Traveling through the veins of Herriman
This story takes place 3 years ago, when I lived in Herriman City, Utah.
--Authors notes--
To give a better visual of this story I decided to give a small description of my friends that I had shared this experience with. I'll start off with my friend Calvin. Calvin has been my best friend since forth grade. Calvin is tall, strong, and determined. Calvin is aggressive and you'll find him at the front leading the group with Cameron. He worked well with Cameron although he was more independent than Chad. Calvin believes that the most effective way to complete a mission is to use military tactics as does Cameron. He usually has really short brown hair. Calvin:
http://tinyurl.com/qnzrl5 --- Cameron is focused on here and now. His favorite group is the United States military, he takes after them in many ways. He likes to be the best at everything out of his friends. He likes to be the commander in everything. He's quite selfish. He doesn't have much feeling, and he's completely non-religious. Cameron is no longer Calvins friend. Cameron:
http://tinyurl.com/px8mxy -- Chad is a gamer. He owns like 3 or four game systems. He doesn't enjoy physical labor. He takes after Cameron in a lot of ways. He follows Cameron. He is most likely to listen and follow Cameron. Chad:
http://tinyurl.com/orbwqx -- Anthony is very mellow, he's not nearly as aggressive as the rest of us. Anthony listens to everyone and is very understanding. Anthony has a great sense of humor and is fun to be around with. I have never heard Anthony complain. He's completely non-selfish. We all showed up wearing short sleeve shirts and shorts. Anthony:
http://tinyurl.com/qhgtfh-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It all started when Calvin called me. He told me that him and some friends were going to explore the tunnels. He asked me to join him, I quickly followed. He asked me to bring a skateboard for easy traveling. Seeing as I didn't have a skateboard I thought I would toughen up and just go through on hands and knees. I walked a ways and met up with Calvin, Anthony, Cameron, and Chad. The tunnel wasn't big enough for you to walk through, unfortunately. As we looked through the entrance of the small tunnel I questioned myself, "Am I really going to do this?".
It was quite scary, we had never entered more than 2 stations in. Stations are every 50 yards or so, a small 6x6 foot box, that had a small plastic ladder cemented into the wall and a manhole up above that the road passed over the room had corners made of cobwebs. This time we planned to travel through the entire blood system of Herriman. We looked into the darkness and felt a cool breeze in our faces. Although my memories are not so clear I think it was Calvin that entered first, Cameron followed, so did Anthony, then Chad, and finally me in the back.
The only person who had a flash light was Calvin who was leading the herd. I was blinded for what seemed like hours, the light was not reaching me in the back. We passed the first 2 stations very quickly because they were so familiar and we were so filled with energy and excitement of what lie ahead if only we knew things would change. Then we were in undiscovered territories, where few have gone and lived to tell the tale. Between the 2nd and 3rd station those who had Skateboards decided that it was too hard to ride them through. They were not going straight, and kept riding up the walls making us all have to stop so they could re-position them to travel straight. The skateboards failure was costing us a lot of time that we could be using to advance further into the black abyss. Everybody ended up leaving their skateboards lying on the cold gravel of one of the many station floors. Except for Calvin who oddly thought that his skateboard would come in handy later so he pushed his ahead of him the whole way through. Anthony managed to grab a wooden stick about 3 feet long that in his eyes were a life saving device. Anthony was terrified of traveling thought the many cobwebs that live in the darkness, so he had Calvin use the stick to tear down all the poor spiders homes. What a "jerk".
After we advanced somewhere around 5 or 6 stations inward, we became completely and utterly lost into how far we actually were. Cameron found a rock lying on the bottom of a station floor, picked it up and wrote "5" on the stations wall, this way we could kinda keep track of how far we had gone. We felt driven to write the number of the station on the side of the station walls from then on. We became exceedingly tired and worn out. Not to mention I never had a skateboard so I had gone on my hands and knees around 3 stations longer than everyone else. Between two stations we decided to rest in the middle of the darkness. We were so far from both the station ahead and behind that the light that shined in thought the manholes of the stations was not visible. As we rested Cameron who was a "Pyro" took out a match and struck it against the circular cement wall. He glared at the flame like a child glares at a cookie he has just received. Soon however the flame burned its way down the stick and he was forced to blow it out. Soon after blowing it out we all found that the smell of smoke was spreading like a disease through the cold confines of the narrow tunnels, where little oxygen circulated. It wasn't that big of a deal, we could all breathe until he lit another one. We all scrambled as fast as possible to escape the toxic smoke screen and regain our oxygen flow. Our much needed rest abruptly ended and we proceeded on through the seemingly endless darkness.
