A Multi Leveled Planet

CHAPTER SIX

A MULTI-LEVELED PLANET (working title)

CHAPTER SIX

Kevin came to first. He cautiously rose and extricated himself from the others, checking his arms and legs for serious wounds. Except for a seriously bruised shoulder, not from straps but from a sizable piece of the wall, he was fine.

He rubbed some of the grit out of his eyes and spit a good amount from his mouth, but he seemed okay. Startled, he realized he could see quite well. Not with the feeble light of a head lamp but from beyond the wall.

Curious now he stood up to stare over the shambled remains of the wall. Where the light was coming from he had no idea, it was almost like dusk, but a dusk of the outside world, at the end of day. For a wild second he thought they might have broken through, somehow, and were outside the cave!

There were sickly looking trees and other types of flora he could barely make out in the dimming light, so that showed him he was not in familiar territory; not the Arizona he knew. Closer to him the light was brighter, no, he frowned as he rested against the shattered wall. It was not so much brighter than the lamps, but the light was more diffused, it seemed more natural than lamp light would be, but it couldn’t be natural.  A groan behind him drew him back.

“Jason?” Kevin squatted down to whisper in his friend's ear.  “How bad are you hurt?”

* * *

“It was another earthquake,” Jason grumbled.

“Without the earthquake we’d still be in the dark, literally,” Kevin reminded him. “Besides now, maybe we can find water, maybe even a way back home. That is, after I find out what is making all this light.”

“Personally, if it meant getting hurt a little,” this from Shelby, who pushed herself into a sitting position.” To get out of that infernal room, I’m glad of it.”

“Yeah,” Now April was awake. She started to nodd her head but ,before she completed the action she grabbed it with both hands and groaned.

“Lie still, April,” Jason commanded, concerned with a possible concussion, he gently forced her to lie back again.

Shelby gently swabbed at the egg-sized lump on her friend’s left brow with a slightly mussed corner of her jacket, cleaning away some of the matted blood.

“OW!” April yelped, pulling her head from Shelby’s ministrations.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Shelby cried, “I’ll be more careful April, but I’ve got to clean this off to see how much damage there is.”

“Okay, but please not so hard,  it hurts like the devil!”

Kevin, again at the wall, slipped over the remains of what was left of tit. At its highest,they could see it was no more than four foot at this end of the 'room' now, where Kevin slipped over, it was more than a foot less. Even as he made his way over it more crumbled away beneath his hands.

“Kevin,” Jason glanced over his shoulder to see his friend crouched slightly, staring into the twilight. “Don’t wander away, you might get lost in the dark since we seem to be loosing the light.”

“Yeah,” Kevin waved back at him, “I know that, I’m not leaving anywhere. Not with… with… uh, things that might be in these trees.

“What things?” April sat straight up, headache or no headache.

“Dammit!” Jason, exhausted, filthy, and hurting himself, cursed. “Kevin…”

“Oh shit,” Kevin repented immediately. “I’m sorry girls. Why would there be animals this far underground? I was just…”

“Why?” Shelby rose to her knees, arms akimbo, “Would there be a jungle in the first place this far underground, with what looks like  ordinary evening twilight? And if that is a jungle, why would animals in that jungle be anymore out of place than the jungle itself? Would you answer that, please?”

Helplessly Kevin met Jason’s eyes. “I… don’t know,” he admitted,
helplessly Kevin met Jason’s eyes.

“There are just some sickly looking plants out there, Shelby,” Jason said after giving Kevin another hard glare before turning to face her. “I don’t know where the light is coming from but I’ll bet there is a  big crack opened up on the surface.”

“You think?” Shelby exclaimed with a big sigh of relief. Both girls, and even Kevin gave that some thought before turning their attention back to their various aches and pains from the tumbling wall.

“How is your leg?” Shelby turned her attention onto Jason.

“It will be okay, Shelby. The skin is scratched away, no doubt from a sharp rock, but I don’t think it is broken.” He was sitting with his pant leg pulled up to expose his shin, which was dark with drying blood.

“Here,” she moved closer to him, “let me clean the blood off. Then we can see how deep or shallow the cut itself is.”

“I really don’t think…”

“C’mon,” she coaxed as she dribbled the last drops of the water from her canteen onto an already moist handiwipe that felt a bit drier than it should hve. She figured it  should be damper in order to scrub the drier blood coagulated around the wound itself.

Giving up to her, Jason leaned back against some of the rubble from the wall. He winced under her ministrations every now and then, but in spite of this he began to drowse. The expenditure of adrenaline during the earthquake, now cost him dearly. Already exhausted, his battered body demanded sleep.

* * *

While Shelby worked on Jason’s leg, April followed his example and drowsed off herself. Only Kevin and Shelby remained awake. Shelby, eventually seeing them asleep, couldn’t help but yawn. It took all her concentration to keep cleansing Jason’s leg while her body cried for rest and her eyelids felt sticky and heavy.

“Hey,” Kevin came up to her from the other side of the wall, or what was left of it.

“Shhh,” she said crossly, “let them sleep for a little while. In fact, I am going to join them in another minute.”

“I just wanted to say,” he lowered his voice to a whisper, “there is a pond a few yards from here. When we wake up we can refill our canteens and even take a bath. How’s that sound?” He sounded quite proud of himself.

“A bath? That sounds like heaven!” Just thinking of it made her want to forget her nap and go as soon as she finished with Jason.

