The Atlantis Scrolls

Chapter 30

Purdue thought it well for them to follow the lines on his tablet, which now pointed eastward, using the tunnel they were in. On the small screen, the castle was marked with a red dot and from there, like a giant spider, the vast tunnel system spread out in mostly three cardinal directions.

“I find it remarkable that after all this time these channels are mostly void of debris or erosion,” Sam remarked as he followed Purdue into the darkness.

“I agree. It makes me very uncomfortable to think that this place has been left vacant and yet it has no remnants of what happened here during the war,” Nina agreed, her big brown eyes taking note of every detail of the walls and their round merger with the floor.

“What is that sound?” Sam asked again, annoyed by its constant hum so subdued that it almost became part of the silence in the dark tunnel.

“It reminds me of a turbine of sorts,” Purdue mentioned as he frowned at the strange object that appeared a few yards ahead on his schematic. He stopped.

“What is it?” Nina asked with an inch of panic in her voice.

Purdue continued on at a slower pace, wary of the square object he could not place from its diagrammatic shape.

“Stay here,” he whispered.

“No fucking way,” Nina said and hooked her arm into Sam’s again. “You won’t leave me in the dark.”

Sam smiled. It was good to feel so useful to Nina again and he enjoyed her constant touch.

“Turbines?” Sam repeated with a contemplative nod. It made sense, if this network of tunnels were indeed used by the Nazis. It would have been a more clandestine way to generate electricity while the above world was oblivious to its existence.

From the shadows ahead of them Sam and Nina heard Purdue’s excited report, “Ah! Looks like a generator!”

“Thank God,” Nina sighed, “I don’t know how long I’d be able to walk in this pitch darkness.”

“Since when are you afraid of the dark?” Sam asked her.

“I’m not. But being in an undiscovered, creepy underground hangar with no light to see what is around us, is a bit unnerving, don’t you think?” she explained.

“Aye, that I can relate to.”

The flare died too quickly and the slowly gaining blackness draped itself like a cloak over them.

“Sam,” Purdue said.

“On it,” Sam replied and sank to his haunches to retrieve another flare from the bag.

A clanging in the dark ensued as Purdue fiddled with the dusty machine.

“This is not your run-of-the-mill generator. It is some sort of contraption designed for various functions, I’m sure, but for which, I have no idea,” Purdue said.

Sam lit another flare, but did not see the moving shapes at a distance coming up in the tunnel behind them. Nina crouched next to Purdue to examine the cobweb-riddled machine. Housed in a solid metal frame, it reminded Nina of an old washing machine. The front was lined with thick knobs, each with four settings, but the lettering had been eroded so there was no way to tell what they were supposed to set.

Purdue’s long, trained fingers fiddled at the back with some wiring.

“Be careful, Purdue,” Nina urged.

“Don’t fret, dear,” he smiled. “I’m moved by your concern, though. Thank you.”

“Don’t get cocky. This place is more than enough for me to deal with right now,” she snapped with a slap to his arm that made him chuckle.

Sam could not help but feel uncomfortable. As a world-renowned journalist he had been in some hairy places before, facing some of the world’s most wicked people and locations, but he had to admit it had been a long time since he felt so unsettled by atmosphere. Had he been a superstitious man, Sam would well have imagined that the tunnels were haunted.

A loud crack and a discharge of sparks came from the machine, followed by a labored, inconsistent rhythm at first. Nina and Purdue fell back from the sudden life of the thing and heard the engine gradually find its pace into a steady rotation.

“It idles like a tractor,” Nina remarked to no-one in particular. The sound reminded her of her childhood, when she woke up before dawn to the sound of her grandfather’s tractor starting up. It was a rather sweet reminiscence here in the abandoned alien dwelling of ghosts and Nazi history.

One by one, the meager wall-mounted lights flickered to life. Their hard plastic covers hosted years of dead bugs and dust, greatly impairing the illumination of the bulbs inside. It was astonishing that the fine wiring was still effective, but, as expected, the light was faint at best.

“Well, at least we can see where we’re going,” Nina said as she looked around at the seemingly endless stretch of tunnel, slightly turning to the left a few yards ahead. For some unintelligible reason, that bend gave Sam a bad feeling, but he kept it to himself. He could not seem to shake this feeling of foreboding — and for good reason.

From behind them, in the ill-lit throat of the subterranean world they found themselves, five small shadows shifted in the dark just as before when Nina failed to notice.

“Let’s go and see what is around that side,” Purdue suggested, and started walking with the zipped bag slung over his shoulder. Nina pulled Sam along and they walked in silence and curiosity with only the low buzz of the turbine and the sound of their footsteps echoing in the vast space.

“Purdue, we need to make this quick. As I reminded you yesterday, Sam and I have to get back to Mongolia soon,” Nina urged. She had given up on trying to figure out where Renata was, but she hoped to return to Bern with some consolation, whatever she could do to assure him of her loyalty. Sam had left the task of probing Purdue for Renata’s whereabouts to Nina, because she held favor with him more than Sam.

