CHAPTER SIX
FALLING UP
Almost as if the hat contained the rejuvenating power of a Sleeping Beauty wakeup kiss, the index finger on the hand twitched a few times before gaining movement in the rest of the fingers as they slowly stretched out and gripped hold of the Stetson. Getting up on weary, wounded knees, picking up and dusting the hat off with a few good shakes before putting it on his head, Michael took a moment to gather his wits as he tried to get a sense of where he ended up.
Looking around in the dampened dark, Michael could only see slight shadows cast off from light creeping through unknown fissures as he attempted to figure out where he was and how he got there. A foul stench permeated the air, reminding him of the putrid odor of a wet dog. Still on his knees, Michael took off his Go-Bag and retrieved a glow-stick emergency light from inside the well-equipped bag. With a quick twist, break, and shake, the contents mixed inside the cracked capsule and the twelve-inch stick began to glow in the dark.
Holding the yellow glow-stick above his head, Michael stood up and looked around to see if he could tell what he fell out of from a perspective of where he landed. Spotting what appeared to be an access duct about ten feet above the large sand pile he and his hat rolled down, Michael quickly concluded he would not be getting out the same way he came in. Turning around, he could feel a slight draft coming from the only other source of light seeping through some narrow cracks in front of him.
Squatting down, Michael took out several more glow-sticks from his Go-Bag. Cracking one open, he put the others in his pocket and threw the first one out in front of him. The small, yellow light didn’t offer much illumination, but it was enough for Michael to make out his broken flashlight a few feet away, also revealing the narrowing space in front of him.
Knowing he no longer had his tracker, an alert realization prompted Michael to reach into the Go-Bag for his phone. Unable to get any reception, he let out a dejected sigh as his renewed hope swiftly faded. Feeling a bit discombobulated from his unintended tumble, Michael went into his trusty Go-Bag one more time for some sustenance in form of a protein snack bar and a bottle of water to help clear his head.
Taking a few sips of water and small bites from the protein bar, Michael did not think anyone would be coming to rescue him anytime soon, considering they would not know where to look or have the means to get there if they did. He came to the conclusion he must have fallen into an old escape tunnel devised by The Environmentalist, and the only way out would be to follow the same path he once took. But something happened to the original route. The years of decay affected it, too. Michael figured he must have fallen out a collapsed section of the tunnel chute, more than likely caused by a sinkhole.
Looking back at the hole he fell out of, Michael lined up his most direct route, where he could feel the draft straight ahead of him. Gathering up his supplies, the wayward researcher made his way over toward the unknown, new frontier. In his hurried egress, Michael picked up the water bottle and accidentally left the partially eaten protein bar behind. Lighting another glow-stick after moving ahead of the first one, he threw it out in front of him, exposing more of the narrowing space, forcing him to crouch down lower and lower the closer he got. He was practically crawling on his hands and knees by the time he reached the mouth of the tunnel. Feeling the draft sucking the air into a hole about the same size as the one he fell out of, Michael took out another glow-stick, cracked and shook it on before tossing it inside to shed a little light on the path ahead of him.
Michael noticed the broken edge of the tunnel chute sticking out of the dirt a few inches below the entrance hole. The cave-in buried the rest of it under his feet, with dirt covering the intact remaining section, which verified he was heading in the right direction and thankfully big enough for him to squeeze through.
Just before entering the tunnel, Michael shot a startled look behind him. He was unable to escape the feeling he was being watched. Nearly positive he could hear something scurrying around in the dark, he tossed the glow-stick in his hand behind him and had another one out and lit almost before the first one hit the ground. He did not see anything to cause him alarm, including the missing protein bar.
Crawling down the tunnel on his hands and knees, Michael pushed his Go-Bag out in front of him due to the reduced area in the confined space. Less than ten feet in, without warning, he came upon a steep incline, which sent him and the Go-Bag swiftly sliding down an unobstructed part of the sharply sloping chute.
