Going back and forth row by row doesn’t reveal anything new for several thousand rooms and leads to some revisiting of rooms when my path is blocked and I have to go around. It isn’t until more than twenty back and forths that I discover something different from the sameness of the rooms. Here the concrete floor is again revealed and there are piles of rolled yellow carpet, gray pads, and stacks of ceiling tiles packed into an opening up ahead, but only about two feet high and no water on the other side. Everything is fairly dry here and even the concrete has some lighter colored areas that have managed to dry out.

  I am on the leftward side of my switchbacks and I can see beyond the carpets are two rooms, the second one of which has a solid wall. I approach closer and soon see that in the room to the right of the one before the piles of carpet is a wall to the left. Its carpets and pads have likewise been removed. The rooms beyond the piles are dark with the fluorescent light tubes missing from the fixtures in the ceiling and the fixture covers hanging down into the room. Pipes and wires wind through the space above where the ceiling tiles have been removed. It looks like the ceiling is also concrete.

  I climb over the carpets and into the next room. It does have its carpets which is completely dry. There is still plenty of light from the adjacent room. Rather than containing water to create a pool, it appears these piles are creating a dam against water leaking in. The room to my right is also carpeted and dry. It only has one additional opening, which would lead to the left if I entered it, parallel to the direction I’m heading. I keep going straight into the dimmer second room and turn to my right. It doesn’t seem to have any opening straight ahead or to the left, only to the right, meaning there is only one way into these four rooms and one way out.

  I approach this somewhat dark room with caution. The room seems like the other three: to have completely dry carpet, missing ceiling tiles, and removed lights, but then I look in the darkest corner that is toward the center of the four rooms and thus shadowed from much of the light. There is something motionless on the ground. I take out my cell phone, turn on the light, and intake a quick breath in shock.

  A mummified man is lying on a bed made of carpet pads. He died wearing black socks, dark gray suit pants, and a dirty white t-shirt. Nearby, neatly arranged, are a red tie, a white dress shirt, a dark gray jacket, and a pair of dress shoes. There is a faint scent of rot, which is especially sickening mixed after the bland sameness of odor everywhere else here. It strikes me that I have not seen any insects, rodents, spiders, or anything else alive in the rooms. The fact that this body has no signs of predation confirms that there are none. How long must this man have been here? I rub my bare arms against the chill and eye the pile of clothes. These are perfectly dry unlike what I pulled from Carl Daniels and they were set aside from the body before death and should be free from odor unless they picked up something from the air while the body was mummifying.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  Even in these extreme circumstances, there is no way I can bring myself to strip anything from the corpse. It is completely different from what I did before, where the body had been reduced to bare bone. Most likely the clothes are fused to the body underneath anyway. I can take the shirt, jacket, and tie. The shoes are way too big, and they don’t have laces to take, but for now I’ll take them back to the other clothes near the pool room in case I have an idea for using them. I do pat his pants pockets to see if he has anything, but they are empty.

  I put on the shirt and jacket immediately and wrap the tie around my neck like a scarf. After loosening my running belt, I am able to use it over top of the new clothes, which are much too large. I am a five-foot nine female runner, and he was a broad-shouldered man who was probably over six feet.

  Feeling warmer now, I roll up the sleeves and feel there are objects in the jacket pockets. In the right pocket is a keychain with a NASA logo where the two a’s look like upside down v’s and a ring with three keys. The left pocket holds a wallet. Inside the wallet is one-hundred-fifty-seven dollars in the same old-style bills as the other wallet, some photographs in plastic sleeves, credit cards, some business cards, and a driver’s license that expired in 1979. His name was Frederick Strohm. I hope I can get out of this place and tell his family what happened to him.

  I go back to where I placed the items recovered from the pool and sit down on the rolled carpet. I place the new items, the wallet and keys, on Frederick’s shoes on the part of the roll near the corner. I then take off my running shoes and socks; both are soaking wet from walking in mostly damp rooms, and my feet are all wrinkled again. I know it’s important to keep drying them out every night. I decide I’m tired enough to sleep before continuing. I wring my socks out as best I can and drape them over the shoes so they can dry on both sides and climb into my roll, warmer than usual, but hungrier than ever.

  When I wake up, I check the pants from the pool and they are dry. I pull them on. They are a bit more deteriorated looking now that they are dry than they appeared to be while wet, but still they are much better than bare legs. With the shirt and jacket, I am adequately warm now. I decide to hold Carl’s t-shirt, socks and shirt in reserve and pack them into the suit jacket pockets.

  I don’t want to return and investigate Frederick’s mausoleum further. It seems he gave up after getting stuck here and just made his own bed to die in. I will not do that. I wonder how long these men wandered before holing up in their own ways and embracing the end. I reach for my water bottle and take a drink.

  I call out, “Rest in peace, Frederick and Carl. Thanks for the everything.”

  It’s time to resume my explorations. I return to where I left off, but on the other side of where I found the mummy. I keep looking a hundred rooms to either side of the center column to see if there is anything more to investigate that breaks up the monotony of the rooms and may lead to my escape or at least my survival.