They walked for a while, reaching dead end after dead end. It was hot on the planet and each of them was growing weary. The suns blazed down on them and Baston felt the tops of his arms burning. Having a job where he worked mostly at night meant he wasn’t exposed to the sun as much. He wondered if Sca was being burnt as well.
They came to another dead end and Cherie threw her hands up, leaning against the wall. Baston noticed vines in a rectangular pattern on the rock and pressed at it with his hands. To his surprise, it moved. When he opened it, he saw that it concealed a deep, dark hole. Sca grabbed the back of his pants to keep him steady.
“Holy shit, what the hell?” Cherie was taken aback and peered down the dark hole as well. There didn’t appear to be anything but darkness inside for miles. It was like a black hole in the middle of the maze. Baston pulled the door shut and ran ahead.
“Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“What do you mean?”
“The doors. One of them will take us to the end.”
“How do you know?” Sca asked.
“I just know a bit about mazes,” Baston said and rushed forward. He moved quickly through the maze now that he knew what he was looking for. The walls rumbled and spikes shot out from both sides. One got Baston’s shirt, ripping it from his shoulder, but didn’t penetrate the skin.
The spikes shot in and out, and the three had to dodge each one in an uncomfortably small space.
The next door opened only a crack when thousands of black insects with more legs than he could count poured out. Sca let out a high-pitched noise Baston had never heard before, and ran the opposite direction. Cherie laughed but backed up as Baston desperately tried to close the door on the bugs. They flew at them and some of them chased Sca as he continued running the opposite way they'd come.
"You're going the wrong way," Cherie yelled at him, swatting a bug off her back.
He screamed again and ran back towards them, passing them as the bugs continued to chase him. It was clear that wasn't the door to the end, and if it was, the bugs weren't worth it. They continued on.
Baston came across another door soon after. The rectangle was marked with rocks that were slightly grayer in color than the others. He felt certain this was it. The color difference was so slight and it would be difficult to notice at first. He took a deep breath and opened the door, looking in with optimism. It was dark and didn’t look much like the end of a maze.
Slowly, a thick orange mist started to flow out towards them. It stayed in one long line, waving with the slight breeze. It looked like a giant snake lazily crawling towards him. He assumed that it could be nothing good. An orange mist with poison in it?
He backed away, shutting the door, disappointed.
“How many more of these can there be?” Sca was apparently getting impatient with their trip through the maze.
“There’s a bug on your arm,” Baston said, pointing to the back of the top of his arm.
Sca turned around quickly, trying to get it off of him and Baston laughed. They moved forward again and continued to run into more dead ends and doors with terrifying consequences. The ground started to shake again as they moved forward, causing them to lose their footing.
Baston crashed into the rock wall and wasn’t sure what they were about to be up against. He decided that whatever it was, it was coming from below them. The dirt beneath his feet moved, causing a cloud of dust to blow up in his face.
He turned around to see Cherie frantically slapping at her legs. One was completely black from a massive moving cover of bugs. The same bugs they’d found in the doorway were now coming up out of the ground to get them.
“What the hell?” He heard Sca say as he bent down to look at Cherie’s leg.
The ground erupted like a living volcano, and a sea of black bugs each the size of Baston’s thumb covered everything around them. The wall became a wiggling wall of legs and flapping wings. Then they were on him and covering every bit of his body.
He could hear Sca screaming but it sounded far away. The bugs had made their way into his ears. He felt his throat tighten and his desire to run growing. He tried swatting them away, moving his hands up and down his body trying to knock them off, but he only managed to dislodge a few. He became aware at some point he was running and flailing his arms. The only thing that stopped him was running right into a dead end. He couldn’t see because if he didn’t keep his eyes squeezed tight their little legs would be inside them. Their pinchers bit into his skin everywhere and he moaned in pain. He didn’t dare cry out for fear they’d go into his mouth.
As he fell onto his back, he felt them bite harder. He hoped he’d at least squished some in the process. The panic was causing his breathing to come in heavy pants, and he felt like the air wasn’t getting to his lungs. He lay on the ground and rolled around, despite the movement making the bugs bite harder.
He felt a warmth coming from somewhere and decided he was dying. The heat got more intense and was right next to his face. He realized the bugs weren’t on his face anymore. He finally opened his eyes to see where the heat was coming and saw Cherie had taken it upon herself to light a large piece of wood and was sweeping it over his body.
She let out a battle cry as she moved on to Sca and did the same thing for him. Baston took deep breaths and lay on the ground. He looked to his side and saw Sca a few feet away in the fetal position
“It’s okay,” Cherie said. She got down beside him and rubbed his arm. Sca shook his head violently.
“I can still feel them crawling on me. I can still feel them.”
“Look, they aren’t. I promise.” Cherie had let her voice lower and it sounded sultry as she tried to encourage him to get up.
After what seemed like forever, Sca finally sat up and looked at his body.
“Bastards bit us all over,” he said and stood on wobbly legs.
