‘Maybe what?’
He turned and walked right passed me. He removed several of the crates and pushed them off to the side. He ripped the lids off of several more and tore through their insides. He tossed clothing, bottles of water, MREs and blankets all over the ground behind him as he searched through the supplies.
‘What are you looking for?’ I repeated. What in the world has him all worked up?
I knelt down and lifted one of the items from the ground. I held it in my hands. The toothbrush was wrapped in its protective plastic sealant. The turquoise line down its sides gave it a non-medical feel. I knelt and rummaged through the debris. My hands tossed floss, medical kits, bandages, socks, toiletries, disinfectant creams, and skin moisturizers to the side. There!
I raised my prize to the light and smiled. The white lettering Colgate shined brightly, untarnished and clean. I ripped open the toothbrush packaging, unscrewed the toothpaste cap, and squeezed a hefty glob of the blue cream onto the end of brush. I shoved it in my mouth and began rotating it around my teeth and gums. I fell backwards in ecstasy as the toothpaste's cleaning components sucked away the dirt and grim that had congregated on the surface of my teeth. The soft bristles of the brush coaxed the years of filth away with soft, gentle, endearing massages. I was in heaven.
‘Got it!’ Parker suddenly exclaimed, and tore out his prize from the crate he had been investigated. He turned and stopped in his tracks when he saw me sitting balled up in the fetal position on the ground with a plastic stick protruding from my mouth and white pus oozing all over my lips and cheeks.
He quickly knelt down and placed his hand on my forehead.
‘Are you feeling all right?’ he asked. ‘You don't feel hot. You feel sick?’
I giggled, and poofs of white, bubbled toothpaste spat out of my lips.
‘I'm fine,’ I said through the mouthful of toothpaste and saliva. I spit a large glob of it out and wiped my mouth with my sleeve.
‘Sorry. It's toothpaste,’ I said with excitement, and smiled as big as I could. I held out the tube to him and asked, ‘Want some? It's AMAZING!’
He grabbed the tube of toothpaste from me and examined it as though it was a foreign entity, or capsule of radiation that was going to destroy us all.
‘Here,’ I said, and tossed him another package with a pink toothbrush. ‘You like pink, right?’ I winked.
He handed both back to me and stood to his feet.
‘You don't want to brush your teeth?’ I asked. ‘Those dirty things probably haven't been clean in years.’ I laughed.
‘Keep a close watch over it for me, won't you?’ he asked. He managed a small smile as he walked away. He pulled the stool over to the small metal table and dropped all the items he had found onto its surface. He slid them one by one into groups on the table.
I picked myself up off of the dirty ground and replaced the cap on the tube of toothpaste. I placed it and my newfound brush into my back pocket and walked over to see what it was he was so focused on that he couldn't even enjoy brushing his teeth.
My tongue licked my clean teeth as I walked. My gums burned with the nice peppermint scent. My mouth felt numb, but it was worth it. I stood over his left shoulder to see what he was doing.
‘What is all of that?’ I asked.
He had three walkie-talkies standing upright in a neat row, several different-sized pliers, a Philips and slot screwdriver, several hex caps, tweezers, and something that looked like a small torch. He stacked a pile of plastic and metal gadgets to the side that I wasn't all too certain of their primary purpose.
‘These are communications components,’ he said, pointing at the plastic and metal gadgetry.
‘What are you trying to do?’
‘The walkie-talkie’—he held up the one he had used earlier—‘clearly works, but its signal is being jammed by something. I'm going to try and boost its range to see if I can hone in on the frequency.’
‘You know how to do that?’ I asked.
His lips jerked to the side with a shallow grin.
‘I'm going to try,’ he said.
I pulled up a chair and sat with my elbows on the table and watched. I might actually learn something.
Three hours later Parker leaned back in his chair and stretched his arms to the ceiling.
‘I think I've done it!’ he shouted in triumph.
