Nen

by Sean Ding

  CHAPTER 8

  The hail storm struck with furious intensity. Within minutes, the wind was screaming through the dilapidated army bunker windows at more than forty knots, lashing them with stinging pellets of hail.

  In sharp contrast, deep down underground, in the western annex of the legendary General’s Tomb, there was this unnerving calmness in the air and all was morbidly quiet.

  The tourists were standing outside the elevator shaft and they were all looking up. A couple of emergency lamps around the elevator shaft were functional and they illuminated the small landing space with a faint yellowish glow.

  The gunmetal elevator doors were half open and the entire passenger cage was stationary at about ten feet above their heads. Wong and Lang pressed all the buttons they could find near the elevator shaft but none of them was making the elevator work.

  “No shit,” Howard said as he stared into the tall elevator shaft, “how high is this shaft?”

  “Very high sir, something is wrong here. The elevator should have power.” Wong said with a worrying tone while he struggled with the red and green buttons on a control panel located on the left side of the elevator landing.

  Paul flipped open his mobile phone, stared at its LCD screen for a second or two and then closed it back curtly, “Damn it, there’s still no signal.”

  Sarah Tan, Mr. Chan and a few of the tourists tried to make calls using their mobile phones but like Paul, they were unable to get any phone signals underground.

  “Why don’t we do this, I will climb up the elevator shaft,” Lang the night guard said to the group in mandarin, “and when I am up there, I will call for help.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” John Chan responded in his unpolished mandarin, “I suggest we wait out here for a couple of hours. Surely someone will come to help us?”

  “Oh,it..it is not..possible” Lang started to stammer as he looked away from the eyes of the tourists.

  “Is there another way out of here?” Sarah Tan asked, looking at Lang gravely. Lang did not answer her.

  Tour guide Wong had apparently given up hope on the buttons and switches he was meddling with and he let out a long sigh, “This is the only way in and only way out.” He glanced at Lang and continued, “We have to get out of this place, because…”

  “Because of what?” Paul scoffed. Apparently he was still angry with Wong and Lang.

  “The main power generator is down, it means that the entire ventilation system here has…has stopped functioning,” Wong answered. He looked at his feet and muttered “in another few hours, we will run out of air.”

  “What? This is bull shit! ” Paul cried with intense hostility. That was followed by a heightening of uneasiness and anxiety among the group after a few Chinese speaking tourists explained the undesirable circumstances to their foreign counterparts. Chaos broke out all over the elevator landing.

  “You go up there and call help,” Mr. Park said, moving a step closer to Lang. “Please. You must go.”

  “This is madness man, it’s so dark up there and any wrong step, he will be so dead.” Howard said as he pointed his finger upwards at the tall elevator shaft.

  “I think we have to let him go,” Henry said, adjusting the horn-rimmed glasses on his face, “they are the ones who ripped us off remember?

  “No..no, there must be another way,” Sarah said, “it is too risky for him.”

  “Who cares, I don’t wanna die here!” Henry blurted out.

  The tourists began to argue among themselves. The situation went totally out of control and some of them were pulling the shirt of Lang, the night guard.

  “Silence!” Wong raised his voice, “Let him go if you want to live. He is our only hope!”

  Wong had a very loud voice and the commotion ceased instantly.

  Lang nodded his head and he gave a light pat on Wong’s shoulder. He smiled to Wong and said, “Wong, I am going up now.”

  “Please be careful.” Wong said.

  Lang took a glance at the weeping Pete for a second.

  “Don’t worry, kid, I will be back soon.” Lang said to Pete in Mandarin. He knew that Pete was completely terrified by the unfortunate turn of events but that was the best he could do.

  Lang turned and gave a final glance behind him. The tourists appeared hopeful and he could see Madam Kim and Mrs. Chan putting their palms together and moving them up and down, the same way the Taoists did when they offered prayers to their gods. He nodded to the group and started climbing onto the elevator Shaft. Within minutes, he disappeared into the darkness above.

