by Scott Reeves
Mike realized that Jason had stopped. He turned back, but Jason shouted over his shoulder, “Keep going! I’ll hold them off.”
The creatures had stopped just outside the tunnel mouth and were peering in at him. Obvious intelligence burned in their eyes. They would have to come at him one at a time. He was in an ideal defensive position.
“But the flames—” Mike said, just as one of the creatures opened its mouth and sprayed a thick tongue of fire into the tunnel. He leapt back to a safe distance as the flames engulfed Jason, obscuring his friend from view. Jason screamed, and Stacy screamed too.
Seconds later the fire cleared. Jason still stood there, gasping and doubled over, hugging himself. One of the creatures started to race in, but Jason recovered and raised the sword, obviously still a threat. The creature backed off.
“Yessss,” the creature hissed in English. “You are the one I sssstung earlier.”
Mike exited the tunnel into the bedroom cavern, realizing that Jason had somehow been granted immunity to the flames. He kept the flashlight aimed back into the tunnel, spotlighting Jason, as he looked around, searching, mind racing. Maybe Jason could hold them off long enough for him to find something to use against them. He looked at the nearest wooden bed frame. Maybe he could break it apart, use a piece of it as a club...
Jason, still holding the sword before him, scooted over and kicked the metal spike back through the tunnel toward Mike. The spike clattered from the tunnel to land at Mike’s feet. He picked it up and looked into the tunnel at Jason, who was now backing toward him.
One of the creatures entered the tunnel and advanced. It doused Jason with another burst of flame. Jason screamed and disappeared from view, but when the flames cleared, he was still holding the sword. Despite the pain, he hadn’t dropped his guard this time.
“Mike,” Jason shouted, not taking his eyes from the advancing creature. “Screaming Viking!”
Mike shook his head. The Screaming Viking was his signature ploy as quarterback. It worked in football, but in this situation it might get one or both of them killed. “No,” he said.
“Don’t argue.” Jason was still retreating, backing slowly up the tunnel toward the bedroom cavern. The second creature had entered the tunnel and was advancing on the heels of the first.
Mike hefted the metal spike, readying himself. Jason obviously intended to go through with it, and any further protests from Mike would only endanger them both and ruin the ploy. He braced his feet against the ground, digging in for traction.
Jason abruptly stopped retreating and reversed direction. He lurched forward, charging at the lead creature, screaming at the top of his lungs. Jason executed his tactic so swiftly that the creature barely had time to register shock before it was skewered by Jason’s sword. Jason dropped to his knees, dragging the sword down with him, neatly slicing the creature open from chest to groin. The creature crumpled on top of him, its guts spilling out onto him.
As soon as Jason had begun his charge, Mike had begun his own, racing into the tunnel toward Jason. As Jason dropped, Mike launched the metal spike as if it were a football. It arrowed through the tunnel, barely missing the top of Jason’s head, and slammed into the second creature, sinking into the creature’s chest. The second creature sank to the tunnel floor, blood leaking from its mouth.
Jason extricated himself from beneath the first creature. He stood, flinging bits of gut from his naked skin as if he were picking lint from his clothing.
Stacy came rushing into the tunnel and hugged him. “You idiot!” she screamed at him. But she hugged him even tighter. Despite everything, he felt himself growing hard from her closeness.
“I see we’d better find you some clothes or something,” Paula said, scowling down at his crotch.
Mike came up to Jason and slapped him on the back. “And here I thought you hadn’t been paying any attention to my football career.” Together he and Stacy supported Jason as he limped from the tunnel and into the bedroom.
Behind them, the creatures burst into flame. Their bodies hissed and crackled as their own fires consumed them.
Thinking quickly, Mike picked up one of the wooden bed frames. He slammed it against the cavern wall. The bed frame shattered into half a dozen pieces, ranging in size from small splinters to arm-sized pieces. The interior pulp thus exposed was in good shape; little to no rot. Paula was right: the wood had been treated with some sort of preservative.
