Intulo: The Lost World

by JE Gurley

“I may have to.” He picked up his rifle and began unsealing the door. “I suggest you grab water, food, and extra flashlights.” He opened the door a crack. No bugs were outside. The battle had moved farther down the tunnel. “I’ll lead,” he said.

  He took a deep breath and stepped out of the shelter. He didn’t know if he was making the right move, but he certainly didn’t want to be around when the winners of the insect Battle Royale came to collect their purse.

  Dry rot so badly damaged the door it looked ready to disintegrate at the first touch. However poor a barricade it was, he still preferred to keep it between him and the bugs. A rusty chain looped through a hole in the door attached to the staple part of a hasp secured to the equally rotten heavy-timber doorframe. He gripped the chain with both hands and tugged. The door squeaked. He paused, but the sound had gone unnoticed among the din of clicks, hisses, and clattering of the fight. The effort hurt his wrist, but he kept at it. He tugged harder, and the chain ripped the metal staple from the doorframe. The door, swollen in the wooden frame, resisted opening, but he persisted. With a final jerk, it finally gave. He pulled the door open, and a stack of lumber leaning precariously against the inside of the door collapsed with a loud crash. Instantly, the sounds of battle stopped and every compound eye in the mineshaft turned their direction.

  “Run!” he yelled and pushed Eve inside the tunnel ahead of him.

  They had moved to the top of the insect menu.

  13

  July 5, 2016, 11:30 p.m. Ngomo Mine, 65 Level –

  Five men worked with Pieter Wilhelmina in the new adit, a short side tunnel cut perpendicular to the ore face off Shaft C 211East. When the evacuation alarm sounded, he shut down the pneumatic drill he was operating and wiped his grimy, sweaty face on a rag as dirty as his face. With the thundering drill silent, the alarm clamored for his attention.

  “Cave-in?” asked Lucas Bandile, Wilhelmina’s Xhosa helper squatting next to the drill wrapping the water line attached to the drill to seal another leak.

  The function of the fine mist of water spraying from the tip of the drill was to keep down the silica dust produced by drilling; great in theory, but it fell short in application. The ancient rubber hose leaked like a sieve. Most of the water ended up on the ground.

  The dust caused silicosis, a deadly lung disease like Black Lung in coalmines. The company issued masks for protection, but they were uncomfortable and became coated in dust too quickly. Wilhelmina preferred to place his trust in God and in luck. Dust particles floating around Bandile’s head sparkled in his headlamp beam, producing an aura. Shirtless in the heat, his jet-black torso glistened with beads of perspiration.

  “I felt nothing,” piped up tall, lanky Imbe Bhekithemba from the other side of the narrow shaft. The tall Zulu driller had to duck his head to avoid the low roof.

  The other two men in the tunnel, both Zimbabwean immigrant laborers, glanced at one another nervously, but said nothing. They understood only one in five of the Bantu words spoken by Bandile and Bhekithemba and even fewer in Afrikaans. The mini-United Nations of workers Wilhelmina dealt with made the use of facial expressions and hand signals more important than language. When the others stopped working, the two Zimbabweans thought it was time to quit. They picked up their lunch pails, walked over to the half-loaded ore cart, and began pushing it back down the tunnel toward the main shaft. Wilhelmina stopped them with a shake of his head. They stopped and stood looking at each other in confusion.

  “Well, whatever it is, we had best heed it.” Wilhelmina took a big gulp from his water bottle. He was always surprised how thirsty a man could get when the air was almost damp enough to drink. The constant ninety-five-percent humidity and 48 degree Celsius temperature of the tunnel made working conditioners appalling, but it was a living. Too many men he knew had no jobs.

  “Come,” he said to the two Zimbabweans, crooking his arm and motioning them to follow, hoping they understood his meaning.

  They heard the first screams as they entered the main tunnel. Bandile stopped and looked around, frightened. “What was that?”

  Wilhelmina shrugged. “Hamba,” he said in Bantu, urging Bandile to go see.

  “Hhayibo,” Bandile replied, shaking his head emphatically, and then repeated in English, “No way.”

  Wilhelmina smiled at Bandile’s reluctance. Maybe he had trained the eager driller’s helper right after all. “I’ll look,” he said.

