Death City: A Post-Apocalyptic Adventure (Dark Resistance Book 1)

by Stephanie Mylchreest

  Stephanie Mylchreest

  Death City

  Dark Resistance One

  Copyright © 2019 by Stephanie Mylchreest

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  First edition

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  To my readers; you are the reason for this book. I hope you enjoy it.

  Unexpressed emotions will never die. They are buried alive and will come forth later, in uglier ways.

  Sigmund Freud

  Chapter One

  The entrance to the cave was lower than her waist, but when she ducked her head and peered inside, the space was dark and vast, and cast the chill of a place never touched by the sun. The cave evoked an intense, complicated feeling that her therapist had instructed her not to suppress, and she let the fear and loathing wash over her.

  “Are you really going in there?” asked Joe. He wasn’t annoyed—yet, but Harper knew he would be worried about getting back in time. She glanced at him, watching him fold and unfold the paper map given to them at the tourist center in Rožňava, and felt her heart flip. Joe also evoked intense, complicated feelings in her. He caught her staring at him and his lips curled into a smile, a bemused expression on his face.

  The woman at the tourist center had spoken to them in broken English before passing the map over with a brochure for the Domica Cave. “Stay together,” she had warned. The four friends had followed the trail on the map to start with, but their thirst for adventure soon led them to forge their own. They had been hiking through the spruce cloaked hills and limestone crags of Slovak Karst National Park for a few hours before finding the unmarked cave entrance.

  Harper pulled her eyes away from Joe and dropped her backpack on the ground. She bent down, rummaging around inside for a torch. Kneeling in the lush green grass, she switched the torch on and directed the beam of light inside the cave. The darkness simultaneously petrified her and called to her, as it always had. She turned back to the others. Fighting every instinct to stay outside, she forced a smile and said, “It’s our last day. Let’s do it.”

  Wolf laughed and dropped his bag to kneel beside her at the mouth of the cave. “The Australian girl has some crazy ideas, but I wouldn’t miss this.”

  Harper grinned as Wolf, her beautiful summer fling, leaned in to kiss her. Conscious of Joe watching nearby, she broke away and pulled out her phone. She captured a photo of the two of them; the sunshine filtering through the tree canopy bathing them in dappled light and the dark semi-circle of the cave entrance framing their smiling faces.

  Sara crouched and squinted into the darkness. “I think I might wait out here,” she said after a pause, raking through her shoulder-length blonde hair with her fingers. She tucked a strand behind her ears and pushed her oversized glasses up with one finger, somehow looking just as gorgeous in her gray cargo hiking pants as she did in a bikini.

  “Come on, Sara,” said Harper. “It’ll be fun. Our last Slovak adventure.” But Harper didn’t push too hard. She knew Sara would follow her, eventually. Curiosity always got the better of her.

  “I’ll wait here with you, Sara,” said Joe, dutifully joining his twin sister at the cave entrance. He folded his muscular body and sat on the ground, leaning back against the rock face. He pulled his beanie down over his eyes. “Wake me when you get out. Don’t be too long, we need to get the car back to Bratislava by six.”

  Harper saluted Joe, then slid the torch into her jean pocket and dropped to her hands and knees. She moved a few inches forward, into the shadow of the cavern, Wolf following closely. Beneath her, the ground was hard and vaguely damp. Ahead, there was nothing but black.

  A bubble of nervous anticipation grew in her throat and her heartbeat quickened as the darkness surrounded her with its familiar, terrifying embrace. After ten feet, the roof of the cave opened up, and she was able to stand. Harper could hear her heart beating in her ears. Being in the dark, facing her deepest, most secret fears, made her feel alive.

  She pulled the torch from her pocket and switched it on—Nothing. The batteries must have been low. She slapped the head gently on her hand a couple of times and tried again. A thin beam of light flickered on before faltering and disappearing.

  She stood in the darkness, letting her eyes adjust until she could make out the gentle curve of the roof of the cave and the walls around her. Wolf’s hisses and grunts echoed behind her as he made his way along the narrow entrance, then he swore loudly in German when he bumped his head on the low ceiling while pushing himself to his feet beside her.

  “Well, this is creepy,” he said, wrapping his arm around her waist.

  His hand slid inside her t-shirt and rested on her lower back. She leaned against him as he pulled her closer. His mouth found her ear, and he whispered: “We could get into some trouble in here.” The hand on her back became more insistent, pulling her harder against him. Wolf sometimes had a hard time taking no for an answer, just as Harper had a hard time saying no.

  You need to be better. You need to do better.

  Harper forced a laugh and pushed him away, aiming for playful and hoping he didn’t notice the edge to her voice. The sound echoed oddly off the stone walls. “Come on, the others are waiting for us.” She shrugged his arm away and stepped into the middle of the chamber.

  “Switch the torch on,” said Wolf, his silhouette a shade darker than the blackness surrounding them. Remnants of sunlight fought through the cave entrance, but the light didn’t travel far.

  “It’s out of battery. Can you use your phone? I left mine in my backpack.”

