by Brian Harmon
Wayne hung back at the rear of the group, remaining behind Albert and Brandy, trying to coax them along in spite of the considerable pain he knew they must have felt. They both needed a doctor. For that matter, he probably needed one too. In addition to the zombie bite, his shredded leg and all the other injuries he’d sustained over the course of the night, he was now aching from head to foot from the battering he took at the hands of the Caggo. A faint taste of blood told him it had bloodied his nose at least a little and it felt like his lip was split. He also suspected that one or two of his ribs might be cracked, but he wasn’t sure. His shoulder hurt like hell, too, where he landed on it. But this was hardly the time to be inventorying battle scars.
He chanced a look back the way they came and immediately wished he hadn’t. Behind them, the tunnel had grown unnaturally dark, as though something were absorbing the light, or perhaps radiating darkness. He wasn’t sure if that was possible, but until tonight he hadn’t believed in monsters at all, so what the hell did he know? The walls seemed to simultaneously expand and contract. And at the very center of it was a queer void that for some reason filled his heart with mortal dread to look upon. He turned his face forward again, freshly panicked. “Hurry!”
Up ahead, the tunnel began to rise steeply and soon they were laboring up a massive hill.
Wayne wanted to look back again, wanted to be sure the darkness behind them was not closing in too quickly, but he dared not. He could hear that sound, as though the whole place were pulling apart, widening to make room for whatever it was that was coming for them, and he felt a sort of terror that he had not even felt when he believed the Caggo was going to kill him.
This, he realized, was the real guardian of the labyrinth. The Caggo had only been a pathetic sentry, a childish, sadistic beast, but toothless in the greater scheme of things.
Andrea caught sight of a narrow opening ahead, about chest high. “I see something!” she cried. “We’re almost there!” She did not know that this was the end. She knew absolutely nothing about the labyrinth, but it was a start. It was a goal, something to focus on besides the rapidly approaching doom behind them.
Perhaps they would be safe on the other side of the opening. Perhaps whatever was chasing them was too big to fit through it.
She ran faster, pushing herself, her eyes fixed on that one chance of escape.
“Get in there!” Wayne shouted. “Don’t stop for anything!”
Andrea reached the wall at the end of the tunnel and poked her head through the opening, quickly examining it. It was fairly narrow and would probably be a tight fit for Wayne. Probably uncomfortable as hell for poor Albert, too, with his broken arm. But the rest of them should have little trouble. Beyond this hole, another tunnel stretched onward. It was identical to the one on this side, but there seemed to be something different about it, something she felt immediately, but that she could not quite grasp in her rush.
She crawled through the hole and tumbled ungracefully onto the hard floor on the other side.
Olivia and Nicole reached the opening next and turned to wait for Albert and Brandy.
“Go!” Albert told them.
“Not until you’re through!” Nicole insisted.
Albert saw the way she was holding her arm against her chest and his heart gave a pitiful cry. Not her, too. Would none of them survive this night unscathed?
Brandy reached the hole and leaned in. From the other side, Andrea took her hand and guided her forward. Olivia and Nicole each took one thigh and gently, but quickly pushed her forward. As she tumbled out of the other side of the hole, Andrea did her best to keep her from hurting herself any more than she already was, but it was an awkward task.
“Hurry,” Nicole told Albert, who hesitated only once. He wanted Nicole to go in first. He wanted her to be safe. He wanted Olivia and Wayne to be safe as well. He would rather have stayed and gone through last, but he knew Nicole well enough to be sure that she would not let that happen, not when he was hurt.
He bent and looked through the hole. There were markings on all four surfaces, just like the ones that covered the stone leading into the entrance of the labyrinth. Even through the pain of his fractured arm and the terror he felt from whatever was bearing down on them, he was able to notice this small detail.
