by Ian Woodhead
Damien knocked Alan’s hand off him. “Fuck you!” He turned and marched down the stairs.
Alan grabbed two torches from a shelf above him and caught up with his younger brother.
“You knew about the tunnels didn’t you?” He grabbed Alan’s shirt and shook him, it felt good. “Answer me, you bastard!”
Before Alan could respond, the house above them shook as every window exploded inwards. Shrieks and screams of every living creature outside reverberated as they tore the house apart room by room in their search to find them.
“It’s okay,” said Alan. “They won’t come down here.”
Damien shrugged; he couldn’t care less now and all he wanted were some straight answers.
“Answer me Alan or so help me, I’ll carry you up there and throw you to them.”
“Of course I knew about the tunnels.” Alan stepped over the rubble and played his beam along the tunnel wall; intricate patterns carved in the smooth stone reflected the light back. “These tunnels have been growing and expanding throughout Holburn for the past couple of days.”
He looked over his shoulder and smiled meekly, “It’s what I’ve been waiting for. Now come on, Damien. We can’t let it get too far in front.”
He followed his brother through the hole in the cellar wall. Damien gazed in awe at the dense patterns in the stone; he had never seen anything like it. He moved closer, but his brother gently pulled him back.
“It’s best if you don’t look at them too closely. Look, I’m sorry about what happened with Jennifer. The bastard had the drop on me.”
As they got to an intersection, Alan pulled a chain out of his pocket, held it tight against his chest and closed his eyes.
“This way,” he said, turning left.
Damien was sure that he’d thrown that in the bin. Despite his brother’s warning, he reached out and rested the palm of his hand upon the wall. Regular, rhythmic vibrations travelled from the stone up through his arm. It evoked images of huge Morlock machinery buried deep underground.
“Nothing human built these walls, Damien.”
He turned around and, with some reluctance, removed his hand, feeling like he’d just been given a static shock.
“Who built it them? Not aliens, surely” He tried to laugh at the absurdity but failed. After what he had experienced over the past couple of days, the foundations of what he believed in were very shaky.
His brother grinned. “After what you’ve gone through, why do you discount the idea of alien life?”
“You aren’t joking are you?”
“Their ship crashed here before we even evolved.”
Damien attempted to touch the wall again but his brother took his arm and placed it on by his side.
“So we’re in the middle of an alien invasion?”
Alan shrugged, “It ain’t quite what Hollywood imagined, is it. The ship is terraforming the planet,”
“Why now?”
“Fifty years ago, a little boy was chased through Holburn woods by two older boys. He tripped and fell down a hole and landed inside a chamber. He must have cut himself because his blood woke this ship up after eons of slumber.”
Damien stared at the engravings etched into the walls, wondering what they meant.
“This machine was overjoyed at being found, but something was wrong. The one that had awoken it was all wrong, flawed. It was a mutation, so the machine tried to re-write the little boy. Now the kid thought he was going insane when he heard the voices in his head demanding more blood; the poor lad must have thought that demons were trying to possess him. The kids who chased him nearly ended up dying, but in the end it was his poor mother who he pushed down that hole. It would have ended there, and he would have died in the institute where he had spent most of his adult life, taking the secret with him.”
Damien tried to take in what he had been told, tried to imagine just what madness that little boy must have endured to end up killing his own mother.
“So why didn’t it end there?”
Alan sighed. “Because six years ago, three little boys found a big hole in Holburn woods and decided to explore.” He stopped talking and became statue still.
“Are you ok?”
After a moment, he blinked and coughed.
“They were trying to get into the tunnels,” he said. “We’re vulnerable out here in the fringes, we need to keep moving.”
Damien caught up with Alan as he rushed through the tunnels.
“Claude dared me to go down and like the idiot I was, I took him up on the dare. I wasn’t doing too badly until I caught my foot on something and slipped. I could have broken my neck but I was fortunate to land on something soft, but I didn’t escape unharmed as my arm was bleeding quite badly. Just like that kid all those years before me, my blood awoke the ship.”
Damien could hear the things running through the tunnels. “Can we get a move on?”
His brother nodded. “The voices spoke to me as well”. Alan started to roll up his sleeve. “No thoughts of demonic possession and satanic pits from the child of the video game generation.”
“Jesus Alan, I can see why you kept this quiet.”
“The only reason you believe me, though, is because what you’ve gone through.”
Damien tried not to look too guilty. “Can we get a move on? They’re getting closer.”
Alan shrugged. “It doesn’t matter now.” He exposed his upper arm, at first Damien thought they were tattoos but then he realised that they were the similar patterns as the walls.
“The machine tried to re-write me too, alter my genetic code so I would become more compatible with the original creators, only it got confused. It brought the man back so it could compare. It teleported Ernest Davenport two hundred miles from a secure institute where he was in a permanent drug-induced coma due to his psychotic behaviour straight back into the chamber. At first Ernest thought he had died and gone to hell.”
“What’s this got to do with Dave and that other bloke?”
Alan didn’t answer at first; he looked beyond him, squinting into the distance.
