Clunk!
“Captain!” Toy was over by an archway that opened onto the kitchen. Mba’s eye was drawn to a pair of small red bowls on the kitchen floor.
Bang!
He looked up at Toy. At a right angle to the kitchen entrance was another door.
Clunk!
Mba slid the drawing into his pants pocket.
“Something’s in the cellar,” Toy said.
Clunk!
Toy’s eyes were wide as he set the palm of his hand against the door under the stairs. He mouthed the word: Gnaw Maws?
Mba shrugged and moved toward him. “I hate cellars,” he whispered. “So, you mind going first?” He patted the younger man’s chest.
“I know, you’re not good in rabbit holes anymore,” Toy whispered, smiling at Mba.
“Mba grimaced grabbed the door’s handle and pulled it open.
Bang! Clunk!
Toy took point, aiming his shortbow into the darkness. Earthen steps led down to the cellar.
Mba caught Toy’s eye. Nodding, he raised his club.
Toy hooked his lamp onto the side of his mask. It filled the angled space with light. He paused a second before hurrying down the stairs.
Mba followed, sweat building up in his hair and forming a channel over his eyebrows. The inside of his mask was starting to become extremely moist. “Anything?” he asked Toy.
Clunk! Bang! Moan…
Moan? Mba thought.
“What the?...” Toy said, turning to fan the corners with his lamp and his bow.
Mba took stock of a door in the wall across from him. To his right was a wall of stone.
Toy gestured with his shortbow to the door.
Mba nodded and followed him.
The younger man took his position, aiming at the door.
Mba moved in close. He slowly nodded – once; twice. On the third nod, he pulled the door open. A closet with metal shelves holding bags of jerky, clay bowls filled with water and fruit greeted them.
Clunk! Bang! Clunk!
They both turned to look at the wall.
“The cellar is smaller than the first floor,” Toy whispered and gestured at the stairs running down the wall. “The kitchen goes on past the top of the stairs.” “All the walls are wood, except for that,” Mba said, pointing his sword at the stone wall.
“What?” Toy asked, covering Mba as he walked to the stone wall.
Mba set his hand against it. The surface was cool, but not cold the way stone should be. Mba frowned at the wall.
Clunk! Bang! The wall said in protest.
Mba perused the room. There was a couch made of tree branches and covered in pillows, a table and a shelf that held dozens of scrolls. He stared at the couch. Then he looked at the table; the shelf. “The couch isn’t straight.” He moved over to it. “Everything else is.” He bent to give the couch a heave; his back throbbed painfully. “Agh!” He coughed, and stood up, pressing on his spine.
Toy darted over to him. He slipped his bow over his shoulder. “I’ve got you, old man.”
Mba nodded.
Together, they pushed the heavy couch aside.
“Daarila, no!” Mba gasped. His hand instinctively covered the photograph in his pocket.
“What the hell is it?” Toy asked, pointing his shortbow at a flap of wood behind the couch. It was about three feet high and five feet wide, hinged at the top and painted the same dark red as the wall.
Clunk! Clunk!
“What is it, Mba?” Toy said, pushing at the corner of the wood flap. It pulled upward easily enough.
“A secret room,” Mba said, kneeling slowly, his back heavy with pulled muscle. “For Ritual.”
“Gnaw Maws?” Toy pulled the door all the way open. Dust drifted out.
“Not Gnaw Maws,” Mba said, shaking his head.
He removed his mask. Toy did the same.
“I gotta go in first,” Mba said. “You don’t ask any questions!” He wrinkled his nose to knock a drip of condensation off it. “You wait.”
“But, Captain...” Toy’s expression was grim. He managed a wry smile. “I’m in charge of rabbit holes.”
“Just shut up and wait!” Mba barked.
Toy frowned.
Mba slipped his mask back on, hooked his lamp to the side of his head and then crawled into the opening. It was dark. He craned his head around, looking up. His lamp lit the rafters and then splashed across some bare beams where a room had been framed. Past it loomed an untreated stone wall. He climbed to his feet. There was a large washbasin, a small medicine priest’s kit, a bundle of rope, a table and a hunting cap.