  He walked to the first bend of the tunnel, stopped, and stared dumbfounded at the spectacle in front of him. Dozens of the biggest spiders he had ever seen swarmed over two workers struggling on the ground. The nightmarish spiders were scaly and bristling with short, wiry hairs protruding from kitchen sink-sized round bodies, which attached to eight spindly, meter-long legs folded until they rose above the creatures’ backs. The spiders repeatedly jabbed their fangs into the workers. As he watched in revulsion, the men’s struggles slowly ceased. Then, the spiders began wrapping the men with silk extruded from twin spinnerets on their abdomen, rolling the bodies over with their legs as they spun silken threads.

  As if giant spiders weren’t enough, a dragonfly as long as his arm flew by on iridescent golden wings. One of the spiders leapt into the air, grabbed it, and dragged it to the ground. It immediately began enfolding it in the web with one of the men.

  “What the fuck?” he mumbled, and then jumped in fright when Bandile brushed up against his back. He glanced at Bandile, whose dark face was turning pale at the horrible sight. “We have to go.”

  “Go where? The elevator is that way.” Bandile nodded past the creatures.

  Wilhelmina tried to think. There had to be another way out. “The ventilator shaft,” he remembered. “We can climb down to the next level.”

  Bandile stared at him. “Why not climb up and out?

  “Because of the ventilator fan above us,” he reminded him.

  Bandile licked his lips nervously and nodded. “Okay.”

  The others were watching them from a safe distance. They had not seen the spiders, but they knew from the tenseness in Wilhelmina and Bandile’s voices that something was wrong.

  “We go,” Wilhelmina said to them. Noting the fear in his face, they didn’t question him, but followed mutely.

  The ventilator shaft was a meter-and-a half-wide vertical opening drilled through the rock, connecting with a maze of similar airshafts regulating the temperature in the mine. A metal ladder inside the shaft provided an emergency exit. It was Wilhelmina’s idea to reach the ore skip elevator three levels below them and ride it to the surface. The problem was that the shaft did not connect directly with the skip loading room. They would have to reach it in a roundabout manner.

  He led the way down the airshaft, climbing hand over hand as quickly as he could. He wasn’t quick enough. The first scream reached him from above just as he entered a second, horizontal airshaft.

  He stuck his head out into the vertical shaft and shouted, “What’s happening?”

  Bhekithemba, sliding down the ladder using only hands and feet, almost landed on his head. He pushed past Wilhelmina with a look of abject horror on his gaunt face, slid into the horizontal airshaft, and scrambled down it on his hands and knees. Bandile stood on the ladder a few meters above the opening staring back up the shaft. Another scream followed the first. Bandile grimaced and began descending the ladder as fast as he could.

  When he reached Wilhelmina, he said, “The two Zimbabweans did not make it. Spiders got them. We must hurry.”

  Wilhelmina was tempted to look back up the shaft to judge how much time they had but restrained himself. “Come on,” he said and crawled after Bhekithemba.

  They soon reached a shaft with a ninety-degree slope, a chute for delivering the ore to the skip elevator room over fifty meters below. Wilhelmina heard the grinding and squealing of the cable-driven skip elevator responsible for delivering the 3.3 tons of ore to the surface necessary to extract an ounce of glittering gold. In his ten years in the min
e, he had yet to see a single gold nugget.

  Without looking back to see if anyone was following, Bhekithemba entered the chute first, spreading his long arms and legs against the rock walls to slow his descent. Wilhelmina shoved Bandile in after him. Both men were younger and more athletic than he was. He didn’t want to slow them down. He dropped his legs over the side and crossed himself. Reciting the names of the saints, he loosened his grip and dropped. He was soon glad for his heavy work gloves, as friction began to heat up his hands. He didn’t bother slowing down. What was following them was far worse than minor friction burns on his hands and butt cheeks.

  He slid out of the shaft and hit a pile of rock hard enough to jar his teeth. He rolled off the ore onto the raised steel-grate walkway and bounced into arms of Bandile. Bandile said something to him as he set him down, but he couldn’t understand him over the noise of the skip elevator. He looked down into the grinding gears of the conveyor pulley on the opposite side of the walkway and was glad Bandile had been there.

