The Lost Level (26 page)

He lay on the floor, covered from head to toe in clear, foul–smelling
slime. It appeared at first glance as if he had lost weight. I assumed it must
have been a visual trick caused by his wet fur. The same thing had happened
when I used to give my cat a bath as a child. Dry, the cat’s fur was puffy, and
he looked like he weighed twenty pounds, but when I stuck him in the bathtub
and his fur was wet, he looked emaciated. But then I saw the wounds on Bloop’s
torso, and I realized in horror what had really happened. The slug had sucked
him dry. It had fed on him in the dark, while we slept only a few feet away.
Had he awoken, or cried out, and we just hadn’t heard him? Or was the attack so
sudden that he couldn’t move beneath the crushing weight? Had his last thoughts
been hope of rescue, a surety that we, his friends, would see what was happening
and come to his aid? Had he died with those hopes?

I’d promised him. I’d promised him that I’d save him, that I’d
get him to help, and now….

The guilt was overwhelming. I raised my head to the ceiling and
screamed. I raged in that place where darkness met sunlight, cursing God, and
the Lost Level, and the slug.

But mostly, I cursed myself.

Perhaps, if you are reading this notebook, then you are just as
angry right now. I do not blame you, friend. The blame is all mine. It was my
fault Bloop was killed. And as I said, although this happened a long time ago,
I carry the guilt with me still. Let that be enough.

It has to be enough.

The giant slug had nearly made it to one of the large archways at
the rear of the chamber. Seething with hate, I clenched my sword and stumbled
to my feet. Dimly, I felt Kasheena grab my shoulder.

“What?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“There are more of them. See there!”

I looked where she was pointing. Sure enough, three more giant
slugs were crawling into the chamber from the other rooms. A fourth slithered
down the large stairwell. Each of the creatures paused, either sensing their
companion’s caution or trepidation at the sunlight, or perhaps both. At that
moment, I didn’t care. If they stood still, that would only make it easier to
slaughter them.

“We cannot fight them,” Kasheena said. “It did not care about our
swords, and I know my aim was true. We don’t have weapons that will kill them.
We must flee while we still can.”

“But Bloop…they killed Bloop. They fucking killed Bloop,
Kasheena! He was our friend, and they fucking ate him!”

“We cannot fight them,” she repeated. “The tikka–birds are gone,
Aaron. If they were not, they would have swarmed inside the moment you opened
the door. We must leave now. I will not die in this place, and if you love me,
you will not either.”

Her words gave me pause. I turned to her, momentarily speechless.
The slugs hovered, neither pressing the attack nor retreating.

“Love you…? Yes. Yes, Kasheena, I do love you.”

“And I love you, as well. Now, let us leave this place, so that
those are not our last words.”

Still overcome with shock and grief, I allowed her to lead me
toward the door. I stopped halfway through. She tugged at my arm.

“Aaron, please.”

“We can’t leave Bloop’s body behind. Not in here. Not with those
things.”

“He is dead. There is nothing more we can do for him.”

“I know, but I’m not leaving his body behind. He deserves better
than that. What if we had left your uncle behind, when the Anunnaki killed him?”

Releasing her hand, I headed back into the temple. The wounded
slug had squeezed its bulk through the center archway at the rear of the
chamber. The others were still holding their positions—wavering back and forth
undecidedly like vast globs of gelatin. All had that same mottled coloring, and
their combined stench made me gag.

“I’ll be back for you,” I growled at them. “You can bet I’ll be
back.”

I grabbed Bloop’s arms, and then Kasheena was beside me, taking
hold of his legs. Without speaking, we carried him out of the darkness and into
the sunshine. When we reached the open plain, we laid him at our feet. His eyes
were open, staring sightlessly. I knelt and closed them, holding my fingertips
in place until I was sure they would stay shut. My ears began to ring.

“See, Aaron!” Kasheena pointed with excitement. “My kinsmen come.
They must have heard our plight. We are saved.”

I glanced at where she was pointing and saw a dozen or so armed
figures running across the plain. They shouted and called, but were too far
away for us to understand them.

“I see Gronak,” she gasped. “And there is little Peto! Oh, how he
has grown in such a short time!”