Baston clapped his friend on the back and they continued forward with their journey. Another hour passed if he was reading the sun right. They came to a dead end again and Baston leaned on the wall, putting his head on the rocks.
He almost moved away when he noticed the flowers on the ground made a perfect square. Could that be the way out?
He kneeled and gradually noticed a tiny handle to pull up a door that was made into the ground. When he peered inside, he saw a set of stairs descending.
“What the hell?” Sca asked as he moved forward to see what Baston was doing.
“I think it’s the way out,” Baston said and descended the stairs.
“Be careful,” Cherie said. “You don’t know if it’s another trap or not.
Somehow, Baston could feel it was the way out. The stairs went down to a small platform, and there was another set of stairs that led back up. He made it to the bottom and followed the set of stairs up the other side. They were underground and all there was above them was dirt.
The door they’d come through had slammed, and he had a brief fear that they might have trapped themselves in the ground. He pushed hard on the ground above the steps, and was relieved when he pulled himself up into the open air. There were no rock walls around them and Baston sank to his knees with relief.
Chapter Five – Jump the Pits
Before they could celebrate freeing themselves from the maze, the next obstacle was on them. As they stood just on the other side of the rock wall, they saw row after row of pits on the ground. There was only enough room for them to stand in between each one, and Baston had a feeling the pits weren’t the only problem they would be facing.
He remembered Ation’s warning about the space worms. Apprehension grew like a boulder in his stomach, but he kept his expression steady lest anyone see the real depths of his hesitation.
“Move forward with caution, the worms might be inside the holes,” Baston warned.
Each of them held their spear up and prepared to go along the edges of the holes. Baston looked in both directions and saw that the holes stretched too far to go aroun
d. They would be traveling at least a couple of miles before they made their way over the holes. The massive ravines sat silent as they pondered their next move.
The first hole they inched by was empty, or appeared to be so. The next was the same. Baston knew better than to get too comfortable, but he started to think maybe this was just a field of holes. Nothing more.
By the fifth one, the tightness in his shoulders had eased a bit. The heightened tension was wearing him down, but he had to keep alert, even if things appeared calm. Luck would have it, that was when a large mouth came up from nowhere, and the worm attached to it almost took his arm off. He speared the worm through the eye, eliciting a scream, and it disappeared back into the hole.
“We need to move fast, they may not be in every hole!” Baston yelled behind him, his eyes trained on the holes. This would keep them busy the entire journey, and not in a good way.
He couldn’t look behind him, and hoped the other two were able to fend for themselves. The next worm was larger than the first, and snapped at Baston’s leg, cutting him in the thigh. He ignored the burning pain and blood dripping down his leg as he prepared to fight back, escaping its grip with expert precision.
With a loud yell, he stuck his spear into the back of the worm and watched as the weapon broke off and the worm retreated with the sharp part of it. He cursed and started moving faster. He could hear his friends having battles of their own with the worms behind him. Jumping and ducking, he managed to miss most of the worms, getting scratches from their teeth here and there. The never-ending field of pits wore him out as he leaped over some smaller ones and went around the larger ones. Hustling across the field of holes, it felt as though it would never end. His lungs burned while his muscles started to seize from the hard sprint.
At the last pit and the biggest of them all, he took a flying leap and misjudged the distance, catching himself on the edge. Slamming his body against the side, he could feel the walls of the hole rumbling as the worm came up towards him. Right before the largest worm he’d seen swallowed him, he threw himself up out of the hole and rolled away. Rocks and dirt embedded into his skin, caking his wounds with painful stabs. Had he lost his weapon? He looked around and saw it just a foot away. Just in time, he lunged toward his spear and turned.
Breathing heavily, he gathered himself and watched as Sca shoved his spear into the large worm towards the end, and was thankfully able to pull it back out before joining him. Cherie was further behind, taking her time around the holes. One of the worms jumped from its hole and over her as she ducked down. The worm went into another hole where he fought with the worm that already occupied that area. Their large teeth gnashed at one another and they fell back down to the ground.
She took the moment to rush past them and came to the end of the pits. The large worm rose in front of her and she froze. Her eyes widened, but she was focused and ready to take it on.
“Cherie, run! Come on, hurry!” Baston yelled.
The worm had lifted up into the air and had its mouth open wide as it came down towards her. She stood with her mouth open, the spear at her side, staring up at the giant worm. Why was she freezing up? This worm was big, yes, but no different than the ones she’d already dodged. Something had her completely transfixed and she wasn’t going to be getting out of the way like she should.
“Shit!” Baston yelled, and ran with the large knife Ation had given him. He slid the knife across the worm as he grabbed Cherie and pulled her away. The worm threw its head back in pain, giving them just enough time to run by. Ation had said the worms wouldn’t leave the pits if they could get past them.
Cherie threw her arms around Baston and shook violently.
“I froze, like a coward. Did you see that? Stupid.” She pulled back away from him and looked up into his eyes.
His body stirred and felt warm as he looked into her eyes. They were still standing fairly close to the pit and a smaller worm jumped up, surprising them and biting Cherie’s arm. She cried out and Sca threw his spear into the worm who let go, but left quite a gash in her arm.
