Hood, June, and Rad nursed bruises they had acquired sliding down the tower. No longer was the base of the tower the dark, quiet place it had been before they had climbed to the top. Dark—yes. Quiet—no. So loud were the children’s voices, they produced echoes off the far walls of the auditorium.
Kara’s screams had drifted off into a series of muted whines that merged with the children’s voices and the to-and-fro paces of the beetle on the other side of the tower. From the cave behind them arose the crescendo sound of creatures heading their way. From up ahead came a series of grunts and squeals that sounded like round-up time on a dude ranch.
As he bent over Kara’s recumbent form, Gunther prodded the jagged tear in his scalp left there by the dragonfly. Trying to ignore the crazy music in his brain, he spoke to her in his best imitation of a calming voice. “Kara, it’s Gunther. Can you see me? Kara … Kara.”
Her whining and thrashing ceased as her eyes found his. “Gunther,” she said, barely audible.
“Yes, Kara. Gunther. Can you walk? Just a little farther and we’ll be out of the cave.” A little farther, his brain reassured him. Maybe a few obstacles in the way.
“I think so,” she said. “I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to …”
“I know,” Gunther said. “It’s not your fault. Thomas bit you on the back of your head. We got him—he’s dead. Here—see if you can stand.”
Without his asking, Sass’s and Giles’s hands curled under her armpits and hoisted her to her feet. For an instant she wobbled, then gritting her teeth pulled herself upright.
“I’m okay,” she said.
“Let’s go, then. Who’s got the light?”
Van answered in an apologetic voice. “It went out. The lamp smashed when we caught someone coming down from the tower.”
Gunther felt a deep, sinking sensation come over him. He rallied quickly. “That’s okay. We’re all getting our dark vision back. At least we can see a little. The other creatures can’t see a thing.”
“Except the Tardies,” added Simon.
Thank you, Simon, Gunther thought. “I’ve got an idea, but I need a knife.”
Kara reached into her pocket, but produced nothing. “Gunth, my knife is …”
Sass thrust her knife into his hand.
“Thank you, Sass.” Gunther took a deep breath. With the marching sound from the lower cave reverberating in his head, he could hardly prepare for the dangers facing them up ahead. Focus, Gunther. Focus. We can only go forward. No turning back now.
“Okay. Here we go.”
He took several steps forward, down a final ramp past the tower. If he clung to the wall to his right, he was certain to encounter at least one giant salamander, as he had on his first trip here. His only chance of avoiding the cave guardians was to turn to his left, into the final quadrant of the auditorium. Here the ceiling varied from low—just above his head—to high, up to perhaps ten or fifteen meters. A mere hundred meters ahead—the length of a football field—lay the far wall of the auditorium and the green passage that led upward to the exit.
He’d taken a mere ten steps into the auditorium before a lash—as from a whip—slashed the air in front of him. So fast, so sudden he could almost have thought it an illusion. He stopped at once.
Like an instant wall erected by a computer game, in front of him stood an animal. A giant salamander, perhaps the one that had eaten the dragonfly and unintentionally saved his life. A relative of the shy two-inch creatures he used to find hiding in the shadows beside Dommel stream.
His foot slipped on the wet ground as he lunged back toward the wall. He knocked Tiff over behind him, and she in turn fell back against Rocky.
“Stop!” he called back—as if the kids had not yet already stopped.
Except for the sounds of rapid breathing, the group fell silent behind him. Ahead, he watched the salamander, its eyes spinning in blind circles, its tongue flicking right and left, probing the air ahead. Its tongue, he realized, had produced the sound of the whip.
He thought fast. Without disabling the salamander in some way, he and his friends could not proceed. He would have to attack. He’d have to attack with the only weapon he possessed—the knife in his hand, pathetic as it was. If he charged full-on, the salamander would sense him as prey—an insect like the dragonfly that had come too close to its hideout.
Dropping to his hands and knees, he crawled forward, watching the salamander for signs of movement.
It remained standing in position, flicking its tongue, seemingly unaware of his presence.
