The Vault of Hercules

Chapter 27

Sam snapped on in high definition. The place was not entirely natural, yet its architecture seemed to be wrought from pure rock formations with no human help. Next to the main pillars, a collection of similar columns formed a circle to the rear, each formed in the fashion of the architectural temple, but void of anything ornate.

“There’s no trace of volutes or carved stalks at the top,” Rita noted as Sam joined her to take pictures of the giant shafts. “But the columns are uniform in size and design.”

“Look, I'm not expert on archaeology or masonry,” he remarked, “but these other columns are not any building material I’ve ever seen. They look… this is ridiculous… natural!”

Purdue came to have a closer look. “I believe you’re correct, Sam.” He touched the pillar, gave it a smell, and then raised his eyebrow at Rita. “Medley, I could be wrong, but I could almost swear that these other columns are natural formations.”

“Bullshit,” Guido scoffed. “They all have precise lines, running from top to bottom.”

Rita shook her head. She let out a shriek of disbelief, armored with awe. “Calcium carbonate. But that’s impossible. It’s an anomaly of nature. Cave formations formed in this exact design at the exact same time?”

“Can calcium deposits form on the exterior of a mountain environment?” Nina asked.

“No,” Purdue answered categorically. “They would have no source to form from. Scientifically, it defies logic. Calcite deposits cannot come from the bloody trees overhead.”

“For once in my life I have to concur with David,” Rita admitted. “There’s no way this is possible, yet I can attest that all these seemingly handcrafted pillars consist of calcite, not stone or marble. Jesus Christ, this is unbelievable!”

Sam was filming now. It was too fantastic to capture in stills and it would benefit the footage if it contained Rita, Purdue, and Nina's explanations and speculation. He soon reminded himself to do some other filming as well and not to get too involved in the surrealistic beauty of the trip. He wondered if Paddy had his daughter back yet, and against his will, he wondered if Amber Smith's little heart was still beating. This hideous thought made him turn his lens to Guido and his men. Zooming in on each of their faces, he memorized them for when they would become fair game.

“Look, the only logical explanation would be that it used to be a cave, and the roof crumbled,” Nina guessed, stretching her cognition as far as it could possibly reach. “So it left the stalagmites standing erect like this.”

“Good call, Nina,” Purdue murmured as he paced slowly from one to the next. “There are ten, excluding the two marble ones.”

“Did you get that, Sam?” Rita asked. Sam whirled around to face her before she could notice that he was filming her husband.

“Aye!” he affirmed. “Aye, got all that.”

Nina chuckled and shook her head. Purdue suggested that they enter the tall, dark portal between the columns to see if it led to an interior structure. Guido left two of his men posted outside as the others collected their backpacks and flashlights to start their journey into the bowels of the unnamed mountain.

Much like the temple built for Hercules by human hands, this natural structure held within the circular columns a stone mound through which the party could enter via the low portal they encountered. There was no indication whether the stone mound was solid or hollow, infested with snakes or brimming with pristine water.

“Ladies first,” Purdue jested as he waited by the entrance.

“Pretend we are feminists, David. Go on, be my guest,” Rita insisted.

Between the two of them nothing would progress, so Nina stepped ahead. “Oh, bollocks! Let me see what grisly death awaits us, oh mighty Athena and Zeus,” she mocked, shoving Purdue aside as her small frame was swallowed by the corroded mouth of the rock mound. They quickly followed suit.

Inside there was no sound and no light. No trickling of water and no hiss of air coursing through the crevices and craters of the subterranean world. It was eerie, but they were determined to finish what others could not. Sam looked behind him, keeping an eye on Guido's movements. Especially here in the dark he would be easy prey for a coward like Guido Bruno.

A light clicked on next to Sam, betraying his eyes to Guido. The Sicilian could not understand the journalist's suicidal infatuation with him, but he vowed to whack Sam Cleave first out of all of them. The light came from Purdue's headlamp, an investment he’d made on his last spelunking holiday that served him well here.

“Shit, Purdue! That’s like a portable supernova,” Nina hissed, sheltering her eyes with her palm.

“Sorry,” he apologized, dampening the strength of the beam by two settings.

They all switched on their flashlights, bleeding their light all around them to ascertain the level of danger they were dealing with. The roof of the stone mound, as expected, was wet and corroded with dripping protrusions weeping down to the solid, but moist floor. Nina was grateful that she’d brought cleats for a firmer grip on the slippery, uneven floor.

There were some traces of previous visits, but only to the keen eye. As he passed, Sam observed a rusted Iron Cross at the base of a rock wall, practically consumed by the calcium deposits and water it was submerged in. He used his night vision to record the remnant, but did not announce it or pick it up. For now, all he had to do was gather enough intelligence on Purdue's involvement in this expedition, even though he couldn’t stop contemplating the fate of the kidnapped girls.

For over twenty minutes the expedition proceeded forward, having no alternative route but the regular shaft they were continuing down.

