by D Haltinner
Darren stumbled, but stayed up.
“Are you hurt?” Audrey asked.
“I’ll survive.”
The siren sound coming from down the tunnel began to regain its strength, back to the shrieking whoop! whoop! whoop! ca-chunk that was becoming it’s staple.
“We need to get out of here before it comes back,” Darren said.
“What about the backpack?” Audrey asked, letting go of Darren.
He bent down and picked up the revolver he had used. “We don’t need anything out of it.”
Audrey helped Darren stand back up. “Can you walk?”
“Yeah, not like I have a choice.”
“Okay.”
Audrey tucked the gun she had back into her pants and gave Darren her arm to help him walk. They moved as fast as Darren’s leg would let him, which all he could do was hope was fast enough.
“You scared the shit out of me!” Audrey said.
“You were scared?” Darren said. “I thought I was going to end up like Jack.”
“We never should have come in here, not when we didn’t know what was going on.”
“It’s too late now.”
“It is.”
“We’re stuck with the responsibility now.”
“But what do we do?”
“I don’t-”
The sound of something scraping against the cement caught their attention. Both of them twisted around to see what caused the sound, but already knowing what it was.
The tendril was back, trying to sneak up on them. It had bumped the backpack on the floor as it moved past it, the whooping noises behind it as strong as ever.
“Run!” Darren yelled.
Audrey didn’t hesitate.
The pair ran, Darren trying as hard as he could not to limp, Audrey trying to block the flame of her candle with her hand to keep it from going out.
Darren knew the tendril was gaining on them. He didn’t have to turn around to know that. As long as it went for him instead of Audrey, that was all that mattered. He wasn’t going to let Audrey get hurt on his watch.
There was a dim light up ahead. It grew brighter as Audrey and Darren ran toward it, and the man holding the light came into view.
The burly man stood in the middle of the tunnel, a green Coleman lantern dangling from his hand. Standing behind him was the man named Kurt, and the balding man. Darren wondered where Coleman was, but stopped the train of thought when he saw the gun in the burly man’s hand.
Darren and Audrey only had a second to decide whether to take their chances with the men or the tendril of some creature behind them, but since Audrey didn’t slow her run at all, either did Darren.
“Stop, right there,” the man with the gun said.
Audrey and Darren continued to run.
“I said stop!”
“No!” Audrey yelled back.
The man looked more confused than worried.
His gun hand wavered when he saw Darren’s gun, but Darren wasn’t even trying to point the gun at anyone. He was more worried about getting away from the thing behind him than shooting anyone.
The man moved out of the way as Audrey shoved past. It was clear on his face that he was clueless as to what was going on, but unless he started to run himself, he was going to see real fast what was scaring them.
Audrey snaked past the men, with Darren following her every step. Neither of them looked back behind them as they ran, not even when the burly man screamed and his lantern fell to the floor.
“It’s got me!” he yelled, somewhere behind Darren. “Get it off me!”
By the sound of the screams growing quieter, Darren didn’t think his buddies were doing much to help him.
Darren caught back up to Audrey’s side when they passed the hatch leading back up to the theatre, and the pair continued to run from the screams behind them.
Chapter 67
Audrey sat on the edge of the dust covered bed after pulling Darren’s pant leg back down.
“It looks like hell, but it isn’t bleeding,” she said.
Darren stretched out his leg, testing his knee. “The pain’s going down at least.”
Audrey leaned over and kissed Darren on the cheek. “It’s all my fault.”
“Why would you think that?”
“I dragged you into that tunnel. I didn’t listen to you.”
“You didn’t have any idea what was down there. Neither of us did.”
“You tried to warn me, I didn’t listen.”
“Come here,” Darren said as he put his arm around Audrey’s shoulders and pulled her in closer.
Audrey let out a sigh and let her head fall to his shoulder.
Darren looked across the beetle encrusted room. It was the original room they had found in the tunnel, left just as they last saw it, with the addition of a million plus bugs covering the walls, ceiling, and floor. It was here they learned about the void’s past and future. About the efforts the Blackburn family had put into controlling whatever that tendril was attached to.
But why wasn’t there a solution here? There was so much information, but nothing that explained in anyway how the creature could be stopped.
“What was that thing?” Audrey said after a moment of silence.
“I have no idea,” Darren said. “But I think that was only the tip of the iceberg.”
Audrey tilted her head to look into Darren’s face. “What do you mean?”
“That thing was attached to something bigger.”
“Did you see it?”
“No, I just can feel it.”
“Your gut.”
“Yeah. I think I use it too much now that you taught me to listen to it.”
“You can never use it too much,” Audrey said. “What does it tell you about how we can stop it?”
Darren shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “That there has to be something here that is the answer, but what it is-I don’t know.”
“Any guesses?”
Darren shook his head.
“I don’t have any either.” She lifted her head off of his shoulder and stood up. “But we need to find it. We might even be too late already.”
