Chapter 4 (Adam Novus Chronicles - Book 1)

Oh shit… everything hurts.

Waking up was slow… and excruciatingly painful. Not a sensation I was unfamiliar with, by all means. My mind felt exactly like one does coming out of a long surgery, when you are all groggy and sluggish, and have a hard time remembering your own name. Only, in that case, you still have the anesthetic coursing through your veins, providing that euphoric pain relief, and I had none of it.

Even opening my eyes was a Herculean effort; maybe some joker had glued them shut while I was out.

Complete silence surrounded me and I wondered if Captain Jenkins and the others were still around, or if they had just left me for dead. My condition ensured that I would not be able to offer any resistance if they decided that the time for that bullet was right now. Hell, the way I was feeling, a five-year-old could've taken me out.

I turned my head to the side and realized that I was lying down on that big crystal altar, like an offering to be sacrificed to some forgotten gods. It took me more than five minutes of failed attempts to properly sit, with my feet hanging over the sides and my shaking arms maintaining balance so I wouldn’t topple over. It was an improvement, but it still took another ten minutes for the room to stop spinning.

My entire body ached as if I was in the same position for quite some time, muscles and joints stiff from being unused. And I was completely covered in dust, a thick layer of it.

The knife I grabbed a moment before I passed out was gone, and the entire cave was… in shambles. On the positive side, whatever was controlling my body as a string puppet was not doing that anymore; I was myself again.

Looking around, I could see that some things had changed. A lot of debris had fallen from the ceiling, and the platform on which they had built this small pyramid was cracked in some places, owing to a few big rocks that did what gravity demanded from them. Moreover, my companions were all haphazardly lying on the floor surrounding the pyramid. In different positions and a few of them partly under the heavy boulders; that put a smile on my face. They will have a hard time putting a bullet in the back of my head from the pit of Hell, no matter how good of marksmen they were. I was just glad that one of those big rocks didn't fall on my head, or that would've been such a buzz-kill.

I used my hands to remove some of that dust from my body and came to a troubling conclusion. I am positively sure I was not naked when I entered this cave, so one of the questions that needed to be answered was: what the hell happened to my clothes? And where is the perv that undressed me while I was unconscious?

I am not a prude, but dangling in the breeze when my posterior is mooning the entire world is not my idea of fun.

Somehow, I managed to stand up, and then slowly descend the stairs on my wobbly feet, feeling like an old man in need of a walker. The snap-crackle-pop sounds my joints made would make even a seasoned chiropractor cringe. As soon as I reached the platform, I received the first of many shocks.

Captain Jenkins was very close to the stairs when that light blazed from the top, and I was pretty certain that the body I was looking at was his, except it was a bit… carbonized. He was well done, as in burned beyond any recognition, charred and crispy. My hand went to touch him, just to make sure I was not seeing things. As soon as my finger came in contact with it, his skull crumbled into a freaking pile of dust… what in the world happened here?

I was starting to panic, with my heartbeat drumming in my ears, feeling like I was in an episode of a Twilight zone. One more thing I noticed was that his gun, which had fallen beside his corpse, was rusty… way too rusty for the brief period I had been dead to the world. Not that I knew how long I was out, but this level of corrosion takes a long time or an extremely caustic environment. The rest of his men were not in any better condition; it didn’t make any sense. This entire situation was so off the wall, my mind couldn't find any plausible explanation of what happened.

Then I took notice of myself. Visibility was on the low side, the glow-worms that were still covering every available inch of the ceiling, were not a good substitute for light bulbs. Still, I could see just fine, not normal fine, but I think reading a newspaper would not be out of the realm of possibility.

To be sure I wasn’t delusional, I put a bit more effort into removing the dust that was still clinging to me. And… something was definitely different.

My body had changed in ways I couldn’t explain.

I had decent muscles all of my life, nothing too extravagant, but decent. Now—I was ripped, as a lifelong obsessive athlete would be ripped. Every muscle was precisely defined, and there were no scars anywhere on my body. I was used to my scars, they told the story of my life, but not a trace of them remained. My skin was clear and unmarred, like that of a newborn baby would be.

Panic is a dangerous thing to feel in an unsecured location, and it is especially not something in which you should indulge during combat. One of my instructors was an old Tibetan monk, an unassuming old man who spread this feeling of peace and tranquility around him. He taught us how to center ourselves, to enter the state of near meditation and concentrate only on important things, pushing everything else away. I used that now, before having a full-on nervous breakdown. My first goal was to find the way out of this massive gravesite and reach the surface. To tell the truth, I may have acquired a slight case of claustrophobia. Large pieces of the ceiling lying on the ground didn’t do much to alleviate that anxiety. Part of me was well aware of the fact that the entire thing could collapse on my head at any minute.

