by D Haltinner
Both parties nodded.
Darren pulled the papers from Jack’s hand. “Turn around.”
Jack spun around and Darren unzipped an opening in his backpack and dropped the papers inside.
“You really think you can read these?” Darren asked as he closed the backpack.
“My roommate has a high resolution scanner on her computer,” Audrey said. “That should have no problem enhancing it.”
Jack shook his head and turned around, but did not look at Audrey.
“It probably will work wonders,” Darren said. A subtle rubbing in Jack’s face. “I wonder why it’s so faded when the math problems are easy to read.”
Audrey shrugged. “Different ink I would assume.”
“I guess.”
“Faded faster, or maybe it’s older. Whatever it says, we’ll figure it out.”
“Well, I have to work tonight,” Jack said.
“We won’t keep you in the dark, we’ll tell you what it says,” Audrey said.
“Thanks.”
“No problem.”
Darren sighed. “Are we done in here yet?”
Jack looked around the room. “Why? You in a hurry?”
“No, but I just didn’t think we were going to find anymore answers here. Are we?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said, still scanning the room with his flashlight. “There has to be more somewhere.”
“I think we should move on,” Audrey said. “We can always come back now that the door is open.”
“Is that okay with you?” Darren asked Jack.
Jack hesitated with his light illuminating the chairs in the circle of gunpowder. “I guess so.”
Audrey spun away from the table and started toward the door. “Let’s go then. This place kind of creeps my out.”
“How so?” Darren asked.
“I don’t know how to explain it,” she said, stopping and looking back toward Darren. “It just feels wrong. This whole tunnel does, but this room even more so.”
“More than that void at the end of the tunnel?”
“Not quite like that, but in that general direction.”
Jack spun around and caught up to Darren, looking at Audrey. “So where are we going next?”
“Down the corridor heading west that we found,” she said.
“It probably ends before coming to the road,” Darren said.
“Maybe, but that’s where I think we should go.”
“Fine then,” Jack said. He pushed his way past Audrey and stepped into the steel doorway. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 33
Jack waited at the intersection of the unexplored tunnel for Darren and Audrey to catch up. He was shining his flashlight down the south tunnel, standing just around the corner in the other tunnel.
“Hear something?” Audrey asked.
Darren swallowed hard. The black wall was not very far away, and if the noise was back already, they were going to have to get out of there fast.
“No,” Jack said. “Not yet at least.”
“Let’s hope we never hear it again,” Darren said.
“Whatever it is,” Audrey said.
“Let’s just get moving,” Jack said, spinning west and starting down the tunnel. Audrey took Darren’s hand in hers and led him behind Jack, moving at a pace a little slower than Jack’s. The tunnel was just as stale as every other section they’ve traveled through so far, but there were no hatches overhead-nor would there be any. There were no buildings west of them unless you passed the road, but there was no way the tunnel could get passed the storm drains. They were at the same depth as the storm drains, and they couldn’t be connected to each other-or else the dust would have been washed away long ago-so there was no way the tunnel could go any further than the road.
“Whoa,” Jack said, coming to an abrupt stop, flailing his arms at his side as if he were trying to catch his balance.
“What is it?” Darren asked as he and Audrey approached.
“That,” Jack said, moving to the side of the tunnel.
Darren and Audrey stopped beside Jack and looked ahead of them in the tunnel. The regular monotony of the concrete floor was broken by a long jagged crack running around the entire corridor, from ceiling to floor. It was filled by patched cement that connected to a stretch of concrete that was a lighter shade of color, but seemed to be less porous than the area behind them. The fresh walls of concrete continued past the three of them, but it began to angle downward, the floor turning into a series of unevenly shaped stairs that continued west into the dark.
“What the…” Darren started to say.
“Stairs?” Audrey said.
“I guess it does go past the road,” Darren said.
“It goes under the road?”
Darren shined his light straight into the angled shaft, but it didn’t illuminate more than a dozen steps down, his batteries must be starting to weaken. “Looks like it.”
Audrey shined her light on the first couple of steps. “Is this safe?”
“Just as safe as the rest of the place I would guess,” Darren said. “Some of these tunnels travel below the buildings. I can’t foresee the road being any worse.”
Jack ran his fingers over the crack that bad been filled in and patched. He followed his flashlight up to the ceiling and studied it for a moment in silence before turning his attention to the floor.
“What is it?” Darren asked.
“I think this section of tunnel going down is newer than the rest of it.”
“They were obviously built from different materials it looks like.”
“It does. It almost seems like the tunnel was cut off, then rebuilt later.”
“Like when the road was built.”
“Exactly.”
“What are you two jabbering about?” Audrey said.
“I think this part of the tunnel was rebuilt when they laid the road,” Jack said. “Or at least during some repaving of it, probably when they added the storm drains.”
“That had to have been decades ago though,” Audrey said.
Jack shrugged. “I still think that the tunnel system was built the same time as the rest of the campus.”
