Cave Crawlers

by Alex Laybourne

  Their hands slipped on the gore-covered entrails, but they managed to find their grip and free Zeke’s legs. Hauling him to his feet, they pushed and pulled him along, moving at a run, charging deeper into the tunnel, not stopping to look if they were being followed

  As they moved, the tunnel started to narrow around them, tightening quickly until they were no longer able to stand fully upright. This was a big problem for Zeke, who frame was exceedingly large in all dimensions.

  “Is that thing still after us?” Declan panted from the front of the line.

  “I have no idea,” Justin answered, barely able to catch his breath.

  Against their better judgment, the trio slowed down, the broken shell that was Zeke panting and sobbing in equal measure.

  “I don’t see anything,” Justin said, taking a moment to lean forward, resting his weight on his knees. His head pounded, and the longer he stood still, the more he felt his muscles turn to jelly beneath him.

  “Til … my sweet woman.” Zeke crashed to the floor, his body shaking, the metallic odor of blood heavy in the air around him. “I don’t understand. That thing … it was an alien or something, it had to be.”

  From his position on the cave ground, Zeke looked up at the two brothers, and he no longer looked like the large, happy-go-lucky-man they had first met above ground. He looked like an old man, lost and scared in a world he no longer recognized.

  “We need to keep moving. There could be more of them,” Declan said, adjusting the light on his helmet to give him a wider, albeit, softer beam.

  Justin took it as his cue to look around the cave. His keen eyes caught scratch marks and indentations gouged into the rock, and he shuddered at the thought of what may have created them.

  “What if there are more of them ahead?” Zeke asked, sounding defeated.

  “Well, we know there is at least one back there, and no way out. The way I figure it, moving forward is our only option,” Declan said, his honesty and simple, straightforward logic leaving them with no real room for argument.

  As the tunnel got smaller, the temperature increased, and with no real movement within the air, all three men found it hard going, slowing even further when the tunnel forced them to their knees. Crawling through the dark like infants, they pushed on, stopping only when one of them heard something. From the sound of their own movements reverberating around them, to what sounded like the distant beating of a drum, the darkness amplified everything and turned it into a threat.

  “It’s getting mighty tight in here,” Zeke growled as he shuffled forward on his belly, squirming his way through the deep caverns like a giant worm, burrowing deeper and deeper.

  “Keep going, I can see something ahead,” Declan called back to the guys.

  The tunnel closed around them, squeezing them together. All three men sank to their bellies and managed to crawl further along through the tunnel, with Declan still in the lead, followed by Justin who had moved ahead of Zeke after their stop for a rest. It had been Zeke’s insistence that he assume the rear guard position, simply because he was the weak link in their chain.

  “Stop here a second,” Declan spoke, passing the message to his brother.

  Declan inched further forward, his head and shoulders found a wide-open space. The chamber was a large affair with thick stone pillars rising out of the ground and stretching up to the ceiling high above their heads. He was close, and wormed his way further through the opening until suddenly, he was free, and dropped down to the hard ground beneath them.

  Declan pushed himself to his feet, his shoulders giving a loud crack as he straightened. It felt great being able to stand, while the cool air of the cavern was a welcome change to the stifling heat of the tight passageway.

  “Justin?” Declan called. “Come on through, there’s another cavern.”

  The words echoed around the space, which Declan had yet to get a scope of in terms of its size. Looking up, the helmet light reflected on the mineral deposits in the rock and twinkled like the night sky. Turning around, he saw the tips of several stalactites that emerged from the dark like incisors, locked and loaded, ready to clamp down at any moment.

  Justin emerged through what was essentially a large crack in the wall rather than any official tunnel and dropped to the ground. Declan caught him and stood with him for a moment. Both men panting, their bodies aching and their muscles exhausted.

  “Guys, um … a little help here,” Zeke spoke, as he balanced halfway through the opening.

