by Deck Davis
He pulled the pickup to a stop.
“Yeah…think that’s our cue to assess the situation a little.”
Tony got out his binoculars and moved them left to right to get a view of the tunnel.
“Jesus,” said Chad. “You would have thought that we’d hear this going down.”
“I heard something,” said Ellie. “I thought it was just the wind. Now I’m thinking it was some poor bastard screaming.”
Ash kicked the car door open and stepped out. He felt his face start to get red, and his shoulders were knotting up with tension.
“Goddamn it,” he said, “That was our only way through.”
“So, what now, boss?” said Ellie, making sure that ‘boss’ was said sarcastically.
“We better be careful. Whatever did this might still be out there. I’d say we should check for survivors, but something about the hands and legs littering the floor makes me a little reluctant.”
“I don’t think we gotta choice,” said Tony.
“Why?”
Tony passed him the binoculars. “Just inside the arch, up at the roof. It’s dark, but you can just about make it out.”
Ash stared through the binoculars and found himself looking at a green sign that read ‘Bolton Tunnel,’ though the writing was fuzzy. He refocused and panned to the right, toward the tunnel arch. Then he saw it.
It was toward the roof of the arch, wedged against it so that it was half covered in shadow, half lit up by daylight. It was a yellow viscous sack around three meters deep. It looked like it was made from some kind of runny latex, except thicker and more fluid. Parts of it had dried to resemble a beehive, and these sections held the most shocking sights.
Dismembered people were stuck to them, trapped halfway-in and halfway-out of the nest as though it had been knitted around them. If they were dead he would have been horrified enough, but these people were alive.
He hoped one Ignis ball would take care of this, but plans going that smoothly were rarer than hand jobs in a forty-year long unhappy marriage.
“Know anything about this, FF?”
Luckily, I know a little; Dr. Aitken spent three weeks studying arachnids, and four days in the Lost Soul Mines completing a quest. He learned a little about nesting insects in Rapto.
“What’s FF saying to you?” asked Chad.
“He says it’s best you go down there on your own first and see what the deal is,” said Ash.
“Yeah, yeah,” said Chad.
This isn’t good, Ash, said FF. Stay alert.
“I’m a big boy. My balls have dropped and everything. Lay it on me.”
“Lay it on you?” said Chad. “That doesn’t sound too good. What’s FF saying? Come on, Ash.”
Looks like one of a few possibilities to me; nest gopplers, corux spiders, and if you’re really unlucky, this could be a giant wasp infestation.
“We need to destroy the nest,” said Ash. “Those people are still alive, for Christ’s sake. I just don’t know how we can get to them without putting ourselves in danger. Call me crazy, but I’m pretty wary about getting close enough to that thing for an Ignis flame.”
“What’s your spell range?” asked Tony.
“About the length of a weak kid’s softball throw. What effects can you put on your bullets?”
“Got a stun spell, and one that drains mana. Need to level up the spell before I get the third effect.”
Chad raised his bolt-action rifle. After his m16 ran out of ammo, he’d reluctantly had to borrow a gun from Tony’s worryingly-vast collection.
“Screw this,” he said. He squinted down the sights, found his mark, breathed in and fired.
Ash lifted up the binoculars. The bullet tore through the nest-like mesh, hitting a strand that connected it to the tunnel. Yellow goo sprayed out and rained down on the cars below like a fountain. The nest dislodged from the roof of the tunnel and began to crumple like a balloon losing air.
“All well and good,” said Ellie, but the people in it will still be alive.”
Ash sighed. He remembered the Labrador he almost had to put out of its misery. That was bad enough, but people? Killing someone who’d attacked him was one thing; it was them or him. This was a mercy killing, and it wouldn’t feel good. It meant getting closer to the tunnel than he liked, but he wouldn’t let them suffer.
“We’ll do a drive-by,” said Ash. “Tony, you take the wheel, and I’ll stay out on the back. I’ll have an Ignis ball ready, and I’ll burn the thing to ashes as we drive alongside it.”
“And where in Satan’s red ass are we going after that?” asked Chad. “If the tunnels blocked…”
“It’ll have to be through the Lantern mountains,” said Tony. “Now, let’s stop flapping our ass cheeks and move.”
Tony drove at a steady clip. Out on the back of the pickup, Ash felt his dark hair blow in the wind. He held onto the side of the vehicle with one hand. He raised his other, and as they drew nearer to the Bolton tunnel and the deflated nest, he grew a purple arcane flame in his palm.
Tony swung a turn, taking them right by the tunnel mouth. Ash unleashed his Ignis, and the flames lapped straight over the nest and incinerated it like it was kindling. It wasn’t the best end for the people who’d been stuck in it, but it was a damn sight better than a dying a slow death, trapped inside a nest waiting for god-knew-what to come back.