  About twenty minutes had passed and the group of tourists was sitting on the icy concrete ground. Some of them were leaning against the elevator shaft and many had started to feel uncomfortable and breathless. Once in a while, someone would let out a cough which echoed eerily across the passageway and back.

  “Mum, I can’t breathe,” Pauline murmured, “are we going to die here?” She was exhausted and was resting her head on her mother’s right shoulder.

  “No my dear,” Mrs. Chan answered. She stroked Pauline’s hair gently and gave her a tight smile, “that night guard had gone up to get help. I think he will be back soon.”

  Nelson, Gupta and Howard were leaning against the cold stony wall directly opposite Pauline and her mum. Screaming silence was everywhere around them. They were slightly lethargic due to the diminishing level of oxygen in air and all three of them could not deny the fact that they actually had the same thoughts as Pauline- Were they going to die here?

  Although it started out only as a fearful thought, but as each second trickled away, the reality of suffocating and dying in the underground chamber would eventually materialized. It was indeed a tormenting twenty minutes for everyone. Nelson got on his feet and asked the question that was revolving in everyone’s mind, “What’s taking him so long?”

  “Maybe he’s gone for good.” Gupta said with a smile, his voice wavering slightly. “I don’t think so,” Howard said, eyeballing Wong who was lying down on the ground five feet away from him, “his tour guide friend is still here.”“I hope he doesn’t leave us here to die.” Henry who was nearby whispered but everyone could hear him loud and clear.

  Howard looked up and stared hard at the elevator shaft. He felt extremely uneasy and he knew that this was the same feeling that he always had when something bad happened. He felt the same way when Keith Johnson, his ex-colleague died three years ago in a mysterious car explosion in L.A. He felt the same way when young Ray Walters, a US marine soldier under his command was tortured to death by the Libyan terrorists ten years back. He closed his eyes and prayed hard.

  CHAPTER 9

  There was no indicator of the passage of time. The only sounds were the heavy breathing of the listless tourists sitting round the elevator landing and the endless, monotonous hiss of water running through the network of copper pipes that lined the entire passageway. Another forty or maybe fifty minutes had passed. Some of the mobile phones that the tourists were carrying went out of power and the only light source that kept their hopes alive was from the flashlight that Wong was holding.

  Everyone was perspiring and feeling extremely tired. Mr. Chan and his wife kept talking to their two drowsy children to ensure that they would not fell asleep. A symphony of coughs and moans perpetuated for a while.

  Wong suddenly stood up.

  “I must go and check. You all wait here.” Wong nodded to the tourists who were sitting around him. He handed over the flashlight to Howard and started to scale up the elevator shaft with great agility, like a monkey climbing up a tree.

  Howard let him go, he had this uncanny feeling that Wong would be safe, at least for the time being.

  When Wong was half way up the elevator shaft, he could make out a human figure clinging on one of the iron girders a few feet above his head. He stopped his ascent and called out, “Comrade Lang, it’s me. I am down here. What are you doing?” Lang did not reply to Wong at all.

  Wong cla
mbered up closer and he stretched out his right hand to touch his friend Lang who seemed to ignore his calls. In a flash, there was a loud crackle and white sparks flew when Wong’s fingers came into contact with Lang’s right shoulder. A smell of burning flesh smoldered from Lang’s convulsing body that twitched violently on the iron girder supporting it. The next moment, Lang had slipped off the iron girder and was tumbling toward the chasm below.

  Wong’s mind went blank momentarily and he accidentally missed his grip. Screaming out loud, he thought he was falling towards a sure death but miraculously, he survived the fall when he crash-landed on a narrow metallic strut protruding from the elevator shaft about ten feet below.

  “Did you hear that?” Paul said, glaring hard at the elevator shaft.

  “What?” asked Nelson, with a sharp look to Paul.

  Paul pointed at the elevator shaft and said, “Up there.”