  At first glance, Justin’s mind was immediately brought back to watching the spider escape the wall. Shaking his head, he drove that memory away, locking it down into the box of long-forgotten secrets and pains, where it would never need to be looked at again.

  Zeke was stuck, wedged fast in the rock. They tugged and pulled on him, but he barely moved. The man struggled, his chest being crushed, unable to take real breaths, but even with his strength fueled by adrenaline, Zeke could not to more than drag himself an inch through the wall, effectively making his predicament even worse.

  “Okay, wait for a second, wait a second, there’s got to be something we can do,” Declan spoke, panting.

  “I can’t really breathe,” Zeke groaned, his face turning a deep shade of red.

  “It’s okay, stay calm, we’ll get you down,” Justin said.

  “Hurry, I can feel something crawling on my leg.” Zeke’s eyes went wide with panic, and he started to thrash around, as the realization of his words filtered through his brain. “There’s something on my leg! Get it off! Get it off!”

  “Calm down, hey, it will only get worse.” Declan tried to calm the big man, but Zeke’s thrashes turned into screams, the veins in his neck and across his forehead rising up from his body as the full extent of the agony he felt surged through him.

  “Help me,” Zeke spat. “It hurts, oh God, it hurts.”

  “We just have to pull him,” Declan said, grabbing hold of one arm.

  “Are you sure?” Justin looked at his brother.

  “It’s biting me, it’s biting me. I don’t want to die. I’m not ready,” Zeke pleaded with Declan and Justin, his eyes wide with a childlike horror, a collection of tears, snot, and saliva dribbling from his face.

  The brothers each grabbed a hand and pulled. They strained and grunted, and at one point, Justin saw nothing but a patchwork of exploding colors as pain exploded in his head. Yet somehow, they managed to move Zeke’s frame. He slid through the crack, screaming like a wounded pig. When he fell to the floor, they could see why.

  His lower left leg had been ravaged by something. The material of his trousers and the flesh beneath had been torn open down to the bone. Jagged strips of flesh dangled over the edges of what remained of his calf like strips of old wallpaper, still clinging on to their former glory.

  “What the hell?” Declan jumped back as if the spreading pool of blood carried some hitherto unknown infection.

  “Where the heck are we? What sort of place has bugs that eat people?” Justin asked, his eyes flitting from the torn-up limb to the hole in the wall they had emerged through.

  “Help me,” Zeke begged from the floor, as for the second time the brothers watch blood pump from his large frame.

  “Here, take this,” Justin said, pulling off his sweater, moving down to just the T-shirt beneath.

  Handing the sweater to Declan, he watched as his brother bent down and got to work. He pressed down hard onto the injury, the squelching sound of the blood only drowned out by the rising cry in Zeke’s throat. Working quickly, Justin tied off the sweater by wrapping the arms in opposing direction around the limb.

  “It’s as good as I can do, but we need to get him out of here,” Declan said, not even trying to hide his voice for the sake of the patient.

  “Then we move,” Justin answered. “Let’s get him up.”

  Together, they hauled Zeke to his feet, and somehow, his giant frame still found the strength to support himself, hopping along, he relie
d on the brothers for support, but refused to give up completely. The gloom of the cave seemed to lessen, and they found themselves able to pick out shapes and forms in the darkness. The crystals and minerals on the rock surface had a phosphorous quality emitting a low-wattage light which, to the trio, seemed as glorious as watching the sun rising bringing light to their world and fighting back the gloom.

  The cavern was a large open place with large stalagmites rising from the ground like pillars, stretching and out of sight, the ceiling above their heads engulfed in darkness. The enormity of the space beggared belief and made them wonder how deep under the ground they had fallen.

  “We should rest,” Justin said.

  “I don’t know. I think we should keep moving. Being down here creeps me the fuck out,” Declan answered, looking around distrusting, as if the shadows were conspiring to hide some new monster from them.

  “Me too, but my head is spinning and I don’t feel great,” Justin said, “and I don’t think Zeke can go much longer.”

