Or whatever remained of it.
Other strange noises had joined the mix too: soft whickers and something that sounded like slithering snakes moving through the darkness. Though Dave was pretty certain most of them were actually in his head, that didn’t make them any less freaky.
Even the chain-smoking he’d indulged in the entire way hadn't helped, and the creepiness only grew as he lit his latest and in the spark of the flint, he caught a glimpse of what passed beneath his feet.
He hadn’t really been paying that much attention so he had no idea how long it had been going on for but even the ground beneath his feet had been altered.
Dave straggled to a halt as he eased down to one knee to look closer.
What the fuck?
He rubbed his hand across the perfectly smooth surface, then almost overbalanced and toppled.
‘What is it?’ the kid whispered. The boy had finally got his tears under control a few minutes into the trip – it had forced Dave to dry his own when he’d noticed. 'Dave, what is it?'
Dave busied himself wincing while he tried to rise and realised that kneeling probably hadn’t been the greatest of ideas. At least it gave him time to try and think of an appropriate response to Will’s query.
When he finally managed to right himself, he then spent a further few seconds staring around the clear space of the dome’s floor until the lighter burned too hot in his hand and he was forced to extinguish the flame.
‘It’s some sort of crater.’ Dave muttered softly, more testing the idea in his own muddled brain than really trying to explain it to the kid.
The explanation seemed to fit. Though it gleamed like marble when he'd held the lighter near, the ground beneath his feet had been rock. Solid bedrock; sheered and polished until it was perfectly smooth and shiny. The way the surrounding ground gently sloped down added to the impression.
'What does that mean?' the kid whispered back and Dave found himself cackling a short burst of hysterical laughter.
'I really don't know,' he admitted, and then his laughter abruptly ceased as a wave of nausea hit and he felt like vomiting.
Somewhere between his third and fourth gag it dawned on him that it probably meant that, at the very least, Monty's shack was no more. Dave really couldn't see how it could have survived whatever had happened to the surrounding area.
He managed to get his gags under control and reached for a cigarette to replace the one he'd spat when the nausea had hit. His realisation gave him pause as he stared around at the darkness that was only broken by the occasional wave of glinting, which merely served to remind him death awaited beyond the shield.
How the fuck am I meant to find anything in this?
He didn't know but as no other option presented itself, he walked on. Smoking away, barely even noticing the kid's hand snake into his own until the grip tightened and became painful.
The babble of voices in his head made it difficult to think clearly but despite their various divergences, they all came together on the one point: that, once more, Dave had completely fucked things up.
He pinned all his hopes on the high pitched whining now. Although even its location was becoming harder to pinpoint in the void.
Surely we must be getting fucking close, Dave thought as another smoke disappeared down to its filter and he rubbed a hand across his face. The sticky, cracking residue of his own dried blood made him wince.
No wonder I feel so fucking dizzy, Dave thought. Further down, his shirt felt like an encrusted mess too. How much fucking blood did she drain?
'Where are we going?' The kid sounded very tentative when he spoke up again. Dave felt his hand slip from his grip and heard him take a step back. He turned to squint at him in the gloom but had to reach for his lighter when he realised he couldn't see anything. He lit it and peered at the boy, then immediately decided that was a mistake and extinguished the flame, wincing as the motion brushed his hand across the cool steel of the knife tucked in his belt.
The question burned in the kid's large and watery eyes.
Are you gonna kill me, mister?
Dave felt like vomiting again.
'We're going to try and... try and stop the bad things.' His voice cracked mid sentence but he managed to get it all out. 'Come on... we're nearly there,' he added even though he had no idea if that was true or not.
'It's really smoky in here,' the kid replied and waved a hand in front of his face. Dave snorted at the unexpected words.
'I'm sorry about that,' he dropped his latest smoke to the ground and squished it beneath his foot. The motion coincided perfectly with the first tapping on the dome and he flinched, froze and then immediately looked up to see that the stars had abruptly vanished from a large section beyond the top of the glowing shield.
Dave swallowed slowly. His heart rate slowed to single, staccato beats.
They've found us again...
He had been sort of hoping that once they'd taken Marge they would have realised she was the only one with any form of power and been content. Now that chain of logic seemed pretty damn foolish.
'What are they?' The kid's voice lowered even further until it was scarcely audible. Dave remembered he'd been asleep for most of Marge's explanation.
'I really don't know.' Dave was finally able to admit to something. 'Let's keep moving, hey?'
He stepped off his crumpled cigarette butt and they cautiously walked forward about ten more paces.
Another section of stars vanished and the surrounding tapping grew in volume.
Shit. Dave felt his heart start to thud stronger and stronger, faster and faster, transporting the chilled liquid that his blood had become into every inch of his body.
Plink, plink, plink, plink, plink... The noise swelled as another few steps passed and another section vanished.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, Dave could feel hysteria nipping at his heels.
Plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink...
