Part 1
Part 2
Frankie began running down the tunnel. I stayed close on his heels as the reverberations increased in intensity and speed, until I could barely keep my footing. The system of concrete tunnels and bunkers had been constructed well, however, and it didn’t split apart or even crack.
He took quick turns to the left and right, and I wondered if he was just choosing passages at random. After a couple minutes, however, he turned to me, sweating heavily, his eyes wild and moving quickly to the left and right. The lights in the tunnel flashed, a deep red glow that strobed on and off in time with the vibrations, giving everything a bloody hue and sending creeping shadows in every direction.
“There are bunkers just up ahead,” he said quickly. “They go deeper down. It’s our only chance. We have to outwait these things.” As if on cue, I heard a wet, slithering sound just behind us. I turned my head quickly, seeing something incomprehensible in the red emergency lights of the tunnel in the moment I looked behind me.
The tunnel must have been nine or ten feet tall, and the creature took up most of it. All I could see was its monstrous face. It had a giant mouth like a lamprey’s, filled with hundreds of fangs spiraling around in concentric circles. Embedded in spongy, black skin, the mouth never stopped moving, the teeth moving in and out as the flesh pulsated and quivered. Even after all these years, thinking of that mouth sends chills down my spine.
I saw no sign of any nose or ears on the face of the creature. The skin on its body, a shiny silver color, constantly rippled as the sleek muscles of the snake worked feverishly underneath the surface.
Its eyes met mine for a brief moment as its massive body slithered around the corner, dark, slitted pupils staring down at me with reptilian coldness. It quickly blinked, the eyelids closing in from the sides rather from the top and bottom, the leathery membranes flicking closed and open in the space of a moment. Then it rolled its eyes up into its head, showing only whites and a bloody film at the bottom, and gave off an ear-splitting hiss. I turned back around, seeing I had fallen behind Frankie. He frantically sprinted ahead, the scars and fibrotic tissue on his body not slowing him at all. The tunnel shook all around us, and I nearly tripped from the constant vibrations.
The creature stopped its hissing, cutting it off suddenly. It had sounded much closer, but I dared not turn my head again. I could feel the tunnel shaking faster and faster as this behemoth closed in on us, and the entire complex gave off eerie groans as countless more filled the other corridors. I was hyperventilating and knew I couldn’t keep up this pace for much longer. I would soon collapse or fall, and it would shred me apart in that strange, alien mouth. No one back home would ever know what happened to me.
At the last moment, Frankie pointed to the left. With an athleticism I wouldn’t have thought possible from his scarred body, he lunged through the door, face-first. Caught by surprise, I started to turn towards the door but my right foot slipped. I felt it all happening in slow-motion, my adrenaline spiking. I expected to feel those hundreds of teeth on me at any moment.
Twisting my ankle, I pushed myself towards the door. A sharp pain ran up my right leg as my foot slid out from under me. At the same time, I jumped. As I flew through the air, I could see the snake, and I realized it was only inches behind me. It looked like a grotesque subway train about to run me down, its two white, rolled-up eyes like headlights as it gnashed its teeth constantly.
I went through the threshold, feeling a pressure on my back right leg, the one that had betrayed me at the critical moment. I thought my entire foot had gotten ripped off for a second. Then I landed on the concrete floor, simultaneously rolling and taking the brunt of the impact on my shoulder, and looked back.
My shoe was gone. I started laughing, thanking God that it had only gotten my shoe.
The massive, endless body of the creature kept moving past us, its reptilian muscles working furiously as it pushed itself forwards at breakneck speeds. But we had escaped. Laughing and smiling, I jumped up, then winced when I landed on my right ankle. I looked down, seeing it was swollen, but not badly damaged. I likely wouldn’t be doing any more running, however.
Frankie smiled at me as I danced around like a lunatic.
“We’re alive, holy shit, we’re alive!” I said. “I can’t believe it.”
“You lost your shoe,” he said, frowning, still breathing heavily. “Well, luckily, there’s clothes and stuff in some of these tunnels. They were supposed to be for the people in the city in case the enemy used the H-bombs on us, but none of them ever got a chance. By the time the antimatter bomb had finished going off, the city got filled with things like that.” He pointed at the snake, whose massive body still hadn’t finished passing. I wondered just how massive it was. I shuddered slightly, thinking of hundreds of those things moving around the tunnels.
“So where do these bunkers lead?” I asked. He didn’t meet my eyes.
“Horrible things lay at the bottom,” he said. “I’ve never gone down to the deepest level. It leads to the Pit of the Skull. No one who has ever gone down has come back.”
“The Pit of the Skull?” I asked, raising an eyebrow. “Who makes these terms up?” He shrugged.
“The Iron Servants used to go down and try to clear things up after the bomb,” he said. “Most of them died. Then the government started recruiting teenagers into the Iron Servants. Most of them died. But they did manage to explore the places first. They put it on TV during the collapse, showing, ‘This is what the Kingdom of China has done to you!’ and trying to rouse the population towards war. But the war was already over. We ended up giving them the H-bomb, and they gave us this.” He motioned around us.