Then we came to a fork in the tunnel at one of the stations. There were 3 ways that we could go, one we could go into the left tunnel opening that was so small you would have to prone thought it on your stomach. The second was the right tunnel opening witch was the same size as tunnels we have been traveling through. The third way we could go, would probably have been our best decision, we could have gone back. Calvin tried and failed to go through the smallest tunnel so we decided as a group to go through the right tunnel. Right in direction, not right in choice.
Instead of straight the tunnel started to bend, left, right, left, right, left right. Slowly but obviously began to ascend, stations started to become increasingly close together, we felt we were finally making some headway and that the tunnel would soon end. We became very impatient for the end of the tunnel, we missed the sunlight of this nice summer day. Still the darkness continued. My knees and palms started to bleed from the friction of the cement. I felt as thought I would never see again, this had been the longest I have ever gone without being able to see. I was led by only the sole of Chad's shoe, to make sure that I was keeping a fast pace. There was no sound but the sound of the skateboard wheels rolling along the rounded floor, it was a sound that made your stomach drop.
As we proceeded we began to see a light, much brighter than a typical stations light. As we got closer and closer to the light, the light got brighter and brighter. We knew it was the long-waited end of the tunnel. We were extremely exited to be walking again, and the light badly hurt my eyes. Finally, we exited the tunnels, stood up and looked around. A dead end! Unfortunately, we found that we were in what could have been described as another station. Although it was larger in size, around 7x7 foot and around 8 foot high. At the top there was slanted steel gate. There was little pieces of steel that protruded from the cement wall. They stuck out about 6 inches. We used them to shimmy our way up the wall to take a look at what lie out of the gate. Calvin quickly made it to the top and took a good look out. Cameron followed to take a look for himself. I followed Cameron. There was just enough room for us three at the top.
Outside the tunnel we were in the middle of a park. Grass surrounded us, and neighborhood surrounded the grass. We saw a kid around 10 years old out playing basketball on the road. We called him over. It him a awhile to find where the source of the yelling was coming from. Once he saw us he came over. The expression on his face was priceless. I have no doubt that he has ever seen someone in that gate before. We told him that we had traveled for a very long ways through the tunnels. The steel gate was bolted into the cement. We asked the kid if he could go get some tools so we could take out the heavy duty bolts to free us. He went and looked for tools, but couldn't find any that would do the job. He brought back a hammer, we tried it, our try failed. We were forced to go the way we had came. The idea of this was crazy. There was probably a trail of blood from my palms and knees. These tunnels were truly veins. We didn't even rest, we were so angry with these tunnels that we started heading back as quickly as possible.
Calvin with his skateboard had the advantage of speed, because the tunnel went up on the way to the exit it went down when coming back. Calvin rode the skateboard down the huge hill on his stomach, because the floor was at a slope he could travel a good distance before having to reposition. I was angry because I saw it as unfair that Calvin could have an easy ride when I traveled without a vehicle the hole way. The rest of the group who had brought skateboards were also pissed at Calvin. Calvin did not care that everyone was angry at him. Calvin shared his skateboard with Chad, it was so unfair because Chad got to use it just be he was complaining the most. Chad was very angry because Calvin wanted his skateboard back. Calvin left the group and quickly disappeared into the darkness. At one of the stations we could not find the marking on the wall. We freaked out in fear that we were lost. We decided to continue even though the wall had no mark. To great relief the next station however did have the mark. We reached the point where people have left their skateboards and they grabbed them and rode them down. Cameron grabbed his first and left the rest of the group to meet up with Calvin who was probably already out of the tunnel. I still however didn't have a skateboard. I hadn't used one the whole time. It seemed like the journey was a lot shorter back, possibly because most of it was downhill.
My knees and palms hurt so badly that I fell behind the group. I could keep up no longer without the fear of passing out. I was going so slow every time I moved it hurt. I could see blood from my palms and didn't want to hurt them anymore so I decided to use my elbows instead. My elbows started getting scratched up pretty bad.
Finally, Finally, I saw the light of the tunnel exit. This was the entrance, but really the exit. I got out of the tunnel and saw everybody else lying on the grass. I was the last one to exit. I was very glad to finally be out of there for good.
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