The ringing in my ears grew louder, and my vision began to blur.
I remained at Bloop’s side, afraid to stand up because I was certain I would
fall over if I did.

Shock,
I remember thinking.
You’re going into shock. If
you had any sense of honor, you’d crawl back into that temple right now and let
those fucking slugs eat you, too.

“Aaron?” Kasheena’s voice sounded far away. “What is wrong? Are
you injured?”

“Your people were right, Kasheena.” I couldn’t tell if she heard
me or not, because I could no longer see straight. The world was spinning too
fast. “Tell them when they get here that they were right. That temple is
cursed. And so am I….”

Then I found darkness again, there beneath that eternal sun.

I AM ALMOST
OUT OF
room in this notebook now, and a thorough search of the bus has
turned up no more paper—at least, not enough that I can continue this memoir at
any great length. So, I’ll have to keep this next part as brief as possible. My
apologies in advance. Perhaps I’ll continue it again, once I’ve found the means
to do so. But this process has taken a lot out of me. I have faced many
hardships in my life, and overcome many obstacles, but I’ve never undertaken
something as difficult as recounting all that has gone before.

After I passed out, Kasheena’s people carried me back to their
village, and I slept in her family’s hut for a long time. While I was
unconscious, I’m told there was much rejoicing at her return, and much sorrow
over the death of her uncle, and to a lesser extent Bloop, who none of them had
ever met, but of whose exploits Kasheena had told them all. There was also a
great debate over my presence in the village, which caused quite a bit of
consternation in some quarters. I learned later that they were grateful for all
that Bloop and I had done, but there were some—mostly men (and a few women, as
well)—who had fancied themselves as Kasheena’s potential suitors and who now
insisted that I shouldn’t be allowed to stay. Luckily, Kasheena’s father gave
an impassioned speech defending me and reminding them of all I had done for his
daughter, and the majority of the village agreed that I should be allowed to
become part of the tribe if I so wished.

Which I did.

Kasheena and I courted, if you could call it that, and there were
a few challengers whom I had to ultimately deal with. In two cases, this was
settled through hand–to–hand combat, and I was the victor both times. A third potential
suitor challenged me to a game of wits, but I bested him, as well. Soon enough,
the rest seemed to make peace with the arrangement. I endeavored to make myself
a valuable member of the community, and worked hard, and was kind and good–humored.
Eventually, the vast majority of villagers accepted me as one of their own,
rather than an outsider. In time, I developed several good friendships among
the tribe and was included in everything.

I also became close with Kasheena’s father, who treated me as if
I was his own son. And I also had many long discussions with Shameal, the
village shaman. We exchanged mystical and occult lore the way some people might
exchange recipes. I’m pleased to say that we learned a lot from each other.

And yes, he verified for me what I had already suspected—that
there was no escape from the Lost Level.

But by then, I didn’t mind.

Kasheena’s people had no marital customs or legally binding
ceremonies. We simply lived together in a hut of our own. In time, we began
trying to have children. We practiced every chance we got.

Time passed, not measured in seasons or cycles of the sun, but in
sleep and aging. I was happy, for the most part. Not merely content, but happy.
I spent my days loving Kasheena, and bonding with her family and friends, and
learning the customs of the village. I was always delighted to discuss magic
and philosophy with Shameal, and in time he became a close friend, as well.
Perhaps my closest. I did my part in helping with the hunting and farming and
construction—whatever they needed of me, I gave. And I was pleased to do so. It
was a good life.

But sometimes, when Kasheena lay sleeping next to me, my thoughts
would wander, and a deep melancholy would gnaw at my soul. I never thought of
home, or those I’d left behind. Instead, I thought of Bloop, and when I did,
the guilt and sadness threatened to consume me.

