The Seventh Mountain (35 page)

It is often unexpected when destiny reveals
itself.

Everyone who was close to Mark, and knew his
thoughts, was taking turns at reading what he was sending. Nick was
standing watch now. “He’s got warm clothes on now and he has eaten.
He’s wondering what to try next.”

Mrs. Shadowitz went to the easel and
wrote:

We’re working on what to try next.

Most of the council is reading about

past attempts at getting people out.

We are not going to give up.

By the time that the new message was
finished, Mark had gotten the large lantern out of a duffel bag and
was taking a closer look at the room. He found an area, just out
from the wall, where a lot of stuff had been haphazardly strewn.
There were old weapons, some tattered leather clothing, a few
stones with pictographs and a hodgepodge of other things. He hadn’t
found them before; because he was too close to the wall and his
penlight didn’t give much light. He examined the artifacts at
length to allow whoever was reading his thoughts to see what he
saw.

A couple of hours later, on another area of
the wall, he found some writing that looked like what he had seen
on the stone in the museum. It read, “
Walk through a door before
it closes
.” He stared at it for a long time so that the others
could pick up on it.

He was getting hungry again. He turned
around to rest his back on the wall and slide down to sit on the
floor. As soon as his back touched the wall, the door opened. Mark
tumbled backwards into the next room. He landed on his back. The
floor was not hard. It was squishy and crunched under his weight.
He turned sideways to look at the floor. A palm-sized maroon and
black bug screeched in his face. The floor was alive.

The smell of decay made him want to puke. He
focused farther away and saw masses of brown house roaches
scurrying toward him. They were climbing over larger roaches that
were red with brown stripes. He put his hand underneath himself to
get up. He put his weight on his arm and his hand sunk almost a
foot, crushing the roaches into a mass of green and brown slime. He
rolled over and tried to get to his knees. He sunk half way up to
his thighs.

He finally did manage to stand up, and he
saw millions of cockroaches rushing toward him. The noise was
horrendous. Their primitive thoughts were invading his mind. He
felt an overpowering urge to eat. He had to act fast. He put the
jacket hood up. He tied it tight under his chin as the roaches
swarmed over him. Some had managed to get inside the hood before he
had tied it closed. He swatted, with one hand, around this neck and
hood to kill the ones that had gotten in. He used his other hand to
keep them brushed off his face. The light vibrated on the floor as
myriads of roaches passed underneath.

A seeming eternity passed before he could
pick up the lantern again. The glass was hot enough to keep the
roaches off it. The roaches were knee deep around him. Every
slippery step crunched a thousand or more bugs as he made his way
around the wall, brushing or shaking the rank creatures off with
every step, looking for where the next door might be. Roaches
swarmed over him. Occasionally, one would manage to get into his
nose. He had to wait for them to get down to his throat before he
could hack them up and spit them out. He made his way around the
wall, crunchy step by crunchy step. The roaches started to thin
out. Thousands would stay behind to gorge on their dead.

The disembodied voice entered Mark’s head
again. “
You’re so lucky. Almost everyone else came in here
starving and without much protection. They would eat the little
buggies by the hand full. They’d swallow ‘em whole, only to have
them crawl back up later. All the while, the little critters were
swarming all over them, getting into anywhere that they could.
Roaches like to crawl into holes.”

Mark suddenly felt tremendous pain in his
left ear. One of the roaches had gotten into his ear and was
walking on his eardrum. He grabbed his ear.

“YEOW! Oh God! It hurts! It hurts! It
hurts!”

He slapped his head and hopped around. He
ripped the hood back and dug his finger into his ear. Nothing he
did worked. He dropped to his knees and screamed again. The pain
was so bad that he finally did puke. Thousands of scurrying roaches
piled onto the newly laid feast.

The pain in Mark’s ear was so intense that
he thought that he was going to pass out. He desperately tried to
keep the roaches off his head. It was a losing battle between the
pain and the roaches.