Five more steps and there was nothing but darkness and Dave was forced to release the whimpering kid's hand so he could dig the lighter out of his pocket.
....Plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink, plink...
He paused before he lit it. Bile crept slowly up his throat.
What he saw once the flame ignited had him scrambling for the last jar still wedged in his pocket.
Above him the shield had started flickering. As the tapping grew louder and more frequent so too did the speed that the shield flickered at. It was almost hypnotic. The level of dread the sight spurred in him froze him in place, one hand on the jar in his pocket while he watched it grow faster and faster and faster.
Added to the paralysing sight were the doubts that started to assail Dave from all sides, buoyed on by the babble of jeering voices in his skull. What if you detonate the bomb and you are miles away from the source? What then? And what if the bomb just blows you to pieces too? You have no idea how it works. What if you shatter the jar and then there's nothing?
Marge said it only affected the creatures but was she bluffing? And can you really believe anything that psychotic bitch told you?
How the fuck will you know where the portal is? You're only going to get one shot at this...
The answer hit him in a heartbeat, finally breaking his paralysis.
'Will,' he snapped as he extinguished the lighter to give his searing fingers a brief respite. 'We need to hurry now.' He dragged the jar clear of his pocket and then relit the lighter. The overheated metal burned into his fingers but Dave barely felt it as he focused, doing his utmost to block out the tapping and the sight of the flickering shield surrounding them.
There was a brief flicker of panic when he thought the whine he'd been following had vanished. But it was only momentary before he detected it again and set off as fast as his body would allow in the general direction he thought it came from.
He kept his eyes to th
e ground as he moved, dimly aware that Will kept pace but barely paying it any mind. He tried his best to ignore the sidelong glances he caught of the dying shield while he staggered on, muttering under his breath, 'Come on, come on, come on.'
The whine grew louder with each step and Dave started to feel something like hope blossom. The incline he headed down steepened and as he stumbled on, it dawned on him what the whine was: the sound of the rock being ground down by the creatures.
It made him think of Marge's words. They're rebuilding...
Dave had no idea what but he hobbled on, the jar containing the last remaining fragment of Sally held tightly in his grip.
He was so focused on gauging the proximity of the whine that he missed the solution on the first pass. The ground beneath his feet went from polished stone to swirling black like he'd just crossed over the top of an oil well then after a few steps back to polished stone again but Dave didn't immediately register it. Not until a few steps on when he was forced to pause so he could transfer the lighter from his blistered and stinging fingers to his other hand. Then it dawned on him what it probably was.
The faint hope that had been building exploded into a supernova and he back tracked, ignoring the kid's queries as to what was going on. For a moment the hope faltered when only polished rock appeared...
But just as he was about to write it off as a figment of his imagination, the black swelled up beneath him once more, causing him to gasp and the kid to yelp in sudden fright. Dave smiled a rictus grin at the sight and immediately extinguished the lighter.
The last glimpse of the shield added haste to his actions.
'Come here,' he called to Will. When the boy obeyed, he rested one hand on his shoulder in a pose he tried to tell himself wasn't at all reminiscent of the way Monty had restrained the kid all those months ago in the bluestone room.
He raised the jar high and braced his aching muscles as best he could. He wanted to impart as much force as possible on the jar. It was a ridiculous notion, he knew, but he could just see the jar rebounding from the rock completely unscratched while the shield failed and the shadows rushed in to finish business.
A final doubt assailed as he held the jar high.
And then what are you meant to do? Once the bomb has been detonated? How are you going to seal the portal? What with all the magic you've learnt?
Dave felt his eyes widening as the chorus of voices inside took up the point. He felt the tears start to leak from his eyes once more as it dawned on him that it was a very good point.
Fortunately momentum carried him onward and before he could think too hard about it, he flung the jar and heard it shatter at his feet...
Then nothing except the frenzied tapping as though the creatures were aware that the barrier was on the verge of collapse.
'FUCK I–' he started to roar when, after two long seconds, the liquid had done nothing but glow a faint red on the ground and his doubts looked like they were about to burst forth into reality.
Then abruptly everything melted away in a blinding flash of white that exploded with such intensity that it knocked Dave clear off his feet.
28.
Dave came back to the kid shrieking.
A second later he realised he was as well and forced himself to stop.
Panic bubbled as he reeled on the ground and tried to open his eyes. Everything came out blurry and it felt like someone had rubbed his eyes in a sandpit.
Wet trickles snaked over his top lip and down his cheeks and the side of his face, tracking through the dried and encrusted filth already there.
He blinked and wiped at his eyes then winced. It did nothing but double the stinging.
It seemed exceptionally difficult to get enough oxygen into his lungs.
But at least the explosion had briefly beaten the voices into a retreat.
Get up, got to get up, Dave thought desperately. Getting his body to coordinate enough to achieve his aim was a whole other story. He struggled to his knees, coughing and yelping as his entire spine ignited with pain.
