All the talk of tunnels and rescuing children rumors … reminds me of HG Wells…
"Deducing that the Morlocks have taken his time machine, he explores the Morlock tunnels, learning that due to a lack of any other means of sustenance, they feed on the Eloi. His revised analysis is that their relationship is not one of lords and servants but of livestock and ranchers."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Time_Machine
In choosing the name "Morlocks", Wells may have been inspired by the Morlachs - an ethnic group in the Balkans which attracted the attention of West and Central European travelers and writers, including famous ones such as Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and who were described and depicted in various writings as an archetype of "primitive people", "backwardness", "barbarism" and the like.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morlock