The Unending Tunnel

To take a shortcut, my boyfriend Tommy gunned the engine and steered us into a tunnel not marked on any map.

We'd been driving for over thirty minutes now, but there was still no end in sight.

My face was pale.

I could have sworn the distance between the two mountains was less than half a mile. How could we drive for thirty minutes and still be inside?

Tommy was stunned. "I'm pushing seventy-five, Jenna. Even in the city, that would get you across town in no time. I've never seen a tunnel this long."

"Maybe there are a lot of turns?" I wondered aloud.

"Impossible. I've been driving straight the whole time. Haven't turned the wheel once."

I quickly checked our GPS. The little blue dot on my phone hadn't moved at all. We had no signal in the tunnel; it was stuck at our position right before we entered.

I zoomed in on the map with two fingers.

Even though the tunnel itself wasn't marked, the satellite view showed the distance between the two mountains was clearly just over 700 yards.

But we'd been driving for half an hour, and the darkness ahead was still absolute. If Tommy hadn't said something, I would have thought I was just groggy from a nap.

Tommys hands were trembling on the steering wheel.

"I don't know if you've noticed," he said, his voice tight, "but in all this time, we haven't seen a single other car. It's just been us."

His words sent a chill down my spine. He was right.

"That can't be right," I said, trying to rationalize it. "The national park is right up ahead. Even if this tunnel is a bit remote, someone else must have used it."

But one look at Tommy's panicked expression told me he wasn't joking.

"Should we turn back?" I suggested. Even if there's no exit ahead, we should at least be able to go back the way we came, right?

I tried to reassure myself.

Tommy immediately spun the car around. The tunnel was pitch black, our headlights only cutting through about thirty feet of the oppressive darkness.

We drove for another hour. Still no sign of the entrance.

"This is impossible," Tommy stammered. "I know we were only driving for about thirty minutes before we turned around. How can this be?"

"But we've been driving back for almost an hour now!" I cried out.

Just then, the cars AI assistant chimed in.

"Battery level critical. Please find a charging station soon."

The battery was about to die.

We couldn't even see a sliver of light, let alone a way out.

Beads of sweat rolled down Tommy's forehead. "Jenna, what do we do? It's like the entrance... it just vanished!"

I was about to try and calm him down when a blinding light appeared in the distance.

Headlights. There was someone else in here with us!

I told Tommy to pull over immediately. I had him stay in the driver's seat with the door ajar, ready to floor it if we needed to. I'd get out and see who it was.

The car approaching us slowed, its window rolling down just a crack.

A pair of wide, anxious eyes appeared in the gap. She looked young.

Seeing that I was a woman, she seemed to relax a little and rolled the window down further, though still only a third of the way.

"Hey, do you know where the exit is?" she asked, her voice shaky. "I've been driving for half an hour and haven't seen anything. This tunnel is insanely long."

So, another lost soul. My hopes sank. I shook my head. "We're looking for it, too."

After talking for a bit, I learned her name was Hailey, a recent college grad who had also taken the tunnel as a shortcut.

I called Tommy over.

When Hailey heard we'd been driving back and forth for nearly an hour and a half, her jaw dropped. "You mean you've been driving for almost two hours, in both directions, and you haven't seen an exit or an entrance?"

She looked even more terrified than we were.

"Check your phone," I said, my voice weary. "Do you have a signal?"

She fumbled for her phone. The top of her screen showed two crossed-out bars. No signal.

"What are we going to do?" she whispered.

Just as despair started to set in, I remembered something. "Wait, I read a clickbait article once... it said that in an emergency, you can still call 911 even without a signal."

"Quick, try it!" Hailey urged.

I quickly dialed.

"We're sorry, the number you have dialed is not reachable at this time. Please try again later."

How was that possible? Maybe the lines were busy?

I told them both to try calling 911 as well. But no matter whose phone we used, or how long we waited between calls, the result was the same robotic voice.

"We're sorry, the number you have dialed is not reachable at this time..."

"We're sorry, the number you have dialed is not reachable at this time..."