I jumped in my chair from the sudden outburst. I had fallen asleep long ago as he dissected the walkie-talkies, removed small chips and wires from their insides, and used the torch and pliers to weld everything back together. I thought walkie-talkies were simple, but they were anything but. When the black plastic shield came off, it revealed its alien planet. The green motherboards were lined with wires, small plastic bits and chips. Parker removed a few here and there, and attached them somewhere else.
Parker was standing above me. I wiped the saliva that had pooled between my arms and my cheek.
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I must have fallen asleep.’
Parker ignored me and walked to the other side of the table and picked up his masterpiece. There was no sign that the objects in his hands were once compact and neatly enclosed walkie-talkies. He had completely demolished any semblance they might have previously had of their former selves. The wires hung from the edges and Parker slowly picked them up in his hands. He turned and started walking in the direction of the crates. I thought he was going back for something else but he kept on walking. He stopped by the entrance to the tunnel system on the far left once half of his body was covered in shadow. His head swiveled on his shoulders back at me.
‘You coming?’ he yelled.
I jumped off the chair and walked briskly over towards him. He motioned downward with his chin.
‘Grab that,’ he said. ‘We'll probably need it.’
I picked up the large rectangular spotlight from the top of one of the crates and turned for instruction.
‘Unless you can see in the dark,’ he added.
I clicked the power button with my thumb. I aimed the bulb's bright LED light straight into his eyes and walked passed him. I shined the flashlight at a forty-five degree angle as we trekked through the tunnels. I had followed close behind Roxx the first time we were here. It felt strangely invigorating and terrifying to be in the front. I knew we were the only ones down here, but still, the hairs on the back of my neck prickled my skin with goosebumps. I felt the cold drip of sweat slid down the ridge of my back. The flashlight shook slightly in my raised hand.
‘Turn here,’ Parker suddenly ordered.
I obeyed and wound to the left into an adjacent system. I'm not claustrophobic, but the further into the tunnels we went, the tighter the squeeze. At first, I thought it was just my imagination and my eyes playing tricks on me in the dark. But after thirty or so minutes in the dim light and the tunnels, the walls were noticeably closer. I wasn't tall by any means and the ceiling was nearly touching the top of my head. I knew Parker had to be struggling. I looked back, and sure enough, he was hunched forward to keep from smacking his head on the top of the tunnel and the small low-lying stalactites that looked like white rubies. The light from the spotlight made them sparkle and glow. I could have used a small candle and the tunnel would have boomed with light. The roof was full of them.
‘We're almost there,’ I heard Parker say behind me. His voice seemed hollow. My chest ached from the cold, damp air. We walked another hundred feet before the tunnel opened up into a large underground cavern.
‘All right, stop here,’ he said. I felt him shuffle past me and grab the flashlight. I braced myself against the wall to balance myself. I felt wheezy and lightheaded. My body was warm, and my thighs burned from the hike. The front of my shins ached. I knelt down and rubbed them with the palms of my hand to ease the stress out of them.
‘Where are we?’ I asked. My voice echoed in the chamber.
Parker was twenty feet in front of me, and gaining distance.
‘If I had to guess...�
� he said, ‘judging from the size of these stalactites, the amount of water here...’ He paused, staring off into the distance.
Water? What water?
‘Roughly a half a mile below the surface,’ he said.
‘What!’ I belched. ‘You've got to be kidding me, right?’ How in the world were we half a mile below the ground? The chasm we repelled down was only about 100 feet, giver or take a few. And, it's not like we were walking downhill through the tunnel system to get here. I would have noticed.
Parker shook his head.
‘Nope. I'm quite serious,’ he said. ‘We've been walking down ever since the main cavern.’
‘How is that even possible?’ I asked. ‘I didn't even feel—’ I stopped short. The ache in my shins and thighs, the labored breathing, the cold sweat, the pressure change, the low ceilings...the clues were all there. I should have noticed.
‘Come here,’ he called. ‘You want to see something neat?’
