The Adventures of Tremain & Christopher BoxSet

by Terry Marchion

  "What do you know of mazes?" He asked her in a hushed voice.

  She threw him a glance.

  "Mazes, labyrinths, who knows?" She cupped her elbows, shivering a little. "They're all the same."

  He gave a low chuckle.

  "No, they're not the same. I thought originally this was some sort of labyrinth, but they're usually more circular with a long path leading to the center," He motioned with his flashlight. "Which usually had some sort of cache or altar or whatever of religious importance. At least that was the thought at one time. But, unless I'm mistaken, I think we're in more of a maze." He walked to the non-gouged exit and took a hesitant step forward, turning his head and shutting his eyes tight as he placed his weight on his foot.

  Nothing happened.

  He cautiously opened one eye, saw that nothing was going to skewer him, released a pent up breath and kept walking, Aziza close behind.

  "What's the difference?" She whispered to him.

  "Mazes usually are more of a puzzle. They have twists and turns, like we've seen here, and usually there's a way out." He took a deep breath. "Unless this one is very complex. If that is the case, we could be here for quite a while." He walked slowly forward, taking the next turn and stopping. The corridor branched into two paths, one running left and down whith the other bending right and curving uphill. Tremain's flashlight played over the stones. "Two paths, one going up, one down. Which one do we want to take, hmm?" He said to himself. He found the telling gouge very quickly, waist high on the path leading uphill.

  Down it is.

  The air grew cooler as they descended, the stone becoming damp to the touch.

  "You had better be on the right path." Aziza threatened.

  "We'll find out soon enough, won't we?" He countered. "If the gouges in the walls stay consistent, I think we're going to be able to navigate through this without any troubles." He stopped short as his feet splashed.

  The flashlight beam showed a pool of water in their way. The corridor, curving back uphill, was visible on the other side of the water. Tremain shrugged and trudged into the pool. It came up to his knees at its deepest point. Aziza, being shorter, was soaked almost to mid-thigh. She cursed as she pushed her way through the water. As soon as they were on the other side, Tremain walked faster, coming to the next intersection quickly. It was another T intersection, the path leading left and right. Tremain could feel just the hint of air movement from the left leading corridor. Aziza quickly found the gouge in the right corridor. The decision being made, they headed to the left.

  "Why would these puzzles be here?" Tremain mused out loud. "I mean, why go to all this trouble?"

  "What do you mean?" Aziza asked, shivering in her wet clothes.

  "These puzzles. The sand room, the grid room and now this maze. Why build them, not to mention how were they built?" He ran his hands over the stone of the wall. "This rock is smooth, like it was carved or sculpted, not constructed. I don't know how the Mayflower people could have done this."

  "Does it matter? I just want to get out of here."

  "Yes . . . and find this weapon you are convinced exists." They walked in silence, taking turn after turn, finding the markings in the stone when the path branched.

  "Why is this so important to you?" he asked Aziza as they walked. "This weapon?"

  She glanced at him as if deciding something, looked down at her feet, then back at him.

  "After I was expelled from school, I was angry and lost. Angry with you, but mostly at myself. If I had studied your notebook more, I might have made it past the board. I might have made something more of my life."

  "That wasn't honorable, trying to pass my work as your own. What would you have done?"

  "It doesn't matter now, does it? After a long while, I met my eventual husband. He was rich and doted on me. I liked what he was doing with his foundation, so I agreed to marry him." She paused, remembering. When she started speaking again, her voice became darker. "Little did I realize I was nothing more than something new to add to his collection. I was like a trophy he brought out to impress others. There was no love in his touch, no warmth in our marriage. I played my part. I was being taken care of after all, and wanted for nothing. After he died, I found I had been left a very large portion of the foundation in his will. I wasn't a stranger to the board meetings, so I tried to assert myself as his widow. They went along with it, but didn’t listen to me. I am as unimportant to them as I had been to my husband. I refuse to be marginalized. With this weapon, I will show them that I am someone to reckon with. They will listen to me, or they will be very sorry."

  Tremain remained silent, absorbing what he'd just heard.

  Soon they felt a stronger breeze, the scent of vegetation urging them to walk faster. The corridor grew brighter. Tremain noticed the enormous cavern's ceiling had taken a steep slope downward and was steadily getting closer to meet the maze walls. He could see light coming from around the next turn in the corridor. Picking up their pace, they almost ran to the exit, bursting through the branches and vines that were partially blocking the way. Once outside, they stopped, taking in their surroundings. Tremain let out a low whistle.

  "I think Hollis would be happy to spend the rest of his career exploring these ruins." He said. He turned in a large circle, taking it all in. "These timbers are enormous!" He ran over and felt one. "Slick, like it's been treated with something to keep the rot out." He wiped his hand on his shirt. "Makes sense. These buildings have been standing for what I would imagine is a very long time, centuries or more." He wandered around the carved columns, noting the pictographs, similar to what he'd seen before. He noticed Aziza looking at the carvings in another column. Noticing a cobblestoned path of sorts that was overgrown with moss and creeping vines, Tremain saw something that made him freeze.

