Subterranea Read online

  There were more shouts from above them, and Murky looked up to see several soldiers peering over the ledge, their guns pointed down at the four kids.

  They wouldn’t, Murky thought. As soon as she thought it, several bullets flew through the air and chipped the strange rock outcroppings around them.

  “They’re actually shooting!” Jesse yelled. “What the hell?”

  “You idiots, stop shooting!” someone else called from up top. Murky thought it might be Agent Larson; already the cavern around them was creating a strange echo effect that made it difficult to be certain.

  “But we can’t let them go down there!” someone yelled back. An argument began, but Murky didn’t hear much of it. They weren’t so far down yet that the soldiers couldn’t give chase, but it was obvious that none of them wanted to cross the swirling blue line of the portal if they didn’t have to. Now that the military wasn’t shooting at them, they seemed to be in the clear to continue.

  Just as she thought that, Murky heard a shout of surprise from behind her. She turned to see that Henderson must have slipped and fallen on a step, because he was on his stomach with one leg and one arm dangling out into the drop. Jesse stopped to grab him, and both Murky and Laura went back up a few steps to help. The stairs under Henderson looked like they might be ready to crumble, but thankfully none of them were particularly heavy and they were able to pull him from the edge before he could be put in too much danger. Henderson looked shaken, but he didn’t stop to say anything. He just gestured for them to go on ahead, and they did so with as much haste as they could without actually putting themselves in danger again.

  Within a couple of minutes, they reached the bottom. When Murky looked up, she could no longer see anyone else looking down at them from the top of the shaft.

  They had made it, but they were now also alone.

  Chapter Four

  At first there seemed to be two separate tunnels they could go down at the base of the stairs, but a quick inspection of one showed that it led to a dead end except for a hole in the ceiling snaking off in a general up direction. That could have been the direction they truly needed to go, for all they knew, but since they didn’t have any way to climb up it, they had no other choice but to go down the other direction, a wide hall roughly the width of Kettle Hollow’s Main Street.

  It was here that they finally got a good look at what was causing the cave system’s eerie green glow. There was some kind of fungus or lichen growing on almost every available inch of the walls and ceiling, and it gave off varying degrees of faint light like dying fireflies. The floor probably would have been covered with it as well if it weren’t for the fact that there seemed to be regular foot traffic through here, resulting in a smooth path down the middle of the cave floor with dead and trampled fungus along the sides.

  They went down this direction for a little way in silence before Laura stopped them. “Okay, we really need to come up with some kind of game plan here. We can’t just go wandering around these tunnels with no idea what we’re doing.”

  “Does anybody have anything in their backpacks that could help us?” Jesse asked.

  “I never have the slightest clue what I’ve left in my backpack,” Henderson said.

  “I think all I’ve got is homework,” Laura said. “That, and that communicator Agent Larson gave us.”

  Nevertheless, she shouldered off her backpack and unzipped it. They all stooped down on the ground as they emptied the contents to get a better idea of what they had to work with.

  “Yeah. Just pens, pencils, a notebook, and my social studies book,” Laura said. “What about you, Jesse? What do you have?”

  “A Trapper Keeper, a gum wrapper, and my math book. Henderson?”

  “Um, just my gym shirt.” Henderson pulled it out and tossed it on the ground with the rest of the increasingly useless pile of items.

  “Ew, gross!” Jesse said. “That thing smells totally disgusting. Why is it in your backpack instead of your gym locker?”

  “My gym teacher said it was the worst smelling thing in the locker, so he made me take it home to wash it.”

  Laura gingerly picked it up and handed it back to him, then started putting her own things back in her pack. “What about you, Murky? Knowing the way you squirrel away things, you’ve got to have something in there that isn’t homework.”

  Murky reached into her backpack and pulled out the only thing inside that seemed like it could possibly be useful. “I’ve got a bag of marshmallows,” she said.

  Laura gave her a look like she thought Murky was crazy while Henderson threw up his hands in disgust. “Great. Marshmallows. I’m sure that will come in real handy against the army of alien ant creatures,” he said.

  “Why do you even have those?” Jesse asked her.

  Murky shrugged. “Just in case I need something to roast over a campfire.”

  “Why would you expect to just randomly run into campfires?” Henderson asked.

  She shrugged again. “You never know.”

  “Okay, so what if we’ve got nothing useful,” Jesse said. “We can still do this, right?” He didn’t sound like he believed it. Rather, it sounded like he wanted someone else to convince him, but no one else responded.

  “We at least have this,” Laura said, hefting up the heavy communicator device. “It’s not going to be fun to lug it around, though.”

  “Man, that agent lady probably should have given us flashlights instead,” Henderson said.

  “She shouldn’t have had to give us anything,” Jesse said. “We’re just kids. It shouldn’t be us that are doing this. It should have been all the people up top with huge guns.”

  “You sure weren’t acting like you didn’t want to do this while we were still in the tent,” Henderson said.

  “Yeah, well that was before I saw all the empty houses and the creepy hole and climbed down it to hang out with who knows what,” Jesse said.

