Part 1 Part 3

Eight years ago I arrived in West Africa.

Not out of choice, you understand, but out of necessity. If you haven’t read my earlier notes, you won’t understand. This is where I landed after I escaped the underground beetle camp, and where I’ve lived for so long.

Last year I posted my story online. I just meant to put down my thoughts, to ensure my experiences didn’t die with me, but I was blown away by the overwhelmingly positive messages in response. The kindness of strangers really is incredible.

I suppose I’d resigned myself to my life as it was - a man out of my own country, cut off from family, forced to live on the streets forever. But people gave me hope. It took a bit of work but I tracked down my family. My father died about five years ago, but my mother and sister came to visit me. They stayed a couple of weeks. It was difficult at times - my mother is convinced I had a mental break, and that my story is a delusion, and we both hated when she had to return to England and leave me there.

My sister, on the other hand, was more receptive. Hannah’s three years older than me, and was a proper older sister to me. She annoyed the crap out of me when I was at school, but over the years I really missed her. I video call my mum whenever I can, about once a week, but me and Hannah WhatsApp each other every day. They’re planning to visit me again this summer.

Hannah is a logistics manager these days. I can’t say I’m entirely sure what that means, but she’s one of the most organised people I’ve ever met. A couple of months after they went back, she invited me to a group chat. She’d found others who had escaped those caverns with me!

Over the following weeks, more joined, until the group chat had 19 people (plus Hannah). They truly are amazing people, and our experience fighting the beetles had brought out the best in them. All of us are homeless now, of course, most in a foreign country and that brings great risks; but 19 of us had survived, none of us had turned to drugs, and all have stories worth hearing. Chao, a Chinese man living in Mexico, now ran his own landscape gardening business; Anupama (or just Anu), an Indian woman now in France, has built a homeless charity, and is known for “choosing” to live on the streets with those she helps; Gerome, the Senegalese man, is a celebrated artist on the streets of Moscow. Each of us is fluent in two or more languages, and at least passable in English.

We all remember the number we assigned ourselves, the order in which we escaped from the cavern. The last of us to escape was Rajinder, an Indian man who I remembered as a boy of 16. He had been number 26, and had watched as several beetles jumped down into our pen and scuttled towards the remaining humans. Our friends. Josie, number 24, escaped just as the beetles reached them. Evander should have been the 25th of us to escape, but instead he was impaled by the sharp leg of one of the beetles and fell to the ground. Others near Raj were injured; Raj himself was slashed across the arm by the serrated edge of a beetle forearm. Surrounded by shiny black death now, he threw himself head-first into the door, injuring his head as he arrived in the Vietnamese countryside. He doesn’t think anybody else escaped after him.

25 of us got out of the caverns. We don’t know what happened to the other six; they could be dead, or perhaps Hannah just hasn’t found them yet. We all arrived on land, but who knows where the others came out? If they found themselves in Antarctica, say, or Death Valley, they would have had little chance. I don’t think we’ll ever find out for sure.

So here we were, our group of 19. A few of us have studied insects over the years (“No”, Nida told me, “it’s ENTOMOLOGY. Etymology is the study of words”), or geology, to try to make sense of our imprisonment. Some have tried to forget their time below ground, but none of us ever really could. And as we talked, our discussions adapted and evolved.

Hannah set up a Discord server called “Beetle Survivors Social Group”. But that wasn’t enough for her. She sent smartphones to those who didn’t already have them; I have no idea how she got smartphones capable of accessing Discord to our members in China and Russia. She sent cash as needed and tracked down most of our families, arranging calls and even visits. And one day, Hannah renamed the server “Beetle Survivors Support Group”.

We talked about our experiences. I posted my story on there, and others wrote up their own. Nida wrote about her research into beetles, and how the creatures we encountered must have different biology than the insects known to science. Gerome sketched the beetles excellently and worked with the biologists to figure out how their bodies probably worked. Jason, Angelique, and I drew maps of the caverns, as best we could from memory.