  Looking at the man, his head hung low and his breaths were wet and shallow, his lungs sounding as if they were filled with fluid rather than air. Sweat fell from his face like rain, and a near sickly aroma wafted from his body.

  “Okay, let’s lay him down, but you need to keep moving. Head wounds are nasty.” Declan had accepted the leadership role without question. “You and I can take a look around, see what options we have for getting out of this damned place.”

  Declan walked with a pronounced limp, something Justin only then noticed, given that they had been crawling and dragging themselves over the floor for so long.

  “You’re hurt,” Justin said.

  “Not as bad as you guys. I’ve had worse knocks before.” Declan didn’t even turn around as he moved behind one of the large pillars.

  Temporarily, Declan disappeared from view, the only thing confirming his presence was the dull glow emitted from his helmet.

  “You mean in prison?” Justin hesitated, not wanting to bring up the subject.

  “Yeah. It wasn’t always fun and games.” Declan reappeared, his eyes set on Justin.

  “I … I had no idea.” Justin lowered his gaze. “You never said.”

  “What was there to say? Hey, bro, I got my ass kicked last night because my new cellmate decided he didn’t like me. Or maybe the time I got my head busted open because Mick Nare wanted to use the weight rack and I hadn’t finished my set.” Declan froze, realizing what he had said and more importantly, what he didn’t have to say.

  The brothers stopped walking, and stood a few meters apart, staring at one another. Yet, for what it was worth, they could have been on different continents in that moment in time. The gulf between them, their lives and their futures, was vast.

  From behind them, in the dark, they heard Zeke groan. Walking back to him, the silence growing into something uncomfortable between them, each brother stuck to their side of the pillars.

  Justin looked up, opening his mouth to speak to his brother when Declan disappeared behind the final pillar. Stopping, Justin paused waiting for his brother to reappear so that he could finally say something and break the awkwardness. Only, Declan did not re-emerge from behind the pillar. The light from his helmet still illuminated the darkness, but Declan himself had stopped.

  “Bro?” Justin asked, cutting back, moving behind the stone to find his brother.

  Declan was right there, standing frozen in place, his eyes staring at the pillar.

  “Shhhh,” he said sharply, not wanting to make a sound.

  Justin looked, trying to follow his brother’s line of sight. At first, he saw nothing, but he could hear it, whatever it was that had Declan so spooked; a gentle thrum, like someone drumming their fingers on a desk. Peering into the darkness, raising his head to extend the area of light, he saw it.

  The creature was as thick as his arm, if not larger, and at least a meter long, but its body disappeared into the darkness and Justin had no desire to raise his head anymore if it meant revealing the rest of the creature.

  “It looks like a millipede or something like that,” Justin whispered, watching as the creature stopped moving, the myriad legs that protruded from its body folding inwards like hinges, bringing the creature down onto the rock.

  “Can you hear that?” Declan looked at his brother, his eyes wide.

  “Hear what?” Justin asked, but received the answer immediately. The sound of clacking hadn’t stopped, and not just because this one creature had paused for a rest.

  “There’s more of them.” Justin spoke the words slowly, fear stabbing into him with each one uttered.

  Looking around, their light extended to cast a gloomy haze over the next pillar, where two of the same creatures were almost at ground level, their bodies over a meter long, closer to a meter and a half. Their shells were black and brown respectively, and shimmered, even in the dull light. Unlike the one on the pillar near them, these two showed no signs of taking a rest, and as soon as first legs hit the floor, they scurried away, bodies bending at a near ninety-degree angle, as the remaining portions left the pillars and hit the flat ground.

  Two long antennae extended from the front of their bodies, and while there was no discernable head or eyes, there was no mistaking the crab-like pincers that extended the minute their antennae started to twitch.

  “Move. Get back to Zeke,” Declan said, turning just as the creature nearest them began to move, not descending the pillar, but rather, it started to swell, certain sections of its body bloating and pulsating.