  “Yeah? Well, what did you expect?” Henderson asked. “The adults to actually be useful? When have you known adults to treat kids like anything other than crap?”

  “Our parents treat us good,” Murky said softly.

  “Yeah, well your parents are the exception,” Henderson said. “My dad… he’s…” He stopped for a long time before continuing. Somehow, the other three all knew not to speak up yet. “I guess he tries. Sort of. What if he’s dead? What if he’s gone now too and I’m alone?”

  There was a long pause as the other three tried to think of something to say. “I’ve met your dad,” Jesse finally said. “He wouldn’t give up without punching a few ant people on the way down. And my mom would bash them over the head with a frying pan. They’ll be fine, as long as we can get to them.”

  “We can do this, right?” Laura asked. Everyone stared at her, but she wouldn’t look back at them. Instead she stared up at the green glowing ceiling as though it held all the answers if only she stared at it hard enough. Finally, when she did look at them, she had a look in her eye that Murky knew well. That was the look her big sister got when she felt too stubborn to let other people tell her what to do. It wasn’t a look she pulled out often, but Murky had seen it enough times that she both respected and feared it. “We can do this. We will do this.”

  As they finished putting all their things back in their backpacks, no one dared question her. Still, even with her sister’s determination, Murky wasn’t so sure they were going to be going back up those stairs into Kettle Hollow ever again.

  Chapter Five

  Murky found herself tiring of all the walking pretty quickly. All four of them were in good shape for their age, but considering they had just run down a set of rock stairs deep into some underground dimension, and it was also getting to be past her normal bedtime, it made sense that she was going to be low on energy. She reached around to her backpack and pulled out a few marshmallows, eating one and then offering the rest to the others. They all accepted, even Henderson after the way he had mocked her for having
them. Murky felt pretty good about that.

  Their first major obstacle occurred after about fifteen minutes. The tunnel had expanded into something roughly large enough for a semi to drive through and then forked into two different directions. They all stopped and considered the branching paths, but it was obvious to Murky that they were all waiting to see what Laura would say they should do.

  “I don’t have the slightest clue which way we should go,” Laura finally said.

  “Maybe now would be a good time to take out that communicator phone thing,” Jesse said. “Agent Larson has got to know more about this place than we do, right?”

  “She didn’t sound like she knew that much when we were talking to her earlier,” Henderson said.

  “Still, it can’t hurt to try,” Laura said. She unshouldered her backpack and pulled out the communicator. “I’m not even sure how to turn this stupid thing on.” They fiddled with it for nearly a minute before they got it to turn on and make some sort of scratching hiss noise. The sound was disturbingly loud in the tunnel. Murky hoped there was nothing down here with them that could hear it.

  “Agent Larson, are you there?” Laura asked into the part of the device that looked like it might have been a microphone or a speaker. She turned to look at the others. “Should I use this the same way people use walkie-talkies? Should I be saying ‘over’ or ’10-4, good buddy,’ or something?”

  There was a crackle from the device before Larson’s tinny voice came through it. “You don’t need to do any of that. Just speak into it the way you would a phone.”

  Henderson snorted. “A portable, wireless phone? Yeah right. When Huffy starts making airplanes, maybe.”

  “I can hear all of you,” Larson said. “This is good. I wasn’t completely sure this was going to work. We never had the chance to give these things a proper field test.”

  “Right, so we’re down here,” Laura said. “Now what?”

  “First of all, are any of you having trouble breathing?”

  “Wait,” Henderson said. “You sent us down here without even being sure if we could breathe the air?”

  “Kid, in case you forgot, I didn’t send you anywhere. You were the ones who volunteered. And no, we couldn’t be sure that the air would be the same as up here. You’re technically in another dimension, don’t forget. We were still exploring what the rules even were for it.”

  “You know, come to think of it, the air down here does seem different, but not in a bad way,” Jesse said. “It’s almost easier to breathe, like there’s more oxygen.”

  “That makes a little bit of sense,” Agent Larson said. “Bugs shouldn’t be able to grow as large as those ants without higher oxygen levels. The only question is where the oxygen would be coming from.”

  “Maybe it’s from the glowing fungus all over the walls,” Laura said.

  “Could be. I’d ask you to get samples of it to study if it weren’t a matter of… wait. Something’s going on outside my tent. Keep the communicator turned on. I’ll be right back.”

  “Wait!” Laura said. “Before you go, we need… Agent Larson? Are you still there?”

  There was no answer from the other end.

  “Great,” Henderson said. “Guess we’re just going to sit around like jerks while we wait for her to come back and tell us where to go. Well I could tell her where to go…”

  Murky noticed a thoughtful look come over Jesse’s face. “What is it? What are you thinking?”

  “I’m wondering if she already told us the direction to go,” Jesse said. “Look closely at these two paths. Notice a difference between them?”

  They all looked, but nothing immediately jumped out to Murky. “I don’t see anything,” Henderson said. “Especially not down that one.” He pointed at the one to their left. “It looks like it’s less glowy.”

  “Wait, I bet that’s exactly what you’re talking about, isn’t it?” Laura asked.