Popping out a vent located two feet above a wooden floor and landing on a king-size mattress, Michael found himself in a large, concealed room cast in dark shadows from the dim gleam of the discarded glow-stick, along with slivers of light visible through ceiling cracks. Once again finding the need to get his bearings after the abrupt entrance left him disoriented, the reluctant adventurer lit another glow-stick, leaving him with only three in reserve. After re-locating his Go-Bag and strapping it on his back, he picked up his hat and dusted it off against his pant leg before returning it to its proper place.
Stepping forward in the shadowy darkness, Michael’s foot came down on a foreign object, momentarily throwing him off balance. He bent down and picked up a piece of a brand-name trademark fashioned in brass letters spelling out W-U-R-L-I-T-Z with the last letters broken off on a jagged edge. Holding the strange object in his hand brought on a sense memory, providing Michael with a valuable clue to his whereabouts.
With the meager light generated from the glow-stick and the ceiling cracks, Michael could barely make out what appeared to be a countertop attached to the wall. Gently placing each foot down to make sure he was on solid ground before proceeding any further—once bitten, twice shy—he cautiously walked over to the wall. Safely navigating his way on a secure terrain, he tested the countertop’s sturdiness with a few hard hand knocks before setting his Go-Bag on it.
Getting out his CPU Notepad and turning it on, the monitor screen powered up and brought about an overlooked light source, illuminating the room enough to see the shape of things previously invisible to the naked eye. Michael spotted something on the end of the countertop that caused him to let out a brief, snorting laugh, amused by the ironic twist of his latest discovery, also grateful he could still find humor in his precarious situation.
Reaching over and picking up a dusty, old-fashioned kerosene-lantern, his widening smile turned into a smirking grin after giving it a shake and hearing the sound of liquid splashing around inside.
“Can I really be this lucky?” Michael wondered aloud, not taking into consideration how he got there in the first place.
He retrieved a box of blue-tip, strike-anywhere matches from his Go-Bag. Taking a deep whiff of the stale air, Michael didn’t smell or sense the presence of any foreign substances contaminating the room, and reasoned it would be safe to light the lantern, knowing the risk of introducing a spark to an untested environment. Even though he could not smell any gaseous elements, there were any number of colorless, odorless combustibles a single flame could ignite, like methane and other natural gases.
Striking the match after lifting off the glass case, he held the burning flame to the exposed wick with mentally crossed fingers. As the wick caught fire, Michael replaced the glass case, letting out a sigh of relief for obtaining a brighter outlook of his current surroundings, while also avoiding the incendiary reaction of blowing himself to smithereens.
Walking around using the lantern to get a lay of the room, Michael came upon some intriguing clues leading him to a hypothetical theory he needed to corroborate. The room appeared to be some kind of sub-basement root cellar that someone converted into a workshop, but it also seemed oddly familiar. Michael felt a chill run up his spine, congruent to the strange sense of déjà vu he found almost as hard to escape as his current dilemma.
On the other side of the room, the lantern’s shine revealed something leaning against the wall. With the dust-covered years wearing down anything left exposed to the elements, Michael had a har
d time figuring out what he found stacked against the wall.
Fingering through what looked like a bunch of frameless paintings with faded images and worn away letters, Michael started getting a clearer picture that what he found were actually antique poster-boards from movies, musicals, ice shows, and television programs of days long gone by. The titles now reduced to missing letter crosswords puzzles, leaving the gamer to fill in the blanks.
_KO pres___ The Anim__ _ingd__
_onga Hen____ _tar_ __ Ice
NB_ Voic_ __ _irstone
The old, laminated poster-boards were not the only clues stimulating Michael’s sense of familiarity with the place. He caught sight of three long, thin shadows in the corner of the room, which turned out to be the legs of a video camera tripod set up a few feet from where the corners of the walls met with a chair placed in front of it. Thrown into a full-throttle memory search, Michael used the downloaded files on New York City contained in his notepad to augment his remembrance.