  Wolf sighed. “Sure thing.” Fabric shuffled as he fumbled with something, and then a piercing white light shot through Harper’s eyes making her wince and step back. “Shit! Sorry, babe.” Wolf turned the light to the ground and Harper blinked, waiting for the bright white circles to fade from her vision.

  “Wow, this place is huge,” said Wolf in wonder, as he turned the phone torch in a slow circle around the interior of the cave. In the low light from the cave entrance, Harper hadn’t realized its true scale, and she looked around now, astonished.

  Harper drew a deep breath through her nose. “The air is musty, and there’s something else I can’t place. It smells bad. Can you smell it?”

  “Yes, it’s not great. Alright then, shall we go back to the others?”

  The voice in her head told to her take his hand and walk out of there. Instead, she said, “I’m going to call them. Even with the smell, this is too amazing to miss.”

  Her heart beating loudly in her ears, Harper bent down and yelled through the low opening, her face angled toward the brightly lit landscape at the end of the tunnel. “Joe! Sara! Come on. It’s cool! Sara, you owe me after I went swimming with you in Paris. Get in here.”

  Harper smiled as she remembered the security guard Sara had sweet-talked into letting them sneak into Piscine Joséphine Baker after closing time. Sara was spontaneous and fun—all the things Harper wished she could be. Floating on her back in th
e swimming pool on top of a giant barge on the Seine, staring up at the star-studded sky, had been surreal. With her new, gorgeous American friends and Wolf paddling close by, Harper had never felt happier.

  She waited a beat and saw the silhouette of someone crawling through the tunnel toward her. A few moments later, they stood and brushed themselves off by the low entrance. It was Sara, and Harper hugged her quickly.

  “Joe’s waiting outside. Wow, this is incredible!” she exclaimed as Wolf shone the light slowly around the chamber.

  “Shall we go out now?” asked Wolf. “I’ve had enough of feeling like I’ve been buried alive.”

  “Let’s go a little further,” said Harper, her chest tightening. How perverse; the thing you fear the most is pulling you deeper. Keeping her voice light, she asked, “How many times can you say you’ve been in an unexplored cave in Slovakia?”

  “Well, now that you mention it…” Wolf laughed his deep, throaty laugh. Harper could picture his face; his blue eyes creased at the edges and the line of his strong jaw as he opened his mouth.

  “Shine the light around again, see if this cave leads anywhere,” she asked him.

  Wolf sighed again but obliged and moved the light slowly around the cave. The elongated stone pillars supporting the roof cast strange shadows that shifted as the light passed them. “That looks like something,” said Wolf, shining the light toward the back of the cave where the walls narrowed and disappeared into another black chamber.

  “Let’s go a little deeper,” said Harper, her voice dropping an octave and her heart rate ratcheting up once again.

  Wolf stepped closer, and she took his free hand in hers. Sara took her other hand with a nervous grin. Together they walked further into the limestone cavern, toward the black space at the back. The cave continued to narrow as they advanced, until Wolf was forced to move in front of Harper, and Sara moved behind her.

  They were at the neck of a narrow tunnel now. “Are we going to keep going?” asked Sara. The main cave they’d come from was behind them, with the waist–high entrance a small bright spot about one-hundred feet away.

  “I think so. Wolf, what can you see in front of you?” asked Harper. She pressed herself against Wolf and peered over his shoulder. Wolf lifted the phone light and their eyes followed the narrow cavernous walkway as far as the light reached.

  “Let’s go another ten meters and then go back,” Harper suggested. There was a slight tremor in her voice.

  Wolf walked slowly, one hand on the wall next to him and the other angling the meager phone light to maximize their view of the cave ahead. Harper glanced over her shoulder past Sara and realized the walkway was curving slightly. The bright beacon of the cave opening was now out of sight.

  Overhead, something clicked softly and then swooped past Harper’s head. She let out a shriek and Wolf jumped. “Damn bats,” he said, laughing. “Hey, the walkway is opening up into another cave. Wow… take a look at this.”

  The three of them stood side by side at one end of a second chamber comprising a huge oval-shaped cave. At the other end of the oval, one-hundred feet away, the cave seemed to narrow again, the walkway twisting away out of sight.

  Fifty feet above them was the roof, where stalactites dripped in frozen formation, deadly should they fall. Dramatic spikes of limestone grew up from the ground. The walls undulated in waves as though carved by the steady movement of water thousands of years ago.

  “It’s like a cathedral, it’s beautiful…”

  “I bet you never did this in church,” said Wolf, wrapping his arm around Harper. He kissed her deeply, full on the mouth.

  “Cut it out, you two,” said Sara, wandering deeper into the cave.

  Harper was kissing him back when Wolf dropped his phone on the ground. There was a clunk, and then they were plunged into complete darkness.

  “Damn! Sorry guys.”

  Wolf dropped to the ground and began to feel around the floor for his phone. Harper stood for a moment, feeling the dark close in around her, swarming and clinging to her from every angle. It rose. Suffocating her. Burying her in nothing and everything at once. The sensation evoked some deep, suppressed memory that made her want to get the fuck out.