“So what happened to the ones who didn’t die?” I asked. “Are they still around here?” Frankie didn’t look comfortable with the subject.
“Well,” he said, looking like he wanted to try to find a way around the question. Then he sighed. “I guess you could say they were changed.”
“Changed?” I asked. “Like what? You mean like mentally, like they had trauma?” He laughed at that, doubling over.
“Mentally?” he asked. “Trauma? No, no, nothing like that.” He wiped a tear from his eye. “If it was something like that, who would care? Not me. We all have trauma.
“No, they were affected by something dark. When they came back, some of them were partially skinned alive. You could see their skulls. And they were hungry, drinking blood constantly and ripping apart bodies with their teeth. They still had on their uniforms, most of them, but they weren’t human anymore. Whatever they had seen in the Pit of the Skull had made them demons. And that’s why no one goes down to the Pit of the Skull anymore. Well, not the only reason. There’s more than that down there.”
“This world sucks,” I said, feeling homesick. Frankie nodded.
“Yeah, it does,” he said, lowering his head sadly, his scarred, fibrotic shoulders slumping. “But this is my home. This is all I know now.”
“What if I could get you out of here?” I asked. “What if I could take you back to my world?” He shook his head.
“No, no, I won’t leave it behind. This is where my friends died, and my mother and father… I think they died here too. This is where I belong, and maybe when I die here, I’ll see them all again. Maybe they will be waiting for me on the other side, and they’ll say, ‘Frankie! We missed you. Welcome home.’ I could have left here a hundred times, but this is what I know.” He sighed heavily. “Well, we better get moving.” The tunnels outside still shook and vibrated with the passage of the snakes. Eerie echoes of clanking steel and shaking concrete ran through the complex.
“OK, so where to now?” I asked. He pointed down the bunker. Red light glowed on steel walls about ten feet apart. Metal benches had been fused together in the corner. I saw a dead, black screen on the other side of the bunker, probably some sort of TV screen. It had been built directly into the wall.
Past the metal benches, a small slit appeared in the wall, no more than a couple feet wide. I had to turn my body to get through it. I found myself in another bunker. This one had the same set-up, with metal benches and a dead TV screen. But these benches weren’t empty.
Through the red glare of the emergency lights, I saw two bodies sitting side by side. A young woman sat on the right, her body slumped over onto the lap of a man in a uniform. They looked like they had both shot themselves. Their bodies had started to mummify in the dry bunker air. In the man’s hand, I saw a pistol still gripped tightly in his dessicated hand. Beneath the young woman’s open, filmy eyes, I saw another pistol on the ground, one that she had likely dropped after the final moment.
It took me by surprise for a long moment, but Frankie just shot them a quick glance and kept walking.
“Wait!” I said. “They have guns.” Frankie looked back at me.
“Guns are dangerous,” he said. “I don’t use guns.”
“I have no idea how you’ve survived so long here without a gun,” I said. He looked at me for a long moment, then pointed to the corpses.
“They’ve got shoes too,” he said. “Why don’t you see if it’s your size?” I limped over to the man’s corpse, hesitating for a long moment. Then I pried his mummified hand open. It had a texture like leather. I could hear the bones cracking underneath as I moved the fingers, a feeling of revulsion overtaking me. I yanked the gun out of his hand as a smell like cinnamon and rotten eggs emanated from the disturbed corpse.
I cracked open the massive cylinder and noticed it still had eight shots left. It was a beautiful revolver, with a polished wooden handle and silver etching curving down its sides. I saw initials engraved onto the wood, saying “TH” in calligraphy. Only one bullet was missing.
I took Frankie’s advice and compared the man’s shoes to my one remaining shoe, putting them side by side. They were slightly bigger than I would have liked, but in the circumstances, I was grateful. I took the shoes off of the corpse, switching my one remaining sneaker for the black leather pair the man had worn. I felt a sense of revulsion stealing from a corpse, but I knew I would need these things much more than he would. And the shoes ended up fitting surprisingly well. I gave Frankie a thumbs-up. He smiled, then looked warily at the gun. He seemed to have an innate fear of guns.
I moved through the slim door of the bunker, finding a corridor with ventilated metal flooring that I could look right through into the seemingly endless abyss below. At the end of the catwalk, a series of metal stairs spiraled down into the darkness. Frankie turned to me, a serious expression on his face.
“Friend, I should tell you the truth,” he said stoically. “I’ve never been to this part of the bunkers before.” I shrugged.
“That’s fine, as long as you know where we’re going,” I said. He didn’t meet my gaze. “You do know where we’re going, right?”
“The snakes won’t stop going through the tunnels for days once they come up,” he said, changing the subject, still not meeting my gaze.
“So you don’t know where we’re going?” I asked. He shook his head quickly.
“I know the direction,” he said. “But I’ve never been down here before. These tunnels have become stranger over time. Sometimes, it seems like new tunnels just appear off of ones I’ve passed a thousand times. Other times, they seem to move around and change places. The antimatter bomb has made everything in this world strange, and these tunnels are part of it.”
