by Jacob Rayne
‘Caught like fucking rats in a trap,’ he muttered, arming swathes of smoke out of his eyes.
Brad gave him a nervous glance.
‘It sounded a fair way away yet,’ Abbott said.
Brad nodded.
The tunnel widened a little and Abbott saw a huge pile of rubble blocking their path.
‘Fuck,’ he said. Flashbacks of the last time he’d climbed through a pile of rubble and almost shook the hand of God flooded into his mind. He looked at it carefully. ‘Ain’t no way on God’s green earth we’re gonna fit through there,’ he said.
Brad flinched when Abbott picked up a lump of rubble and launched it into the pile, letting out the most furious and inventive barrage of curses he had heard in his life.
‘You know, there’s a hole in the wall here,’ Brad said, pointing to a small hole in the rock beside them.
Abbott looked down, flicking on his Zippo lighter to chase away the darkness. ‘Looks clear,’ he said, ‘but we don’t know it ain’t gonna cave in.’
‘This looks more likely to cave in,’ Brad said, pointing to the pile of rubble and the distinctly ropey looking ceiling above it.
‘Yup. Reckon you’re right. In we fucking go then,’ he sighed.
They’d been crawling for maybe a hundred uncomfortable yards, taking the skin off their knees and elbows – and, in Abbott’s case, his forehead – when the floor suddenly fell away from beneath them.
‘What the hell’s he doing?’ Winters said. ‘He’s gonna get himself killed.’
‘He’ll be fine,’ Craggs said. ‘Now look, there are two left. You upto taking them out?’
‘Does your mamma fuck sailors?’
Craggs grinned.
‘Let’s get it on then.’
They ran in, keeping in the war cries they were dying to utter as they didn’t know how many enemies they were facing.
Craggs slammed heavy blows into the creature’s head until it was stunned then sunk in a tight chokehold.
When his creature was dead he turned to help Winters, but he didn’t need any help; he was smashing the bloody remains of the creature’s head into a sharp rock on the floor.
‘I think he’s dead, Morey,’ Craggs said. ‘Now get your ass in here.’
They moved into the small building and found the trapdoor in the centre of the floor. It opened with a squeal of rusted hinges, showering rust particles into the air.
They coughed and waved the noxious mixture out of the way.
Craggs gasped and pulled Winters down when he saw another few creatures making their way towards the cabin.
He edged the trapdoor shut, keen to avoid the rusted hinges sounding the dinner gong, and climbed down into the gloom.
The ladder went down maybe twenty metres then they hit the concrete floor of the tunnel below.
It was dark down here and they couldn’t see anything more than a foot or so in front of them.
Water droplets fell on their heads.
‘Told you I’d be ok,’ Duggan’s voice said from the darkness ahead of them.
Both men jolted until they saw him leaning against the tunnel wall, casting a small torch around.
‘You guys want the good news or the bad news?’ he said.
‘How’d you get down here?’ Winters said.
‘There was another trapdoor, I remembered seeing it on the map.’
‘What’s the good news?’ Craggs said.
‘There are no creatures in here with us at the moment.’
‘What’s the bad news?’ Winters said.
‘We’ve got one hell of a climb on our hands.’
‘Gimme that rifle,’ Weiland said, squinting into the distance.
‘Why?’ Hennessee asked.
‘I can see one of those things on its way over here.’
‘I reckon you should leave it until it gets close,’ Peterson said.
‘They’ll all come to investigate the gunshot, dummy.’
Weiland shrugged and lined up the shot anyway. Fired. The gunshot was almost deafening in the silence of the forest.
‘You fucking idiot,’ Hennessee said. ‘We told you not to do that.’
‘Did you even hit it?’ Peterson asked.
Weiland hung his head.
‘You didn’t hit it?’ Hennessee said. ‘You utter moron.’
‘It’s headed over here now,’ Peterson said.
‘I still can’t believe you did that,’ Hennessee said.