  He searched for Bhekithemba, but he was nowhere in sight. As he tried to catch his breath, he saw Bandile’s eyes go wide with fright. He spun on his heel and saw one of the spiders drop to the pile of ore attached to a silk thread as thick as a clothesline. He grabbed a large chunk of ore from the floor and threw it at the spider with all his strength. Luck was with him. He missed the spider but hit a rock beneath it, dislodging it. He smiled as the spider tumbled into the opening. Yellow liquid squirted from its smashed body as the gears ground it into pulp.

  As the pair raced for the skip elevator, a blood-curdling scream stopped them in their tracks. They entered the loading room cautiously. Spider webs festooned the entire room from roof to floor and draped over the front-end loader used to scoop up ore from the pile and deposit it in the line of moving buckets. Dangling from the webs were bundles Wilhelmina knew instinctively were humans, the loader crew. Spiders crawled over the web, some clinging to the bundles with their front legs with their mouths buried in the bundles. Wilhelmina felt sick to his stomach.

  The scream had come from Bhekithemba. Half a dozen spiders had backed the big Zulu against one wall, and he was using a length of pipe to beat them back. One lay crushed beside him. Another oozed yellow ichor from its back and wobbled unsteadily as it moved, but there were too many of them. Bhekithemba saw Wilhelmina.

  “Help me!” he screamed.

  Wilhelmina looked around for a weapon to help him but saw nothing. More spiders were moving toward the Zulu from the sides like a pride of stalking lions, trying to surround him. He spied the open ore bucket ascending from below and wavered between rushing to safety and helping his co-worker. Bandile made his decision for him, grabbing him by the arm, and dragging him to the waiting skip elevator. He didn’t resist. Spiders noticed them and began scuttling toward the elevator. Wilhelmina knew they weren’t going to make it.

  A sudden chill enveloped him, like an icy hand reaching inside his body and clutching his spine. Instantly, as one, the spiders turned to face the other direction. They became agitated, bouncing up and down on their legs, and then raced away down the tunnel. Whatever had frightened them was getting closer. He could feel it in his mind, growing like a dark cloud pregnant with lightning building to a summer thunderstorm. Most frightening of all, he knew the presence sensed him as well.

  A creature entered the room, an ebony carpet sliding across the floor on hundreds of tiny legs. It paused for a moment, staring at the men with two large compound eyes almost as black as its body; then, began rising from the floor, heaving itself into a four-meter tower of dark terror scraping the ceiling. The dark orbs regarded the men leisurely, its hunger almost palpable in its intense insect gaze. Wilhelmina’s bladder let go. He felt warm urine running down his leg, but he felt no shame. Men could not face such horrors. What did courage or strength matter to such a primordial creature? He felt a tickle in his mind and tried to fight it, but it was too strong. Had Bhekithemba across the room not chosen that moment to move, he knew he would have fallen into the dark abyss from which there could be no return.

  The ebony creature swept across the floor and enveloped the Zulu in writhing bands of black. The tiny, needle-like legs punctured his flesh in a hundred places. His screams roused Wilhelmina from his trance. Bandile shoved him into the elevator bucket. He cast one last forlorn look at Bhekithemba, who had now stopped fighting and stood like a black statue, one eye visible through his shroud, watching him, accusing him of cowardice. The Zulu’s blood ran down his body in crimson streams. Almost in a convulsion, the creature embracing him wrung his body dry of blood, its black carapace soaking it up like a sponge. Wilhelmina swallowed hard and made a move to help the Zulu. Bandile grabbed him and pulled him back.

  “You will die,” he warned.

  As the bucket slowly groaned up the cables, Wilhelmina closed his eyes and fell to his knees sobbing, partially from abandoning Bhekithemba to his doom, but mostly out of joy that he had escaped Bhekithemba’s grisly fate.

