“Go!” Kate yelled, jumping brazenly across the landing into the stairwell. Max and Tauber swung and landed hard on the steps. We scrambled down two flights, breakneck, to the basement door. Max threw it open and then melted the lock, sitzing and sparking, behind us.
A rickety wood staircase plunged two more stories in seconds through a rough-cut chamber that looked carved out of the earth instead of built. An ancient narrow stone archway blocked the view below. I heard the others gasp as they reached it-when my turn came, I couldn’t help but do the same.
Stretched out below, under floodlights, lay the open-air courtyard of the Emperor Nero’s summer house. Two huge fountains framed an archway like the Lincoln Memorial but fancier; behind that stretched an open-roofed courtyard with a wading pool and a mosaic floor hand-painted by a cast of thousands.
“What’s the point of a museum education?” Kate whooped. “I know excavating equipment when I see it, that’s what.” Behind us, I could hear fists pounding at the melted doorway.
We ran a central corridor, between rooms painted with flat pre-perspective murals-mountain and garden landscapes, well-dressed Roman citizens dancing, drinking, bathing and some other stuff. Some of it looked pretty dirty, actually. I wouldn’t have minded spending a little more time there, under better circumstances. The lights cast dramatic shadows behind the pillars and the timber skeleton bracing the cavern ceiling.
“What the hell is this?”
“Rome is built on top of ancient Rome,” Kate yelled back. “They just buried the old neighborhoods and used the old buildings for foundations.”
She dashed to the last chamber, the largest, deepest room, where picks and trowels and paint brushes lay among wheelbarrows and two-by-fours in a disorderly pile.
“Lecture later!” Tauber yelled. “We need outta here, dammit!”
Kate lit a torch from the pile and threw it at me. Everyone grabbed one and she ran to the farthest corner, kicking over a construction pile with a clattering roar. She poked her torch into the corner, close to the ground, where a small oblong hole appeared just above the base of the wall.
It wasn’t a place you’d think of going on your own. It looked like the floor had given way. If you were going, you’d at least want a wetsuit.
“ That’s the way out,” Kate said. “But I’m not going first.”
Just at that moment, we heard a groan above us as the door to the apartment building began to give way.
I dropped my torch into the gap. It landed on a nearby floor with a muffled clatter. The walls within shown with an eerie glow. I took a breath as though diving underwater, swung into the hole and let go.
I fell further than expected and landed in a kind of silt that cushioned the impact. But it didn’t feel right from the first second-I got shivers just trying to get my footing. The torch was above me and only a few feet away but the floor was unstable-every time I reached for it, the ground underneath would shift under me.
“You okay?” Tauber called but I kept my mouth shut-I didn’t like it.
When I finally got the torch over my head, I saw…bones. The whole floor was bones, bones in layers, bones several layers deep, bones that turned to dust as soon as I touched them. All I wanted was to jump and run, get the hell away from this place as fast as I could. But with every movement, the ground kept dissolving under my feet.
I probably would have lost it right there except for hearing the door above give way with a crash. That was it-panic was something we couldn’t afford. I remembered what they said in the movies about quicksand-instead of struggling, I slowed down, moving slow and deliberate and suddenly, I was making headway. A solid stone ledge lined the room; I climbed up onto it and took a quick survey. The room was vast, the walls lined with small chambers covered with painted images.
“C’mon down. Just move slow,” I called and the others started dropping through the hole.
Several passages ran into the black distance. I ventured in that direction, torch in hand, and came face to face with Jesus, an ancient flat-perspective version painted three times life-size, rough-featured, stark, a whole lot edgier than the greeting-card Jesus I grew up with. This guy looked like a carpenter. I could see him losing his temper, tossing the money-lenders bodily out of the Temple. A working-man’s savior, with a wand(!) in hand.
“Catacombs,” Kate said, scrambling up the ledge. “Common people couldn’t bury in the Holy City, so outside the walls, it’s all catacombs, miles and miles of them.” She leaned her torch into the passages, the light dancing into the distance.
“We should split up,” Max said.
“Bad idea,” Kate answered sharply. “These bones aren’t all ancient. People go into catacombs and don’t come out.” She ran down the center passage and we followed, bunched into the narrow space.
The passage quickly got so tight, we could barely scrape through. Rough-hewn walls ran to several-story-high ceilings, miles of stone wall, every few steps bringing another row of chambers floor-to-ceiling, some wide-open displaying loose bones or skeletons, others marked by stone blocks with handwritten legends in Greek.
Everything was painted chalky white, set off with bright borders, flat-perspective trees, real and mythical animals, charioteers and soldiers, muscular heroes and some rather shapely goddesses. With our torches held high, we still couldn’t see the end.
Behind us, Marat and gang dropped through the gap in the wall and made the same noises we had climbing out of the bone pile.
“How are we getting out of here?” Max asked.
Kate shrugged. “I’m depending on you for that.”
In minutes, we heard them on our heels. They had split up and were moving down the narrow corridors faster than we could. With us lighting the way, they’d be on us in minutes.
A lightning bolt smashed the wall to our left; it collapsed in a deafening cloud of smoke. Another bolt overhead scattered a chunk of stone into the passage in front of us. We peeled off to the last clear corridor, but with them now right behind.
And then, a minute later, we hit a dead end. A hole halfway up the white-painted wall showed where the ancients had wriggled through to the next chamber, but we had no wriggling time.
The two groups faced off in close quarters. There was a sudden lull, like maybe they’d caught up with us faster than they expected and nobody was quite certain what to do. Each breath sounded lurid, echoing against the high walls full of painted witnesses. A rumbling groan warned that the ruptured corridor nearby was breaking down and not slowly.
Max’s hand swiped the air in front of us and I could feel the shell forming. We held our breath but not for long-it got tight in the corridor all of a sudden, like a belt worn a notch too close. The shooters were eyeing us in no particular hurry. Marat held out several headpieces like an offering.
I felt the rock wall behind me creep upward a quarter-inch and then drop back into place. Even Max couldn’t maintain a shield and rearrange several hundred tons of rock at the same time.
“Come along,” Redbeard said. “Put on the headsets and we’re good. When this is over, you can tell anyone you want about us. Levitate cars on YouTube for all I care. We know your tricks, pal. Nobody’s getting close enough for you to do anything. Take the glasses or we take you down-your choice.”
I felt Max reach behind me, reach for Kate. “This isn’t the time,” she muttered but he pulled her close and whispered, “Remember what you did… at home? To amuse your boyfriends?” He nodded at the chalky walls, the gallery of Orthodox crosses and pagan gods. “Do it now… with all this.”
Kate’s eyes opened wide. And, right away, things began to change.
She leaned against us and I heard the rumble inside me like a generator, pulsing through my shoulders and trunk. I got a raging erection-it would be a problem if we had to run real soon. The shooters heads swiveled and I realized they could hear it too. But clearly they had no idea where it was coming from.