Mike picked up a long, skinny piece with splintered ends and rushed into the tunnel. The creatures were still burning, but the flames were rapidly dying out. Mike stuck his piece of wood into the fire. The wood was slow to catch fire, but it did.
Paula and Stacy, meanwhile, had swept the shattered pieces of the bed frame into a pile along one wall of the cavern. Mike brought out his flaming, makeshift torch and pressed it against the smaller pieces of the pile. Soon they had a good-sized fire going that shouldn’t burn itself out for hours.
Mike and Jason spent the next few minutes breaking up more frames. Paula winced with each destructive blow, agonized by the history that was being obliterated. Soon they had a respectable pile of wood with which to fuel the fire.
The smoke from the blaze rapidly filled the cavern.
“We’ll move into the kitchen, since it’s got a chimney,” Mike said, “and build a fire in that recess in the wall. But we’ll have to let this one burn, so just cover your noses with your clothes if the smoke gets to be too much.”
“Easy for you to say,” Jason said, indicating his naked body. He stood there with everything confidently on display, without the least sign of self-consciousness. Right then, he was just glad to be alive, after everything that had happened to him. Nudity was a minor inconvenience.
“Are you cold, sweetie?” Stacy asked.
Jason shook his head. “Are you kidding? I’ve had enough heat lately to last me for a lifetime. And if I get do get too cold, I can simply jump into the fire to warm up, right?”
Mike took off his shoes, handed his socks over to Jason and then put his shoes back on over his now naked feet.
Jason held the socks at arm’s length and made a face. “Gee, thanks for your smelly socks, dude. You going to give me your jockstrap too?”
“It’s yours if you want it, buddy.”
Jason donned the dirty socks. “Thanks.” They weren’t shoes, but the socks would at least provide some protection from the rough floor of the mine.
“I’ve got another idea,” Mike said. He searched through the pile of wood until he found two flat pieces of wood of roughly the same size. Then he pulled the shoestrings from his shoes, had Jason put one foot onto each of the two pieces of wood, and wrapped the shoestrings around both wood and feet, tying them tightly.
“It’s not much,” Mike said, “but it’s better than no shoes at all.”
“Sure it is,” Jason said sarcastically. But he left them on and paced about, testing them. “They’ll do for now, I suppose,” he concluded.
Stacy eyed him critically. Her boyfriend, naked save for a pair of knee-high white tube socks and a pair of makeshift sandals. “You look very sexy,” she offered.
Jason waggled his hips and danced a little jig. “I’ll bet I do. Let me wear your panties, baby, and the picture will be complete.”
Paula turned away from the gruesome sight. “For God’s sake, Mike, give him your jockstrap, already.”
Jason stopped dancing. “Seriously,” he said to Mike. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this. But I wouldn’t mind your underwear, if you’re willing to lend it to me.” Self-consciousness was finally setting in.
Mike began unbuttoning his pants.
THEY EACH LIT A MAKESHIFT torch. By general consensus, from then on the flashlight would only be used when absolutely necessary. Then they made a trip to the pantry cavern, Mike and Jason each picking up a sword as they passed the torture devices. In the pantry, they harvested all the mushrooms they could carry. As they pulled up the fungal delica
cies, they warily watched the mouth of the tunnel leading to the chasm, all too aware that more of those creatures could come skittering in at any moment.
But none did. The friends worked quickly and then retreated back through the tunnels. In the kitchen, they dropped their haul on the hardwood table at the center of the room. Then Mike and Jason picked up the iron pot in the cooking recess and carried it back to the pantry. It was slow going this time. The immense pot was dreadfully heavy and awkward to walk with it clutched between them. Once in the pantry, they struggled to dip the pot in the lake. But they managed to fill it with water and, after an even greater struggle to move it now that it was full, they returned with it to the kitchen and put it back in its place in the recess. Then they piled wood from the bedroom around the pot and lit a fire. Soon the water was boiling, hopefully killing any bacteria. They dumped all their mushrooms into the boiling water.