“I know, my dear Nina. And we will sort all that out as soon as we have discovered what Ernaux knew, and why he sent us to Wewelsburg, of all places. I promise I’ll make good on it, but for now, just help me find this elusive secret,” Purdue reassured her. Not once did he look at Sam when he promised his assistance. “I know what they want. I know why they sent you back here.”

That was enough for now, Nina realized, and decided not to press him any further.

“Do you hear that?” Sam asked suddenly, his ears piqued.

“No, what?” Nina frowned.

“Listen!” Sam exhorted with a serious expression. He stopped in his tracks to better distinguish the tapping and ticking behind them in the darkness. Now Purdue and Nina heard it too.

“What is that?” Nina asked with a distinct quiver in her voice.

“I don’t know,” Purdue whispered, holding his open hand up to calm her and Sam.

The light from the walls brightened and dimmed constantly as the current rose and fell through the age-old copper wiring. Nina looked back and gasped so loudly that her terror echoed through the massive warren.

“Oh, Jesus!” she cried and clutched at the arms of both her companions with unspeakable horror on her face.

Behind them five black dogs appeared from the shadowy lair of the distance.

“All right, how surreal is that? Am I seeing what I think I am seeing?” Sam asked, rearing to bolt.

Purdue remembered the animals from the Cologne Cathedral where he and his sister were trapped. These were the same breed with the same tendency toward absolute discipline, so they had to be the same dogs. But he had no time now to ponder on their presence or their origin. They had no choice but to…

“Run!” Sam shouted, and dragged Nina half off her feet from the velocity of his dash. Purdue followed suit as the animals took off at full speed behind them. The three explorers raced around the bend of the unknown structure, hoping to find some place to hide or escape, but the tunnel continued without change as the dogs gained on them.

Sam turned and cracked a flare. “Go! Go!” he shouted at the other two while he acted as barricade between the beasts and Purdue and Nina.

“Sam!” Nina cried, but Purdue pulled her forward in the flashing pale light of the tunnel.

Sam held the fiery stick out ahead of him, waving it at the Rottweilers. They stopped at the sight of the bright blaze and Sam knew he had only a few seconds to find a way out.

He could hear Purdue and Nina’s footsteps gradually grow quieter as the distance between him and them grew. Quickly, his eyes darted from side to side, while he kept his gaze on the position of the animals. Growling and salivating, they curled back their lips in furious threat at the human with the fire stick. A sharp whistle floated through the yellowish pipe, instantly beckoning from the far end of the tunnel, Sam estimated.

Three of the dogs turned immediately and ran back, while the other two stayed put as if they had heard nothing. Sam reckoned they were being manipulated by their master; much like a shepherd’s whistle could control his dog with a series of different calls. This was how he controlled their movements.

Genius, Sam thought.

Two remained to keep an eye on him. He noticed that his flare was growing weaker.

“Nina?” he called. Nothing came back. “That’s it, Sam,” he told himself, “you’re on your own, lad.”

Out of flares, Sam took his camera and set it to flash. At least the flash would temporarily blind them, but he was mistaken. The two buxom bitches ignored the bright light of the camera, yet they did not advance. The whistle sounded again and they started to growl at Sam.

Where are the other dogs? he thought, standing dead still.

His question was answered shortly after, when he heard Nina screaming. Sam did not care if the animals caught up with him. He had to come to Nina’s aid. With more courage than common sense the journalist hightailed it in the direction of Nina’s voice. On his heel he could hear the clicking of the dogs’ nails on the cement as they chased him. At any moment he expected to feel a leaping animal’s heavy carcass land on him, nails ripping at his skin, and fangs sinking into his throat. In his sprint he looked back to see that they did not gain on him. From what Sam could deduce, it appeared that the dogs were being used to corral him, not kill him. Still, it was not a good position to be in.

Progressing beyond the bend, he noticed two other tunnels shooting off from this one and he prepared to make a dash into the higher of the two. One above the other, it was bound to break the speed of the Rottweilers when he jumped for the higher entrance.

“Nina!” he called again, and this time he heard her far away, too far to figure out where she was.

“Sam! Sam, hide!” he heard her cry.

With an extra jolt of speed he leapt for the higher entrance, a few yards before the ground-level entrance of the other tunnel. He struck the cold, hard concrete with a devastating thud that nearly crushed his ribs, but Sam quickly clawed his way up into the gaping hole about twenty feet in height. To his dismay, one dog followed, while the other yelped from the impact of her failed attempt.

Nina and Purdue had the others to deal with. The Rottweilers had somehow doubled back to ambush them from the other side of the tunnel.

“You know that means all these channels are connected, right?” Purdue mentioned, as he punched in the information on his tablet.

“This is hardly the time to chart the fucking labyrinth, Purdue!” she frowned.

“Oh, but it would be the opportune time, Nina,” he retorted. “The more information we get on the access points, the easier we’d be able to escape.”

“So, what are we supposed to do about them?” she pointed at the milling dogs around them.

“Just keep still and speak in a quiet voice,” he advised. “If their master wanted us dead, we’d be doggy fodder by now.”

“Oh, lovely. I feel so much better now,” Nina said, as her eyes found the tall human shadow stretching against the smooth wall.