‘Well sorry,’ Weiland said, his tone that of a surly teenager.
‘It’s still coming. It’s seen us alright, it’s pointing at the chopper,’ Peterson said.
‘I’ll shoot at it again,’ Weiland said.
‘You’ll be outta bullets before you even hit the fucking thing,’ Hennessee said. ‘Besides, the rest of them will hear it. Finish it by hand.’
‘Why me?’
‘Cos you fucking brought it here,’ Hennessee hissed.
‘OK then, but just so you know I’m not happy,’ Weiland said.
‘Well you should listen to us next time then, shouldn’t you?’ Hennessee snapped.
Weiland said nothing, just sloped off. Hennessee snatched the gun from his hand.
‘No guns. Too much noise.’
Weiland got out of the chopper, pulled his cosh and walked towards the creature, wishing he’d never fired the gun.
Abbott and Brad fell for an age, the cold wind rushing past them, chilling their skin and tearing the breath from their lungs. They wanted to scream in protest at how close they’d come, but there was no air to do so.
The darkness had swallowed the light now and they could see nothing at all. They had no idea how far they had left to fall. Abbott couldn’t decide whether this was a good thing or not.
The stop to the fall was sudden in comparison to the epic length of their descent. Abbott hit first, amazed to still have his senses about him. Brad landed a second later.
They were standing on something springy and sticky but there was no light to see what it was. Abbott winced as he put his hand into what felt like a mass of dead flesh. Suddenly the lack of light seemed the least of their worries.
Abbott remembered the lighter he had in his pocket. He pulled it out and fumbled the lid open. His trembling fingers struggled to light the mechanism.
Twice, three times, his fingers scraped off without the flame taking hold. Then it sparked and caught. The light chased away some of the darkness, revealing a dark green substance beneath their feet.
The small distance they could see was dotted with gleaming bones and rotting carcasses. More mutilated remains were cocooned in the same substance they had seen hanging from the ceiling in the tunnels.
The thought of being trapped like that while some arachnoid fiend crawled over them and bit chunks loose was not one that brought comfort. The blood stains on the rock glistened in the dim light.
‘What the hell?’ Abbott said.
Above them came a strange crackling sound. Neither of them wanted to look up, but they had to.
A strange, bloated form clung to the wall of the cavern. It looked like an enormous hybrid of a spider and a leech.
The front of it was like a spider with an arachnid head and small beady eyes that seemed to taste them even at this distance.
It had two long, thick legs that it used to drag itself down the wall towards them. The back end of the creature was a tapered tail, behind which a trail of thick mucus glistened.
The creature didn’t seem to be able to move very fast, but it didn’t need to if they couldn’t get their feet free from the sticky green goo.
It moved towards them, clacking its front mandibles together as it neared.
Brad froze at the sight of the strange creature, unable to take his eyes off its distorted bulk. Abbott was busy trying to remove his feet from the goo. It was making slurping sounds, almost like it was a living thing that wanted to embrace him.
‘Stop looking at it and get yourself free,’ he sho
uted.
The creature made a strange sound and continued down the wall. It seemed to sense that its prey was trying to escape and increased its efforts. It plopped onto the floor in the vast bowl of gloop, shaking the ground beneath them.
‘Shitting hell,’ Abbott said. With the proximity of the creature it suddenly looked even bigger and more terrifying than it had before. He pulled uselessly at his leg, trapped in the goop. It may as well have been encased in dried cement.
The lighter flickered out.
In a way that was better, because the huge, pale behemoth that was trying to make them its next meal was blotted out by the darkness.
It was so much easier to just wait, let it claim them. With no light to see it, there would be no fear, just a hasty demise. In a way the thought was welcoming.
Abbott shook his head to clear it of this folly and ignited the lighter again with a clack that echoed round the cavern.
In the time they’d been in darkness the creature had gotten much closer. The goo seemed to help its sliding motion, the two thick legs dragging the bulk forwards.
