discernible skeletal mass he couldn’t be sure exactly what it was capable of. Nevertheless, he guessed it would send one or more of its tentacle clubs into the crack to try to hook them out using the vicious talons embedded in their tips.
They were no more than a hundred paces into the rift when Alex became aware of a cessation of air movement. Without alerting the team and without slowing them, he stopped and stared intently into the dark, using all his senses to try to determine the cause of the change in air density. Though he could not see outside the rift, he could sense that a large presence had blocked the entrance they had just come through. The orthocone was trying to squeeze its enormous bulk into the small crack in the cave wall. There was a groaning and some debris rained down on the group. Monica paused and held up her hand to stop, fearing that it was their footsteps that were setting off some sort of small earth tremor, but Alex overrode the instruction and urged them on. He alone knew that the creature was trying to widen the fissure in the wall.
The liquid stealth with which the creature had pursued them so far was abandoned and replaced with a ground-shaking crashing like the charge of a hundred elephants. Matt and Monica looked at each other, then back to Alex, momentarily blinding him as they directed their torches into his face. Alex turned and closed his eyes for a second to get some night vision back, but when he opened them it became clear to him exactly what strategy the creature was going to use. A gigantic tentacle was moving quickly down the tunnel; as it came forward it knocked car-sized boulders out of the way like a child would do with its toy building blocks.
This was not the place for engaging the creature. Their armoured caving suits would either be snagged by the razor-sharp hooks on the tentacles or they would be crushed as the creature knocked a boulder on top of them. Alex fired a stream of compressed gas projectiles into the club tip, but he knew that this would only slow the advance.
“Ms. Jennings, find us some cover, double time. Everyone else follow her — now!” Alex was running and turning to fire every few seconds. He was aware they only had a few minutes before they were run down or crushed when he heard Monica call from just ahead.
“Careful under here… it’s a floating choke.”
Alex could see what she was referring to. The rift they were moving through was only about twenty feet wide, but suspended over a narrowing area was a table-shaped slab of stone of immense proportions that held tons of debris above it. Aimee had dropped back to Alex and looked at him with her determined, grime-streaked face.
“Are you thinking what I am?”
“Oh yeah, time to shut the door.”
They all passed under the choke and Alex yelled for them to keep moving as fast as they could and to stay close to the walls to avoid any falling debris. He turned and calibrated his rifle to deliver fist-sized compressed air punches to the weakest point in the choke and depressed the trigger. A constant stream of air projectiles was focused on where the choke met the wall. The high-velocity compressed air hit the rock face with the power of a pneumatic sledgehammer. In just under three seconds, Alex managed to do what the rocks had tried to do in their original rush to the cave floor tens of thousands of years before; they came boiling down with a thunderous crash. He threw his rifle over his shoulder into the backpack strapping and leaped forwards, bouncing nimbly over and through the falling stones. Tons of rock and debris collapsed around him. The impact, when it came, was like being hit by a car. The centre of his back was punched by a rock the size of a bowling ball travelling at about forty miles per hour. The breaking sound from his back was lost in the crash of the rock slide, but Alex was knocked to the ground.
He lay on the cave floor waiting for the dust to clear. His senses told him there was no more airflow and that most of the debris had fallen, totally blocking the narrow cave. He doubted whether the creature could bring enough power to bear with just a single tentacle to force a path through. They were safe for the moment.
Alex sucked in a deep breath and spat out some dust. He slowly got to his feet and flexed his upper body; he hurt and something crunched at his back. He pulled off his pack and pulled his rifle free. The once sleek M98 was a crumpled mess. It had been made from thermopressed polycarbonate — stronger than steel but as light as plastic. The impact had shattered the casing. Better you than me, he thought, and dropped the crushed gun at his feet.
Aimee was waiting just behind a large boulder with her canteen for him to take a much needed swallow.
“Well, looks like we can rule out doubling back from now on. Let’s take ten minutes.” They all fell to the floor. Now that the adrenaline was subsiding in their systems, exhaustion was taking over. Muscles screamed, feet throbbed and backs ached. Alex lay down flat and closed his eyes. He gave them ten minutes, so he would sleep for exactly eight before rousing them to continue the next stage of their journey back to the light.
“It’s a door.” Matt was dwarfed by the structure.
No one else spoke for several seconds as they looked in awe at the seamless transition from natural rock creation to man-made structure. The rift walls suddenly smoothed, and then were blocked by a twenty-foot-high stone door. The panels were intricately carved with images of kneeling human figures and glyphs similar to those they had seen earlier. The massive structure stood out from its surroundings, not only due to its size, but also because of a reddish sheen that made the doors glow even after all the thousands of years. Monica ran her hands over the stone, spat on a small spot and rubbed it in.
“This is red Aswan granite, one of the hardest granites on earth and definitely not from around here.”
Matt shone his yellowing torch onto the spot Monica had just cleared. “You’re right, it’s not even from this side of the world. This rock only occurs in the Middle East; there was a sarcophagus inside the Great Pyramid of Giza made from this type of stone and when it was discovered they said it shone like fire. To this day no one knows how the Egyptians managed to work it.”
“How would it have got down here?” Aimee was running her hands over the stone as well.
“This was an advanced civilisation. I bet these guys visited all corners of the globe. I’ll tell you one thing, this door was made to keep something in or out.” Matt was shining his torch into a crack where the door didn’t fit flush with the wall. “Hang on, I think it’s open.”
“OK, everyone push.” Alex put both hands against the door and tensed his muscles in anticipation of the force that he expected was needed to move the stone monolith; however, the door swung open easily and in silence. After over 10,000 years the mechanism was still working smoothly. “They sure don’t build them like this anymore.”
“Not for thousands of years anymore.” Matt was first through the door, quickly followed by Monica.
Beyond the doorway they found themselves in a large, domed room more than 150 feet in diameter. Blackened stone urns around the perimeter once probably held oil that when lit delivered light to the magnificent carved walls, some still bearing colouration that hinted at great architectural detail and ornate artwork. A smooth ramp led up to a higher doorway that also had a red granite stone door but this one had been smashed to pieces.
“It looks like a church.” Monica stood just inside the door and hugged herself.
“Maybe, at least a place of worship, for sure,” Matt responded, moving quickly in the dark, his torch beam darting from ceiling to wall and back again.
At the base of the ramp it looked like the building of a new wall had begun. The materials used were not the finely honed blocks from other parts of the room and looked more rough-hewn, with each piece about five feet cubed and weighing many tons. This newer wall was not for decoration; it looked hurriedly built and was more fortified than its predecessor.
There were also three stone pillars, each about eight feet in height that stood facing the door they had just passed through; heavily corroded metal rings hung from their front.
“This is a wonder of architecture. You know, everyone wondered where the Romans got the skill to build a giant domed building that defied analysis for centuries. But this… this is even bigger.” Matt was twirling slowly in the centre of the room, trying to take it all in.
“It looks like some sort of arena.” Aimee was scanning their surroundings and moved to the centre pillar for a better look. Around their bases the stones were darker, stained even after all the passing millennia.
Matt was moving busily around the walls, running his hands over the glyphs and moving his lips silently as he tried to draw out their meaning. “An arena? No, but close, more like an altar — and a sacrificial one at that. Most cultures had myths and stories about creatures from their own version of hell, and the Aztlan legends don’t appear