“If so, it’s been taken care of,” Darren said.
“What about those buildings that are newer then the rest of the campus?” Audrey said. “Like the Union, and McCormick Hall? Even the dining hall is pretty new.”
“If this tunnel even reached that far,” Jack said. “The tunnel’s probably been expanded like it is here.”
“There’s only one way to find out,” Audrey said, shining her light down the steps.
“Then let’s move on,” Jack said, moving to the top step, then starting downward into the beckoning darkness.
Darren started to follow Jack, but Audrey held him back. “You want to go down there?” she asked.
“Don’t you?”
“More than anything. It’s just..." she looked back down the tunnel from where they came. “I don’t know, I guess something just feels odd.”
“The whole place is odd.”
“That’s not exactly what I meant.”
“What do you mean?”
Audrey shook her head. “I’m not even sure.”
“You two coming?” Jack yelled from a dozen steps down.
“Yeah,” Darren called back to him. He turned hack to Audrey before speaking again. “Are we?”
Audrey nodded. “Let’s go.”
Audrey stepped down the first step, Darren at her side. They walked in unison behind Jack, hand in hand, both their flashlights focused on the steps in front of them. There was no hand holds built into the walls to help them keep balance and no way to tell how far it was to the bottom, so they each step slow and careful so as not to risk any serious injury for stumbling over a step or two.
The top of the steps disappeared into darkness behind them, replaced by a floor closing in in front of them. It spanned out in all directions when the stairs ended, the layers of dust that cov
ered the rest of the corridor thinning in the approaching surface.
“We must be twenty feet below ground by now,” Darren said, watching Jack disappear beyond the end of the steps.
“Probably more,” Audrey said.
“The road has to be above us by now.”
“Or just about.”
The pair reached the bottom of the steps, searching the area with their flashlights. The three of them stood in a larger tunnel running north and south, at least as wide as the street above them, with a ceiling almost ten feet high. Another set of stairs led back up across the tunnel from their position, blocked off by a wide slit running down the middle of the floor.
Jack stood in front of the slit, looking down into it with his flashlight, then moving the light north along the trench into the wide blackness.
“What is it?” Darren asked as he and Audrey approached Jack from behind.
“A trench,” he said.
“A trench?” Audrey said.
“You know, like a ditch?”
Audrey rolled her eyes, an almost invisible gesture in the darkness.
Darren and Audrey moved along side, looking into the trench before them. About six feet across and at least that deep, the ditch was more than just the small slit that it appeared to be from further away. The concrete floor ended in a clean line at the beginning of the crevice, being replaced by earth as it stretched toward it’s uneven base.
“Why isn’t that made out of concrete too? Audrey asked. And what the hell is it?”
Jack looked straight up, pointing his light toward the ceiling. “Flood protection.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Concrete is porous. The storm drains above are probably made out of concrete, and they must leak at times. Maybe even sections of it are broken and pouring into this larger tunnel.”
“So?”
“Jack turned his light back down to the ditch. “I bet they built this to protect the rest of the tunnel from flooding,” he said. “Any water that finds its way in from the storm drains will fill into the trench and just soak back into the ground.”
“They sure don’t want these tunnels harmed, do they?” Darren asked.
“It would appear not,” Jack said. “But the question still lingers.”
“Why?” Audrey said.
Jack nodded.
Darren turned around, scanning the vicinity with his flashlight. “It reminds me of a subway tunnel.”
“A bit small though, don’t you think?” Audrey said.
“Yeah, but it just has that feel.”
“When was the last time you’ve ridden a subway? Wisconsin doesn’t have a whole lot of them around.”
“It’s been awhile.”
Audrey let out a sole chuckle. “Sure.”
“I wonder how far it goes?”
“I would guess the length of the campus,” Jack said. “It’s only a guess, but it would make sense.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Darren said. “I don’t see any reason why it would stretch further than that.”
“We can’t be far from the south edge,” Audrey said. “Should we see what’s down that way?”
“It’s probably just a dead end,’ Jack said. “I’m more curious as to what’s on the other side.” He raised his flashlight to illuminate the set of stairs climbing away from them.
“Why don’t we split up then?” Audrey said. “You go that way, and Darren and I will go south.”
“We’re not splitting up,” Jack said.
“Who are you to be telling me what to do?” Audrey yelled.
Darren jumped in between the two of them. He had to stop an argument from growing out of a simple disagreement. Something was nipping at Audrey today, and it wasn’t a simple dislike of Jack.
“Whoa, whoa,” Darren said, blocking their views of each other. “Before the yelling starts, let’s just make a compromise, okay?”
Audrey sighed and crossed her arms, letting her flashlight shine behind her as she held it clamped in her hands.
Jack shook his head and looked at the floor.
“Time isn’t an issue for us right now,” Darren said. “So why don’t we take the short trip to see what’s at the south end of the tunnel?”
Jack started to grumble something, but Darren cut him off.