Darren sighed. He started to stand up, but when his hip bone started to burn, he stopped. “Maybe we overlooked something.”
“Probably,” Audrey said. She walked to the table where she set her candle down, and looked over the papers still on the table. “We went through all these papers already though.”
“We never got to the ones that we picked up off the bed though.”
“We don’t exactly have the time to go find them back in the room though.”
“No, we don’t. There has got to be another answer here though. Blackburn wanted people to know how to stop the creature, so wouldn't he have left the answer here to find?”
“You would think so,” Audrey said, pointing to the wooden chairs in the circle of gunpowder. “There has to be something about the arrangement that we’re over looking.”
Audrey’s mouth tensed. “Yeah, bu-” Her eyes shot open. “That’s it!”
“What’s it!”
“You’re right!” she said, her face lightening into a joy on the verge of her former self. “It’s those damn chairs!”
Darren shook his head. “What are you talking about?” he said. “I don’t see it.”
Audrey picked up her candle and walked to the circle of powder around the chairs. She bent down and put the flame against the gun powder.
“What are you doing?” Darren asked.
The gunpowder ignited and Audrey stepped back from the circle. Fire burst into the air where she had held the flame, and it began to spread its way across the circle as black smoke billowed into the air. The beetles nearest to the fire burst into flames themselves as the fire spread, the rest swarming as far from the fire as possible.
“I saw the thing freak-out when the liquor started on fire even though it was so weak,” Audrey said. “Now I know why.”
<
br /> The entire circle broke into flames that soared waist high.
“Fire?” Darren said. “Of course!”
“They made this circle here as protection, just in case it found them off guard,” Audrey said.
Darren coughed from the smoke starting to fill the room. “But how does that help us?”
Audrey waved Darren toward her and stepped out of the room.
Darren followed, holding his breath as he passed through the densest part of the clouds. “What is it?” he asked when he caught up to Audrey ten feet from the door.
“There’s more gunpowder,” she said.
“But that’s back across campus,” Darren said. “We’ll never make it back in time!”
“We still have to try.”
“Then get moving, I’ll try to keep up.”
Audrey took Darren’s hand in hers. “We’re going together.”
“Then get going.”
“We’re going to have to go back toward the theatre though.”
“Not far to the intersection, just hurry!”
Audrey pulled Darren’s hand and led him away from the room, back toward the place as the creature waited in the center of the void. The sounds stopped a few minutes after Darren and Audrey stepped into the room, and it was still silent-at least for now. Audrey rushed them to the hallway leading back down into the large stretch of tunnel below the road in silence, and pulled Darren down the steps faster than his hip liked.
“Looks clear,” Audrey whispered when they got to the bottom of the steps and peered around the corner. “I don't see any sign of the men.”
“If they made it away,” Darren said.
Audrey pulled Darren around the corner and the pair jogged as fast as Darren could bare the pain. Fifty feet from the stairs leading upward to the small room that held the gunpowder, the layer of beetles that covered every square inch stopped in an abrupt line where the void must have ended. Audrey didn’t hesitate as she continued to drag Darren along. It didn’t take long to get to the steps leading up to the small room below the dormitory parking lot, but Darren had to slow when they started the upward trek because his wounds did not take the strain very well.
When they turned the corner and stepped into the room, Audrey stopped dead in her tracks and let out an abrupt scream.
Lasser’s body lay on the floor in a pool of dried blood, just as it had been when Audrey shot him.
Darren grabbed her shoulder and spun her back around fast enough that the flame on the candle flickered and almost went out. “I’ll get it,” Darren said. “You shouldn’t have to see that.”
Darren had never seen her eyes so serious when she spoke. “But I did that,” she said.
Darren closed his eyes for a moment. “You did what you had to because I dragged you into this,” he said. “That”-he pointed behind Audrey at the body of Professor Lasser-“is my responsibility. Not yours.”
“But-”
Darren put a finger to her lips. “We’ll talk about it later,” Darren said. “For now, I’m going to go in there and get the gun powder. You wait right here, and don’t move, okay?”
Audrey nodded, her eyes going blank.
“Okay,” Darren said, letting go of her shoulders. “I’ll grab another candle too.”
Darren stepped around Audrey, over the body, and into the room. Audrey held the candle in front of her, so Darren didn’t have much light to see by, but he had no problem taking a candle out of the top box and shoving it in his pocket. The gun powder was a problem to itself, because it looked a lot lighter than it really was, and his knees and hip didn’t enjoy the extra weight. But he lifted the bag onto his shoulder despite his body’s complaints and stepped back over the body and in front of Audrey.
“Come on,” Darren said.
Audrey nodded and sniffled at the same time. A sole tear drop rolled down her cheek to her chin bone, dangling on the brink from her skin.
Darren shoved the revolver further into his waist band since lifting the bag brought it up too high, then put his arm around Audrey, trying not to lean too hard against her and hold the weight up himself.
