Tunnels 02, Deeper

ground. "Could they be one and the same?" he wondered aloud.
    He went closer to the center panel and looked it over again. There was something more at the base, something he hadn't noticed under a crusty coating of a fungal growth. He feverishly scrubbed at it and found that it had been obscuring a line of cuneiform writing.
    "Yes!" he bellowed exultantly, immediately flicking his journal open to the Dr. Burrows Stone page. It tallied with the script he'd already interpreted... he could translate it!
    Squatting down, he wasted no time in getting started. The inscription consisted of five distinct words. He glanced repeatedly between the panel and his notebook, a huge self-satisfied grin forming on his face. He deciphered the first word: "GARDEN..."
    He clucked impatiently, his eyes rapidly switching from his notebook to the script and back again. "Come on, come on," he urged himself. "What's the next word?"
    Then he read, "TO... no, not TO, but OF! " And then, "That's an easy word... THE ."
    He took a breath and summarized his findings so far. "GARDEN OF THE..." he announced.
    The next word stumped him. "Think, think, think!" he said, each time thwacking himself on the forehead. "Get your act together, Burrows, you numskull," he growled, annoyed that his mind wasn't firing on all four cylinders. "What's the rest?"
    The remaining words weren't coming so easily, and he was frustrated that it was taking so long to translate them. He scanned the final part of the inscription, hoping that by some stroke of luck he would have a breakthrough.
    Just then the fire flared, as a thick piece of kindling began to burn with a loud hiss. Dr. Burrows saw something from the corner of his eye and slowly turned his head away from the panel.
    In the brighter light now being cast by the fire, he could see largish hollows, or perhaps holes, all over the side walls of the temple. Many of them.
    "That's odd," he muttered, his brow creasing. "Didn't notice them before."
    As he looked more closely, his heart missed several beats.
    No, they weren't holes ... they were moving.
    He spun fully around.
    He cried out in surprise.
    Before him were many of the enormous dust mites, he couldn't even begin to count them. It was as though the one he had befriended had summoned its brethren, and now hundreds of them had gathered like an outrageous congregation in the interior of the temple. Among them were behemoths easily three or four times the size of the dust mite that had led him in here. They looked as big as Sherman tanks and just as heavily armored.
    His cry stirred them into activity, and their mandibles clattered as if they were giving him a genteel round of applause. Several began to lumber toward him with that gradual and inhuman intent that only an insect possesses. It made his blood chill.
    He hadn't felt threatened by the original dust mite, but this was an altogether different situation. There were too many of them, and they looked too big, and too darned hungry . He suddenly pictured himself as a king-sized food stick, poised invitingly on the altar before them.
    Holy smokes holy smokes holy smokes went over and over in his head.
    Some of the largest ones, dangerous-looking brutes with dented and holed carapaces, began to advance more rapidly, ramming smaller dust mites out of their way. Their articulated legs thudded on the flagstones. Some reared up, their thick legs sweeping in the air, as they crawled over the backs of the pews, affording Dr. Burrows a flash of their glossy black underbellies.
    He snatched up his rucksack, ramming his notebook into it and then swinging it onto his back, his mind racing. He needed a way out, and quick. But he was surrounded. They were everywhere; to his front and sides they were coming, like an advancing armored division of the flesh-tearing variety.
    Holy smokes holy smokes holy smokes.
    He wondered wildly if he could just make a run for it over the dust mites, jumping from back to back as if he were leaping across the tops of cars in a traffic jam. No, nice idea, but he was sure they wouldn't just sit still and allow him to do that -- it wasn't going to be that easy. And, anyway, he'd rather not go back out into the cavern, where the swooping creature might still be waiting for him.
    He seized a boughlike piece of debris from the fire and waved it at the mite brigade, trying to scare them off with the flames. The nearest were only a few feet away from the base of the altar now, and others crept