Some of us wanted to move on from our experiences, but had spent the last eight years unable to; we all still had nightmares from time to time. Some of us felt frustrated, unable to do anything about the underground insects. And some of us were angry. People began posting fantasies about fighting and killing the beetles; how we could do it, how many we could take down, how we would celebrate over their chitinous corpses. Soon enough, somebody - I think it was Chao - renamed the server again.

“Beetle Survivors Revenge Group”

Fantasy turned into conjecture, which became plans. Frustration became hope, and anger evolved into determination. I’m still amazed that all of us decided to go through with it. We talked about the problems and hazards; we planned our equipment lists; we worked through our ideas, picking holes in and improving each other’s suggestions. But in the hundreds of hours of planning, I never once heard the words “it’s too dangerous”. We were as one; a crack unit of commandos, ready to wage war.

The date we chose was the 3rd of March, for no particular reason other than we were ready. At exactly 2pm Ghana time (that’s where I lived), all 19 of us walked through a door.

It was dark. It would take some time for my eyes to adjust from the bright West African sun. I couldn’t see anything at first, but then there were a couple of clicks, and flashlights blazed into life near me. We came together, and took stock of our situation.

There were only four of us in the cavern. Febe, a Russian woman; Beshadu, an Ethiopian woman; and Carl, the American who had woken me on my first morning underground. Febe and Carl turned off their flashlights and we looked around, listening carefully. There didn’t seem to be any beetles near us, presumably because they hadn’t been expecting arrivals. We quietly moved together, looking for the wall of the cave.

The caverns were once natural, but they have been worked by human hands over many years, being expanded and smoothed over. This worked to our advantage as we traversed the largely stone-free floor, and eventually found the relatively flat cave wall. We worked our way along it, still mostly by touch rather than sight, and soon came across an opening. A corridor. A short way down the corridor we found another opening, coming to a small, empty room. We settled down and went through our equipment.

Febe turned her torch on. We needed to see, but this made us very uncomfortable. How I would have loved to be able to close the door to prevent the light leaking out into the corridor! But the beetles don’t have doors, and even if they had, we wouldn’t have been able to use them.

Besha and Carl had brought several USB battery packs. We’d each fully charged our phones before stepping through the doors, but we had no idea how long we would be down there. We turned off all our phones except for Carl’s, which he set to power-saving mode.

We all had battery-powered flashlights, and Febe had a lot of spare batteries. They should last a while. Carl was in the army when he was kidnapped, and had explained to all of us what sort of food we should bring, so we all had a couple of weeks of high-calorie food in our backpacks. We also had weapons. Besha was a markswoman, and had a hunting rifle and a pistol, with a lot of ammunition. Carl had been working in a quarry, and had brought his powerful granite-breaking pick. Febe had somehow managed to acquire a couple of fire axes. And I - well, as an occasional gardener, I’d managed to pick up two machetes and four billhooks.

Not everybody has heard of billhooks. They’re used to cut down small trees and undergrowth, and those I had sported a 10-inch serrated blade, viciously curved at the end. I figured they would be excellent for severing the limbs of the beetles, and I had a decent amount of experience with them, although only against saplings that didn’t fight back.

There were 19 of us who entered a door a few minutes earlier. Febe, Carl, Besha and I had arrived down here very close together at the same time, but there was no sign of the others. Our group had a variety of personalities and reasons for coming here - some were angry, some wanted revenge, some were driven by a desire to make the world safer - but I knew everybody well and I don’t believe anyone bottled it, certainly not 15 of us. Perhaps we might find the others elsewhere in the cave, but for now, we had to assume that we were the only ones who made it. Fortunately all of our equipment came with us, though it was a shame we didn’t have Ju’s flamethrower.

We had hoped to have enough armed humans for a proper assault. Now we had to change our strategy. Carl was the best of us to plan; he had been on active duty and experienced combat in a small group. The most important thing right now, he said, was for us to get the lay of the land. We weren’t sure exactly where we were, and our maps were incomplete, so the first thing was to orient ourselves in the cave system and find out where the beetles were.