Pulling up the data on Rockefeller Center and the Vanderbrock family tree, Michael followed clues revealing answers his own intuitive nature never expected to find. Things started falling into place and making sense of the discovered artifacts. The Vanderbrock’s were an old, well-established New York family, one of the original Dutch settlers, who rumor had it, were cheated out of their property rights in Rockefeller Center. The family’s claim to the land dated back nearly fifty years before the Center’s construction. Daniel R. Vanderbrock III (the black sheep of the family—until his great grandnephew, Alan, came along) was a drunken dullard who got swindled out of the property rights by a couple of grifters after he traded them for the rights to the newly erected Brooklyn Bridge, forever coining the saying, “If you believe that one, I got a bridge I’d like to sell you”, and the not so well-known, “Dumber than Daniel”. The family always maintained their claim to the land and even invested in Rockefeller Center when construction began during the tumultuous years of the Great Depression. They just happened to invest in the only building ever torn down at the iconic Center.
The old RKO Roxy opened in 1932. A movie palace meant to be a sister theatre to the very successful Radio City Music Hall, but it never achieved the same fame as that highly renowned venue. However, the most interesting fact to Michael was the name of the first film to premiere there, The Animal Kingdom, providing him with some puzzle pieces (letters actually) to help him start filling in the blanks.
The more information he uncovered, the more blanks got filled.
After a successful lawsuit by the original Roxy Theatre, a forced name change re-dubbed it the Center Theatre, also switching their scheduled entertainment to plays and musicals, which unfortunately did not make any improvement on its popularity.
In 1940, the theatre found short-time success when converted into an Ice Skating theatre featuring the very popular Sonja Henie, which led to the filling in of more blanks after noticing the name of one of her many shows was Stars on Ice.
By the 1950’s, the novelty of ice show spectaculars wore off, leading to more filled in blanks when the theatre changed, again. This time into a television studio for NBC, which aired classical music and operas on the Voice of Firestone program until 1954. Not long after, they replaced the theatre with the U.S. Rubber Company Building.
With most of the puzzle pieces neatly fitting into place, Michael was able to formulate a credible theory about his present location as the tripod proved to be the most significant piece. Running it through his mind, it started to make sense. Although he never expected to find it, this had to be The Environmentalist’s secret lab where he filmed his suicide confession video he streamed live.
Except now, Michael needed to find a way out so he could tell everybody of this latest discovery, however fortuitously fallen upon. But the room had no windows or doors or any way out other than the way he came in, which could not be an exit, too. Michael started searching for a concealed door or a hidden lever, feeling around the walls and under the countertop table, where he pulled out a metal draw, which had a book inside it.
Sidetracked by an obscure, prescient notion he just found the most important book since the Prophet Warrior unearthed The Book of Tomorrows, Michael temporarily forgot about his search for an exit. Trying not to disturb the contents, wanting to preserve the integrity of the find, he tried to make out the title through the cloudy, oxidized zip-sealed bag used to preserve it. The words on the cover were legible enough to read the author’s name, Michael James Carducci, and the title, When You See After Dark.
Feeling bit overwhelmed, Michael thought he just slipped into some sort of déjà vu city—his own private Twilight Zone—where whatever he saw or touched recalled some past memory he was certain he never had before. He was sure he never heard of the book, much less read it. But there was something familiar about those words, almost as if he could hear them spoken in some distance, unknown memory living deep in his subconscious.
Deciding not to let the mystery distract him any longer, he tucked the book safely away in an airtight, sealed compartment of his Go-Bag, thinking to himself, ‘if I ever get out of here, this might prove the unexpected journey worth the trip’.
Continuing his desperate search for an exit, the pressing need to get moving started to make the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end, causing him to try and expedite his departure. Struck cold by another alarming thought, the thing he could not put his finger on before was not about what was here, but what wasn’t. Where were the remains of Alan Vanderbrock VI, who killed himself in this very room after filming his incoherent, rambling confession? Since no one ever knew this place existed, and he had to be the first person to set foot in here since—most likely, the only person—there should at least be some skeletal remains.
