68% Left

Stench, Fear, and Loss

The stink hits me first. A wave of air carrying the smell of rottenness. I must not have realized before its intensity, as I gag at the smell. The door swings open making the faintest of creaks. It's darker in the tunnels than I remember and it takes my eyes time to adjust. I take a step forward, out of the refugee chamber, looking for the root of the noise, but there's nothing there. I look back at the door and my heart stops for a millisecond before it thrums in my chest, beating faster than I can ever remember.

Like scratches in the paint of a car, the door is covered in long marks where the white paint has been chipped away. I couldn't forget these marks if I tried; three parallel lines, scratched in repetition up, down, and across the door. The same marks that have followed us from when we fell, the same ones of a creature able to burrow its way through the ground.

I stumble back from the door and whip my head around now, there's something in here with us it's confirmed, but what?

We need to find a way out, no matter what that thing is, it can't be good. I return to the refugee chamber and grab my phone from one of the seats. Sam's still asleep and I feel guilty, I want to wake him, but he would only slow us down at this point. I need to be quick, I can find our way out faster alone and come back, he'll be safe inside here.

My rationality goes out the window. This feels like a bad idea, no this is a bad idea, I just don't see another option. Sam won't be able to make it if a wild animal is chasing him, and we can't waste anymore time, we need an exit. My body is filled with nerves as I ready myself to leave, I bring water and a bit of food with me, anything I can fit into my pockets. My hands are shaking as I turn to the door, I take a deep breath and twist the levers open.

Stepping into the tunnels once again I give myself a second to get oriented before starting forward. I'm able to move a lot faster now that I'm not carrying Sam. I pass intersection by intersection, my phone lighting the way, nothing changes from before until it does. It takes me a while to notice that the tunnels gradually begin to widen while the ceiling begins lowering until I need to duck my head to keep walking. The intersections have stopped at this point too. I keep on walking this way and am pretty sure I'll need to turn back soon. The ceiling is getting lower and lower, at some point I may need to start crawling.

I pass by a mine cart, a long one, big enough that it looks like it could hold 10 men laying down side by side. I keep walking until I don't think I can anymore. I'm fully hunched over now, on the verge of falling to my knees. This can't be right, we can't leave like this. I drop to my hands and knees, putting my phone and light away - shit using my light really drained my battery, I'm at 38% already. Once my flashlight is off I'm surprised by how much I can still see.

The pitch-blackness is no longer. I can make out more, and as I look ahead I can see light. Not from a lantern, but daylight, I crawl like mad. My wrists ache and my knees are bloody from the crawl but as I get closer I can smell the fresh air.

I approach the gash in the rock leading to lights faster, likely looking like a creature out of a horror movie. Bloodied, exhausted, dirty, my clothes torn off. I imagine myself looking a bit like Gollum from Lord of the Rings as I peak my head out into the light, immediately blinded by the sheer brightness of day.

My eyes adjust a bit as I'm able to see where I am. Well I'm able to make out something, the end of the tracks. Ahead of me the tracks keep going along the ground until they run under the door of a building. A wooden shack in the middle of... in the middle of what?

With only my head out of the hole I look up and around to see that I'm still deep down. Around this building like a corkscrew the ground is dug in concentric circles funneling all the way up to the sky. It must have been dug by humans, it looks like some other sort of mining effort was made here and they needed to go deeper. Who cares about that though, this is our way out!