Chapter 11 #3
Ellis and Trent, however, were a different story.
Trent’s history as a competitive weightlifter meant he understood the importance of stable footing.
His steps were solid, like the strike of a hammer hitting a nail squarely on the head, but it still took him an extra moment to find each step in the dark.
In contrast, Ellis’s footsteps were all over the place. Each step he took was hesitant and sounded as sturdy as a butterfly’s wing. For such a large man, he made surprisingly little noise when he moved, like he was deliberately trying not to leave any evidence of his presence behind.
This was familiar territory, charging into an unknown situation with a team at my back. Yet, the addition of Ellis and Trent couldn’t distract me from the fact that we were missing a set of footsteps.
Creed should have been here with us. He loved these kinds of unknown situations. Thrived on them. If he were here, he would have been leading the way while barking at the rest of us to hurry up.
I refused to entertain the idea that I would never hear his footsteps again. We’d received word that he was alive. Even if we didn’t know the specifics of his situation or what was happening to him, I had to cling to the hope that he would be all right.
Anything else was unacceptable.
Distance was hard to judge in the cramped confines of the tunnel, but I estimated that we’d traveled about a hundred feet when the walls around us spread out. The tunnel abruptly widened, allowing us to walk two by two instead of single file, and I was even able to stand up straight.
It was a relief, and I rubbed the kink out of my neck from hunching over for so long as I studied what lay in front of us. The tunnel split into two paths, which explained the sudden change in size.
After seeing symbols of the same flowers so often, I was convinced that this time would be no different. So much so, that when I looked above the arch of one of the tunnels, I was legitimately surprised to see a simple circle and an X carved above the different doors.
“Ugh,” Magnus groaned from the back of the group. “I know cults like being mysterious and everything, but just once couldn’t they have labeled things with words instead of using symbols. How’re we supposed to know what this means?”
“We’re not,” I said as I stepped under the archway marked with an X. “That’s probably the point.”
Ellis was still clinging to my shirt and had no choice but to come along with me as I inspected the tunnel I’d chosen.
Meanwhile, Magnus and Trent hung back in the tunnel’s intersection.
“Um, we probably shouldn’t go any farther,” Trent said, the light from his flashlight disappearing for a moment as he checked the main tunnel we’d just come from.
“Following a straight line is one thing, but if the tunnel keeps branching off then we’re going to get lost. We need something to mark the path before we go any farther. ”
“I know,” I called back and stopped just a few feet into the divergent tunnel. “I’m not going any farther. I just want to see if there’s any indication about where these tunnels lead.”
It was a fool’s hope, but I couldn’t turn back without making absolutely sure there wasn’t some hint about what lay at the end of the tunnel.
There was nothing. Of course there wasn’t. The stone and earth walls and the carefully built support structures of the tunnel were all the same. There was no indication of the purpose of the tunnel, but still I had to check.
Maybe, just this once, I shouldn’t have been so thorough.
In the silence of the tunnel, a slight popping sound echoed as if it were a firecracker, followed shortly after by the shriek of sliding stone.
I pulled Ellis out of the way just as the entrance of the tunnel we stood in collapsed.
Dirt and debris were thrown everywhere, making it nearly impossible to see even with the light of the flashlights, and the ground under our feet shook as large chunks of rock landed right where we’d been standing moments ago.
The chaos ended almost as quickly as it started, and Ellis and I were left standing there, staring at the pile of rock and earth where the entrance of the tunnel had once been.
“That shouldn’t have happened,” I said as I searched the nearby support structures that were still standing.
Ellis approached the pile of rubble blocking our path. “Well, clearly it did. Hey! Can you guys here us? Are you okay?”
On the other side of the collapsed rubble, Trent and Magnus’s voices could just be heard shouting back at us.
I grabbed Ellis before he took another step away from me.
“No. It shouldn’t have collapsed.”
Dread pooled in my stomach. There wasn’t time for me to explain. All I could do was drag Ellis with me as I turned and ran the other direction down the tunnel.
Luckily, he didn’t fight me and followed without complaint. Almost as soon as we started running, more of the tunnel collapsed.
One after another the support structures fell, their remnants piling on top of one another until the tunnel was packed tight with rock dirt.
I kept running until the noise of the collapsed ceased, and only when the tunnel fell silent again, did I dare stop.
Ellis leaned against me, panting heavily from our sudden sprint.
“What… the hell?” He gasped for breath, just as much from fear as from exhaustion. “I thought you said it was safe.”
“It was,” I insisted, but Ellis wasn’t listening.
“Clearly it wasn’t. We never should have come down here.”
“It was safe,” I tried again, but Ellis was still too caught up in his terrified rant to hear me.
“Who even just goes down into a strange tunnel? Of course it was unstable. We only found it because it collapsed in the first place. We’re idiots for coming down here.”
“Ellis, listen to me.” I grabbed his shoulder and shook him until I knew I had his attention. “It was safe. I know construction and building. I know the signs of an unsafe structure. It was safe. This tunnel shouldn’t have just collapsed like that.”
My mind returned to the slight popping sound I’d heard right before the collapse. That was not the sound of stone and wood breaking naturally.
“It shouldn’t have collapsed,” I repeated. “Not on its own.”
Ellis took one look back at the pile of rubble only a few feet away, then his gaze returned to me and in his eyes was a new understanding.
“You think… someone made it collapse?”
“I think you should stay very, very close to me.”
Letting him go, I reached under my jacket and pulled out a handgun from the holster clipped to my belt. With the gun in one hand and my flashlight in the other, I pointed both down the open end of the tunnel.
“You’re armed?” Ellis gasped out, while practically plastering himself to my back.
“I’m always armed.”
“Of course you are,” he sighed. “Why am I even surprised?”
My flashlight didn’t penetrate the darkness very far, and even with Ellis adding his own light into the mix, the open tunnel still stood before us like a solid black curtain.
I started moving down the tunnel, pushing forward into the black, but before I could take more than two steps, Ellis clung to me so tightly I was trapped in place.
“Shouldn’t we stay here?” he asked, speaking directly into my ear. “If we leave, Magnus and Trent won’t be able to find us.”
My gaze never left the open maw of the tunnel stretching before us, even as I answered him. “There’s dozens of yards of debris between us and them, now. It would take an entire excavation team for them to reach us. No. Our best bet is to keep going.”
“But—” he started to argue, but I cut him off.
“Listen. Whoever built these tunnels knew what they were doing. They would have built other exits just in case one was cut off. There must be another way out farther down the tunnel, so we need to keep going. Besides, I don’t want to wait around here for whoever sabotaged the tunnel to bring the rest of the structure down on our heads. ”
Although I couldn’t see him, I could feel Ellis’s whole body shaking as he pressed himself against my back. I couldn’t let go of my gun or my flashlight to reach out to him, but with him so close, it was easy to simply turn my head a bit and press my lips to his cheek.
“Trust me?”
He swallowed hard enough that I could hear his throat moving. Then he stopped shaking and nodded.
“Yeah. Yeah, I trust you.”
“All right. Then come on, stay close, and do exactly as I tell you.”
Ellis barely allowed an inch of air between our bodies. As we pressed forward into the darkness, we moved as one unit, so in sync that the echoes of our footsteps were indistinguishable from each other.