Alone in the Crowd (The Chronicles of Anna Foster Book 3)

by Patrick Stutzman

  He cut his statement short, when Cooper’s aim shifted onto him.

  “Necessary?” The gulp that followed was loud enough for everyone to hear.

  “Come on!” Anna protested. “Would you honestly shoot me over this whole thing? That’s ridiculous!”

  “No, it’s effective. Now, sit down next to the two Einsteins over there and shut up.”

  With heavy sighs, Anna and Jason disengaged themselves from the two soldiers, walked over to Cary and Tomomi, and sat down, looking grimly at each other.

  “Now that I have your full cooperation, we can sit here and wait for our rescuers to come.”

  * * * * *

  “Is this the place?” asked a lieutenant standing behind another grunt at the top of the stairs leading to the door. The cool green glow from the soldier’s light stick provided the only source of light in the middle of the pyramid.

  Hicks poked his head around the corner and nodded. “This is it, ma’am. The trap door is just before the door.”

  “All right, then. Break out the equipment. Let’s start digging!”

  “Permission to speak freely, sir?” one of the soldiers at the rear asked.

  The lieutenant removed her backpack. “Go ahead.”

  “Why don’t we try to open the trap door again, send someone down on a tether, and pull them up?”

  “That is not a viable option, Ramage. Hicks, explain.”

  “Because,” Hicks supplied. “The trap door remains open for about three minutes. By the time one of us reaches the bottom and secures the first one to be rescued, the door would close.”

  “Can’t we prop it open?”

  “We tried, and it damaged my rifle.”

  “Enough chatter,” interrupted the lieutenant. “Ramage, Green, grab a pick. You two will chip through the trap door in five-minute shifts. Miller, you and Hicks will hold the line while they work. Hunter, you and I will scout the rest of the floor to see if there is another way down.”

  “Yes, ma’am!” The squad responded in almost perfect unison.

  About half an hour passed while they worked and searched. As Hunter and the lieutenant reached the area near the stairs leading up, she heard one of the soldiers yell. “Lieutenant Kriegler!”

  Kriegler stopped her examination and turned to Hunter. “Keep searching, Hunter.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  As Kriegler reached the top of the stairs, she saw Ramage sitting on the top step, shirtless and sweaty. Hicks knelt next to him holding a canteen.

  “Report.”

  Ramage pointed down the stairs. “Green found something, ma’am.”

  Green stood next to a tiny hole in the floor where they had been digging.

  “What did you find?” asked Kriegler.

  Green shook his head. “I’m not sure, ma’am. We discovered this after digging through about six inches of stone. It seems that a faint, blue glow is coming from the hole, and it looks like some strange machinery is on the other side. The workings under the floor appear almost organic in nature.”

  Kriegler stepped past Ramage and descended to the landing. Once there, she squatted down and peered through the hole at the mysterious technology. She pulled a light stick from her pocket and poked it through the hole.

  “Sir,” Green remarked. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  Kriegler ignored Green’s comment and jabbed deeper. “Why is this working and nothing else?”

  As Kriegler prodded again, a faint, ascending whine reached everyone’s ears. She looked around, trying to locate its source. Tracing it to her sidearm, he drew the weapon and smiled on seeing it powered and fully functional.

  “Sir!” Ramage exclaimed. “My equipment is working again!”

  “Mine, too!” added Miller.

  A sound of stone moving against stone emanated into the stairway from behind Green as Kriegler held her hands out in victory and smiled, “See? Now that we have power running again, we can…”

  A bright green flash filled the room for a brief second and cut her words short.

  * * * * *

  Hunter’s voice echoed through the dark corridors.

  “Ma’am? Lieutenant? Hicks? Miller?”

  Receiving no answer, Hunter walked to the doorway and surveyed the staircase. He took note of the blue light coming from the hole in the floor, the scattered equipment and ash. He frowned. Using his own light stick, he knelt next to the pile of ash at his feet and sifted through it until he discovered a set of dog tags. They belonged to Hicks.