  He’s not here. He’s not here. You’re safe.

  She took a deep breath to calm herself, using the breathing techniques she’d been taught to tame her anxiety. The air was damp and the bad smell—probably bat excrement—was stronger here. They were in the underbelly of the Earth, a mountain of dirt above them.

  Hurry up, she thought to herself, listening to Wolf fumble in the darkness.

  “I got it.” A moment later, the blue glow of the phone screen appeared, illuminating Wolf’s face which was turned down in a frown. He tapped the screen and the paltry white phone light shone once more.

  Harper’s eyes followed the light as it hit the curved wall to her left.

  “We should get back to Joe,” said Wolf, shining the light around the chamber. He rubbed his jaw with his hand. “I have no reception so he won’t be able to contact us. Plus my battery is at five percent.”

  “Hold on, put the light back where it was,” said Harper, frowning through the shadows.

  Wolf moved the phone light and Harper stepped closer to the limestone wall. “There’s something here. There are markings on the wall. Can you see them? And look here. There’s a pile of stones that have been stacked into a hole in the wall.”

  Harper reached out her hand and touched the unusual lines that had been carved into the rock face. The marks had been eroded with time and she traced the irregular width and depth with her finger.

  She sensed Wolf and Sara approaching and the brightness of the phone light grew. “Look here,” she said in a whisper. “This looks like a picture of people lying on the ground.”

  “Maybe this used to be a massive orgy room for the cave men,” joked Wolf.

  “Or maybe the picture is of the dead,” replied Harper.

  Wolf laughed nervously.

  Chapter Two

  Harper continued to stare at the lines etched in the limestone, tracing her finger over a second set of markings she found higher on the wall. “This looks like three linked triangles,” she said. “I wonder what it means.”

  “I want to go,” said Wolf. His voice wavered, but his cleared his throat to disguise it.

  “We can’t go yet. This is incredible. How old do you think these carvings are?”

  Wolf muttered something in German and turned away—taking the phone light with him, plunging Harper into darkness once again.

  “Please Wolf, just another minute. I want to look at these stones, and then we’ll go back.” Crossing the space between them in one step, she reached up and brushed her lips softly against the nape of his neck. She whispered in his ear, “I’ll make it up to you, promise.”

  Wolf’s fingers snaked around Harper’s waist before quickly retreating. He turned back to her and sighed. “Please be quick, Harper. This place is giving me some really bad vibes.”

  “Thank you. Can you take a quick photo of these markings? I want to show my dad when I get to London.”

  “I thought your dad was some big time scientist for the British Government?” Wolf said. “Why would he care about some markings in a cave?”

  Harper shrugged, moving her attention back to the wall. “He is. But he was born here in Slovakia. He likes history. I dunno… I think he’d be interested.”

  Wolf and Sara looked at her for a moment longer than was comfortable. She hadn’t known either of them for long, but in a moment of vulnerability—tequila shots loosening her tongue—she had told them a little about her parents, about her childhood in Sydney.

  She had mentioned her father’s unpredictable and arbitrary rages.

  Yet she avoided mentioning the feeling of total, consuming fear as she hid in the dark. She hadn’t described that moment of panic when she was found and yanked from her hiding place, the fear that this time he would go too far and
might kill her. Nor could she talk about the explosions of pain, or the dark places she would be returned to.

  She waited for either of them to say something, but they didn’t press her and she was grateful. Instead, Wolf turned off the phone light and took a couple of photos. The flash was quick and bright, and then they were plunged into darkness once more. He turned the torch back on. “Done,” he said. “Let’s get out of here now.”

  Harper ignored him, stepping to the rocks that had been stacked one on top of the other against the wall. “Shine the light here, please,” she said. Wolf’s face tightened, but he held the phone close to the wall. She could tell he was running out of patience. Harper touched his arm lightly, before running her hand over the surface of the rocks.

  “Can you see the outline of a hole around the rocks? I think these smaller rocks have been put here to block the space. I’m going to see if I can pull one out.”

  “Don’t do that!” Wolf’s voice came out forcefully, startling Sara as she, too, stepped closer to examine the carvings.

  “I have die götterdämmerung.”

  “What?” Sara looked back at him.

  “I have a bad feeling about the future.”

  “There could be something inside. What if we’ve discovered something incredible? I’m just going to loosen a couple,” said Harper. Sara dropped down beside her and they both probed the gaps around the stones.

  “What if those markings are a warning?” asked Wolf, his voice low. Harper had never seen him nervous before, and she glanced back at him in surprise.

  “There’s nothing to worry about, Wolf,” replied Sara.

  Wolf swore in German but kept the phone light on the stoned-up hole. Harper inspected the stones more closely. They were roughly fist-sized and jammed in tightly, one on top of the other. The gaps between the rocks had been filled with something that had solidified, like a primitive cement.

  Harper tried to take hold of one of the rocks, but she couldn’t get a good grip on the stones. “They’re wedged in pretty tight. Have you got something I can use?”