It suddenly lost its fluid motion when a bright light hit its eyes. Hands raised, it tilted its head to reduce the glare.
I took advantage of the moment and attacked with a savage flurry of strikes. Lunging in, I jabbed the left end of my staff into its throat. Not waiting for the response, I stepped up and spun the other end of the staff around to strike hard at the side of its neck then, changing the direction of the force, brought the left end up again to slam into its groin. I finished by bringing the right end of the staff down on top of its head, followed closely by the left side to the same spot. Windpipe crushed and head cracked, the creature fell, air whistling through its ruined throat as it tried to suck in a breath.
I was already moving toward my mother when its body hit the ground.
She and Rick were not doing well.
At first, they were coordinating. He would slash at the shadowling attacking them, then back off suddenly, giving her an open shot. She’d shoot one or two of the monsters, making each bullet count. Then he would go forward and engage them again. It seemed to work for the first few waves.
But then her gun clicked. Twice. She was out of bullets.
She tried, frantically, to reload, but her hands were moving like she had lost coordination, fumbling and almost dropping the gun. When Rick tried to recover, the five opponents in front of him came forward in a wave. He lunged in toward one, and another of them slipped past his guard and slashed at his arm. He cried out, but back-stepped while slashing at another of them. Without the gun, he wasn’t able to take small breaks between attacks and was quickly tiring out.
Another of the creatures jumped on his back, slashing down his left shoulder as it tried to sink its teeth into his neck. He bent at the waist, throwing it off and slashing it with both swords as it fell, but there was something wrong with his movements. The gash on his shoulder looked to be affecting his range of motion. Not good. I put my head down, held my staff tightly in one hand, and sprinted toward them, ignoring the others fighting their own battles around me.
Rick was losing his fluidity, as if the energy had been drained from him. He looked like a prize fighter in the twelfth round, stumbling, dead on his feet. He must have been losing a lot of blood.
A shadow jumped from my right side and landed directly in front of me. I swung at it, wanting to take care of it quickly. I kept one eye on Rick. He received another slash, this one so deep in his left forearm that he dropped his short sword.
“No!” I yelled as I battered away the shadowling’s attack, kicked it in the face with a hopping front kick, and then spun while savagely battering it with diagonal downward strikes. Five powerful blows later, its head was no longer round in shape. I stepped on its body to leap toward Rick and my mom, who was still paralyzed with panic. It had only been a handful of seconds.
I launched myself, eyes locked on the scene a few feet in front of me. Rick brought his remaining sword up, cutting a shadowling as it tried to tear out his throat. He had no way of stopping the two others, one on each side of him, as they slashed his sides. Cloth shredded and blood splattered my mother’s face as they tore flesh from him.
He screamed. Then, almost as if it was slow motion, he dropped his sword, eyes wide with pain looking at my mother. His knees buckled and he fell backward, narrowly avoiding the two other sets of claws coming toward his neck and face. He hit the ground hard, his back taking most of the force, but his head bouncing off the stone also.
I landed next to him, a rage building up in me I’d never felt before.
One of the shadowling swiped its claws down toward Rick, and something in me snapped. I screamed at it, spittle spraying out as I did so. I brought my staff around in a hard horizontal strike to the thing’s arm, right at the elbow. A sound like a dry tree branch breaking filled the cavern as the limb bent in half the wrong way. The beast didn’t have time to scream. I jammed the end of my staff into its throat so hard, the noise made by cartilage cracking was almost as loud as the breaking bone had been. I spun toward the next creature, knowing the one I’d just struck was already dead.
There were four shadowling left around me, all of them turning from Rick’s fallen form to me. I hissed at them as I attacked.
It wasn’t anything fancy, and it definitely wasn’t beautiful, but letting my anger fuel me, I whirled the staff around me, keeping any claws thrown my way from connecting. I was a storm of blows, striking from every angle, not using finesse to find an opening, but instead battering down the upraised arms used for defense. These creatures were strong, but they weren’t strong enough to withstand a heavy hardwood staff spun with such speed.
One by one, I relentlessly battered them. I broke bones, shattered noses, crushed eye sockets, and struck at soft tissue. If the creatures had the same anatomy as humans, I was sure they were bleeding internally by the time I was done.
I was finishing off the last foe when I heard an insistent buzz in my ears. It irritated me. What was it, that noise?
“Dani!” It was my mother’s voice. I continued to rain blows down on the shadowling at my feet. I needed to make sure it couldn’t ever harm any of us again.
“Dani!” she screamed at me again, frantic, fearful. “Dani. It’s dead. They’re all dead. Stop.”
I blinked a few times and looked at her, slowing—but not stopping—my staff as it thudded wetly on the creature at my feet. She looked hysterical, her eyes wide and tearful, her hands on each side of her head, quivering.
I looked down.
The carcass I was hammering with my staff was unrecognizable. It was a mass of red flesh, like dark tenderized meat. I stopped hitting it and saw that both ends of my staff were red, blood dripping from them. How hard did I have to be hitting the beasts to make that much blood?
I widened my vision and saw the others, all of them staring at me. There were no other shadowling standing.