Through the back window of the pickup he saw Chad looking at him and giving thumbs up. Ash didn’t especially feel like patting himself on the back, and the 20% EXP he had earned when the people died made him feel dirty.
The smell of the burning nest mixed with scorched flesh, and Ash was glad when he felt the wind hit him faster, and Tony picked up their pace to get the tunnel behind them.
And then he heard the buzzing. A loud drone, like a pneumatic drill hammering up and down on concrete, except there seemed to be dozens, and they were coming from somewhere in the air.
The pickup lurched violently to the right, and Ash almost toppled right over the side. He was about to shout at Tony, when he saw what he had steered to avoid; there was a fly in front of the pickup.
Not the kind a kid could swat with a newspaper while taking a dump. This was a much bigger, and nastier, fly.
This fly was seven feet in length. Four feet of that was comprised of its beetle-black-colored body, with gangly, hairy legs and beady, bulbous eyes. The other three was made up of a translucent sac on its back. It looked almost like a cocoon, and thin layers of goo washed over the jelly-like material.
Most sickeningly of all, there was a man inside the cocoon on the fly’s ass. His face was pressed against it, his hair covered in slop. He beat against the sides of his prison. The fly didn’t seem to care; it made no sign that having a man trapped inside its arse hindered it in anyway at all.
Worse than I thought. Musca Flies. They dissolve things in their sacs and convert it to energy. It’ll be a long, painful death for the poor bastard inside.
Ash let an Ignis ball fly toward the insect, but it was too fast. The purple flames scorched passed it and fizzled in the distance when they ran out of range. After a short cooldown he cast another one, this time aiming not at the fly but where he guessed it would go.
He hadn’t judged it completely correctly since the fly moved diagonally upwards from where he aimed, but it was a better shot than last time.
The arcane flames struck the bottom of its translucent sac, splitting it open so that the man inside – his face dissolved by acid- fell to the ground amidst a glop of jelly juice and stomach acid.
With its buzz dying out and its wings flapping slower and slower, the fly lurched down like a plane losing altitude. It recovered itself, and then plummeted again. It hit the ground just in time for the pickup to crush it under its wheels.
The buzzing sounds intensified around them, and he saw five flies coming at them from the sides, while another five approached the rear, straight toward Ash.
He banged the metal
roof of the pickup and shouted so that the guys inside it could hear him.
“We’re surrounded!”
It was hard to compete with the rushing wind and buzzing insects, but he tried.
“Keep zig zagging,” he told Tony. “Don’t let them get close.”
“Got it!”
“And you guys, aim for their jelly asses. I wanna see more jelly on the ground than at a five-year-old’s birthday party.”
Chad leaned out of one window with his rifle, Ellie leaned out of the other and took aim with her pistol. Gunshots sang out. It was a deafening sound but a sweet one, and made all the sweeter when it was followed by the pop of a jelly sac and the plummet of a dying fly.
They hadn’t had time to properly agree on where to go, but Tony was driving closer and closer toward the start of the Lantern mountain pass. He zigzagged as much as possible, careful not to lurch too much in case Ash flew out of the thing and splatted on the ground like an egg.
Ash clung on through every lurch of the vehicle, then judged the arc of the flies and did his best to scorch them.
A chain Ignis was impossible since they moved too much, and he couldn’t risk a level 2 Ignis with such a great chance of missing and wasting HP. Added to that the fact they were driving at 50 miles per hour, meant he didn’t have time to Life Drain the ones they managed to kill.
One fly swooped over his head. It was so close that the buzzing drowned out the engine of the pickup. His hairs stood on end. He’d never seen an insect so humongous.
Tony steered to the right, and a fly smashed into the windshield. Tiny cracks frosted the glass, but thankfully they were on the passenger side.
Ellie leaned out of the car window. She fired off a shot with her revolver and blasted open a jelly sack. Sour smelling goo splashed down onto the ground. Smoke rose off it.
Not good. This stuff burned whatever it touched, which made it dangerous to fight the flies at close quarters.
He heard a loud drone to his left, and turned to see a black shape heading straight for him. It hit him in the face with the power of a heavyweight boxer’s punch. He landed on his back on the metal of the truck.
Two more flies buzzed overhead. They kept pace with the truck and managed to hover just above him.
He saw a jelly sac open, and a slop of goof rained down. Ash rolled to the side and avoided it. The acid goo smoked on the metal.
He scrambled to his feet. That was no easy task, since Tony lurched left to right to avoid the fly onslaught.
The sound of a revolver shot boomed out. One fly to their right lurched back and then fell out of the air. Another kamikazed into the side of the truck, hitting it with such force it almost tipped it over.
