“I’m tired of only reacting,” I said. “I feel like we’re being herded to somewhere they want us to go. They’re playing with us, but I don’t want to play their game. I’m not sure why they aren’t killing us or sending dozens of them against us, but I’m done with it. I don’t know if that one I chased was trying to lead me where it could escape or if it was panicked and actually fleeing to where it lives. I took a chance that it would show us the right passageways to find the ones they’ve taken.”
“I understand why you did it, Dani,” she said. “Just don’t make any more of those split-second decisions without talking to us first, okay? You scared me to death. What would have happened if it had led you into a bigger group of those things?”
“I probably would have been captured, and then you would have had to come rescue me.” I smiled at her, showing all my teeth. She shook her head at me.
“I agree with you, for what it’s worth,” Rick said as we looked around the area we were in. “It’s always better to have your own plan than to just react to what your adversary is doing. It’s too bad that shadowling got away, though. Do you think we can use another one to lead us again?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “That trick probably won’t work again. We’ll have to try something else. At least we’re on the right track now. If it was going toward its home.”
We had a choice to make. There was the narrow passage we had come through, and there were four other openings of various sizes coming off the section of tunnel we were in. It was sort of shaped like a summer squash, narrow at the end we came in and getting wider and rounder on the other end. I guess that made the place we were in some kind of intersection.
“It continued on that way,” I said, pointing in the direction almost across from where we had come in. “It could be one of three tunnels, though I’m thinking it was one of those two.” I gestured toward two wells of darkness that resolved into two passages when Sam shone her light at them.
“Left or right?” Sam said, asking no one in particular. Really, though, she seemed to be looking at me, waiting on what I would say. In fact, everyone was looking at me.
To ease my discomfort, I inspected the floor in front of each of them, hunching down to get a better look.
“This one,” I said, choosing the left passage.
“Why that one?” my mother asked.
“More activity here. The dirt seems more disturbed, the little bits of stone and gravel are more parted here, pushed to the side of the cavern. I think this tunnel has seen a lot more people—or things—than the other one. That’s what we’re looking for, the place where these things pass through a lot.
“Sam, can you go back and mark the walls we passed while chasing the shadowling?”
“I already did,” she said. “I’ve been keeping a big piece of chalk in my pocket and as we ran after you, I quickly marked the walls.”
“That was great thinking. Good, I don’t want to get lost coming back out of here.”
As I spoke, she marked the wall in front of me with a big X and drew an arrow down the corridor back toward where we had come from. I hoped we would be able to use those chalk marks. I tried to suppress the thought that we might not be coming back out, but it was hard.
“Nothing to do but go forward,” I said, hitching up my pack and starting down the selected tunnel. We were alive, for now, and that meant there was a chance to do what we’d come to do. It would have to be enough.
Chapter 18
“I was thinking about it,” I said to Jacob, who had come up to walk at the front with me for a while. “Maybe not all these creatures are bad.”
“What do you mean?” he said, turning his head to look at Madison, who was walking next to him with a sour look on her face.
“I was thinking maybe the shadowling are like humans. You know, some of them are good and some of them aren’t. Some don’t want to hurt us while others do. Some might want to eat us and some others don’t. I don’t think it’s always black and white. Or light and shadow, as it were.”
“You’re thinking about the one cowering in front of you earlier, huh?” he said.
“Yeah, that’s part of it. I’m also thinking about that leader, how he tried to talk the other one out of killing me. If these things were just mindless beasts trying to eliminate us or to take us as food, we already agreed they could have done it by now. Pretty easily, too. Even if they just gathered all those we’ve seen and fought so far, attacking at once, there’s no way we could have withstood that.”
“I know what you mean,” he said. “It’s kind of humbling. I think it’s pretty obvious we’re no match for them and their numbers.”
“We’re not. I wish I understood why they’re holding back.”
We both lapsed into silence, and eventually he and Madison were replaced by Sam. We continued on, speaking of little things, trying to pretend we were anywhere else. There were no side passages for over an hour, though we looked for them carefully.
“When do you think we’ll get to the section with the burning sands?” she asked after we’d been silent for several minutes.
“What?”
“The burning sands. You know, the ones reserved for the people who were violent against nature. In the book.”
“Oh,” I said. “In Inferno. You’re still stuck on that, huh?”
“It’s a fitting punishment for people who act against nature, don’t you think? All of them are pretty fitting, though I am not so sure about Dante’s opinion on which sins are most serious. I mean, giving murderers a lesser punishment than liars? Still, most of it makes some kind of sense.”
“Sam,” I said. “We’re not in Dante’s hell. We’re in a different kind of hell. This isn’t a punishment, just something that happened to us. Or that happened to the ones we loved. We chose to come here. Not that I had much choice.”
“Like Dante,” she said.
“Oh, Sam.” I sighed.
“I also wonder about the punishment given to the thieves. You know, they’re surrounded by vipers and when they get bit, they turn into vipers themselves and stay that way until they bite someone else.”