Andrea and Brandy reached through from the other side and seized his good hand. Behind him, Olivia and Nicole pushed him through by his legs. They tried to be gentle, but his injured arm screamed with freshly awakened pain. He cried out in agony as he was fed through the hole, the backpack threatening to catch and slow them down. He wondered once if he would have to back out and take it off, but it slid through the opening without much trouble.
Although they tried to catch him, Andrea and Brandy were not quite able to keep him from tumbling to the floor and jarring a bolt of agony from his broken bone that made the whole world waver out of focus for a moment.
Wayne had stopped and was looking back the way they’d come. The tunnel had grown not just dark but utterly black. The noise had risen into a roar, as though there were a freight train coming down the tunnel straight at them. And that probably wasn’t such an exaggeration. Whatever was moving toward them was much more massive than anything he’d ever seen before, much more massive than anything that should be able to squeeze through this small tunnel. “Go!” he told them. “Hurry!”
“Not without you!” Olivia screamed.
“I’m right behind you! Go!”
Nicole grabbed her by the arm and urged her forward.
Olivia wanted to argue, but she knew that would do nothing but waste valuable time. She squirmed into the hole with the same ease that Andrea had shown and tumbled into the waiting arms of the girls who’d gone before her.
Wayne watched the darkness in front of him. He actually saw it move, as though it were folding in on itself. The very sight seemed to unlock new realms of terror inside his head. Entire chambers of his mind he’d never known were there seemed to be opening wide to him, revealing deep, abysmal wells of terror that none of this night’s other horrors had been frightening enough to expose.
Once Olivia was clear of the tunnel, Nicole glanced back at Wayne, who was finally beginning to back toward the wall. “Come on!” she screamed over the strange roaring. “We’re all through!” Then she turned and pushed her head and arms into the hole. Immediately, her wrists were seized from the other side and she was pulled out of the labyrinth.
As Nicole tumbled to the floor, the opening through which she’d just crawled suddenly swelled. Like a blossoming flower, it spread open to the unnatural darkness behind it, spewing strange, gaseous shadows like foul, black smoke. Then something shot through it, narrowly missing her kicking feet as she rolled out of the way.
It reached out at them, wickedly fast, a long, sinuous shape of slithering darkness that sailed over Brandy’s head and snatched at Andrea’s face, who threw herself to the ground to avoid it.
For a single second it remained there, wavering in the air, a thing that was like nothing at all, only a thin, snake-like void, a blackness that seemed darker than any shade of black they had ever seen. And then it vanished, fading like a ghost before their eyes, taking the unnatural darkness with it.
But they did not linger on the mysterious black thing. They didn’t wonder why it had simply vanished and ceased its pursuit. They didn’t worry that it would return. The only thought in each of their heads was that Wayne had not emerged from the tunnel.
“Wayne?” Olivia called, her voice already broken with dread. “Wayne!”
Albert had been standing to the side of the opening when the thing reached out for them. Now he turned and peered through it. Wayne was there, standing on the other side with his back to him. His light was still on. Albert could see the shape of his body, his strong, broad back, his thick arms. He could also see the ragged, two-inch hole just to the right of his spine, the hole that had been torn straight through his torso when the snake-like thing came t
hrough the opening. It had passed right through him like a bullet. “Oh God!” he cried. “Wayne!”
Olivia had approached behind him. At the sound of Albert’s startled voice, her panic rose like an explosion. “Wayne!”
Nicole, Brandy and Andrea looked at one another, terrified.
Slowly, Wayne turned and bent forward, looking through the opening. For a moment he said nothing, only stared at Albert through the lenses of his glasses, and then he held the flashlight out to him. “Take it,” he said, his voice soft, weak. “I…don’t need it anymore.”
“The hell you don’t!” Albert forgot about his broken arm. He reached in with his left hand and seized Wayne’s wrist. With more strength than he knew he possessed, he pulled his wounded companion through the hole, dragging him from the labyrinth.
Wayne slid heavily out of the hole and fell with a limp thud onto the ground.
“Oh God!” Olivia cried, staring at the bloody hole in his back.
