by Greig Beck
In the side tunnel that had broken open, perhaps by the force of the water, stood one of the petrified statues. Karen held her wobbly light on it for a moment.
“What is that thing doing down here?” She looked briefly up at him, her breathing coming fast.
Mitch lowered his gun. “I don’t think it’s like the ones from outside.”
Kehoe glanced at Mitch’s gun for a moment and grunted his displeasure. Mitch ignored him, took the flashlight from Karen, and went a little closer. He was right; it was and wasn’t like the ones outside. This one was wet-looking and the features more distinct. He briefly shone his light at the cave ceiling to see if water was dripping on it but found the rest of the cavern fairly dry.
He brought the light back to the thing’s head—undoubtedly, this one was a work of art, and if not for the rough wooden surface, was absolutely lifelike.
Oddly, the roots were twined around it, growing up from the floor and embracing it. The other difference was instead of having a visage of agony, the face of this petrified statue made it look like the subject was in ecstasy.
“Amazing,” Kehoe whispered. “Did someone bring this down here, or was it always here?”
Karen came closer. “It looks like it’s growing down here. How is that possible?”
“Or taken root,” Kehoe said.
“Was this here before? Does anyone know?” Mitch asked.
Kehoe shrugged. “Never been this far in. Never had a reason to.”
Karen went up to the thing and peered into the upturned face. “It seems, almost, familiar.” She held up a hand. “I could swear it looks like Marshal Simmons, the garage owner.”
Kehoe squinted. “Yeah, it does look a little like old Marsh.”
“Simmons is on our missing person’s list, boss,” Deputy Anderson said softly.
Karen reached up with her flashlight to prod at the statue. “Hard, but not quite petrified hard.”
Kehoe shone his light around at the walls. “Those damn roots are everywhere.”
Mitch followed his gaze; Karen and Deputy Anderson did the same.
“No more statues. Thank God.” She turned her light back to the single statue. “Just this one…hey!”
Mitch spun back.
“Has this thing…?” She turned to Mitch, frowning.
Mitch knew what she was getting at. The statue’s face seemed to have turned a fraction. Before, it was tilted up toward the cave ceiling but now was slightly angled toward them.
“Please tell me it’s just a trick of the light.” Deputy Anderson’s voice was strained.
Mitch felt a tingle run up his spine. Kehoe’s light went from the thing’s head down to it base, and he saw that it also seemed to have slid along the ground.
“Yeah, I’m thinking we should probably leave now.” Kehoe lifted his light to the statue’s face.
Its eyes flicked open.
“Shit.” Mitch lifted his gun.
The twin orbs were a brilliant yellow and shone like lights in the darkness. Then to everyone’s horror, it screamed, a sound so animalistic and ear-piercing it stretched their nerves to breaking.
“It’s freaking alive!” Kehoe yelled.
With the sound of ripping root-threads, it took a step toward them and its arm rose.
“Move, move, move!” Mitch yelled.
Deputy Anderson was first out of the side cave, followed by Mitch dragging Karen with him. Kehoe came last while keeping his gun trained on the thing.
Out in the main shaft, Kehoe headed toward the exit, but Karen sprinted to get in front of him. Mitch tried to stop her.
“No.” She swiped Mitch’s hand away. “We are not leaving without my son.”
“We need backup,” Kehoe said. “This is beyond us.”
As Mitch, Kehoe, and Karen debated their next move, from behind them came a gurgling noise, and Mitch spun to see the deputy being held by another of the statues.
Kehoe and Mitch raised their guns, but the thing had the deputy between itself and the line of fire.
“Get out of the way!” Kehoe yelled, his gun up and steady.
Karen shrunk back but toward the cave depths. As they watched, the statue thing leaned forward to fix its mouth to Anderson’s neck and as the young man screamed, the hard thorn-encrusted lips burrowed in.
“No shot, no shot!” Kehoe screamed. “Anderson, get out of the fucking way.”