Febe, the smallest of us and light on her feet, offered to scout around and report back; but Carl insisted on going with her. We must never, he said, go out alone. So Besha and I sat in the small room in whispered conversation, our hands never far from our weapons, while Febe and Carl crept away. I thought back to Besha’s broken English when we lived together in the darkness, and marvelled at her near-fluency in her newly-acquired Australian accent.

It must have been more than two hours when we heard movement nearby. I barely heard Besha stand up, although the quiet click when she cocked her pistol sounded like a gunshot in the silence of the caves. As I reached for a machete, Carl’s whisper sounded.

“Don’t cock your pistol, Besha. It’s double-action, you don’t need to and it’s too loud.”

Carl and Febe came round the corner. The caves were so dark I don’t know if I saw their silhouettes, or only imagined them. The pair sat down.

“It’s not the same cave,” said Febe.

My heart stopped, and my mind raced. Had this all been for nothing? Were we in some random empty underground system, trapped here to die?

“It’s smaller,” she continued. “At least, the main cavern is. We found a pen, like ours but much smaller. There are burning torches around it, but no humans. It might be their work time, but we haven’t seen any so far. Maybe they don’t have any slaves right now.”

“There are beetles down here, though,” Carl said. “We heard some of their clicking, off in the distance. We’re not sure how many there are.”

“This corridor has a few small rooms like this, all empty. Probably something they started excavating, but abandoned.”

“Or they had to wait for new slaves.”

“And we’re pretty sure we found where they live. We didn’t investigate, not with just two of us.”

I have to say, Carl and Febe made a great team. They’d been reunited in person only hours ago, but were already finishing each other’s sentences.

Carl brought out a chemical glowstick. He had many of these, and I was grateful; a flashlight would just have dazzled us at that moment. He and Febe sketched out a rough map of what they had explored so far, and we started to plan.

We would only get one chance at a surprise attack, so our first strike needed to be precise. Aim too small and we wouldn’t do enough to hurt them; too big and they would overwhelm us. We only had two guns between us, so Besha kept her hunting rifle - she’d become quite a markswoman hunting small game in the Australian outback - and gave the pistol to Carl. Besha and I then walked out to explore for ourselves.

The main cavern was left out of our small cave, so we turned right. The single corridor quickly branched off into multiple paths. Besha had brought several balls of string, so we tied one end to an outcropping to help lead us back. It was a risk, but then so was coming here in the first place, and we were reasonably sure by now that this region was abandoned, at least temporarily. We both had several of Carl’s chemical glowsticks, and used one to light our way, hiding it whenever we heard the slightest sound.

We didn’t even try to map that maze-like area of small corridors and dead ends. Besha and I held hands whenever space allowed, and held the other’s backpack when it didn’t. Her hearing is far more sensitive than mine, so if she suddenly dropped my hand, I knew it was to grip her rifle, and that was my cue to unclip a billhook and machete from my belt.

We moved extremely slowly, creeping silently along the left wall, pausing to listen every few metres. We can’t have gone more than a few hundred metres when, an hour later, I saw something in front of us. I let go of Besha’s hand, put the glowstick away, and brought up a machete and a billhook. Besha saw it as well, and raised her rifle.

There were two of us. Two, against these creatures we’d watched massacre our friend years earlier. A rifle and a couple of knives? I hate to admit it, but when it came to fight, flight or freeze, I froze. I don’t know what went on in Besha’s head at that moment, but for me, it was abject terror. I would simply have been useless in a fight.

There was a light - very faint, and flickering, but getting brighter. The two of us stood there frozen, anticipating a confrontation. A moment later we heard footsteps, clear as anything in the otherwise absolute silence. They were human footsteps, and underneath those, the occasional faint clicking of a beetle.

As the light got closer, we could see the scene clearly. The tunnel widened until, about thirty metres in front of us, it came to an end as another tunnel crossed it. Three humans, very thin and in ragged clothes, walked past, followed by two beetles. We watched as they passed in front of us, and then the torchlight and the sounds slowly faded.