  14

  July 6, 2016, 2:05 a.m. Ngomo Mine, 134 Level –

  Alan frantically piled lumber, rocks, pieces of rusty machinery – anything he could find – against the flimsy wooden door. Eve helped him, handing him items she rushed around to pick up. He wondered if he looked as frightened as she did. Her eyes had the faraway look of someone not fully in the present, but to her credit, she didn’t freeze or run. Her courage inspired him. His hands shook like a bartender with a cocktail shaker, and his feet did a two-step any square dance caller would be proud of as he fought the urge to run away, but he swallowed his fear and kept working.

  Outside the rattling door, the horde of insects forgot their territorial disputes, and now concentrated their little bug minds on the removal of the only obstacle standing between them and food. They chewed, scratched, and propelled their bodies against the rotten wood. Powdered wood floated in the beam of Alan’s light.

  “Will it hold?” Sandersohn asked, as he watched the thin boards of the door bend inward.

  “Not for long,” Alan admitted.

  “This was a stupid idea,” he yelled at Alan. He held his clenched fists against the side of his head and closed his eyes, as if not seeing the door would make the threat go away.

  “You could have stayed in the emergency shelter and taken your chances,” Alan shot at him.

  Sandersohn didn’t hear him. He was repeatedly moaning, “We’re going to die. We’re going to die.”

  The frightened scientist’s quick capitulation to death made Alan angry. “If you’re so eager to die, stay here by the door and guard it while I get the hell out of here. Maybe you’ll slow them down.” His ire vented, he turned to Eve, “Where do we go from here?”

  She took a moment to get her bearings. Alan suspected the tunnel was conjuring the ghost of her dead husband, but she would have to set that memory aside for the moment. He needed her in the here and now.

  She nodded her head, as if convincing herself she was right. “The air shaft is about two hundred meters down the tunnel.”

  Alan led the way. As they hurried down the tunnel, the geologist side of his mind noted the brittle rock formations. The shaft would need massive supporting pillars and crossbeams to sustain a viable mining operation. No wonder Verkhoen had abandoned it. The Cerberus would be extremely effective in such soft rock formations, reinforcing the walls with the spun casing it produced.

  They came to the cave-in. Snapped beams protruded from piles of rubble like broken bones. The path became a narrow, winding defile excavated through the rubble.

  “This was the first collapse,” Eve pointed out. “It took twenty hours to carefully dig through the rubble. The roof kept collapsing on the workers. The entire time, I half-expected to see Frederick’s body beneath each stone they removed, but he and his crew were in an adit farther down and perpendicular to the main shaft.”

  Alan picked up a stone. It was brittle and friable, crumbling in his hand with only slight pressure. �
��This entire zone is unsafe. No amount of shoring could keep it stable in the event of even a moderate tremor.”

  Eve nodded. “That’s what Verkhoen decided in the end. He simply abandoned the shaft and sealed it.”

  Alan located the airshaft by a slight breeze stirring the layer of dust on the floor. He swept the beam upwards. The tiny, round hole bored in the roof of the tunnel dashed his hopes of escape. The airshaft was less than two feet wide, barely sixty centimeters. Disappointed, he probed the shaft with the light; then turned to Eve.

  “You and Doctor Sandersohn might be able to squeeze through. I’m afraid Doctor Tells is a bit too big in the belly, and I’m too broad shouldered to fit.”

  Tells smiled. “Don’t apologize, young man. I freely admit I am fat. I have not regretted that fact overly much until now.”

  “It’s three-hundred meters to the next level,” Eve protested. “There’s no ladder. I could never make it.”

  Sandersohn eyed the narrow opening and became forlorn. He shook his head as well. “I am too claustrophobic for the climb. Only the thrill of discovering a new species brought me down the elevator. Even fear cannot force me up such a tiny hole. I’m afraid I would panic and kill myself or someone else.”

  Alan sighed. He tried to hide his disappointment. He might be able to shimmy up the hole if he pulled his arms in tight, but not while carrying the rifle and the dynamite, and he was reluctant to abandon either one. He couldn’t desert the elderly Doctor Tells. Now, with the others refusing to try, it looked like a bust all around.

  “What about the lower tunnel?”

  “It’s flooded,” Eve reminded him.

  “It was six years ago. Rock is permeable. It might have drained by now. Can we reach it from here?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Well, we can’t go back.” His head was pounding and his wrist throbbed. He leaned against the wall and closed his eyes to calm down.