As the Worm Turns

by Matthew Quinn Martin

  Or so she thought then, with the adrenaline flooding her bloodstream faster than the water had flooded this chamber. She felt a clink, felt it in her bones, and she stopped moving. She was stuck at the waist. She scrambled. She shoved against the bars but was unable to pull the rest of the way through. She looked up again at the surface. Salvation just three feet above her. Completely out of reach.

  Beth screamed. Bubbles streamed from her mouth, the last air in her lungs. She clamped her mouth tight while her reflexes howled at her: Take a breath! She squirmed. She heaved. She twisted. No use. She was stuck on her tactical belt. The thick webbing and various attachments had snared her. She reached down, groping for the buckle, as her lungs flattened and her chest went spastic.

  Her fingers were numb—the blood fleeing her extremities—but she got them around the sides of the quick-release buckle and pinched. It clicked open. The belt fell from her waist and she was free of it. She gripped the webbing and kicked upward. She could sense the surface inches from her face, could see it waving there, mocking her.

  Beth broke through, gasping, giving in to her reflexes, feeling the air rush into her lungs, quelling the panic. And at the same time, she sensed a slight tug on her hand, as the belt slipped from her grasp. She looked down and watched in horror as it fluttered away from her into that aquatic death chamber, all of her weapons and equipment slipping forever out of reach.

  She breathed deep and dived after it. She spotted the belt just past the portcullis. She kicked hard, thrusting her arms through and fumbled blindly for whatever she could grasp. The back of her hand hit something, then her palm touched it, and her hand wrapped around its smooth cylindrical shape. With her lungs screaming that time was up, she ascended, hoping that what she clutched was her gun.

  She surfaced again, fireworks pinging her vision as she looked at the shape in her hand. No gun, just a single snap vial. A lonely juniper stake broke the surface a moment later and floated past her. She must have knocked it loose. Better than nothing. At least she’d be able to see what was going to kill her now. See it for what it was. At least she could get one last strike in before it did. Bobbing there, she slipped the stake into one pocket and the vial into another.

  Beth looked up at the shaft. It would be a steep, slippery climb for about ten feet, and then it went totally vertical. For how far, she couldn’t tell. She pressed her back against the slope and kicked her feet up. Planting them on the opposite side, she started to shimmy her way up into the black unknown.

  Sixty-six

  The creature’s head exploded into white mist. Jack fired again, hitting another in the chest. Its piercing screech was cut short by a shot to the head. Jack sparked up a few more flares, pitching them deep into the vault. The metallic light transformed the creatures about the charge into nothing but red-rimmed silhouettes. Sexy, enchanting shadows. Lethal shadows. He kept his focus slack, lest one of them snare him with its basilisk stare. None had come wearing Sarah’s face. Yet. He knew it was just a matter of time.

  Jack squared off against a mass of them, a mass that grew denser as he advanced toward the first of the egg sacs. The conflicting illusions fought for dominance in his brain. Endlessly repeating images of alluring women cycled before him like an erotic hall of mirrors. In a way, it was helping. All the clashing fantasies flooding his vision somehow canceled one another out as they tore his desires this way and that.

  He fired off four rounds. Two more creatures went down, writhing on the ground in a flailing flurry of white. As the rest of the pack reared back, Jack surged into the breach. He primed the first of the canister bombs and dropped it as close to the mound as he could, then retreated an instant before they swarmed back for him.

  One down, he thought, as he reached for the next canister. Nineteen to go. Jack dived over two of the creatures, rolling as he set more flour bombs. He’d known going in that odds were this would end up being a one-way trip. Beth had, too. At least, for her it had been quick, if not painless. At least, it hadn’t been one of them that took her.

  Another creature lunged from the pack, diving right at him. Jack sidestepped it, auto-snare dangling from his hand. In one fluid motion, he slipped the wire loop over its head and pulled the ring. The creature clawed at it, scratching as the loop zipped tight, the wire digging into its lithe and lissome neck for a moment before its head went rolling. Another creature broke from the pack, rushing to take him down. Its beautiful mouth spread wide, hungry, sucking—

  And was met with a face full of burning flare.

  The illusions were getting easier to keep out of his mind, the things easier to kill. Maybe it was more than just their number. Maybe it was the adrenaline surging through his veins. Or maybe it was the knowledge that if he succeeded, neither Beth nor he would have died in vain.

  He set another canister down and rolled out of the path of another leaping creature as it sprang for him. Never had he felt so in the zone, so efficient, as if he and the mission were one. As if he was an engine of fate itself, driving to a single end.

  Jack clacked a pair of flares together. They roared to life. Red and white sparks showered him as he waved the sticks in a wide arc, rushing full-bore at the massing creatures. After setting two more bombs, he ran that gauntlet of gorgeous flesh and teeth. They scattered back, leaving an empty pocket. He rushed in and set the final canister down in the midst of the pack.

  The flare in Jack’s left hand sputtered out. It hadn’t lasted half as long as he’d expected. The one in his right also began to go out. He hurled both dying flares at the advancing creatures and scanned the chamber for some escape.

