Hollow Earth Read online

  I could see the idea strike her and for several moments, Tara thought about her world without the feared. Meanwhile, I quickly came to realize that no one on the surface would believe a word of my story. My chances of being committed to an asylum were far greater than raising any sort of army.

  Still, I had to try.

  "There is a place not far from here. A day's hike, perhaps. Many of my people have rumored the feared to settle there, but none have been brave enough to seek this place out. I could take you there but I do not wish to enter this place, should we find it."

  "I understand." I replied.

  For several moments I smiled at her warmly. She was a good woman. I didn't care about her past or the fact that we were from two different worlds which happened to be stacked together on the same planet.

  Tara and I kissed against a curtain of falling snow.

  Chapter 8

  Most of the day had been spent hiking.

  Tara had been right, in that respect. Though she'd failed to mention how rugged the terrain in front of us would actually be. Snow had stopped falling near the end of our journey, but a lot of it rested on the ground. We did the best we could in very humble clothes and a wrapping of animal skin to keep us warm.

  Each of us carried a sword, though I wasn't sure if Tara knew how to use one. I was a novice at best. Had we encountered any large beasts or men of war, both of us would have been as good as dead. Fortunately, we didn't. I believe that the snowfall and hurtful cold kept the normal perils of this strange land at bay.

  And then I saw it.

  A large fortification. A building. It was solid enough as plates of steel had been riveted on with power tools. I saw no soldiers; just one door with what appeared to be a digital scanning device of some type.

  "This is it." I said.

  "I..." Tara began. "I cannot go any further."

  "I know," I smiled. "Nor can I. At least until I figure out how to get through the thick of that door."

  "How then?"

  "We need to stay here for a while. I need to learn the pattern of their guards, if there is one. And how they gain access to the door. From there, I can do whatever needs to be done."

  "And you can reach your world from inside that building?"

  It was a massive building. Perhaps as big as a long row of urban warehouses. But it was well protected behind walls that were impenetrable - built into the face of a mountain.

  "I'm not sure," I replied. "But there has to be something inside that we can use. Weapons, clothing, food - they're storing something there and protecting it well. Plus, the installation is built smack into the side of a mountain that reaches up to this sky. It could be nothing...or it could mean that I can reach the surface from here."

  There were large rocks scattered all about and we stayed tucked behind one, hidden in plain sight. I tried my best to explain cameras to Tara, but I'm not fully sure that she grasped the concept. Either way, I drove home the fact that we needed to stay hidden or risk being discovered by watching eyes inside of the installation.

  I had spotted several box shapes along the rooftop of the initial building and suspected they were cameras, though I was too far away to be sure. So I decided to err on the side of caution and stay put, no matter how cold it was.

  ?

  It would have been impossible to say exactly how long we waited, as I had no watch and the same effervescent blue glow shined down from the rooftop - or dome, as I would explain it, that rested miles above us in the air.

  But in my mind we'd been waiting for nearly two hours.

  Suddenly, the door zipped open and two guards exited. They wore Nazi clothing! The mere sight of them confirmed everything for me. Hitler, or, in the least, some of his high commanders, had somehow escaped during World War 2 and found this place. Perhaps they created it - I'm not sure. But they were here.

  Tara's eyes filled with fear and I placed a single finger to my lips. To her, these men were murderous beings that were impossible to kill. To me, they would die using the same methods that war had invoked for thousands of years. The allies had killed enough of them during World War 2. I would be cautious, but not fearful.

  The men smoked cigarettes and laughed. I assumed they were also bitching about the cold as they pulled their long coats close. Finally, I watched on as one of them pulled a key card and held it to the digital screen near the door. With a slight beep, the door opened.

  I glanced as hard as I could. I saw interior lighting and concrete floors. The floor space was large, from what I could tell, but it also was cluttered. That was good news for anyone who wanted to enter and hide - namely me.

  I pulled my sword and dug it into the snow at my feet. It would do me very little good down below, after seeing both of the soldiers hoisting rifles. Instead, I pulled my long blade. It was nearly a foot in size and combat ready, as was I.

  "I need to go down there and wait."

  "But-" Tara began.

  "Listen to me," I said. "You can't stay here now. It's not safe," I continued. "Can you find your way back to your own people from here?"

  "Yes...eventually." she replied.

  "Good," I removed my animal skin and placed it around Tara to warm her even further. "I won't be needing this anymore. You do not have to wait for me here. I need you to go to your people and find safety. Then you need to have your people meet me in Toma...I can find it again."

  "But what of the witchers?"

  "I will bring back weapons to deal with them in a hurry," I assured her. "I don't think I can live without you."

  "Then you do not have to go," she replied. "You could stay here and-"

  "There are things I need to take care of first. The feared have done horrific things to my people, too. I cannot spend the rest of my life trying to avoid them. Not when I have the power to end them."

  "But I will see you again?" she worried.

  "You will," I replied. Placing her chin into my hand for a moment. "And when I return, I will seek retribution against every man who's wronged you."

