The Underground

by K. A. Applegate

  «Come on, Rachel. Get a grip, kid. Get a grip!» I said to myself. «Just dig a turnaround. That's it. A little more off the sides. Yeah. Hang in there.»

  No air! Oh, lord, I'm buried alive!

  «No! No! Hold on. Keep digging out a turnarounds

  I scraped madly with my "hands," shoving the dirt back beneath my body to be shoved back by my hind legs.

  And slowly a chamber began to appear. A hole a few inches wide on either side of me. I tried turning. Not yet. Dig some more. Dig in blind darkness.

  Finally . . . yes! I could turn around. My sensitive nose felt the empty, open tunnel ahead of me. It was crumbly and far from perfect, but it was a tunnel.

  I raced down it, squeezing through the tight spaces, desperate, desperate for air!

  My nose emerged into light. It seemed blinding now.

  91 "She's back," Cassie said. "Rachel, are you okay?"

  «Yeah. Yeah. Fine,» I lied.

  "How far did you get? You were down there for twenty minutes."

  Twenty minutes? No. It had been an hour at least.

  «l . . . urn, I don't know.» I tried to visualize the tunnel I'd never actually seen but only felt. How long was it? «1 guess it was, I don't know, probably only three feet.»

  "Three feet straight down?" Jake said with a whistle. "That's pretty good. The top of the Yeerk pool dome is probably what, fifty feet down maybe?"

  «Not straight down,» I said. «The mole can't dig straight down. It's just barely downhill. Maybe a foot deep.»

  «0h, man,» Tobias groaned. «This is going to take us forever.»

  We took one-hour shifts. Between shifts those of us who weren't digging or standing guard walked down to the Mickey D's and bought fries and Cokes.

  Six hours of digging till we had each done our shift. The day was over. We couldn't stay any longer. We had to head home.

  "Someone should carry a string down in to see how far we got," Marco suggested.

  92 No one volunteered. No one even moved. We were a haggard, unhappy-looking bunch of kids. Sweating and pale from the stress of fear and the constant morphing.

  "I'll do it," I said. "It's my turn."

  I morphed and Cassie tied the end of a string around my tail.

  Down into the tunnels again. We'd each gone as far as we could, then dug a turnaround. Six turnarounds. I counted them as I passed each one by.

  I would have been sweating if I were human. It was hot and close. Very close. Like being in a coffin. That image kept coming up. Like being in a coffin. Like being buried alive. Like you wanted to kick and scream to get out, only no one would hear you because you were underground. Buried alive.

  Then my nose touched a wall. The end. I had reached the end of the tunnel. You'd think I'd have been relieved. But now the pressure to get out out OUT drove me to the edge of panic.

  I could barely control myself. Barely keep from screaming.

  I raced back along that tunnel as if something were chasing me. Was that light up ahead? No, I'd only passed three turnarounds. Or was it four?

  Finally, I poked my snout up out of the

  93 ground, crawled free of the hole, and began to demorph instantly.

  Ax was in his own body, having been in human morph too long. He measured out the string I'd carried down the hole. «Would you like the measurement in feet or in meters?»

  I was human enough to be able to see Marco roll his eyes. "Whatever."

  «The total length of the tunnel is approximately forty-one feet long. I believe the slope ratio is about six to one. One foot down for every six feet of tunnel. That would mean we tunneled down approximately six point eight feet.»

  I was emerging into my human body now and still trying to shake off the unholy willies. "Six lousy feet!"

  «Closer to seven lousy feet,» Ax corrected.

  «0h, man,» Tobias moaned. «lf we're right and we have to dig down fifty feet, that would take us a week. You've got to be kidding! I'm a bird. I have no business being in a tunnel.»

  I almost agreed. In fact, I almost said, "Forget it! I'm outta here."

  But I didn't. In fact, I was the strongest voice for going forward. See, ! wasn't going to let the claustrophobia scare me. I wasn't going to let fear dictate what I did.

  Or maybe I was just a fool.

  94 got better at digging as we became more experienced. But then we found ourselves running into rocky levels no mole was designed to dig through. We had to figure out ways around the rocks. Long, tirne-consuming ways around boulders.