Hailey threw her phone down in a panic. "That's impossible! My cousin is a cop. He told me that even if the lines are busy, an emergency call gets rerouted to the nearest available dispatcher. It's impossible for no one to pick up!"

Things were getting stranger and stranger. I instinctively grabbed Tommy's hand. He pulled me into a hug, whispering softly. "Don't be scared. I'm here."

Hailey rolled her eyes. "Seriously? Now is not the time for PDA."

I offered her an apologetic smile. "Driving is getting us nowhere," I suggested. "Why don't we try walking? See if we can find a side path or something. It's better than burning through what little power we have left."

I tried to push the weirdness of the phone calls out of my mind. Maybe the signal was just completely dead, and the article was wrong.

We turned on our phone flashlights and started walking back the way we'd come. We hadn't gone more than a few steps when my foot landed on something soft and crinkly.

"Hold on, I think I stepped on something."

I pointed my light at the ground.

A second later, a wave of pins and needles shot up my leg. Lying on the ground was a crushed soda can.

Tommy looked confused. "It's just a Coke can. What's wrong?"

I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry. "This can... I threw it out of the car."

"But I remember exactly when I threw it out. It was right at the entrance to the tunnel. The moment we drove in."

A bizarre silence hung in the air.

Hailey forced a laugh. "Haha... maybe... maybe the wind blew it in here? I mean, it's pretty light, right?"

Tommy was quiet for a moment. "You're probably just misremembering, Jenna. Let's focus on finding a way out. Don't scare yourself."

My mind went blank for a second.

Maybe he was right. I get carsick, and I'd been drifting in and out of sleep the whole way. It was possible I was confused.

I followed them numbly, but the feeling of wrongness wouldn't go away.

No, I was sure of it. I distinctly remembered tossing that can at the tunnel entrance. I even took a picture of the view.

My eyes widened. The picture!

I scrambled to open my phone's photo gallery. And there it was. A picture of the scenery outside the car window, my hand clearly in the frame, dropping the can. It was taken right at the mouth of the tunnel.

I was about to show them when Hailey let out a gasp of excitement.

"Hey, look! Is that a phone on the wall?"

I looked up. Sure enough, mounted on the tunnel wall was a green emergency telephone, the kind you see in every tunnel.

Tommy let out a huge sigh of relief. "Thank god. We should be able to get help now."

He hurried me over to the phone. After two rings, someone picked up.

It actually worked?

Tommy, stumbling over his words, explained that we were trapped.

The voice on the other end was calm. "Okay, sir. Please turn on your flashlights and keep them on. Stay where you are."

"Do not, under any circumstances, wander off. Our personnel are on their way."

Hearing this, Hailey's tense expression finally relaxed. She grabbed the phone. "Well, hurry up! What kind of messed up tunnel is this? We're completely lost! I'm going to file a complaint when I get out of here!"

"Our apologies, ma'am," the voice replied smoothly. "This tunnel has been decommissioned. We're sending someone immediately."

After he hung up, both Tommy and Hailey were smiling with relief. Tommy pulled a chocolate bar from his pocket and offered it to me. "Hungry? Have a bite."

Hailey winked at me. "There they go again with the PDA. You're lucky to have such a great boyfriend, girl."

I managed a weak smile, but my mind was stuck on what the operator had said. A strange, unsettling feeling was creeping back in. Something wasn't right. But what...

"Do you think that guy on the phone could have been lying to us?" I whispered.

Tommy looked surprised. "Why would he lie? Stop overthinking. Let's think about what we're going to eat when we get out. BBQ or hot pot, what do you think?"

Hailey was bouncing around, waving her flashlight. "Yeah, Jenna, don't worry about it! What would anyone get from lying to us? We don't have any money."

But I couldn't shake the feeling of dread.

About fifteen minutes later, a man in an orange work uniform appeared in the distance, waving a flashlight. "Sorry about the trouble! This old tunnel has all sorts of problems. Please, follow me."

Behind him was a tow truck.

Everything looked so normal.

As his light washed over my face, something clicked in my brain. It was like a flash of lightning.

I finally realized what was wrong.

If the tunnel was decommissioned, why would it have staff? There would be no one working here.

"Run!"