  The adrenaline was leaving him now. The illusion was beginning to take hold. Before him was a sea of arrestingly beautiful women, slowly circling, begging for him to come and drown among them. They shifted from shadow to shadow in the flare light. Beautiful and ravenous. As the sparks from the closest flare grew more intermittent, the creatures inched nearer. Soon they would take him, and he found himself thinking that there were worse ways to die.

  No. Focus on the mission.

  He smacked his sole remaining flare against the wall.

  It didn’t light. He tried again. Still nothing.

  The flare on the ground before him had started to spit its last, and the creatures moved in. Jack dropped the useless stick, reaching for his gun as one of the woman-creatures leaped from the pack. His injured hand too feeble to get a grip on the pistol’s handle, he fumbled it from the holster, as one of the creatures landed on his chest and sent the gun flying.

  He and the creature went tumbling, rolling backward over and over. He fought to kick the thing off him as it snapped for his neck, as it tried to peg him with its paralyzing glare. More of them drew close, circling, hemming him in. Jack felt his strength about to give out. The thing chomped again at his throat, its teeth grazing his exposed skin with each snap.

  Jack knew then that all of his options had melted away. In a few moments, the remaining flares would die out, the chamber would be plunged into blackness, and those things would take him into their eternal night. His gun was out of reach. His stakes and wire loops had all been used up. Nothing was left on his belt but a few snap vials and the buckle. Nothing but those . . . and the detonator.

  Sixty-seven

  Beth kept her gaze fixed above her, never looking down as she continued the ascent. Her headlamp revealed nothing but more shaft. It seemed to stretch above her endlessly. She pulled in a couple of quick breaths, trying to forget about the trembling ache in her calves, the shooting spasms running up her spine, her torn nails and bloody, scraped-up palms. Trying to ignore the creeping cold as it eroded every last ounce of resolve she’d managed to hang on to.

  She pressed on. She felt her grip give way; her foot slipped a few inches. She caught herself, but not before also catching a glimpse of the forty-foot drop yawning beneath her. She locked her back against the wall, pressi
ng the soles of her boots even harder against the stone.

  I will not die here, she told herself. Not like this. Not without taking some of them with me. No way was she coming this far just to be beaten by her own weakness. She heaved herself up one last time and suddenly found herself sitting on a ledge. She’d made it to the top. Her limbs and back wracked with trembling spasms, she collapsed and found herself lying in a horizontal shaft about three feet square.

  After a moment, she sat up, shivering and trying to catch her breath, her clothes and boots waterlogged, her hair matted to her face. Never in her life had she felt such deep cold. It was as if her bones had been replaced with shanks of ice. Beth peered into the dark, wondering where these tunnels led. To a dead end? To the creatures? To the nest? To Jack? She looked around, trying to orient herself. She peered across the gap and her headlamp reflected off a pair of eyes.

  Not again! But her wish was in vain. It was another one of them. No need to see it with the vapors from her single remaining snap vial. What else could be stalking her in the depths of this icy subterranean hell? She could barely make out the darkened shape of the thing as it slithered along the inside of the shaft.

  Its face was stubbornly in silhouette, just the vague shadow of handsomeness glittering in the blackness. She watched it sniff the air, creeping ever closer toward the too-short gap that separated them. She found herself thankful for the dark, where she couldn’t see it fully. Couldn’t give in to the temptations it might offer.

  The creature crouched, about to launch itself toward her. Beth tightened her grip on the lone stake she had left. As the thing leaped from the precipice, Beth reared back and kicked. She hit it square in the face with the soles of both boots. It flailed, frantically scratching for some handhold on the slick shaft wall and finding nothing to grab on to.

  Except Beth’s foot.

  The weight of the writhing creature dragged her toward the void. She shot her arms outward, the skin of her palms scraping away against the stone as she tried to stop from slipping farther. Any moment, she and the creature would both head express to the bottom, and if the fall didn’t kill her, that thing certainly would.

  The creature thrashed violently, swatting at her free leg, trying to get a second arm wrapped around her. Beth felt the hard stone of the shaft edge bite into her back. Vertebra by vertebra notched over with each wild jerk from that thing.

  She had to get loose. She reached down, tugging at her boot lace till the wet knot started to give. She pulled back as the creature slapped at her wrist, almost catching her. She yanked the cords free from the top eyelets of her Doc Marten. A searing pain shot up though her leg as her ligaments popped and her ankle flexed in a direction it was not designed to go.

  But the boot slipped off, and with it the creature. Beth heard its scream cut off by the sound of splashing water. She rubbed her sore and bruised ankle, wondering how much damage the thing had sustained in the fall and just how long it might take to crawl back up the shaft. She shuddered, shoving herself away from the gaping hole.

  And tumbling into another one right behind her.

  Beth hit the water almost before she realized was falling. She landed feet first and found herself carried by it through the twists and turns of a narrow sluice. The rushing stream pushed itself up and into her mouth and nostrils, threatening to choke her. She struggled to keep her head up, to keep from sucking in a lungful of water, and calm her rapid breathing.