  And we could only dig after school. We'd bring our homework and sit in that stifling shed and quiz each other on history or science. Ax would stand there, listening gravely to the history, and laughing at the primitive nature of our science.

  One by one we'd go down that hole. We timed it out so the next person was always in morph and ready to go. Four more days we dug. Till

  95 Cassie came back up and said, «l think we're blocked. It's solid rock.»

  "We are not blocked," I said. "We have not been doing all this just to end up blocked. There has to be a way."

  So down I went. Like an idiot. Like I was all excited about digging the stupid tunnel.

  Ax had calculated we were twenty-five feet down. Down through loose topsoil and clay and gravel. Down and down I scurried, pushing ahead with my little back feet, always clearing the tunnel of fallen dirt with my spade feet.

  I reached the end. The darkness was so absolute that no eye could see. Let alone a mole's eye.

  My nose touched the end of the tunnel. I began to dig. Rock. I moved left. Rock. I started thinking, hoping almost, that Cassie had been right. No more digging. No more tunnel. No more being buried alive.

  But then I found it. The seam between rocks. My nose felt it. I dug away some dirt and the seam grew. Yes, there was an opening.

  I hesitated. Did I really have to tell the others? They would take my word for it if I said Cassie was right. No one else was going to come down here to check. No one liked this any more than I did.

  I dug some more. And then . . .

  96 «What?»

  Air! A breeze.

  «No way.»

  But it was a breeze. Faint, and smelling heavy and damp and nasty. But a definite breeze. Air was flowing up between the rocks.

  «Hey, guys?» I called up in thought-speak. But they were out of range. No answer came.

  I dug away more dirt and now the breeze was stronger still. There was enough space for me to push my body through. But I sensed emptiness beyond.

  I turned around and raced back to the surface.

  «l think I hit a cave or something,» I said. «Cassie was right, it's rocky. But there's a breeze coming up between the rocks.»

  Jake checked his watch. "Too late for today. We'll hit it tomorrow. It's Saturday. We'll have more time."

  So on Saturday we were back. Rested and refreshed. Or as rested and refreshed as you can be after a night of nightmares where you're trapped in a coffin screaming, "Let me out, I'm not dead!"

  This time we all went down together. We dug out a larger area around the fissure in the rock. We made it large enough for all of us to fit. And somehow, as creepy as it still was, it was more or

  97 less comforting to know that everyone was down there with me.

  Until it occurred to me that now there was no one on the surface to rescue us. The tunnel could collapse, we could be trapped . . . what could I do, morph to human? Under twenty-five feet of dirt?

  Everyone took turns digging away the last of the dirt. Our noses told us we were standing around a crack that went down and down into the rock.

  «This just gets to be more and more fun, doesn't it?» Marco said sarcastically. «Now it's solid rock.»

  «Better than digging through dirt,» I said.

  «0h, yeah? Guess again. We're moles. If a dirt tunnel collapses on us we can dig our way out. What do we do if rocks collapse in on us?»

  He was right. I had to force myself to st
ay very still and not start running. If I started running, I'd never stop.

  «lf you're scared, I'll go in,» I said.

  «l'm scared,» Marco confirmed. «Help yourself,»

  There must be something kind of liberating, just being able to say "I'm scared" like it's no big deal. I can't do that. I don't know why. I just can't.

  I pushed my sleek mole body down into the

  98 rock. It was rough, unworn rock. Rock that had been split open by pressure. I shoved forward. The path twisted and turned, but not too much.

  If I demorphed in here, my human body would be a hundred times too big. What would happen? Would I become a part of the rock? Would I be able to scream and scream with no one hearing me, no one able to help?

  «Get a grip!» I ordered myself. «Stop torturing yourself. It's going to be okay.»

  Suddenly . . .

  «Aaaahhhh!»

  I was falling! Falling blind.

  99 IB

  Trailing!

  «Aaaahhhh!»

  «Rachel!»

  WHUMPF!

  «Rachel! What's the matter?» Cassie's thought-speak voice.

  I landed on my back. I landed on something almost soft. Something that reeked in my mole nose.

  i was still in total, absolute darkness. I couldn't see anything. But I knew I was in a vast, open space. The Yeerk pool? No, of course not. There would be light there.