  A stone or brick that seemed to be a border of some sort, almost completely covered by grass had a set of pictographs chiseled in its face. A hand, a swirl of lines, followed by a burst. Another brick was turned over next to it. Tremain nudged it with his shoe, turning it back upright so he could read the pictograph. It was a crude arrow, pointing away from the mountain. He looked away, in the direction the arrow was pointing, only to realize Aziza had been watching him the entire time. The look on her face was eager, almost enraptured.

  Her hand held the gun pointed directly at him.

  Chapter 12

  Christopher stopped and stared at the entrance in the rock wall. Vines had been pushed aside to make the opening more visible. He could see the stone was firmly back in place.

  He stood there for what seemed like a long time. He knew he had to help his uncle. He wanted to help, but his feet wouldn't move. He took a deep breath and gathered himself.

  He pushed at the stone. It moved inward much easier than last time, swinging to the side to reveal drifts of sand covered in footprints. Snapping on his flashlight, he stood at the entrance and examined the interior. He was breathing faster, his adrenaline kicking in as he realized what had possibly happened. He coughed in the dry, flinty atmosphere. In the pictures from the tablet, there was no sand, so obviously a trap had been sprung. That coupled with the wooden shafts that had impaled the goon made him hesitate.

  What other traps are there that have yet to be encountered? He gulped hard as his flashlight beam found the entrance to the second room. He could make out the shape of a dirty hand sitting in the opening, not moving.

  Christopher cautiously walked over to the doorway and shone his flashlight from the hand up the arm to see the face of the goon, eyes closed. The wooden shaft sticking out from his chest shifted with each breath. Good, he was still alive, Christopher thought. He had passed out. The wound glistened with blood in the flashlight beam.

  Christopher gave a shuddering breath and looked around the room. There was an entrance on the other side, but he hesitated to follow it. He didn't want to leave his uncle to any other traps, but he also knew he must be well behind the others. There had to be a way to
circumvent the hazards. In a flash, he remembered one of the items he had shoved into his bag.

  He quickly unslung the duffel and rummaged inside until he pulled out the "gun". It was what his uncle had used to look through things. Christopher hoped it worked here too. Backing out into the first room, Christopher unrolled the tablet, pointed the gadget at the wall and pulled the trigger. On the screen, an image of the rock wall appeared, then slowly faded to reveal the white room beyond it. That too, faded away to show more rock beyond that. Christopher couldn't make out what it all was, but he knew it couldn't be anything easy. So far, it seemed, whoever had built this . . . place, was intent on making people work hard to get through. He pointed the gadget at the sides of the wall, left first.

  Nothing but rock.

  To the right, there was more stone, but then he saw something else. Another room. Another trap? He followed the image until it ended at the wall in front of him. He walked over to it, the painted images on this wall slightly different than all the rest. He realized the images had a sort of geometric shape when seen as a whole. They outlined a hidden doorway.

  He pushed at the stone, which hesitated at first, then slid away to reveal a dark corridor. Christopher pointed his flashlight into the darkness. A stone corridor was revealed in the beam of his light. Christopher pulled the gun up and checked the tablet. No traps that he could see. Was this the way around them?

  He stared into the gloom, the flashlight revealing nothing more. He thought about cobwebs, spiders, other insects, unknown imaginary horrors that could be waiting for him in there. He also thought about his uncle, at the mercy of that woman and her men. His uncle who was facing this all without him. Steeling himself, he took a deep breath, let it out, and entered the corridor.

  He didn't hear Leesa enter the sand room, following him.

  Chapter 13

  Christopher followed the corridor as it threaded its way through the mountain. It seemed almost a straight shot. He almost stumbled as he reached a small set of stairs, which ended in another long stretch of corridor, curving to the right, then back to the left. All the while, he kept his eyes trained ahead, the flashlight always moving. In his mind, he saw all sorts of horrors lying in wait for him, just looking for a teenager-sized snack. Not that he expected to see any of those things, but when you're in a dark underground corridor, your imagination does tend to work overtime.

  Twice during his journey, he thought he heard a scuffing behind him, but when he turned, there was nothing there. He shook his head, thinking his imagination was playing tricks with the echoes of his own footsteps. He stumbled over a loose stone on the floor and almost lost his balance. Regaining his composure, he noticed the light was brighter. He rounded the next curve and saw the end of the corridor. A stone archway bordered the exit from the mountain. Through the trunks of trees, late afternoon sunlight bounced off the stone walls. He jogged to the exit and peered out.

  What he saw took his breath away.

  Two large trees had grown on either side of the archway, almost blocking the exit. He squeezed through to find himself on an old path. The walkway before him was almost completely covered by fallen leaves. Creeping vines snaked among the cobblestones which the path had been constructed with. To his left, built out of the wall of rock, was what could only be described as a temple.

  Vines and roots had partially obscured the structure over the years. Wooden beams, strong and thick jutted out of the roof, which was covered in mossy shingles. Thick wooded columns supported the joists, each one carved with ornate pictographs. Christopher stopped to run his hands over the carvings, awed at the grandeur of it all. Directly above him was a balcony of sorts, the wooden railing missing in many spots, but much of it still standing. He wondered what it would have been like to live here. What would he find if he explored? He snapped pictures with his uncle's tablet, just in case he didn't get that chance.

