Part VII

Part VII

We walked quickly, our weapons drawn and held at the ready. Our battle with the creature had left us shocked and exhausted. Jim went first, followed by Sam, then Denise, and lastly me. We listened closely for any sound from behind us and frequently turned and looked back, hoping not to see the creature, or more like it following us.

As we walked though, the quiet of the tunnel and the dim green light from the bioluminescent plants soothed our nerves and slowed our pulses. We maintained a good pace and after only 15 or twenty minutes Jim thought that we were about halfway so he called a stop to rest briefly and eat and drink something. We didn’t face each other but sat back to back, looking down the tunnel. I had just had a gulp of water and was unwrapping a granola bar from my pack when Sam said,” something is coming up the tunnel from in front of us.”

I grabbed my rifle and looked up the passageway. In the pale light, we could see a number of dark silhouettes slowly advancing towards us. Jim told Sam to watch the rear while the rest of us readied our weapons. I got down on one knee and brought the other up, braced the rifle’s stock against it and looked down the sights towards our targets. I counted at least eight. They moved forward and then stopped, waited, and then moved forward again. There was however, something about the way that they moved that did not frighten me and I began to relax despite our group’s collective uneasiness. I didn’t know what they were but they certainly didn’t move like the creature in the cave.

“Lower your weapons,“ Jim suddenly whispered. Denise began to protest, but then realized her mistake. It was another group of the humanoids. Their pale almost white faces looked agitated as they moved forward and past us to the left or right in the tunnel. They were all very heavy, like the group we had seen in the cave, and I could hear the naked surfaces of their inner legs rub against each other as they passed. There were four older male children, three females and in the rear, one, older, very rotund male. He had a long flowing beard and hair and walked lurched forward with a severe limp and the aid of a cane.

Suddenly he stopped and pointed at us from the shadows. It was then that I saw, in the light of Jim’s headlamp, that the cane in his left hand was in fact, a long wooden-handled ice-axe and that his left leg was horribly twisted and scared. The younger males and the females then stopped on the other side of us. Denise brought the rifle up to her shoulder and his eyes went wide and there was no mistaking the startled look on his face.

“No,” he wheezed through the long kinky whiskers of his grey beard. His skin was a deep brown, and everywhere on him it was stretched tightly over his ample weight, except on his brow where it was deeply wrinkled. “No hurt. You, talk,” he said with effort. He then turned and grunted something to the two oldest males. They looked at him and he pointed two fingers from his free hand at his eyes and then down the corridor in either direction. The two then ran off in either direction down the tunnel and the rest of the group sat down on the stone floor.

“Sons watch. We talk. Who…,”he asked in a whisper,” you.”

“My name is Jim Huxley,” said Jim stepping forward with his hand outstretched. “This is Sam, Denise and Eric,” he said pointing at each of us in turn. Jim pointed at the ax and then asked,” are you one of the climbers.”

“Climb?” he said looking puzzled and like he was trying to remember somewhere long ago and far away. “Yes, climb, ago, then fall, then no up, only climb down.” He looked up to the ceiling and then started to smile. “Heh, no more climb up, only climb down.” He shook for a moment with silent laughter looking down at the ground. Then he stopped and looked up smiling,” my name is Troy Will… iamson. From…Wy…Wyoming.

“What happened Troy,” Jim asked.

“Camp. Camp on the ice,” he said pointing at the ceiling and then continued. “Camp near crack. Very deep. Joe go down. We say no. Joe go down. We follow. Find smooth rock. Find door. We go down. Falling water. We go down. Joe falled. Stabbed by rock. We cry. Then they are there, around us.”

“They?” asked Sam.

“Black monsters. Demons.”

“What happened?”

“Killed. Ate.” He paused, clearly shaken by a memory better left unremembered.

“Did any of the other climbers survive Mr. Williamson,” Denise asked.

His face straightened. “No.” He looked at us and it was then that I saw the years of pain and trauma he had endured in that nightmare world. “Black eaters, ate them, tore them apart.” Tears filled his eyes. “Claw my leg. Why they leave me? Why?” He wiped away his tears and then stared in sad wonder at his wet hand.

Jim started to ask a question, but Troy held his hand up in protest. He blinked his eyes several times looking at the ground and then looked up at us. “How you come here,” he said pointing at the ground.

“Our plane crashed, in the valley above. There was a dome in the valley,” Jim said showing the shape of the dome with his hands.

“Through the ice?,” asked Troy.

“The ice is gone, melted,” said Denise.

“No.” His face looked troubled. “Gone?”

“Gone.”

“Where you going,” he then asked.

“Back,” said Sam. “We are going back to the dome.”

“Good. We will go with you,” he motioned for the others to stand and he turned and started to lead us up the tunnel.

We had only walked about a hundred feet when suddenly the calm of our new resolve was shattered by a terrible, gutteral shriek coming from the direction we were walking. The sound pierced some primordial place in the deepest, darkest part of my mind. I clutched at my ears. My legs shook. We were cut off.

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~ by transcription17 on September 22, 2010.