From there he made it to his feet after a couple of quick false starts. His right leg felt strangely damp as he swayed, still trying to clear his swimming vision. When he did, he soon saw that his original surmise that he'd pissed himself was incorrect.
The fall had lodged the knife he'd had tucked into his belt into his thigh and Dave realised that the moisture running down his leg was in fact blood. Surprised I've got any left in me, he thought and then chortled in hysterical amusement, only stopping when he realised he was wasting precious seconds.
He stared around in dazed amusement at his surroundings and saw his earlier summation was correct. The shadows had pulled back and beneath the glittering stars he could just make out that he was in the middle of a large crater of smooth stone; buffed and polished until it shone. As he stared around, Dave almost absently plucked the blade from his thigh, the extra little dart of pain barely even noticeable. The array of injuries he'd endured so far appeared to have short circuited his nervous system.
He held it down by his side while his eyes locked onto the point, a few metres away where a black cone already started to spiral its way up from the ground again.
It served to focus his attention and as he watched it elongate, the strange fog that had gripped Dave since the explosion melted away beneath a flowing tide of panic as he realised, Oh shit, this is it... it's time...
'Will,' he called with urgency when it dawned on him that there was probably only moments before he'd be swamped again and that this time there'd be no shield standing between him and the creatures.
He wheeled around and saw the kid staggering in a small circle about a metre away, reeling to and fro, his eyes, nose and ears trickling streams of blood to match Dave's own. The boy's voice still moved violently though sound no longer issued forth. It made Dave wonder if maybe the kid had blown his vocal chords shrieking.
It took him a second to wonkily cover the distance and grab the kid by the shoulder again.
'C'mon–' He tried to keep his voice calm while he guided the boy toward where the swirling cone rose from its bed of polished rock. It jagged alarmingly though as he saw that the black tide had started to amass on the edge of the crater once more.
'Move! C'mon!' he blubbered, giving in to the rising tide of panic. 'Ssshh, ssshhh it's alright, you need to calm down, we need to move, we...' Dave realised he was merely babbling. The boy paid no attention to his words, only grabbed him tight in a hug. In the end Dave simply dragged the boy over to where the cone was, his panic lending him strength.
The kid's grip was tight, a desperate hug, tighter than any he'd ever felt before and Dave's stream of babble died out into a blubber.
He dragged the boy to the foot of the roiling cone and paused to steal a glance back over his shoulder. The shadows were definitely there but it wasn't like the other times when they came flooding straight back in. However Marge had constructed the bomb, it must've been a potent brew. They were still moving forward but there was something a little tentative about it. As though instead of a headlong charge, this time they were pacing themselves to see if Dave had anything else up his sleeve.
'C'mon, little man, I...' Dave's voice cracked again. 'I just need you to face this way for a second.' He pointed him to the swirling black mass, unsure if it would help but a morbid part of him thinking that it'd be the best bet if the blood spray at least landed in the general vicinity of the growing cone.
Even thinking that made him want to vomit but Dave fought through the nausea and snuck another peek at the shadows.
'Fuck me,' he whispered as he saw how much ground they had covered. Clearly their hesitation wasn't going to last much longer.
He gripped the kid tighter by the shoulder and murmured, 'That's the way,' under his breath while Will continued to rub away at his eyes.
Dave raised the knife...
But froze, a sob ripping from his lips as he darted glances around. On all sides the shadows
massed, building momentum no more than ten metres from him now. The cone in front of him bulged, swelling taller, threatening to disgorge thousands more at any second.
'My eyes hurt,' the kid wailed.
The shadows hurtled closer.
Still Dave's hand stayed frozen, the knife mere inches from the boy's throat.
It doesn't matter, he told himself, we'll be dead soon anyway...
But he couldn't quite convince himself as the shadows streamed closer and closer, until he could hear the click of the claws their darkness contained.
It'll all be for nothing if I don't, he thought.
Tears streamed down his cheeks and the shadows loomed, forcing him into action.
'FUCK!' he screamed and the boy tensed as the cold steel rested against his throat.
Goddamn it, Dave thought as his grip tightened on the blade and the shadows loomed all around him, should I kill the kid? Should I fucking kill the...
He squeezed his eyes shut a second before the darkness could swamp him.
29.
Something tugged at the blade and Dave whimpered. The kid drew a final breath and then a gurgle and hiss filled the air.
He felt the weight drop as he released his grip. The smack of flesh hitting stone sounded shortly after. But Dave didn't open his eyes. Even when they started to sting from the build up of tears he kept them squeezed shut. Choking back sobs as he waited for the end. Thinking, that at the very least he had the demise of the mocking laughter that boomed in his head to look forward to...
At least that's what he thought for the first ten seconds. Until he realised that it was taking an awfully long time to die and got to thinking about why that might be.
Should Have Killed The Kid Page 27