Mitch didn’t have a clear shot either but fired anyway. His bullet struck the side of the thing’s head, blasting away a fist-sized piece of the lumped, overgrown skull.
Even after the damage, it didn’t let go and in the glare of the light, its eyes fixed on him and he could see inside the open skull was just a mad tangle of what looked like fibrous roots.
It took its mouth off the young man’s neck long enough to bare thorn-like teeth coated in blood. Mitch fired twice more. This time, most of the top of the head, from nose up, was blown clean away.
Even with the top half of its head gone, the thing didn’t go down. Instead, it dropped the deputy and stumbled away into the darkness as Karen screamed behind them. Kehoe rushed to Anderson as he fell, holding his neck as blood pulsed through his fingers.
“Gotta get him out.” Kehoe lifted his deputy.
Mitch spun to where Karen had been. She was gone.
*****
“Karen!” Mitch shouted. “Karen!” He roared again and then jogged a few paces further in.
“Goddamnit,” Kehoe said between clamped teeth. He shook his head and exhaled. “Sorry, Mitch, got to get my deputy topside before he bleeds out.”
Mitch half-turned. “Go.” But then spun back to the sheriff. “Wait.” He ran to snatch the deputy’s large black flashlight from his belt.
Kehoe held his deputy under his arm, and then nodded to Mitch. “Good luck, son.”
“You too. Both of you,” Mitch replied. “See you soon.”
*,kh.hk***
Mitch went fast, holding the gun out in front of him and the flashlight underneath, trying to cover every inch of the mineshaft.
In the cave, the tree roots were everywhere now, like ribbing, and making the shaft seem more like the gullet of a large animal. Several times, he came across the standing statues, and even though some slowly turned on creaking necks to watch him pass, none moved from where they had taken root.
He now knew this was what was happening to many of the people who were infected. Perhaps to begin with they were just feral creatures like Benji’s friend James, but once they made it to the mine, many began to complete their transformation.
And the others? He wondered whether the other people who had disappeared were changed or snatched and brought down here? He just hoped they weren’t killed immediately, giving him a chance to save Benji and Karen.
From out of the darkness, something flew at him and struck his chest and stuck there. It immediately tried to burrow its sharp, pointed head into him, and he grabbed at it, immediately spiking his hands on all the thorns and sharp edges jutting from its hard body.
Thorny wings flapped on the thing and he threw it hard onto the ground and stamped a large boot on it, making it break like a crustacean’s shell and spilling its mushy, fibrous contents to the floor.
Was that a bird once? he wondered.
There was more flapping and then another came at him, flying awkwardly as it tried to keep its ungainly size and shape in the air. Mitch took no chances this time and quickly lifted the gun, fired once, and blew the thing out of the air. It landed in a brittle heap to the mine floor and lay still.
“It’s a damn madhouse,” he whispered, his chest now pumping hard.
He ran on, gathering speed, and after another 20 minutes, he stopped to drag in lungfuls of putrid air and just listen. There was the sound of water up ahead, and after a moment thinking through the pros and cons of making any noise, he decided.
“Karen?” his voice boomed and then echoed away from him. He was about to call again when a tiny sc
ream came back—it was her—and Mitch launched himself forward, sprinting now.
After another few hundred feet, the rotting, fishy smell took on a more distinct odor. He’d smelled it before—the eggy odor of methane gas.
Mitch slowed as the tunnel became wetter and even more thickly malodorous. The walls were moving now almost in peristaltic waves like the inside of a gut. He felt like he was being swallowed alive and soon to be digested.
The tunnel had ended, and he moved through raw tumbled rock, obviously where the miners had accidentally broken through into the water cavern all those decades ago. He had to breathe shallowly, as the gas was starting to make his head and vision swim.
Mitch eased through a crack in the rock face and crawled out into a large cavern that, due to its size, seemed to have no end. Where he emerged, he found he was up high and looking down on a dark lake of bubbling liquid. The methane gas was percolating up from below to pop in little explosions of green vapor from its surface.