I stumbled over to him without conscious effort. I was still trying to get the idea that we were half a mile below the surface wrapped around my head. I suddenly felt very claustrophobic, as if the weight of the world rested on my shoulders. I peered up at the ceiling and the thousands of hanging stalactites. They all began to look like sharp, pointy, killers. If one of them decided to randomly dislodge from the roof of the chamber, and I was the unfortunate soul standing underneath when it decided to sprout from its perch like a butterfly from its sac, my thick skin and hard skull would be destroyed instantly. I must have been wobbling because Parker grabbed my arm to steady me.
‘Whoah!’ he said. ‘Watch your step. You wouldn't want to go falling down this...’
I gained my balance with his help and steadied myself. I pried my eyes off the jagged rock forms hanging above me and tried not to think about it.
‘Okay, what was it you wanted to show me?’ My mouth felt dry.
His hand turned the spotlight to the right and cast its light upon the surprise he wanted me to see. My mouth hung open the moment the light reflected off the world in front of me.
‘I told you,’ he said.
I had no words.
≈ Chapter 24 ≈
Rubies and gems are magnificent beauties, but put a city of them beneath the darkest cobalt blue you've ever seen, and you get this.
‘It's beautiful, isn't it?’ Parked asked. He moved the spotlight along the water's surface, allowing the crystal formations below to reflect and make the water sparkle in a million dancing lights. I've heard of the Northern Lights, never seen them of course, but if there was ever anything that could resemble their beauty, I'm sure this would top the cake.
‘Beautiful is a bit of an understatement,’ I breathed. ‘How in the world did you find this place?’ I said. ‘I thought the tunnels were all blocked and only wound in crisscrossing patterns.’
‘Some of them do,’ Parker admitted, ‘but there are a few that branch out into their own rivulets. I actually stumbled upon this one by accident,’ he said.
‘Accident?’ I asked. I found that hard to believe. Man just doesn't stumble upon heaven, accidentally.
The largest, most beautiful underground lake I have ever seen sat motionless. The flashlight couldn't even reach the other end of the water. The lush, cobalt, blue extended beyond view. The stagnant water reflected the flashlight's beam along the water and radiated into the ceiling and the depths. There must have been millions, if not billions, of stalagmites jutting up from the bottom. Some of them poked their curious heads through the water and stuck up like tiny islands amongst a sea of blue. The water looked like ice. Not a single ripple. Honestly, the only reason I thought it was water was because of the blue.
I raised my foot to touch the water's edge. The heel of my boot sent a current of circles stringing into the distance.
‘How deep do you reckon it is?’ I asked.
‘It's hard to tell, really,’ he said. ‘It could be hundreds of feet deep, or merely inches. We won't find out until we go in it.’
‘IN it?’ I said. ‘You can't be serious. We don't even know if it's safe. What if it's poisonous?’ Worse yet, I thought. What if there were creatures living in this foreign world? And we two measly humans come trumping along on their turf? Yeah, I thought I'd pass on the water-diving tour this go around.
‘Do you think that's such a great idea?’ I asked. ‘What if—’
He cut me off.
‘Do you want to live your life, Willow, on a bunch of “what ifs”?’ he asked. There was no judgment in his tone or facial expression. His eyes were soft, genuine. He truly wanted the best for me.
‘But...’ I couldn't finish the statement. He was right. What was a life worth living if all you ever did was question everything and refuse to act because of fear? I mean, our world was dying because we burned it with our chemical bombs, our greed, and our negligence. None of us deserved to be here. Mother Nature was the protector of the world, and she merely tolerated us living here with her and all other living things. For how much longer...now that was a mystery even the most sophisticated scientists and researchers would be hard pressed to find an answer to. Chances were, there probably wasn't one.
Parker sat down on his haunches and placed the spotlight next to him. He removed his own boots and his parka and set them down in a neat pile on a flat rock a few feet away from the water's edge
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
He looked up at me and smiled like a child about to get into mischief. His blue eyes looked even bluer down here.
‘Going for a swim.’ He said it so simply. A swim? The world was crumbling around us, people were starving to death, and the new government was sucking those survivors for everything they had left, and he wanted to go for a swim? Oh, why not!