“I didn’t read that far,” I said.
“Do you think if these things bite us, we’ll turn into one of them?” she asked.
That made me stop and think. “You mean, like a werewolf?”
“No, like the vipers.”
“I…” I wasn’t sure what to say. I hadn’t thought of it that way. “I don’t want to talk about this anymore. Let’s change the subject.”
“Okay,” she said. “Do you want to talk about physics?” Her face brightened.
We spent the next fifteen minutes talking about physics. I didn’t pay attention, though. What Sam said got me thinking. What if she was right? What if some of the things we were fighting—were killing—had been bitten and changed into the monsters. Could we be killing the miners, security personnel, and missing people who had changed into shadowling? I felt a burning in my stomach and chest, like I had eaten food so spicy I was going to be sick, over the thought.
The tunnel sloped slightly downward while twisting around like a river had run through it. I could imagine water filling the cavern and had to try to think of something else. Being trapped in a cave full of water was not something I wanted to linger on.
As our passageway widened, movements on all sides made my heart lurch.
“We’re being attacked!” I yelled as the creatures descended upon us from ahead on both sides. It was hard to tell, but there seemed to be more than ten of them. With the wide tunnel, at least ten feet in the area we stood, they would have the advantage.
From the start, this attack was different. The creatures acted in harmony, almost like they were running plays. Two split off and came toward me, and others seemed to be teaming up on individuals in our small party, especially Jacob, Rick, and my mother. My remaining friends only had one each to deal with.
All except Madison. She had no less
than five surrounding her. Why? I struck a clawed hand coming at me as my mind searched for the reason. I had to give up thinking about it for a moment as both of those in front of me attacked at the same time, one swiping high, toward my head, the other going for one of my legs. Holding my staff in a wide grip, hands about two feet apart, I intercepted the high claw with my staff, my right hand high and the left low. A solid thunk of hardwood hitting whatever these things’ arms were made of echoed in the cavern. Then I swiveled and caught the other monster’s arm as it came in toward my leg, pulling my right hand down and raising the left. The staff contacted the attacking arm and forced it upward, causing the creature to spin. I took the opportunity to guide the staff in a tight circle, making it come around and slam down on the shadowling’s collar bone.
There was a loud snap, and the monster screamed in pain. I continued the motion as the left side of the staff bounced off the creature, slamming the right side down on top of its head. The shadowling’s knees got wobbly, and it collapsed to the floor.
I didn’t stop, though. I flowed from that attack to the next, swinging the staff horizontally while pulling my head back from the path of the other attacker’s claw. Ribs cracked and the creature huffed as all the air was driven from its lungs. Two more quick diagonal strikes, one from high left and the other from high right made the second attacker drop on top of the first.
Their attacks still had been half-hearted, not really seeming like they were trying to seriously injure me, but they were dangerous anyway. I had no choice but to do my best to incapacitate or kill them, even if I thought that there may be ones that were not so evil among them.
I looked over in time to see that three of the shadowling that surrounded Madison had grabbed her arms and a leg. Jacob and Tyler were busy trying to fight others—two for Jacob and one for Tyler and his crowbar—so it was up to me. I lunged at one of the monsters holding Madison as Sam shone her light in another’s face.
The one I attacked was so preoccupied with his captive, it didn’t see me until the end of my staff crashed into its eye. It let go of her immediately, falling backward, claws coming up to soothe its face as it fell. The dull thump of its head hitting a protruding rock behind it didn’t bode well for the thing’s future. When its body finally stopped its movement, it lay there motionless, either dead or knocked out.
The other two proved to be no problem. With Sam shining light in their eyes and Tyler coming to help after crushing the skull of the other one he was fighting, both the remaining shadowling went down.
My mother’s gun rang out a couple more times, breaking through the screeching and screams of pain from the remaining attackers. A few of them ran away, but most of them were lying on the floor, scattered around the area.
“Is everyone accounted for?” I asked a few minutes later. “Is anyone hurt?”
We were all there, and though we had more scrapes, bruises, and claw marks than before, we were all relatively unharmed.
“Did you see what they did that time?” I said. “A bunch of them ganged up to try to take Madison—”
“They can have her,” Zach’s voice said from behind me. I don’t think he meant for it to be heard. Madison glared at him and Jacob frowned, but no one said anything.
“Ahem.” I started again. “Like I said, something like five or six of them went after her, and the others seemed more organized, like they had a plan in place. I don’t like it.”
“I haven’t liked anything since we entered the mine,” Tyler said.
“True,” I said. “Me either. But I especially don’t like this. Not only are they showing more intelligence, it seems that they are trying to capture us one-by-one. We can’t let that happen.”
“How are we going to stop it?” Rick asked. “I mean, if they swarm one person but there are others to keep us occupied, how are we going to deal with it? We need plans of our own.”
“We do. The first thing is that we need to use the buddy system. I don’t care where you go or what you do, do not be alone. That includes if you need to…um, answer the call of nature. We need to stick together, very close together, as a group as much as possible. I think we’re getting close. We need to get to where the prisoners are with all of us together. It’s the only way we’ll be able to free them.”
