There's a war raging under the earth. Humanity is losing.  Part 1
Channel: Scary Stories
Date: 2022-11-23

There's a war raging under the earth. Humanity is losing. (Part 1)

I'll keep the introductions short. My name is Matt, and I am - *was* \- an avid fan of urban exploration.

If you've never heard of it, the short explanation is this: in any city or town, there are multitudes of abandoned, hidden places that most people don't even know exist. Old, unused railway stations. Miles and miles of tunnels. Hell, even whole reservoirs of water.

Urban exploration is the practice of finding and exploring such places. I got into it when I was seventeen, and ever since then, I've been hooked.

Good thing too, seeing as I'll be spending my entire life in the underbelly of this city, hunted by an uncaring government that probably wants me dead to ensure my silence.

The man who went through this horror with me, who I know only as Rodriguez, sits next to me. He too will spend the rest of his life hidden away, a mute observer and confidante as I write these words.

I don't hope to forget what I've seen. That will never happen. The best I can hope is that, after reading this, you too will see the truth, one day.

So, here goes.

The day it began, I left my house in the morning, full of excitement. I'd received a tip from a fellow urban explorer about some sort of old, abandoned complex deep beneath our city. She’d sounded ecstatic about her find, which I could hardly believe – she was an explorer far more experienced than me. This place really had to be quite something to get her this worked up.

She told me that it looked like some kind of semi-military installation, abandoned for God-knows-how-long. Perhaps a WW2-era resistance hideout, she'd theorized. As if I'd needed more reason to see the place.

I had my usual gear with me: a flashlight, a coil of rope, a first aid kit. I wasn't expecting any trouble, but it pays off to be ready.

Exiting the surface through an innocuous-looking rusted door, I walked, climbed and, in places, crawled for an hour through a series of ducts, chutes and cable-strewn passageways. It was clear that this was not the "correct" entrance to wherever I was going, but rather an ad-hoc infiltration route.

Already, I was captivated.

Finally, I dropped down from a grimy air duct, lifted my light and looked around in wonder. My friend hadn't been exaggerating: this place was an urban explorer's dream.

I was in a large, circular room with four exits, apparently a crossroads of some sort. Narrow passageways led off in every direction of the compass, all but one sloping upwards. The last led steeply downward. The floor, covered in a deep coating of dust, was broken up by waist-high concrete blocks, with shallow trenches excavated behind each one.

Looking back on these events, I realize one thing: these concrete blocks, obviously intended to take shelter behind, were all facing towards the single downward-heading passageway.

Whoever had built this place hadn't intended to defend against an attack from the surface, but *from beneath the ground.*

In my excitement, I somehow managed to ignore this fact. After taking a photo of my surroundings, I continued down one of the passageways. Obviously, I took the one heading downward.

The corridor went on for about half a mile, before ending at a large iron door, an iron circle set in its centre. I grabbed it and pulled. At first, it wouldn't budge, but after several hard pulls, it swung open with a squeal of rust-covered hinges.

Beyond was another room, this time with only a single other corridor, again leading down. I gasped. The centre of the room was dominated by a wide wall of sandbags. Several heavy machineguns, the kind you see in scenes of trench warfare, were mounted on the top. All were pre-aimed at the corridor heading downward.

I went closer, rummaging for my phone. This was unlike anything I'd ever seen while exploring. Old, abandoned underground stations were one thing. Goddamn machine gun nests were another.

As I approached, I frowned in confusion. The floor was covered in a heavy coating of dust, but around the sandbags, large, booted footprints were imprinted in the grime. I stooped down to take a closer look.

These prints were fresh, days old at the very most. Someone had clearly been tending to this place recently. I shone my light up. The trail led off into the dark of the downward corridor.

A small, nagging doubt pulled at me. Someone was clearly using these tunnels. Might it have been my friend? No, that couldn't be it. She'd have told me if she’d found something like this. Besides, if these were her tracks, they'd have come from the surface.

I should've turned back at that point. Why didn’t I? Some goddamn curiosity, the thrill of discovering something new, stopped me from doing the reasonable thing. I stayed where I was like an idiot, staring at my strange find.

A half-heard sound up ahead made me look up. I got a split-second glance of movement, a dark figure moving at the corridor entrance, before all hell broke loose.

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