David Morrell - First Blood

The upper rung of a ladder. From the mine, he thought. It must be. The guy who worked the mine must have explored here. He lowered himself gingerly onto the rung. It bent but held; he stepped gently onto the second rung, it split and he snapped through two more rungs before he stopped. The sound of his fall drummed through the chamber, startling him. When it faded, he listened for the shouts of the men but he could not hear them now, his head below the rim of the hole. Then as he relaxed, the rung that held him bent, and fearing that he would crash through to the bottom, he quickly waved his torch to see what was below. Four other rungs and then a rounded floor. When it rains, he thought, water from outside must drain down here. That's why the smooth worn rock.

He touched bottom, trembling. Looked. Followed the one exit, a wider fissure that sloped down as well. An old pick was leaning against one wall, its iron rusty, its wood dirty and warped from the damp. In the flickering torchlight, the handle of the pick cast a shadow onto the wall. He could not understand why the miner had left tools here but not in the upper tunnel. He came around a curve, water plunking somewhere, and found him. What was left of him. In the shimmer of the orange light, the skeleton was as repulsive as the first mutilated soldier he had ever seen. His mouth tasted of copper coins as he stood away from the skeleton for a moment and then took a few steps toward it. The bones were tinted orange by his light, but he was certain that their real color was gray like the silt that had gathered around them, and they were perfectly arranged. Not a bone was out of place or broken. No sign at all of why he had died. It was as if he had lain down to sleep and never wakened. Perhaps a heart attack.

Or poison gas. Rambo sniffed apprehensively, but he smelled nothing except dank water. His head was not off balance or his stomach queasy or any of the other symptoms of gas poisoning.

So what in hell could have killed this man?

He shivered again and hated the sight of this perfect set of bones and hurriedly stepped over them, eager to get away. He went farther down, and the fissure became two. Which direction? The smoke had been a bad idea. By now it had dispersed so he could not see which way it was drifting, and it had dulled his sense of smell so he could not even detect its path with that. His torch was burning low in the damp air, flickering sporadically in no particular direction. What was left to him was a kid's game, moistening his finger in his mouth, holding it at one opening, then the other. He felt the breeze slightly cool on the wet of his finger going to the right, and uncertainly he followed down, sometimes forced to squeeze through, occasionally stooping. His torch was burning lower in the damp air all the time. He came to another set of openings and wished that he had rope or string to lay out behind him so that if he became lost he would be able to find his direction back.

Sure, and wouldn't you like a flashlight too? And a compass? Why don't you go on over to the hardware store and buy them?

Why don't you forget the jokes?

The breeze seemed to the right again, and as he moved along, the passage grew more complicated. More twists and turns. More offshoots. Soon he could not remember how he had come to where he was. The skeleton seemed a long confusing distance behind him. It was strangely funny to him that the moment he considered turning around and retracing his steps, he realized he was lost and could not do that. He did not actually want to return yet, he was just considering it, but all the same he would have preferred the option of being able to go back if the breeze suddenly ended. It was extremely faint even so, and he wondered if he had missed some crack in the rock where it seeped out of the hill. God, he could wander here until he died, end up like those bones.

The murmur saved him from panic, and he thought it was them coming, but how could they find him in this maze, and then he recognized the distant sound of water rushing. Before he knew, he had increased speed toward it, at last a perceptible goal in mind, shouldering against walls, staring into the darkness beyond his light.

Then the sound was gone and he was alone again. He slowed and stopped, leaning against a wall, hopeless. There had been no sound of rushing water. He had imagined it.

But it had seemed so real. He could not believe that his imagination could trick him so completely.

Then what had happened to the sound? If it was so real, where was it?

A hidden turn, he realized. In his haste to reach the sound, he had failed to check for other entrances in the rock. Go back. Look. And as he did, he heard it once more, and found the opening, on the blind side of a curve, and slipped into it, the sound louder as he went.

It was deafening now. The flames of his torch diminishing to go out, he arrived where the fissure came onto a ledge — and below him, far down, a stream was swirling through a hole in the rock, roaring down into a channel and away under a shelf. Here. This had to be where the breeze was going.

But it wasn't. The water foamed up over the shelf and there was no space for air to be sucked through. But still he felt the breeze strong here; there had to be another exit close by. His torch hissed, and he glanced around frantic to memorize the shape of the ledge, and then he was in darkness, a darkness that was more complete and solid than any he had ever stood in, made overpowering by the cascade of water below into which he might easily fall if he did not grope his way with care. He tensed, waiting to get used to the dark. He never did get used to it. He began to lose his balance, swaying, and at last he went down on his hands and knees, crawling toward a low passage at the end of the ledge that he had seen just before his light sputtered out. To go through the hole he had to slip flat on his belly. The rock there was jagged. It tore his clothes and scraped his skin and twisted his ribs until he repeatedly groaned.

Then he screamed as well. From something more than his ribs. Because as he came blind through the hole into a chamber where he had room to lift his head, he reached out his hand to claw himself forward, and fingered mush. A drop of wet muck plopped onto his neck, and something bit his thumb, and something tiny darted up his arm. He was lying in thick scum that was soaking through his two ripped shirts streaking his belly. He heard squeaking above him, and the cardboard ruffle of wings, and Jesus Christ, it was bats, he was lying in their shit, and what were by now a half-dozen tickly things scurrying over his hands, nibbling, they were beetles, the scavengers that feasted off bat dung and sick bats fallen to the floor. They could strip a carcass clean, and they were piercing the flesh of his arms, as he wriggled insanely backward through the hole, Jesus Christ, swatting them off his hands and arms, bumping his head, wrenching his side. Jesus, rabies, a third of any bat colony was rabid. If they woke and sensed him they might attack and cover him biting while he screamed. Stop it, he told himself. You'll bring them to you. Stop screaming. Already wings were flapping. Christ, he couldn't help it, screaming, wriggling back, and then he was out on the ledge, sweeping his hands and arms, rubbing, making sure and double-sure they all were off, still feeling their many-legged tickles on his skin. They might follow, he suddenly thought, scurrying back from the low entrance to the hole, disoriented in the dark, one leg toppling off the ledge, dangling. The fright of his near fall jolted him. He lurched in the opposite direction and bumped against a wall of rock and shook, hysterically wiping the mushy dung off his hands onto the rock, pawing at the slime on his shirt to get the stuff off. His shirt. Something was in there scratching on his skin. He shoved in a hand, grabbing it, snapping its brittle back so he felt its soft wet insides on his fingers as he threw it violently toward the sound of the cascade.