“A little thinner than I’d like, but she’s better than eating more rats, more rats,” one Dweller repeated the last words in a low, raspy tone.
Another Dweller vibrated eagerness. With jittery movements, its head rocked from side to side, while showing its whitish gray, semi-cracked fangs. “I like it when they run. It makes me feel like a hunter again.” Its whole body twitched.
“I’m going to tear the flesh from her bones, and then crack them open and suck out the marrow,” a different Dweller exclaimed in a deep, low resonance. It dragged its unusually long and thick, tar black, bladed talons, scraping them forcefully against the tunnel walls. This Dweller dug into solid stone with a jarring fingernail to chalkboard, eardrum-piercing screech. It snarled delightfully at Emma, chomping at the air several times in her direction.
Emma blocked her ears and screamed, “STOP IT! STOP IT!” Her voice yelped throughout the tunnels.
Killian, still standing without a word or movement, brusquely stepped in front of her, putting his hand up, signaling for the other Dwellers to halt their advance. “This one has potential. Let’s turn her like us, and bolster our ranks instead of devouring her like the other two.”
“No!” a Dweller called out. “You’re selfish Killian. You ate the body you wear and left nothing for us, for us.”
“Yes.” Another shivered and shook uncontrollably. “You enjoyed life up there too much, while leaving us down here to rot in the cold, damp dark.”
A long, thick talon pointed at Killian. “I think your heart resides above ground,” a deep, low voice snarled. “No matter what, you are a Dweller, and you’ll never be anything else.”
Killian braced and stood his spot. He resolutely opened his arms wide with his fingers spread. His back faced Emma as his human parts continued to fall away. He shielded her from the other Dwellers’ discontented grumbles, hisses, and groans.
Killian addressed certain Dwellers. “Think of all she could tell us of the modern world, Recur. We haven’t turned anyone in hundreds of years. She could be a great asset.”
“I’m too hungry, too hungry.” Recur licked his fangs.
Killian turned toward another Dweller as they gradually closed in. “Slash, we can get other humans that come into the catacombs, but I want to keep this one.”
“You’re a fool, Killian.” Slash dragged his oversized talons deeper into the wall. “You want every female we encounter.”
“Not true!” Killian turned toward yet another. “Snare,” Killian put his hand up, “don’t even think about it.” He backed his way closer toward Emma. He groped behind to assure her safety. He felt all over for her, but only stroked the empty space of air she had left for him instead.
“The hunt is on!” Snare barked. With a grin, he bolted off the tunnel wall and over top and past Killian.
“You fool, you fool,” Recur said. “While you blabbered, she ran away, ran away.”
“Not for long.” Slash waved the other Dwellers onward down the dark tunnels after Emma.
Emma swung her arms back and forth. She huffed, panted, and gasped as the catacombs appeared to jump with her every stride. Winded with exhaustion, she wheezed for oxygen, but her lungs and feet were sore, tired, and heavy.
With a flashlight in one hand and a gun in the other, Emma sprinted down the tunnels. She continually looked over her shoulder as galloping hordes of Dwellers clopped and stomped, hunting in a pack, chasing toward her with colossal speed greater than any known predator on Earth.
The air was thick and musty. Emma started to cough. She sucked in a lungful of stagnant air, but labored from breath to breath, and as the Dwellers closed the gap, she wondered which of her breaths would be her last.
The Dwellers bounded down the tunnels with ease. With large strides and hurdles, using all four legs, they hunted as a singular unit, growling like wolves, they raced like cheetahs through the dark tunnels, each leapt over the other from wall to wall, and floor to ceiling in seamless movements.
Sweat flowed down Emma’s face. She stopped looking back and held the flashlight straight ahead. She knew there had to be an opening to the outside, and a way to get up and out of the nightmarish catacombs.
Fretful moisture leaked into her eyes, stinging her sight. She wiped some from off her brow. Briefly dabbing her wrist to her forehead, she glanced at the shiny, metal object in her other hand. The forgotten object bolstered her confidence. Emma suddenly felt emboldened as if she still had a shot to get out of the catacomb tunnels alive.