Retracing our way in, I walked towards the tunnel that led us to this cave, and only had to jump a few feet since a small part of that bridge had been destroyed by a large boulder that had separated from above. Despite the calming state I tried to maintain, I almost lost it when I saw that the corridor was closed a hundred feet from the entrance. A cave-in had collapsed all those stairs, so there would be no exit on this end. Considering the size of the stone slabs that were baring my path, there was no way in hell I could ever be able to dig through, not in a million years.

There was nothing to do but to go back, into the cave of horrors.

The place was the same as I left it, with no marked and glowing exit signs to guide my way. OK, that was a bit much to expect, but my state of mind at that moment was not in the best of places.

I looked for any other opening, a possible way out, and nothing, nada. The only other possibility was to go into that darkness at the end of the cave where there were no glow-worms above. Even my weird sight couldn’t pierce that gloom, and as a bonus, I’d have the pleasure of taking a swim in murky water. God only knew what kind of creatures inhabited that primordial soup; the smell of it was not exactly inviting. It was a good time to wish for a truckload of water purification tablets. The only silver lining was that the stiffness in my muscles and joints was almost gone. With each minute, it became easier to move, and I was infinitely grateful for that.

Coming to the edge of the platform, I jumped into the water only to find out that it was relatively shallow, maybe three feet deep. Good thing I didn't jump with my head first, or I could now be sporting a severe case of a broken neck.

I quickly thanked the big guy upstairs for the small miracles; now, if he could pull some big ones—that would be freaking great.

Wading through that water I realized something odd. This water was really cold, I could feel it on my skin. Yet, I was not cold, not even shivering a little. Another thing to put into the weird column, which was rapidly filling up. After some twenty minutes of going forward, the end of the cave almost hit me in the face… a dead-end. The weak bioluminescent light from the glow-worms above the small pyramid barely reached here, but my sensitive eyes could still vaguely see the details in the rough stone.

Was this going to be my tomb? Buried under the earth, until one day some archaeologists find my bones and wonders what on Earth happened here. To be perfectly honest, it was not that bad as far as tombs go; the cave had something majestic about it, and the glow-worms gave a subtle magnificence to this dark forgotten place.

Then, something gave me a new sense of hope, an instant focus on my survival. I could not pinpoint the exact direction, but there was a slight breeze on my face. If the air got in and out, then maybe I could do too. I started going along the wall, touching it with one hand as a guide. I was inspecting every foot of its surface and trying to follow that air current to its origin.

It took me an hour, but I did find it.

There was a crack in the rock, a three-foot opening close to the floor, of which two were underwater. From it, the sacred fresh air was coming through. I don’t think anyone ever gave a bigger grin to a dark hole in the wall, but this thing signified hope for me, a way out of this tomb.

Nevertheless, it would be stupid to rush inside without checking the rest of the cave; I needed to know all my options and if there was any other opening.

Two hours later, I knew for sure that there was no other way out, and I even climbed a few walls to inspect some promising ledges that obstructed my view from below. There was always a possibility of some fissure on the ceiling that led to the surface and made air circulation possible. I certainly couldn’t climb so high with all the slimy residue the glow-worms left on the walls; it made me lose my grip a few times. Besides, even if there was a passage there, trying to free-climb it without safety equipment was a recipe for a nasty suicide.

I managed to make some preparations; that opening was Stygian dark. I needed at least a little light to see where I was going; moving forward in complete darkness gave me the chills. I had this image in my mind of falling down some deep crevice like Wile E. Coyote, with the same sound effect and a funny dust cloud at the bottom.

Utilizing a mindset where any material can be used in a pinch, I made an unusual portable light source, not that my late companions would mind little desecration. The problem was that all the equipment we carried inside was unusable. Plastic water canteens had melted into piles of hardened sludge, and all the cooking utensils were so rusted through, they looked similar to slices of Swiss cheese.

So… the upper part of a human skull makes for an excellent makeshift bowl and filled with glow-worms—a lantern, of sorts. I was quite happy that not all their corpses were in the same stages of decay. It seems those closer to the small pyramid were afflicted the most, while those in the back were not so bad. It still didn’t help them any, they were all equally dead.

Ever tried to crack a man’s head because you only needed the upper part of the skull? Don’t try it, it is not a pleasant thing to do… trust me. Even scoring a groove with the barely usable Ka-Bar knife I liberated from one of the kits, didn’t help that much; breaking only the upper part was unexpectedly difficult. My third attempt proved fruitful, the previous two were messy, leaving me with a bunch of jigsaw puzzle bone fragments.