I removed my boots and tossed them to the side as well.
‘Why not,’ I said, and eased my bare toes into the water. I fully expected it to be ice cold, but surprisingly, it was quite warm. I looked over at Parker with a shocked expression on my face.
‘It's warm,’ I said.
‘Yup,’ he said.
He was already knee deep into the water and working his way deeper.
‘Why's it so warm?’ I asked.
‘There's an underwater vault that's releasing built up pressure from the Earth's core. It's heating up the water.’
‘How do you know that?’
That mischievous smile returned. Before too long, I'd grow accustomed to that smile and begin to do it myself.
He winked.
‘Let me show you.’
He opened his mouth and took a deep breath, then dove under the water. I wasn't ready for him to just up and disappear—definitely not beneath the water. I peered around the cavern and suddenly felt very exposed. I felt like a thousand tiny eyes were watching me. I quickly filled my lungs with a gulp of air and went under.
I swam in darkness for as long as my courage held out before daring to open my eyes beneath the sea of mysterious water. I fully expected my eyes to burn from some bacterial fungus or mineral composite from the drip of the rock walls, but I was sweetly surprised. In fact, my eyes felt better. As if the foreign water was the purest, cleanest, most healing substance on the planet. The deeper I swam, the more I began to believe it. The ache in my legs subsided to the point that I questioned if they had ever hurt in the first place. The cobalt blue shifted colors the further I went, and yet, I could still see into the strange blackness permeating from the vast, unknown deep. Parker's white feet flared in front of me as he flicked his legs and moved his arms, propelling his body forward. The spotlight glared its white stem through the mountains of stalagmites stabbing out from the base of the lake; their own feet vanished somewhere in the dark expanse below us. I tried not to imagine what monstrosities could live in the abyss as my feet kicked above the pitch-black water below me. Parker's body squeezed through two towering stones. His frame looked tiny compared to the enormity of everything under the water. He disappeared
around another boulder and suddenly it was dark.
I kicked my legs and pushed my arms as hard as I could to catch up, fearful of being trapped beneath the blue water and blind. My head peeked around the bend and I saw him hovering by a stone wall. My ears popped as the pressure of the depth pressed down on my ear canals. A steady stream of bubbles ascended to the cavern above from my nostrils. I had never held my breath for long periods of time, but I was surprised at how easy it was to hold your breath under water. I swam over to Parker and bobbed my body next to his. He had the flashlight aimed at the wall. I couldn't see what it was until he turned his chest towards me and exposed what he was floating in front of.
It was a hatch door; under water no less. What was a hatch door doing all the way down here? And why was it under the water? Parker pointed at me, then at himself, and aimed his finger up. I nodded my head in understanding as we both kicked our legs towards the surface. My head popped out of the water seconds after Parker. My lungs released the built up tension of stale air and quickly took several gasps to restore my oxygen reserves. I moved my hands from side to side to keep myself afloat. Considering I had never been in water before, well, nothing deeper than five feet, I was proud at how well I was able to swim. My arms were burning and quickly tiring though. I would need to swim back to shore before too long or risk drowning.
‘Did you see it?’ he asked.
‘Yeah,’ I said through splashes of water. I brushed my hair back out of my eyes. ‘What is it?’
‘It's a hatch,’ he said.
‘Yeah, I guessed as much. But what is it doing all the way down here?’
‘I asked myself the same question when I first found it,’ he said.
‘You've been down here already?’
He smiled.
‘Well, yeah. How else would I have known about it to show you?’
He winked.
Good point, I thought.
‘Let's swim back to shore,’ he said.
I was already on my way.
My hands dug into the dirt beneath the water at the base of the shore. I crawled my way up until my knees and feet touched the soft surface. The blue water poured off of my shoulders as I rose and walked out. I sat down on a nearby rock and rung out my hair with my hands. The water gathered into a large puddle by my feet.
2136: A Post-Apocalyptic Novel Page 16