by Isaac Stone
I could hear the occasional shot. Chamita did her best to stay hidden around the bootleggers, but soon they would find her. I patted Bonnie on the back to reassure her. I wished someone would reassure me.
I found it hard to get Chamita off my mind. She was the symbol of something I’d longed for all my life. A wild thing that I could claim for my own. As much as anyone could claim her. She was a creature of the wilderness.
Suddenly, Chamita appeared in front of us. She seemed to be unscathed and Lobo stood by her side. Once again, she materialized out of the darkness. The wolf girl had powers that made her supernatural.
“Go back,” she said to me. “We have to leave, they come soon.” I nodded and pulled Bonnie out of the niche where we both were hidden.
We crept back to the rock where Howard and Lester waited without any trouble. As we stayed close to the edge of the cavern wall, it was hard to see the three of us. The side of the trail opposite the underground river ran next to a rock facing and we stayed flat on it. The three of us made our way back. I could hear the bootleggers grumble in the distance. They argued over whether or not to stay down here given what just happened.
Someone noticed us.
The moment we made our way to the spot where the protective boulder sat, a shot fired in the darkness. Someone found us and began to shoot directly at our trio. I grabbed Bonnie and threw her behind the rock as stone chips littered the air. Chamita pushed me, in turn, behind the rock barrier and turned to grab Lobo by the scuff of his neck.
The next shot hit Lobo. He yelped and fell. The wolf didn’t make another sound. I could tell from where the bullet hit, he was dead. Blood flowed all over the ground under him.
Chamita grabbed Lobo and pulled him behind the rock. I watched as she tried to revive him, but it was useless, he was gone.
While the bullets continued to whizz overhead, Chamita dropped to the still form of Lobo and hugged him. I watched as she rocked back and forth. For the first time I saw tears form in her eyes.
“My friend, my friend,” she said over and over. I could tell she was torn apart by the death of the wolf.
“You were with him a long time,” I said to her. Even Bonnie notice how torn up she was from Lobo’s death. I guess I was too, even if he was just an NPC's animal companion.
“Raised him,” she sobbed. “Mother didn’t want, he small. Took him. Showed him how to hunt.” Finally, she quit rocking and stood up.
Chamita walked over to me and put something in my hand. I looked down and saw the pocket watch. She’d found it and I didn’t care how. Now I could communicate with the VR crew.
“You lost again,” she told me.
Chamita gave me a big hug and walked to the edge of the stone. She turned and looked at me in the dim light of the cave with her big eyes. She reached down near the bottom of the rock and picked up something that she held out to me.
It was the bag with the photograph and jewel boxes. I took it from her and looked inside. Both of the boxes were still there. Why did she give this to me?
“I need go,” she said. “Take care this. Please.”
In one swift movement, she leaped into the underground river with her spear. I could hear her paddling away from us. In the dim light of the fungus, it was hard to see much of anything in that river. I worried I would never see the wolf girl again.
I turned to look back. Howard still had the shotgun aimed in the direction of the bootleggers and Lester had his Tommy gun propped up on the rock. I reached in my jacket and made sure there was ammo for my automatic. Bonnie’s face was turned away from me and at the body of Lobo. I went to her.
“She lost her dog,” Bonnie said. I could see the tears in her eyes as well.
“Wolf, actually,” I said to her. “But Lobo was more than a dog to her. He was her family.” She held me and cried on my shoulder.
Right now, we were in a fine spot. The bootleggers regrouped and started to advance in our direction. I could see the muzzle flashes and they were closer each time a gun fired. We needed to get moving again. This time, we’d lost Chamita and she was our guide to this underground world. At least I had the watch communicator back. I considered the red button behind it. It was one solution. But I wasn’t ready to end the game just yet.
No, I had to see it to the end. They wanted me to take these people to safety. Fine, I could do that if the game worked out in my favor. The big problem was that I had no idea where I was at the moment or how to get the hell out of this cavern. Our only guide to it was off swimming in the river, full of grief after the death of a wolf she regarded as her only friend in the world.
And it was up to me to bring everyone together. I needed to get out of gamer mode for a minute and think about what to do to save this bunch if I was to make the finish line. The only way to do that would be to find the exit to the surface. Most caves had multiple exits, most of which were hard to reach. There was a reason caves were considered dangerous.
“Howard, can you keep them back?” I asked. “We have to get out of here and I don’t think we can return the way we came.” I stood in place and tried to figure out what to do next as bullet whizzed through the air.
“I can,” he responded as the carbine fired again. “I’ve managed to get two of them. I can hold them off, but they’ll make another charge.” I could see the old treasure hunter’s face concentrate as he took aim and fired again. This wasn’t the first time he’d been in this spot.
“We need to move in the other direction,” I told him. “I hope there is something we can use to barricade us from these thugs. Maybe there is a way up. This cave floor wouldn’t have a trail if someone didn’t use it. We need to find out where it goes.”
“Or if something didn’t use it,” Lester pointed out. I could tell he was ready to unload his Tommy gun when the bootleggers came into range. I didn’t have the heart to ask him how low his ammunition might be at the moment. He probably didn’t known anyway.
