Star Road

by Matthew Costello

  Without a word, Jordan slung his backpack off and opened the top flap.

  “Only a few left,” the gunner said.

  As Jordan took out a flare, Ivan asked, “How many?”

  “Seven ... counting this one.”

  Ivan nodded, thinking.

  Jordan took out three flares and handed them to Ivan.

  “Share and share alike.”

  “Thanks,” Ivan said as he slipped them into his backpack and zipped it shut.

  He watched as Jordan struck the second flare and held it above his head. The sputtering red glow filled the cavern as sparks spilled to the floor and a thick billow of smoke rose to the dark reaches of the cave ceiling. How far up it went was anyone’s guess.

  The sudden brightness momentarily blinded Ivan, but when he looked down, he could see ...

  “I’ll be a son of a bitch,” he said as he and Jordan stared down at the long flight of stone steps spiraling down into the depths below.

  Ivan looked back at the others and called out. “There’s a stairway. We have to go down.”

  Is that all this is? he wondered.

  He took the first step down, placing his foot solidly on the wide stone.

  And in an instant, it disappeared ... like a light winking off.

  Thrown off balance, Ivan lurched forward and began to fall.

  ~ * ~

  38

  THE STEPS

  As Ivan’s momentum carried him forward, Ruth let out a piercing scream and Jordan dove forward. He missed Ivan’s arm, but his fingers snagged his jacket collar.

  It wasn’t much ...

  But it was enough.

  Ivan twisted around to face Jordan. His arms shot up and out as his hands and forearms slapped the top edge of the cave floor. Grit from the cave floor rained down into his face.

  For a few seconds—seconds that seemed like minutes—he dangled with his legs kicking freely in empty space.

  He grunted, looking up at Jordan and Ruth and the others.

  “Uh ... a little help here’d be nice?” he said, his breath puffing hard with the effort of hanging on.

  Jordan held the flare high so Annie and Rodriguez could see what they were doing as they knelt down on either side of Ivan and got a good grip on him. Hands wedged under his armpits, they lifted him up, dragging him slowly until his knees scraped against the cave floor.

  “Thanks,” he said, panting from the effort as he straightened up and brushed himself off.

  He noticed the blood still leaking from Ruth’s ear and reached out to touch her on the shoulder.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  A quick nod. Ivan turned to face the others.

  “Okay. Want my guess about what’s going on here?”

  For a moment, they stood there quiet. Stumped. Then: “It’s another part of the defense system.”

  “Defense system?” Annie echoed, moving close.

  “I mean, this is all a deadly game for someone.”

  “Your brother, you mean,” Jordan said.

  “No doubt he’s enjoying it. But I don’t think he had anything to do with making any of this. It’s too ingenious. And my guess—probably alien.”

  Ivan looked around.

  “Kyros must have found this place and now he’s using it against us. And whoever made these traps was sure as hell protecting something pretty damn important.”

  “And each part of it,” Annie said, “is luring us deeper in—”

  “If it doesn’t kill us first,” Jordan said.

  “Yeah,” Ivan said. “Designed to kill any interlopers. Like us. That is, unless we can figure out the traps.”

  “So it’s like a test?” Ruth said quietly.

  The flare sputtering in Jordan’s hand tossed red sparks onto the dirt floor.

  “Pass the tests, and it drives us deeper and deeper into the cave,” Ivan said. “And I suspect whatever’s down here that’s valuable my brother has already found.”

  He looked at Annie. She’d been unshakeable as far as he had seen so far.

  Now? Her face was set, grim.

  Stay with me, he thought.

  “W-we should stop then,” Rodriguez said. “I am not going to be herded like an animal to the slaughter. I say we go back.”

  Ivan turned on him, hoping to make it perfectly clear.

  There is no going back. No turning around.

  “I say we get out of here while we can,” Rodriguez continued. “We can find some other way to deal with your brother if he’s even down here.”

  Ivan tensed, resisting the temptation to punch him.

  “Oh, he’s down here all right,” he said.

  Will the doc get the hint to shut the fuck up before he freaks everyone out?

  “You think you get to call the shots, Doc?” Ivan kept his voice low, commanding. And Rodriguez took a quick step back. His expression froze as he looked around searching for support from someone ... anyone.

  “What?” he said. “You all want to die down here?” He pointed at the stairway. “If we had panicked and been running away from that UHF, not being careful, not looking where we were going, we would all have gone off the edge when we reached these steps.”