  “What the hell?” Declan asked, but his curiosity was not strong enough to hold him in one place.

  They could see Zeke, his body flat on the floor, his barrel chest rising and falling in jagged movements.

  Behind them came a shriek and the frenzied sound of hundreds of pairs of legs running. Casting a glance over his shoulder, Declan saw something that brought him to an immediate stop.

  The creatures were not chasing after them, but fleeing an attack from things else.

  The brown millipede was pinned beneath the bodies of two spider-like creatures that were each as large as a big house cat.

  “Holy shit,” Declan said, “would you look at those things.”

  “They’re the same as those toys we saw, only bigger.” Justin couldn’t believe his eyes as the brown-bodied beasts tore the brown millipede apart, their long front pincers opening up to extend the length of their body before them, slicing into the creature’s flesh like small saws before folding inwards, shoveling the torn-off chunks of meat into their mouths.

  “Oh shit, that’s not good,” Declan said, backing up as another, even larger, cave spider dropped from the darkness, landing on top of the black millipede.

  The creature bucked and twisted its body like a wild bronco but couldn’t shake the thing loose. A thick black stinger extended from the rear of the body, rising like a reversed scorpion’s tail. Striking with a lightning quickness, it skewered the millipede, which let out a sound akin to a piglet’s squeal.

  “Run,” Justin said, not wanting to stick around to see what was going to come as a result of the attack. Turning, he came face to face with the swollen body of the first millipede, which still clung to the pillar, even though its body was bloated to three times the size. Its skin was tearing open, and each pulse of its body made the tears widen. Clear liquid spilled out, while in places where the skin was thinnest, he could see shapes moving beneath the surface.

  Justin’s brain willed him to move, but his feet remained soldered to the ground, fused as if the rock had pulled him down into it, holding him captive.

  Justin felt Declan grab him, his hand squeezing his shoulder and yanking him backward. For a moment, it still felt as though his feet were stuck, but at the last moment, he took a stumbling step backward, and everything that held him still was broken. He stumbled, turning just as the body of the millipede burst open with a wet splat, sending a shower of pus-like goop and chunks of black exos
keleton through the cave.

  That was when they came; an army of tiny cave spiders, each one a pasty, yellow color, their bodies wet and soft still. They fell from the hollowed-out carcass, tumbling to the floor, hundreds of them immediately beginning to scurry away, heading towards food.

  “Run, goddammit,” Declan roared, heaving his brother backward.

  With the lights of their helmets bouncing around as they ran, all hell broke loose. The brothers tried to keep pace with one another, but it was impossible. The floor of the cave was littered with the rocks and jagged shards that that stabbed at them, pulling all of their attention onto their own passage. They could hear the sound of wet, scurrying bodies behind them, advancing like a wave of destruction, eager to claim them as victim number one.

  Justin chanced a look over his shoulder, the light of his torch reflecting off the bodies that gave chase. They were gaining on him.

  Justin turned and tripped as his feet hit something large and solid. As he stumbled, he tried to jump, hurdling the object in his path, but he didn’t make it. His trailing leg also caught on the blockage and sent him tumbling to the floor. He landed hard, tucked his head and tried to roll, his helmet flying free as he somersaulted through the air.

  Pain shot through his head as he struck it on the ground, rolling twice as another pain flared in his arm. It started in his shoulder, then shot through his arm and out his fingers, as if he were the Emperor and the power of the dark side was ready to burst from his fingertips.

  Justin laid there, his heart hammering in his chest, pain spotting his vision, ready for the end to come. That was when he saw the eyes staring at him, glistening with tears.

  Zeke’s large form, which had been the insurmountable obstacle in Justin’s path, lay between him and death. The old man’s face, under-lit by the light of the helmet which lay on the floor between them, reflected his own acceptance of death.

  Justin hated himself for it, but he knew that it gave him a chance. He snatched at the helmet, and hauled himself to his feet as the first wave of baby cave spiders reached the man.