“Floor is solid stone,” Jayden yelled, his voice echoing all over the vertical chamber. “Stepping off…I’m on solid ground!”
Hunt and Maddy continued climbing down the last few steps until they, too, stood on the stone tile floor with Jayden. On the floor was Jayden’s torch that he had dropped from above, now extinguished. Hunt picked it up and lit again from his own, then handed it back to Jayden.
In front of them, a corridor with an arched ceiling beckoned into the horizontal distance. It represented the only avenue out of the small room they were in, so they ventured n that direction. Before long they came to a bend in the corridor, and when they rounded it they saw a track of sorts laid out down a long passage, as far as they could see.
“What do we have here?” Hunt wondered aloud.
Jayden ran up ahead to where a boxy object sat on top of twin metal rails made of pure gold.
“Ancient rail car system! The tracks are gold, the car looks like bronze, but who knows?”
The three of them took in the unusual sight: a bucket of a rail car, perhaps six feet long and three wide, with wheels that looked like they were made out of a silver alloy, aligned on the track. The sides were about four feet high, and a push handle was the only feature inside the car.
Hunt and Maddy joined Jayden at the car. Hunt inspected it briefly including underneath. “Looks sound to me. I’m thinking that if there’s a rail car, the track probably goes for a pretty long way.”
Jayden pumped the handle up and down, activating a piston that moved the car forward along the rails. “Or it could mean they had heavy loads to haul.”
“Only one way to find out.” Hunt climbed up and into the cart, standing by the push handle. He leaned his torch in the corner of the vehicle and began to pump the handle. It creaked at first with some resistance, but the action became smoother as Hunt continued to pump…and the rail car began to roll.
“Hop in guys. Next stop… unknown!”
Maddy and Jayden trotted along after the cart. “Just so you know, I’m not in the habit of jumping onto trains with men headed to unknown destinations,” Maddy said, as Hunt pulled her by the hand up and into the rail car.
“I am. Reminds me of my hobo days, riding the rails,” Jayden said, easily hopping inside the moving cart. “Let me give you a hand here, Mr. Engineer.” Jayden took a position on the backwards-facing end of the push handle, while Hunt stayed where he was on the opposite side facing forward. Together, they operated the pump in classic seesaw fashion, moving the piston up and down to roll the car’s wheels forward along the track. The ride was surprisingly smooth for such an antique construct, which Maddy commented on.
“Certainly it’s an example of the advanced technology the Atlanteans were rumored to have possessed. I cannot wait to write about this miraculous find in the journals…if I get that chance.” She finished on a darker note, a reminder that their fate was still very much up in the air, traversing unknown territory riding a rail car beneath a Cuban mountain.
“You’ll get your chance, Maddy. We are riding the Atlantis Railroad right on out of here. Just hold tight!” Hunt began to pump faster, with Jayden following suit, and soon they had the car coasting along on the rails at a good clip. The two torches, now held by Maddy, flickered in the breeze created by their forward motion. After a time they noticed that the track was set on a slight decline, which added to their speed, and Jayden let out a whoop and a holler as they sped along underground.
“Driving that train…” he began to sing the well-known Grateful Dead song, eliciting groans from Hunt and Maddy that were lost to the creak of the pump and rattle of the car over the rail system. The pumped along the rails, enjoying the gentle downhill slope, until at one point they heard a fluttering noise and suddenly the air above them was filled will dark shapes zig-zagging about in hectic, unpredictable fashion.
“Bats!” Jayden called out.
“Duck!” Hunt shouted. He and Jayden stopped pumping while they crouched with Maddy at the bottom of the cart while the winged rodents wheeled and collided just above them. Hunt felt one bump into his head, but it was gone as soon as it happened. The rail car’s momentum carried them through the swarm of bats and before long they were able to stand again and resume pumping the cart along its way.
“The fact that there are bats down here means that there is a way out somewhere,” Jayden pointed out.
“But that could be the same way we came in,” Hunt said.
“The glass is always half-empty with you, isn’t it Carter?”
“I just have a feeling that we have a ways to go on this rail trip.”
The three of them settled in for the ride, Hunt and Jayden taking breaks from pumping to coast through downhill sections while Maddy did her best to observe their surroundings with the torches. The walls of the tunnel became narrower, such that they could reach out and touch them while still inside the cart. Comprised of natural rock, they were unembellished with anything other than the occasional structural support created out of stone pillars or buttresses.
After a while the terrain became more flat, and they had to pump more to keep up the same speed. Hunt glanced as his dive watch. “We’ve been travelling long enough now that there’s no way we could still be under the pyramid mountain.”
“I was think that, too,” said Jayden.
“So then where are we?” Maddy wondered.
Hunt answered her. “I think we must be underneath the forest, in between the mountain and the beach.”
“Where does it let out, though? I didn’t notice anywhere on the beach that looked like it could be used for that.”
“Me neither,” Jayden said.
“Just settle down and enjoy the ride,” Hunt said, continuing to work the handle. “We’ll find out where it leads soon enough.”
Hunt let go of the hand pump and leaned against the side of the cart, watching the monotonous tunnel walls pass by. Checking his watch by the torch light, he shook his head. “It’s been about eight hours. I’m starting to think this track is going around in a loop even though we think we’re going straight.”
“Please don’t say that,” Maddy said. “You’re scaring me. I don’t want to be lost down here…wherever here is.”
Jayden, who had been staring behind the cart at the walls as they receded into the distance, shook his head. “No way, this isn’t a loop. We’re going more or less in a straight line. Look at that weird crack in the ceiling right there, for example.” He pointed to a specific spot on the tunnel ceiling as the cart plowed on.
“True, I don’t remember seeing anything like that. There are other irregularities like that, too. I think we’re just going a long way in one direction, and with a downhill slope at first that has since leveled out.”
Maddy appeared confused. “But…if we’ve been travelling at an average of say, even five miles per hour, for the last eight hours, that means we’ve gone about….” She trailed off, as if stunned by the implications of her own conclusion.
Jayden completed the sentence for her. “…forty miles. Which would put us somewhere in — or should I say under—the Florida Straits.”
“About halfway between Cuba and Florida,” Hunt concurred. The trio rode along in silence for a few seconds while they contemplated the significance of their estimated position. Hunt broke the silence by adding, “We must be in a tunnel beneath the seabed.” He tried not to imagine the countless tons of water above their heads.
Maddy appeared impressed. “Imagine the engineering knowledge required to build a train tunnel from Cuba to Florida!”
“And the manpower they must have used. I’m thinking the people of Atlantis had slaves.”