  “Are you about done?” Ivan said, taking a step closer.

  “Easy there, Ivan,” Jordan said.

  “That room back there.” Rodriguez’s face flushed. “That stuff that was stuck on the walls? You know what it was, right?”

  Before anyone could answer, he finished it for them.

  “It’s whatever was left of whoever came down here. That high sonic frequency shattered their skulls. And it would have done the same to us if we hadn’t run.”

  “No one’s dead,” Ivan said.

  He looked around, taking the temperature of the group.

  “Not yet!”

  “It’s talk like that that’ll get us killed. Fear, Doctor. Trust me. Fear kills.”

  And Rodriguez definitely looked afraid when Ivan stepped closer.

  Rodriguez looked at Annie, as if expecting her to back him up, protect him.

  “I say we put it to a vote,” he said.

  Before he could finish, Ivan backhanded him across the mouth, a hard, loud smack that drew blood.

  “Leave if you want, Doc,” Ivan said softly, evenly. “But I say we’re safer if we stick together.”

  Wiping blood away with the back of his hand, Rodriguez looked at Annie.

  “And you’re going to just stand there and let him treat one of your passengers like this?”

  Annie glanced at Ivan. Then shook her head.

  “You’re not my responsibility anymore, so”—a shrug—”I’m fine with letting Ivan and Jordan take command.”

  Ivan cocked an eyebrow at her.

  Jordan, too? When did I say anything about Jordan being in charge? he wanted to ask but didn’t.

  “Okay,” Ivan said. “It’s decided, then. We have to calm the fuck down and figure this out.”

  In the sputtering red light of the flare, he looked down the long flight of stairs. They took a long, sweeping curve around to the right and disappeared down into darkness.

  Who knew how far down they went... or if they were even really there?

  Are all of the steps an illusion or just some of them?

  Ivan dropped onto his hands and knees and waved his hand in the empty space where the step had been. He leaned out, feeling around the edges.

  “This step’s definitely not there.” He leaned out even farther, looking left and right, but it was impossible to see into the deep shadows. “There’s no indication it was some kind of projection, so my guess is, the step was real—just not supported.”

  “We never heard it hit the floor down below,” Ruth said.

  Ivan nodded. “True. But we were so surprised, we weren’t really listening for it, either.”

  He leaned as far forward as he could go and slappe
d the second step in front of him.

  His hand hit hard stone. This one was solid.

  “Okay,” he said, easing back onto the platform.

  “It won’t be if it drops away as soon as you stand on it,” Ruth said, sounding worried.

  Ivan sat back on his heels and ran his fingers through his hair.

  “I’m thinking the first step was a holographic projection. Never really there. No one would create a trap where a real stone would fall and have to be reset every time someone tripped it.”

  “Maybe,” Jordan said, “but how do we know which steps are real ... or if any of them will support us?”

  Ivan stared down the long, winding stairway, thinking.

  “That flare about done?” he asked Jordan.

  He held out his hand.

  Jordan studied the flare for a moment and then gave it to him.

  Ivan gripped it loosely, feeling the heat of the burning metal tube. Then he leaned over the gap and gently tossed it onto the second step.

  It hit the wide stone block with a loud, metallic ringing sound.

  The stone step didn’t disappear. Then the flare rolled and dropped onto the next level.

  Same thing.

  The stair remained where it was.

  The fourth step didn’t fall or disappear, either.

  But when the flare rolled onto the fifth step, that one winked out of existence with a faint electronic hum.

  And the flare dropped, spinning end over end until it disappeared into the dark abyss.

  “Long way down,” Jordan said once the light was gone.

  Ivan nodded. “Hate to fall.”

  He took a breath. “Okay, then” he said. “The first step and the fifth step weren’t real. If this is some kind of puzzle, it’d be too easy for every other step to be the fake one, right? So”—he shook his head—”the only way to find out is to go down them ... step by step.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” Rodriguez said. He was daubing at his split lip, licking the blood off his fingertips. “You’ll get us all killed.”

  Ivan stood up and brushed his hands on his jacket.

  “You know, Doc, I was kinda thinking of asking you to lead the way.”

  Rodriguez backed away.

  Ivan smiled and, turning to the others, said, “So who has the fiber cable?”

  Jordan stepped forward, unzipped his backpack, and took out a length of thickly coiled cable.

  Ivan held the man’s gaze as they each held the cable tightly.

  “You want to play hero?” Ivan asked.