Clunk!
“Toy, come on,” Mba called.
A few minutes later, Toy crawled into the space. He got to his feet in a cloud of dust. “Captain, you don’t have to protect me. I know what I signed on for.”
“I’m not protecting you,” Mba said.
Clunk! Bang!
In the dark space, the noise seemed to come from all sides.
“Is that a dinner table?” Toy’s headlamp pointed in the direction of the sound. The light fell on the table. Near the table was an effigy full of nails and a stone carving of a woman with three pairs of breasts. The nail-filled statuette sat in a booster seat. There was another chair – empty.
A support pillar framed with pine obscured something past it in shadow.
Toy took a step toward it but halted when he heard…
Chewing noises. A splatter of fluid.
Clunk! Bang!
And the wet, ripping noises continued. There was a gasp of breath, more wet sounds – chewing – followed by a wheeze and a quiet moan.
Mba moved forward quickly, his guts churning.
Toy came behind him, shortbow ready.
There were candleholders on the table, clay plates, wooden utensils and napkins. On the floor sat a wine rack.
Clunk!
Toy’s headlamp glittered on the chains where they clasped a pair of thick wrists. The face was barely recognizable, twisted with Bacillus and madness.
Toy stared at the mutilated features. “Oh, Daarila! What happened to him?”
The man was naked. His crotch, abdomen and thighs had been skinned to the muscle and veins. Plump flesh hung from between his teeth.
“He ate his own lips,” Toy coughed.
“Daarila!” Mba said, raising his sword. “Somebody got you good.”
Toy pushed Mba’s arm down. “You can’t kill him!”
“He manifested,” Mba said. “It’s over.” He shoved Toy aside and raised his sword again.
“Eeeat...”
Mba swung toward the entrance.
Toy leveled his bow, glancing at the opening. He had heard it too.
Nothing there.
“Eeeat,” the word was whispered; quietly, intimately. A clicking sound followed and: “Eat. Eat. Eeeat.”
Behind them? Their lamps flashed around the cellar as they turned back to back.
“Where is it?” Mba shouted.
Nothing there.
“Where?” Mba bellowed, club swinging at...nothing.
“Eeeat...”
“I don’t see it!” Toy’s shortbow whipped toward the drifting shadows.
“Eeeat... eat... eeeat.”
“Wait! Wait, Captain!” Toy shook his head rapidly. His eyes were wide with terror. “We’re picking it up in our heads.”
“Eeeat...”
“Damn,” Mba said. “They just got one of our telepaths somewhere!” He raised his weapons.
CHAPTER forty-six
There was a flash of light from behind as a low rumble of thunder rolled up the tunnel. It pushed at their backs, heavy and ominous, plunging the shadows before them into deeper darkness.
Jima paused ten yards from the sewer opening and let his lamp play over the dirty water at his feet. Something had wrapped loosely around his right ankle. He dredged the water by his foot with a backhanded sweep of his sword. Something was there. The keen blade
cut through the murk and snared a piece of leather with a steel snap button. Then, with sinking heart, he recognized the ragged foot-long strip of material – the flexible joint fastening from a suit of Bacillus Squad padded armor.
Eeeat...
“What is it?” The corporal’s voice was shrill. In his anxiety, he bumped against Jima, who had to brace himself against a wall.
“Careful, corporal,” Jima whispered, raising his sword and moving forward.
Their boots splashed in the ankle-deep water and shuffled over humps of sediment. The sewer gurgled and echoed, water splattered and dripped, reverberating, amplified by the tunnel’s walls.
“Keep your head,” Jima said, pressing on. “Twenty yards from us, the tunnel branches east and west.” He peered into the circular shadow ahead. A heavy mist diffused their lamps but he could see the textured, wet surface of the stone walls where they met the massive block-like juncture that formed the joint where the sewer forked.