Audrey sniffled, and Darren walked with her back down to the main tunnel. They walked in a depressed silence until they reached the line of beetles signifying the start of the void. It was impossible to tell the difference between normal darkness and the void under the candlelight, but the bugs made it easy.
Audrey tried to kick the beetles at the start of the line, but they darted out of her foot’s path before it connected with their high-gloss shells.
“What’s the plan?” Darren asked as they walked through the beetles back toward the tunnel leading toward the center of the void.
“It’s probably easier said than done,” Audrey said. “But I figured we’d just try to get it to grab the bag instead of one of us, then shoot at it until it catches fire.”
“It does sound easy.”
“It grabbed hold of your backpack without a problem, I figured it would grab the bag too if we put it in its path.”
“One thing though, instead of shooting at it, can I make another suggestion?”
“What?”
“Why don’t we poke a small hole in it so that it leaves a trail of powder when it drags it away? That way we can be sure it withdraws all the way back to the rest of it before we ignite the trail and let the powder carry the fire to it.”
“That might work as long as there aren’t any big gaps in the trail.”
Darren shrugged. “We can always follow it,” he said. “Seeing the creature burn will be the only way we could know for sure it worked or not.”
“I am curious as to what the thing is.”
“I doubt we’ll figure that out, but we could at least figure out what it looks like.”
“I say we give that a try anyways. You’re right, it will be the only way we’ll know if it worked or not.”
They walked in silence to the steps leading up, and climbed them, pausing at the top.
“Here, we go,” Audrey said.
Darren nodded. “Here we go.”
But he still couldn’t shake the feeling in his gut that something was wrong.
Chapter 68
Audrey approached the Coleman lantern lying on its side. The flame had gone out, but the gas still hissed as it poured from the tank. “I wonder what happened to the other two?” she said.
“Probably ran off like we did,” Darren said.
“I guess.”
They moved through the tunnel of beetles, Darren wondering how long it would be until the noise started up again. It was only a matter of time now that they were within reach of the tendril, but Darren was in no hurry to attract the thing’s attention. They needed to get this over with, but he couldn’t subdue the feeling swimming inside of him.
“I wonder what’s at the end of the tunnel,” Audrey said. “When it hits the road, does-”
Clunk. Hiss. Clunk. Hiss.
“I don't know what will be at the end, but we’ll be finding out soon enough, one way or another,” Darren said.
Audrey pulled in a large breath and let it out in a sigh. “I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
“Just stay behind me,” Darren said. “I will try to get it to grab the bag.”
Whoop! Whoop! Whoop! Ca-chunk!
“Please be careful,” Audrey said.
“I will, now get behind me.”
Audrey did, holding the candle out to the side so that Darren could see ahead of them.
They continued to walk as the siren droned on ahead of them, but Darren stopped fast when there was movement up ahead of them in the ocean of beetles.
“There it is,” Darren said.
“This is it?” Audrey asked.
“This is it.”
Audrey reached around Darren on her tippy toes and kissed Darren on the cheek.
Darren watched the tendril move forward and the beetles scatter out of the way. It snaked its way closer and Darren dropped
the bag off of his shoulder.
“Come on,” Darren mumbled below his breath.
The tendril inched closer, then coiled its body, ready to pounce.
Darren lifted the bag in front of him like a matador with his cape.
“Stay behind me,” Darren said to Audrey.
“I will,” she said.
The tendril pounced. It attacked lower than Darren expected, but he had no problem in lowering the bag in time to block his own body from the pinchers.
The pinchers grabbed the bag.
Darren grabbed hold of the side of the bag.
The tendril began to pull the bag away.
Darren tore the bag open. Gun powder poured out onto the floor like an hour glass, following the tendril as it moved away.
“It worked!” Audrey yelled.
“That was too easy,” Darren said.
“Come on, let’s follow it!”
“One sec,” Darren said. He pulled out the candle from his pocket and tipped the wick to Audrey’s candle to light it. He pulled the gun out in his other hand. “Okay let’s go.”
Darren and Audrey walked after the tendril, avoiding the continuous line of gun powder that was left behind. They began to jog after the tendril increased its speed, and worried that it would move too fast, Darren stopped and ignited the trail of gunpowder.
The powder hissed and sparked, igniting into a bright flame that shot forward as fast as the tendril moved away. Darren and Audrey ran after it again, staying back behind the flames, but not moving as fast as they had before.
The feeling still haunted Darren’s gut.
They ran toward the sounds of the siren until the flame caught the bag the tendril carried and Darren held his arm out to slow down Audrey. “I don’t want to get too close,” he said. “We don’t know what will happen if the bag blows.”
“We need to stay close though,” Audrey said.
“We’re close enou-”
The bag and tendril vanished.
“Oh no,” Darren said.
“What happened?” Audrey said.
“We need to find out,” Darren said. “But stay behind me.”