Tunnels 02 - Deeper

by Roderick Gordon

  Despite this, Will's spirits were high. He was pleased that they seemed to be working together as a team again. He hoped that any differences he'd had with Chester were firmly in the past and his friendship with him would revert to how it had been before. And above all else, he was so grateful that Elliott had stepped straight into Drake's shoes as their new leader. He had little doubt she was capable of the role.

  Will heard sounds along the way, rasping animal calls and hollow rattling noises. He eagerly tried to locate the source of these, peering all around and up above at the branches of the gigantic trees, but could make out nothing. He would have given anything to stop and conduct a proper search. He was in a primordial jungle, which could be filled with all sorts of fantastic creatures.

  The path took them into a clearing, where Will stole glances at the lush vegetation, hoping to catch the merest glimpse of one of these animals. Then, as he peered through the flora, a pair emerged. Will did a double take — he wasn't sure if they were birds or reptiles, but they resembled small, freshly plucked bantam chickens, with stubby necks and mean little beaks. Like two old women complaining to each other, they communicated using both the rasping and rattling sounds Will had been hearing. They turned and scurried back into the brush, flapping stunted wings from which a few mangy patches of fur — or feathers — sprouted. So much for the exotic creatures he'd been dreaming of!

  Elliott led them onto a track, and they continued along until Will heard Chester's voice up ahead.

  "The sea," he said.

  They gathered around Elliott, crouching down in the bushes. A strip of beach stretched before them and they could hear the sound of waves again.

  Cal spoke up. "It looks exactly like our beach. You're not telling me we just came full circle?" he quizzed Elliott indignantly, shaking the sweat from his face.

  "This is not the same beach," she informed him coldly.

  "But where do we go now?" he asked, frowning as he craned his neck to peer along the foreshore.

  She stuck a finger out to sea, out over the rolling waves.

  "Well, we're on an island and the only..." Will began.

  "...way on and off is the causeway," Elliott finished his sentence for him. "And I'll bet you that at this very moment the Blackheads are sniffing around the remains of our campfire."

  An uneasy silence descended over the group until Chester spoke in a small voice.

  "So, are we going to swim for it?"

  40

  He staggered to his feet, blinking with surprise. He was spellbound by the space around him, his insatiable thirst for knowledge dismissing all other concerns. In that instant, his hiccups ceased, and Dr. Burrows, Intrepid Explorer, was back on duty. His fear of the unidentified beast, and all thoughts of his hysterical rush to escape it, were brushed aside.

  "Bingo!" he cried.

  He'd stumbled upon some sort of edifice, carved into the bedrock of the cavern itself. If he'd been in search of evidence of the ancient race, he'd certainly found it now. He crept forward, his light revealing row upon row of stone seats, many shattered by fallen debris. He was making his way to the front, in the direction the seats were facing, when he happened to look up.

  The ceiling high above him was smooth and generally intact, except for a few sections where it had crumbled in. As he shone his orb around, he caught a tantalizing glimpse of something that reflected the light.

  "Extraordinary!" he exclaimed, holding his orb higher, its rays only just traveling the distance to a dully glinting circle that was at least fifty feet in diameter.

  "Higher... have to get higher," he told himself, clambering onto the seat of the nearest of the stone benches, and then up onto the narrow back of the bench itself.

  As he moved his light slowly around, teetering precariously, the design became clearer to him. The circle was dull gold or bronze in color and could have been applied by some kind of gilding or possibly even painted on. He spoke out loud as he scrutinized it.

  "Let's see, you're a hollow circle with... with... what's that in the middle? Looks like..." He squinted and pushed the orb toward the ceiling as far as his arm would permit, until it was supported by just his fingertips.

  In the very center of the circle, also cast in the metallic medium, was a solid disk. Jagged lines that resembled stylized, angular rays extended from its circumference.