Fleeing tensely for her life amid the traumatic darkness, Emma had forgotten about the object of empowerment. She had somehow forgotten about the gun she held white knuckled. Grinding her teeth, she readied to unleash its power on the Dwellers. Emma gripped the gun ever tighter. Without looking back, she felt time running out. Her heart pounded until it throbbed inside her brain. It was time to pull the trigger or die.
Up ahead, in the distant part of the catacombs, an ethereal light streamed into the tunnel from up above. An old, wooden ladder appeared vertical with the dim light. She ran even faster toward her way out.
Emma knew it was still too far, and that the beasts were gaining nearer her position. The Dwellers were almost on top of her, and she could feel the ground thump from behind. She stumbled, reaching toward the dimly lit exit leading out from the stench of the unholy, rotting pit of death currently surrounding her.
The light was so close she could hear noises from the streets above ground. A second wind lifted a heaviness from off her chest. Euphoric, Emma smiled, for she was finally free. Then, an unexpectedly sharp, cold ripping pain ruptured her hope. “ARGH! GOD!” she wailed from the deep, piercing sensation.
A set of sickle-shaped, penetrating claws dug into the top of her shoulder, tearing the fine cloth of her sleeve to pieces. In total reaction, Emma turned around. She squeezed the gun’s trigger, shooting at the Dweller clinging onto her now gushing, wounded arm. Ba-boom! The gun popped, rattling dramatically. The bullet sent the creature hurling backward. The Dweller had released its grip, followed by a lifeless flop to the ground.
Emma’s hand vibrated and stung as if she had stuck her finger in an electrical socket. The gun’s echo rang out through the tunnels. Undaunted, more Dwellers pursued, so she blindly fired five more shots, clicking the trigger repeatedly without aim.
Before the Dwellers were only hungry, yet now their fangs, talons, and muscles showed fury. Their tiny slit nostrils swelled—the Dwellers jumped out from the black void of the catacombs—their arms and claws reached toward her, their mouths opened, their fangs sopping gooey drool. Emma yowled, firing one last shot as the beasts merged down upon her like a tidal wave.
Viip. The bullet hummed, ricocheting off the tunnel ceiling. Voomp. A massive cave-in erupted. A piled mound of rock and dirt now separated the Dwellers from Emma, and though stunned, she enjoyed a restful sigh, and an odd feeling of abrupt quiet, with an almost disturbing calm. She was now free to escape up the dim, dusty beam of light from the streets above.
Acloud of gritty particles coated her body and glazed the air. Emma
coughed, hacking out the exhaled specks of airborne dust. The dirty air stabbed her lungs like that of a thousand tiny knives. Her eyes watered as she waved the thick, dusty particulates away from her face. She tripped and fell to the ground, losing both her flashlight and the gun. One was bright, its smoky light spread along the hazy cloud, but the other slid off somewhere far along the dark ground.
The once lifesaving weapon was lost. Emma plunged desperately to her hands and knees. She searched the muddy puddles, slapping the water, and blindly probing the ground in front of her, all the while, her flashlight faded in strength and brightness. At first, after the cave-in, there was only wonderful silence, but soon she heard the Dwellers burrowing from the other side of the walled hill of rocky dirt.
Emma hastily stood. She again
waved the air in front of her face, and as the dust cleared, so did her senses. The gun no longer mattered. She stopped what she was doing and ran over toward the only thing that did matter—the dim light shining as a beacon from above. Her legs wary, her arm bloody and injured, she could not raise her shoulder. Emma sniveled. Any other time she would have already made it to the top and have been out of the tunnels, but as she eyed the wooden ladder, it turned into an impossible feat, it turned into her Everest. With a deep sigh, a gulp, and a vertical view of light from the safe world above, the ladder became a climb of doubt and fear nearly rivaling the Dwellers in fright.
