Subterranea

by P. K. Hawkins

  Chapter Eight

  “Please tell me he’s stopped,” Henderson dramatically whispered to Laura. Laura, however, used her normal voice when replying.

  “Nope. We’ve still got a walking razor blade following us like a lost puppy.”

  “Maybe we can make him stop,” Henderson said. “Like, I don’t know, whack him on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper.”

  “A, we don’t have any newspaper,” Laura said. “And B, if you want to be the one who risks bopping a carnivorous dinosaur on the snout, go ahead and be my guest. I’ll be sure to see what I can do to reattach your arm afterward.”

  “Nobody’s hitting him!” Murky said. “He’s my friend.”

  Chicago had been following them for the last ten minutes, but he wasn’t doing anything at all to make them think he was stalking them in any way. If anything, he appeared to want to get closer, especially to Murky, but seemed afraid of what the others might do. Murky was amused by that, a dinosaur that could rip any one of them apart being afraid of a human. A couple of times she had almost been able to coax Chicago to walk right beside them, but he’d backed away and instead followed them from a distance every time.

  “Murky, maybe it’s not a good idea for you to keep encouraging him like that,” Laura said to her.

  “Why not?” Murky asked. “This is how I would treat any of my other pets.”

  “Except this isn’t a pet. This is a dinosaur. A meat-eating one. You do realize what that means it will try to eat if it gets hungry enough, right?”

  “More marshmallows?”

  “You already gave him all your marshmallows.”

  “Maybe we can find more down here somewhere.”

  Before Laura could respond, Chicago gave a sudden hiss at something up ahead of them.

  “Everyone stop,” Henderson said. “I think he’s seeing something, or smelling something, or whatever.”

  “How could he even see anything down here?” Laura asked. “The fungus on the walls is barely illuminating anything right now.”

  “Also, why are we assuming that something he doesn’t like would be something we don’t like? Maybe there’s something else friendly down here that could help us.” Jesse kept walking down through the passage, although he didn’t do it with that much confidence. More than anything, he still seemed to just be trying to put extra distance between himself and Chicago.

  Laura held out her hand in a stopping gesture. “Jesse, I really don’t think you should…”

  There was a squish as Jesse stepped on something soft and strange. “Ewwww,” he said. “What was…”

  He was cut off as something thick and heavy whipped up from the cave floor and slammed him in the legs. Jesse screamed as it knocked him over, but he didn’t even get a chance to fall all the way to the cave floor. Some kind of vine or tentacle wrapped around his leg and hoisted him up into the air.

  “Jesse!” Henderson called out, but he didn’t seem to have any idea what to do. None of them did. They weren’t even sure what was happening until a particularly large spot of glowing fungus farther down the wall started to glow brighter. Other tendrils of fungus had been blocking it off, deliberately making it darker to hide a single, ten-foot tall stalk with what looked like an inverted mushroom cap at the top. The top of the cap had some kind of flap on it, immediately making Murky think of a giant mouth. Inside the flap she could see a hard ring of spikes like teeth. At the base of the stalk she could see a number of rubbery tentacles, including the one that had Jesse, protruding from its base like exposed roots.

  “It’s some kind of killer plant!” Henderson yelled. He jumped up to try to grab Jesse and pull him out of the tentacle’s grasp, but the carnivorous mushroom just pulled Jesse higher in the air and out of reach. As he was jerked up, Jesse yelled something that Laura didn’t quite hear.

  “What did he say?” Laura asked Murky as they both ran toward the stalk and writhing mass of tentacles.

  “I think he said it’s a fungus, not a plant,” Murky said.

  “It’s really not the time for that, Jesse!” Henderson called.

  “Whatever!” Jesse called back. “Just get me down before this thing, like, eats me or something!”

  To Murky’s horror, that did in fact seem like what it was intent on doing. From this angle she couldn’t see what was in the mushroom cap beyond the weird toothy thorns, but she could guess there would be enough room in there for the mushroom to swallow Jesse whole. And after it was done with him, it could very well do the same to the rest of them.