  "Aha! It's obvious what you're meant to represent... you're the sun! " Dr. Burrows pronounced, and then furrowed his brow. "So what have we got here — a subterranean race engaged in surface worship? A people harking back to a time when they were up above on the crust?"

  Something more caught his eye. Simple renderings of humanoid figures were depicted walking around the inside of the larger circle — men, evenly spaced, as if treading in a whopping giant great hamster wheel.

  "Hey, what are you chaps doing there? You and the sun are in the wrong places!" he observed, frowning even more deeply as he shifted his light toward the solid disk in the center again. "I don't know who made you, but you're all the wrong way around!"

  Despite the topsy-turvy nature of the picture, it wasn't lost on Dr. Burrows that any representation of the earth as a sphere, dating back to the time of the Phoenicians, meant whoever had put it there was incredibly enlightened by what he'd seen.

  "So much for symbolism!" he said, and sniffed dismissively as he resumed his way forward. He passed the front row of seats, and his light beam touched upon what lay before them. He caught his breath as he saw a raised dais, on which rested a solid block of stone. As he came closer to it, he estimated the block was some forty feet from side to side and about five in height.

  "What are you doing here?" he asked, again speaking aloud into the somber gloom. He glanced back at the rows of seats, up a that the roof with the circles, and then contemplated the stone block once more. "You've got pews, a cockeyed mural on the ceiling, and you've also got an altar," he posited to himself. "Absolutely no debate... you're definitely some sort of place of worship... a church, or a temple, perhaps?"

  He trod forward, his light revealing more of the altar as he went. Coming to a halt, he marveled at the craftsmanship: Beautiful and intricate geometric carvings worthy of any Byzantine sculptor decorated its sides.

  As he lifted up the orb, an area of wall immediately behind the altar caught the light and shone enticingly.

  "Oh my goodness... look at you!"

  Breathing quickly, he leaned nearer. It was a triptych: three massive carved panels — bas reliefs. He know they were made of something other than the chocolate brown rock by the way they were reflecting his light and adding a warmth to it.

  His feet found a step at the base of the altar, and then another. As though mesmerized, he climbed up to its top. From one side to the other, the three panels extended the full length of the altar, and each was approximately twice Dr. Burrows's height. His pulse was racing with anticipation, he approached the central one and, gently brushing away the dust and cobwebs, began to examine it.

  "So very, very exquisite... polished rock crystal," he proclaimed as he ran his fingers over its surface. "You are quite beautiful, aren't you... but what are you her for?" he asked the triptych, peering closely at its surface. "By Jove, I think you might be gold in there!" he wheezed with disbelief as he saw the shining brilliance behind the transparent layer. "Three huge golden panels, faced with carved rock crystal. What a fantastic artifact! I must make a record of this."

  Although his mouth was watering at the prospect for what was on the panels, he resolved to get himself properly organized first, and set about gathering together enough kindling for a fire. It was awkward using his orb as the sole source of light — and besides, a good-sized fire would enable him to appreciate the panels in their full glory. In a matter of minutes, he'd collected enough dry material to start a small blaze on top of the altar, and the flames took without any hesitation.

  As the fire crackled away behind him, he began to sweep the dust from the faces of the th
ree panels using his forearm. For the uppermost sections, he dug out his tattered blue overalls and flicked them upward, sometimes jumping in an attempt to hit the tops.

  His efforts raised a cloud of dust and the exertion soon became too much for him in his weakened state. He stopped, breathing heavily, to inspect his progress. With some relief, he realized that he didn't need to clear the dust off completely; when combined with the illumination from the fire, a residual coating of it actually made the panels' carved images easier to see.

  "Right, let's have a good old look at the lot of you," he announced and, with his trusty stub of a pencil poised over a fresh page in his journal, he whistled through his teeth in a random, impatient way. "So what are you going to tell me, my pretty?" he said almost flirtatiously to the panel on the far left as he stepped before it.

