Cave Crawlers

by Alex Laybourne

  “Hey, hey, that’s enough,” Declan said, wrapping his arms around his brother, stopping him from striking out again.

  The creature’s head was gone, reduced to nothing more than a messy pulp on the floor, as if someone had dropped an overripe melon and then kicked it for good measure.

  The body still twitched, somehow, but there would be no coming back, that was for sure.

  Justin stood, panting, his lungs and arms burning from the exertion, but he would not stop. The anger had taken control and would drive him further for as long as he could control it.

  Stepping over the creature, Justin strode forward, the gore-dripping bone held in his hands like a shotgun.

  “I get it now,” Justin said as they walked.

  “Get what?” Declan asked, still trying to get over the shock of what he had seen.

  “Why you killed Dad. I get it.” Justin’s words were emotionless, and that sent a chill up Declan’s spine that felt worse than anything else he had experienced until that moment.

  “I didn’t feel good for killing him,” Declan said, speaking directly about the act that changed their lives, for the first time.

  “You didn’t?” Justin asked, disbelieving.

  “No, I live with that decision every day,” Declan answered, his jaw clenched as he spoke.

  “He got what he deserved. You did the right thing, you said it yourself,” Justin answered, nonchalantly.

  “I said I would do the same thing again, and I would. It doesn’t make it the right choice though. That’s one thing I know for sure. I didn’t get a fancy education, but I know that people don’t deserve to say when another man’s time is up.” Declan didn’t want to get into that discussion, and so he held his tongue on the rest.

  “Nonsense. He was a bully and an abuser. He deserved to die, and he deserved to feel pain,” Justin growled.

  Declan ignored the words, knowing it was the stress that was talking, not his baby brother. Yet, there was a deep-seated anger that he recognized.

  Before he had a chance to bring it up again, there were a series of shrieks in the tunnel behind them, too close for comfort.

  “I think they found your handiwork,” Declan said as he pushed Justin into a run.

  The shrieks and cries echoed through the tunnel were accompanied by the sound of running feet, which rose like thunder around them.

  “Move, quick, quick,” Declan yelled as the chasing group drew closer to them. The sound of grunts and feet slapping the wet ground seemed to rumble, the echo of the cavern and the tunnels made it sound as if they were surrounded and being closed in on rather than chased down.

  “Run,” Declan yelled, the time to quiet was long since over. Declan could hear the pack getting closer, and he refused to end up another pile of bones in their meat locker.

  Ahead of them, the tunnel forked.

  “Left,” Justin called back to his brother as his feet stumbled on the floor. He pinwheeled with his arms to keep both his balance and speed, careening into the tunnel absorbed by the darkness.

  Tripping, his balance refusing to hold for him, Justin fell towards the wall. He tried to bring his hands up to protect himself, only there was no wall. He was falling through empty space, the ground disappearing beneath his feet.

  With no idea of how far he had to fall, Justin’s head conjured up the worst image it could think of. Justin saw himself falling only to land only a group of rising skewers of rock. He saw his body pierced and impaled, his guts caught on the tip, yanked from his body like wool on a spindle.

  He opened his mouth to scream, but the floor was there. Hitting face first and unable to brace for the impact, his body was not prepared for the sudden stop. The pain registered as he landed, his nose splattering like a squeezed grape. It saw his world light up with pain before the darkness swam back in to claim him.

  Declan saw his brother stumble and disappear into the darkness. “Justin,” he called out but got no response.

  The light of the helmet bounced around furiously as Declan ran, giving him little or no vision of what lay ahead. He was simply running. The pack was still getting closer to him, but he didn’t want to chance a glance over his shoulder.

  Hoping he would run into his brother, Declan continued, when suddenly something hit him in the stomach. The blow came from nowhere, originating from the right-hand side. At first, he thought he had been stabbed, as the pain flared up like fire, consuming his gut and sweeping through his body. Lurching forward, his body useless, Declan felt hands grab him, tearing at what remained of his clothes. He was shoved to his right, hitting the wall hard, his head whipping to the side, catching the rocks. Stars exploded before his eyes, and he felt blood start to flow from the wound that had opened above his ear.