  “We’ve got to get him down,” Henderson said. “Murky, get up on my shoulders and try to reach his hand.”

  “I don’t think that will… ack!” Murky found herself in the air along with Jesse before she could finish her sentence. The rubbery tentacle fungus had wrapped around her waist while she’d been distracted, and now that she was hefted up, she could clearly see the inside of the mushroom’s maw. Down inside the long stalk of the mushroom were more of those tooth-like protrusions, most of them pointing down to keep anything that went in from coming back out. At the bottom there seemed to be some kind of shimmering liquid. Murky thought she’d heard something about how certain plants would trap bugs in them and then digest them in some kind of acid deep inside. She had a feeling that if the tentacles dropped the two of them in there, neither of them would be coming back out.

  “Help!” Murky screamed. She wasn’t really expecting anyone to be able to do anything, but at the sound of her distressed voice, Chicago hissed.

  The dinosaur had been hanging back as the mushroom attacked Jesse, but now that it had Murky, he rushed forward. The tentacles whipped up in the air to grab him and the others, but Henderson and Laura jumped out of the way while Chicago went straight for them, slashing at the vine-like appendages with his sharp claws. The mushroom didn’t seem to feel any pain at this, but it was definitely distracted, if distraction was even something it could feel. It dropped Jesse, who landed in a bundle of root-like appendages sticking out of the stem’s bottom and bounced off their rubbery outsides. Murky, however, stayed firmly in its grasp, and the tentacle pulled her closer to the waiting maw.

  This has to be fine, right? she thought. There’s no way this is actually going to happen. She continued to think that to herself until she was dangling directly over the opening. At the last second, right as the vine-like appendage let her go, she tried to swing all the weight of her body over to one side. Murky yelped as she tumbled through the air, and Laura screamed, but she managed not to drop directly into the fungus’s throat. Instead she landed right on the lip, one half of her body dangling outside and the other inside, with her shirt catching and tearing on one of the tooth-like thorns.

  “Murky, hang on!” Laura called up to her. “Whatever you do, don’t fall in!”

  “Um, it’s not like that was on the top of my list of things to do,” Murky muttered, but most of her concentration had to stay on her grip. This thing was incredibly slippery, and it was taking all of her effort not to tumble the rest of the way in. Although it was dark down in the gullet of the mushroom, she thought she could see some white spots that might have been the remains of bones.

  “Look out!” Henderson called to her. She looked up just in time to see one of the vines whipping at her, obviously in an attempt to dislodge her and give the mushroom its meal. It barely missed her head, but a second one reared back, ready to hit her straight on. Murky closed her eyes, thinking this might very well be it, only to snap them back open again a second later as Chicago jumped at the tentacle and clawed the end of it right off, sending it flying into the mushroom’s gullet. The fungus only barely reacted to this and certainly didn’t seem to feel pain, but it did react when Chicago finished his absurdly high jump and landed right with his claws in the lip of the mouth. The entire mushroom swayed and shook violently in an effort to get the dinosaur off. Murky could feel her grip slipping, and she didn’t think that she would be falling to the outside if she did.
>
  “Chicago, help!” she called out to the velociraptor. In response, he opened his mouth and lunged his head at her, a movement that would have terrified her in any other circumstances. But instead of chomping down hard and killing her, he took her as gently as he could in his mouth and lifted her from the lip of the mushroom. The thorn that her shirt had been stuck on tore away with her and got caught between her and the dinosaur as they both tumbled away from the mushroom. Chicago let her go before they hit the spongey roots, keeping her from getting impaled by his teeth on impact.

  Murky wanted to take a moment to hug and kiss the dinosaur in gratitude, but before she could, Laura was hauling her to her feet. “Come on! We’ve got to get out of here!”

  They all ran past the mushroom as several more of the tentacles lashed at them, but now none of them came close to catching them. The element of surprise that it had had when it first attacked was gone, and the fungus couldn’t do anything but reach out after them in vain as four kids and one dinosaur skipped out on their intended destiny as its dinner.

  It was strange, but as they ran, Murky thought she could hear the mushroom make a weird creaking sound that was almost like a cry of rage.