  Amply illuminated by the guttering flames, it depicted a man wearing a headdress that vaguely resembled a squat miter. The figure had a strong jaw and a heavy brow; the long staff he brandished in his clenched fist suggested he was a person of immense importance.

  The figure occupied most of the panel, and Dr. Burrows could see that the man was at the head of a long and meandering procession of people. The procession want on for a considerable distance, trailing away to the horizon and over a large but featureless plain.

  "Egyptian influence?" Dr. Burrows muttered, spotting the similarities to objects from that period. He took a step back from the panel. "So what's the message here? This fellow is, undoubtedly, a big cheese... a leader, a Moses figure, perhaps taking his people on a journey to this place, or perhaps just the opposite, leading them away in some kind of exodus. But why... what was so very important that someone carved you with such consummate skill and left you here at the altar?"

  He hummed for a while, uttering the odd random word, then clicked his tongue against his teeth. "No, you're not going to tell me any more, are you? I'm going to have to talk to your friends," Dr. Burrows informed the silent panel. He spun on his heel and made straight for the panel on the far right of the triptych.

  Compared with the first panel, the subject matter was more difficult to make out. There was no single predominating image — the scene was altogether more complex and confusing. However, as the firelight fell across it, he began to see what it represented.

  "Ah... so you're a stylized landscape... rolling fields... a stream with a small bridge over it and... what's this?" he muttered, brushing an area of the panel directly in front of him. "Some form of agriculture... trees... perhaps an orchard? Yes, I think you might be." He stepped back to peer at the top of the panel. "Curious, very curious indeed..."

  Strange columns lanced down from the upper right corner over the rest of the landscape. At the point from which the columns radiated, there was a circle.

  "The sun! Oh, it's my old friend the sun again!" Dr. Burrows exclaimed. "Just like the one on the ceiling!" The sphere's jagged rays spread out over the rest of the picture. "So what are you telling me? Are you showing me the place where the Moses figure was leading the people? Was this some great pilgrimage to the surface? Is that it?"

  He glanced back at the first panel. "A ruler leading his people to some sort of idealized nirvana, to the elysian fields, to the Garden of Eden?" He looked at the panel in front of him again. "But you're showing the earth's surface and the sun... so what's a nice picture like you doing in a place like this, way down here? Are you just a reminder of what lies up top? A subterranean Post-it-note? And who are these people — are they really some forgotten culture, or the forebears of the Egyptians or the Phoenecians or... or perhaps something far more fantastic?" He shook his head. "Evacuees from the lost city of Atlantis? Is that possible?"

  He checked himself, realizing he was jumping to conclusions before conducting a full investigation. Lost in thought, he fell silent for a second, then sidestepped to the central panel.

  "Maybe you hold all the answers," he muttered. In what typically should have been the most important of the three panels, he was expecting to find something impressive — perhaps a religious symbol, a crowning image. But instead, it was by far the least remarkable of the triptych.

  "Well, well, well," Dr. Burrows said. The middle panel depicted a circular opening in the ground with craggy rock borders. Its perspective allowed Dr. Burrows to see a little distance down into it, but there was nothing to note besides a continuation of the rock sides.

  "Ah!" he exclaimed, bending forward and spying some tiny human figures on the very edge of the hole. "So, you're on a gargantuan scale, I now know that much," he said, reaching over to rub the dust from the little figures, no bigger than ants. He continued to do this for a short while, finding more and more of the Lilliputian people in a procession, until he abruptly stilled his hand, then drew it back.

  At the far left of the procession, a number of these tiny human forms had their arms and legs splayed out, as if in free fall, tumbling down into the mouth of the huge opening. Strange winged creatures hovered above them. Dr. Burrows stood on his tiptoes and blew hard to try to remove some more of the dirt from these diminutive flying forms.