Michael suddenly couldn’t escape the feeling of being watched, making his flesh creep as he began stumbling around the room with a jittery nervous abandon of a scared child frightened by a ghost story. Pressing his back against the countertop, his left heel bumped against one of the table legs, causing it to slide back and click into place. A concealed trapdoor in the floor flopped down.
Stepping into another dark, narrow, cavernous passageway, Michael went down his second metaphorical rabbit-hole into an unknown land, only this time he had the lantern to help guide his way. A cold, damp draft permeated the air, along with the same wet dog smell from the other side. He left the exit door, camouflaged as part of the top of the cave, open for the day when he hoped to return to investigate the site more thoroughly and under much improved conditions.
The trapdoor opened at the end of the cavernous passage and opposed to the other side got wider the farther Michael moved forward, traveling along on a slight downgrade. Starting out with only a three foot space to maneuver, the passageway widened into a big open space after about fifty yards. It came out at the bottom of a gully leading up to a rocky ridge. The ground ahead turned damp, and he could hear the distinct sound of running water coming from where the ridge crested two hundred feet in front of him. There was a guiding beacon coming from a dim light at the end of the tunnel, providing more illumination for his mind than vision for his eyes. A research memory dawned on Michael, triggering a recollection of an article he read about an old abandoned passageway in between 49th St. and 7th Avenue that led to the underground concourse at Rockefeller Center. Never finished for some reason, it supposedly connected through a concealed, out of service subway tunnel. Although never used by the public during its time, Michael believed it was the most logical route for The Environmentalist to take when secretively traveling back and forth to his lair.
Positive as Michael was about this being the same way out used by The Environmentalist, he was also pretty sure it wasn’t underwater when he did. Reaching the crest of the ridge, he found himself immersed by a subaquatic quandary after seeing the path ahead was totally submerged, leaving him only two options—go back or go for another exploratory swim.
Michael knew
he really had only one choice, and it was not one anybody would envy. Deciding to take a short respite, he removed the Go-Bag to inventory its contents and see what he could dispense with to lighten the load. It would be a difficult enough swim without the benefit of scuba gear, an arduously treacherous journey not knowing if there was a way out or if he could find one before running out of air. But he felt he didn’t have much of a choice. Going back the way he came would not work any better than waiting around for a rescue, even though he knew Jacob would be doing everything in his power to find him. Regrettably, it might take too long.
Assessing his food and water rations, Michael had at least two days before attempting his hazardously indeterminate voyage. Nonetheless, the thought of staying here any longer than he had to didn’t sound too desirable, either. He could not shake the distinct, creepy feeling something was watching him.
Aside from the food and water, Michael also removed his CPU Notepad, a first-aid kit, a compact tent, and other camping equipment, along with two short swords neatly concealed in the sides of the Go-Bag’s structural lining. The swords were for protection when exploring unstable sites, since only members of the DOS with the highest security levels had firearm permits. The NRA was a long extinct entity, along with the gun violence that use to pervasively infect our culture with the arrogant assertion of the right to bear arms being more sacred than other’s right to keep living.
Leaving most of this stuff behind didn’t bother Michael, except he did regret sacrificing his swords. Not because he believed he would need them, or any of the other things he discarded, the swords had a sentimental value in being gifts from Jacob on their first expedition. After securing his valuable find, along with his hat—the one personal possession he refused to sacrifice, since his mother gave it to him—Michael noticed something about the ridge he should have seen right off, causing his nervous apprehension to rise up again. Figuring he was a bit distracted when first coming upon it (after all he did have a lot on his mind), he decided to give himself a break for his unprofessional observation as he now realized the alarmingly unavoidable conclusion. The ridge could not have formed naturally. Something had to make it. But what could have done it? He knew one thing for sure. He was not alone down here.
