We don't mine today; it's the day off."
Austin smiled, showed me the bag. "I'm getting a little self-satisfactory revenge," he said, and just as he did so, the ground shook like an earthquake, and a huge gout of dust issued from the mouth of the mine shaft.
It was over just as quickly as it started, and as the shaking stopped, I knew exactly what he had done.
"You blew up the mine? You blew up the goddamned mine."
"Think of it as payback."
"Dude, the Underground doesn't have feelings to hurt, and even if it did, it is massive! It would not even notice a little tunnel caving in from an explosion. And where did you get the explosives for this?"
"We had a store of gunpowder from the big green monsters that we manage to pick off sometimes. I just applied a bit of science."
"You . . . you must be mad."
He grinned. "But it was so satisfying."
He volunteered to go with us to look at the damage he had caused in the tunnel, probably out of a sense of curiosity as to how much carnage his explosives wreaked, so we all geared up to excavate. The six of us descended carefully, ropes and picks at the ready in case something happened. The closer we got to the place Austin had been trapped, the more dust covered the floor and walls.
The epicenter of the blast was surrounded by a space void of stone in a rough sphere some twenty meters across. It seemed as though much of the rubble had been vaporized by the blast, and the exposed stone now was rough and unworked. Austin whistled and then hopped into the bottom of this crater. He tapped on some stone with his pick.
"And to top it all off," he said with a grin, "I found us some diamonds!" He knocked the glittering jewel free from the stone with the butt of his pick but then lost his footing as the ground under him crumbled a bit too. A hole opened up beneath him, and he tumbled into the dark.
Rushing to the edge of the hole, ready to start saving Austin yet again, I instead saw a tunnel, one lit by what must have been ancient lamps still burning. Austin sat wide-eyed on a rail cart track that stretched both directions down the tunnel, which was reinforced much in the same way we reinforced our own.
"We are the only ones on this continent, right? That was the deal, right?" James paced back and forth. We reinforced our doors that night, and everyone gathered up on the second floor from the sudden paranoia wave.
Katy cut up bread, put thick slices with butter on the edge of the bowls of mushroom soup. "Has anyone else found any traces of others besides us?"
"Not a single one. We're here alone," I said, my eyes falling first on the staircase, then on the frames on the walls full of swords and axes.
Mary shook her head. "Lots of animal life but no human to my eyes."
"I've got nothing." Austin shifted on the chest he had taken as a seat.
Anne was silent, contemplating. We all looked at her, and she furrowed her brows. "I cannot be sure of it, but when I was out in the jungle when we first came, before I had my bearings, I got really lost. We were all looking for a good place to settle, so I figured getting lost wasn't a terrible thing. Anyway, deep in the jungle, just as it was getting dark, I thought I saw through the trees a big structure of some sort. It was too dark to see, but it looked like it was something built—not naturally formed."
Austin's ears perked up. "Why didn't you tell us before?" he questioned.
She shrugged. "I thought it was just a trick of the light through the trees. Now I'm not so sure."
We sat in silence, contemplating the meaning of such possible evidence of others here. I sucked a deep breath and stood up. "Well, here's how I see it. We are the only ones here now. Nobody has seen anyone else, just the signs that they were here at some point."
James, who had gone pale white at the realization, quietly interjected. "No, we see them all the time. At night. When it is dark, and they come out of their hiding places."
No way, I thought. The monsters that plagued our nights before we had strong walls?
"It's true," Katy began, "that these monsters look vaguely like humans and walk on two legs like humans, but what evidence—"
"Evidence? Some of them wear leather clothes, some of them carry with them old tools, and some of them drop scraps of fresh food when they die! These creatures . . . they are the remains of the people who were once here! They have to be . . ." James trailed off.
"Okay, putting this all together," I said and counted off on my fingers. "We're not alone here. Others were here before, but they are not any longer. We have found the evidence of this previous occupation. We also think that the skeletons and zombies that come out at night may be the remains of said previous population. Here's what I think now. If they built big structures and mineshafts and the like, then they might have left things in those places, and since they are no longer using them, should we accidentally stumble across them, it would not be against any rules to take those things, right?"