  "Well, that's a surprise!" he declared. Clad in loose flowing gowns, they seemed to have human bodies, but swanlike wings extending from their backs. "Angels... or devils?" he pondered aloud. Then he took several steps back. With his arms crossed and his chin cradled in one hand, he continued to regard the panel, whistling to himself all the while in his erratic, atonal way.

  He stopped whistling. "Aha!" he yelled, remembering something. He hurriedly retrieved the Coprolite map from his pants pocket and unfolded it, then held it up before him. "I knew I'd seen you before!"

  On the map, at the end of a long line representing what he assumed to be a tunnel or a track, and dotted with various symbols along its path, he saw something similar to the image in the panel. It was sketched in a much more simplistic way, with just a few pen strokes, but it, too, appeared to be some kind of opening in the ground. "Could they be one and the same?" he wondered aloud.

  He went closer to the center panel and looked it over again. There was something more at the base, something he hadn't noticed under a crusty coating of a fungal growth. He feverishly scrubbed at it and found that it had been obscuring a line of cuneiform writing.

  "Yes!" he bellowed exultantly, immediately flicking his journal open to the Dr. Burrows Stone page. It tallied with the script he'd already interpreted... he could translate it!

  Squatting down, he wasted no time in getting started. The inscription consisted of five distinct words. He glanced repeatedly between the panel and his notebook, a huge self-satisfied grin forming on his face. He deciphered the first word: "GARDEN..."

  He clucked impatiently, his eyes rapidly switching from his notebook to the script and back again. "Come on, come on," he urged himself. "What's the next word?"

  Then he read, "TO... no, not TO, but OF! " And then, "That's an easy word... THE."

  He took a breath and summarized his findings so far. "GARDEN OF THE..." he announced.

  The next word stumped him. "Think, think, think!" he said, each time thwacking himself on the forehead. "Get your act together, Burrows, you numskull," he growled, annoyed that his mind wasn't firing on all four cylinders. "What's the rest?"

  The remaining words weren't coming so easily, and he was frustrated that it was taking so long to translate them. He scanned the final part of the inscription, hoping that by some stroke of luck he would have a breakthrough.

  Just then the fire flared, as a thick piece of kindling began to burn with a loud hiss. Dr. Burrows saw something from the corner of his eye and slowly turned his head away from the panel.

  In the brighter light now being cast by the fire, he could see largish hollows, or perhaps holes, all over the side walls of the temple. Many of them.

  "That's odd," he muttered, his brow creasing. "Didn't notice them before."

  As he looked more closely, his heart missed several beats.

  No, they we
ren't holes... they were moving.

  He spun fully around.

  He cried out in surprise.

  Before him were many of the enormous dust mites, he couldn't even begin to count them. It was as though the one he had befriended had summoned its brethren, and now hundreds of them had gathered like an outrageous congregation in the interior of the temple. Among them were behemoths easily three or four times the size of the dust mite that had led him in here. They looked as big as Sherman tanks and just as heavily armored.

  His cry stirred them into activity, and their mandibles clattered as if they were giving him a genteel round of applause. Several began to lumber toward him with that gradual and inhuman intent that only an insect possesses. It made his blood chill.

  He hadn't felt threatened by the original dust mite, but this was an altogether different situation. There were too many of them, and they looked too big, and too darned hungry. He suddenly pictured himself as a king-sized food stick, poised invitingly on the altar before them.

  Holy smokes holy smokes holy smokes went over and over in his head.

  Some of the largest ones, dangerous-looking brutes with dented and holed carapaces, began to advance more rapidly, ramming smaller dust mites out of their way. Their articulated legs thudded on the flagstones. Some reared up, their thick legs sweeping in the air, as they crawled over the backs of the pews, affording Dr. Burrows a flash of their glossy black underbellies.

  He snatched up his rucksack, ramming his notebook into it and then swinging it onto his back, his mind racing. He needed a way out, and quick. But he was surrounded. They were everywhere; to his front and sides they were coming, like an advancing armored division of the flesh-tearing variety.