Below The Earth

by Lucas Pederson

  I spun, trying to glance everywhere at once.

  “What was that?” Megan asked.

  “The thing that’s gonna eat us,” Max spouted. “Duh.”

  “Anyone see anything?” Hannah asked.

  “No,” I said. “But it’s gotta be close, right? As loud as it was…”

  No one answered me. Because of course they didn’t. They only talked to me if they needed me to do something, despite Megan’s love of my random sarcasm.

  “I think we should—” Hannah never finished.

  It burst through the trees, mouth wide open, lower jaw splitting in two and filled with long teeth. And it was huge.

  I stumbled backward, barely able to breathe as it thundered toward us.

  “Aw, shit,” Max shouted.

  “Run,” Hannah said. “Go right!”

  I turned right without thinking and ran.

  Nearly breathless, Megan said, “It’s…like a T-rex…but…its jaw is…”

  “Will you just shut your face and run?” Max roared.

  Ahead, the vegetation thinned out, giving way to rocky ground and what appeared to be hills or caves, or something. Didn’t matter. Under me, the ground quaked. It was after them. How fast could a T-rex run? Shit, I couldn’t remember what all the claims said. Nothing too fast, though. Maybe. I just—

  “Head for those caves,” Hannah said.

  So, they were caves. Well, okay then. Mystery solved.

  “We’re gonna fuckin’ die,” Max cried.

  “Shut up,” Megan shouted. “For once, just shut the hell up and run!”

  Smaller things scattered as I ran closer to the caves. No idea what they were. Lizard-like, only running on two legs. All of them dark green. They were about the size of chickens.

  If the Flex Mech increased speed and strength sevenfold, then I should be running at about 20 miles per hour. Or about. I didn’t know for sure. Also had to take into account the mech I was in wasn’t exactly a full-fledge mech.

  I was the first into the caves, which went back about 60 feet. Maybe more. Not like I was counting. A couple seconds later, the other three came barreling in. Another second, and the ground quaked. Rocks rained down from the ceiling. A three-talon claw darted through the mouth of the cave and dug into the floor, digging deep grooves into the stone, barely missing the last one into the cave. Mere inches.

  We all pressed ourselves against the far wall as the claw darted in again and again, every time at different angles.

  “It’s a T-rex,” Megan said. “Severely mutated.”

  “Thanks for the fact check,” Max said.

  “Once it realizes it can’t get us in here,” Megan said, “it’ll go away. It loves to hunt, but there’s easier prey.”

  And, after a few long minutes, the claw slipped out of the cave. It didn’t return. The ground shook for a moment, then…all fell still.

  Max sighed. “You been reading up on dinos lately? How do you know all that stuff?”

  “Of course I’ve been reading and studying,” she said. “Someone has to.”

  No one argued with her. Probably for the best she knew what she was talking about. If she said it was a mutated T-rex, then…by God…it was a mutated T-rex. Me, I knew very little about dinosaurs, mutated or not. What I knew most were the aquatic creatures, even the mutated ones and hybrids. Like Roofus. The land creatures…yeah, I was lost.

  “Okay,” Hannah said. “We need to make a plan. There has to be another tunnel out of here somewhere.”

  “Did you see the landscape out there? It’s huge,” Max said. “It’d take us months searching and we’d probably die way before that.”

  “I’m thinking, since this is a closed-off environment,” Megan said, “maybe we find the walls of the place. The tunnel we came up from had a rocky wall not far behind it.”

  “It did?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Max spouted. “I never even noticed that.”

  “So,” Hannah said. “You think if we locate the walls of this lost world, we might find another tunnel?”

  “Might. Just an educated guess, though.”

  “Better than wandering around through the thick of it out there,” Max said.

  “Agreed,” Hannah said. “So, there’s our plan. We find the walls, keep to them until we find an opening. Could be a pond, or stream, anything.”

  “Or,” I said. “Maybe it could just be a hole in the ground covered up by weeds and stuff.”

  Everyone paused a second or two.

  Finally, Megan said, “Yes. That too.”