There was a pause in the fighting as the other side stopped shooting. I didn’t know if they were low on bullets or what. All I could see was a brief pause in the carnage. They seemed to be discussing something from their side.
“The treasure,” a voice called to me. It was Thermon. “We want the treasure. We know you have that treasure. Give it to us and we’ll let you go. Does that sound like a deal?”
“It sounds like a deal I’d make in hell,” I yelled back. “I’ve got one for you, go back and we won’t kill every one of you.” I waited for his response.
“Seems to me we have the upper hand,” Thermon yelled back again. “All we have to do is sit here and wait. You’ll need to rest soon enough. Give us the treasure and you can go. All we want are the diamonds.” I could hear the silence as they waited for my response.
12
I was ready to pull out the watch and hit the red button on the back. So far, I hadn’t done much to get us out of the mess we were in at the moment. I had the bootleggers at the other end of the cavern. They blocked us from the only exit we knew about to the surface. We were outnumbered by a factor that was off the scale. Granted. They wouldn’t be able to get around us again. Now we would watch the opening the gat man used when he slugged me with the rifle stock. In theory, a small group can hold off a much larger invasion force if they block a gap. It was the way the noble 300 held off the entire Persian army at Thermopylae. However, they were all killed in the end. I needed to avoid that outcome.
At least I had the watch. With the communicator pocket watch, I could talk to the VR crew. But not right now, I needed to get my team to safety before we were over run by the bootleggers.
“Let’s fall back and continue into the cavern,” I told my team. “This isn’t working. We can’t hold them off from this bolder forever.”
“You have a plan?” Howard asked. “I don’t. We need to do something.”
“Maybe we should give them some of the jewels,” Lester suggested. “They might be happy and leave.”
�
��They might be happy to kill us,” I told Lester. “They’ll never let us leave this cavern alive. Once they have the jewels, they’ll murder every one of us. So get any ideas of compromise out of your head.”
My immediate plan was to move us down the trail in the direction of the deeper part of the caverns. There was no way to block the trail, at least none I could find. The underground river ran in both directions and we couldn’t see what was around the bend twenty yards behind us. I hoped we would come to some kind of choke point or bridge that I could use to keep them from an advance. I just hoped the programmers had gone all out with the world building and I wasn't going to just hit some pixelated wall.
Just as I decided to move, the gunfire from the other side started up, and then stopped. The bootleggers thought over their latest strategy so that they could come up with a new tactic. This was fine with me as it gave us the time to slip away.
I signaled to Howard and he tapped Lester on the shoulder. One look at Bonnie let her know what I had in mind. We began to retreat in silence down the trail. As we went, the bootleggers stayed quiet. I could hear them arguing over something in the distance, which was good for us. The sounds became fainter as we went around the bend.
The silence was interrupted by a loud bang from the other side of the bend. Howard looked to me for guidance and I shook my head. The rest of the team stopped and I crept back to the bend we’d passed. I looked around it to see the source of the bang.
Someone from the bootleggers’ side had tossed a bomb at the boulder they thought we were still hidden behind. Had we waited much longer, the bomb would have killed us all. I could see the cloud of smoke rise from where it detonated. I suspected they had grenades with them, this proved it. It was another thing to keep in mind before the game ended.
As I stood there, I heard a rumble and turned to look at the cave wall. The grenade’s shock wave caused something to loosen in the structure of the caverns. In seconds, a cascade of rock and soil burst loose and flowed across the trail and into the river. I jumped back until the sound of the avalanche finished, then looked around the bend once more.
The trail was covered. The bootleggers solved a problem for me with their idiotic use of a bomb. The explosion triggered the collapse of the rock wall that now covered the trail. It almost damned the river, but it hadn’t been large enough. The end result was the trail was blocked. The bootleggers would have to swim the deep part of the underground river and I didn’t think they were that foolhardy. Not after the stygian horrors I saw staring at us from the river’s edge, didn't need the logbook to know that those were game enders. Chamita knew how to avoid the big predators, but they wouldn’t.
I turned back to the team when I noticed another box on the ground. It might be a hidden cache, so I reached down to pick it up. I hesitated as the game caches could work for or against us. I decided to take the chance and picked up the box. It wasn’t’ that big, no larger than a portable file cabinet.
When I removed the lid, nothing happened. Perhaps we’d knocked it loose on our advance and set off a chain of events that resulted in the landslide, I didn’t know. I spilled the contents on the ground. They were sheets of paper, so I took them back with me to our group.
“What happened back there?” Howard asked me as I approached our team. “We heard an explosion. Was it those thugs?” He appeared stern and concerned at the same time.
“One of them through a grenade,” I told him. “It landed right where we were standing a few minutes ago. The explosion caused a landslide and the trail is blocked.”
“At least they can’t follow us any longer,” Lester said while he held onto his Tommy gun.
“The entrance is blocked,” Bonnie pointed out. “They can’t get to us and we can’t get out.”