 
* *
* 

In the museum, Nick still had the watch. “Oh
man! He’s not in the main room anymore. He’s covered with roaches.
They’re everywhere. They’re getting in his nose and mouth. Oh! It
hurts! It hurts! It hurts!” Nick dropped to his knees and vomited,
projecting a slimy brown stream onto the floor. Those nearby gagged
and retched. Nick was experiencing Mark’s predicament through
Mark’s own thoughts and feelings.

 
* *
* 

The vile bugs were still swarming over Mark.
The wall in front of him disappeared. He got back to his feet and
stumbled through it into the next room. He was still covered with
swarming roaches. He shook and brushed the roaches off. It didn’t
do any good. He brushed some off; more took their place. He still
felt nauseous from the pain. He looked around and saw thousands of
beady, red, feral eyes staring at him. It was rats. Ragged,
ravenous and rank, they all pounced at once.

Hundreds of rats swarmed over him. He didn’t
know which was worse, the putrid smell of decay from the roaches,
or the acrid, piercing odor of gallons of rancid rat urine mingled
with the puss from festering boils that matted their fur.

Their combined squeals of delight pierced
his head. He felt the roach that was in his ear climb out. The pain
in his ear subsided, but the squeals of the rats weren’t much
better. In his mind, he felt their bitter desire to eat. To his
surprise, the rats weren’t attacking him. They were after the
roaches. He looked back at the door from where he had come.
Thousands and thousands of roaches were emerging through the door.
Rats pounced and devoured them in a futile attempt to satisfy their
insatiable need to eat.

It occurred to Mark that perhaps the doors
in the rest of the labyrinth only opened once a month. The rats had
to be starving. They were going after the quick and easy meal. He
knew that he had to find the next door and get through it before it
closed. He didn’t want to be stranded in a room full of voracious
rats for a month.

The impish voice laughed in Mark’s head.
“
Oh, I love rats. They’ll eat anything. It don’t matter if
they’re full or not. If it’s food, they’ll eat it, dead or alive.
Listen to them sing. They always sing when they eat. It’s so lovely
to hear them sing. You’re going to be a nice buffet.”

Mark searched the wall. He found the writing
that said, “
Walk through a door before it closes
.” It was on
the far side of the cavern, away from where the rats were swarming.
All he had to do now was to wait for the door to open, if it hadn’t
already. He turned to watch the rats. Time passed ever so slowly.
They had finished their feeding frenzy. The squealing noise
stopped. They turned, en masse, toward Mark.

 
* *
* 

In the museum, Tim ran to Nick. He put both
hands on his shoulders to steady him while he got to his feet.
“Nick, you need to get out of here and clear your mind. I will take
the watch now.”

“No… I want to stay.” Nick was still woozy
from the experience.

“Okay, just go to the rest room and clean up
first.”

Tim closed his eyes and tuned into Mark. “I
am not getting him as strong as I was before.” He took a couple of
steps, carefully avoiding the steaming mess on the floor, turned
and walked toward the exit.

“There he is. He is in a room full of rats.
They are eating the roaches. Oh… now they have turned on him.”

 
* *
* 

In the rat room, they began slowly at first.
Mark started inching his way backwards toward the next door. He was
desperately trying to think of what to do. He looked over his
shoulder at the door. It was still closed. He suddenly remembered
the meal packs in his pockets. He grabbed one, tore it open and
flung it at the encroaching pack of death.

A lot of the rats stopped to devour the meal
pack. Most kept coming. Mark threw several more meal packs at the
tide of demise. That seemed to stem the surge, for the moment. He
looked over his shoulder. The door was still closed. The rats were
starting to pick up steam again. He looked over his shoulder again
and fumbled for more meal packs. The wall disappeared.

 
* *
* 

“Good thinking, Mark. Done like a true
Magi.” Tim was talking out loud to himself. He raised his head to
explain to the group that was listening. “He used meal packs to
slow them down. He is in the next room now.” Tim edged out of the
museum exit to follow Mark. He needed to stay relatively close so
he could pick up Mark’s thoughts.