Mary glowered at me. "Grave-robbing?"
"Not grave-robbing, no. These would not be graves. If we found a gravesite, it would be different; we leave that alone. I mean like old houses or the like, storerooms in the mines."
Austin and James seemed interested. Even Katy looked like she was contemplating it. Anne shook her head though and sighed.
"If you four want to traipse through the ruins of a long-gone people, then feel free, but I might stay out of there. I am not comfortable going into potentially zombie-infested city blocks." Mary nodded her agreement, and that seemed to be that.
"It's settled, then. Tomorrow, we'll try to explore some of that underground mine, see where it leads."
That night was tense, knowing that the things that stalked in the dark outside might have very well been just like us, huddled in a house some time in the past.
The next day, four of us stood at the entrance to the tunnel we'd found. We would treat it just like any other tunnel we would explore, except this one was already at least partially lit and dug out. In we went, pickaxes and ropes and bags at the ready.
The tunnel was some five or six meters wide, and about three or four tall, and it stretched in both directions. We decided to go eastward first, and, marking on the stone walls as we went, our trek began.
What followed was a labyrinthine mass of twists and turns, wooden supports partially decayed and portions of the tunnel filled with water that had leaked in over several years. Here and there just out of sight someone would hear something or catch a glimpse of movement, but we never saw anything fully, until . . .
I turned a corner and was suddenly faced with a literal ton of spiderwebs, from the floor to the ceiling, stretching to both walls and positively filling up the entire tunnel for at least the two meters I could see through it. The webs were so thick; I don't think we could have gone through them without lighting them on fire. I tried to step back, but James turned the corner just at that time. His frame pushed mine face-first into the webs. I started to fall, but the sticky silk kept me standing.
Of course, it also immediately wrapped around my legs and arms, sticking and tangling like spiderwebs are wont to do, and I found myself struggling and getting stuck further into them. James seized the back of my collar and tried to haul me out, but the sticky threads held tightly. It took both him and Austin pulling me out to get me free. I fell back and began frantically trying to brush the awful white thread from my body as the others chuckled.
"Come on, man, what's a little cobweb going to do to you?" said Austin, pulling a tuft of it from my hair. I opened my mouth to answer, but when I started to speak, all I heard was a sort of screeching hiss. My eyes fell to the spiderweb tunnel, and I just barely caught sight of dozens of glowing green globules in the mottled dark.
"Spiders!" I cried, and the sound of the swarm filled our ears. "Fall back!"
We stumbled back, slipped between two of the wooden supports into a tiny alcove. Katy jammed some wooden planks between the supports to try to deter the spiders from entering. Just in time she did, too, for as she stepped back, a
thud sounded against other side of it. At least ten spiders the size of large dogs began to try to force their bodies through the narrow opening.
"What are these things?" shouted James over the din. "They’re not like any spider I've seen before!"
He was right. These were a dark green color and had shining, green eyes, not at all like the black-bodied, red-eyed, larger variety to which we had grown accustomed. Their fangs were longer, their bristles less pronounced. On their abdomens was a peculiar mark, and they emanated an acrid scent. I could almost feel the poison in their mouths.
I dropped my pickaxe and slid a sword from its sheath, jamming the end of the blade directly into the face of one of the invading bugs. It screeched and scrambled back, disappearing behind the other spiders, who took its place.
"They may not be the same spiders we know, but they will still die just like them!" I said and stuck again through the narrow opening. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw Austin heft an axe, James pull a similar blade from his pack, and Katie leaning into her bow to string it. That's my team; that's my team. I struck again then ducked to the side as Austin's axe replaced me, a spray of green slime accompanying its strikes. Above his head, two arrows thudded into the throng, and James ducked low to slash at the legs and abdomens under the brace. Thanks to their girth not allowing entry to our alcove, we were able to make quick work of this wave.
"Now, before