  They surrounded him, their grunts and chats bearing no resemblance to English. Declan tried to look up, but couldn’t. Crawling on the floor, he hid the light beneath him, hoping the darkness would buy him some cover. Crawling, he felt the ground give way beneath him, and he gave himself to the fall, welcoming the descent and whatever impact laid waiting for him.

  The shouts and grunts came again, and Declan heard something behind him. He hit the floor too soon after leaving it, the drop was not more than a few meters. Rolling as best he could, reacting after the initial impact had occurred, he felt his shoulder burn and head the pop as it dislocated.

  Declan gritted his teeth against the pain, and tried to find his bearings. His stomach still burned from whatever had struck him, but he felt no blood as he ran his hands over his shirt. Still holding his bone club in one hand, he hauled himself to his feet, using it like a cane.

  It didn’t take long for Declan to realize he wasn’t alone. Even in the dim light offered by the helmet, which lay on the ground behind him, Declan could tell.

  He felt something moving through the air. Not wanting to put it down to his imagination, he grabbed the bone like a bat and swung it as hard as he could. He would not go down without a fight.

  Chapter Thirteen

  The club connected with something solid, forcing a rush exhalation from the creature’s lungs. The rotten breath expelled hit Declan in the face, and like the musk of a skunk, it was strong enough to drive him backward.

  Stumbling a step, he listened, but couldn’t react in time to stave off the second figure that attacked him.

  Hands wrapped around his face, long nails digging into his flesh. The stench of rot filled every breath as slimy skin slipped over his face, smothering him. An exploratory finger found his mouth and slid inside. Declan gagged, the taste and smell of the greasy digit too much for him. A sharp nail gouged a strip of flesh from his tongue, and Declan bit down, instinctively. His teeth severed the flesh and bone of the finger, which was far too soft.

  A thick, sour-tasting liquid filled his mouth, causing vomit to rise from his gut. It exploded from his mouth like when a Mentos gets thrown into a coke bottle. The foaming liquid that his body created was unlike any vomit Declan had produced before.

  Behind them, the first creature had gotten from the floor and was upon him within seconds. Arms wrapped around him, but Declan was ready. He would not go down without a fight, and so he threw himself forward, bending at the waist, sending the creature hurtling over his back and onto the floor. Grabbing the bone, Declan held the club end and stabbed forward, impaling the thing through the shoulder.

  The creature wailed and thrashed about, its screams increasing before suddenly, they became a laugh; a high-pitched, maniacal laugh. The creature snatched the bone out of Declan’s hands and yanked it free with a wet, smacking sound.

  It inspected the blood-covered bone, and smiled before it proceeded to lick the bone clean, chewing the thicker lumps of gore as it reached them.

  Declan gagged as the long black tongue picked the lumps of flesh and blood from the bone, Declan turned to run, but the second creature was on him again, it’s teeth sinking deep into his shoulder, tearing loose a large lump of fresh meat. It was Declan’
s turn to howl with pain, and he did so gladly, dropping to his knees as the pain surged through him. He could hear the thing chewing on the bite he had taken. He could hear the crunch of his raw flesh as it was hungrily wolfed down.

  “Please,” Declan begged on his knees, nowhere else left to turn. “Let my brother go.” The two creatures looked at each other as if they could understand what was being asked of them.

  One stood, his face caked in fresh blood and a goofy smile on his face; the other stood with the bone club in its hands, a look of cold calculation in his eyes. The blood-smeared creature crouched down onto its haunches and pushed its face to within a few inches of Declan’s. Its eyes stared into his, and the goofy smiled disappeared as it opened its mouth, as if making to speak.

  “No.” It managed to force the word from its lips before standing back up as both broke down into a fit of hysterical laughter.