  A rumbling sound became more audible and both men stood up immediately, their eyes scrutinizing the top end of the elevator shaft, trying to figure out where the strange sound came from.

  There was a momentary silence before night guard Lang’s body plummeted down the elevator shaft at great speed and crashed onto the hard ground.

  Chaos erupted and screams reverberated all over the small confined space at the elevator landing. Mr. Chan pulled his children one side and used his body to block their views of Lang’s contorted body.

  “Oh my god …oh my god…” Mrs. Chan cried, in a high-pitched, quivering voice, looking first at Lang’s body, then at her children.

  “Shit, what the hell happened?” Howard said. He moved forward to take a closer look at Lang’s dead body which was charred and badly twisted.

  “Don’t touch,” Sarah Tan said firmly, “let me have a look.”

  CHAPTER 10

  In the shadow of the towering elevator shaft that extended a thousand feet below ground, a few adults were squatting in a circle around Lang’s body. Sarah Tan had made known to the others that she was a medical doctor working as a forensic scientist in Singapore. Under the faint flickering light from Howard’s torch, Dr. Sarah Tan inspected Lang’s charred and contorted hands which were still fuming with a pungent odor.

  Wong the tour guide had returned to the elevator landing safe and sound save for burns on his palms. Squatting beside Howard, his eyes were red and teary as he watched Sarah examine his friend’s body.

  “He died of electrocution,” Sarah said, pausing for a moment, she then flipped over Lang’s hands to show his palms and fingers to the others, “Look at these burns.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen such deaths before.” Howard said, inhaling a deep breath.

  “I saw…I saw sparks all over him,” Wong whispered, trying hard to tone down his uncontrollably loud voice which was quivering with fear, “Look, my…my hands are burnt too.”

  “I think some parts of the elevator shaft must be conducting high electric currents and this poor chap had totally no idea about it.” Gupta said with a stern tone.

  Nelson shrugged and said, “What’s happening outside may have caused the damage. Maybe a live wire short circuit or something.”

  “Shit. That means..umph..we are trapped here.”Paul stuttered, coughing repeatedly at the same time.

  “Oh dear, it’s all your fault Paul!” Henry cried and gestured in a vigorous manner, his glasses almost slipping from his nose when he did that.

  “Hey, back off!” Paul retorted, pointing his index finger at Wong, “You should blame this guy!”

  “Quiet!” Howard intervened. He turned toward Wong and said in perfect mandarin, “Wong, are there any other exits? Are there any one else here besides us?”

  Wong was surprised that the hunky American could speak mandarin. He shook his head and sighed, “No other exits. There is no one else here besides us. You speak mandarin?”

  Howard gave an assuring nod to Wong and said, “Your English is not bad either. Listen up, do you know this place well?”

  “Yes,” Wong replied, staring blankly into space, “I used to work as a laborer here, helping the archeologists excavate and clean up debris. I operate the fork lift.”

  “Great,” Howard said, his eyes locking with Wong, “is there some kind of a map or Communication device we can find here?”

  “There is a small office next to the Power mains. Maybe there is something we can find there.”

  “Okay, please lead the way,” Howard’s voice was firm and confident. He moved over to Paul and Gupta and said to them, “Guys, please watch out for the others. Ask the kids to lie down and breathe gently.” He took a glance at the tourists cluttering all over the cramped place and muttered, “We will be back in a minute.”

  After placing the flashlight he was holding into Gupta’s hands, Howard flipped open his cell phone which had barely enough illumination. He gave a thumbs-up gesture to the rest and strode steadily into the darkness with Wong leading the way.

  In the stuffy and overcrowded elevator’s landing deep underground, a group of unfortunate tourists were either sitting or lying on the cold hard ground, waiting for someone to come to their rescue. Beads of perspiration rolled down their foreheads and their bodies were soaked with sweat. The rhythmic groans and coughs by the oxygen-deprived tourists reverberated in that confined space, reaching a stage where by such depressing noises of suffocation had become a norm which bothered no one.