  But definitely an open space. Large. Quite large.

  100 And then I realized I was not alone.

  I didn't know what they were, but I felt their presence above me. Many, many of them.

  «Rachel!» It was Jake now. «Answer if you can.»

  «l'm okay,» I said. «!...! guess I fell into some kind of a cave.»

  «Do you see a guy in a cape and a really cool car?» Marco asked.

  «What?» I was too preoccupied to care about his dumb jokes.

  «The Batcave,» he said. «l'm thinking you fell into the Batcave.»

  It wasn't until that moment that I realized whose presence I felt above me.

  «Actually, Marco, I think maybe it is a bat cave. Come on down. You can jump. It's a nice, soft landing on a bat-poop mattress.»

  One by one they came, dropping down beside me. And soon we were six blind moles wallowing in mostly dried bat guano.

  Now that I was out of the tunnel, out of the confined space, I wanted to laugh. «Well, this is pretty glorious, huh? We have tunneled our way into a major bat-poop deposit. A whole week, and we have reached a bat cave. You know what I think? I think this whole thing has been cursed. And I think it's all my fault. I should have let that Edelman guy just splat on the concrete.»

  101 «We can't back out now,» Marco said. «l have thirty-six boxes of maple-and-ginger instant oatmeal at home. In easy-open single serving pouches.»

  «We should demorph,» Cassie said.

  «Why?» Tobias asked. «So we can really enjoy the lovely ambience?»

  «l was thinking since we're in a bat cave, maybe we should go into our own bat morphs,» Cassie said.

  «0h. I don't have a bat morph,» Tobias said.

  «Easily fixed in here,» Cassie said with a laugh. «l'll bet there are a few hundred thousand bats hanging from the roof of this cave. Just hanging around and waiting for someone to come along and acquire their DNA.»

  «You're awfully cheerful,» Jake grumbled. «We're in a cave way underground with no way out except a mole tunnel we can't reach anymore^

  «No, no, no,» Cassie said. «Wrong. Don't you realize? The bats fly out of here at dusk. Out. As in out? As in exitl»

  «Hey! She's right!» I yelled. «We won't be buried alive in here. Not that I was worried or anything.»

  «No, we'll just be buried in bat poop,» Marco muttered. «Let's morph to bat like Cassie said.»

  Yes, bat was a good idea. If you're going to be

  102 in a bat cave, best to be a bat. But first we had to pass through our own natural bodies.

  And oh, was that not fun.

  You think it's grim being a mole in a bat cave? Try being a human. For one thing, the cave was less high than we'd thought. For another thing, we all passed through the same helpless stage where we had big, swollen human bodies with tiny little feet and arms.

  "Ah, MAN!" Marco moaned. "Buried in bat -"

  "Guano," Cassie said, supplying the word.

  "Yeah, guano. That's what I was gonna say. Guano."

  "Thisissoguh-ROSS!" I yelled.

  My arms and legs reappeared and I had to stick my palms down in the stuff to raise up. The only good thing was that the awfulness of the grossness completely distracted me from the claustrophobia.

  , «What are you whining about, Rachel?» Tobias snapped grumpily. «Try having feathers in this stuff.»

  I raised myself up. I stood up. I raised my head. And that's when I made the discovery about the cave not being as high as we'd thought.

  You see, my head was entirely surrounded by soft, warm, fuzzy bats.

  103 There was really only one thing to do.

  "Marco," I said. "Be sure and stretch out. Up on your tiptoes now."

  "Aaaahhhh!" he yelped. "Oh, really funny, Rachel. That was so mature!"

  "What, I should suffer and you shouldn't, just because you're short?"

  And then, weird as it seems, we all burst out giggling. Thirty feet underground in a bat cave so dark you might as well be blind, lost, scared, and smeared with bat guano, we got the giggles.

  104 Here. Have a bat," I said. I held one for Tobias. I wasn't afraid of bats. I'd been one.

  «Thanks.»

  "Watch out, he'll eat it," Marco said.