I dropped my staff, threw up, wiped my mouth, and broke down in tears.
I sobbed uncontrollably as my mother took me in her arms and tried to console me. I tried to pull air into my lungs, but could barely manage it. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. Was this what it was like to have a nervous breakdown? I focused on trying to breathe, going down deep into myself. It still took me a few precious minutes to calm down enough to remember what had happened.
“Rick?” I said. “He fell. Rick, where is he?”
“Here,” he said, his voice barely a whisper. He was a few feet away, in an area the others had cleared of the shadowling bodies.
He was a mess. The blood from his sides pooled under him, and he was so pale I would have thought him already dead if he wasn’t blinking his eyes.
“Oh, Rick,” I said, going to him. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t faster.”
“Not…your fault,” he gasped.
We all knew he was done for. Even if we had the supplies to suture him up and stop the bleeding, it was obvious the damage was too severe. Even a hospital may not have been able to help him at this point.
“Allie,” he said. “Are…you okay?”
“Yes. Thank you. I’m sorry. The gun. I ran out of bullets.”
“I know.”
Mom went to him and I jerked my head to let the others know to give them some space. We walked to the other side of the chamber, letting them talk by themselves.
“He’s not going to make it,” Sam said.
“No,” I said.
She teared up, little fat droplets rolling down her cheek. Hot, wet tears ran down my face also.
“Is everyone else okay?” I asked, more to distract myself than anything else.
Everyone had a few scratches or bruises, but most of the shadowling had concentrated on my mom and Rick.
“Did they target those two specifically?” Zach asked.
“I don’t think so,” I said. “They happened to be right there when we were attacked from the back. They were using elementary tactics, ganging up on one or two to overwhelm them and then moving on to the next one.
It was just unlucky they were in that spot.”
“Or lucky for us,” Tyler said. I rounded on him and cocked my fist to knock him out, but Zach’s dad caught my arm and held it.
“Wait, Dani,” Adam said. “I think he meant that if it would have been any of the rest of us, the creatures would have killed us quickly and moved on to the next one. Half of us may have been dead before they were stopped.”
Tyler had backed up a step, his arms up like he was surrendering. His eyes were manic, as if he was facing an executioner.
“That’s what I meant,” he said. “I just meant that Rick is a badass with that sword. None of us could have kept them back so long.”
I relaxed my arm and Adam released it. “Oh, sorry.”
“No problem.” Tyler’s voice was shaky, no doubt thinking about how a couple of minutes before, I was beating the corpse of that shadowling so violently. My stomach lurched.
We gathered our packs, some of which had fallen and been kicked around the cavern as we battled. Those with first aid kits in theirs helped the others dress their wounds.
My whole body felt like one big wound. I had scratches and cuts all over me, most of them small enough that I didn’t need to do anything for them right then. My forearm, where that thing had bitten me, burned, but that was nothing compared to how I felt inside.
“Are you in a lot of pain?” my mother asked Rick.
That was strange. I was too far to be able to hear them speaking. I looked around to see if anyone else gave any indication they could hear. No one was looking toward the pair. Maybe it was some kind of weird acoustics thing the cave did.
“It’s…okay,” he answered.
“I’m really sorry I couldn’t help you,” she said. Her words were halting, shaky. She didn’t know what to say. She knew he was dying. I was sure he did, too, even through the shock.
“It’s fine. I came—” he grunted as he shifted, “—to protect you. I did that. As long…as you’re okay…that’s all that matters.”
There were a few seconds of silence.
“Can…I ask you something?” he said.
“Of course,” she said.
“Did you ever…could you—” he took in a wheezing breath. “Do you think you would have ever been…interested in me?”
Another pause.
“I mean,” he said. “Would it have been possible…for us to be together?”
“No.”
My heart broke over that one word. I felt the tears trying to come back even though they had dried for the time being.
“Oh,” he said.
“Rick, you’re a great guy,” Mom said, “but I’m not interested in you like that. I can’t help who I love.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I guess it’s stupid. I thought…you at least cared for me.” He sucked in a quick rush of air, hissing at the pain.
“I care about you the same as everyone else. You’re not special, though. I have lots of friends. You’re just one of them. I just don’t think of you like that.”
“I…” he wheezed again. “Okay. Listen…take care of Dani. She’s…a great…kid. Have a…good life, okay?” Rick made a noise like someone had hit him in the stomach. His voice had gotten softer as he spoke, the last word barely a whisper.
“I will.”
There were no other words. There was no sound at all until my mother’s shoes scuffed the stone floor and crunched on bits of rock as she came back to the rest of us.
“He’s gone,” she said, eyes strangely blank.
Chapter 25
For the second time in a half an hour, rage blossomed in me, a fire being fanned from smoldering embers to a full blaze.
‘“You’re not special’?” I spat at her. “‘I have a lot of friends, and you’re just the same as them’?” I put my head in my hands and squeezed. “I can’t believe you.”
“What?” she asked, but then she drew her eyebrows down and glared at me. “And don’t you talk to me like that.”
