68% Left

A Brief Respite

When I tell Sam the news he doesn't shout or swear, we sit there in silence. I don't know what to do anymore. I could maybe climb out of here myself to get help, but would I really leave Sam like that, injured and alone. I don't think I could do that, besides, I hardly know where I am at this point, I'm not sure I could get out of here alone. We continue to sit in silence, I don't have anything to say yet. I'm tired. Maybe we should just sleep here, I could make this rock work I think as my eyelids flutter.

"Well it looks like we only have one option then", Sam's voice is quiet, but still cuts the silence like a knife. I know he's realized the same thing as me as I see him staring across the pit into the void on the other side.

I groan myself back awake. "Are you sure? We've got no clue where that leads."

"It's better than just staying here Riley, there's no one coming for us. We've got to do something. My leg's not going to get any better tomorrow. Let's hope I'm even able to move it", his tone quiets a bit as he says the next part "It could be now or never."

It's hard to hear Sam like this. He's usually the ever-optimistic one, but he's also not wrong. There's no other way to go and I'm not going to leave him down here alone. I help Sam up and can tell he's in more pain now than when he woke up but he doesn't stop. As we get to the void that is the tunnel on the other side of the pit I take out my phone and turn on the flashlight.

It doesn't look promising, the tunnel leads further down. I don't say anything, it wouldn't help, and we start to make our way. The tunnel isn't large, big enough for us to just fit side by side ducking our heads most of the way. The walls are rough, and as I come to a sudden stop Sam chides in.

"What are you doing, why'd you stop?"

"Oh nothing, sorry" my voice falters. "I thought I saw something ahead, but it must have just been the light shining", I continue to walk, now my eyes frantically looking around the tunnel.

I'm scared, no, terrified, but Sam can't know. Maybe it's just paranoia on my part. I continue to look at the tunnel walls and know I'm not crazy, this tunnel was carved by something. Covering the walls around us are the same gash marks I found in the pit. Long streaks on the walls, so many you could mistake them for jagged stones. It reminds me of a burrow, the ones that rabbits make to escape predators, but no fucking rabbit could do this.

We continue to descend walking only about ten minutes before we come across the end of the tunnel. Another black hole in the wall. I help Sam sit down so I'm able to check out what's through the hole first before we start going anywhere. I step through the wall and am able to stand up straight. My phone light isn't bright enough to show me the whole room but it's enough that when I return to Sam I've got a smirk smeared across my face.

"I think we've found our way out"

"What, really! Holy shit, I thought we were going to die down here."

Sam doesn't necessarily share the same excitement as me once I show him what we've found.

"Riley... you can't be serious, this is hardly a way out, we've got no clue where to go from here"

Maybe my excitement was a bit premature, but I've got to have hope that this will get us somewhere.

"Yeah, I guess, but anything's better than being stuck in a pit, besides, at least we have options now", the last part drawls out of my mouth as I look around the intersection of new tunnels we've stumbled upon.

What really led to my excitement however was that we'd finally found signs of humans. I think we've come across an abandoned mine. It's hard to tell when it was abandoned, but it couldn't have been that long ago. The wooden beams supporting the tunnels are still intact, and the mine cart tracks haven't even started to rust. Along the walls I even find lights strung up every 15 feet or so, if we could get those on somehow, our trip out of here would be a hell of a lot easier. The more I look around the more I wonder what made someone abandon this place. I thought underground mines went out of fashion once open-air mines started to get preferred, but this looks like it was built too recently for that, something else must have happened here.