The creature’s tiny eyes seemed to sparkle with a malicious intelligence. A thick strand of blood dripped down its gaping maw as its mandibles clacked together.
Abbott leant down, pulling his leg with both hands, despite the futility of his actions. As he did so, the lighter tumbled from his hand. Cursing, he caught it, but dropped it due to the hot metal on the top. The flaming lighter hit the goop and a flower of flame bloomed at his feet.
The creature hissed for a second, unmistakably the sound of fear. Then the fire raced across the enormous bowl, igniting the obviously highly-flammable gloop.
The monster turned, trying to move away from the flames. It now looked pathetic rather than terrifying as it tried to drag itself on limbs that weren’t strong enough to support its own weight. It emitted high-pitched mewling sounds that sounded remarkably like a puppy locked out of a house.
Then the flames caught hold of it, crawling slowly over the immense, slug-like tail end. Trails of fire ambled over the creature’s skin. A sickening burning smell filled the air. It smelled to Abbott like the time he had tried to barbecue some roadkill he’d found in the height of summer.
The creature continued its mewling, still trying to drag itself away from the flames that already consumed its frame. Its whole back end was ablaze now. It blazed bright, making spattering sounds like bacon in a frying pan, only ten times louder.
Then the back end burst, showering liquid and rotting flesh over a thirty metre radius. The hot liquid set off new flames wherever it touched.
Part of it landed on Brad’s arm and he let out a cry as it scalded his flesh.
The spider part of the creature was still ablaze, dragging what looked like a twisted, black spine behind it. Bones and pieces of partially-digested corpses flew from the burst carcass. The spider part was also ablaze now, desperately trying to manoeuvre itself out of the inferno.
‘Come on,’ Abbott said. The fire had removed the goop’s sticky quality and his feet came free easily. Just in time too, as the whole bowl-shaped piece of rock was already engulfed in foot-high flames.
Brad followed, his vision blocked by the smoke and the flames and the shimmering of the hot air.
They had no idea where they were going; nowhere seemed safe from the raging flames.
An immense creaking sound came from all around them. Abbott had a horrible feeling that it was another avalanche, that they’d gone through all of this just to be crushed like bugs on a windshield.
The ground beneath their feet lurched. They saw why when one of the sections of flame dwindled – the bowl-shaped piece of land was glued to the cavern walls with the green-black goop.
The flames had removed the bond on one side of the cavern. Now they were racing round the circumference of the bowl.
The spider half of the creature gave up the ghost and dropped into the climbing flames. They eagerly consumed it, setting off tiny popping sounds as the fluid in its eyes overheated and burst.
‘This whole fucking thing’s gonna drop when the fire burns through the goo on the edge,’ Abbott shouted.
It was hard to hear him over the crackling of the flames. Smoke rushed into his mouth and nose, making talking difficult. Instead he ran towards the nearest edge of the bowl, dragging Brad with him.
They didn’t even make it halfway across the immense bowl when the ground lurched beneath their feet.
The ground rumbled like the stomach of a hungry giant. The vibrations travelled up their legs and into their brains, disorienting and sickening them.
Suddenly and violently, the ground tipped to their right. Abbott was thrown off his feet, into the flames. He screamed as they lapped at his flesh. Brad went to help him up, but the ground lurched to the left, putting him on his ass too.
The bowl tilted almost all the way to the left. Abbott had dug his knife into a crack in the wall. He and Brad clung to the edge, praying it would hold.
The blazing remains of the spider thing teetered and fell into the dark below them. The body parts that had been held in the goo fell past them and disappeared into the gloom.
The knife held. Their arms burnt with the effort of clinging on, but it was better than the alternative. The bowl tipped further to the left, so now it was vertical.
The remaining bones and body parts slid down the bowl. A burning human head smacked into Brad, making him see stars for a split second. Then nothing mattered, not even pain, because the huge bowl slipped through the cavern and started to fall.