“I trust you,” I said, putting my hand on his shoulder. He looked up and smiled. And anyways, I had no other choice. If Frankie couldn’t find his way, I would have absolutely no chance.
We began climbing down the diamond-plated steel staircase. The stairs seemed to go on for eternity. I looked down, realizing I could see right through the vents in each step. My stomach seemed to drop. I saw one red emergency light after another descending into the shaft, but no sign of a bottom. They seemed to just draw closer and closer together until they disappeared into the darkness. Frankie didn’t know how far down the stairs went, and he seemed somewhat anxious as well. I tried talking to break the tension, but my voice echoed up and down through the shaft with every word, and I began to feel the noise might wake up something. I quickly stopped trying to make conversation.
After what must have been an hour of descending, the air started to change all around us. It grew warmer, and a red glow began to emanate from far down below us. It looked like fire, giving off flickering hues of crimson-orange and yellow.
Then Frankie gave a shout of triumph, pointing. A dozen stories below us, I saw a catwalk extending from the staircase, fused to the far wall. A dark doorway stood there, the only break visible in the endless metal wall.
“You found a way out!” I said excitedly. “Where does it lead?” He stopped celebrating suddenly and gave me a half-smile.
“We’ll see when we get there, won’t we?”
***
When we got there, we found a heavy bunker door. I turned the wheel, which looked like one from a submarine door. It silently slid open. Behind it, I saw white lights shining from the corridors. After being in the dark with only red emergency lights for so long, it felt like staring into the Sun.
I squinted, blinking fast, spots dancing across my eyes. They quickly adjusted to the fluorescent lights illuminating the hallway, however. Underneath the glaring light, I saw dozens of bodies, a macabre show to welcome us to this new part of Hell.
They were mostly women and children, and they looked like they had tried to flee towards the door we just came through. Their bodies all faced towards the door, some of them still reaching out their pale, bloody hands towards it. Many had their throats ripped out, as if by packs of coyotes, while others had portions of their stomachs and chests chewed open, revealing the organs and intestines underneath. Puddles of blood saturated the floor, and black clouds of flies zipped around the hallway, feasting on the corpses. These bodies looked much fresher than the ones in the bunker.
“Uh, Frankie?” I said.
“Just ignore them,” he said after a long pause at the doorway. “There’s a lot more bodies here than that. Bodies won’t hurt us.”
“But what did this?” I asked. “Who did this?”
“If you’re lucky,” he responded, “you won’t ever find out.” As if in response to his words, the lights flickered, and a deep, distorted laugh began to echo from farther down the hallway. The lights came back on, and I saw dozens of men beginning to approach, turning the corner, walking calmly towards us.
It looked like some had been skinned alive, at least from the neck up. Their skulls grinned at us, a mass of blood and gore. Their lidless eyes stared ahead without blinking, and a green light seemed to spiral out from their pupils. When the lights went out again, I could still see that sickly green light in the air, emanating from the eyes of each of the transformed men.
Their uniforms reminded me of the uniforms of the SS- pure black jackets and pants with high, polished leather boots and a leather visor cap. On their uniforms and caps, a symbol was engraved, over and over, like a backwards 7 with a line slashing diagonally through it. Many also had medals pinned to their chest, medals engraved with swords and hawks and ivy vines that meant nothing to me.
Frankie had turned around so fast that he ran right into me, sending me sprawling. His panicked eyes rolled in his head, and with immense strength, he sent out one hand and picked me up as he ran past me, putting me back on my feet. The suddenness of it nearly sent me falling again, but he pulled me by my hand, and I started moving. My ankle gave off waves of pain as I ran behind him. The lights went out again as we reached the door. Luckily, we had left it open.
As soon as we were back out on the stairs, I flung the door closed and spun the wheel, locking the abominations inside with the bodies of their victims. A few seconds later, fists began to pound against the other side, rhythmically smashing against the metal. Frankie turned to me and shook his head.
“The Iron Servants,” he said. “The bodyguards of General Matheson. Those are the transformed ones. I’m not even sure if there’s any normal ones left. I haven’t seen any sign of them in months. The surviving Iron Servants used to try to do patrols still, as if they had some control over the city, but they gave that up quickly when most of them didn’t return after the first night.”
“So what now?” I asked, feeling panicked. “We can’t go back up, and that corridor is cut off by those things.”
“Well, we have to go down,” he said. “Let’s hope there’s another way out before we reach the Pit at the bottom.”
“Is there a way back through the Pit of the Skull?” I asked. He nodded.
“It connects with everything,” he said. “The Pit has many trails that seem to grow overnight. I’ve woken up in my room and found doorways that had grown there while I was sleeping. But the Pit of the Skull is worse than any other part of the city. I’d rather deal with the snakes than the creatures down in the Pit.”
“Have you ever been there?” I asked. He hesitated for a long moment.
“I’ve looked in,” he said, his face turning pale. “Once. I never did it again.” When I asked him why, what he had seen, he wouldn’t answer, but just shook his head. With the conversation over, we began to descend, hoping to find some way out of here, but hope faded with every downwards step we took.
Part 4