A Multi Leveled Planet

CHAPTER THREE

THE MULTI-LEVELED PLANET (working title)
CHAPTER THREE


The foursome slipped and slid across the silty floor for hours. Every so often they would run into another strange, silt-covered machine-like object that didn’t look natural. These they left alone as Jason urged them to put as much distance from their starting point as possible. Secretly, they all suspected none of them would ever see the light of day again.

“My light is dimming,” April complained, breaking the long silence.

“Yeah, mine too,” Jason admitted. “Let’s stop, have a rest, and see if there is anything left of our lunch.”

“I’m starved!” Kevin exclaimed before he pulled his backpack off his shoulders, and while looking around for a reasonably clean space to sit down. Though the silt seemed more of sand than mud, it still was a mess to walk through, and more of a mess if one must sit in it. He grunted, made a face and then plopped down into the wet stuff.

“Where are we going to sit?” April complained, looking around.
 
“In the mud,” Shelby eased the weight off her feet. Relaxing, she opened her backpack, searched inside and retrieved a zippered plastic sack that contained a pack of handiwipes. Something she never, she claimed, went without. “Need a wipe anyone?”

Between them they found two more drumsticks, one and a half tuna sandwiches, three hard boiled eggs, two oranges, and an apple. Shelby even produced a zipped bag of potato chips to share.

“Wait,” Jason stopped them before they took their first bite. “I think we’d better consider rationing what we have. How much water is left?” Without a word, everyone produced their canisters of water. April shook hers, frowned, unscrewed it, and turned it upside down. Not a drop fell.

“Darn.” Her eyes grew wide as she realized what this meant. In the dull light Jason could see her cheeks darken. He wanted to erase her discomfort, but the reality of their position tightened his gut.

“Shelby?” he asked.

“Mine’s about half full.”

“I may have a quarter left,” Kevin frowned.

“Mine is just about three-quarters full.” Jason uncapped his canteen and took a sip. “I’ve noticed there’s been no pools where some of the water might have gathered. I wish… There’s no use wishing. What’s done is done.” He turned to April. “Here, I’ll pour a little into your canister but be careful with it, okay?”

“I’m sorry…” she mumbled.

“No,” He stopped her, laying his hand on her arm. “Don’t say that, April. None of us even dreamed, with all that water at our feet,  water or the lack of it would become a problem. “You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“Now what?” Shelby asked. “I’m not sure how much to eat.”

“Break the sandwich in two, that gives us three sandwiches, one meal.” He turned to Kevin. “I know it isn’t much but can you survive on one of those drumsticks?”

While they chewed what food they allowed themselves, Jason and Kevin kept glancing into the surrounding darkness. The cavern had turned into an uninteresting journey through muck. Other than the occasional  noise as a zipper bag being opened or shut, or the rustle of clothing or equipment, the silence loomed thick and gloomy.

“Can I peel an orange and separate it into pieces for us all?” April’s voice trembled in the dimness.

“Sure.” Jason put the cleaned chicken bone back into Kevin’s bag after his friend dropped to the silty floor. “It will help clean our mouth and give us a little sugar energy.” Then, in an aside to Kevin, “We’d still better keep our trash in the packs, someone, sometime will follow us,” he swallowed before adding, “I hope.”

Kevin nodded though he couldn't help wondering, Why take their rubbish with them if they want someone to track them.. shouldn’t they leave a trail? He remembered, in his mind's eye, Jason's pickup truck still waiting beside the road, alone, empty, and showing any searchers they were in the area.

“Too bad this muck isn’t a bit drier; I could almost ignore it and go to sleep for a while.” Shelby tried to wipe her hands with the one handiwipe she allowed herself. He watched as she dug at the dirt from beneath her nails.

“I know, we’re getting tired, we’ve been walking for hours. I wonder if anyone has noticed the Bronco sitting alone on the side of the road. It’s dark out there by now. Hell.” He glanced at his watch. “It’s after midnight!” Jason't mind loped along the same track as Kevin's.

“Midnight?” April groaned. “My folks are going to come unglued. I’ll bet they have half the police in the state looking for me.”

“Mine too,” Shelby wrung her grimy handiwipe and sighed as she glanced at her own watch. “At least my watch is still working, too.”

“How far does this room go?” April brushed a strand of mud streaked hair away from her eyes. “I’ve trekked more than a dozen caves and I’ve never seen anything like this.”

“Yeah, and I’ll bet you’ve never seen artifacts in any of them, either.” Kevin zipped his backpack closed and pushed himself to his feet. “Or at least none not made by anyone other than an Indian.”