  I sighed and wondered what the hell I needed to prove to them. They recruited me, for shit’s sake. It was almost like high school all over again. Stupid.

  “Let’s get moving,” Hannah said. “We only have roughly three hours before the nets holding Roofus dissolve.”

  “Again,” Max said. “This place is huge. I doubt we’ll find anything before our time is up.”

  “We have to try.”

  “Right. Sure. Let’s go get eaten by mutated dinos! Onward!”

  “Ugh,” Megan said. “Dude, a little less cynicism and more actual contributing here.”

  “You’re not my boss, lady.”

  “But I am,” Hannah said, tone darker than usual. “And she’s right. You’ve never been this cynical. A little, but never to this extent. Either you tell us just what hell is wrong with you, or you suck it up and help us get out of here.”

  Max fell silent for a while. So long, I figured he was over it, but…

  “First of all,” he said, “I’m sick of this fucking mech. I can barely breathe or see. It’s hot as hell, too. Second, we’re stuck in a ‘lost world,’ as y’all put it, and I’m seriously doubting another way out. Unless Wen is right, and all this was built, like a government play lab or something. Third, people need to start listening to me when the time comes. Because, as soon as we got out of the tunnel, I said we should regroup and plan. But no! Shit no. I didn’t know what the hell I was talking about, did I?” He huffed out a breath, which crackled in the speakers. “Look, I get you’re all excited about discovering this place, but there’s some seriously dangerous shit here and we need a better plan to document it.”

  Two of them glanced at each other while the other one moved away. I assumed the one moving away was Max. The tension in the cave was like steel cables tightening and tightening around our little group.

  Regardless, Max made a lot of sense. He was the only one not awestruck by the place. He was actually thinking. And he tried to get us out of there before anything bad happened.

  None of us listened.

  “I say we take a breather here,” Hannah said. “I’m not sure of the air quality down here, but if the dinosaurs can breathe, so can we. So, we can try getting out of the mech and cooling down a bit. Once we’re all ready, I suggest we get back into the mechs, though. They’re protective. If not for them, we’d all be dead by now. Those raptors would’ve torn us apart.”

  “Finally,” Max said, and I watched him lie down on the rocky ground. A second later, the mech split open and he sat up, wiping sweat from his face.

  The others followed suit, and so did I.

  Well, until I couldn’t figure out how to open the mech…

  “Um, how do I get out of this thing?” I asked.

  No one answered, and I saw why as soon as I turned my head. They were out of the mechs too. Stretching and moping sweat off them. They couldn’t hear me. My heart trip-hammered. I needed to get out too. I needed to recoup a bit. I…

  Max hunkered down beside me, smiling. “The mech is always on command. All you have to say is: Dismount. Sorry no one told you that.”

  I sighed in relief, and said, “Dismount.”

  In an instant, the mech split open from head to toe. It made a slight hiss as air escaped. I sat up, taking in my first breath of lost world air…and coughed.

  Max chuckled, patting my back. “It’s a bit harsher than above, but at least it’s breathable, right
?”

  “Right,” I managed between coughs. Although, at that moment, I really didn’t know exactly how breathable it was. The very air stung my throat. A mild sulfuric stench permeated the air.

  Once the coughing passed, I stood and stepped out of the mech. Max was right, the view from within the mech was constricting. I hadn’t realized how beautiful the cave we hid in was. The walls and ceiling literally sparkled. With what, I didn’t know. A type of rock, maybe, or even diamonds. Hard to tell. Bright green moss clung to almost everything.

  Eventually, I got used to the sulfuric odor and breathed normally as I inspected the cave a bit more. There weren’t any tunnels. Just a shallow cave, nothing more. Still, it was serene. Calming. I didn’t know if it was because of how it sparkled or all the draping green moss, or what. Just something about the place calmed me. I could really think for the first time since setting foot in that strange place below the earth.

