Chapter Text
They weren’t sure what they would find in that cave, but it sure as hell wasn’t this. The mouth had been sealed shut for God knows how long by a thick barrier of rocks and snow, but recent earthquakes and a massive heatwave last summer had reopened the crevice just enough for a small, well-trained team to explore and map the inner workings of the subterranean wasteland.
“Hey Mathews, get a picture of that.” said one of the scouts, gesturing his torch at some splashes of paint on the wall. They seemed to depict several humanoid figures, some fleeing and some fighting a figure splashed with green pigment, as if it had been spilled or painted on in a hurry.
“Ok, hold the flashlight steady-” said Mathews, holding up a Polaroid camera and pressing the button. For a brief moment, the cavern lit up as the flash went off, illuminating the team’s features, and then dark again. They all wore thick, tough clothes under orange high visibility jackets. The five members of the expedition crew journeyed deeper in the tunnel, beams of light sweeping the surface, occasionally pausing for Mathews to take pictures of things of note.
Eventually, they reached a point in the tunnel where hundreds and hundreds of glowing, green mushrooms grew on a thin bed of green slime. The team looked around in wonder. This was the kind of thing they had only seen in movies. As Mathews crouched down to take a picture of the unusual fungi, one of them shone their torch to a patch on the ceiling above Mathews. Just visible through the slime, was an ancient, human skull, pasted to the roof of the cave. As they watched some of the slime dripped down from the jaw of the skull right on top of Mathews. He looked up just as the skeleton fell on top of him, covering him in the strange goo, swallowing some of it in his shock. The team rushed to his aid, pushing the long-deceased corpse off him and moving him into a sitting position against the wall, hacking and coughing.
“Mathews! Mathews are you ok? John!” shouted Jones, grabbing his shoulders and lightly shaking him.
“Yeah-yeah, I’m fine, just a bit of a shock-” Mathews choked out between coughing.
“Come on, let’s get out of here, we can finish the mission another day. It’s not like this place is going anywhere” said Brown from the back of the group, shaking light still on the pile of bones.
They waited until Mathews could stand and helped him out of the cave, calling for an airlift the moment they were in range. As he was lifted into the helicopter, they could have sworn that Mathews blue eyes were tinged the same shade of green as the fungus…