Animorphs - 17 - The Underground

I would have been sweating if I were human. It was hot and close. Very close. Like being in a coffin. That image kept coming up. Like being in a coffin. Like being buried alive. Like you wanted to kick and scream to get out, only no one would hear you because you were underground. Buried alive.

Then my nose touched a wall. The end. I had reached the end of the tu

I could barely control myself. Barely keep from screaming.

I raced back along that tu

Finally, I poked my snout up out of the ground, crawled free of the hole, and began to demorph instantly.

Ax was in his own body, having been in human morph too long. He measured out the string I'd carried down the hole. "Would you like the measurement in feet or in meters?"

I was human enough to be able to see Marco roll his eyes. "Whatever."

"The total length of the tu

I was emerging into my human body now and still trying to shake off the unholy willies. "Six lousy feet!"

"Closer to seven lousy feet," Ax corrected.

"0h, man," Tobias moaned. "lf we're right and we have to dig down fifty feet, that would take us a week. You've got to be kidding! I'm a bird. I have no business being in a tu

I almost agreed. In fact, I almost said, "Forget it! I'm outta here."

But I didn't. In fact, I was the strongest voice for going forward. See, ! wasn't going to let the claustrophobia scare me. I wasn't going to let fear dictate what I did.

Or maybe I was just a fool.

We got better at digging as we became more experienced. But then we found ourselves ru

And we could only dig after school. We'd bring our homework and sit in that stifling shed and quiz each other on history or science. Ax would stand there, listening gravely to the history, and laughing at the primitive nature of our science.

One by one we'd go down that hole. We timed it out so the next person was always in morph and ready to go. Four more days we dug. Till Cassie came back up and said, "I think we're blocked. It's solid rock."

"We are not blocked," I said. "We have not been doing all this just to end up blocked. There has to be a way."

So down I went. Like an idiot. Like I was all excited about digging the stupid tu

Ax had calculated we were twenty-five feet down. Down through loose topsoil and clay and gravel. Down and down I scurried, pushing ahead with my little back feet, always clearing the tu

I reached the end. The darkness was so absolute that no eye could see.

Let alone a mole's eye.

My nose touched the end of the tu

But then I found it. The seam between rocks. My nose felt it. I dug away some dirt and the seam grew. Yes, there was an opening.

I hesitated. Did I really have to tell the others? They would take my word for it if I said Cassie was right. No one else was going to come down here to check. No one liked this any more than I did.

I dug some more. And then . . .

"What?"

Air! A breeze.

"No way."

But it was a breeze. Faint, and smelling heavy and damp and nasty. But a definite breeze. Air was flowing up between the rocks.

"Hey, guys?" I called up in thought-speak. But they were out of range.

No answer came.

I dug away more dirt and now the breeze was stronger still. There was enough space for me to push my body through. But I sensed emptiness beyond.

I turned around and raced back to the surface.

"l think I hit a cave or something," I said. "Cassie was right, it's rocky. But there's a breeze coming up between the rocks." Jake checked his watch. "Too late for today. We'll hit it tomorrow. It's Saturday. We'll have more time."

So on Saturday we were back. Rested and refreshed. Or as rested and refreshed as you can be after a night of nightmares where you're trapped in a coffin screaming, "Let me out, I'm not dead!"

This time we all went down together. We dug out a larger area around the fissure in the rock. We made it large enough for all of us to fit. And somehow, as creepy as it still was, it was more or less comforting to know that everyone was down there with me.

Until it occurred to me that now there was no one on the surface to rescue us. The tu

Everyone took turns digging away the last of the dirt. Our noses told us we were standing around a crack that went down and down into the rock.

"This just gets to be more and more fun, doesn't it?" Marco said sarcastically. "Now it's solid rock."

"Better than digging through dirt," I said.

"0h, yeah? Guess again. We're moles. If a dirt tu

"lf you're scared, I'll go in," I said.

"I'm scared," Marco confirmed. "Help yourself," There must be something kind of liberating, just being able to say "I'm scared" like it's no big deal. I can't do that. I don't know why. I just can't.

I pushed my sleek mole body down into the rock. It was rough, unworn rock. Rock that had been split open by pressure. I shoved forward. The path twisted and turned, but not too much.

If I demorphed in here, my human body would be a hundred times too big.