Starting with one reluctant hand, Emma climbed the rickety, old ladder. Her injured shoulder fastened to her side, she forced her wounded arm to grab hold a rung. She refused to look anywhere except up, toward the light of salvation, even as the Dwellers broke through the massive, earthy divide piled between them.
With every step, the light from above ground got brighter, and the noise of cars and people soon carried her upward. She winced with every pull upon her wounded, bloodied shoulder.
The flashlight died, so she let it slip away to the bottom of the tunnel’s black void. Her eyes needed time to adjust from the pervading darkness over the last few hours. Finally, Emma reached the top. There was a heavy, steel drainage guard between her and ultimate freedom from the catacombs.
The steel guard was solid, wet, and cold to the touch. Her thin fingers slipped through the metal slats with ease. She angled her face sideways, pressing her cheek close to the slats—trying to see some of the lights and people nearby. She caught a glimpse of her hotel, which appeared only about a block from where she stood at the top of the ladder. But from where she stood, it might as well have been a thousand miles away, as the heavy drainage guard blocked any hope of further advance.
Emma tried to lift the metal plate to the side, yet it did not budge. She desperately yelled, even screamed for help, yet no one heard her fraught cries of distress. The mining of burrowing Dwellers underneath her feet, at the bottom of the ladder, in the dark void below, opened a pit of despair inside Emma. Anguished feelings of melancholy fragmented panic to her very core. With each bang and scrape, she recoiled and flinched. The sound of Dwellers bursting through the mound of rock and dirt cost her a moment of balance. The whispers returned, with rushing streams of foul air shooting up past her, before filtering into the city’s night air.
The Dwellers had broken free. They shook the ladder under cover of dark at the bottom of the tunnel’s black void below. The Dwellers were not only coming after Emma…they were here. She braced the ladder tightly and looked down. Her injured arm let loose. Uncontrollably, she swung to one side of the ladder, almost falling, hanging on with a single arm and foot.
The creatures now surrounded the bottom of the ladder, kneading their talons in expectation of her dropping toward them. Her stomach, it felt, jumped into her throat. The creatures began climbing the ladder, and though stationary, the Dwellers spun around her as she flailed in and out, while dangling at the ladder’s top half.
Emma steadied herself.
She grabbed the metal drainage guard, while holding her position.
Dread became anger. Emma was tired of being afraid, and she used all that fear for one angry push, a push strong enough to lift a solid, metal drainage guard nearly twice her body weight from off its loose fittings.
Emma’s face reddened as the tendons in her neck strained into pronounced, corded lines. Her injured shoulder popped. She groaned deep and low from her diaphragm up to her throat. Her low, deep groan ended in a shrill cry when the drainage guard moved a mere impossible inch.
The drainage guard cracked open into chilled, yet free, nighttime city air of Paris.
It was a tight fit. She sized the gap. There was barely enough room between her body and the metal frame on each side.
She pushed the metal drain some more, sliding it a screech along metal to ground. Her whole body ached unbearably. The Dwellers nearly upon her, the ladder quaked. Emma slid through the constricted opening. Parts of her slight frame felt pinned. Her face mashed together, with a red so red, her skin turned almost purple. She felt a pressure in her blood until her head spiked an awful throbbing. “I can do this!” I can do this!” she shouted to herself.
Slowly, her thin figure gravely wedged out of the catacombs, and up safely above ground. Emma leaned her head backward as far as it would go, holding her wounded and bloody arm in place of a sling. She enjoyed the noisy, crowded openness only the streets of Paris offered. Tears of distress were replaced with those of accomplished success.
She stood for a moment, her body swayed like a vessel at sea. She pulled her injured shoulder in against her chest, and lent her other hand straight armed, bending over, clutching one of her knees. Her stomach distended in and out rapidly, before her breaths calmed.
Emma straightened upward.
Elation filled her entire being, but her chest felt weak as if to faint. Emma took a step away from the drainage guard.
One Dweller boldly reached up, strongly gripping her ankle from between where she had wedged and slipped through to freedom.
Its firm clasp bound her leg, pulling Emma abruptly down and hard onto her stomach. Her chin smacked against the cold street. She twisted her body over. Her bottom side now dragged along the ground as she was towed back in the direction of the catacombs.