Standing up, he walked over to the base of the ridge, leaving the Go-Bag behind, instinctively taking along one of his swords and the lantern. Using the tip of the sword to poke at the ground, Michael noticed the ridge had formed from rocks and mud, but could also see pieces of driftwood mixed in with a variety of garbage, junk, and other wasteful materials pushed into place until it built up enough to form a makeshift dam. He then realized the whole area would have been flooded if the ridge never existed, which would have prevented his escape through the lab’s trapdoor.
Hearing movement coming from behind, he whirled around with sword in hand and lantern held high. Stunned and amazed by the sight of a rodent-like creature of unusually large size foraging through his food supply, Michael blinked his eyes in rapid progression, hoping it was just a mirage. It appeared to be an evolved hybrid of a species of common sewer rat and a mole, only much bigger. Michael did not know what attributed to its unusual size of about six feet in length from tip of tail to its pug-nose snout. He also sensed it might be blind or had very poor vision as it sniffed around the ground tearing at the protein bar packaging with its long, talon-like claws. It had short, grey hair, and he estimated its weight between one-hundred-sixty and one-hundred-seventy pounds. Stepping around, he attempted to move downwind of the creature.
As Michael’s foot came down on a lose rock, causing it to roll down the ridge, the strange creature before him lifted its head and snorted at the air, letting out two high-pitched snarls in his direction. Bracing himself with sword ready to strike, he gently placed the lantern down and removed one of the glow-sticks from his pocket. Cracking it open in one hand as quietly as possible, he shook the stick and threw it as far away from the Go-Bag as he could, keeping the sword ready in case the diversion didn’t work.
The mole rat looked over in the direction of the glow-stick the moment it hit the ground. Hesitant to leave its newly acquired food behind, the hybrid creature’s curiosity got the better of it. Heading over to investigate any unwanted intruder trying to hoard in on its find, the mole rat let out a few threatening snarls in the direction of the glow-stick.
Moving slowly down the ridge and over to his indispensable belongings, Michael wanted to grab the Go-Bag, leave the food, and slip away unnoticed, only he needed a free hand to do it. He set the lantern lightly down on the ground without making a sound, thinking it best to keep the sword at ready. Picking up the Go-Bag by its shoulder strap, a small rock caught up in the folds of the bag fell out, lightly clinking off another rock. It barely made a sound, but enough noise to alert the hungry creature.
The mole rat let out an angry snarl. Kicking up dirt and rocks with claws digging into the ground, it charged full bore straight at Michael. Misjudging the beast’s speed, the mole rat quickly made up the ground between them. Standing his ground, Michael held the short sword straight out in front of him. Leaping up in the air less than three feet away, the large, heavy beast slammed into him with a thudding force. The sword impaled the mole rat on top of Michael, piercing it through the chest as they both fell backwards to the ground, causing the Go-Bag to fly a few feet away.
Badly wounded and bleeding profusely, the mole rat still tried to bite and claw at Michael, barely missing his face. With his right hand pinned down from the weight on top of him, Michael reached out with his left hand for the other short sword, only a few inches from his fingertips. Pushing up with all the strength he could muster, Michael shifted his weight enough to be able to grip the hilt of the other sword and thrust it up and into the mole rat’s head, instantly killing it.
Rolling the mole rat’s body off of him became much easier once it was dead. Michael laid there for a moment catching his breath after freeing himself. While still on the ground, he looked around for the Go-Bag and could make it out in the shadows, about ten feet in front of him. Getting to his feet, he reached down and pulled the short sword out of the dead creature’s head, before walking over and retrieving the lantern.
Shining the light over in the direction of the Go-Bag, Michael quickly became aware his surreal, woken nightmare had only just begun. About a dozen more mole rats were coming out of previously unnoticed cavernous passages dug into the earth, drawn out by the smell of the fresh-kill. They sniffed the air snarling at each other, even biting at others in close proximity as they headed right toward Michael in direct line between him and the Go-Bag.