He stood with his mouth hanging open, astounded and probably dealing with shock as he stared—hundreds of feet out from the shoreline was some sort of island and on it was a single massive tree-like thing. And it moved. Because it was alive.
“Adotte Sakima,” Mitch softly said the name of the first people’s powerful god.
“It’s real,” he whispered.
As he stared, he saw that the roots of the monstrosity constantly shifted, snaking about and curling over objects that it snatched up and fed into itself. Hanging from its withered branches were pendulous bulbs like hideous fruits that writhed and jiggled and threatened to birth hideous things.
The primitive core of his mind rebelled at the horror and screamed for him to turn and flee, but his military training forced him to stand firm and face it down. He had been in hair-raising situations before, but those times it was human monsters he had to deal with, and now it was something from an ancient time of dark nightmare.
But above it all, he knew Karen and Benji were down there somewhere, and he would never leave without them.
“I’ll never lose anyone again,” he said to strengthen his own resolve.
Mitch felt light-headed from the methane-laden air but still slid down the slope, holding his light up. The powerful beam only just reached to the island, but he saw there were bodies floating in the disgusting water, some face down, but others being dragged out toward the waiting tree—no, not bodies…people, as some of them still feebly struggled. It was these poor souls that the roots delicately picked from the water and stuffed into one of many red-lined orifices on the mighty trunk.
“Ah shit,” Mitch whispered. This was the thing the Paleo Indians had tried to warn them about all those millennia ago. Those carvings and painted images in caves were of this tree god, the Adotte Sakima, that lived below them all.
Mitch wondered whether it was some freak of nature, a mutation, or even if it originated from this world at all. And how many thousands of years ago had the waters first surged to the surface and its seeds infected people or grew inside them then turning them into some sort of quasi-plant beings to do the bidding of a living, sentient tree? The rest of the people were captured and herded down here to be nothing more than living plant food.
“Karen!” he yelled again.
“Mitch!”
His head swung to the voice and he saw her then. A group of the petrified-looking beings dragged several people toward the water. Karen was there, clinging to a smaller body, which lifted his spirits a fraction to know it was undoubtedly Benji—she had found her son and done what she set out to do.
He reached for his gun but realized he could never fire it in here now as he might ignite the methane gas. So instead, he began to run toward them, now not having any plan at all.
As he did, the branches of the tree stopped their sinuous movement as though the massive growth finally became aware of him.
In seconds more, from the fetid lake, from the walls, and lifting from the rotten earth, strange figures began to rise up. If they had once been people, they were nothing like that now. Instead, they were decrepit creatures with twisted limbs, spiked growths or wing-like extrusions branching from them, and glowing yellow eyes with bodies all held together by slimy mosses and meshes of fibrous vein-like roots.
They screeched and whined and scuttled toward him. Some hobbled on broken limbs, some dragged themselves trailing fibrous roots, but others came incredibly fast.
Mitch began to run toward Karen and Benji, and as he closed in on them, he lowered his shoulder and charged one of the beings holding onto her. He struck it hard and knocked it backward a dozen feet, but it damn hurt and felt like he had just rammed a tree trunk.
Mitch used the only weapon he had—the heavy Maglite flashlight—and he swung it like a club, smashing it down and crunching away chunks of the petrified skin and caving-in heads.
In seconds more, he had freed them, but only temporarily as hundreds of the things were coming at them fast.
“Can you run?” he asked her.
She clung to him and nodded jerkily.
“And Benji?” He lifted the boy’s chin. Benji nodded more slowly and it seemed the methane was fogging his mind after being down here so long. It would happen to all of them soon, and then they’d either be fed to the tree god or changed to become its servants until they eventually rotted down to nothing.
“Gotta move, Benji. We have to run fast, and you must keep up with your mom, okay?”
Benji nodded again and put a hand on Mitch’s shoulder to lift himself to his feet. He opened glassy eyes wider.
“I dreamed you’d both come get me, Batman.” He gave them a hazy smile. “I want to go home now.”
