Dead World

by Lucas Pederson

  DEAD WORLD

  Lucas Pederson

  www.severedpress.com

  Copyright 2018 by Lucas Pederson

  ONE

  Somewhere in the darkness, water drips, echoing off the stone walls of the tunnel. The sound mingles with the shuffling of boots.

  The tepid air reeks. Like a bushel of rotting tomatoes.

  Dr. Alyx Wick adjusts the filter scarf over her mouth and nose. The scans don’t indicate anything toxic, but she’s come to rely more on instincts rather than technology. Hasn’t failed her yet.

  The lights barely penetrate the absolute darkness of the tunnel ahead. Cuts off at about thirty feet.

  Behind her, Morris mutters an old Xyeth prayer. He’s new to her team, inexperienced and jittery. So far, he hasn’t shown much of anything besides fear. Which is a dangerous thing during explorations. Fear puts everyone else in jeopardy. It clouds the mind. Still, she needs his knowledge of the Xyeth tunnels. She knows about them, but only from old books. She brought Morris on as a guide, mostly. His other abilities, well…she’ll see if he was lying sooner or later.

  A shrill cry from down the tunnel bounces off the walls, batters Alyx’s ears.

  Morris sucks in a sharp breath, all those prayers dying in his flabby throat.

  Alyx’s free hand drifts to the butt of the gun on her hip.

  “Dahs bad sign,” Morris mumbles.

  Alyx rolls her eyes, glances at him over her shoulder. “Shh.”

  “No,” he says. “I not go now. We turn back.”

  “I’m paying you to guide me to the Sythilias. You tuck tail and run now, our deal is off.” And when he grumbles something about not being paid enough, Alyx spins on him. He stumbles away in surprise. Em and Crane catch him before he falls. She nods at Em and Crane, the only two in the Universe she really trusts, and they let Morris go.

  He, with his scaly, reptilian skin, rights his filter scarf and glares at Alyx with double lidded yellow eyes. “Too dangerous, don’t you see? Bad things in tunnels.”

  “You said that before we left.”

  “Tis true! Shoulda never came here.”

  Alyx, smirking, steps closer to Morris. He’s shorter than her by about three inches, but what he lacks in height, he makes up for in stoutness. He’s like a walking boulder. And Xyeths are renowned for their superior strength. Even so, Morris lowers his lizard-like head, double lids blinking.

  “You said whatever used to live in the tunnels were long dead.” Alyx grabs Morris’s scarf and yanks him close. “So, what the hell did we just hear?”

  Morris, snout exposed now, thin lips quivering to reveal small, pointy teeth, simply blinks at her.

  Alyx yanks him closer, nearly nose to snout. “What did we hear?”

  “I-I-I…I dunno, Dr. Wick. Things in here. Sacred place. Shoulda stayed away.”

  She shoves him away, sight darting from Em to Crane. “Be ready.”

  They nod in tandem and draw their guns. Revolvers loaded with lumini rounds. Bullets able to take down the largest of beasts.

  Or so Alyx hopes.

  She bends to Morris, about to ask him for the map, when a low, rumbling growl trembles the air behind her. Morris, gasping, backing away as Em and Wick step around him, eyes focused on whatever growls behind her.

  Heart whipping against the walls of her chest, Alyx’s hand slips to the gun on her hip. She whirls around, dropping low, and pulling the trigger in a single fluid motion. Em and Crane fire their weapons a second later, lighting up the darkness.

  She catches a few glimpses of something large with tight, white skin and massive snapping yellow teeth before the gun flashes go out. All the lights are pointed at the floor. The creature howls, something swishes through the air directly in front of Alyx, blowing her hat off. She grabs it, slaps it back on her head and points the gun at a wall of black.

  “Lights,” she shouts.

  There’s a click and the tunnel is doused in high density, white light.

  Long, yellow teeth snap an inch from her face. Greenish blood dribbles out of three holes in the monster’s broad chest. It drops to all fours, roars at her. Three black eyes sunken in the white flesh of its narrow face, glare at her. Blue drool slathers the stone floor under it. It squeals, as if the light hurts it. The creature slaps its claws inches from her boots, yet doesn’t attack.