  Tara leaned in and initiated a kiss that my own heart longed for.

  "Now go." I said moments later.

  I didn't turn back to watch her leave. I couldn't bear to. Instead, I skirted nimbly down the hill of snow and positioned myself right behind a large metal box which I believed to be an electrical box of some type. The men had stood close by it while smoking and they would return soon enough.

  A pile of old cigarette butts lay nearby to testify to the fact.

  ?

  Waiting in the cold was the worst.

  I didn't necessarily regret giving Tara my own animal skin throw, but I regretted the fact that I'd not had another to spare. Wearing only a short sleeve shirt and pants, my skin had long been numb from the cold. Even worse, I couldn't see the rock where Tara and I had once hidden ourselves. In doing so, I would have exposed myself and potentially been caught by one of the cameras. I had noticed them on my sprint down to my current hiding spot. They were definitely cameras and rotated on a timer.

  I had no idea if Tara had made it away safely or not. All I could do was hope that she did, as my hand clinched the handle of my combat blade.

  Finally, the door opened.

  The same two soldiers, from what I could tell. And they were jonesing for a bit of nicotine. Each man had a cigarette out long before the door closed behind them. They spoke German and I didn't understand any of it. But they laughed as well, so I assumed they expected nothing out of the ordinary.

  They were wrong.

  As both men leaned against the large metal box which I'd hidden behind. I thought of myself as a military commando. I certainly wasn't, but I needed to be. I'd learned enough with a long blade to implement my teachings into a combat knife.

  Spinning around suddenly, I plunged my knife into the stomach of one of the men. Without hesitation on my part, I jerked up on the knife to ensure that enough damage had been done. As I pulled the blade, blood began gushing out like a r
aging river. He slid down to his own death and took not a single breath.

  The other guard, obviously surprised, fumbled with both his cigarette and the butt of his rifle. Enough so that I was able to grab hold of his gun hand and fall to the ground with him. A single gunshot would have spelled disaster for me.

  The soldier was strong; I'll give credit where it's due. But he'd also been taking completely off-guard and that had given me the upper hand. I sunk my blade into his chest and he screamed wildly. Then I pulled it and plunged it again, this time into his stomach.

  They were both dead and I glanced to the nearest camera, which rotated away from us. Giving only thirty seconds or so, if my calculations were correct. I scrambled through the soldier's clothes in order to find anything of use. Especially the key card.

  I found it quickly enough and it included his color photo, signature and a gold chip. The card was anything but World War 2 era.

  Still, his outfit very much resembled that of a German storm trooper of the second great war. His helmet bled down and flattened out around its brim. They'd both worn heavy leather coats that were the typical Nazi green. The bottoms flared out and the shoulder of each was marked with the Nazi emblem.

  But I started to notice major changes as well. First, the soldier at my feet was equipped with night vision goggles. Second, though his rifle looked like a standard Gewehr, I noticed a fancy digital readout and extended cartridges. I would have investigated further, if not for the damn camera that could have, at any time, sealed my fate.

  I pulled his sidearm, which was a much fancier version of anything I'd ever seen. It was completely dipped in chrome and heavy enough to knock the teeth from a bear's face. I grabbed the rifle, key card and a packet of papers. They could have been instructions on building a soap box racer for all I knew, there wasn't time to sort through them.

  Then, mustering every ounce of muscle I had, I began dragging both bodies. Placing them behind the large box and kicking loose snow over the majority of blood that I saw. With a deep breath I held the key card to its reader beside the door. Just as the camera made its way around, the door opened enough to allow my entry.

  Chapter 9

  The first thing I noticed was warmth.

  Almost as badly as I wanted to stay hidden, I wanted to get warm. I shook my hands back to life as best I could. The interior of the building in front of me looked like the inside of a very large aircraft hangar bay in its design, but it was obviously something else. There were plenty of computer terminals and just from where I crouched behind a large crate, I could see at least a dozen doors. Still, I'd spotted no guards.

  But as alarms began sounding, I thought of nothing more than tucking away somewhere. There were so many places that would have been great hiding spots. I actually felt a bit of pity for whomever would be doing the searching as they would be at it all day long. Eventually I slid beneath a large steel shelf, which seemed like the last place that I would look. And I did it at the last opportune moment.

  I could see dozens of boots rushing to the door. I could only spot the very bottom of each boot and even then they seemed to be running with purpose.

  It wouldn't take them very long to follow the trail of blood to two bodies. When they found them, there would be hell to pay. They'd kill me. Well, first they'd torture me. Then they'd kill me. I skimmed my eyes around the bottom of the shelf to make sure I'd left no visible signs of blood - which I hadn't.

  But then, as I prepared to wait them out, I noticed the small door of an air shaft, directly across from me. The soldiers were all outside. I guessed they were searching the surrounding area, though it wouldn't take them long to discover a missing key card. At which point they'd be in here searching.

  I decided to make a go of it.