Mitch helped Karen up and then turned to the approaching horde. He knew they’d never be able to outrun them all.
“I’m going to slow them down.” He handed her the gun. “Use this, but do not fire it until you’re out of this cavern. And don’t stop running for anything, okay?”
“No, not without you.” Her eyes were panicked.
“I’ll be right behind you. Don’t stop for anything. Go! Save your son.” Mitch pushed her. “Save Benji.”
Her face was twisted with anguish, but she nodded and then the pair began a staggered run to the mouth of the cavern.
Mitch turned back toward the horrifying beings that were coming at them. He felt his stomach roil with fear as it looked like someone had opened the gates of Hell as they came toward him. To his horror, he saw that some began to run toward Karen and Benji, trying to head them off.
He waved his light at them. “Hey! Here I am, you ugly bastards.”
He bent to pick up a slimy stone and hoisted it at the group, managing to strike one, but it didn’t even flinch. He picked up another rock and this time threw it with all his might toward the tree. It fell short, sending up a splash of mucousy water. But even the failed attempt prompted a response to his attack on their god. Immediately, all the things turned toward him. And only him.
“Here it comes.” He ground his teeth together hard to stop his chin from shaking and then, turning, saw that Karen and Benji had vanished back out through the crack in the wall. He began to edge backward. Unfortunately, there were so many, he knew that they’d cut him off before he made it to the opening.
From high above, he saw that those branching things on the back had purpose, as some flapped the membranous coral-like wings to swoop down on him. He turned back to see there was even worse news—some of the horrors were running a lot faster than Karen could manage and she’d be chased down before they reached the surface.
“Never lose anyone again,” he breathed out. His mind was becoming foggy from the gas and his thinking clouded. Flashbulbs of light began to go off behind his eyes and he suddenly remembered another woman who had died in his place on the battlefields of Syria, seeming like 100 years ago.
“Not this time, you sonofabitch.”
He smiled as he reached into his pocket for the cig
arette lighter, drew it out, and held it up. He looked out toward the grotesque tree and saw that it had gone back to feeding human beings, some struggling, into the many maws along its trunk. It obviously felt it had won.
“Go to Hell.” Mitch flicked the lighter’s tiny wheel.
CHAPTER 35
Karen staggered toward the mouth of the mineshaft, dragging her son with her. From up ahead, she could hear a voice chanting, and as she emerged, there was an ancient Native American to the side with his arms raised and eyes closed.
“Help us,” she begged.
But he ignored her and continued to chant his words in a sing-song manner and stamped his feet. Next to him was a smoking pile of shrubs that gave off an odor of eucalyptus, licorice, and other fragrant scents.
He stopped his chant and turned ancient eyes on her. “Hurry now, move away. Retribution is coming.”
Karen sucked in a huge breath and dragged Benji forward. There was no one else waiting for them, as the sheriff had obviously taken his deputy to hospital.
Benji wheezed as he recovered from the methane saturation in his lungs. Karen pull-lifted him out of the small depression in front of the mine mouth, just as she felt the ground rumble beneath her feet. In another second, an orange hurricane burst from the shaft to roar like a jet engine and incinerate the remaining twisted trees and everything else before it.
She threw Benji down and covered him with her body but luckily, she was to the side of the gout of flame. After another minute, she slowly sat up, her eyes glistening as she realized what it meant.
Benji coughed. “Where’s Mitch?”
She blinked as he stared into the mine. “He stayed…” she whispered, “…to save us.”
“I knew he would,” Benji said.
“It’s over,” the old man said. “I beat it.”
“You beat it?” She shook her head. “Mitch saved us.”
Johnson Nightbird grunted softly, and then turned back to the smoking shaft. “But it was me that called him to save Eldon.” He faced her. “And you.”
Karen wiped her eyes and stared back at the mineshaft. The flames were dying down, but there was still an orange glow coming from deep down in the mine’s throat that made it look like the entrance to Hell.