“I should have made him go first,” Nicole said. She was staring at him, not believing what she was seeing. Behind her, Andrea was kneeling on the floor, her hands clasped to her bosom, her pretty eyes wide and afraid.
Albert rolled Wayne onto his back. His belly had the same ragged, blood-filled hole. He was bleeding, but not as much as he should have been. The hole had been singed by the passing entity, cauterized, as if he’d been run through with a white-hot sword. “Come on,” he said lamely. “Get up. It’s not that bad.”
“Liar,” returned Wayne.
Albert looked back up at the opening through which they’d just pulled Wayne. The thing had come through and then just disappeared. Why hadn’t it come after the rest of them? Did it have something to do with those markings? The Keeper had told them that the curse was bound to the labyrinth. Perhaps it had struck whatever strange force kept it sealed and was repelled.
Olivia knelt beside him and took his hand. “No,” she whimpered. “You can’t leave us.” She reached up and straightened his glasses for him. He wouldn’t want to lose them on the journey ahead.
He shook his head. “Not my choice now.” He held the flashlight out to her. “Take it.”
“No,” she said. “I won’t.”
“You’ll need it. You…only have the three now.”
“You’ll need it,” Olivia insisted. “You’re coming with us.”
Wayne turned to Albert. “I’m just dead weight. Take them. Go…wherever the hell it was we’ve been trying to go…take care of them.”
“No!” Olivia was sobbing now. “Don’t you dare!”
“Listen,” Wayne said to Albert, ignoring Olivia. “No one knows where I went last night.” He drew a long, shuddering breath. It was getting hard to speak. “Don’t tell anyone you were with me. There’s…nothing you can do for me…and those people up there…” he swallowed hard, as if trying to swallow the pain itself, “…they’ll just make it hard on you…might even try to blame you…so just keep it to yourselves, okay? If not for you then for me.”
“Wayne no!” Tears streamed down Olivia’s face. She could not stand to hear him say such things. How could they not tell the world what happened to him? How could they let his family wonder that way? What about his mother? It was wrong.
“Come on,” Albert said. “Don’t give up.”
“I want you to go,” Wayne told him. “Right now. I don’t want you to watch me die.”
Albert shook his head. Wayne was right. He was leaving them. They couldn’t take him with them any more than they could have taken Beverly with them, but he still did not want to leave him. Wayne had done so much for them. He’d saved both his and Olivia’s lives. He’d probably saved all of their lives at least once tonight. “I can’t do that,” he said.
“You can. You will. Please.”
Albert stared at him, hurt.
“You can’t,” Andrea said, still kneeling on the hard floor behind Brandy and Nicole. “You can’t go like this.”
“I…wasn’t a good person.”
“The hell you weren’t!” Albert snapped.
Wayne shook his head. “No. I could have been a lot better. I made a lot of mistakes.” He stared up at Albert for a moment and then turned his eyes to Olivia. “But I think I ended good enough.”
Albert shook his head, still wanting to argue.
“I can be satisfied with this. Really.”
“Oh, Wayne!” Olivia was sobbing too hard to speak anything more.
Wayne closed his eyes. “Please go.”
Albert took the flashlight from him and stood up. “If that’s what you really want.”
“It is.”
For a moment Albert stood there, more unhappy than he had ever been in his life. “Thank you,” he said. “For saving my life. For taking care of us.”
Wayne gazed up at him. “Thanks for letting me come along.”
Albert handed the flashlight to Olivia and then turned and walked away so that the others could say their goodbyes.
Brandy stood up and approached Wayne. “Thank you,” she said. “So very much.”
Nicole stepped up behind Brandy and put an arm around her. “It was very nice to meet you, Wayne.” It sounded lame, but there was nothing else she could say. Tears streaked down her cheeks and her breath hitched in her chest.
Wayne smiled at them both and watched them walk away.