When Stacy deemed the mushrooms safely cooked—she was the resident expert on them, after all—she shrugged out of her shirt, pulled off her bra and used it to fish mushrooms from the scalding hot water.
Mike couldn’t help gawking at her casually bared breasts, which were massive and succulent. Paula pulled him to the other side of the room to distract him. As he retreated, he gave a thumbs-up to Jason, who grinned.
Stacy put her shirt back on, sans bra, and they all knelt in a circle along the wall and wolfed down the mushrooms. None of them cared much for the squishy pieces of fungus, but, as hungry as they were, they didn’t complain.
Then, one by one, utterly exhausted, they drifted to sleep, snuggled together for warmth and to use each other as a pillow. Mike was ostensibly charged with guard duty, keeping his sword within easy reach, but he couldn’t stay awake. Eventually he too nodded off.
Paula was the first to awaken. She had no idea how long she’d been asleep, but it was long enough that she felt somewhat refreshed and the fire had had time to burn low. It took her a second to realize they weren’t alone.
Four of the winged creatures hunkered across the room on their haunches like dogs, gazing silently back at her. One of them smiled at her, an unsettling sight on such a bastardized human visage. “Did you have a niccce ssssleep?” it asked her in its hissing English.
She screamed.
CHAPTER SEVEN - Captured
THE FRIENDS WERE LED from the room, two creatures in front and two goading them from behind. The creatures carried torches to light the way. Fortunately, Mike still had his flashlight tucked away in a pocket; they had not been searched.
In the tunnel, more of the creatures skittered from the bedroom and from further up the tunnel in the direction of the bronze door, perhaps having emerged from the narrow side shaft. They crawled along, bellies low to the ground, stingers arcing above them, like human scorpions. Soon the tunnel was filled with the things.
The whole swarm is here, Mike thought to himself. Maybe they’d finished their task of melting the chasm’s ceiling and were heading home for the day. But where was home?
The creatures herded them down the tunnel to the black maw of the vertical shaft. They were forced to stand precariously close to the lip of the shaft. One false move and they would plunge to their deaths. And with these creatures so near to them, making a false move would be all too easy. The creatures were hideous and terrible to behold. Paula and Stacy were on edge; the slightest twitch of a wing or the rake of a malevolent eye across their bodies made them both jump in fright. Jason stood in meek silence, a far cry from the selfless bravery he’d displayed earlier. He had a hard time believing that he had actually killed two of these monsters. Mike was watching for an opportunity to rush at them, maybe put his quarterback skills to use and take a few of them down. But those lashing whip-like tails with their vicious, dripping stingers were a major deterrent to his bravery. And those distant screams of agony that drifted up from the shaft did nothing to bolster their courage.
One of the creatures operated the crank. The four friends exchanged commiserating glances as they listened to the iron cage creaking upward. When it arrived, they were herded inside. It was a tight enough squeeze with the four of them, and the fit was made even worse when two of the creatures skittered inside. The heat from their torches was powerful.
The cage lurched and began to descend. It lurched again when three of the creatures jumped down onto the top of the cage to ride it down. The rest of them, save the one operating the crank, dispersed, heading back into the bedroom and presumable toward the chasm.
Jason looked at their two escorts, then stared up through the rusted metallic lattice at the three riding on the roof. They peered back at him. He noticed for the first time that they had bulbous eyes with slit-shaped pupils. “Honestly, guys,” he said with forced cheerfulness. “Appreciate the escort, but I think we can find our own way out.”
“Where are you taking us?” Paula asked. The creatures could speak English, so they were obviously intelligent. Perhaps they could be reasoned with.
“We are taking you to the lake of fire,” one of them said, “where you ssshall burn for your ssssinsss.”
“Oh, wonderful,” Jason said.
The screams grew louder as they descended, screams that sounded as if they’d been wrenched up from the deepest core of people in the throes of unimaginable agony.
“You know,” Jason commented, “I really think I’m starting to like this place.”