  While he admired the ruins, he kept an ear open for sounds of his uncle and Aziza. Only hearing the jungle around him, he assumed the corridor had bypassed whatever other hazards there were in the mountain. He must have arrived here before the others. Good, he thought, it will give me time to plan what to do.

  He had to find this weapon, or whatever it was, before the others arrived.

  Turning away from the ruins of the temple, he carefully followed the path downhill, towards the sound of rushing water. As he approached, the sound steadily increased. Through the trees, Christopher could see a gap. The path curved away, but he kept walking towards the roar of water. He came to a drop-off, the chasm wider than he could easily jump. About twenty feet below him was the source of the noise. A rushing torrent of water spewed from a natural vent in the mountain and flowed away into a roiling river. He could see moss encrusted pipes jutting from the sides of the rock face and curving down into the water. The other side of the chasm, he could see, was a mass of hanging roots, vines and more thick jungle. With no way to cross, he turned back to the path and continued on his way.

  He wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he hoped he would see something that would stand out.

  Huge piles of stone, what may have been structures at one time, had tumbled across the walkway and became obstacles that he had to either climb around or over. As he scrambled over one, something caught his eye. A stone beam, roughly six feet long stretched from the pile of rubble he was clambering over to a wooden construct. The beam itself wouldn't have been interesting, but for the pictographs chiseled into it. He saw a series of hands, a swirl, and a burst of lines. The pattern was repeated down the length of the stone. He gasped as the realization hit him. The weapon! Looking around, he tried to discern what the weapon was, or what it did, but all he could see was the wooden and metal scaffold that the piles of stone were crumbled around.

  There were voices coming from behind him, back in the direction of the temple. While he couldn't make out any words, he could recognize his uncle's voice. He had to figure out what to do. If he were caught here by Aziza's goons, he'd be no help to his uncle at all. Looking around frantically, he spied another fallen stone structure just beyond the wooden scaffolding. He hefted his pack and heard the rattle of the nano blocks as they shifted around. Looking at the wooden contraption and back to the pile of stones, his eyes grew wide.

  He had an idea.

  Chapter 14

  Tremain stood, his hands instinctively raising. She gestured towards the path.

  "We're going to find this weapon." She said in a low voice, one which brooked no argument. Tremain sighed and walked in front of her, acutely aware of the gun in her hand.

  The background hiss of rushing water became a roar as they approached the drop-off. Tremain spared a glance to see the water gushing from the rock face, which curved away from them, across the ravine. The trees and vines were thick and hung over the side, making the footing treacherous. At a gesture from Aziza, Tremain kept on walking, coming around a large pile of rubble. He saw the construct and stopped. Aziza came up behind him.

  "Why are you stopping?" She growled. Seeing the contraption in front of them, she quickly scanned the stones, looking for pictographs. Finding the repeated pattern at the base of the construct, she beamed. "This is it. I've found it." She quickly gave it a once-over, her confusion apparent.

  "Can't figure out how to turn it on?" Tremain taunted her, sitting on a stone that had a conveniently flat side. She ignored him, seeing stone, metal and wood, but not understanding what she was looking at. She whirled on him, her eyes blazing. The gun came up to point at him again.

  "You will help me." She commanded. "Get this working."

  Tremain slowly stood up, brushing imaginary dust from his pants.

  "We don't even know how it's supposed to work, or if it'll work at all." He said calmly. He pointed to the structure. "We aren't even sure what it's supposed to do."

  She grabbed his arm and pulled him over to the stone border, pointing towards the pictographs.

  "This is the weapon!" she sho
uted as she pushed him towards it. "Figure out how it works or so help me, I'll use this." She brandished the gun. Tremain stared at her for a moment, as if he were gauging her sincerity, then turned to the contraption.

  It was built into the stone of the mountain, the treated wooden pieces emerging from holes in the rock. He walked over to the edge and peered down, careful to keep hold of something, lest he fall. The spray from the rushing water was thick as fog, but he could see pipes coming from the water. Glancing at Aziza, he followed the line of the pipes as they entered the rock. He scratched his head, then went back to the wheel.

  It was connected to an ingenious set of pulleys and gears, some of which was still intact. He could see right away where a rope or belt would have to go to link everything together. He grabbed a vine from the rock face and gave it a yank. It pulled free from the structure easily. He tied the ends together and fitted it to the pulleys and gears, replacing the few that had fallen.

  The wood was in amazing shape, considering how long it had been sitting here untended to. All the wood had been treated with the same oily substance as the columns and the door of the storeroom. Tremain had a new-found respect for the ingenuity of the Mayflower people. Aziza watched all of this quietly, her gaze intense and unwavering.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Christopher spied on his uncle from his hiding place. Checking his tablet, he re-read the message from Senator Marcus that help would be here soon. He needed to stall for time. He half stood and shouted down towards the weapon.

  "Don't touch it, Uncle -- I've rigged it to blow!"