  His eyes widened in horror, and he moved to look at the second pile at the top of the stairs. In the green light, the metal chain of Ramage’s dog tags glinted back at him. He gazed down the stairs at the three other piles and the bits of equipment scattered around them.

  “Oh, god!”

  Hunter jumped to his feet and bolted for the pyramid’s entrance.

  Chapter 15

  Anna, Jason, and the scientists sat huddled together for what felt like hours, while Cooper reclined nearby with his pistol trained on them. The only sounds Anna heard were their own breathing, occasional shuffling while somebody adjusted their position, and a distant drip of water, which Anna deduced was on the far side of the cavern. She rubbed her arms and, for the first time in a long time, thought about donning something other than the sleeveless leather top she wore; the temperature in the cavern was a little lower than comfortable.

  Anna stared into the darkness, lost in thought. She focused on their current situation and thought back over her words and actions. Could she have said or done anything different that would have had a better result and not trapped them below the pyramid? What secrets could possibly lie behind the door inside the pyramid that had never been opened? Could the key to solving their problem be there?

  An elbow jabbed into her ribs, pulling Anna’s wandering mind back to reality. Jason was pointing at Cooper. She saw that his head had lolled to the side and he had loosened his grip on the pistol.

  Anna placed a finger to her lips and slowly stood up. She stepped carefully toward the sergeant, alternately shifting her eyes from him to the uneven floor ahead of her. It was not easy to watch her target given the low green light, but her determination to get the gun out of Cooper’s hand fueled her bravado.

  A sharp breath from behind caused Anna to stop. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Tomomi. The scientist had been sleeping a moment ago. Now, she stared at Anna with wide eyes, her hand cupped over her mouth.

  Anna froze and stared unblinking at Cooper. Expecting him to awaken, her muscles tightened as she crouched, preparing to dive back toward her seat if he stirred.

  Hearing Tomomi’s deep breathing return after another moment, Anna stood again and breathed easily before resuming her cautious approach. Remembering the pistol still holstered in her tool belt, she contemplated readying the weapon to defend herself should Cooper wake up. She decided it would be best to be prepared, slowly drew her pistol, and kept it trained on the slumbering sergeant.

  Step.

  Anna could now hear Cooper’s soft breathing as he slept. Though he did not stir, he appeared as if he could spring into action at any time. She renewed her grip on her pistol. Was she breathing? She could no longer tell.

  Step.

  Cooper’s weapon was almost within reach.

  Step.

  Anna crouched next to Cooper and reached for his pistol. She kept her own aimed at his head. As her fingers slid over the pistol, Cooper inhaled sharply and squirmed. Anna jumped, almost reflexively squeezing off a shot. She steadied her hand, but her heart continued to race so hard she thought each beat echoed within the cavern. Her eyes, wide and alert in the dim light, locked on Cooper’s face for any sign of him waking up.

  To her relief, Cooper settled back down and returned to sleep. Anna turned her gaze to his pistol, closed her grip on it, and slowly lifted it from his hand. Once it was clear, she stood and stepped backwards while watching him. Confident that he slept on,
she returned to the rest of the group.

  As Anna sat down, she looked at the weapon. She mentally kicked herself. Its digital displays were lifeless. She could not believe she had forgotten the EM field. While mentally kicking herself, she handed the dead firearm to Cary, who took it and shrugged after looking over the pistol for a second.

  Jason leaned toward her ear. “What do we do now?”

  She looked back at him. “I’m going to scout the caves while the rest of you wait here and keep an eye on the sergeant.”

  “I want to go with you.”

  “No, I’ll move faster alone. Besides, you’re the only other uninjured person here. You need to stay and help the others.”

  Anna patted him on the shoulder and smiled before rising to her feet. She pulled two light sticks from Anderson’s jacket and sneaked to the lower exit from the chamber.