  Chapter Nine

  They didn’t stop running until they were far enough down their current tunnel to no longer see or hear any sign of the carnivorous mushroom. When they did stop, the four of them collapsed to the stone floor in exhaustion. Chicago, who had been limping along behind them, made a series of strange whining sounds as he too leaned his body against a wall for support.

  “That was crazy,” Jesse finally said when he got his breath back. “We seriously almost could have died.”

  “Murky,” Laura said. When Murky looked over at her to see what she wanted, her big sister grabbed her in a tight hug and kissed the top of her head. “I thought I was about to lose you.”

  “Aw, don’t be like that,” Murky said, although she too had been terrified that she might not make it. “I’m perfectly okay.”

  “But are you?” Laura asked. She held Murky out at arm’s length and looked her over as best she could in the dim green light. “What happened here?” she asked, indicating the huge gash in Murky’s shirt. It wasn’t positioned so the hole exposed anything embarrassing, but Murky felt self-conscious about it anyway.

  “I got caught on one of those tooth things in that plant’s mouth,” Murky said.

  “That fungus’s mouth,” Jesse corrected.

  “Plant, fungus, whatever,” Henderson said. “It was still something that shouldn’t even have a mouth.”

  “Are you hurt?” Laura asked her. “There’s… there’s blood on you.”

  “What? Where?” Murky looked down at herself and saw that, yes, there was indeed a large smear of blood on her clothing, but when she checked herself, she couldn’t find anywhere that the blood might be coming from. “I don’t think this is mine.”

  “What, was it from the fungus?” Henderson asked. “Not only is this a place where mushrooms try to eat you, but you’re telling me they actually bleed as well?”

  “I don’t think it’s from the mushroom either,” Jesse said. “Look.” He pointed behind them. They’d been so caught up in their escape that none of them had noticed that Chicago, while still following them like a lost kitten, had fallen significantly behind. Once he limped closer, they could all see that he had to have been the source of the blood, as there was a fresh patch of it streaming down his leg.

  “He must have gotten caught on the broken thorn while we were falling,” Murky said.

  “Do you think one of us should try to help him?” Jesse asked.

  “Murky should,” Laura responded. “She’s the one with all the experience in taking care of animals.”

  “I take care of cats and hamsters,” Murky said. “Those are really not even close to a dinosaur.”

  “Let me put it this way,” Laura said. “Out of all of us, you’re the one most likely to be gentle with him, and therefore the least likely to cause him pain.”

  Henderson snorted nervously. “And less likely to piss him off enough to want to eat us.”

  Jesse nodded. “You’re also the smallest of us, so you’re the least likely to be appetizing.”

  “Okay, guys?” Laura said. “That’s probably not helping her.”

  Murky cautiously approached Chicago, stopping once or twice when his whining became more of an angry growl. He didn’t snap at her or otherwise try to keep her away, though.

  “It’s okay, Chicago. I just want to help you.”

  The dim glow of the wall fungus made it hard for her to see details until she got close, but the worst of his wounds seemed to be on his right leg. Everywhere else the damage looked like it was just small cuts, scrapes and scratches, but here the dinosaur’s rough pebbled skin had been torn away in a deep gash. There was blood coming out of it, but not fast.

  “Henderson, didn’t you have your gym shirt in your backpack?” Murky asked.

  “Why the hell would you want… oh, wait. I get it.” He shrugged off his backpack and pulled out the gym shirt, causing all of them to wrinkle their noses in disgust at the smell as he handed it over. “Might not be the cleanest thing to put on an open wound, though.”

  “We are literally underneath the dirt,” Jesse said. “I don’t think a little more grunginess is going to make the wound that much worse.”

  With Henderson’s help, Murky tore the shirt into the longest strips she could manage and then set to wrapping them around Chicago’s leg. The resulting bandage was pretty sad looking when it came to craftsmanship, but at least it covered up the entire wound and seemed to keep it from bleeding too much. All the while Chicago left Murky alone to do her work, although he did hiss at her several times when she was less than delicate with the wound. When she was finished, he shook his leg like he was trying to get the makeshift bandage off, then tried to nip at it with his teeth.