  “Well,” Alyx says, “you’re an ugly bastard, aren’t ya.”

  She points the gun at the creature’s head, squeezes the trigger. Sklack. Half of the narrow head explodes in a splatter of green and yellow. The monster chuffs, staggers to the right, and collapses.

  Steadying her breathing, Alyx stands, holsters the gun and turns to Em and Crane. Both are humans and they blink at her. Em looks like he’s about to say something when she waves him away. Her sight shifts around the two men.

  “Where’s Morris?”

  “Sucker ran off,” Crane says in his deep voice.

  “Gave me this, though,” Em says and hands Alyx a slim, clear sheet of hard plastic.

  The map.

  Lips forming a thin, white line on her sweaty face, Alyx taps the sheet and immediately the map pops up. A green circle shows her their location. She turns, facing down the tunnel. A small, red X marks their destination.

  Over her shoulder, she says, “Let’s go.”

  She steps over the dead creature and continues down the tunnel. Behind her, Em and Crane follow without a word. Em has been with her since the early days on Earth, before that planet choked and died. There are no more mysteries left to find on Earth. All artefacts have been discovered and those still lost…well, they’ll remain lost. Earth’s artefacts aren’t worth much anyway these days.

  Building her reputation for finding the unfindable, Alyx brought Em along for the intergalactic ride. Crane came only a couple years later while on an exploration of the ghost planet Pluto. He’d been with another team searching for precious metals and joined Alyx once she revealed his employers had no idea what they were doing.

  Trust…it’s an important thing.

  Perhaps the rarest of things.

  The tunnel turns left, then right before finally coming to a T. Alyx, following the map, takes the right tunnel, which begins to gradually taper inward. The deeper she goes, the lower the ceiling becomes, the more the walls close in. Her shoulders scrape against the damp stone so she begins walking sideways, sparing a glance behind. Em isn’t having much of a problem, but Crane is. He’s almost seven feet tall and two hundred-eighty pounds. The man is a behemoth and walking through this tunnel, Alyx notes, is turning into a major task. At least he’s not claustrophobic. Poor guy. She almost tells him to wait for them, then thinks better of it. Crane is the type of guy who’ll push onward, despite the difficulties. An admirable, but frustrating trait.

  The problem isn’t the creatures stalking the tunnels, but what lies ahead. That’s if what’s in the books are true. Sometimes stories are only stories. But…

  The narrow tunnel opens to a small room. The walls are shrouded with cobwebs. At the center of the room is a silver circle. It glitters in the lights thrown by Em and Crane.

  Em starts forward, about to cross the threshold into the room and Alyx stops him.

  “Stay here,” she says.

  Em backs up a few feet, nodding.

  Alyx returns her attention to the room. Her eyes shift back and forth, up and down, sight picking out any abnormalities. The walls, with their swaths of cobwebs, doesn’t make much sense. Unless they are the remnants of spiders now long extinct. It’s possible. And yet…

  A frown creases on her face as she stares at the right wall.

  Nothing in the texts, nor the tid-bits of information from Morris, ever mentioned spiders.

  On the other side of
the room awaits the entrances of two other tunnels. According to the map, she needs to take the left one. But, if memory serves right, this is the Room of Tangles. Where nothing is what it seems. Then again, texts aren’t always true facts. Still, if nothing is what it seems, then the webs aren’t really webs, but something else. And the tunnels…

  She fixes her sight on the circle drawn into the middle of the floor. More like etched.

  “Dr. Wick?”

  She looks over her shoulder at Crane.

  “Morris said something about this room. He said the room with the circle will kill us all.”

  Alyx snorts. “They all say that.” But when she turns back to the room, her eyes widen a bit and she blows out a long breath. She wipes sweat from her face and focuses on the circle.

  There’s something about the circle. Something that teeters on the edge of her mind. But what? Damn it. What…

  She smiles, snaps her fingers and spins on Em. The guy just about jumps out of his pants. “The stones!”

  Em, blinking, manages, “Huh?”