Finally, after much haranguing, I convinced Kasheena’s father to
allow me to lead a party into the Temple of the Slug and exterminate the threat
that resided within. Convincing him was difficult, but finding enough warriors
to go with me proved nearly impossible. Eventually, I set out across the plain
accompanied by five stout individuals and weapons that had been coated with
salt, which the villagers mined from a nearby source. Shameal went with us, as
well, intent upon seeing the inside of the temple and perhaps finding hidden
knowledge. The fight was gruesome and arduous, and we lost a member of our
party when a slug knocked him down the stairwell, breaking his neck, but in the
end, we prevailed. And Shameal did indeed find some ancient scrolls in a room
on the upper floor. Unfortunately, they were written in a language that neither
of us recognized, but he studied them diligently, hoping to decipher their meaning.

After that, with the threat of the slugs vanquished, the village
grew and expanded, its boundaries stretching out across the plain and now
encompassing the temple as well as the forest.

Weeks or perhaps months after we killed the slugs (because I
still have never gotten good at marking the passage of time in this place), I
led another group to the crash site of the Nazi flying saucer with the intent
of burying the wreckage beneath the earth to safeguard the rest of the land.
Fifteen men and women accompanied me on that journey, including Shameal once
again, who was very interested in seeing the technology for himself. We worked
for what must have been several days, based on the number of sleeps we had, and
constructed a large earthen mound over the crash site. Indeed, by the time we
were finished, our labors had changed the very landscape itself. Satisfied that
nothing or no one would stumble upon the radioactive hazard unawares again, we
returned to the village—

—only to find it in smoking ruins.

Our people lay scattered, dead or dying, alongside the corpses of
an equal number of Anunnaki. We learned from one of the injured that a massive
force of snake men had attacked the village while we were gone. They’d captured
those they could restrain and slaughtered those they couldn’t. Kasheena’s
father was among those who had died defending the community. The Anunnaki had
been especially cruel with him, and we never did find all of his body. Many
others were mutilated in the same way. And though the villagers had put up a
fierce fight, in the end, they were overwhelmed by sheer numbers. Over one
hundred of our friends and family had been taken, including Kasheena.

I set out within a few hours, accompanied by a group of about two–dozen
men and women, tracking the Anunnaki. I made Shameal remain behind to guide and
lead what was left of the tribe. Our journey was one from which most of us didn’t
return, and it led us into the very heart of the Anunnaki’s city and the
horrors that awaited us there, in that artificial darkness.

But I’m out of room now, so that story, and our final battle with
the reptilian hordes, and how I eventually parted from the village, and how I
met 9, and our adventures together, and the next encounter with the Greys, and
my journey beneath the Lost Level, and the truth about the sun and the moon,
and everything else that has happened since, will have to wait.

I only hope that I have the means and time to write it before I
die. I fear that might be sooner than later. For I do not need to mark the
passage of time to know that I have grown old.

And thus, we come full circle, you who are reading this.

And I am still alone.

And it is dark in the sunlight.

The Lost Level
is the first book in a planned multi–volume
series of pulp–adventure novels. The next two books in the series are
Return
to the Lost Level
, which will pick up right where this novel ended and tell
the continuing adventures of Aaron Pace (including his assault upon the
Anunnaki city in an effort to find Kasheena), and
Hole in the World
,
which serves as a prequel and features characters who arrived in the Lost Level
before Aaron did. (In fact, one of those characters owned the wheelchair that
Aaron, Kasheena, and Bloop found in that pile of dinosaur shit earlier in this novel—but
you’ll find that out later).

I’ve always been a big fan of lost world and man–out–of–time
stories. Three of my greatest joys as a child were Sid and Marty Krofft’s
Land
of the Lost
television program (the original version rather than the remake
or the Will Ferrell film that followed), Mike Grell’s
Warlord
comic
books (published by DC Comics), and Edgar Rice Burroughs’s
Pellucidar
series of novels. All three featured characters from our world and time being
transported to someplace decidedly elsewhere, and it’s very easy to see how all
three influenced this particular book. Sometimes, the nods are blatant (such as
the presence of eternal sunlight). Other times, it’s more subtle. This is to be
expected of any tribute or pastiche, and let me be clear—I firmly mean for this
series of novels to serve as both. There are a number of other works that have
also influenced this endeavor, including Joe R. Lansdale’s
The Drive–In
series and
Under the Warrior Star
, Robert E. Howard’s
Almuric
,
and the ABC television series
Lost
, to name but a few.