  She scanned the sides of the sluice as they rushed past, looking for something to grip or another shaft to climb out of. She saw nothing but uniformly smooth arching walls zipping by her in a flickering blur that was only getting faster. Then something ahead snared her gaze: a fissure. She stuck out her hands—a reflex—just in time to catch the rim of the opening.

  The rushing water sucked at her body, dragging her with its raging current as she strained to pull herself out of the sluice. She chinned herself to the level of the gap. Through it, she saw a vault. Inside, shadowy figures swarmed, backlit by harsh red flare light. Beyond them loomed towering bulbous mounds.

  The main chamber. The one Jack had described.

  Beth’s hand slipped from the lip. The strain doubling on the second, her already bruised and bloodied fingers began to give. Her body flailed in the current as she fought her way up and into the chamber. She inched her fingertips into the fissure and pulled herself out of the sluice.

  She rolled over. Then, choking out the water, she rose, wet, shivering, barefoot, her other boot gone, sucked away by the sluice along with her headlamp.

  Creatures swarmed everywhere, seeming to dance in the metallic light. She found herself struck by the absurd thought that this vaulting chamber didn’t look all that different from a packed dance floor at Axis. Except there was no music, and every single thing out there wanted her blood. And every single one of them wore Jack’s face.

  Sixty-eight

  Jack had known it would probably come to this. Even if there was some way back to the surface, there was no getting past the thing pinning him to the wall, not in a contest of brute strength. And not with that persistent illusion steadily eroding his resolve. The time had come for him to end this. He’d gotten Beth killed, and if he didn’t flip that switch now, he might not have the strength to do it once the creature struck. Once its toxin sent him over the mountains. And then both their deaths would be in vain.

  He reached down with his free hand, groping for the familiar form of the detonator’s safety gate. As he did, his fingers brushed against a small bottle tucked into an elastic loop. It was the spray solution he used to treat the sewer grates, concentrated saline. How could he have forgotten about that? The bottle only held a few ounces, but that might be just enough. It might just buy him a few more minutes to look for a way out. He snaked it from the belt, raising his hand—

  Only to have it knocked back. The creature ground his wrist into the stone. Jack inched his finger up the side of the bottle, straining to get it over the top of the nozzle. He gave it a pump. The spray hit his hand only. Solution dripped uselessly down the wall. The eye of the nozzle was facing the wrong way. He could have laughed at the absurdity of it all. The thing bucked against him. Jack felt the tendons of his wrist tear as he looked at the bottle, his only shot at salvation, sitting useless in his palm an inch from his face.

  So close, Jack thought. So very close. The creature snapped again, millimeters from his skin. He’d blown it. He should have hit the detonator when he had the chance. Now one hand was pinned, and the other was the only thing keeping his own death at bay. He felt the pull of the thing stronger now. He knew how wonderful a straight shot of that venom would feel. All the pain, all the regret, all the shame would be gone the instant it broke the blood/brain barrier. There was only one option left.

  Let go.

  Let the thing strike, and pray he’d have enough time to hit the switch before it all went white. This was his fault—his cowardice, his worthlessness. He could have stopped it had he not scraped for one last way to save his own pathetic skin. It was just like the night Sarah died, and again, the innocent would pay for his craven selfishness.

  Another snap, this one close enough for him to feel the vibrations in the air. With the bottle still sitting useless in his immobilized hand, accepting death from them was his only chance, and a slim one at that. Unless . . . no, no way that would work, he thought. But then again, what did he have left to lose? Might as well go for it.

  Jack jerked his head toward the bottle, lifting it away with his mouth. Then he turned, leaning his face toward the gnashing mouth of the creature, close enough for a kiss. The thing bit down, tearing right through the skin of the bottle. The solution splashed against Jack’s skin and the creature’s too.

  It screamed, reeling back. Jack watched the perfectly proportioned face begin to dissolve before his eyes. He pushed the thing off of him and dived for his gun. He was up
an instant later and finally put an end to the melting creature. But something was wrong. His grip on the pistol felt rubbery, the ground beneath him suddenly made of foam. Everything in his field of vision went double, about to shut down for good. The thing must have grazed him. Its neurotoxin was starting to take effect, the venom overpowering him faster than it ever had before. He stumbled, his back found a wall, and he collapsed against it, firing his pistol into the dim haze.

  Jack spotted a flare still burning near his hand. He picked it up. The cascading shower of sparks revealed a throng of the creatures. All of them were moving toward him with determined finality. He waved the flare wildly, and the creatures stayed back in a wide arc—for now.

  He fired into the gaining mass. He could feel his pistol grow lighter as he expended what little rounds he had left. They could sense that he was fading, that he’d be finished soon. And he knew it, too. He’d been graced with a second chance to make it right, and this time, he wouldn’t waste it.

  Jack pulled the detonator from his belt. He extended the antenna, lifted the safety gate, and said a silent prayer for strength. He prayed to see his Sarah on that far shore, laughing, squeezing the saltwater from her blond curls, joy shining in those pale blue eyes as she ran through the surf. And Beth. He prayed to see her too. Prayed that she’d forgive him. That they both would. His numb and deadened thumb found the kill switch; in a moment, a flash, it would be over.

  “Jack. Jack.”