There was still one fly above Ash. It’s jelly sac began to retract., Soon, he’d be showered in acidic gunk.
Damn. Can’t Ignis it, because the acid will rain down on me.
He banged the back of the truck.
“Break,” he shouted.
The jelly sac opened further.
“What?”
“Hit the brakes!”
Tony slammed on, and the truck stopped so suddenly that he smashed his head on the edge of the roof. He stumbled back, dazed.
Be careful with your head, said FF, I live in it too, you know!
He recovered himself to see the fly twenty feet in front of the truck. Breaking so suddenly had bought them a little distance from it. Two more buzzed to their left and right.
It was now or never. Hit them now, because if they got too close, they couldn’t shoot without getting splattered with acid.
“Take the bastards down!” he shouted.
He grew a level two Ignis and focused on the fly ahead of them. He studied the arc of its flight, watched it swoop side to side.
Come on, come on…
When he was sure he’d judged it correctly he let his arcane fire fly. The ball shot through the sky. Ash watched its flight nervously, hoping it landed.
The purple flame ball hit the insect bang on the jelly sac, melting the gooey flesh. Masses of yellow glop rained down on the ground. The fly hovered to the left, and then fell.
“Come on, yeah!” he shouted.
He banged the truck again.
“Okay, speed it up.”
The mountains loomed closer. One by one the flies died, whether by a bullet popping their ass-sacs or arcane flames greedily devouring their black skin.
Finally, the buzzing died, but even when the last fly was dispatched, Ash felt like he could still hear them. It was a sound that rattled around in his skull, louder even than the rushing wind.
He sank onto his back and felt the cool metal of the pick up on his neck. The sky rushed passed above him.
He took a few deep, quick breaths. His head stung from where he’d banged it, and he couldn’t get the rotten sour smell of the fly gunk out of his nostrils.
Level up level 12!
Blood Concentrate LVL 1 increased to 25%
“Thanks, FF,” he said, panting.
As glad he was for the progress, Ash was too tired to spend his attribute points yet. He’d cast so many Ignis balls in the fight that his health was down to 402, and his head was swimming so much he worried he’d gotten a concussion.
He gripped the edge to the truck and turned around, and he was relieved to see that there weren’t any more insects following them. The truck rolled over the dry ground, leaving the fly corpses behind them.
Eventually Tony slowed the vehicle to a stop. In front of them was a narrow path that marked the start of the Lantern mountain pass, a dangerous road over a rocky mountain range that nobody in their right minds would attempt. And yet, they had no choice.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Target Practice
Before even thinking about what to do next, Ash convinced Tony to turn back around a few miles and sweep the area so that he could Life Drain the dead flies. It was risky, but it would be worse to go on with a big dent in his HP.
With his done, his Life Drain skill increased to 80% on level 2, and his HP was almost topped up. Then, arriving back at the mountain pass, Tony killed the engine.
They decided that their only option was to drive through the Lantern Mountains. The road through them was treacherous as hell and would add almost five days onto their journey, but it came out somewhere near the city. It meant going back on themselves, but there was no other option. It wasn’t as if they could move the wreckage away from the tunnel entrance, and Ash didn’t think he could part the mountains. He was good, but not that good.
“It could take a week if things really go to hell,” said Ellie. “But there’s no other way through.”
“I might be losing my eyesight in my old age, but I’m sure a gang of big beaked little bawbags are spying on us from up in that tree,” said Tony.
Tony pointed toward a tree, and sure enough, Ash saw a group of crows perched on a branch not far above them. They were a few birds short of a murder, and there was something unsettling about the night-black birds watching them.
Ash shot an Ignis ball their way, cooking them instantly.
“What the hell?” said Chad.
“They might have been regular crows, but I wasn’t taking chances,” said ash.
Good thinking, said FF. It’s likely that Beele is still watching.
“Maybe we should head back to the ranch,” said Chad. “The tunnel is done. We might have enough supplies to get through the mountains, but the margin is thinner than a goblin’s cock.”
Ash shook his head. “No way. Things are only gonna get worse, and the Rapto shit is spreading. If we don’t make it through now, I doubt we’ll get another chance. The only thing that worries me is getting back. Tony, if you wanna head back to the ranch, I won’t blame you. All I’d ask is that you let me keep the pickup for a while.”
“No way. Marg would skin my ass if I went back alone. Not my style.”
“We better talk supplies, then,” said Ellie.
They w
orked out that they had enough MRE’s to last nine days if they rationed themselves. A man needed roughly 2500 calories a day and a woman 2000, but they were looking at getting 1600. If something happened on the mountain pass and they needed more food, they were going to have to hunt.
In terms of water, they were okay. They had enough bottles to last a week, and they had water filters with them. It just meant that when the bottles ran out, they’d have to find a stream.