  I drifted to the nearest wall, intrigued by all the sparkling. What made the walls do that? Mica? I stepped closer to the wall, frowning. I pulled a bit of the moss away, fully exposing the stone. From the light cast through the mouth of the cave, I stared at the wall. It wasn’t made of diamonds. The metallic gleam proved that much. But what kind of metal was mixed in with the rock? Silver? Gold? Titanium? Bronze?

  I really didn’t know, nor could I tell for sure. But, I did recognize the shimmer of metal. Like millions of tiny mirrors. I ran a finger over the cool, rough surface and realized two things right then. It wasn’t damp, as stone should be in such caves, nor did it feel right. Something about the texture. It was rough, but not like stone, exactly. Concrete, maybe…?

  It was a tough call, especially since it could really be a lost world and rocks were different back in those long-ago days. Or were they? Ugh, I wish I had paid more attention in geology class.

  Regardless, as I ran my fingers up and down, the stone just felt so…fake. Or different. If we were truly in a lost world, the entire mass sank and somehow closed itself off, avoiding the extinction and Ice Age. Another thing I didn’t get was…how did they stay alive so long down there? Sooner or later, wouldn’t they have run out of food? The carnivores would decimate the herbivores long before the herbivores could reproduce. Unless…there was a cognitive thing going on. Like the carnivores knew to back off for a while on certain species or something. Still didn’t make much sense.

  All thoughts of the wall being fake, however, shattered when my fingernail scraped away bits of rock and dirt. Okay…so the cave was real and not just placed there like in some giant terrarium. Still didn’t completely disprove anything yet.

  The air in the cave was cool and felt good on my sweat-slicked skin. I walked around a bit, letting myself dry off and thinking while the other three hunkered down, chatting amongst themselves. I could probably join them and wouldn’t get too many stink-eyes, but…meh. I’m sure they’d let me know what they came up with after their little pow-wow.

  In the meantime, I strolled the cave before finally standing just inside the mouth and staring out into a world that shouldn’t be. A place that wasn’t scientifically possible, especially how the creatures survived so long. And what caused their mutations? Perhaps some form of radiation was leaking into the place, contaminating the water? So many questions without answers swirled in my head and I hated it. Drove me nuts. I was someone who needed answers right away, or at least in a timely manner. In that place, I wasn’t going to get any answers soon.

  The small, dark-green lizards, or whatever they were, gathered not far from me. They appeared to be digging into the loose rock, which looked like gravel to me. They made tiny growling sounds. Light glistened off their scaly backs.

  That was another thing. The light. Where was it coming from? Everything from some nuclear ball to the Earth’s core drifted through my mind. Because there sure as hell wasn’t a sun. And being, more than likely, about 2,000 feet below the surface of the ocean, there was just no way that much light would find its way to the lost world.

  I watched the small lizards dart their narrow heads into the loose rocks and bring up what appeared to be some form of rodent, or maybe bugs? I really couldn’t tell because they ate their findings so fast. Whatever their meal was, it squealed.

  An errant thought drifted in just then…

  What if…somehow, the place was self-sustaining? It didn’t make sense, but it piqued my interest. I mean, could it be possible?

  Something not far off shrieked. The noise echoed, bouncing off trees and into the cave. Even the small lizards scattered at the sound, leaping into the dense foliage. After a few seconds, they scampered back to the loose rocks.

  What other mutated forms of dinosaurs were stalking around? The very thought sent a chill shivering through me. The raptors were bad. The T-rex, even worse. But…how many more versions of dinosaurs were out there? How many messed-up species were simply roaming and hunting and ready to rip easy prey to shreds?

  “Wen?”

  I sighed and turned around. All three of them stood in front of me, Hannah slightly ahead of Megan and Max.

  Hannah stepped forward, smiling, and placed a hand on my shoulder. She smiled a bit, and I wasn’t sure if maybe they decided I was too much of a liability and were about to kill me off, or…

  “We haven’t had much time for this, but we want to thank you. You’ve been kicking ass since I asked you to help. Your courage and smarts…a lot of what’s happening now wouldn’t have happened without you.”

