Jack Du Brul - The Medusa Stone

Mercer heaved Selome off the floor as if she was no more than a child. As more debris rained around them, they ducked into a side tunnel. He took just a second to look back and watched a slab of rock larger than an automobile land squarely on Mahdi as he writhed with the pain of his burned neck. The weight of the stone forced the contents of his torso toward his head, but they could not erupt through the cranium. Mercer saw Mahdi’s throat expand like that of a bull frog’s until the entire bulbous mass exploded in a red mist and the body lay still.

He trained the light to the far end of the gallery where he had seen the distant glint. Just before his view was obliterated by the crumbling chamber, he watched an eerie blue light radiate from the gloom, burning brighter and brighter until a chunk of stone crashed right in front of him, sealing the room forever.

The side tunnel’s roof was lower than most of the others they’d encountered, and Mercer had to ease Selome to the ground and coax her to follow as more of the chamber behind them collapsed. Huge clouds of dust blew into the tunnel, enveloping them, choking them until they could no longer open their eyes and every breath was torture. And still more of the room fell, a roaring sound that filled their world and threatened to tear away their sanity. They scrambled from it, ripping skin from their hands and knees as this tunnel began to fill with debris.

They covered fifty yards before the cave-in ended. The sudden silence left their ears ringing. Looking back the way they’d come, Mercer saw that they were cut off from the others by untold billions of tons of earth. Even if they had wanted to, there was no way they would ever be able to return.

What the hell was that glow ? The blue light had to be a static discharge, he thought. When rock is crushed, it can give off a small amount of electricity. Given the amount of moving stone, the phenomenon could easily explain what he’d seen. Or maybe it was a pocket of methane catching fire after being ignited by a spark. He had several other naturally occurring explanations, but deep in the back of his mind, he knew there was also an unnatural one. No, it couldn’t be .

“What happened in there?”

“Mahdi suffered a crushing defeat,” Mercer rasped, waiting for Selome to take a drink from their canteen. He wanted to give her time to recover before telling her that this tunnel went in the opposite direction from where they wanted to go. There was no way he was going to tell her what else he’d seen.

“You have no idea what I was thinking in there when he attacked us,” Selome replied, wiping her lips against the delicate bones on the back of her hand.

“Can’t be any weirder than what was going through my mind,” Mercer agreed. “Are you okay?”

“My jaw hurts and I’m sure it’ll be black and blue in a few hours, but I’m fine. You?”

Mercer removed his pants and began working on the knife wound in his leg. He didn’t waste any of their precious water cleaning the gash but slapped a fragment of his shirt over the incision and secured it with a strips of silvery duct tape from his bag. “Dr. Mercer’s antiseptic surgery, secondary infections are our specialty.”

“Is it bad?”

“Nothing major was hit,” Mercer said, then added with dark humor, “and it’ll stiffen long before we get to see your black and blues.”

The dust was still too thick to rest this close to the cave-in, so Mercer donned his pants and they started out of the area. Particles lay heavily in the air, and the powerful light could cut only a feeble swath through it. After a further hundred yards, the tunnel had shrunk in diameter so that their backs scraped the ceiling as they crawled. Still they were dogged by chocking clouds of grit.

“This may take a while to settle.” Mercer gagged each time he opened his mouth and his nose felt scored by acid.

They were forced to lower themselves even more as the tunnel continued to shrink. In moments the shoulders of Mercer’s shirt were ripped through and the abraded skin began to bleed. Without choice or option, they continued, using their elbows and toes to propel themselves forward.

“Mercer, what’s happening?” Selome cried.

“I don’t know.”

The tunnel was no larger than a coffin, just wide enough for them to squirm on their bellies, and in the murky light Mercer could see its diameter constricting even further. For the first time he considered that this tunnel might pinch out into solid rock. As if reading his thoughts, Selome called his name again, her voice teetering on the edge of hysteria.

“I know, I know.” It was becoming tougher for him to move. He’d taken off his kit bag a while back and pushed it and the AK-47 ahead of him. He had to twist and struggle to gain every inch.

For a while, the tunnel remained the same size, neither growing or shrinking, but their progress was cut to a snail’s pace. Rock encircled Mercer completely; not one section of his body was out of contact with its jagged embrace. The tunnel walls were pure, blood-red mercury ore. In a few places, raw mercury had worked itself from the ceiling and dripped into little hollows and troughs on the floor.

“How long did you say we could stay in here?”

“I’m not sure.” The light revealed a stretch of tunnel glittering with hundreds of tiny pools of quicksilver. “Remember, mercury can be absorbed through the skin, so don’t let it touch any open wounds you might have.”

“My entire body is an open wound.”

They made it through the severely contaminated section and started down a gentle slope. Mercer could see where the mercury had cut canals in the floor as it flowed downhill.

His coughing fits were becoming less frequent, but their severity was punishing. Unlike Selome, who had a little room between her body and the tunnel walls, Mercer was so constricted that every cough seemed stillborn in his chest, exploding within his body without finding a proper outlet. He had to prepare himself for the pain when he felt one coming. Already he could taste the coppery salt of blood in his mouth from ruptured lung tissue.

Mercer jammed.

Fighting panic, he rolled his shoulders and tried to work them forward, but the more he struggled, the more it seemed the walls tightened around him like the remorseless coils of a python. The tunnel floor was compacted dirt, and he tried to tear into it with his hands, but it was as hard as cement and left his fingers bleeding.

Selome saw his frantic movements and slid back to avoid his flailing feet. “What’s happening?”

“I’m afraid I’m stuck.”

“What do you mean stuck?”

“I mean I can’t move. I can’t go back and I can’t go forward.”

“Well, try!” In the confines of the tunnel, her voice was muted, dead, like she was speaking from the other side of a wall.

“And you think I’ve been lying here taking a nap,” Mercer snapped, but he couldn’t draw a deep enough breath to give force to his words. He felt like he was drowning.

“I’m sorry,” Selome said. “What do you want me to do?”

“Grab my feet and pull as hard as you can.” He needed to breathe. He wanted to scream. The rock wouldn’t let him.

It took five minutes to pull him back enough for him to gain some working room. Mercer calmed again, but he could feel panic clawing at the back of his thoughts. His shoulders and back were flecked with blood. “Now we go back again.”

“But that way is blocked by the cave-in.”

“Not that far back. We need to find a place where you can crawl over me and take the lead. I think you will be able to squeeze through.”

“What about you?”

“We’ll burn that bridge after we cross it.”

It took two hours of slithering backward for them to find an area with enough ceiling height for Selome to crawl over him. When she was lying on his back, she rested her head against his neck for a moment, her breath in his ear.