Back down the mountain!

The inside of the passageway is filthy and damp, and the light quickly vanishes as you move forward. And stumble, almost tripping immediately – the floor here is jagged and uneven, and there’s a nasty stench of decay. Mould grows in bubbling yellow patches on the walls, and you wrap the leftover strip of cloth around your face to mask the smell.

The floor is still sloping down, though. At least you’re moving in the right direction.

You take it one step at a time, aware that you have no idea where you are right now. Maybe the mountainside would have been safer – it would have been hell trying to clamber back down in the dark, with an injured leg, but at least if you collapsed, someone might find you in the morning. Down here, you could lie for days without anyone discovering the body.

That’s not fucking helpful.

You grimace, shaking the image of your own corpse out of your mind. One foot in front of the other. That’s the only thing you need to worry about right now.

The tunnel curves at one point, and you wonder dimly whether it actually does lead down to the beach. Then there’s a crack in the ceiling, and a rare patch of moonlight – but your relief is short-lived.

Just up ahead, the tunnel forks into two separate paths. Both disappear into inky blackness, and you have no idea which direction you’re facing.

In the end, you go right out of some deeply-buried instinct, hoping against hope that it takes you down to the beach, or the town, or just out of this underground fucking labyrinth with its rotting smell and its treacherous floor and its scurrying vermin. You see a rat, twice, probably the same one; it’s large and fat and covered in dense black hair, and it sits in the center of the passageway, studying you curiously.

It doesn’t look intimidated at all, and you find yourself suddenly imagining what might happen if you do pass out down here… whether the rats will swarm over your body, whether they’ll gorge themselves – whether there’ll even be anything left if any rescuers come looking…

No. Fucking focus. Panic won’t help.

You swallow, taking several deep breaths. You’ve got to be nearly out of the tunnels now. It feels like you’ve been walking for miles.