  Alyx reaches out. “The West Wood stones in the pack. Give’em to me.”

  Em shrugs out of the pack and begins rummaging through it.

  “Hurry,” Alyx says.

  He brings out a small, black sack. The contents click as he hands it over. Alyx grabs it, swings back to the room and opens the sack. Inside are three luminous stones. All glow a deep purple. The West Wood stones are relics said to set things that are askew to true. She’s been carrying them for years, but until now has never tried them out. If this truly is the Room of Tangles, the stones should show her what’s real and what’s not.

  The stones are about the size of golf balls, shaped like eggs. Alyx tosses one near the right wall. The stone flickers. Darker purple shifts to lighter purple, to an almost pink color. She waits, keeping her sight on the wall blanketed in webs. Light bursts out of the stone, glaring in every direction, and when it subsides, the wall is gone. Instead, she stares at the opening of a tunnel.

  Smiling, she throws another stone close to the wall on the left. Soon, the wall changes to another tunnel.

  The final stone she holds on to for a moment. If the walls are tunnels, then what are the tunnels directly in front of her? She steps a couple feet into the room and the floor quakes under boots. She glances down just as the section she’s standing on cracks and crumbles. Alyx leaps to the side before the section of floor breaks, disappearing into a black abyss below.

  Breathing in snippets of air, she looks at Em and Crane. Em appears to be on the verge of a heart attack, or something. Crane shakes his head at her. Not to say she’s stupid, but to not go any farther. At least that’s how she reads it anyway. Maybe he does think she’s stupid. Or crazy. Hell, he wouldn’t be the first to think so.

  The floor is made up of square sections, she quickly notes. They’re about three feet wide, or so. Give or take. The question is: Which ones are rigged to break? The other thing is the edges are difficult to make out. There’s too much dust covering the floor.

  She sighs, and tosses the last stone. It lands, clicking along the floor, coming to a rest near the center of the large circle where it begins shifting through colors. Before it can reach pink, the stone begins to sink. Bubbles burst over the surface of the floor inside the circle. Then the stone vanishes under the floor.

  “What the hell?” Crane bursts out.

  Alyx, breaking out of her reverie, glances at the two men. “Just stay there.”

  Using the toe of her boot, she tests the nearest square. She presses harder and the square holds. Wiping sweat off her face with her hand, she adjusts her backward hat, and steps fully onto the square, eyes pinched shut. When the floor doesn’t give way, Alyx blows out a long breath, too heavy to be a sigh and opens her eyes. The left tunnel is maybe ten squares away. Once hidden under some glamour or another, now revealed. It’s the left tunnel they need to take, according to the map, but…

  As she checks the next square, something in the room clinks. The sound bounces off the hewn stone walls like a ping-pong ball. She stops, trying to see everything at once. The silver circle rises out of the floor and begins to turn. Dust plumes as the raised circle clicks counter-clockwise.

  Alyx blinks, cuts her sight to Em and Crane. “You two better move.”

  The men exchange a worried glance, and carefully make their way to her, stepping on the same squares.

  The silver circle clicks, filling the room with dust. Inside the circle, the floor boils. Nothing in any of the texts she’s read said anything about a boiling floor, or the turning circle, for that matter. That’s why Morris is kind of important to this exploration. But he’s gone now, and it’s up to her to figure out what the hell to do.

  From the fake tunnels to her right, a low groaning sound mingles with the clicks. A foul stench fills her nostrils. Something like rotting meat.

  “Dr. Wick?” Em steps into her square. Way too close. The guy needs a damn shower.

  “What?”

  “You think maybe we should get to that tunnel before something bad happens?”

  She grunts, claps him on the shoulder. “What would I do without you, Em?”

  “Find some other fool to drag along with you on these crazyass explorations of yours,” Crane spouted in his deep, rumbling voice.

  Alyx chuckles, nods and turns to the tunnel.

  “Wait, really?” Em, he’s so close he’s almost pushing her off the square now.

  Alyx grins. “Gotta keep you on your toes.” Then she jumps across the remaining squares to the mouth of the tunnel.