“Ouch…” Shelby, clambering to stand, shrugged her backpack’s straps over her shoulders. “My shoulders feel as though I rubbed them with sandpaper. These packs seem to get heavier even as we use our supplies?” She shrugged the weight higher. “Could this have been an underground complex or something, I wonder? You know, maybe some secret government complex? Maybe when the river started coming down they had to abandon it.”

“We entered through a hole in the top of a hillside,” Kevin reminded her.

“Yeah but, maybe there is another entrance, maybe a man-made one and we just have to reach the other side, find the stairs and climb out. Or… or maybe the remains of an old elevator rusted away at the bottom of the shaft. We could still get through it, maybe, or climb up…”

“Quit thinking of ‘ifs’,” Jason stopped her. “We’ll find out when we get there, but can you imagine even the government building a complex this deep into the ground? What would the expense of that be?”

“Why should the expense stop them?” Kevin mused as they re-started their endless trek across the room. “The space programs all cost billions, the war against terrorism cost America trillions!”

“Hey I know,” Shelby added, “back in the early fifties everybody worried about planes dropping atom bombs on us, and in the sixties it was nuclear missiles. This may be their idea of the first hideout before Colorado’s.”

“If it wasn’t so far down…” Jason mused, as ideas raced though his head. “Back in the mid-twentieth century they didn’t have the technology to do this; at least I don’t think they did.”

“They walked on the moon!” April objected. “That wasn’t a primitive accomplishment, even now.”

“That wasn’t until the seventies,” Jason chuckled. “This is different. This is chiseling into rock, a long way into rock. I don’t know, maybe you’re right, but… it just doesn’t feel right. I mean the idea that our government is responsible feels wrong, but someone had to do it.

“I… uh, when we get topside again, they can come down and solve the mystery. Unless we finally run into a normal cave again, with stalagmites and stalactites, flow stone, and pools of water with real cave formations, I don’t want to come back.”

“Me neither,” Shelby agreed, fiddling with her shoulder straps.

“Hurting much?” Jason noticed her discomfort.

“They’re just aching. I think April’s are worse than mine.”

“I don’t know if mine are worse or not, but they are getting awful sore.” April tugged at her straps. Kevin didn’t say anything but Jason noticed that he too seemed bothered by the straps. Jason learned long ago to pad his straps to avoid such problems, thanks to his Dad.  So far his shoulders, though tired, didn’t hurt.

“Can you keep on for awhile? Maybe in a little while we’ll reach the far wall, or a higher and drier spot where we can stop and rest.” Jason glanced at his watch.

“Why do you keep watching the time?” Shelby asked.

“My watch has a compass.” Jason grinned in the dimming light. “See?” He held the back of his wrist for her to see. “I’m making sure we don’t walk in circles.”

“Smart!” Kevin laughed. “When we get out of here I’m going to get me one of those. May never need it, but I’ve been secretly worrying about going around in circles down here.”

“Yeah,” Shelby nodded. “I have too.”

“So we’re definitely going straight, right?”

“Right, Kev, we are.”

“How far have we walked, I wonder?” April sounded weary. Watching how each step took an effort, he feared for her. The wan light showed her drained features.

“I think we’ve been walking this floor at least several miles.” Jason tried to estimate the answer.

“So… if we’ve come several miles, and my feet feel like we’ve been hiking forever,” Shelby mused aloud as if she needed to chatter. “That would be another reason to doubt our government built this. Right?”

“Right, that’s what I’ve been thinking. Still, who else could have afforded to do something like this? And since this has been the United States since way before anything technological was thought of…”

“Yeah,” Kevin stumbled for a second, before he continued. “But I…”

“You okay?”

“I think I’m getting a little tired. I know it wasn’t that long ago we grabbed a nap back there, but…”

“Not long? We’ve been in this cave for over twenty hours , and if you aren’t exhausted, I am.” Jason snorted, irritated with himself and with their circumstances. As the oldest, you’d think…

“And there is still no dry place to stop,” April complained. “If we could just find a dry spot…”

“That’s it,” Shelby stopped suddenly. “I can’t see a thing. My battery is finished.” She looked at Jason; her voice trembled as it dropped to a whisper. “I’ve only got one left.”

“But you have your emergency candles, right? That’s one of our spelunker’s rules; always pack some candles just in case.”

“Well, yeah but…” Her voice dwindled away. Jason knew everyone felt the very real grab of fear in the pits of their stomachs.

Jason knew everyone felt the very real grab of fear in the pits of their stomachs. He’d held off changing his battery as long as possible, as had the others. Like Shelby, he slung his backpack off to search for his last battery.