Jima had studied Commander Dinsu’s maps as a matter of course and, while the water drainage system was simple enough, there were complicated overlaps of ventilation shafts and maintenance hatches due to the army’s installation of the underground storage area. Jima knew such old architecture was prone to structural failure, weakness and the possibility of unmapped renovations and additions.
The corporal’s breathing became an anxious whistle as they moved toward the east-west fork in the tunnel. The lamps they hung from the sides of their masks created great black shadows left and right.
The water was deeper at the crossing. Jima’s foot landed on something soft and his balance shifted. He staggered and dropped to a knee, his sword beating the water for purchase as he fell forward on his knuckles.
A face popped up out of the water. Skinned, bereft of character, two dead eyes stared up into Jima’s. He gasped, heaving himself upward, feeling the corporal’s hands lifting him.
The young man’s shout cycled upward with terror – “Daarila!”
At their feet was a dead constable, the exposed muscle and bone of its ribcage torn by three wounds – two by sword; one by arrow. Its lower half was draped with the remnants of a squad uniform and boots. By the size of the body and flare of its hips...
“Juju,” Jima sighed.
He examined the upper torso, which was a massive wound of raw meat and tissue. It was difficult to determine underlying structures, but there was fatty tissue, torn with the skin, and the distinct orange-sections of breast lobules. “It’s definitely Juju.”
Thunder boomed up the tunnel.
Jima levered Juju up with his sword. Her skull had been opened and the brain removed.
“What happened to her?” the corporal gasped, his lamp light focused on the empty cranium. “Can Gnaw Maws do that?”
“Not Gnaw Maws,” Jima said, shaking his head. “This is a surgical wound from a bone saw.” He pointed at the open skull. “Squad medicine priests carry them for emergency amputations.”
Jima looked up along the tunnel. “This was done without finesse.”
“Who did it?” the corporal whispered, hefting his shortbow at the darkness. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know,” Jima said, rising. He picked up the splashing of many footsteps. A group of them...distant.
“Was it Bunseki?” the corporal asked. “Didn’t Storm have a criminal record?”
“And a meritorious constable service record,” Jima said, tilting his head back to focus his lamp on the young man.
“I’m just a driver,” The corporal sighed, drawing back from Jima’s skinless face. “What am I doing here?”
“Staying alive,” Jima said, turning back to the dead constable. “So calm down.”
“Kundo’s Science Units also carried Bone saws back in the day,” Jima continued, glancing along the tunnel. “They collected samples after squads destroyed hunting packs.”
“Eeeat.”
“What was that?” The corporal swung his bow to the left, then the right.
Sounds of splashing and hissing echoed down the tunnel. Jima’s Tyrak-skin suit-enhanced hearing kicked in. Jima heard a woman’s voice, authoritative one moment, pleading near madness the next.
“We are in luck, corporal,” Jima said. “The captive is still alive.”
If it’s her; but…how? He thought.
The woman’s voice came again, echoing over the wet sewer noises. It was followed by the staccato splash of many feet running in the water. Then, more echoes.
Jima dimmed his lamp and ordered the corporal to do the same before they started pushing up the fork in the tunnel toward the activity. The darkness closed in. Water rose around his ankles.
“Where are we going?” the corporal asked, panting frantically.
But Jima pushed on silently, listening for sounds of hope.
Then, clear and cold, came the clicks and repetitions of a single hissed word:
“Eeeat.”
Gnaw Maws ahead – not far. Lots of them.
“Eat.”
“Corporal,” Jima whispered. “Are you familiar with the expression tactical withdrawal?”
“Retreat?” The corporal said.
“I want you to fall back to the sewer opening and contact the squad,” Mba said, his voice shaking.
Another explosion – and repetitions of the word eat – shot through the tunnel.
“Captain Dambe should be here by now.” The corporal grunted, “But you...”