“That man loved you,” I said. “He came down here to protect you, risking himself even though you never gave him the time of day. He sacrificed himself to keep you from getting hurt. He got torn up by these damn monsters, dying in pain, shredded by claws. He loved you, and when he asked if you cared, you told him no.”
“It’s not like that,” she said. “He didn’t have to come down here. I didn’t ask him to.”
“I know you didn’t,” I said. “And that makes it all that much sadder.”
“Who are you to question me?” she shouted. “I’m your mother.”
“Yes,” I said, “you are. And right now, I’m embarrassed by that fact.”
She started to say something, but I turned my back on her and walked back toward Rick’s body. Thankfully, she closed her mouth and didn’t make a sound other than a huff of air.
I looked down at the body of my mom’s friend. Memories of our interactions flashed through my mind. He wasn’t perfect, had his faults like anyone else, but he tried. He had always cared much more about Mom than she did about him. I had never asked her about it. We didn’t really talk about feelings around our house.
I could understand her not being attracted to him, though for an older guy, he was kind of handsome. He probably wasn’t her type. The thing was, though, she always kept him at arm’s length, never really seemed to care one way or another about him. Well, she’d never hurt his feelings again. I’d never have to see the pain in those blue eyes again. The last thing he heard was her telling him he was nothing special, after he gave his life for her. That must have hurt more than the physical pain in his shredded body. I was going to miss him.
I picked his swords up from where he had dropped them. We would come back and get his body when all this was over, give him a proper funeral. For now, I would honor him in the only way I could think of. I wasn’t as good with a sword as I was with the staff, but I had trained a little with it, and I would cut any creature that crossed my path until this thing was finished. And every cut would add to his legacy. If my mother wouldn’t show him honor, I would. I lifted the sword in salute, feeling a little embarrassed doing so, slid it home in the scabbard I had taken from his body, and went back toward the others.
I handed Sam my staff and Rick’s short sword while I passed through the midst of the others on the way to the corridor down which we’d been heading before the attack. “Will you hold these for a while?” I asked my friend.
“Yes.”
“Let’s find Bobby and Allison and get out of here,” I said.
The others looked at me like I was some kind of alien. I didn’t really care. For the first time since we had entered the mine, fear was not the overriding factor in me. Anger was.
A little ball of molten lava smoldered in my belly. Fury at the shadowling, at Rick for dying, at my mother for her lack of sensitivity. It all whirled and gyrated inside me, making me feel like I might throw up but also like I could do anything. There didn’t seem to be any reason to fear any longer. What could happen? I could die, right? So what. If life was this disappointing, why bother?
I had one goal: find the remaining captives, mostly my brother, get them out, and never have to see another cave again as long as I lived. Nothing else mattered.
“Dani,” my mom said softly. It was the tone she used after we’d argued and she was trying to patch things up. Of course, it usually came after a week or two of us not talking to each other at all.
“No,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about it. If we survive this, maybe we can talk next week. Right now, I want the anger I’m feeling. I want to use it to kill these things. The more I kill, the easier it’ll be to get Bobby out.”
Thankfully, she stopped as I continued walking. I didn’t want to argue with her. I wanted every bit of my annoyance to go toward the shadowling.
As I walked, Sam right behind me, the tunnel widened and flattened. It began to look as if it was one of the mine corridors, though I didn’t see any marks from drills or pi
cks or any other tools, but it struck me as odd that the passageway was so uniform.
“Are you okay, Dani?” Sam asked after we had walked for over an hour.
“Should I be? Someone I know just died. Died in a horrible way. My mom made his last few minutes even more painful for him. My brother is still missing, all my friends are injured in one way or another, and we’re hundreds of feet down under the surface of the earth.”
“True, but I’m concerned about you. That’s a lot of stress for one person.”
I sighed. “Yeah, it is.”
“It scared me, when you were beating on that dead creature. I’m not sure if that scared me more or if it was the way you took out those four shadowling so quickly when Rick fell. I’ve never seen anyone attack anything so savagely before.”
“Really?” I said. “Was it that bad?”
“It was. I still shiver when I think of what I saw in your face and how your stick seemed to break something everywhere it hit. These things are strong, stronger than people, it seems like, but it was like they were as weak and uncoordinated as toddlers when you went at them.”
“Oh. Well, I’m sorry I scared you. I liked Rick. He didn’t even need to come. He only did it to protect someone who doesn’t seem to care if he lived or died.”
“You know it’s not like that,” she said.
“Maybe. Anyway, that rage is gone. I’m still mad, but I’m controlled. I want to find Bobby and Allison and get out of here. I want this to be done. And I want it to be done quickly.”
“Me too.”
When we came into an area in the tunnel with several squat formations along one side, I figured it was a good place to stop and rest.
“Let’s take five or ten minutes here,” I said. “Eat something, drink, sit down for a little while. Not more than ten minutes, though. We still have work do to.”
Madison eyed me warily as she sat down. No, not warily. She had fear in her eyes. She looked at me as if she thought I had gone insane and would start attacking people. Good. As long as it shut her up, it was fine with me. I could just imagine the stories she’d tell at school. If we got out of here alive.
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