D. Thomas - Backlash

Lewis took a couple deep breaths and sat up. Not claustrophobic in normal situations, Lewis did not like being squeezed by rocks like that. He gingerly probed the new scrapes and bruises that the crawl had given him before looking on with his headlamp. There were three tunnels leading away. Lewis called back to the others. “There are multiple choices in here. They all look bigger than that last spot.”

“I’m coming in.” Pierre’s accented voice rang out from behind him.

As Lewis waited, he noticed something in one of the passages. At first he thought it was a blurry spot in his vision but he gradually realized there was a light coming from one of the tunnels. Shutting off his own headlamp, he confirmed there was a light in the leftmost passage, and it was moving towards him. “Stonewood!” he yelled.

“Did you find him?” came the voice behind the light. It was Miller. “We found an easier way to get in here.” He grinned, shining his light back on the others, who were lined up behind him.

“Your timing could have been better,” Lewis said with a grimace as he rubbed his bruised ribs again.

“Our way was just fine,” Pierre said from behind Lewis. “Not really elephant material, I suppose,” he joked while slapping the much larger Lewis on the back. Lewis laughed, giving Pierre a fake glare.

“What about Stonewood?” Samantha asked worriedly.

Lewis looked at the others before answering. “We need to conduct a search; hopefully he hasn’t gone too far. One of us should stay in the treasure chamber in case Stonewood comes back while the searchers are out looking.”

Miller volunteered immediately, saying, “I found some mysterious runes I’d like to work on some more — they may help us get out of here.”

“I’ll stay too,” Samantha said as she raised her hand. “I think we just passed the site of the old waterfall entrance described by Stonewood’s uncle. I may be able to find a way through.”

It was decided. Samantha and Miller would stay behind while the others worked their way through the newly found passages. They would search for an hour, then return — one way or another.

Having learned that the left tunnel looped back to the main cavern, Lewis led the way down the middle tunnel with Gonzalez, Pierre, and then Craig following behind. It was decided that the third person in line would be the only one to use their light when they were traveling down a simple pathway, so Pierre lit the way for everyone as they walked. The passage was mostly tall enough that even Lewis could have stood upright but the closeness of the ceiling caused everyone to walk in a slight crouch, just to be careful. Lewis called out to Stonewood every few minutes, but received nothing but echoes in response.

The makeshift search and rescue group followed the winding tunnel for fifteen minutes before it terminated at a large round boulder. The boulder appeared to be just the right size to fit into the tunnel. Further inspection revealed tooling marks at the edges, indicating that this huge rock had in fact been placed here on purpose. Lewis scratched his head at the new mystery. “I don’t know who put this boulder here, but it looks to have been here for quite a while.” Turning his back to the road block, he added, “At least we know Stonewood didn’t come this way.”

There was no reason to shout for Stonewood, or stop to listen for a response, on the return trip, allowing the group to make better time. They went all the way back to where Samantha was examining a rock pile, just before the passage joined the treasure chamber. “Any sign of Stonewood?” she asked.

“Not behind the first door,” Lewis responded. “I assume that means he didn’t make it back here either.”

She shook her head. “Nope. Miller was just here asking if I’d heard anything, so he hasn’t seen him either.”

Lewis looked to the pile of rocks. “Any luck with this?” he asked.

Samantha smiled. “Maybe. I think I may have found something. I’ll know more in an hour.” With that, she turned and got back to work. Lewis and the others did the same, heading back for the last unexplored passage.

Pierre took the lead into the final tunnel. Gonzalez lit the way in the third position with Craig in front of her and Lewis behind. This passage was different than the others: it was a tight oval, much like the doorways on a submarine. The ceiling was low enough to require everyone to walk hunched over. Lewis found the walls to be just close enough to be annoying, requiring him to walk a little sideways, or repeatedly bump his arms and shoulders.

Craig took over calling out to Stonewood at regular intervals as they moved along. Lewis took to counting the calls as a strange way of tracking their progress. After eleven calls, the passage’s shape began to flatten out and widen. By the thirteenth, everyone was crawling on their bellies with less than six inches of clearance. Pierre and Craig turned their headlamps on as well, scanning back and forth along the now 50-foot wide passage, which was now more of a horizontal crack, each looking for a taller path or any possible offshoots. Craig made only one more call to Stonewood before the passage entered a large, dramatic chamber.

This chamber was over a hundred feet across and unlike anything they had seen so far. The most obvious trait was that the room was nearly spherical, even the floor was rounded. The walls were shiny and smooth like glass — probably obsidian, Lewis guessed. The final oddity was a trio of pits near the center of the room, 70 feet below. Lewis felt that the pits combined with the round shape and glossy walls gave the chamber the feeling of a huge bowling ball that had been turned inside out.

The passage they had come through opened near the center line of the giant sphere, meaning it was essentially a vertical drop for the first fifteen feet or so before the wall gradually rounded into more of a floor. The four members of the search party were now lying shoulder to shoulder with their heads protruding into the ball-shaped cavern, while the rest of their bodies remained inside the crack they had been crawling through. Lewis slowly worked their salvaged stretch of rope off his shoulders. “We don’t have any actual rappelling gear, but this rope should be enough to get somebody down to those three holes to check them out,” Lewis said.

“I’ll go.” Craig was the first to volunteer.

Lewis looked for a boulder or outcropping of some sort to anchor the rope, but found nothing. They would need Craig’s strength on this end. Lewis was about to address his concerns but Pierre beat him to the punch. “Why don’t I go?” the French climber offered. “The person who goes will have to be lowered then raised back up by the others. Craig is a lot of muscle for us to haul back up. Besides, we don’t know what kind of climbing may be required once I get to those wells down there.”

Craig couldn’t argue with the logic. The fact that they had to remain laying down was going to make it hard enough just to lower the small mountain climber. Gonzalez nodded her silent agreement to the plan. Lewis didn’t want to go all the way back to get additional equipment, so lowering Pierre seemed like the most logical choice given their situation.

Lewis handed one end of the rope across to Pierre, who had to roll around a bit to get it tied under his arms. Lewis then removed his shoe and handed it to Gonzalez, who recoiled at the stench.

“I didn’t mean for you to smell it,” Lewis said with a chuckle. “I was thinking you could hold it on the edge to give the rope something less abrasive to slide over.” Gonzalez made a quiet comment in Spanish. Lewis caught something about dead monkey guts, but missed most of the words.

With everything ready, Lewis and Craig moved back up the passageway a bit. They turned around then pushed their knees and feet against the ceiling, wedging themselves in place as best they could. Gonzalez helped Pierre climb over the edge, careful to keep the rope from being cut on the sharp lip. Lewis groaned as he and Craig took the climber’s weight.