When its front claw lay directly in front of him, he shot upward, driving the knife into its belly before darting back into a cleft in the wall.
To his surprise, at the moment of contact the salamander let out a high-pitched squeal. In an instant, it was gone. From somewhere up ahead its cry echoed off the rocks. A scurrying of footsteps told him other creatures were following its cue and retreating as well.
As far as Gunther could see, the way ahead lay clear.
It took him a moment to understand what had happened. The battle he’d expected had not transpired. Despite its size, the salamander had reacted to attack the way salamanders of all sizes and species across the globe would have reacted—by running away.
“I think we’re clear,” he called back—keeping his voice just loud enough to be heard by the person at the end of the group. “We’re moving on. Slowly, but keep moving. Don’t lose sight of the person ahead of you.”
Hood’s voice, loud and jagged with more than an edge of fear, followed from the rear. “G, we gotta move faster than that. They’re coming.”
Gunther glanced back into the auditorium. From three or four passageways on either side of the stream, processions of creatures were marching into it, all of them headed toward him. He had the impression of the movement of thousands of bodies—and then realized why. He was witnessing the arrival of dozens upon dozens of millipedes. Millipedes like none he had ever seen—giant millipedes, perhaps ten feet long, weaving from side to side, wiggling back and forth, flowing over rocks and speleothems as if the obstacles did not exist.
He thought fast. What kind of millipedes inhabited caves? None were poisonous, as far as he could remember. But they could sting.
He tried to answer Hood’s exhortation to move faster, but choked on his words. “Hood …”
His feet responded faster than his mouth. Almost of their own accord, they raced forward, running as fast as they could in this world of slippery rocks and near darkness. Tiff’s hand gripped his jacket from behind, pulling the front of it tight against his windpipe and making him gasp for air. Behind her, the other children followed—slipping and sliding, occasionally crying out. To his left and rear, the arthropod armies galloped alongside and past them, as if trying to outflank them and cut them off from the patch of green that beckoned up ahead.
Gunther slowed as another sound greeted his ears—the rustle of a dozen feet, coming on fast from up ahead and to the right, in the direction of the auditorium’s wall. Without warning, a horde of salamanders began leaping over the children’s heads, catapulting from the rocks above them into the auditorium. At once came the sounds of chomping, sucking, and swallowing, magnified a hundred times by the cave and the size of the creatures. There was no way the Tardies had trained their cave guards to eat each other. But the salamanders were experiencing a feast unlike any they’d ever known.
His moment of glee came to an abrupt end when something hit him—or he hit something. His chest exploded with what felt like a torpedo fired at close range. He felt himself tumbling backward, then smashing against the ground, the pain in his back and head igniting an explosion of stars in his brain. He heard the gasps of several kids, and was vaguely aware of Tiff’s body flattened on the ground beside him. He gasped for breath, struggled against forces that wanted to suppress his consciousness. No, he told himself. Keep going. Pain is okay. Keep going. Can’t stop.
June’s voice cut through the fog. “Gunther! What …? Oh, no.”
He shook his head, looked ahead to see where the blow had come from.
He could see nothing. His world had gone black.
Sass’s voice sounded above him. “Up, Gunth!” Within seconds, several hands pulled him to his feet.
“God, what was that?” Tiff moaned as hands hauled her, too, to her feet. “I’m covered with goo.”
“Me, too,” Gunther said, suddenly aware of the sticky stuff that coated his shirt.
“Slugs,” Sass answered. “You guys okay?”
Taking a deep breath caused a sharp pain that ricocheted throughout his chest. His head still sang with the explosions of stars colliding. But he could see again, and he could walk, and his fingers had feeling. “I’m okay.” He reached toward Tiff. “Tiff?”
“Me, too.”
“Got to go on, then. Further to the left.”
A few steps forward revealed his attacker. Ahead of him, a gooey mass blocked his way—a giant slug. Its tentacles, waving in slow motion, lay to the left. Along with its head segment, the tentacles rotated slowly toward him, sensing his position. Remember the lesson of the salamanders, he told himself. Although they were big, they were still slugs. In all likelihood, they would still behave like their four-inch-long ancestors.