“We might as well put them in. Wait, why don’t we just use one head lamp at a time. That way we’ll have three times the amount of service out of them.”

“That makes sense, wish I’d of thought of it hours ago.” Kevin’s words hung in the still air, dripping with dismay. Jason knew exactly how he felt, maybe more so.

While they switched out their batteries they chatted in between several dark silences.

"Oh!," Shelby broke one of those silences. "I've packed a couple of those batter-less flash lights. You just have to pump and pump and pump to work them, but they are bright."

"I have one too," Kevin nodded, "but they sure make the hand ache after a while."

"I've got one in my pack, too." Jason mumbled, searching into his pack again to pull out a blue one of the battery-less lights. "That gives us four, just in case."

"Let's use the candles while we stop, one at a time, and then maybe the battery-less when the head lamp batteries go down altogether." Jason looked around at them.

A few moments later, with the new batteries installed, only Jason’s lit their way. This time he noticed even his straps were beginning to chaff his skin. He frowned, wondering how bad the others were. Concerned, he walked beside April and touched one of her straps. Like he feared, she jerked away in pain.

“That bad, huh?”

“I didn’t want to worry you.” She nodded. “I wish I’d thought of padding my straps like yours are.”

“I learned that back on my first trip to Carlsbad year’s ago, with my Dad. We took the long way through the caverns.” He chuckled in remembrance. “By the time we walked to the entrance, instead of riding the elevator, my straps literally rubbed my skin clean away. Dad wanted to take the elevator but I wanted to see everything there was to see. When we got back home, I sewed some pads onto my straps. I wasn’t about to go through that again. Anyway,” he finished with a sigh. “I never forgot the lesson.”

“That should be another one of our rules.” Kevin nodded to himself. “Never go into a cave without wearing padded shoulder straps.”

“My shoulders are only meat, now,” Shelby groaned, shifting her strap for the umpteenth time. Unseen in the dimness Shelby’s shirt was beginning to show stains.

“Hey, everyone!” Kevin reached for Shelby’s arm, dragging her to a halt. “Look!”

“What is it?” April whispered.

“I think it’s the wall!” His sentence ended close to a shout.

As one, all four of them found themselves jogging toward the end of the 'room'. Sure enough, as they neared and could see in the light of one headlamp, they were up against the wall. Cracks traveled across the pitted remains, for that is what it seemed to be, the remains of a once perfect, man-made wall. Here and there chunks had fallen to the floor, where they remained invisible under the silty muck. They chatted among themselves with more life than they had shown in hours. The floor wasn’t so smooth anymore, instead it was full of mud-covered bumps, no doubt bits of wall, and no telling what else.

After nearly an hour of almost almost jogging when possible along the ruined wall, they began to slow down as the debris became more and more hazardous. Finally, April stumbled into Kevin and they both fell into a heap.

“I can’t move anymore,” she moaned.

“Where are you hurt?” Shelby, openly scared now, cried as she leaned toward them.

"What's wrong?" Jason, further along than the rest, realized something was wrong, and he turned to glance back before skidding to a halt.

“They fell.” Shelby raised her voice in answer, “Kevin and…”

Before she could finish her explanation a familiar groan started up from deep beneath their feet. April screamed as Kevin threw his arms around her and Jason and Shelby joined them in a heap.

“Cover your heads!” Jason yelled at them, trying to keep his own arms above his skull. They should try to get away from the wall…
A terrible crash of broken debris sounded a distance from them where they crouched against the wall itself. “Come on,” Jason shouted, “let’s move back from the wall. It might break and come down on us…”

“No,” Kevin shouted back, “it’s the ceiling falling, not the wall. If we back away from its protection…”

“Okay,” Jason, understanding, agreed.

The floor buckled like a live thing beneath their feet. Then, as Jason poked his head up to try to see something in the dim, dust laden lamp light, he saw they had almost reached the corner of the room. Cracks in the far wall were opening even as he looked!

Then he realized he could see light between the cracks, which were widening with each second. He ducked his head back down, covering it with his arms as more debris, some heavy by the sound of it, hit the floor fall much too close to them.

They were rained on by small chunks and a lot of dirt and dust. In moments, even as the ground beneath began to stabilize, they found it hard to breathe. The dust from the fallen ceiling above them plugged their airways. Then, as if matters weren’t getting worse enough, the wall crumbled with some of it landing on top of them.

Something about that last thought... Jason tried to rationalize what was happening. Great! He thought, this is a Real cliff hanger!!!
Unconciousness descended on him and as the lights dimmed away altogether, it registered that something had struck his skull... hard!