“What do you have there?” Howard asked me as he noted the papers I carried.
“Found them in a box,” I told him. “One that the bomb dislodged. Bring one of the torches over here; I want to see what I’ve discovered.”
We spread the papers out on the ground and looked at them. They were maps of the caverns made hundreds of years ago. Somehow, they’d survived in the humidity of the cave system. The maps showed an extensive network of caves that lay under the mountains. I was amazed and everyone commented on them.
“I never knew there were so many caves down here,” Howard spoke. “I’ve been in a few cave systems, but this is larger than anything else, if these drawings are correct. How did they make them? What is the date on the maps?”
I held one closer to me and looked at it. “1850,” I read to him. “I don’t see the name of an author.”
“Don’t know how accurate the drawings are,” Lester commented. “But we don’t have anything else to go on. We’ll have to use them.”
I looked at one manuscript that didn’t fit in with the rest. It was a study of the subterranean creatures that lurked in the darkness. After the incident with the giant scorpion, I wanted to know more about them and read it as best I could.
The author included several sketches of what lurked down in the caverns. The giant scorpion was drawn, from life, as they’d seen it too. The other sketches showed the large rodent Chamita brought in with her before we left the rise. There were huge, blind fish that lived in the underground river. Almost everything down here was blind, as eyes served no purpose. The light from the fungus wasn’t enough to be useful for most of the creatures.
The manuscript had some notes on each one. The giant cave rat, as this what he called the rodent, lived in large packs and travelled all over these caverns. The scorpions were solitary and roamed toward the surface. Most of the creatures he talked about were carnivores, probably from the lack of plant life in the caves.
One of the drawings interested me more than the others did. It was of a short creature, not quite human, but who resembled a man. It held a spear and wore a loincloth. The text described it as a deritar and discussed the way they lived in small settlements. The author didn’t think much of them and described the cave dwellers as “savages”. Was this supposed to be some kind of troglodyte missing link?
I heard a sound next to me and turned, once again, to find Chamita. She wasn’t wet, even after her dive into the river. Still with her spear, she looked as graceful as ever. I was relived, as I’d feared Chamita had run off for good.
“Trail blocked,” she noted. “Can’t go back. Bad men can’t come to you.”
“We know, Chamita,” I told her. “The bad men did something to collapse part of the cavern. But I found some maps that might help.” I picked up one of the maps on the ground and let her see it.”
By now, everyone else knew she’d returned. They appeared relived, as she’d been the only guide we had inside the cavern. Bonnie was relieved, but I could tell she still had a bit of resentment from when she spotted me with the wolf girl.
Chamita looked at the maps and traced her finger down the trail we’d traveled to arrive at our present destination. I could see her concentrate on the map; she seemed to understand what it represented. Her curly hair covered most of her face as she looked at the map. Her finger traced the line of the trail to it came at a large area marked as “plate”. From what I could tell, it was a huge underground grotto that opened into a dome.
And right at the end of it was a passageway marked “Tunnel to the surface”.
“This take you out,” she told us. “Have used it too. Go straight to sunshine.”
So there was another way to get back to the surface. It made sense; most cave systems had multiple ways to get in and out of them. We all felt better after she’d made the announcement. However, we still needed to reach it.
Chamita stopped her finger on the open grotto indicated on the map. “They live here,” she informed us.
“Who lives there?” I asked her for more information. Her eyes stopped on the paper I’d looked at when she arrived, the one with the study of the dangerous creatures who lived in the caverns.
She point
ed at the drawing of the deritar. “They live there. Not like it if you cross. May get angry.”
“Well, we do have guns,” Lester pointed out. He held up his Tommy gun.
“We have no idea how many of these things live in the grotto,” I told him. “You may be able to get a lot of them with your Tommy gun, but you’ll run out of bullets before you get them all. How much ammunition do you have left?”
“Well, I…”
“That’s what I meant. Let’s not be too quick to shoot things.”
I couldn’t find any other exits on the maps, so we decided to take the direction Chamita pointed out to us. It might not be the best way to get to the surface, but it was the only one we knew about. Going back was almost impossible and I had no desire to encounter those blind predator fish that lived in the river.
With the matches we had, Lester relit another torch and we had more light than before. I was grateful, as I hated the darkness we were stuck inside. I had no way to tell if it was night or day outside, but I did feel tired.
“I think we all need rest,” I announced. “I’ll take the first watch for two hours and Howard can spell me afterwards. Howard, you can pick whoever you want to stand watch after you.”
Chamita picked up her spear without warning. She spun around and looked at us. I couldn’t tell if she there was some danger we didn’t know about or if she simply needed to go. With her, it was hard to tell. She stood there in the torchlight with her large eyes upon us. For someone who’d lived all their life in the forest, she had a high degree of basic knowledge.
“Need to find food,” she announced. “Back soon.” Once again, she leaped on a rock near to where we stood and vanished.
The place where we’d stopped was another niche in the cavern. There wasn’t much room on either side of the underground river, but, every now and then, the side of the cavern would open up into another passage or a large niche. The niches we could use to camp inside.