Emma used her other foot to kick the beast’s hand off her ankle. She kicked, and kicked, biting her lower lip until her mouth bled. However, her best attempts were for naught. Her recent taste of freedom suddenly appeared fleeting. Against every part of her living will, she slowly drifted back toward the Dwellers in the underground boneyard.
Emma hysterically screamed over again, “HELP! HELP!” She rapidly kicked the creature’s hand around her ankle, neither of which was to any avail.
“No one can hear you, hear you.” Recur pulled her with ease, while grinning from just below the drainage guard. Its black, saucer eyes reflected the colorful, bright city lights directly behind her.
Emma scrambled frantically. She looked for another way to free herself. Her head whipped from side to side. Then she saw her only chance. She stopped kicking the Dweller’s arm, and instead, kicked the hefty, metal plate where its long arm protruded out.
Again, she groaned heavily. She planted both palms as stops along the cold, wet street. Even her injured arm braced the weight it could.
She clamped her teeth, grinding them back and forth. Emma’s whole body stiffened as she let out a single, garish shriek. It was every bit of strength, but with her other leg, she pushed the solid, drainage guard, until her knee ached, and the hefty, metal plate slid, clunking back over, down onto its fittings.
It slammed shut on top the Dweller’s arm. A cracking of its bone, like a twig, smashed its upper wrist, trapping the Dweller’s forearm, leaving it upright and leaning askew above ground.
Recur squealed a profane howl that carried throughout the alleyway, but it immediately released Emma’s leg.
She jumped to her feet and sprinted from the drainage guard on a nonstop, direct course toward the visual shelter of her hotel.
Still shaking, but just yards away from her hotel, she slowed from a run to a hurried stride. Emma encountered groups of well-dressed people talking and laughing outside clubs and restaurants on the streets next to her.
Emma watched behind, looking back with a paranoid head flip every other second. Several people stared oddly. As she hurried by them, their gay chatter dulled in waves when she passed.
One young, elegantly dressed woman walked over to Emma. “Are you all right, miss? Do you need help?” The young woman gently placed her hand on Emma’s back.
Emma slanted her shoulder up, down, and away, saying nothing to the woman, but giving her a wide-eyed, blank yet brief stare of dislike as she rushed by, fleeing from the
elegant young woman’s touch. She refused to look anyone else in the eye, as all eyes were scoping her. Emma saw fingers pointing, and heard people talking amongst themselves over her appearance and odd behavior. Yet for all she knew, they were one of those horrible, demonic creatures escaped from the catacombs, silently stalking her in human form.
Soon every person, no matter how nice they appeared, seemed like a potential Dweller to her. Emma ran until her heart felt weak as if it would explode. Her body could run no farther, but still, she pushed herself, and did not slow until she got back to the front gates of her hotel.
Once through the bright, main hotel lobby doors, Emma searched her pockets, but realized she had lost her room key. Her eyes shifting back and forth, she held her head high, tilting her chin upward as she calmly walked across the granite floors, while traipsing mud, along with a reeking stench of the sewers, through the glorious hotel lobby.
Emma stopped by the front desk for another key. She tapped the silver bell, ringing its chime. She clanged it once, and then several more times in quick, agitated succession. Emma smeared some grime across the gold stripe paint that lined the counter as she propped herself in an awkward, anxious sort of tension.
She breathlessly fidgeted, and without end, kept looking all around her. A shiver overcame Emma’s hand. She could not stop the tremor, so she closed her hand into a balled fist. She tapped the silver bell again and again. The bell rang out with an unmistakable clanging of irritation, until another hand reached over and stopped its hollow vibrations.
The attendant, with hand on the bell, raised an eyebrow at Emma’s sudden and unsettled appearance, to which even she was not fully aware, but began to guess by his repelled expression.
With his right eyebrow raised, the attendant cleared his throat, loosening his button collar, while tilting his head. “Um…how can I help you, miss?” he said unsurely.
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