  The moment her boots land in the tunnel, the clicking increases. The raised circle turns faster.

  “Hurry,” she tells Em and Crane.

  Em jumps, but, being shorter, lands on the square directly in front of the tunnel. The floor cracks, crumbles. Alyx grabs the front of his jacket and yanks him into the tunnel with her. He’s breathing too heavily to say much of anything and sort of collapses against the wall. Crane makes the jump without any problems.

  The groaning gets louder. A shadow catches Alyx’s sight from the tunnel across the room. She squints, trying to make it out. A ratcheting noise joins in with the clicks and groans. Then, in the gloom of the tunnel across the room, something metal gleams.

  “Go,” she shouts, pushing Em and Crane away from the opening. “Run!”

  The two men ask no questions. They don’t hesitate. They know her well enough that when she says run, it really means haul ass.

  Alyx risks a glance over her shoulder just as there’s a whoosh sound and two metal spikes stab into the stone wall inches from her head.

  She stares, wide-eyed at the spikes still vibrating in the stone and says, “Traps. Why are there always traps?” Out of the corner of her eye, the gleam of metal in the dark.

  Without further hesitation, Alyx sprints down the tunnel and around a slight curve to join Em and Crane. Behind her, the raised circle continues to click.

  “You said there wouldn’t be any crazy traps on this one,” Em says, all bug-eyed.

  Bringing out the map, Alyx says, “I said there might not be. Small difference.”

  “Small? I about died back there.”

  Alyx smiles. “But you didn’t.”

  “How far are we to the Sythilias?” Crane asks, apparently not in the mood for bickering.

  Alyx eyes the map. “Not far.”

  “Any more rooms that aren’t rooms that try to kill people?” Em frowns at her.

  She holds the map up for him to see. “Does it look like there are?”

  He rolls his eyes and points his lights down the tunnel. “There’s one thing I’ve learned going on explorations with you, Dr. Wick.” He glances at her. “Maps don’t mean shit.”

  This time, however, the map is right. There aren’t any more rooms. No more traps. And if there are more of those creatures that tried to kill them earlier…there’s no sign.

  The air in the tunnel is cool on Alyx
’s sweaty skin. It’s almost a relief. Up until now, the tunnels have been a balmy ninety degrees. Checking the thermal meter fixed to her wrist, it’s currently sixty-four.

  A couple turns finds them at their destination.

  The tunnel yawns open, revealing a dark cavern. Here they linger.

  “Set up the tall boys,” Alyx says.

  Em and Crane unpack the two stands fixed to wide, rectangular lamps. She steps back, letting them set the lamps up. They’re maximum exposure, high density. But that’s not what makes them so special. Their light spreads out in massive fans, making most of the insides of deep caverns visible.

  Just a couple of the many toys she stole from the University before they kicked her out.

  The men switch on the tall boy lamps and instantly the cavern is lit. It isn’t as deep as she first thought and the lamps make it appear as daylight. Clear, every detail illuminated.

  Through the texts and stories told by elders, the Sythilias is surrounded by giant serpents that guard the precious idol. It’s said whoever tries to take the Sythilias from its alter shall die many deaths. It’s said there are dark spirits who will enter you and force your body into convulsions, twisting your insides until there’s nothing but pulp. All are fickle warnings. Pretty much the same kind of warnings she’s debunked over the years. The only other warning that stands out, though, is by touching the Sythilias itself.

  Legend has it, the Sythilias contains the very essence of a god. A god gone dormant, asleep until his time to wake arises. The god’s name is, Reque. The Xyeth God of Death. And, as legend goes, he wasn’t an evil god. Perhaps, he was even kind. For he took those who needed taking and if merely injured, he healed until that person’s time to truly die arrived. Or something like that.

  So, it is said, if one touches the skull idol for which Reque slumbers, the god will be transferred from the idol into the person, becoming a new vessel. A mobile idol. That person will be possessed by a god.

  Of course, that’s also just a story. Common legend through the Xyeth culture, which is all but extinct now. Morris is but one out of four hundred still alive today. And the bastard ran off on her.