Leaping ahead, he jabbed the slug with his play-knife. At once, every muscle in its body tightened, pulling the whole creature into a ball of frightened goo.
He nearly shrieked with joy. “Stab them as you go by,” he screamed back. “Hit them with anything—a knife, your fingers, whatever! They’ll roll into a ball—just like slugs back home in the garden!”
“Break off a piece of stalagmite or stalactite,” Giles called out. “Instant sword!”
Gunther’s assessment proved correct. Although the path toward the exit was strewn with several dozen of the fat, gooey bodies, he could navigate his way between them as if he were running between rocks on the lakeshore. Each slug turned menacingly toward him as he approached, then retracted into a quivering mass the instant he jabbed it.
Ahead of them the green passage loomed closer and closer.
And then a weird, singsong voice pierced the air, emerging from the far end of the auditorium, near the passage from which the children had entered. Ee-e-ee ta-la-la shing-baddy bong-sweece.
The voice was followed by a new sound of marching. No, not quite like marching—more like a railroad train, or a jet plane, accelerating for takeoff. Or …
“The Tardies!” Hood cried. “Gunther, my brother … Oh my God!”
The orgy in the auditorium ended at once as salamanders jerked to attention, some of them with wiggling millipedes still dangling from their mouths. They’d heard the call to arms, and were responding.
As Gunther approached the slug that he thought the last in line, it drew suddenly to attention. One second it was a quivering blob, the next a fortress of wet concrete. He stabbed it with his knife—once, twice, three times—but it did not curl up into the cowering ball he’d expected. Its head end turned toward him, its antennae radiating its intentions.
A glance back at the auditorium entrances confirmed Hood’s words. While several of the passages still spouted millipedes, from two or three of them now emerged row upon row of Tardies, all looking alike, all smaller than those the children had come to know from their days or weeks of confinement. Gunther could not see where the voice came from, but it shrieked like a banshee in this den of echoes.
“It’s giving these suckers orders!” Hood cried.
In a flash, Gunther experienced a vision of the scene that was about to befall them. “Run!” he screamed. “Follow me!”
Giving the last slug wide berth, he ran a half-circle around to his left, moving as fast as he could without charging into an unseen stalagmite or tripping over a rock. He felt Tiff’s hands gripping his jacket again, and hoped that the other kids hung on to each other in the same way.
His feet slipped on the slick floor, but by waving his arms he managed to maintain his balance. The final slug oozed its way forward, attempting to block his passage, but it turned aside when he slashed at one of its antennas.
A thunder of footsteps headed in his direction, followed by the relentless march of millipedes that had survived the orgy. Ahead of him alighted the overgrown springtail. From the rear came the voice of the commanding Tardy—“Ee-eee-yomp! Ee-eee-yomp! Yomp! Yomp! Yomp!”
Spying the sharp point of a stalactite directly in front of him, he dodged to avoid it, then heeding Giles’s advice turned back and grabbed it. He lost a mere fraction of a second with the thought of destroying one of Mother Nature’s creations. The lowest twelve inches broke free in his hand, and at once he had a new and improved weapon.
Tiff slipped and fell behind him, and a quick look back told him that except for Rocky, the other kids lagged some ten or fifteen steps behind them. He pulled Tiff to her feet. “Go!” he yelled at her. “Rocky—you, too!”
Rocky grabbed Tiff’s waist and charged forward toward the green passage as if she were a football and the passage the end-zone.
Touchdown! Gunther thought. He pulled back, and waved Sass and Giles on.
Four down, seven to go.
As he waited for more kids to catch up with him, his vision filled with a panoply of shadows, waving in conflicting directions, surging toward and around him, accompanied by the patter of feet. The salamanders had once again turned vicious, and poised to attack. The rest of the kids were dispersed over the cave floor, struggling to reach him.
A grunt and a thunder of hooves forced Gunther to turn his attention forward again. The beetle was charging like a bull toward the four kids headed toward the final passage. Two of the kids—Sass and Giles, he thought—stopped just before the entrance to the passage and slashed at it, wounding it enough turn it aside. If he remembered right, Rocky still had one of the knives. Why didn’t he use it?