OK, now was the time I was dreading, going inside that unknown space… that narrow, small, dark, tunnel. Did I mention my minor case of claustrophobia?

After returning to the back of the cave, and standing in front of that dark maw for a few minutes, just to prepare myself mentally for what I was about to do—I got down on my knees and crawled in, holding the skull lantern and my head above the putrid water.

It was tight, not at the beginning, but some fifteen feet in, I had to lay on my belly to squeeze through a particularly narrow spot. The tight space had me so unnerved; I didn’t even celebrate the fact that I was out of the water, as the tunnel sloped up. My lantern was pushed in front of me as I was following the twisty passage; crawling inch by inch, pushing with my toes, and wiggling through.

I will never understand those spelunkers that do this kind of thing voluntarily, they have some serious issues. For a while, I felt like a baby trying to push its way out to the outside world, after spending nine months inside the safely protected belly of its mother. If it wasn’t for the teachings of that monk, I think I would have lost my mind at some point. Just imagining uncountable tons of rock that surrounded me, and how easy it would be for them to shift for a bit and make me into a pancake. I almost cried from the sheer exhilaration when the narrow passage ended and I had a little more breathing room.

I emerged into a wide tunnel, roughly the size subway trains use. The smooth walls told me this was once a lava tube; it is interesting what weird pieces of knowledge you pick up watching the Discovery channel.

After a few minutes of rest, I picked myself up and decided to go right; the direction didn’t make much difference.

The lava tube went on and on, like there was no end to it. I must have walked for hours until finally, I found something to break the monotony of bare rock walls. My quasi-subway tunnel joined another and this one was several times bigger. Its main feature was a freaking underwater river, not a small one either—this thing was huge.

The first thing I did was to submerge my whole head under it, I was so freaking thirsty, who knows how long it has been since the last time I drank water. That stale and black thing in the cave was hardly something anyone would call potable; a few mouthfuls that did pass my lips when I slipped a few times in that damned cave, tasted utterly foul. The glow-worms in my skull lantern got a few drops too, and that got them to glow a bit brighter; they were getting on the dimmer side lately. I hoped that this underground river made it back to the surface, so I did the only thing that seemed reasonable… I followed the flow, walking on a slightly curved surface beside it.

***

“99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer.

Take one down, pass it around, 98 bottles of beer on the wall...”

Yeah, I started singing just to hear a voice, any voice… the silence was driving me mad. I missed that, the sounds in general; the splashing of water gets annoying after a while. My only audience were those glow-worms I still carried inside the skull, which ensured that there was some light and that I wasn’t completely in the dark.

Do you know how many times you can sing that song until you really start to hate it? Two hundred fifty times—that did it for me. Then I started to expand my repertoire and belted all the songs I knew by heart. Strangely enough, the vast majority were country and originally performed by female artists… odd. I’ll say this for underground cave systems, the acoustics are amazing. If any denizens of these tunnels could appreciate the sweet melody of my voice, they didn’t show it. In fact, I had not seen so much as a freaking spider so far. Part of me was thinking that I was actually in some sort of hell, where the monotony of never-ending underground passage serves as atonement for a few morally questionable things I did in my life.

Days later… at least I thought that days had passed (I did not have a clock to measure the passage of time, and the sun was a no-show), I was still following the goddamn underground river that just kept going on. Doubling back and trying to go upriver crossed my mind a few dozen times, but there was no reason to think my luck would be better than it already was. Plus, the river had made a nice bank for me to walk on, and I hoped the water level wouldn’t rise; I couldn’t see that ending well.

The glow-worms were still alive, I wouldn’t want to lose my little helpers; a few drops of water and some lichen scraped from the rocks gave them everything they needed. If this continued for much longer, I might start talking to them full time (I already called them good boys for providing light for me). The fact that I was chatting with freaking glow-worms at all was worrying; a part of me was beginning to suspect that when you are talking to glow-worms, nice people with a straight jacket were not far away.

I had to tempt fate with wanting a different ambiance—because she delivered.

I noticed a light in front of me in the distance and picked up my slow pace. More than a little excited that I had finally found a way out, but no such luck. The tunnel opened up into a circular cave, some fifty feet in diameter. The flow of the river ended in a small underground lake that covered most of the cave’s floor. However, the most amazing thing was on the walls, they were completely plastered with some type of bioluminescent fungi, giving of pale light in a variety of colors; from neon blue and purple to psychedelic green. If it were not for my dire circumstances, I would have found the entire sight incredibly beautiful. Unfortunately, my only commentary on this nature’s wonder was saying shit, repeatedly.