The others nodded.
“Let’s—”
I wasn’t even able to finish what I was going to say. Another group of the shadowling came from where we had just been. A larger group. There was no way we’d be able to beat them in a large area, allowing them to surround us.
“Run!” I said, pushing Sam toward the opposite side of the chamber, where it looked like the corridor tapered in. “Get into that passageway so they can’t surround us.”
Rick ran toward it to lead the way, my mother right after him. Sam stumbled from my push and ran for all she was worth right behind them. Then Emily, Zach, Madison, and Tyler sprinted away from me and the pursuing shadowling. I jerked my head toward where the others had gone, and Jacob started jogging, looking back over his shoulder to make sure I followed. I did, at least twenty of the dark creatures on my heels.
Chapter 19
I dashed after Jacob, just getting to the narrow section of the tunnel as the first shadowling reached me. Thankfully, the ceiling was not too high here, only maybe seven feet up. That would keep them from climbing over and dropping on us. Of course, the narrow passage, with not nearly enough space to swing my staff from side to side, would affect my use of the weapon, but better that than to be where I could be attacked on all sides. I turned to face the oncoming horde, backing down the tunnel as best I could while jabbing at them and swinging the staff vertically.
It seemed like our adversaries had learned that the staff hurt because they were wary in coming toward me. That was good. The more time we had before they overwhelmed us, the better. Maybe someone could figure out a way we could escape. Sam was smart, she’d come up with something.
I ran into something softer than stone. It surprised me so much, I almost allowed a wild claw swing to get me. I dodged to the left, slammed into the stone of the wall, and kicked the offending shadowling in the face.
“What’s going on?” I said, not even able to spare a look at what I’d backed into.
“Those other ones from earlier,” Jacob said, “the ones that ran. Well, they came back when they heard their friends catching up to us. We’re trapped in here.”
As if to prove it, the gun went off. Great, trapped between two groups.
“They’ll need to take them out,” I said. “Quickly. We can’t fight all these. Tell them. Pass it up to the front.”
“Will do.”
I heard him telling those in front of him and then it being passed along. I hoped they could manage it. There weren’t probably more than five left in that original group. If reinforcements hadn’t arrived from the other side, too. What a pain in the ass.
I kept jabbing at the shadowling coming at me and swinging the staff up and down when I had the chance, but I wasn’t doing a lot of damage. It was enough to keep them a few feet away from me, but not enough to whittle down their numbers. I wasn’t sure how long I could keep this up.
My entire existence devolved into swinging a big stick around and trying not to be sliced open by sharp monster claws. I was soon sweating from the exertion. Swing, jab, kick, dodge, those were the only things in my life at that moment. The only thing that changed was that another gunshot sounded occasionally, apparently when my mother was able to get a clean shot without hurting one of us.
The narrow space was heating up. I think I was heating it up. Sweat poured down my face, trickling down my chest and back, soaking into my shirt.
“They took care of all of them,” Jacob said. “They’re moving out of this narrow part. Do you want me to take a turn?”
“No room,” I said, panting from my exertion. “We’ll have to wait until it’s wider before we’ll be able to swap.”
“Okay,” he said
. He patted my shoulder quickly, not letting it linger so it didn’t affect my fighting. “Hang in there. I’m going through now. Back up as you get the chance.”
“Got it.”
It was a dicey thing. I wanted to turn and run, but that would have been stupid. I wasn’t about to make that mistake after all the effort I expended trying to keep from getting gutted by one of those claws. I backed up while attacking, shuffling like a boxer. The uneven floor made it dangerous, and I almost tripped a couple of times, but regained my balance without dropping my guard. When I felt cool air on the back of my neck, I knew I was almost there.
“A few more steps,” Jacob said. “You’re almost out. As soon as you are, we’ll jump in and attack them as they come through one at a time.”
“Okay.” I was breathing so heavily. I had forgotten how hard it was to fight for more than a minute or so. Even fighting for a minute would make most people throw up. The strain on the breathing, not to mention the muscles, was really intense.
I took one more step and then stumbled. If it wasn’t for someone behind me catching me, I would have fallen. I looked over my shoulder and saw Sam’s face, smiling at me. “I’ve got you. Great job, by the way.”
I nodded and cast my glance back toward the passage I had just come through. As Jacob had said, the shadowling were coming through one at a time. He, Tyler, and Zach were taking turns clobbering them as they did, Rick standing by to get into the rotation.
I sighed, leaning on my staff, and breathed. I’d rest for a minute and then get back into line with the rest of them.
It only took another couple of minutes for our pursuers to stop and retreat. I think what really did it was when my mom stood in front of the passage and calmly took aim at the creatures as they came out. She shot four of them in the face as they came, killing them and clogging the entry into our chamber. The shadowling screeched at each other in their language and stopped trying to climb over the bodies of their companions. Soon, there were none alive in front of us.
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