“Look, boss,” one of Guido's men whispered, getting Sam's attention too. The journalist dropped his camera to his side without turning around, and filmed behind him. Sam would see later upon running the footage that the dreaded sigil of the Order of the Black Sun was fashioned against the cavern wall, sporting the Herculean clubs as its radiating lightning bolts. Guido nodded quickly and gestured for the man to keep quiet. Sam knew precisely what that was all about and wished more than ever that he could just lash out, finish the Mafia lowlife, and be done with it.

Purdue walked just behind Rita, with Nina trailing him. All their illumination yielded was more confined space between walls that met the slanting ceiling a bit lower every few meters. For a tall man like Purdue, it was becoming exceedingly uncomfortable to walk so hunched over, but he hoped that soon they would enter a larger chamber with a higher roof.

“Stop,” Rita said suddenly. They all gathered into a clump to hear what she’d seen ahead. “We should just leave these to find our way back,” she said, holding a handful of flashing beacons out to the others. “Take these, and make sure we leave one on the floor for every five meters we progress into the cave.”

“Find our way back?” her husband scoffed. “Christ, Rita! We’re moving along in a queue of one file because of the single lane vein we are in. There is only one way back. It’s kinda hard to get lost with only one fucking corridor.”

“Well, anything can happen while we’re at the deep end, Guido,” she snapped. “The roof could collapse or water could come pouring in from the side, leaving us disorientated. For fuck's sake, just listen to me! This is my turf. Here you are just a tourist.”

Nina and Purdue smiled among themselves and obeyed Rita's suggestion before they carried on.

“How far in do you think the Vault will be?” Sam asked, solely because he needed to calibrate his feed according to the coverage above the mountain region.

“Not far, I'm sure,” she replied. “But I think we should be looking for water to find the Vault. As soon as we reach water, or an underground lake, the Vault should be close.”

Purdue was excited to find the Vault, although the knowledge of previous explorers perishing and the blatant presence of Nazi ideology all over the place had him calculating disaster in the near distance. The trail had become disturbingly monotonous, forcing the individuals to wonder if they were even in the right subterranean death trap.

Nina started falling back, mostly because she wanted to be closer to Sam. Guido, in turn, advanced ahead to walk behind Purdue. “Oh, hey, Mr. Bruno,” Purdue greeted with a wince as he craned his neck forward under the low ceiling. Rita frowned and whispered, “What are you doing here, love? Did you suddenly realize how interesting this is after all?”

“No, I just don't like the vibe back there,” Guido admitted, sounding almost normal. “Something is following us. I ain't scared, I'm just saying that I'd rather have Sal back there. Just a fucking creepy feeling, you know?”

“I don't blame you,” Purdue said. “Many men go into paranoid panics when inside mine shafts or confined caverns where the escape route is so small.”

“I said!” Guido moaned defensively. “I ain't scared or panicking or whatever.”

“Alright, alright. Just keep your voice down,” his wife reminded him. “We don't want unnecessary problems down here.”

A terrible waft of putrid stench suddenly overcame them.

“Fuckin' hell!” Sam groaned nasally as he pinched his nose. “Did Guido let one go?”

“Fuck you, man!” was all he heard from Guido ahead in the faint dark. Sam could see four silhouettes sink to their knees in disgust, the beams of their torches swinging wildly against the roof and walls of the cavern. Coughing and uttering their revulsion, the members of the Hercules expedition slowly composed themselves.

“Come on, everyone,” Purdue said clearly, as he lit the area in front of him. “There’s a larger hall here, thank God.”

“You mean a sewerage farm with a higher ceiling,” Sam corrected him, scampering to his feet to catch up to the others. He did not trust Sal, Guido's big oaf, behind him, although even the thug was having a hard time holding his breakfast in the warm, fermented fetor of the next cavern. From afar they could hear the sound of water rushing and a faint dripping closer to them. When they stepped into the large cave, all looked normal — stalactites, stalagmites, cascading protrusions — apart from the floor.

“Holy shit!” Nina exclaimed. “Guano galore! Be careful, the amount of nitrogen and spores in this shit will kill you. Cover your mouths and noses, people!”

Sam just had to. “That one statement alone, Nina, contains several priceless puns.”

“I know, Sam, let it go,” was all she replied, wrapping her bandanna around her face. The entire floor, reaching a distance of at least one hundred meters, was covered in heaps of guano so concentrated that it contained more fungal spores than average infestation dictated, deadly to humans.

Purdue checked the roof and examined the formations against the wet walls, looking perplexed. “There are no bats here.”

“There has to be. It's a cave!” Guido said.

“No, there are no visible colonies of bats, although I’m not prepared to fling a rock into the cave to find out for sure. I just find it peculiar, since there’s so much excrement in such a centralized area.”

“We have to cross it to get to the next tunnel, David. Otherwise we’ll never get to the lake flooding the Vault,” Medley reminded her old foe. She stepped onto the guano, but soon discovered that it was as hazardous as it smelled. Medley's shoe sank into the loose deposits as if it were wet mud. With a scream she retracted her leg, revealing the fabric being eaten away by the potency of whatever bred in the excrement.