  “Yeah,” Jesse said. “If the ant people need lots of oxygen, and we’re assuming the fungus is somehow making it, then wouldn’t it be more likely that that’s the direction they would have taken everyone?”

  “That’s making a lot of assumptions,” Laura said, then looked at the communicator in her hand. “But it’s all we’ve got for now. Let’s start down that way. If Agent Larson comes back on and tells us otherwise, we’ll just come back and go the other way.”

  They started in that direction and quickly decided they were probably going the right way. Whether or not Jesse’s logic had been correct, the rock floor here was even smoother than the tunnels they’d been in previously, implying it had been well travelled. They also began to see a number of cracks in the wall forming darkened alcoves where the fungus wasn’t growing. Henderson went up to one and stuck his head in.

  “Henderson, I’m not so sure that’s a good idea,” Laura said.

  “It doesn’t look that dangerous to me,” Henderson said. “It’s big enough for…”

  Before he could finish the sentence, something screeched from the direction of the tunnel they had just come from. They all froze.

  “What was that?” Murky asked.

  “Whatever it is, I don’t like the sound of it,” Henderson said. “Everyone, hide in here.”

  He grabbed Murky by the arm and shoved her into the crack. All four of them could fit in it if needed, but it wouldn’t be terribly comfortable. Laura was the farthest away, and as she started running for the alcove, the communicator came out of her hands and clattered to the floor. For a moment she looked like she wanted to go back for it, but somewhere behind them something was causing the glow to darken. She ran in after Henderson, with Jesse close behind her.

  “Oh God, what is it?” Jesse asked. “What is…”

  Henderson put his hand over Jesse’s mouth as he quietly gestured for Murky and Laura to look out in the direction they’d come. They all instinctively pressed themselves tighter up against the nearest rock wall as a shape became more visible in the distant shadows of the tunnel, accompanied by a series of soft noises that were somehow between hisses and grunts.

  “Kids, are you still there?” Agent Larson’s voice said through the communicator.

  The sound grew louder in response.

  “We need that communicator doodad,” Laura whispered. “It’s the only thing we’ve got going for us.”

  “Don’t look at me,” Henderson said. “I’m not going out there to get it until we’re sure that whatever that thing out there has gone away.”

  “Kids, I don’t know if you can still hear me, but if we lose the connection, there’s something you need to know.”

  The thing moving down the corridor to them was much louder now, and it was obvious that whatever it was, it was big enough to take up most of the tunnel.

  “The general in charge has decided that if we can’t close the portal, he might as well try to close it by blowing the town up,” Larson’s voice said. “It’s going to take a while to get enough ordinance, though. So you have about seven hours. After that…”

  They didn’t get a chance to hear the rest of what Larson was going to say. They all scrunched up tighter against each other in the alcove as the thing that had been coming after them finally arrived. Whatever it was, it was absolutely enormous, and it must have had multiple legs judging by the relentless sound of clicking against the rocks. It went by too fast for any of them to be sure what it was supposed to be, but Murky thought she saw, at the front of the thing, two giant oversized mandibles that took up a significant portion of its entire head. The creature, whatever it was, gave some kind of screeching roar as it passed, but even with as fast as it was going, it took quite a few seconds before it was no longer blocking the entrance to their hidey hole. It was like some kind of organic freight train rushing by them. But even through the noise, Murky was sure she heard the crunching of metal and plastic.

  Even after the enormous creature was past their alcove, none of them dared come out until the sounds of its movemen
ts were nothing more but distant echoes sounding throughout the caverns. Only once they were sure it wasn’t coming back did any of them risk venturing back into the main tunnel.

  “Okay, would someone like to tell me what the hell that was?” Henderson asked.

  “It was big,” Murky said.

  “No kidding, Sherlock,” Jesse said. “I didn’t get a look at it, but it almost might have been some kind of insect.”

  “That’s one huge insect,” Laura said.

  “We already know we’re supposed to be seeing giant bugs down here, but I don’t think that was one of the ant people Agent Larson was talking about,” Jesse said. “That had to be something else.”

  “Yeah? Well let’s hope it’s a something else we don’t see again,” Henderson said. He went over to the point on the ground where they had dropped the communicator and kicked at the remains. It was shattered beyond all recognition. Whatever that thing had been, it had been big and heavy enough to completely obliterate their only connection back to the world above. “So much for that doohickey.”

  “Did anyone else hear what Agent Larson said before that thing came through?” Murky asked. “It sounded like she was saying something about explosions.”

  “Yeah, I think she did,” Laura said. “She said we’ve got seven hours before the military blows up Kettle Hollow. Maybe less.”

  “How would they even explain that?” Henderson asked. “An entire town going kaboom would make people pay attention, wouldn’t it?”

  “They could make up any story, like a gas leak or something,” Jesse said. “It would be far-fetched, but still easier to believe than the truth.”

  “So we don’t have any more time to worry about what else might be in these tunnels,” Laura said. “We need to get moving.”

  “Shouldn’t be too bad,” Henderson said as they all started walking down the tunnel again. “I can’t imagine that there’s going to be anything crazier than what we’ve already seen.”

  It didn’t take long at all before he was proven wrong.