A girl’s scream and an inhuman squeal made him whirl around again. Kara, the next closest behind him, ran toward him, only to be stopped by the lash of a salamander’s tongue. As he watched, helpless, it drew her to its mouth. Responding faster than he, Rad and Van pummeled the salamander with some sort of primitive weapons until it relented and dropped her, turning its attention to them. Behind Rad and Van, Simon had stilled another salamander with a series of slashes from a stalactite that looked like a sword, and Hood and June slashed at two more.
With a guttural scream that would have made a Hollywood hero proud, Gunther charged the nearer of the two salamanders, dodging the flick of its tongue. After drawing its attention with a knife-stick in the under part of its jaw, he pierced its head with the broken-off stalactite. Surprised at how soft the head was, he stirred the stalactite about until the animal dropped unmoving to the floor.
Seeing that Hood and June had their other salamander staggering uneasily about, he ran to help Rad and Van, ramming his stalactite-sword into the creature’s belly. As it turned toward him, the girls dispatched it with rocks to the head.
“We’re away!” Hood called. “Me and June!”
“You go, too,” Gunther told Rad and Van, as he went to join Simon in attending to Kara.
Kara was standing, but just barely. When she attempted to walk, one leg gave out and she fell into Simon’s arms. “I’ve got her left side,” Gunther said, and together the two boys coaxed her forward toward the final passage.
A series of screams up ahead and waves of movement alerted Gunther to the arrival of the remaining millipedes.
“Keep moving,” he heard Hood’s voice. “Don’t stop!”
Next came Van’s voice, frightened. “It got me! Oooh, it got me!”
“Don’t stop! Keep mov—”
A thump on his side took away the rest of his words. As if struck by lightning, his left arm erupted in pain that sent shock waves up to his shoulder and down to his fingertips. He knew at once wha
t was happening.
“The bite’s painful but not poisonous,” he called ahead, hoping what he said was true. “It’ll go away. Keep moving!”
But his arm felt paralyzed. He could see it moving, but could not feel the movement. He could feel only pain.
“Go,” he told Simon. “Get her out of here.”
“Got her.”
At once Kara’s weight fell to Gunther’s right side, as she limped ahead on Simon’s arm. Gunther turned to his left, the direction from which the millipedes were attacking, but he could not see the individual insects, just waves of movement. He slashed about with his right hand, occasionally meeting resistance but not knowing what damage he was wreaking.
Ahead of him the green of the escape route beckoned, agonizingly close yet still out of reach. Before it bobbed the heads of the other kids. Then a shadow leaped before it from the right side, followed by another. Two distinct screams filled the air, followed by a voice that was clearly Rad’s. “No!”
Simon’s voice followed. “I’m on it.”
“Take that, you sucker!” Hood.
“Got this one!” The voice belonged to Giles. Why was he not in the passage?—he was supposed to be shepherding the first group.
Gunther could not complete the thought. He tripped over Kara, lying several steps ahead, while Simon slashed at another salamander. Another body lay several steps further, struggling to stand. Rad’s. As Simon drove his stalactite-sword into the salamander’s belly, Gunther stabbed it in the head. Another shock of pain struck him, this one in his back. Ignoring it as best he could, he grabbed Kara and surged ahead.
“Simon—can you get Rad?” he called out.
“I’ve got her!”
Hood and Giles, with the help of Van and June, were polishing off the last two salamanders as he practically threw himself at the passage.
“Made it,” said Hood. “We all here?”
There was no time for a head count as the first dozen Tardies reached the passage entrance, pushing and shoving as if each wanted to be the first to destroy these human invaders. From a dozen Tardy heads shot a dozen waving mouth parts, each aiming to grab a piece of human. One of them grabbed Kara’s leg and pulled her toward it as if it were the suction tube of a vacuum cleaner. Before she could even scream, Hood struck with his impromptu sword and hacked the mouth part off.
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