Michael reacted without hesitation, knowing his dire circumstances would prevent him from getting away with his valuable find unless he tried a desperate move. Throwing the lantern five feet in front of the converging mole rats, it crashed on the hard ground and burst into a short, blazing fire, giving him cover enough to grab the Go-Bag.
The heat from the fire sent the mole rats scurrying in all directions, some of them bumping into one another, which only brought on more snarling and biting. They were starting to flank Michael on both sides, still drawn by the smell of the fresh-kill and the blood all over him. Securing the Go-Bag on his back and keeping the short sword at ready, his situation forced him to make a desperate escape as he ran up the ridge.
Standing on the crest of the ridge, Michael looked back to see how far away the mole rats were and saw most of them converging on the carcass of their fallen brethren, ripping and tearing into its dead flesh in a cannibalistic feeding frenzy. Choking back his disgust, Michael was surprised to see one of the mole rats, who could not squeeze in with the others, must have caught wind of his blood soaked clothes and was heading toward him. Deciding on flight instead of fight, he jammed his sword into the ridge, and left it standing sentinel. As he dove into the water, one last thought ran through his mind. ‘I sure hope they are only a hybrid of moles and rats, and not beavers, too’.
; The cold, dark water offered little comfort without the benefit of his insulated wetsuit, chilling Michael to the bone and giving him concerns of succumbing to hypothermia before running out of air. Taking out his last two glow-sticks, he cracked and shook on both of them to try an increase his vision. The old three rules of survival kept playing out in his head—you can survive three weeks without food, three days without water, but only three minutes without air—and how many precious seconds had he wasted already. With only one direction to go, Michael started swimming down the dark tunnel, hoping it led to a subway platform.
He saw an actual sign of encouragement indicating the 49th St. subway station was up ahead somewhere. But how far up ahead? It had already been almost a minute since first hitting the water and he was still in the old abandoned access tunnel. The out of service, underground passageway leading to Rockefeller Center was constructed back in 1940 and connected to a new office tower on the northeast corner of 49th St. and 7th Ave., where the northbound platform concealed the entrance to the hidden tunnel.
Coming up on two minutes, Michael could feel his joints starting to cramp from the frigid water. For the first time since waking up from his fall, he started to lose hope of ever making it out alive. The thought of coming this far with only a slim chance that anyone would ever find his body, preventing his important discovery from being found, propelled him onward in a desperate search for a way out.
A sinking feeling hit Michael like a heavy anchor dragging him all the way down to Davy Jones’ Locker as he came upon an impassable barricade created by a collapsed section of tunnel, combined with a subway car wedged in between. It totally cut Michael off from the 49th St. platform, only a few feet beyond the obstruction. Almost out of breath, panic set in as he frantically swam around looking for a way through. Swimming up to the top of the tunnel in a last ditch effort to seek out an air pocket, Michael managed to catch a few quick breaths after finding a space just big enough for him to stick the tip of his nose out of the water. The splashing waves created from him treading water started to fill his nostrils before he could get any more relief. While up there, he caught sight of a release valve to an access shaft out of the corner of his eye, and decided it was the last and only choice left to him.
Reaching the wheel, Michael barely had the strength left to turn it, but had some luck on his side and found it moveable. After managing a few full turns, he only had enough strength left for another half turn before losing consciousness. As he began floating down with his arms extended above his head, the hatch opened. The force of water rushing up the previously empty shaft carried Michael with it.
The other end of the shaft was also sealed shut, but the thrust of the water blasted it open with such force it ripped the hatch off and sent it sky rocketing up to the surface.
Just as Jacob and GP Sally were coming up out of the docking ramp in the electric cart, the hatch burst out of the water and shot up in the air over twenty feet. It came crashing down on the dock a few feet from them. A few seconds later, Michael flew up ten feet out of the water and fell back in, floating face down and motionless