The Phantom of the Catacombs
Page 12
The Lighting Tailor made it to the end of the mud tunnel to find a steep, sloped drop. She shined her flashlight down the incline. The foundation looked craggy and treacherous in spots. The descent into the cement slab, under Jack’s house, proved considerably more tight and slick than the first part of the tunnel. Irene slipped and fell a few centimeters.
Her biggest concern was the fire extinguisher. If it hit a jagged spot in the crack of the cement it could leak, explode, and possibly kill her. Irene slid slowly now as if on a water slide- the kind where one has to lay down and cross one’s hands across one’s chest. All of a sudden, she sped up and could hear the metal of the extinguisher clanging off bumps in the cement. She couldn’t stop.
With her eyes closed, she felt her speed lessen and mud in between her fingers. The collection of mud in her fingers provided a smooth stop and prompted a sigh of relief, Irene opened her eyes. Darkness enveloped her. GlimmerLight goggles would be useful at the moment, but the moisture of the tunnel would have ruined them. She had three flares left. The flashlight weakened. Her extinguisher was running low. She hoped the nest was close. Luckily, the tank had only suffered minor scratches and a tiny dent.
Irene popped a flare. She began to crawl into another horizontal mud tunnel and secured the flashlight to her belt. She forgot to call Lily with a status report and then remembered that communication was impossible this deep underground. Irene was truly alone.
This last tunnel ran under the lawn of the house and directly to the nest. Irene army-crawled toward it. She could sense a slight difference in the way the air felt in this tunnel, slightly cooler, and fresh. A new wall of termites blocked the entrance to the nest. They were the workers, the fierce defenders. Irene had had enough and crawled right up to them spraying sporadically. She heard their high-pitched squeals. The ones that crawled underneath their frozen brothers, she stabbed with the hook of her GlimmerLift.
One of the pincers from a worker termite caught her sleeve! She slammed the termite into the side of the mud tunnel, splattering termite juice onto her arm and shoulder. She pushed out of the pile and into the nest where there was enough room to stand up. Irene let loose another flare and threw it into the middle of the nest, illuminating the mother termite. A long, disgusting, pale, slimy, pulsating abdomen made up her womb. Her body was much bigger than her babies and her head was much taller than that of her brood. The tiny Tailor would have been intimidated earlier, but not now.
Irene kept the other worker termites back with the light. She had a plan. She removed the fire extinguisher from her back and threw it at pulsating abdomen of the mother termite. Still holding the flare, she backed up to the entrance of the nest. A worker tripped her. More termites swarmed to her on the ground. With no fire extinguisher, she would have to use her own brute force. She peeled one off her chest that had been biting at her face. The mother termite shrieked loudly, urging her crew to kill.
Irene managed to get back on her feet. Flare still illuminated, she jabbed the light into the next closest termite, and its insides glowed. She tossed the flare to the side and beat the rest with her GlimmerLift. With more closing in, she aimed the business end of the GlimmerLift at the fire extinguisher next to Mama Termite and shot. The hook sped and sunk into the metal of the tank. Carbon dioxide spewed out of it blanketing the mother’s abdomen. The shriek turned shrill. The large termite’s legs and pincers twitched spastically. She struggled to survive.
Irene detached the harness to her GlimmerLift and escaped into the tunnel. When she was about halfway through, the screeching stopped.
Also by JB Michaels
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