  “No, no, no, no,” the bloody beast repeated over and over, its voice hoarse but clear. It started to bounce around, its excitement building, while its companion stood, staring at Declan with cold eyes. The time for laughter was done.

  The thing raised the club above its head, and swung in a strike not dissimilar to Declan’s own. The strike was fast, and Declan didn’t even have the time to raise his hand to protect himself. The bone hit hard, his head exploding from the force of the blow, sending him to the ground.

  Declan was unconscious before he finished his fall.

  ***

  Justin came to and all he knew was pain. His world exploded anew with each breath he took. Trying to move only increased his agony to a new level he did not previously know existed. Yet above the pain, he heard something … several somethings.

  He heard his brother scream. He knew it was Declan. He could recognize the sound of his brother’s agony anywhere. It sounded exactly as it had in every nightmare he had had since the day Declan was arrested.

  “No,” he mumbled, his broken lips blurring the words into an indistinguishable sound.

  Justin didn’t know if it was adrenaline or something else, some power from a higher authority, but a surge of energy kicked in, shutting down his pain, bringing him to his feet. His head throbbed, and all he could taste was blood, as it poured from his shattered nose and mangled mouth. He turned around, trying to find his bearings, but it was dark. Holding his arms out, he felt the wall. Moving against it, flinching at each bump and crack, with visions of bugs and beasts dancing in his head, Justin felt upwards, searching for the entrance he had fallen through. There was nothing and no clear way to reach up any higher.

  He was trapped. His first thought turned to a holding cell, where they would keep their food. He stopped to rest for a moment, closing his eyes while he waited for a moment of light-headedness to pass.

  He turned around, looking to the cave wall for support. He fought back tears as the bitter fingers of desperation grabbed at the edges of his sanity, trying to wrench it away, removing his comforter before exposing him to the true depths of the hell he had stumbled into.

  At first, he thought the light was a spot on his vision. A sign of the obvious concussion he had picked up since the day began, if it was even still the same day. He had lost all concept of time since falling from the bridge.

  He blinked several times, first fast, and then slower, but the light remained, a hazy orange glow, originating not from within whatever chamber or cavern he had landed in, but from somewhere else. Justin refused to let his hopes get ahead of him. Lights meant people. People meant a lost colony of presumed cannibals that were hunting him down, but he also knew that it meant visibility and the possibility of a way out.

  Justin’s legs trembled as he walked, as if still in deliberation as to whether they were going to hold him upright, Justin moved towards the glow.

  He stood on something, and head it crack underfoot. It was the sound of eggshells. Without a light to see by, he could not check to see what else was in the chamber, and so he refused to let his racing mind ponder the thought for too long.

  With his eyes focused on the orange glow, Justin made it across to chamber, which could not have been more than twenty feet wide. He found himself at the entrance to a tunnel. A small tight space dug into the wall. Blindly, he felt is way around the entrance and reasoned he should be able to crawl through it, because standing was not an option.

  Ignoring the screaming inside his head, Justin forced his body onward. He moved on hands and knees, dropping down to his belly in a slow commando crawl not long after.

  A strange stench wafted towards him, coming down the tunnel from whatever lay at the other end. It was a heady concoction that made Justin think of an old gym bag and compost. It had a strange, peaty, earth-like smell, rotting leaves, and body odor. It was slick yet lingered like old sweat, a constant stench rather than something passing on the breeze.

  It increased as he inched his way closer to the end, and with it came a sound too; a wet, crawling sound. Justin couldn’t place it anywhere, but knew it was the sound of multiple things, be it bugs or the original residents of Crawleigh.

  Shadows began to dance on the tunnel wall as the eerie orange glow began to envelop him, the stench an unforgiving entity, as if he had crawled into the bowels of a fresh cadaver, just as the gasses were starting to build.

  Justin wanted to turn back, but the tight confines made it impossible. His body was tired, and he hurt all over. Blood still dripped from the facial wounds, although the heaviest flow seemed to have stopped. He breathed through his mouth, gulping down as much air as he could each time, Justin edged closer, peering as if somehow he could zoom his vision and take a look around before his body arrived.