The problem was that the river did not exactly stop there, it continued onwards… disappearing into the mouth of a small tunnel. So, what did I do? I sat there on the shore of that lake and used all the swear words in my vocabulary (had to stop myself after repeating myself a few dozen times).

That tunnel was much smaller and there was just over a foot of clearance above the water. When I went through that half-submerged opening in the pyramid cave, I was wading through stagnant water. While not in the least appealing—it did not move. The current that was entering this tunnel was several times faster than the river I have been following all this time.

Going back wasn’t something I considered doing, and I don’t think by that time I was all there. Would anyone be under similar circumstances?

To hell with it, I thought, let’s do the crazy scary thing.

My life had been decided many times by tempting fate, doing things that would make little sense to normal, well-adjusted people, and I was still alive. That is not saying much, but it has to count for something… right?

Placing the skull with the glow-worms by the wall, I wished them a good, long, and bright life. I hope the boys would find the glowing fungus to their liking, so they can spread forth and multiply. It may sound crazy but I felt sad for leaving them there, as if I was leaving behind a favorite puppy. It just goes to show how messed up I was. Being emotionally attached to a bunch of glow-worms may be a sign of some deeper issues.

With that, I mentally kissed my ass goodbye, took a few running steps, and jumped into the fast current. Just for the heck of it, I screamed “Geronimo!” before hitting the water. The sound of my voice reverberated through the cave systems, making countless echoes.

It took only a few seconds for the fast current to bring me to the mouth of the tunnel, and then everything was out of my hands, there was no going back.

I saw my mistake a few feet in, while the faint light from the cave still showed what was in front of me. That clearance to the ceiling I was counting on for a good supply of air, decreased by the second. Not even having time to think about it, I took a deep lungful of a life-sustaining mixture of gasses and was then pulled under the surface.

How long can a human hold its breath? I can’t say for certain how long I was under, but it seemed like an eternity. By the time I was once again on the surface (giving it my best to stay afloat), my lungs had probably suffered some damage as I was trying to extract every single molecule of oxygen from the meager volume that was in them.

If I was thirsty when I first saw the river, I sure was not anymore. Between attempts to get enough air into my lungs, I swallowed a fair amount of that river. The current was taking me through that tunnel very fast; the air on my face told me that, not that I could see a thing. My only wish was not to crack my head open on some rock outcropping.

Surprisingly, the walls I could touch from time to time were smooth, polished marble smooth. When I was a kid, I often collected small rocks by the river, with my grandpa. And was amazed how water can almost polish such hard material to a glassy finish. I was sure glad about it now.

Telling time is difficult without the watch, or the sun and the moon for you to roughly guess. This never-ending water slide ride seemed to last for hours; all the while I was simply trying not to drown, wishing with all my heart for it to end.

Careful what you wish for, as it did in fact end, and I was finally out of the earth’s prison. After who knows how long, I was on our planet’s surface again.

Well… not exactly on the surface; to be exact—I was way above it. So freaking high in the air, the ground looked like when you observe it from the top of a very tall building. Even blinded by the sudden abundance of light, through my squinting eyelids I could see that this couldn’t possibly end well.

The underground river ended in this huge ass waterfall, too high for my taste since I had no wings to keep me from plummeting down. Mrs. Gravity can be a bit too clingy sometimes, and she pulled me down with all her might. After what felt like a fair amount of time in that quasi-weightless state, my body finally reached the water surface again—and hit it like a rock.

The river had carved a nice deep well for itself after so many eons bashing the ground at the same place, but for me, it was comparable to landing on a concrete… every bone in my body hurt. And like that rock I mentioned, I immediately sunk below the surface.

There was water all around me and a million bubbles going in every direction. Wouldn’t it be ironic that after all I’ve been through, my life ended by a simple drowning because I didn’t know which way was up?

It took ages for me to reach the surface again and then breathe in a big gulp of life-giving air. I was done, muscles refusing to follow orders the brain was sending. This time it was not because of some outside influence, but out of sheer exhaustion.

It would be so easy to let go and allow the river to sacrifice me to its gods. On the other hand, I didn't go through all this to give up now, no matter how tempting it was.

With the last reserves my cramping muscles could provide, I managed to find the strength to desperately doggy paddle to the nearest shore, and then crawl like a tired alligator out of the water.

That was it, I was utterly spent, and there was no place in my head to think about anything anymore. Finding a good, barely muddy spot, a few feet from the riverbank, I laid on the blessed earth, taking in a couple of deep wheezing breaths of the fresh air before I passed out.

Despite everything that happened, there was a wide grin on my face—I was still alive.