 
* *
* 

Thousands of rats poured through the door,
behind Mark, into the next room. Mark shifted his attention,
briefly, from the rats to scan for whatever peril this room held.
The floor was covered with snakes.

“Snakes are so beautiful. Look at them, so
many different kinds. They all have one thing in common, though.
They are all fiercely protective and they don’t like anything that
is warm blooded. I’ll lay odds, a hundred to one, that you don’t
make it to the next room without dying at least once. Snakebites
are so nasty. Being squeezed to death is even better. What do you
say; care to make a friendly little wager?”

Mark watched as snakes coiled at his feet.
Many had already struck at the rats and were slowly swallowing
their meal. “You don’t have anything to bet with. You’re just a
voice.”

“I could take you through the next
hundred rooms, if you win. What would you be willing to bet that
you will?
”

He carefully stepped over several of the
snakes that were eating. “How many rooms are there?”

“On this side, three hundred and thirty
three
.”

He took out the staff and used it to
carefully slide snakes out of his path. “What would it take for you
to just shut up and go away?”

“I’m afraid that I can’t do
that.
”

Mark moved slowly and used the staff to
clear another spot to step. “What’s in the next room?”

“I can’t tell you that, either. Care to
take a guess?
”

“Ah, probably something that eats snakes and
people.”

 
* *
* 

Tim said, “Snakes this time. You are doing
it right, Mark. Move slow and easy… slow and easy.” Tim moved up
the hall toward the stairs, each step calculated and careful,
mirroring what Mark should do.

 
* *
* 

For Mark, it seemed like it took forever to
reach the far wall. He scanned for any indication of the door and
couldn’t find it.

“Gotch ya! The door ain’t here.
”

Mark decided to turn left and follow the
wall. Left looked like the door would be the farthest away. That
would be in keeping with the philosophy of this sick place.

Mark painstakingly made his way around the
wall. Several hours passed. He had come full circle before he
realized that the floor was sand. He knew that he had made a
complete circuit. He found footprints in the sand. Footprints so
fresh that only he could have made them. He reasoned, “
If the
door is not in the walls, it has to be in the floor. If it’s in the
floor, then there has to be a pit where the sand has gone through
the door when it opened.”

He decided to go directly across the middle
of the room. That seemed to give him the best chance of finding the
door. An hour or so later, he found the pit. It was about four feet
deep and filled with snakes. They tried to climb the steep sides
but just kept sliding back down.

He cleared a space with the staff so that he
could sit down. He ate while he waited for the door to open. He
knew that it had not opened recently, judging by the number of
snakes that were in the pit.

About a day later, labyrinth time, the door
opened. The snakes disappeared down the gullet of the gaping hole.
He waited. That gave enough time for the snakes to disperse before
he slid down the side of the pit into the open door.

Gravity shifted direction again when he
crossed the threshold. He slid to rest on his backside. Large birds
were all over the place. They all looked like they were walking on
stilts and had multiple bald spots freckled with oozing scabs. They
were grabbing the snakes and throwing them up into the air. He had
no idea what danger the birds posed, if any.

“He is in the next room now. Good… secretary
birds. No danger, unless he gets too close to their nests.” Tim
walked halfway up the stairs for the optimal spot to read Mark.

 
* *
* 

Mark walked around the edge of the wall,
looking for the next door. The stilted raptors paid him no mind.
They were too interested in their squirming meals. Incessant calls
marked every kill. Occasionally, two birds would grab the same
snake, pull and snap the serpent in half. Other birds would feast
on entrails flung into the darkness.

He approached the far wall. Weak chirps and
squeals started to emanate from the wall above. He looked up. There
was a ledge with nests, high up, along the wall. The commotion of
the birds behind him started to ebb. They were all standing stark
still. Their attention was focused on Mark. The snakes were
slithering off into the gloom.