  About five feet away from the twisted body of Mr. Lang, Gupta was resting against a cylindrical barrel, holding on to the one and only flashlight in the group. He had been staring hard at the flickering light for the last ten minutes, fearing that the batteries in the flashlight would flat out any second.

  The only light source in the elevator landing flickered for a second or two and then it started to dim.

  “Oh god, no...no,” Gupta stammered, his hands trembling with fear while he gave a few gentle knocks to the flashlight, hoping that by doing so, he could extend the lifespan of the batteries, “please…we need you…don’t do this to us.”

  The flashlight continued to dim and the entire place became darker and darker.

  “Mummy, I am scared.” Pete cried, his tiny arms barely able to wrap around her mother’s waist. Mrs. Chan did not know what to say at that point of time but the only thing that she thought she could do then was to keep her two children as close to her as possible.

  “Come here Pauline,” Mrs. Chan called out. Pauline inched herself forward to be closer to her mother, her teary eyes fully locked onto the diminishing flashlight that was shining from Gupta’s hands.

  Finally, the light went out.

  Pitch black buffeted the passageway leading to the elevator landing. Unnerving episodes of sobs and groans erupted in the screaming darkness and total despair finally descended upon the tourists. This lasted for a mere five minutes but to the tourists who were waiting for eternity in the cold and dark enclosure; it seemed like ten long years had passed.

  Just when faith had almost vanished completely into the darkness, the wooden door at the end of the passageway swung open suddenly and two beams of pale white lights infiltrated the passageway like two sharp knifes slicing open a piece of black cloth.

  Howard and Wong had returned to the elevator landing, each carrying a flashlight and a bunch of stuff under their arms. At the elevator landing, they carefully laid down all the stuff they had carried on the ground- A duffel bag containing gardening tools such as shovels, spades and hatchets, a couple of crowbars and two plastic bags of bottled beverages presumably taken from the vending machine in the underground chamber. After making sure that all the items were accounted for, Howard and Wong started to hand out the bottled drinks to everyone.

  “People, please drink up before you become dehydrated.” Howard said with a serious tone.

  Like football players who embraced isotonic drinks after a match so as to re-balance the loss of sodium in their bodies, everyone in the confined space started gulping down the heavenly soda from the bottled
soft drinks to quench their thirsts. Mrs. Chan handed the drinks to her two children and was seen planting an extra bottle in her hand bag. Nonetheless, nobody bothered at that point of time.

  Howard waited a moment for the adults to finish their drinks before he talked to them in a whisper, trying his best to keep his voice down, “Guys, We were at the Power Room. The entire power system to drive the elevator and the overhead lights has broken down and there’re no backup generators whatsoever to even power up the ventilation system.”

  He looked into the weary eyes of the tourists and continued, “We found a map and some stuff at the Guard office. There are no land lines here. Maybe they used to have some phones lying around but after the archeologists left this site years ago, the authorities had since deactivated all communication lines in this place. No phones, no computers, no fax machines. It really sucks but there’s nothing we can use here to send our distress calls out.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Mr. Chan said worryingly, “somebody would come for us right? This is an archeological site isn’t it?”

  Howard glared hard at Wong who slowly lowered down his head with a stern face splattered with guilt and remorse.Howard rolled his eyes. He then took out a small crumpled map and a tattered piece of newspaper cutting from his right pocket, unfolded them and explained, “This place is one of the various abandoned sites of the Chinese National Archeological Center. It was believed that in one of these sites stood the entrance to the west wing chamber of the General’s Tomb. There are probably twenty or thirty such sites in this area.” He pointed to a few excavation sites marked in red ink at the top right corner of the map. He then repositioned the newspaper cutting which he had held upside down and said, “Look, the newspaper cutting give details that this excavation site was abandoned by Chinese archeologists in the 1970s due to safety reasons. I believe our good tour guide here and some of his friends from the village used to work here but now they were digging for leftover treasures, antiques, anything they can savage from this place…and they sell their national treasures for a profit.”