The creature saw Weiland and moved towards him in an awkward all fours run. He flailed the cosh at its head, but the strike hit air as the creature rammed his knees and knocked him backwards.
His head hit the floor. The creature’s jaws opened, headed straight for his throat, eager to taste the warm blood racing through his veins.
Weiland raised his arm to fend off the creature. Let out a cry as the teeth sunk into his arm. Blood streamed down the stricken limb and into the creature’s mouth. Suddenly full of anger, he slammed the cosh into the creature’s temple.
It let out a cry that its feeding time had been disrupted.
While he had it dazed, he rained down blows on its head, snapping the cosh in his vigour.
He dived on its back and shoved its head into a puddle. He kept hitting it with the half of the cosh until it stopped breathing.
While he basked in an exhausted euphoria, the back of the creature’s head burst open in a shower of blood and pulverised bone.
A transparent moth flew out of its head, flying into his face and raking it with dozens of tiny cuts from claws on the edges of its wings.
He cried out and tried to knock it away. It circled, letting out a low screech. While he flapped, it landed on his arm and crawled into the bite wound.
He wanted to carve his arm open to pull the hideous creature out, but he knew he would die doing so. He was hopeful he could cope with the parasite, despite the way it squirmed beneath his skin and made his skin crawl and his belly churn.
He pulled the sleeve of his jacket down, hiding the wound and the bulging skin on his arm. Then he made his way back to the chopper, coated in the creature’s stinking blood.
As Duggan, Winters and Craggs peered over the edge, the air seemed to grow thicker, colder. Malignant.
They could sense that nothing good lurked in the gloom. A dim light flickered from far below them. The moving patterns on the wall shimmered in the same way as light reflecting off water.
‘Ah shit,’ Duggan said, upon realising that the cavern walls were covered with literally hundreds of the weird moth creatures. He watched them for a while, realising that the majority of them were asleep. They held his eye for longer than he wanted, and he found he was drawn to them, finding them beautiful despite the horror and revulsion they inspired in him.
‘We’re gonna have to be careful cos if we wake them up we’ll end up turning into those mutant things
,’ he grimaced.
‘Over my dead body,’ Craggs said.
‘Let’s get down there, before they wake up,’ Duggan said, eyeing them carefully.
‘They’ve been in there ages,’ Hennessee said, glaring at his watch. ‘Think we should go in?’
‘Na,’ Peterson said. ‘We have to be ready in case they come back. No sense them coming back and then us having to wait for you.’
‘I guess.’
Hennessee looked round the cabin, bored. Weiland was asleep, snoring at the top of his lungs. Some guard, Hennessee thought with a smile.
Unseen from Hennessee’s position was the small pool of blood dripping from the bite wound in Weiland’s arm and the bulge at the back of his skull.
For the second time Abbott and Brad found themselves falling into the inky blackness. They heard hissing sounds from below and the flames dwindled, allowing darkness to reclaim the cavern. They hoped the noises didn’t mean there were more of the spider creatures.
The bowl jerked hard to the right, levelling out a little. The strain was taken off their arms for a precious few minutes, allowing the blood to rush back into their limbs.
The bowl fully levelled out, seeming to slow a little due to the increased surface the air had to slow it down. The whole bowl shook as it collided with something below them. Cracks shuddered along the bowl.
The impact hurled Abbott away from Brad, just as the bowl split into four sections.
Brad screamed as he realised that he was not with Abbott anymore. He clung to the rock like his life depended on it.
His section of the bowl landed with an impact that knocked the wind out of him. Then the bowl bobbed. He looked down and saw a raging torrent below him. It was lucky, as the water had taken the sting out of the impact.
He shook his head to clear it and looked round for Abbott. The dark still clouded all but a few feet of vision, the only light coming from the small creatures on the walls. Then the bowl started its journey down the underground river.