Masters of the Arches Ch. 18

They didn't bother to observe the valley very long. They made a wide detour so as to avoid this radioactive region and then they moved south again.

About five miles further, while climbing higher so as to cross a peak taller than any they had encountered so far, Verla, who had been walking just in front of Vincent, suddenly sunk into the ground. She disappeared completely from sight.

One second she had been walking ahead of Vincent and just behind Nika and the next second she was gone. Had Vincent not actually seen her sink into the ground, he would have probably thought that she had disappeared right on the spot.

He shouted to Nika and they both carefully approached the place where he had last seen her. They saw her hands holding her body weight around a circular metal bar at the edge of a hole that was less than two feet in diameter. She didn't seem to be hurt and she was trying to pull herself out when they got near her.

"Are you ok?" Said Nika.

"I don't have any broken bones, just a few bruises and scratch, but I did get a good scare when the ground gave way under my feet. But my feet are now on something hard like a small ledge, I will try to get out."

They both proceeded to help her to pull herself out and a few seconds later she was standing next to them looking down into the dark hole.

"There is a great deal of wind in there and there seemed to be so kind of room also. It's a good thing that I was able to grab the edge, otherwise I would have fallen to the bottom of that hole."

Vincent recognized immediately the hole for what it was. The fact that air was being sucked into the shaft met that it was part of a ventilation system and it therefore indicated the presence of a very large underground structure somewhere underneath their feet.

Both women stood well away from the dark hole while Vincent knelt near its edge and looked into it's dark interior. He could see a circular ladder descending into the darkness and it was the first strand of this ladder that Verla had been holding only a minute before.

"Why do you stare down?" said Nika. "We should go away from here, there can only be bad things in that hole."

"No, on the contrary, we will go down and see what we can find there. This is a ventilation shaft for an underground complex. We could find many useful things in there, as for it being bad for us, we don't have to worry about that or about the inhabitants or their spirits since no one has been in this place or near it for a very long time."

Both women were not convinced of that, but since it was his wish and he was their leader, they stopped arguing about the matter.

He was the first to descend, taking with him half of their supplies and leaving the rest for the women. Both women went down after him and while they were descending on the rust-free metal ladder, he did encourage them to continue decending all the way down. After what seemed a very long time, they finally stepped on the floor of a circular room that look more like a cage since the circular wall was covered with plastic-like plates having thousands of apple size holes in them.

There was a single door, which was about three feet in height, and when Vincent tried to force it open, it wouldn't move. But the instant he tried to lift it, there was a loud creaking noise and the door panel did slide up into the wall above. They went inside on hands and knees into some kind of connecting duct made of the same plastic-like material.

They were in complete darkness except from the weak glow of the light coming from the open door at their back. For how long they crawled inside this restricting channel, he couldn't tell, but twice they came to a connecting duct that went perpendicularly to the one they were in. On and on they went until both women were on the verge of panic.

It was now completely dark and windy, but they kept on moving using the direction of the flowing air as their guide. Then all of a sudden, they felt that the duct they were in was beginning to turn. After a ninety degrees turn they saw light a long way ahead of them. It took them another fifteen minutes of crawling on hands and knees before they got to the source of the light.

(to be continued)