  I couldn’t stop the snort that burst from me. “Like being stuck in a subterranean hole in the earth that just so happens to be crawling with mutated dinosaurs? Yeah, I’m pretty proud of that too.” God, my sarcasm bled through every word, and it was awful. Rarely, if ever, did I talk like that. Unless I was really stressed, pissed, or sad, my sarcasm was pretty damn tame.

  Megan giggled. Max rolled his eyes. Hannah…her smile grew.

  “This is a discovery of a lifetime, and you made it happen. For that, we want to ask you to join us as a full member. This means, you get a bigger cut of any profits we accrue.”

  I blinked. “So, like, I’m one of you now? Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” Megan said, flashing a goofy-ass grin.

  “I told ‘em you should get paid more than Megan, but…ya know…”

  I chuckled a little. “Two against one, eh?”

  He shrugged. “They’ll kill me if I tell.”

  Megan elbowed Max. “We said maim, not kill. Horribly maim.”

  Max rolled his eyes again. “This is how they recruit people. False hope followed by big ass lies. I still haven’t seen a paycheck, but I’m too scared to leave because they’ll shank me.”

  Hannah sighed. “Max…put a cork in it for now, okay?”

  “Fiiiiinnne.”

  “Yeah,” Megan spouted. “Or we’ll shank your ass.”

  “Har…har,” Max said.

  Hannah pulled me away from the other two and lead me to the far side of the cave. For a while, neither of us said anything. Then…

  “You’ll be able to fully retire after this, you know?” Hannah glanced at Megan and Max. “Those two won’t. They love this, even if Max seems a bit tense and worried. They’ll keep with the team either because they’re mad, or they truly believed in me.”

  There never was a gray area, even though I wallowed in it every day. Life was very gray…

  Either madness…or belief.

  For me, I lingered somewhere in between. Uncertain of everything. No firm right or wrong.

  If Hannah was telling the truth, though, I could retire and have my dear Venis every day. My beautiful baby boy.

  “So,” Hannah said as we walked slowly back toward the other two. “Here it is. We will gather samples and pictures and whatever else, but I want you to be the one looking for the tunnel. We might get separated from you, but don’t worry. Our mechs allow us to communicate, as you know. You have the less stressful job. All you have to do is find
the hole to the tunnel out of here.”

  I grunted. “Is that all? Gee…thanks.”

  “Don’t get shitty on me,” Hannah said. “I don’t offer involvement lightly. Either you want to come aboard, or you don’t.”

  I didn’t even think about it. Really, once again, there was no choice. “I’ll take it. Thank you.”

  After that, all the tension in the air faded. Hannah drew me into an awkward sideways embrace.

  “No,” she said. “Thank you. You might like the gig. We’re said to be so great, we can slay dragons, according to my son’s preschool teacher.”

  That made me laugh a little, because it was also something Venis would say. And just like that, I liked Hannah a little more. And who knew, maybe I really could retire early, pay to get my son back and then…oh and then…we could live a long, happy life together. Free of worries, we could get a nice little place on a beach somewhere and just…live. So what if I was pretty much a pirate. Well, barely, but still…

  The money would be a blessing.

  Funny how money could be both evil and good at the same time.

  Hannah patted my back and stepped away, her smile, for once, truly appearing genuine. Almost…proud. Megan crowded in, slammed into me, and gave the most enormous hug. So enormous, I could barely breathe.

  She released me a bit and held me at arm’s length, beaming a smile. Tears trickled down her cheeks. “You did it, hun. You made it in! Now I can hear that spontaneous sarcasm all the time.”

  I laughed. “Is that all it takes to get into this group? Bouts of sarcasm, snark, and nihilism?”

  Megan wiped tears away and chuckled. “Pretty much. But you really impressed all of us.”

  We shared a smile and she stepped away as Max waded in.

  He blew out a breath, which puffed out his cheeks dramatically. “Well, you know you can still run, right? This isn’t exactly diamonds and roses.”

  “Oh, for shit’s sake, Max,” Megan said. “You have three damn houses because of what we do.”

  Max made a pshh-ing sound and gave me a wink. “Those are for my girlfriends to share.”

  Megan rolled her eyes and punched him the arm.