  He saw a flame, naked and dancing on the wall, enticing him to come further, its hypnotic flickering tempting him closer, where he knew there would be warmth, and warmth brought comfort.

  Justin reached the end of the tunnel, and stared into the room. He could not stifle the gasp that escaped his lips as his eyes took in the monstrosities that sat before him. The room was filled with women. Only they were nothing like anything he had seen before. They say equally spaced around the room, their bodies chained to the wall and floor, via cuffs that clamped down hard on their wrists and ankles. Naked, their enormous bodies looked to be swollen to the point of bursting, their bellies distended, the skin stretched so thin Justin believed he could see through it if he stared long enough. Large boils and swollen pustules covered their flesh around the different cuffs holding them in place, while open sores dotted the body of two. They looked weak, their eyes closed and heads lolling to one side as if unconscious.

  The floor was thick with piss and shit, both fresh and dried, from where the women would defecate where they sat. Their breasts hung from their bodies, sliding over their bellies, nothing more than shapeless sacks of flesh.

  Children scurried around them, moving on all fours like animals, their bodies deformed, limbs that bent at unnatural angles, faces contorted by genetic mutation and abnormalities. Some had only one eye, others two but were sightless as a result. They played in the filth, rolling with one another like bear cubs on a nature documentary.

  Several sucked from the hanging tits of their mothers, nipples hanging a few feet above the floor where children could stop off and drink at will without needing to leave the game for too long.

  All around the chamber old-fashioned oil lamps were burning, including one to Justin’s immediate right. A moment spent close to it confirmed to him that they were also a cause of the stench, so it did not lay fully on the poor hygiene of the breeders below him.

  Justin knew what he was a looking at: a breeding room of some kind. It sickened him, and yet his eyes lingered with a strange and morbid fascination. He thought of his own kids and the life they had had; a life of privilege, compared to his own upbringing. He felt for the children here; the women too. There was no way any of them were part of the original family, for their history was hundreds of years ago. They were merely people, humans, caugh
t in a life cycle started long before they were born, and destined to continue living until their bodies finally withered and died. They were no more capable of fighting back or breaking the cycle than he had been all those years ago. His abusers were his parents, haunted by whatever unspoken horrors had been inflicted upon them, while theirs was the cave and the ghosts of ancestors long since claimed by the past.

  Justin thought of his brother, lost somewhere inside the cave. Once again, he had led his brother away from the chance of a good life to ease his own selfish regret. Lost in thought, Justin stumbled, his hand slipping on the edge of the tunnel. The crash of his body against the tunnel echoed through the breeding room and brought everything to a sudden halt.

  Justin held his breath as he felt the weight of dozens of pairs of eyes turning towards him, finding him in the gloom with a laser focus.

  The women began to scream, their throats producing a gargled cry that seemed to be an attempt at speech. The children turned towards him, their teeth bared like wild dogs ready to attack.

  One leaped at the opening and Justin pulled himself out of the way just in time. Another tried, leaping up into the entrance of the tunnel. They were the perfect height to move through it, and Justin wondered if the chamber he had been in was some sort of dormitory for them.

  The small creature, which he could not associate with a child, advanced on him. Justin lashed out, his survival instinct kicking in. The creature stumbled backward and fell to the floor, landing with a puppy-like yelp. It turned and looked over at Justin just as another jumped up, razor-like claws scratching at the air, ready to slice through his flesh.

  Justin reacted on instinct, plucking the creature from the air, his fist locking around the thing’s head, Justin growled as he pulled it towards him with such a force there was nothing the toddler-sized miscreation could do. It slammed face first into the lip of the tunnel, his head denting inwards, the skull caving in on itself, driving both the nose and the eyes deeper into the skull. The creature wailed and struggled, and as Justin let it drop to the floor, he watched in wonder as the others turned on it, eliminating the weakest of the pack to keep the rest of them strong.