“It's getting too dark to go right now.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked, noticing his puzzled look.

“Uh, nothing, I was just thinking that Jason had to be right about that crack opening this valley, or whatever it is, to the light from the sun.

"But I don’t think you should take a bath until morning, when we can see how clean the water is.”

“Kevin tell me, do you think he’s right? And if not where are we? He has to be right; there is no other explanation possible, ... or is there?.”

“Shelby, we will figure it all out later, okay? Get some rest while we can. I have no idea what will come next, maybe one of us is having nightmares and we are all safe at home asleep, or maybe we are all delirious or something, but whatever we are, we are all exhausted and need to sleep, at least for a while.”Jason’s drowsy voice answered her instead of Kevin’s.

With a scared swallow, Shelby allowed herself to lie back against the hard chunks of ruined wall. It took a while before she picked out one chunk or another until she felt she could relax a little. She snuggled against April’s shoulder, and fell into a deep sleep in seconds.

* * *

Jason woke up smacking his dry lips, feeling as if a skunk had crawled inside his mouth and died there during the ‘night’. He opened his eyes at the thought. Carefully he rose from the uncomfortable nest he’d slept in, trying not to waken anyone else. He peered over what remained of the wall.

It definitely was lighter than the previous ‘evening’, if that was a true evening. If he was right, they would soon be crawling out of here, permanently. What a story they could tell! He thought staring out at the increasing light. Headline news, at least, maybe even some television interviews. He chuckled softly to himself as he managed to step carefully over what remained of the wall.

Once on the other side he glanced back in to check on the rest of them. All were still deep in slumber-land. Taking a deep breath of satisfaction, he moved off toward the sickly trees to relieve himself.
Once finished he limped off toward that ‘pool’ Kevin spoke of the night before. He saw it reflecting the early dawn light, or what looked like the early dawn light.

At first it looked great, so he knelt to stick his grimy hands into it, but just before letting them touch the water, he drew them back. He bent a little closer, examining the water’s surface.

“Yuck,” he said softly to himself. Millions of tiny worms were working at the surface. There would be no baths in this pond, or drinking water, either. Wait, he thought to himself, maybe we could boil it, there is plenty of dry underbrush around. Then he shook his head, no, maybe there is a better offer up ahead.

“Found the pond, hey?” Jason jumped at Kevin’s unexpected voice.

“Gees Louise, don’t sneak up on a man like that. If I’d had a weapon…”

“But you didn’t,” Kevin chuckled, then, “It doesn’t look very palatable to me.” He knelt to swish the water with a dead stick he found lying beside the pond.

“No,” Jason started to say when without warning, something huge and black rose from the mucky water. Instinctively Jason through himself back, knocking Kevin to fall, rolling with him. A huge something almost surfaced before it looped back on itself to submerge back into the black water.

“Shee-it!” Kevin exclaimed. “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know but I’m sure glad you convinced Shelby last night, not to take a bath!”

“Yeah, uh… me too.”

“Are the girls still asleep?”

“Yeah, and I was quiet getting up. For once,” he added.

“Okay, let’s just walk a little way; see if we can see something of this place.”

Together they wandered outward from the cave. Kevin picked up another piece of dead wood along their way, and jabbed it into the straggly bushes as they walked. Jason started to ask him if he was jabbing for snakes or something, but he didn’t get the chance.
Kevin made his usual stab at an unusually thick bunch of scraggly flora when, instead of jabbing into the ground, it passed through, almost spilling him downward from the force of his thrust.

“Hey there!” Jason cried, startled. He grabbed his friend’s left arm to yank him back. “You okay?” He asked as Kevin got his feet firmly beneath him again.

“Yeah, thanks to you. What do you suppose…” he started to ask as he bent over to part the bushes, then a half-shouted, “Yowsa!” spilled from his mouth as he flung himself back again.

“Damn,” Jason said in an awed voice. They were standing on the literal edge of a cliff that plunged a good hundred yards or so to another rocky floor far below.

Now they could see what lay before them. A fairly strong shine of… sunlight ... it had to be! ...came to a sharp edge several yards before the cliff, which even though it rose straight up, remained in shadow.

They craned their necks upward, expecting to see at least a little of the blue Arizona sky, but there was no sky, at least not a blue one. Following the direction of bright light they could see behind a small range of mountains, that it hid just out of sight. Bringing his eyes back to where the shadow of the cliff started and outward, Jason could see a world as different from their reality as Barsoom, from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ origin, to the real Mars of today.

In front of them lay a valley in the brightening morning light, a valley filled with the flora of near jungle-like growths and large grassy meadows with an early rising mist masking most of the ground floor. There was a river too, flowing much as the prior river above the huge ‘room’ they traversed the last day or two. That it was the same river couldn’t be known. At least they couldn’t tell from up here.

“Jase-son!” They heard April’s call almost on top of Shelby’s yell  to Kevin.

“We’re coming!” Both young men shouted as one and turned to head back the way they'd come.

With a glance thrown over his shoulder, Jason couldn’t help but shake his head. Where were they? He wondered as they tramped back towards the ruined wall where they left the girls not long moments before. If there was a crack in the surface sending sunlight down this far, they sure weren’t under it yet.

A sudden scream interrupted his thoughts and both of them broke into a run. It was Shelby’s scream, not April’s.

“I’ll bet Shelby tried to take a bath,” Kevin huffed as they ran.

“Oh, NO!”