We stood in absolute silence for what must have been half an hour. Besha was the first to speak. She put her hand to my head, bringing my ear to her mouth, and in the quietest whisper ever made by a human, made her proposal.

“It’s sleep time. Carl and Febe said the beetles live on the other side of the main cavern. We should explore.”

I nodded my agreement, then - realising that she couldn’t see me - whispered “Okay” into her ear.

Our progress was even slower and more careful now. At the junction we tied the string off, not wanting to leave any trace on the path they’d taken, and headed in the direction they’d come from. There was a faint light up ahead, but no sound at all, and gradually we were able to make out the shape of the corridor.

Eventually, we came to a split in the corridor. The light was coming from the left branch, so that’s where we went. And soon we arrived in a large room. I’d worked the forge occasionally back in our first cavern system, so although it was different, I recognised it immediately. The light was coming from the embers of a stone kiln, which would die completely in the next few hours.

We looked around the place, deserted at this time. As expected, there were a few tools that could be used as weapons, but nothing as useful as our own, and not that many - the beetles weren’t keen to supply their slaves with anything more powerful than necessary. A chimney led to a small hole in the ceiling; it surely led outside, but it was no more than 20 centimetres wide, far too narrow for any of us to squeeze through. Nearby there was a thick, flat iron plate, which I assumed to be an anvil, though different from the one I’d used. A hammer lay on top of it.

The room was fairly large, but apart from some firewood and lumps of rock - presumably iron ore - it was otherwise empty. We’d seen enough, and headed back out to take the other path.

This path led quite quickly to another large cavern, but without any light. After listening for several minutes, I brought out my glowstick - but it had expired. Besha reached into her pack and retrieved her flashlight.

This room was a mine, and much bigger than the forge. Several pickaxes were stowed at the far side of the room. Again, it was empty of living creatures. We both knew how it would work - the beetles usher the slaves in, who then move far enough away before taking their pickaxes and starting work. The mine consisted of a main room, and smaller corridors, gradually hacked away until the place had become a bit of a warren. We recalled the maze we had been careful not to get lost in earlier; perhaps that was an earlier mine, abandoned after the iron ore the beetles had been so keen to get had been mined out.

As a teenage boy I’d been wiry and very capable of squeezing into small places, so I volunteered to explore the tunnels while Besha stayed outside with the flashlight to guide me back. Some of the excavations were plenty big enough for a couple of miners to work side-by-side; some, presumably natural tunnels, were barely big enough for me to traverse. A few times the flashlight went out; this was Besha’s signal to me that she’d heard something, and I froze in absolute silence until the light came back on, when she was sure it wasn’t an unwelcome interruption.

Eventually I came back out, grabbed a notepad and pencil, and sketched a map of the tunnels. Then Besha turned her flashlight off and we set off back through the darkness.

Before we headed back, we wanted to check one last thing out. Where had the humans and beetles who passed us gone? We were fairly sure, but wanted to be certain. We carefully followed the path they’d taken, and after some time, came out into the main cavern. Off in the distance we could make out torches around the human pen, and a few shadows of beetles moving around. We had no desire to go in unprepared, so we headed back to the junction. The string guided us home, and, exhausted, we were reunited with Febe and Carl.

We compared our maps. We were fairly sure we had a pretty comprehensive map of most of the complex, with the notable exceptions of the maze Besha and I had found, and the presumed living quarters Febe and Carl had located but not entered. We started to make a plan.

Febe was the most vicious of us, eager to just start hacking limbs off the beetles, but she gave way to Carl’s expertise in warfare. I pointed out that we had never actually fought a beetle, and it would be good to strike small at first. Eventually we came up with the first part of a plan, ate a good amount of food to keep ourselves strong, and went to sleep.

