Nathan Hystad - The Survivors - Books 1-3

I assumed spiders would be prevalent here as well, but when I looked for them, I saw nothing but dirt walls and dust particles floating around as we disturbed the portal room.

“The door’s over here,” Leslie said, in her more than familiar voice. “It looks like stone.”

We didn’t know just which pyramid we were under, or if we were going to be stuck trying to get out. I’d had nightmares the night before that we arrived, only to have the doorway inside covered by fallen rocks. It had been a few centuries since the portal had been used, so we had no idea what the condition was on the other side of the door. I pushed my fear of the unknown down, not letting myself worry.

“Open it,” I said, and walked to them as Terrance used his weight to push on the large stone wall.

“It won’t move!” Terrance grunted.

Magnus moved beside him and started to push. After a minute of exertion, they gave up.

“Wait. It wouldn’t be on hinges. It’s probably round. We need to roll it away,” Mary said, and I pictured a large stone circle on the other side. I lowered to the ground and saw slight openings at the corners of the doorway.

“She’s right. We need to roll it.”

“Which way?” Leslie asked. We had no way of knowing.

“Look up here. I think these are handles.” Magnus ran his hand over the stone slab and showed us where a couple of handholds were recessed. “Not much room, but I bet we can get enough leverage, as long as there isn’t something jammed on the side of the circle out there.” I went beside him and jammed my fingers into the second opening. We pulled to the left, and after ten seconds of hard yanking, it started to roll. We kept pulling, and it rolled open.

My heart hammered from effort and joy at our success. It was short-lived when I thought about how much further we needed to go before we could come back to this room to leave. It wasn’t going to be easy.

We all ushered out of the portal room. “Should we close it up?” Mary asked me.

“Good idea. I doubt anyone’s coming down here, but better safe than sorry. Mary, can you pin our location on your GPS?” I asked as Magnus and Leslie rolled the door back closed. The hallway we’d emerged into was shallow and went beyond the room in both directions.

All we knew was we were underground, a pyramid on top of us. We just needed to get to higher ground, and then we could find our way out.

“Look for elevation changes in the pitch of the ground,” Mary said, and we chose to go left from the room, because it seemed to rise slightly as you walked along it.

The ceilings were low, and Magnus had to duck a few times to avoid hitting his head on jutting rocks. The halls were primarily dug from dirt, but rock was stuck into both the walls and ceiling, probably to help support the opening. We walked along the path for ten minutes, slowly moving and breathing in stale air. Mary had elected to put her mask back on her helmet, and Terrance joined her. If we didn’t get out of the basement here soon, I’d need the fresh air as well.

“I’ll be damned,” Magnus said, stopping so suddenly that I walked right into his broad back.

“What is it?” I asked, stepping around him to see for myself.

The hall opened to a room, this one with more hieroglyphs. These looked different from the Shandra ones and were most likely done by ancient Egyptians. It showed small figures bowing on the ground to large people in animal masks, presumably their representations of the Theos they wouldn’t have ever seen.

“At least they were smart enough to seal the portal and build a pyramid overtop it,” Mary said, running a gloved hand over the stone walls.

“Do you think…?” I started to ask and let the question fall quiet.

“I know what you’re thinking, and I bet some sad soul was lost on the other side a few times before they assumed their friends were just being killed.” Magnus was filming the room with his suit’s surveillance.

I pictured an ancient Egyptian child playing with his sister, chasing her down a tunnel they’d found in the desert. She made it to the room first, awestruck by the glowing gemstone. She stood still, the game all but forgotten. The walls began to glow as she neared the table, and the pretty drawings put her into a trance. Her brother called to her from the doorway, older, more aware of danger. She ignored him, her heart pounding so loud she could hardly hear his words. She touched an image on the screen. The room shone brightly, and when it subsided, the boy was left alone.

I opened my eyes and wondered if that had happened, or if my imagination was just filling in the blanks.

“This way. I see stairs,” Leslie called from the far corner.

Each step kicked up a puff of dust as we climbed them. They were made of stone now, not carved out of dirt like most of what we’d seen so far. I guessed this section was newer than the other one, added on when they were about to build the pyramid, or built afterward to connect the two.

We found another door at the top, a stone circle we had to roll out of the way. Once out, we followed a hall in the dark, our suits lighting the way. I spotted old torch holders on the walls, some of the torches still mounted, the majority of their shapes gone to dust.

“Anyone else feel like lighting one of those just to see what happens?” Magnus asked, and I could almost hear his grin.

“I imagine they’d burn for a minute, then be ashes in your hand. They don’t just look a couple hundred years old, they look a couple thousand years old. I don’t need a carbon dating test to know that,” I said, trying to remember anything from the documentaries I’d seen as a kid in school. “If I recall, the pyramids housed the tombs of a queen and king, each in separate chambers. I’m sure there’s more to it, but if we follow the path that leads us up, we should be able to either get out or go to the ancient Egyptian mummified royalty.”

“That sounds right to me too,” Mary confirmed. “I don’t know which pyramid we’re in, but they all took an insane amount of effort. I can’t believe there’s been a hidden portal down inside, and no one’s found it.”

That got me thinking. “These days, they have all sorts of ultrasonic sensors that tell them what density of soil and rock are under things. How did they not learn there was an opening down here?” I asked, perplexed.

“No idea. I’ll chalk it up to ancient alien gods,” Magnus said.

I looked back at the hybrids, who had remained very quiet to this point. “Are you guys okay?”

“The sooner we get out of this dusty tomb, the better. I’m not a fan of tight underground spaces,” Leslie said.

Terrance slid his hand into Leslie’s. “Me neither.”

The walkway kept going slightly uphill, but eventually, it came to an end. Magnus was ahead; he and Mary were feeling the walls.

“There’s no exit,” Magnus said, and I instantly felt the walls closing in on me.

“What do you mean, there’s no exit?” Leslie’s voice lifted, on the edge of panic.

“We’ll find a way out,” Mary said.

I tried to get a feel for where we could be. We’d walked a short way, and at an uphill trajectory. We were probably near the ground level, where they’d plopped the pyramid on top of the portal access. If archeologists hadn’t found what was below, there had to be a layer of thick rock between the levels.

We spent an hour looking for any sign of an exit, and by the time we’d given up, we were covered in dust and Leslie was crying.

“We’ll be okay. We can always go back,” Mary said, trying to comfort her.

“We aren’t going back!” she yelled. “Our family is up there, stuffed away in a prison, tormented and dying. I’ve seen enough of humans to know how they’ll treat us.”