  * * * * *

  Jason turned to Cary and Tomomi, both of whom stared at him with questioning looks. He mimed his message to them, only to receive confused looks in return. As he started again, Tomomi’s face changed, showing she had figured it out, and she whispered something into Cary’s ear. He nodded knowingly and beckoned for Jason to lean in close.

  “Next time,” said Cary in hushed tones. “You don’t need to be all secretive about it. Just let us know that Anna had to use the restroom. It’s no big deal.”

  * * * * *

  Anna drew another arrow on the cave wall with the rock she’d picked up shortly after leaving the rest of the group. It pointed back the way she had come, so that it could lead her back to the group.

  Over the last several minutes, Anna’s task had been relatively easy. The passage in the rock that led downward from the cavern curved around gradually but did not branch off. She figured it would have to divide at some point.

  Fate must have listened to her; Anna encountered a three-way intersection several steps later. The main passage continued straight forward. But, another passage branched off and spiraled down and to the right, while another narrow tunnel led directly upward. Anna examined the walls of the shaft. She thought she could climb it, although with some difficulty. She did note, however, that no air seemed to be coming down the shaft as she stood below the entrance, and the glow from her light stick did not reveal any deviation in the passage’s direction. She believed the shaft was worth investigating, even as she doubted it led directly to the surface. She paused to put on the knee pads stored in her tool belt before beginning her ascent.

  Several minutes passed while Anna scaled the pipe. She was glad it was narrow enough for her to brace herself from time to time, which she now did. She braced herself against the wall behind her with her feet and wiped the sweat from her brow. The shaft felt warmer now. She thought she could see either the top or a turn the illumination from the light stick did not clarify which. Anna took a deep breath and set off again.

  Anna reached the top in no time. It was solid stone. She reached up and pushed against it, but it did not budge. Her fingertips came away damp. With a frown, she climbed back down to the intersection.

  Anna dropped to the floor and looked up again as she ran her thumb across her fingertips. They were dry!

  “That’s odd. The cave isn’t that warm. They should still be wet,” she mused out loud.

  She crouched and examined the tunnel’s floor. No water. Despite the fact that her arms ached from the climb, she scrambled back inside. About halfway up, she caught a water droplet fall past her out of the corner of her eye. She returned back to the bottom of the pipe.

  She scrutinized the floor on her arrival, but did not find the telltale wet spot where the water would have landed. Puzzled, she looked straight up the tunnel. “Where did you go?”

  She waited for several minutes for another drop of water to fall out of the opening, but none came.

  “This makes no sense,” she said before ascending the shaft yet again. “And, I really need to find an easier way to climb this.” She grunted, trying to ignore the burn in her arms and legs.

  When she reached the halfway mark again, she braced herself and pulled a rag from her belt and draped it over her legs. She planned to wait for several minutes, so she rested as best she could while taking a sip from her canteen.

  Just as her legs felt as if they were about to give out on her, a drop of water impacted with the rag. She immediately snatched the rag up and scrambled back down the shaft, pausing every few meters to check that the rag remained wet. The stain was there all the way down, but as she fell through the opening into the intersection again, it appeared to evaporate, leaving the rag bone dry. She stared at the cloth for a few seconds. What could cause such a phenomenon?

  “It’s a hologram!”

  Anna stuffed the rag back into her belt and reached for the shaft again but stopped. Her current capacity for examining the suspected hologram was about as good as that of somebody from the Dark Ages. Without the proper tools to examine it, the end of the tunnel might as well be real stone.

  She sighed, disappointed, and drew a star on the wall by the entrance to the shaft. She looked up it one last time before turning and resuming her expedition. She chose the straight path and ventured down it after marking an arrow just inside the opening.

  She had walked along the new passageway for barely a minute, when it abruptly curved to her right and downward. Perhaps the sergeant was right; the tunnels did not lead to a way out. She leaned against the rocky wall and examined what she knew so far of the underground labyrinth. Only the vertical shaft held any hope of providing an exit. These other passageways led deeper into the moon. Her memories of the network of caves she had wandered through almost a decade ago were hazy at best, the most prominent being of the pain from her broken leg. One thing she did recall was that the passage that had come to a dead end had also dripped water from the ceiling.