  Jordan smiled and let go of the cable.

  “All right, then. We loop this around ourselves and start down one at a time, single file, giving plenty of slack. I’ll take the lead.”

  While he was talking, he unspooled the end of the fiber cable and, with Ruth’s help, tied it around his chest, keeping the loop snug under his armpits.

  “You don’t have to do this, you know,” she whispered, her voice soft, her breath warm against the side of his face. “Maybe Rodriguez is right. Maybe we should all go back.”

  Ivan took a breath.

  A thought.

  Obvious. So clear.

  She cares for me. And maybe I care for her.

  There it was. But he had sensed all along that there was also something going on between her and Jordan.

  Should he back off?

  Finally, while playing out the fiber from the coil, he called out, “All right. Who’s next?”

  Before anyone could speak, Ruth said, “Me.”

  She took the fiber line and tied it securely around her chest the way Ivan had.

  Ivan checked to make sure it was secure. Then he played out more fiber, so Annie and then Sinjira could tie it around themselves.

  When it was Rodriguez’s turn, he took a step back and held up his hands.

  “No fucking way I’m doing that.”

  Jordan glanced at Ivan, who nodded. Then Jordan raised his pistol and pointed it at him.

  “You have a simple choice to make here, Doc.”

  Rodriguez’s face was pale even in the glow of another flare.

  Ivan thought the doctor was going to stand his ground and not tie on, but finally, he took the fiber and looped it twice around his chest. Jordan checked it, giving it an extra hard tug.

  “If one of us goes, we all go, huh?”

  “One for all, and all for one,” Ivan said with a smile.

  Lastly, Jordan tied on, making sure there was plenty of slack between him and Rodriguez.

  When they were done, they were each spaced a couple of meters apart.

  Ivan went down the line, checking everybody. Satisfied, he sucked in a quick breath and jumped over the first gap to land on the second step.

  The solid one.

  It held.

  “All right,” he said, only slightly relieved. “Let’s see how many steps there are to this hell.”

  ~ * ~

  These idiots are all gonna fall and drag me down with them.

  Rodriguez trembled as he climbed up the three stone stairs and prepared to step over the gap and onto the second—and first solid—step.

  He made sure to keep plenty of slack between him and Sinjira in front and Jordan behind.

  If someone fell, he wanted as much time as possible to drop to the ground and find something—anything—to hold on so he wouldn’t be dragged down into the abyss.

  “H-how do we know any of these steps are safe?” he called out, his voice echoing weirdly in the wide stairway.

  He could still taste the blood in his mouth and spat.

  Up ahead, Ivan carried a flare, holding it high.

  Behind him, another flare—carried by Jordan—sputtered as it spewed smoke. The red glow from both flares was as thick as paint, casting wavering double shadows across the rough-cut stone walls and descending steps.

  “How many flares do you have left?” he wondered.

  No answer.

  “If we run out before we reach bottom, what then?”

  Jordan said, “Relax, Doc. We’re still alive so far, ain’t we?”

  Rodriguez inhaled the dry cavern air and adjusted the rope around his chest.

  Then he took his first step down.

  Four people in front of him. They stretched out in a long line, carefully making their way down. Up ahead, Ivan paused and checked each step before putting his full weight on it.

  It pays to be paranoid, he thought but didn’t say.

  Some steps disappeared with a crackling hiss while others remained solid.

  So far. What if they, too, gave out once they were all on them?

  They inched along, taking their time, until both Jordan’s and Ivan’s flares eventually burned out.

  Before his was entirely gone, Jordan tossed it over the edge. Rodriguez looked back and watched it disappear, sucked down until it disappeared into the darkness below.

  And then gone.

  When Jordan lit another one, Rodriguez was momentarily blinded by the sudden burst of light in the darkness. Blinking his eyes, he turned away.

  That’s when he saw on the wall—-

  Symbols.

  “Hang on,” he shouted, loud enough for everyone to draw to a stop. The line went slack.

  “What now?” Jordan asked.

  “Look here. On the wall.”

  Rodriguez scanned the cave wall. The symbols were carved into the rock wall about six meters above each step.

  They were difficult to see with the light flickering.

  “This could be important,” he said.

  The numbers or letters or whatever had obviously been carved into the rock on purpose. Old, like ancient petroglyphs, worn by erosion.

  But that was strange, too. There was no “weather” down here to cause erosion—unless this stairway had been filled with floodwater in the past.