“Look, there has been a slight change of plan, Damien. These things will be on us any moment.” Alan pushed the necklace into his brother’s hand.
“I’m afraid you will have to get Jennifer yourself.”
Damien shook his head, “You are joking right? What am I supposed to do against the thing that’s holding her?”
“The same as you did when you rescued Dave and Pete.” He placed the necklace over his head and gave him the other torch. “This will give you limited protection; it will also guide you to her.”
Alan turned and ran back the way they had come leaving Damien wondering if he’d ever see his brother again.
Chapter Twenty-One
Pete must have travelled a good couple of miles since he’d left the house and even from here, the violent cacophony of shrieks and howls made him go cold as a sudden sound exploded behind him. He put on an extra burst of speed, desperate to put as much distance between him and those creatures as possible.
He had no idea if they would be able to follow him. As he crashed through a thin curtain of yellow vines, he figured that a blind man would be able to follow him considering he was ploughing his way through this weird jungle like a fucking bulldozer.
Pete stopped when he came to a moss covered boulder, thinking it would be an excellent spot to look around for any familiar landmarks. As he scrambled up, he wondered how Alan had lost control of the animals. He told Pete that he had been drawing them to the house like a lodestone, effectively clearing the surrounding forests of wildlife.
The view from the mound was of little use. Apart from the rooftop of Alan’s house and a distant church spire, he could see nothing familiar. Pete climbed down and faced up to the fact that he was lost.
It’d all seemed so clear back at the house when Alan issued his instructions. He knew the exact location of the target; he even knew how long he would be sta
ying there. Pete hadn’t questioned just how Alan had known all this stuff; he just took it for granted.
Now that he was away from the safety of the house and Alan’s calming influence, things didn’t seem to be so clear. He ducked beneath some undergrowth when a flock of yellow flyers passed overhead. He was so glad that he wasn’t still on that mound.
Time was short. Alan had made sure that Pete understood that and that he needed to rush, but where to? Alan’s insistence that he should keep mobile ran through his head like a bloody mantra but he fought it. If some of the wildlife was returning he would have to watch where he put his foot so that it wouldn’t get bitten off. The flyers hadn’t hung around and Alan’s mantra became ever more urgent, but he couldn’t remember where the hell he was supposed to be going, it was like grasping at smoke. Pete growled at the frustration and he jumped at the sound of his own voice.
It also startled another creature that had been creeping towards this oh-so-juicy piece of food for the last couple of minutes. Pete heard the noise behind him and rolled out of the undergrowth. The huge spider sprang at him, frantic not to let its food get away.
Pete watched in horror as five hairy legs dragged the bloated body out from the greenery, its other three legs just bloodied stumps. He almost felt sorry for it until it raised two legs and sprayed out a stream of white fluid, Pete jumped out of the way but some of the stuff still managed to splash onto his leg. It was ice cold and numbed his leg from the thigh right down to the toes.
The thing was almost dead and only had half of its legs but it was still eager to eat him. The spider lurched forward, its legs reaching out, one catching the fabric of his trouser bottoms and pulling him over. It dragged him closer, its fangs dripping yellow liquid.
There was no way that he was going to end up like Dave. He punched it on the head but it hardly felt the blow. Pete reached behind him, his grasping hands finding only leaves.
The spider had him by three of its legs now, reeling him in like a fish on a line. Pete’s hand brushed against something cold and hard half buried in the leaf litter. He dragged it out, the sun glinting off the silver surface. He sat up and swung it in an arc and took off two more of its legs. The spider let loose a high pitched screams and attempted to drag itself back.
Pete scrambled out from under it and booted the vile thing with his good leg. The spider turned round and spat at him. Pete saw that it was beginning to change; its face had undergone a partial transformation. Human like features bubbled out from under its arachnid shell. Oh fuck, he recognised the face. It crawled back into the undergrowth, leaving two wet, pink frothy lines leaking from where its other legs had been severed.
That face had belonged to Mrs Wilmington. She had been buying parrot food from him every Wednesday for the past five years.
Pete had a road sign in his hands; he turned it over and laughed out loud when he saw the street name. Worthington Street. He used to park his car here every day before they built the supermarket. He was just behind his pet shop. Alan’s directions cleared, the lad wanted him to get to the other side of the road.
As he jogged past the shop’s entrance, he thought about just how much time he had spent in there. Considering how much of his life had been consumed by the pet shop, he should have broken down in tears at the sight of the devastated shell but he felt nothing, to him it was just another ruin.
Pete looked at the road and sighed, wondering how he was supposed to get across there. Those tiny green lumps he had last seen pushing up through the soft tarmac had grown into tight clumps of carnivorous trees, making the way impossible. The blue vines hung down, almost touching the floor; there was no way he could get through that lot. Further down the road, one of the flyers had been stupid enough to get within the vine’s reach, a couple of vines held onto it while others teased open gaps in the creature’s cartilage shell.