  “Maybe we should put a cone around his neck to keep him from doing that,” Murky said. “You know, like a dog.”

  “Murky, think for a second,” Jesse said. “Where would we get one of those paper cone things down here in a cave?”

  “Maybe we can find a way to make one out of your math book,” Murky suggested.

  “We don’t have time to try being MacGyver just to give a dinosaur a cone around its neck,” Laura said.

  “Maybe we should make him stay behind,” Henderson said. “If he’s too badly hurt, he might slow us down.”

  “Uh-uh. No way,” Jesse said. “He saved me. He could save us again if something else attacks us.”

  “Less than an hour ago none of us wanted him around, and now you’re saying you have no problem with him?” Henderson asked.

  “I wanted him around,” Murky said quietly.

  “Yeah, well, we were wrong,” Jesse said. “He hasn’t tried to attack us once, for some reason, and he was aware that something was wrong with the mushroom creature before any of us were. And we’re still not even positive we’re going the right way, but if he can sense danger then maybe he can help us figure out where the ant creatures went. And also? He saved us. We can’t thank him by running off without him while he’s hurt.”

  “I’m going to have to agree with them here,” Laura said. “Chicago has proven pretty valuable, and if he hasn’t killed and eaten us by now, then I kind of doubt he will.”

  They all looked at Henderson, who sighed. “Okay, fine. But I say it’s Murky’s responsibility to look after him and make sure he doesn’t get us into trouble. That’s fair, right?”

  Murky enthusiastically shook her head. “Oh yeah. I can do that! I’ll be good at it, too! I’ll be the best dinosaur watcher ever!”

  “You’ll be the only dinosaur watcher ever,” Jesse said. “At least the only human one.”

  “But Murky,” Laura said, “you do realize that doesn’t mean you get to keep him when we get back to the surface, right? Under no circumstances.”

  “Right. Of co
urse. I understand,” Murky said. But what she thought was Oh my gosh, I’m going to keep him!

  “If he’s up to walking again, we need to get going,” Laura said.

  “Any idea how much time we have left?” Jesse asked.

  “Best guess? Somewhere between four and five hours, and even if we can find everyone, we still have to go all the way back the way we came.”

  “And we still don’t even know if we’re going on the right track,” Henderson said morosely. “We could have been going down the wrong tunnels this whole time and we would have no way of knowing.”

  “Wait. What’s that up ahead?” Murky asked. She pointed at a spot some distance ahead where the tunnel flared out and appeared to go into another excessively large cavern like the one the dinosaurs had been in. The glow from there was far brighter than in the tunnel. Murky thought back to what Jesse had originally said about the glowing fungus being the source or large amounts of oxygen. If that was true, then it seemed possible that this might be a place that had something to do with the ant creatures that had taken the townsfolk. “That’s got to be what we’ve been looking for, right?”

  Before any of her companions could say otherwise, Murky ran for the mouth of the tunnel. Laura called out after her to stop, but Murky quickly heard the fast footsteps of three humans and one dinosaur running after her.

  Murky skidded to a halt as soon as she was out of the tunnel, with Jesse so close behind her that he ran into her and almost knocked her over. They were on a ledge again like they had been in the dinosaur cave, and it gave them a perfect view of everything beyond.

  “Okay, I’ll admit I was wrong,” Henderson said with hushed awe.

  “About what?” Laura said with equal quiet.

  “About what I just said,” Henderson responded. “We were definitely headed the right way this entire time.”

  Chapter Ten

  The only way to describe the structure they were seeing was as a city, but it was unlike any city that a human being had ever dreamed of living in. Hundreds of stalagmite-like spires reached up into the massive cavern, and while each one looked like it was made out of something like stone, the shapes were somehow organic. There were thousands of holes and balconies along the spires, none of them placed with any apparent rhyme or reason. From a number of them they could see some of the ant creatures scurrying out, easily gripping the sides as they went up and down the structures on tasks that the four of them couldn’t even begin to imagine.