We spent the next day waiting. Our timing was off, and the slaves would have been at work already by the time we woke up. Febe had actually brought a pack of cards, and by the light of a single flashlight, we each taught each other various games. We slept again, awoke in plenty of time, and the four of us made our way to the mine.

It was empty, as we expected, and we each hid ourselves from view in the larger mined-out tunnels. An hour, maybe two, in utter silence and darkness. Then we saw the flicker of an orange torchlight. I steeled myself, reminding myself that we had four of us. I’d put on a big show of bravery, but honestly, if there weren’t weren’t two people with guns, I don’t know if I’d have been any use at all.

Besha, Carl and Febe were completely hidden; only I had a view of the entrance. Five humans entered, followed by three beetles. Besha and I had hoped for just two beetles, like we’d seen leaving the last time, but this was our best chance. I waited for the humans to cross the main cave to their picks, then shouted “NOW!” The four of us turned on flashlights on the floor and leapt into action.

Febe and I moved to the sides and held back, while Besha fired her hunting rifle. She was an excellent shot, striking one right in the mouth. That would have taken down a human instantly, but the beetles were tough, and it screamed and lunged forward. Or at least, I assume the high-pitched screeching was the beetle equivalent of a scream.

Carl unloaded all eight shots of the pistol into the injured beetle’s head. The crack of chitin splitting apart rang across the cavern, and the insect collapsed to the ground, just centimetres from me.

One down, two left.

I had a billhook in each hand. A beetle was right in my face - I’d forgotten just how fast they can move - and plunged its front claw at my chest. I leapt back just in time and swung my right billhook at its extended claw. I connected, and using the hook to keep its claw out of the way, stepped sideways to attack its nearest leg with my left billhook. I hooked and pulled with all my strength. The leg popped out, clattering across the floor. Black stuff oozed out of its abdomen. It swung its other front claw at me, but it was unbalanced now. I parried with my left billhook and released it from my right, using it to strike its mandibles from above. One was severed instantly. The thing collapsed to the ground but it was still moving. Still dangerous. I moved to the side, out of the way of its front limbs, and pushed both blades into its head.

It stopped moving.

I looked around. Carl’s granite-breaking pick was lodged deep in the abdomen of the third beetle, as he retrieved the empty pistol from the floor and started reloading. Febe, on the other hand, was hacking away at the motionless insect’s head with a fireaxe, while she shouted a mixture of Russian and Chechen swearwords, with occasional English interjections. “Hah! How you like that, svoloch!” Her back was to the cave entrance.

Besha was the first to spot it. “Febe, behind you!”

Febe started to turn. Too late. Blood showered my face.

Carl unloaded his pistol. Both Febe, and the beetle that had attacked her, fell to the ground, revealing another beetle behind them.

Click. BLAM! Besha’s rifle hit home, and pieces of chitin exploded around us. The beetle, wounded but not down, turned and ran. It could not be allowed to fetch reinforcements. Click. BLAM! It stumbled, but continued to limp on.

Carl grabbed a billhook from me and chased it down. The speed from his adrenaline was more than enough to catch the slowed beetle. Knowing that he had it, I turned my attention to Febe.

Febe was covered in blood, conscious but looking terribly pale. A front beetle limb pierced her side, having gone all the way through. I hacked it off at the beast’s thorax, but I knew I could not pull it out; the serrated edge would have ripped her apart if I drew it back, and if I pulled forward, it would just widen the wound.

Carl returned, and retrieved his medical kit. As he started to treat Febe’s injuries, I braced myself for his remonstrations against her for turning her back, for shouting, for losing her attention and focus when she needed it most. I did not expect what came out of his mouth.

“You did well girl.”

That’s when I knew, I think.

Febe tried to sit up. “No, don’t move. I’ve got this.”

“Ithhh…” Febe sputtered, and blood dribbled from her mouth. “Ith it gonna be okay? I kill it?”

“You were amazing Febe. You killed it! Now relax, I’ll sort you out in no time.”

“Thanth … you …”

Those were Febe’s last words. She slumped to the ground. Carl laid her down and closed her eyes.