Pete looked at the road sign in his hands and he wondered just how tough the tree stem really was. They grew fast, faster than anything he had known so he doubted that it would be solid like proper wood. He guessed that it would be more like giant celery.
He took off his shirt and wrapped the material around one end of the sign. The cool air felt good on his chest but he still felt uncomfortable with having his upper body exposed which was bloody ridiculous considering the circumstances. He saw a small tree growing a little further down from the main clump and jogged over to it. If that wasn’t there, he may have just enough room to sneak through. The vines didn’t seem very long which helped.
He took a deep breath and swung the sign back.
“It’ll be just like cutting through those spider’s legs,” he said to himself. “Like a hot knife through butter.”
Pete thought of coiled springs and put all his strength into the swing. The road sign dug in halfway and stopped. The tree’s vines slivered down and coiled around the metal before he had time to retrieve it. His shirt slid off the metal sign and tumbled to the floor. He watched in disbelief as an orange worm emerged from a burrow at the base of the tree and tugged it into the hole.
“I’ll get you for that!” he shouted. There was a fire axe at the back of the shop; the shaft wasn’t wood but cold, hard steel so it wouldn’t have been bothered by all this stuff.
Pete turned around and stared into what was left of his beloved pet shop and wondered if venturing inside really was such a good idea. The yellow vines were busy chewing holes in the stones, the wood was bound to have gone by now which meant that the upstairs would now be downstairs burying everything anyway, so what was the point in looking? Then again, what choice did he have?
He approached the shop with caution, alert for anything that might jump out at him. Pete stood before the wall with his heart in his mouth trying to convince himself that he was being careful. Who knew what would be lurking in the dark.
“Bollocks, Pete. You’re hesitating because you’re scared.”
He scooped off some of the wet, green slime coating, surprised to find the glass beneath was now pitted and scarred like burnt plastic. Not even glass would make it in this brave new world.
From what he could see, it didn’t look too bad. The upstairs hadn’t collapsed just yet. God, he was still hesitating. What was wrong with him? He walked to where the door used to live, even the frame had disappeared.
Pete stepped into the shop, trying not to breathe in the spores that still floated in the air. He would only be here for a few seconds; the axe would still be in the same place. Pete rushed in determined not to look into the cages but he got halfway before his curiosity got the better of him.
The cages were full of dead animals but no species he recognised. Corpses of what looked like fat purple worms occupied the bird cages. He closed his eyes and turned away, not wanting to see anymore. He knew he shouldn’t have looked, it was far too upsetting. He hurried over to the store room, knowing he would have to get out of here soon; this place was beginning to destroy him.
He pulled away the yellow vines, certain that the axe would be here somewhere, looking for any glint of metal amongst the green and yellow. His fingers were stained from the pus that burst from the thin stems but he didn’t even notice, and he was too focussed on digging that axe out.
The scrape of a chair made him pause and look up, wondering if he was hearing things, and he turned around. A huge demon sat on the chair, leaning forward, its lantern eyes burning holes into his face.
Pete dashed to the door but the demon was faster, it leaped over the desk and blocked his escape with its black armoured body. It grinned at him and licked the tips of its sharp teeth.
Pete was rooted to the spot, paralysed with terror when it spoke.
“Hello boss,” it said. “I thought you’d show your backside here.”
He couldn’t believe it; this monster was Andy fucking Grayson. He pulled his eyes away from its nightmarish face and saw that it had a silver chain wrapped around its black, scaly neck. Just like the one that Alan was playing with.
The demon lunged forward and grabbed Pete’s arm. It pulled him closer then wrapped its huge talons around Pete’s neck.
“I’m going to squeeze your neck until your eyes pop out. The rabbit thing made a noise like a dog toy then its eyes popped out.” It tilted its head. “I hope you do the same, that’ll be funny.”
Pete’s vision went grey as the Andy-demon slowly applied pressure. It was too late to get the torch out of his bloody pocket. He slapped ineffectually at the creature’s stone-stiff arms. His strength was failing, he was about to pass out. The thing that used to be Andy pulled him closer, its cavernous jaws opening up. Pete’s flailing arms caught the chain around the creature’s neck and with the last of his strength; he ripped it off the demon.
The Andy-demon dropped him. Pete collapsed and crawled slowly to the store room, expecting the thing to jump on him and finish him off.
Crying, choking, he rolled into the alcove and shut his eyes. The blood in his brain felt like it was boiling. He took in a great lung full of air; his throat feeling like the insides had been coated with broken glass. He still had the chain in his hand, which he tried to throw across the room but a link caught on his little finger. He used his other hand to dislodge it but then the medallion fell into the palm of his hand and his fingers automatically closed around it.
Strength flowed into him, fuelled by a lifetime of frustration and disappointment; Pete’s temperature rose, he refused to take this shit any longer. He saw the handle of the axe close to where he had been searching, his hand reached up and he pulled it from the tangled vines.
It felt so good to have a weapon in his hand, and he had a better use for it now. He got to his feet and looked over at the Andy-demon. It was stood with its back to him, trying to pull one of the worms out with its thick claws. Pete raised the axe.