One of the creatures opened its mouth and hissed at him, gnashing its wickedly serrated teeth in his face. He tried to pull back, but the cage was too cramped to allow such movement. “Please excuse the smell,” he said to Mike in a shaky voice. “That’s just me shitting my pants. Or into your underwear, I should say. You know what I mean.”
“I understand,” Mike said. “I’m feeling a bit incontinent myself.”
The cage shuddered as it hit the bottom of the shaft.
“Get out,” one of the creatures said.
“Really, I’m fine right where I am,” Jason said.
The creature shoved him, and he stumbled out into a large cavern. Just as Nigel had reported, there were two tunnels on the far wall, leading deeper into the earth. The heat in the cavern was uncomfortable. The screams were loud; still distant, but much louder than they had been up above. There was no telling how far away they were. They might have been echoing down through the tunnels for miles. If they were this loud here, where the air seemed to have that strange deadening effect on sound, how much louder might they be at the source? Jason cringed at the thought.
Stacy came up behind him. She touched his shoulder in concern. “Sweetie,” she whispered, “quit making smart remarks, please. You’re just antagonizing them.”
“I can’t help it,” he said. “I babble when I get nervous. And I turn into a smart-ass when I get scared.”
“Scared, angry, happy... When don’t you turn into a smart-ass?” she asked with forced humor.
He put his arm around her and drew her close. “I love you,” he said.
“I know,” she replied.
Not I love you too, he noted. Just I know.
The three passengers jumped from the top of the cage and soared, wings spread wide and flapping impressively, across the cavern. They lit between the two tunnel mouths, waiting.
The other two creatures shoved at the four friends, forcing them forward.
As they walked, Paula pressed her hands against her ears to block out the screams. “I’d give anything for sound to be unusually muted again, the way it was back up nearer the door,” she said.
“It still is muted,” Jason said. “That’s what so disturbing about the volume of those shrieks.”
Mike put an arm around her.
Without warning, something that felt like a spike being driven into the small of his back dropped him to the ground. He screamed as white-hot pain burned away all thought, washing over his body. He convulsed, hands scrabbling at his back, trying to pull the spike out.
Even as Mike cried out, S
tacy was ripped from under Jason’s arm as one of the creatures lashed out with its tail, burying the dripping barb of its stinger deep in the small of her back. The tail struck and withdrew with lightning quickness. Jason scrambled to catch her as she toppled to the ground, shrieking and clutching at her back. He lowered her gently to the ground. He hugged her close, not knowing what else to do, as she twitched spasmodically against him, her eyes rolling up in their sockets.
He looked at the creatures with wild eyes, fearing they would sting him next. But they didn’t. He’d already been stung, and they must have known it. Nearby, he saw Mike and Paula writhing on the ground. Their convulsions slowed. Mike came out of it first, lying on the ground, his eyes open and staring vacantly at the ceiling of the cavern as he gasped for breath. A second later, Paula’s convulsions also stopped, and she sat up, looking around, her eyes lidded with fading pain.
Stacy’s convulsions seemed to last an eternity. Jason figured that was because he cared about her more than the others. But they faded at last, and she lay in his arms, looking up at him as the pain slowly cleared from her eyes.
Jason gently let go of her, and then reared up as his bravery came rushing back. He had killed one of these creatures; he could kill another! “Fuck you!” he shouted, rushing toward the nearer of the two. It simply batted him away as if he were a pesky fly. As he crashed to the ground, the wind rushing out of him, he reflected: perhaps he and Mike had gotten lucky, killing those other two.
Stacy, Mike and Paula got back to their feet. They swayed, still a bit sick from the fading pain.
“You have been prepared,” said the creature that had swatted Jason away.
Suddenly, both it and the other creature opened their mouths wide and spat tongues of fire that washed over Mike, Stacy and Paula. They shrieked and reeled away as the flames engulfed them, igniting their clothes. The two creatures spat a non-stop stream of fire, following the three friends as they raced mindlessly around the cavern, trying vainly to escape the flames. Finally they fell to their knees and surrendered to the fire. The three creatures near the tunnels looked on impassively, ready to jump in if needed.