  "You know," Jake said in a conversational tone as we waited for Tobias to acquire the bat, "from the point where Edelman said 'maple and ginger oatmeal,' I should have known this was going to end stupidly."

  "Instant maple and ginger oatmeal," Cassie said.

  "Battles that involve oatmeal are just never going to end up being historic, you know?" Jake went on. "Gettysburg? No major oatmeal invoive-

  105 ment. The Battle of Midway? Neither side used oatmeal. Desert Storm? No oatmeal."

  «Excuse me, but what is oatmeal?» Ax asked.

  "It's a kind of food," Cassie explained.

  «ls it tasty?»

  "You can think about food here? Here?" Marco said. "In bat-poop land?"

  "Battle of Bunker Hill? No oatmeal used by the British, no oatmeal used by the Americans," Jake went on. "D-Day? No mention of oatmeal."

  «0kay, I'm ready,» Tobias said.

  "Let's do it, and then let's get out of this place," I said.

  I focused my mind on the bat. The bat DNA had come from a common brown bat. Not a very big animal. More like a mouse with wings.

  It was a strange sensation. I was shrinking. Probably. But I couldn't see anything. So I couldn't see myself getting smaller. Couldn't see any of the changes.

  In the absolute darkness I was left with just my sense of hearing. I heard things I seldom noticed. I heard my thick, human bones grinding and suddenly squishing as they went liquid. I heard a sound like my stomach rumbling from hunger. Only it was the sound of my stomach and all my internal organs shifting and moving. Some organs shrank. Some basically disappeared. All

  106 of it was happening inside me at a point when I didn't even know if I was five feet tall or five inches,

  I reached with my hands to touch my face and "see" how much I'd morphed. But my hands were restricted. They were weirdly jointed. And when I moved them I heard a faint sound like leather being folded.

  I flapped my arms. Yes, I had wings. The paper-thin leather of bat wings.

  And then, I felt that most vital of bat powers: I felt the echolocation. I fired an ultrasonic blast. Sound waves pitched higher than any human ear would ever hear. But I heard them. They came bouncing back to me and I heard every distorted, twisted, shattered echo.

  «0h!» I said in amazement. I'd been a bat only once before, and only fo
r a short time. I'd forgotten the stunning array of information that comes from echolocating.

  It was as if I'd been blind and allowed to see.

  Not "see" the way humans see. But to see shapes, edges, openness, and narrowness. I fired another burst and I "saw" the edges of a thousand bats clustered above us. I saw their tiny, doglike faces and their big feathery ears as they hung down with wings folded demurely.

  It was as if all the world were drawn with pen and ink. Edges and outlines, no hint of color. And

  107 each picture was only a flash, only there as long as the echoes lasted.

  Now the others all began echolocating, and I redoubled my own efforts.

  Yes! I could see the cave. A comic book drawing of a cave, thin lines and thick ones.

  I flapped my wings and lifted off heavily, rising from the floor of the cave. I took a quick turn around, absolutely confident of where I was flying.

  «lt's not quite like seeing, but it beats being blind,» Cassie said, sighing with relief.

  I realized the others had been as stressed as I was by the utter darkness.

  «To the Batmobile, Robin,» Marco said.

  «How about if we just get out of this place?» Tobias suggested.

  «l'm with that,» Jake said.

  We flew. Through the cave, which wound and twisted, always beneath hanging bat stalactites, and above a carpet of bat-guano stalagmites.

  I could feel the way out. I could feel the slight changes of air pressure, the changes of temperature that showed the way out. But then . . .

  «You guys feel that?» I asked.

  «lt's coming from our left,» Ax said. «My echolocation is showing an opening. But not an opening to the outsider

  «0h, man,» I moaned. I could feel the near-

  108 ness of the cave opening. But I could also feel this other exit. I had a pretty good sense of where that second exit might lead.

  «We could just go home,» Jake said. He was offering us all a way out. Go home, forget about it for now. He didn't want to "order" us to go on if we weren't up for it.

  Everyone in a group has a role to play. At least that's how it always works out. My role was to say, "Let's do it. Let's go. That's what we came here for."

  But I was tired. And I'd had a really, really bad few days digging down to this stupid cave.