This time Sca ripped Baston’s pants to tie up her arm.
“Couldn’t you have used your own pants?” he protested, although not with much force.
Cherie winced as he tightened the cloth around her arm, and the three moved as far away from the pits as they could without entering the dark trees that once again waited for them
“What else could be waiting for us?” Cherie wondered out loud.
“Who knows? I’m no more eager to go forward than you, but we need fuel to get off this planet. Once we reach our destination, Ation said they will fly us back over all of this.” Baston hoped the promise from the leader was the truth.
The ground started to shake, and at first, Baston wasn’t sure what was happening. He realized the ground was shaking because the worms were coming for them. They’d left their holes underground. Ation hadn’t mentioned they had tunneling capabilities.
“Run, now!” Baston yelled. They took off again as the ground burst open beneath them and large teeth snapped at their legs.
They were coming up on another patch of trees. He wondered whether if they ran in, the worms would get stuck and not able to go through the roots. They were massive worms; the roots would probably be easily broken by them, and the trees could come down on their heads.
“Get in the trees!” Sca yelled, as he ran ahead and climbed up a tree, clinging to the top limb he could reach and waving for them to do the same.
“And what,” Baston yelled back, “wait until they get bored?” Even as he said it, he was climbing a tree and saw Cherie doing the same. The worms seemed to lose them – maybe they couldn’t sense where they were when they weren’t running over the ground.
“They can’t find us, the dumb bastards!” Sca yelled, laughing, and immediately one of the worms hit the tree he stood in. He almost fell to the ground and quickly steadied himself.
Baston put a finger to his lips. They couldn’t find them if they were quiet. The worms could feel the vibrations. He’d seen something about it on one of the nature shows he kept on simply for background noise.
“They aren’t coming past the roots,” Cherie whispered. “I think we can move back into the forest and be safe. She was the first to jump down to the ground and slowly back into the woods. One of the worms heard the thud as she dropped out of the tree. It charged, but stopped before it actually entered the forest. She was right, so the men followed her lead and jumped down as well.
“Ha, you dumb worms!” Sca yelled at them.
“Don’t antagonize them, or they might figure out a way!” Cherie hissed.
The trees brought Baston’s mind to several horror movies he'd seen recently. He was about to voice this to Cherie and Sca when a branch smacked him in the face. He was pushed back by the force of it, his cheek burning.
Sca was in front of him, so his natural reaction was to think the branch had come from Sca walking into it and letting it snap back. "What the hell?"
He'd barely gotten the words out when a vine wrapped around his foot and caused him to trip.
Sca laughed. "Watch where you're going, big guy." He turned around and stood against a tree which Baston saw was slowly lowering a branch towards him.
"The trees," Baston started to say, but the vine chose that moment to pull him across the forest floor. He felt his pants tear as they were pulled over sharp rocks and sticks. Little scrapes caused his skin to burn, the dirt gathering as he was pulled across the ground. He reached for the vine around his foot, trying to free himself, but it was too strong.
"Whoa." Baston reached out, trying to grab passing plants and trees to slow himself down, but it didn't work. The vine was pulling him too fast. He heard Sca yell behind him, and soon the vine dragging his friend had caught up with him.
The vine stopped suddenly and pulled Baston into the air. He hung high above the ground from a tree, and the vine swung, slamming him into the trunk.
&nbs
p; "What do I do?" Cherie stood at the bottom of the tree looking up at him, a mixture of worry and fear evident in her voice.
"Get me down!" Sca answered, swinging from a nearby tree. A supple branch slapped him on the back and then ass. It was almost as if it was playing with him as it quickly moved to his face and slapped his cheeks.
"I know, but how?" Cherie held both hands out, at a loss for what to do.
Baston's head was starting to throb as all the blood rushed to it. He remembered his knife and pulled it out, striking the vine above his foot. It loosened and dropped him down towards the ground, but still held on. He hit it again and it dropped him the rest of the way. Thankfully, he wasn’t too far in the air after it had dropped him down the first time.
He tossed the knife up to Sca who did the same thing, but the vine let go completely as high as it had him. Baston’s friend landed on the ground with a loud thump and groaned. He’d landed in a bush which had broken some of the fall, and now lay stretched out over it with his head upside down.
About that time another limb slapped him across the face.
“I’m over this damn forest!” he yelled and took off. Baston and Cherie followed, getting slapped and poked by the trees. They jumped over branches and dodged vines. Baston kept his knife out so he could hit them when they got too close. They were beginning to think the forest stretched on forever when they suddenly reached the end of it.
“Did you hear that?” Baston stopped and held his hands out.
Cherie stopped and looked back towards the woods. “I don’t hear anything.”
Baston wasn’t sure what he’d heard, but it almost sounded like a grunting. A distant grunting. He started to think it was possible that the tendrils of fatigue had started to wrap themselves around his mind. Perhaps he was just hallucinating.
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