  I squeezed my body from beneath the shelving unit and went to the air shaft cover. Two screws - great! I second guessed my decision for a moment, but then I went to work on each screw. Slowly twisting it out with my fingers until I had the cover loose.

  Then I popped it off, exposing a ventilation shaft.

  Like a child crawling onto a tractor back in North Carolina, I pulled myself up and in. Easing the cover back into its original spot as I set off to look for a way out of this fucking maze of killers and cold.

  ?

  I'd felt like a mouse navigating myself through a maze as I made my way through the ventilation shaft. The plan was simple. I wanted to get as far away from my point of entry as I possibly could, which should give me the best chance of staying out of sight. From there, I would begin looking for anything similar to the elevator which had brought me down to this savage land.

  What I hadn't expected was to find that this large building was, in fact, just a small fraction of what had become a massive installation. Every room that I peeked into through its ventilation shaft vent became something unbelievable.

  Had the Third Reich really lost the war, or had they simply led the world to believe they'd lost in order to flourish down below the surface. Even now, I wondered if the force of arms I saw could best the most superior armies on the surface.

  Finally, having passed at least a hundred large rooms, I realized that I must be inside of the mountainside. There was no other explanation.

  I watched for several minutes to ensure that no one occupied the room below me. Now, even if they'd somehow tracked me to my point of entry into the ventilation system, they'd have no idea where I was at. I felt confident enough to make a go of it.

  Easing the ventilation shaft cover off, I slipped down to the concrete floor below. Quickly, I replaced the cover as to leave any search party no clues to my whereabouts. There were two computers nearby, though they looked very different from the computers I was used to. The screens were perfect ovals trimmed in copper, while the keyboards below were mounted inside the tabletop, beneath a glass touchscreen.

  To my surprise, the platform appeared to be unlocked. Still, I couldn't read anything on the screen and for a moment, cursed my local high school for having pushed French onto its students, rather than German.

  A fine wooden cabinet stood nearby, as did two doors. The cabinet contained nothing of real value to me. Just a stack of papers that I certainly couldn't read and what looked to be an official lab coat. Then I remembered the handful of papers I'd pulled from the soldier I'd killed to ensure my own survival.

  The paper was much thicker and was embossed with the official Nazi logo. I assumed they were orders of some type. Again, damn my native tongue!

  Then an idea struck me.

  I began draping myself with the white lab coat and I placed the soldier's key card onto the front pocket. To me, that's what a scientist would have looked like. It was one hell of a gamble, but what choice did I have? Only a fool would stay boxed in while waiting for the search party to find him.

  At first I cracked the door - peeking out. The place was huge. There must have been sixty more doors in the area of mine and hundreds of people moving about. Some of them were military, but most wore white lab jackets just like mine.

  If only I would have stayed behind and bought a yacht!

  With a deep breath and a moment of pause, I made my way outside of the door and closed it behind me. I needed to do it quickly, while ensuring that no one close by recognized that I didn't belong at the door. They didn't.

  Just as quickly as I had shut the door, I began shuffling among the crowd of busy faces. Pretending that I, too, had somewhere to be. My eyes skimmed the area and finally, after walking the bulk of the floor space, I spotted what appeared to be a set of two doors that looked very much like the one which had brought us down to this world of marvel.

  I also spotted two armed soldier guarding it.

  Damn! I thought. Surprising two men with cigarettes in their hand was one thing, and I'd barely pulled it off. But if I approached these two men, both of them outfitted with MP 40 submachine guns, they'd check my badge long before I got close enough to make a run for it. It was a plan of suicide
- nothing more.

  Brushing a hand through my hair in frustration, I began skimming my eyes to the doors near the elevator. I spotted a young woman enter one of them and had no other choice. I nodded to the soldiers in order to appear official and followed her inside.

  Chapter 10

  "Lost, or-" she began.

  I suppose the woman understood otherwise as I pulled a pistol to the ready - inches from her face.

  "You speak English?"

  "Yes..."

  "I don't want to hurt you," I began. "But I'm here by mistake. I need to get back to the surface and you're going to help me do it."

  "I can't." she replied.

  "You can't," I stated. "Or you won't?"

  "They don't just let us come and go as we please...not to the surface. That's restricted to officers only and even they need official orders."

  "Like these?" I asked. Pulling the wad of papers from my pocket. Handing them to her, my gun hand remained steady.

  "Well yea, sort of," she began. "But this is for kitchen duty."

  "What?"

  "The orders we need will have the same letterhead, but they will be different. Where did you get these?"

  My look told her the only part of the story she needed to know.

  "Oh." she replied with intimidation.

  "Why do you speak English?"

  "Most of us are required to speak both. We deal with visitors from the surface from time to time and they don't handle German very well. The scientists typically speak English back and forth unless officers are around."

  I looked at her with doubt. Who else knew about this fucking place?

  "It's just what we're used to speaking."

  "Look, I don't want to hurt you-"

  "Sarah." she replied.

  She stood about the average height for a woman. She was thin, but filled out well enough. Sarah had curly blonde hair and very deep, brown eyes.