  Water dripping from the ceiling…

  Noting the similarities between the tunnel she had first discovered and the most recent one, a startling revelation struck her.

  “Could it be that the exit was there the whole time?”

  Her lips creased into a smile that widened.

  Almost squealing with delight, Anna turned to dash back to the rest of the group, but halted in her tracks. “Better mark this spot, just in case.”

  As she stepped next to the far wall and placed her left hand on it to steady herself, the activation light on her wristcomp, now glowing, grabbed her attention. She stared at the device, then gasped. She was outside the EM field.

  She tapped the communicator button and opened her mouth to speak, but stopped in shock. The rock wall in front of her shimmered and disappeared to reveal more tunnel leading further along its original straight path.

  Excited, but now wary, Anna looked down the new piece of tunnel, unsure of whether to venture further or not. She looked back over her shoulder toward the cavern. The group depended on her finding a way out. She didn’t want to let them down.

  She turned back to the new portion of tunnel. After ten years of living in solitude with only occasional interactions with the strange beings who visited the moon, she finally had a possibility of learning more about them. Her heart leaped at the chance to find them.

  But, what if they didn’t want to see her? After all, their isolationist behavior in the past had made relations with them unreliable. Only the one scientist and his companion had been open and friendly toward her. Would they be there to greet her? Would anybody be there at all? Where would they be anyway?

  Anna looked behind her again. Should she take the chance at meeting with the other life forms while trying to find their escape route, if that was where this tunnel led? The tunnels she had already checked all led to dead ends or areas that could not be explored while the EM field was in place. The others guided her further down and were less likely to lead to a surface entrance. This was her best option.

  Anna removed her flashlight from her belt and turned it on. She grinned at the bright beam that p
enetrated the darkness ahead. She dropped the light stick on the ground in front of the cave entrance, hoping it would serve as a clue, if anyone followed her down the tunnels, as to her whereabouts. She took a deep breath and stepped into the tunnel.

  Chapter 16

  Hunter ran down the pyramid steps and on to the stone terrace surrounding the large, ancient building. Pivoting on his foot, he bolted for the officers’ tents. He almost tripped during the sudden turn, but managed to keep his footing. He sped past the unsuspecting scientists and soldiers, who paused their activities to watch him.

  Todd screeched to a halt in front of the captain and his lieutenants moments later, sweaty and out of breath. He saluted and stood at attention for the scant seconds it took for the captain to return the gesture.

  “Report, soldier.”

  “They’re…dead, sir. Lt. Kriegler…Hicks…Ramage…the whole squad, sir.”

  “What? What in the hell happened, private?”

  “I…don’t know, sir. One minute…they were talking…and the next…silence.” He was out of breath.

  “Why aren’t you dead?”

  “Pardon…sir?”

  “Where were you, when the rest of the squad perished?”

  “I…was investigating…the walls…outside of the room…lieutenant’s orders…sir.”

  The captain fell silent for a few seconds. His brow furrowed while he rubbed his chin.

  One of the lieutenants interrupted, “Sir?”

  “Private, go have a seat over there. Take a breather.”

  “Yes, sir.” Hunter saluted.

  After Hunter moved away, the captain turned to his subordinates, “This sounds fishy to me. Buckley, call a couple of MPs up here to take the private into custody for further questioning. Basta, assemble an assault team. I don’t care what kind of collateral damage is done to that god-damned pyramid. We’re getting our people out.”

  * * * * *

  A low moan escaped Cooper’s lips as he stirred from his nap. He was fully awake a couple of seconds later, momentarily confused by the dim surroundings but recalled that he was trapped underground moments later. Cary sat several meters in front of him, holding a pistol. Tomomi slept next to Cary on the hard ground, using her backpack as a makeshift pillow. Neither Anna nor Jason were in sight. It was then he realized he no longer held his sidearm.