“Do not have as much to lose as you…driver,” Jima said. “And I am not defenseless.” He turned to the corporal. “Get the squad! Tell them I will attempt to rescue the captive or captives and retreat along the east tunnel. Hurry!”
The corporal didn’t hesitate. As his splashing footsteps receded, the dim light from Jima’s lamp fell on a patch of curly brown fur floating on the water at his feet—the partly chewed skin of a small dog.
CHAPTER forty-seven
Oga koi-koi #1 and three elephants loomed ahead. No more Tiptoeing.
#1’s lamps flickered, lighting the area as the squad deployed and prepped. After the squad was in the hole they would seal it shut. Then, as they moved forward they would search out openings and hiding places and seal those too. All temporary, none of it airtight, but the idea was to force the pack out into the main tunnels or open ground where they could be ‘treated’.
As long as there were shadows and nooks to hide in, the squad would be vulnerable to ambush. A single Gnaw Maw in full manifestation could do a lot of damage in close confines, attacking when the constables could not throw a club, shoot an arrow or swing a sword without hitting other constables. More than one squad had been whittled away in a tunnel fight back during the First Outbreak. The attrition rate could be brutal against a large hunting pack. Luckily, they were after a fresh pack of inexperienced Gnaw Maws still orienting themselves to Ritual.
“Give me another swig, Captain,” Toy said as he and Mba stopped their horses well behind #1’s mammoth frame.
Mba handed the calabash over.
Toy took a big gulp. “What the hell happened?” His eyes pleaded as he handed the calabash back. “I can’t believe I did that.”
“By the end of all this, you’ll believe,” Mba said. He tipped the calabash at his lips.
“But I...” The words withered in his throat. He lowered his gaze. “I should have let you.”
“Maybe,” Mba said. “But it was your call. He was your friend.”
He had raised his sword to end the Gnaw Maw – the constable chained to the wall – but Toy had pushed his arm down again.
“He took three arrows to the neck,” Toy cried. That’s impossible!”
“Bacillus overrides natural responses,” Mba said. He tossed the empty calabash onto the ground. “So we have to do the same.”
“Is that why you burned the house?” Toy whispered.
Mba closed his eyes and thought back. He had clambered out of the Poacher’s lair with matches and oil he found in t
he cellar. They had soaked the scrolls and drawings in oil and set them on fire as they moved through the house. Smoke was rolling across the main floor as they rode away, leaving Jima’s elephant and chair behind. Let him explain it.
“Bash. Bag. Burn,” Mba said. “We just skipped the bagging.”
“But Protocol,” Toy sighed.
“Protocols are in place to give us time to prove Bacillus manifestation,” Mba said. “We know what happened and you treated the only Gnaw Maw at the site.”
“Treated?” Toy said, frowning.
Mba shrugged. “Sounds better than killed, destroyed, or annihilated.”
“True,” Toy said. “Why was he chained up?”
“It’s what Poachers do, Mba replied. “Part of their ritual.”
“Is that why Jima was there?” Toy asked. “Does he know?”
“No,” Mba said, shaking his head. His heart sank.
“So, why keep it quiet?” Toy asked.
“I’m ordering you to play along until I can prove it,” Mba said. “I’ll take full responsibility. Poacher talk will just spook the squad.”
Toy nodded.
“When asked, just tell them the simple truth…we found Dummy there,” Mba said. “He had already manifested and you had to put him down.”
Mba’s thoughts ran back to the scene in the cellar, in the dark and dust of the Poacher’s lair. Toy had pushed his sword down and raised his shortbow. He could still see the revulsion on the young man’s face as he fired and fired and fired.
“Mba!” Binta’s voice ripped through the still night air as she crossed the space between #1 and the horses. The padded armor hugged her athletic form. A shortbow hung over her shoulder. She carried another shortbow in her hand.
Behind her, the squad had formed ranks beside #1.
“We’re ready to deploy,” Binta said. “Jima’s still in there, but we can’t raise him. Swole says he can’t find a connection to his, or the corporal’s, mind.”
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