, Gunther selected the right side of the pillar, and the rest of the group followed, sticking as close to him as possible.

  He remembered this portion of the cave well. Here the passage wound upward in a corkscrew pattern. In a mere fifteen or twenty minutes they would reach the auditorium where the cave guards awaited. He slowed his steps, calling back every fifteen or twenty seconds to report on some rock o
utcropping or projection that required special care to pass. Several times he stopped to aim the headlamp behind him so those who followed could see some obstruction or other.

  He was leading the way through a particularly difficult passage, where the contours of the cave forced the children to lie on their backs with their arms extended above them, then twist to the right and push their way upward with their heels, when a scream from below pierced the air. Gunther stopped, but he could not move backward—Tiff’s hands lay directly below his feet, and Sass’s below hers.

  He heard sounds of a scuffle. Grunts, another scream. Hood’s voice: “Bug off, you dumb alien.”

  Gunther yelled down into the tube—much louder than he’d intended. If they had not already heard the children’s scrambling, any giant insects waiting above would be warned of their arrival. “What is it?”

  Once again he heard sounds of a scuffle, but no one answered.

  “Tiff, go back down!” he ordered.

  “I can’t! Sass is …”

  “Tell her to go back down, too.”

  Hood’s voice again, as if from half a world away: “Who’s got a knife besides me? Yo, Van!”

  Giles’s voice followed. “Dumb sucker.”

  By the time Gunther reached the area where the sounds came from, Thomas lay still on the rocky floor, and Kara lay unmoving beside him. Her head was twisted to one side, her hair splayed in every direction. Her mouth was open, and Gunther could see her chest rising and falling. At least she was alive.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Sucker sneaked up on us. Kara fell behind me. If she hadn’t screamed, I wouldn’t have known anything happened. I swear he was trying to eat her brain.”

  “Say what?”

  “Hey, man, I don’t say this stuff for fun! The dude stuck his what-you-call-it—mouth parts—I don’t know, ask Rad—in the back of Kara’s head, and I swear that’s what he was trying to do.”

  “Help me.”

  As gently as he could, with the help of Hood, June, and Giles, Gunther turned Kara’s body so he could see the back of her head. He gasped at the sight of the circular wound, perhaps an inch in diameter, which greeted his eyes. As round as if made by a cookie-cutter, edges drawn up, center collapsed inward like a crater. Blood oozed from the circumference and caked around it. If he didn’t know better, he could have believed that she’d been branded into some bizarre cult.