GENESIS (GODS CHAIN) (55 page)

No sign!
This is the way, the right way!
Francesca stumbled onto the first three or four steps, feeling weary and exhausted
,
her body completely frozen
.
H
er plight was desperate and this would have been the finish for most people,
but somehow Francesca was given
one final boost
.

             
‘Come on girl,
move it! Come on, get up! Lift yourself now! Up
!’ she screamed loudly, a surge of adrenaline instantly inject
ing throughout
her body
.
Her heart began pumping strongly enough
...
and
Francesca started crawling up the stairs two and three at a time.
She eventually reached the top.
She had made it!

Her teeth chattered uncontrollably and her body shook, completely frozen and covered totally with white frost.
Francesca’s
hair was stiff and her face white - she came to rest, lying on the cold floor, resembling a thin snowman on a white field. The girl lay down atop the frosty hall and fell asleep, her body shattered from overuse.
As she lay, the frost began to
melt from her shoulders and
hair; her cold white skin and blue complexion thawed, and a blush started to flow in her cheeks as she remained still, slouched and unconsciousness to the sound of someone or something screaming from below....

**********

Francesca slowly became aware of her body lying there in the darkness
—
some light appeared to shine in this solitary place.
Aware
first
of her toes and then her fingers, she imagined in her mind a golden colour
flooding
around her body
.
Her bruised
and battered
self
began to move bit by bit
, wincing at sore muscles
.

‘Ooch, Ooooh
,
’ the girl groaned long and hard
,
raising her head a little.
Her clothes were wet
with melted frost
.
The corridor
was still and silent
.
T
he light from her headlamp was still shining, shining the way ahead,
down the hall
and into a smaller passageway.
The temperature was cold
,
al
though not as extreme
as before
.
Slowly
,
Francesca raised herself up to a kneeling position and
,
with a great effort
,
stood.

‘I must look a right state. What a trivial thing to think about at this moment
—
at least I don’t have hypothermia!
Oooch
...
my body is killing me.’ Holding her head, her face
felt
pained and her knees
were
scratched and skinned
from falling on the ice
.
She must be black and blue all over,
but
at least she was alive!

T
he reality of her immediate danger
began
to return
,
or
was it even
real?
Real or unreal
,
she had to deal with it.
Somehow, she had gotten lost in the catacombs....
Francesca
refused to
look backwards to the void below the stairs
—
it was quiet and brooding
down there
,
imbued with
a feeling of a hidden menace.
Something
lurked
down there in the darkness.

Then
,
from the frozen depths
,
came the sound of a blood
-
gurgling subterranean
scream
!
It echoed up
rudely
from below
and was
f
ollowed by another resounding scream of sheer terror
.
Human?
she wondered.
The sound died instantly
, and there was
s
ilence
...
.

Shit
,
what the fuck was that?
Francesca
’s
mind jolted in fright
, and she decided she was
not staying long enough to find out
.
A
woman’s
scream!
I am losing my mind!

Francesca
jumped
up and
sprint
ed as
fast and as far from those sounds as
she could.
Further
she fled
into the dark catacomb, scanning left and right as
the tunnel
began to twist again on a flat plane. Just to get away from
the cavern of bones
seemed like the right thing to do
.

Francesca soon became aware
that her battery power would not last forever
—
the beam of light was beginning to yellow, losing its sharpness.

Bloody great
,
that’s all I need
.
I
t
’
s going to be really bad for me if I don’t get out of here
soon
. Although her
initial stiffness
was
gone,
she felt
desperate and very thirsty
.
Francesca prayed for help.

I hope I am not going to be the next skeleton down here!
Looking ahead, Francesca found another fork in the passage
.
A
gain
, it was
a 50:50 choice
.

Shit
,
which way!
Which way?
L
eft or right? I went left the last time and ended up here
...
I know
that
this is a different place
,
so I’ll take the
other
fork this time and hope
that it’s
right
.
Francesca knew that a wrong decision would
mean the end of her lamp and of herself
. Hearing her laboured breathing and looking in both directions to each passage
, she
tri
ed desperately
to make
the right
decision.
There was a greater urgency
than even the darkness, though
.
Instinctively
,
the girl knew that something would follow
her
.
This thing was not over yet.
If she did not
keep going
,
whatever that awful sound was would find her.
It was not human.

Unknown to Francesca, people went about their businesses as usual
far above on the city streets
,
unaware of the girl’s battle for survival way down in the depths
beneath
their feet
.

Francesca
stumbled or
was
pulled towards her right side as the weak
light
beam struck something darker f
a
rther down that right hand tunnel
It appeared to be a darker place
,
or was it
...
a
different surface?

Whatever it was that she saw, it did not seem to be like
the
wall
of
solid rock
that spread before
her down that subterranean passageway.
It appeared to have a strange effect on the light
....
The beam could not penetrate this substance!
It was difficult
for Francesca
to
even
establish just how close
the
substance really was
...w
as it mist or smoke?
Th
e
substance appeared to be
constantly shift its
shape
,
making the light beam alter the shade and depth of the outlandish surface.
W
ith no definite pattern or edge
,
there seemed to be a heavy
,
ominous atmosphere
that
exuded from th
e
place
...
.

Francesca began to move cautiously further into the passage as she descended downwards into this right
-
hand divergence.
To her, it still seemed like the correct way to go.