“If it’s just a dead end, then we’ll turn right back around and head up those steps. We’ll only have lost a few minutes." Darren paused, expecting some sort of reaction from either party, but got nothing but blank stares. “If there is something there, then I think we’ll all be curious as to what it is. Am I right?”
Audrey nodded right away. Darren was siding with her after all.
Jack sighed. “Yeah. Fine. We’ll do what the little woman wants.”
Audrey mumbled: “About time,” but Darren didn’t think it was loud enough in the dead air for Jack to hear.
“If that is alright with everyone, then let’s get going,” Darren said.
He looked down the north side of the wide tunnel, then back at the stairs behind them. He felt vulnerable standing there with nowhere to go. What if the noise that was in the void appeared now in this wide section?
Jack spun without another word and began to walk south, staying right at the edge of the trench as he walked.
Audrey moved up beside Darren and locked her arm around his before following behind Jack. “Thank you,” she whispered into Darren’s ear.
Darren leaned down and kissed the top of her head.
“I don’t know how he expects to get across that ditch anyways,” Audrey said, letting her volume raise back to normal.
“Even you could jump over a six foot gap,” Jack said.
Darren began to wonder if Audrey meant to have Jack hear her.
“And risk falling and breaking my neck?” she said. “I don’t think so.”
“Who ever built this tunnel must have built a way across,” Jack said.
“I haven’t seen one.”
“Not yet at least.”
“It’d probably end up being a two by four you have to tip toe across.”
“If they put in enough through to build this place, I’m sure they thought of a better way across than that.”
“You better hope so.”
“I know so.”
Darren bent down and whispered into Audrey’s ear. “You’re just asking for trouble, aren’t you?”
Audrey smiled and tightened her grip on Darren’s arm instead of answering.
A few minutes of walking later, and the end of the tunnel came into view ahead, lit by the dimming light of Jack’s Barney flashlight until Audrey caught up and illuminated the concrete wall with her light.
The trench ended with a small ledge in front of the concrete wail, just wide enough to walk across without having to worry about balancing. Jack may still be right about some things.
“Looks like I was right,” Jack said, scanning the pitted wall with his light.
“Go ahead, rub it in,” Audrey said.
“I’m not a mean person. I don’t need to do that.”
“Yeah, right.”
Darren scanned the wall with his light, noticing something unusual about the east corner. He slid himself out of Audrey’s grip and walked closer.
“What is it?” Audrey asked, watching Darren move away.
“I don’t know,” Darren said as he moved toward the corner.
Two steps later, he realized what he saw.
“The void...” Darren mumbled.
Chapter 34
“What?” Audrey said, coming up alongside of Darren, flashlight already exploring the corner of the two walls.
“The void,” Darren said. “The black wall, the wall of darkness, whatever it is you want to call it. It’s here too.” To emphasis his point, he moved closer and let the beam of his flashlight vanish into the shadow covering the corner.
“Is that what it is? A shadow? But what could be casting it?”
“Bu
t how can it be here?” Jack asked as he moved closer. “We found it in the tunnel above us, it can’t be here too.”
“I don’t know how, but it is,” Darren said.
Audrey’s flashlight explored it up and down, hesitating where the walls met the floor. Darren’s dimming light wasn’t able to spot what hers did at the intersection, but her beam lit the area around the void like a spot light.
“Why doesn’t it reach the floor?” Audrey said.
Darren looked where she focused the light. Sure enough, the void ended before it reached the floor, radiating outward and upward from about knee height. Darren followed it on its way up, pausing as he tried to look straight up the wall.
“Can you point your light up?” Darren asked.
Audrey did as asked, focusing her light on the same place of the void Darren was trying to see.
The void pushed away from the corner the further it up it went, hovering over their heads by the time it reached the ceiling, jutting out of the walls as if it was a bowling ball that had crashed into a cardboard box.
“It’s round,” Audrey said.
“A sphere,” Jack said.
“Wow, someone knows their geometry.”
Jack mumbled something, but the air of the tunnel kept Darren from hearing it.
“Does the void... I don’t know, emanate? In a sphere?” Darren asked.
“But we saw it twenty feet above us, and who knows how far east of here,” Jack said.
“And yet, it’s here,” Darren said. “And if I didn’t know any better, I’d say that where we found the void was straight that way, along where the surface of the sphere would be found.”
“But an underground sphere?” Jack said. “That travels through concrete and the ground?”
“Can you explain it any better?” Audrey said.
“It’s a far stretch to start saying that this is connected to the void blocking the tunnel past the theatre,” Jack said. “Maybe there are two spheres.”
“But look where we are,” Darren said. “If there is a sphere, it would stretch that way through the ground and cut through the tunnel exactly where we saw it before.”
“Even if that was so, there’s one thing you’re forgetting,” Jack said.
“What’s that?” Darren asked.
“A sphere the size of what you’re suggesting would have cut through the surface,” Jack said. “And last I looked, I don’t remember seeing a black sphere behind the theatre.”