Andrea came next. She knelt down and hugged him gently, then kissed him on the cheek. “I…” she choked on her emotions and had to stop and sob into her hand. “I don’t know what to say,” she continued after a moment. “Maybe if I hadn’t come with you…”
Wayne shook his head. “Thank you,” he said to her. “For coming. It was…” He thought about what Nicole had just said and found the words fitting. “It was nice to meet you.”
She kissed him again, the tears no longer letting her talk, and then stood up and hurried away from him, unable to take any more. Nicole and Brandy met her a short distance away and put their arms around her.
Olivia stared down at Wayne, her tears streaming down her face. This was her hero, the one who risked everything to come after her, even though she was only a stranger to him. What did you say to your dying hero?
“It was worth every minute,” Wayne told her. “I feel good. I hurt, but I feel so good. I really do.”
She smiled at him, then bent and tenderly kissed his parched lips. “Thank you,” she said simply. She took a deep, shuddering breath, trying to calm the sobs that threatened to bubble up her throat at any moment. “Thank you for my life. Thank you for taking care of me. Thank you for being a wonderful—” Her voice cracked and she was unable to go on.
Wayne smiled back up at her. “You’re welcome,” he told her. “It was my pleasure.”
Olivia stood up, sobbing, and walked away.
Wayne closed his eyes for a moment. The pain seemed to be fading and that was good. He had not been lying when he said that he had ended well. He had saved two lives tonight. That was much more than twice the worth of his own, as far as he was concerned. When he opened his eyes again, the light had faded. They were walking away, leaving him, just as he had asked.
He stared up at the dark ceiling above him and let himself think of Gail Porbin. To his surprise, he realized that he didn’t really miss her anymore. He finally felt at peace with that part of himself. Instead, it was Olivia who occupied his thoughts. She was such a lovely girl. He was sure he had made the world a better place by making sure she was still a part of it. And that made him happy. His only regret in these final moments of consciousness was that he would never see her again.
As the darkness swallowed him completely, so did his weariness. He closed his eyes and slowly drifted away.
Chapter 52
The five of them moved on without speaking. Albert lingered behind a few steps, his heart heavy. He regretted terribly that he could not do more. It felt wrong leaving Wayne there in the darkness like that. But what more could they do? They had no way to save
him.
He felt so useless.
He lifted his eyes and gazed at the four young women who walked ahead of him. He could feel the overwhelming burden as he wondered how he could possibly hope to keep them all safe through whatever trials still awaited them when he could not even save Wayne. He was only one man, and a man with a busted arm at that.
Brandy, Nicole and Olivia walked close together in front of Albert, holding hands and comforting one another. It was difficult to believe that Wayne was gone. Of all of them, he should still be here. After all he’d been through, after all he’d accomplished…
But this was the very nature of the Temple of the Blind. It took without warning, without mercy, without sympathy. It claimed Wayne as quickly and as certainly as it had claimed poor Beverly.
And it could claim any one of them just as swiftly. It could claim all of them, if it so wished. And perhaps it would do just that before it was all over. Perhaps that was simply their fate.
Olivia, in particular, felt hollow inside. She’d gotten herself into a lot of trouble these past few days, and it was only thanks to Wayne that she was not dead now. He was her hero, her shining knight. He rode to her not once, but twice, bursting from the darkness to carry her back to the light like any girl’s favorite fantasy. And how many times had he saved her since then? He braved the fear room alone to spare her and Andrea its terrors. He pushed her out of reach of the hound that chewed up his leg. In fact, he made sure he was the last one to leave the labyrinth…just so that if one of them didn’t make it…
She shuddered beneath the weight of her tears and Brandy and Nicole squeezed her hands. She still had them. She still had Albert. She still had sweet Andrea. She was not alone here in this cruel darkness. And yet, she couldn’t begin to imagine continuing on without him.
Andrea walked ahead of everyone, her eyes fixed blankly on the darkness into which they were journeying. If she stopped walking, she would begin to cry. She was sure of it. And she was also sure that if she began to cry, she would not be able to stop.
