Evidently satisfied, he got up and handed it to Melanie, who accepted it dourly.
“You use that if another of those things gets too close to you.” He turned to Charly. “You’ve got my pocket knife. It’s not a long blade, but it’s sturdy. One of them comes for you, don’t show it any mercy. Go for the balls.”
Eric said, “I notice you kept the buck knife for yourself.”
“I’m in the lead,” Sam said evenly. “Something attacks us head on, it’s got to get through me first.”
“Who goes last?” Charly asked.
Sam nodded at Eric. “He does.”
Eric laughed breathlessly. “Yeah? And what am I supposed to use to defend myself?”
“Try your breath,” Sam said. “I can smell it from here.”
Chapter Six
“How far is it to the end?” Greeley asked.
“Three miles,” Red Elk answered.
“But it’s just one tunnel, right?” Colleen said. “I mean, it’s not like we’re going to get lost in some subterranean labyrinth.”
“Dad made it one tunnel,” Red Elk agreed. “We’ll have to climb quite a bit and worm our way through some tight places, but the tunnel should take us all the way there. There used to be several places where the passage forked or joined with others, but much of what he did in his spare time—other than get drunk in town—was to make sure those spots were sealed off.”
Clevenger shot Red Elk a look. “Sealed off?”
Red Elk nodded. “Right up here, if I’m not mistaken, is the first fork in the road. Least it used to be. Dad stacked it so full of big rocks, it’d take those creatures a good while to open it up. That is, if they even know of its existence.”
“You knew of it though,” Greeley remarked. “I’m still amazed you never warned anybody.”
“Knowing the stories is a far cry from believing them,” Red Elk said distractedly. He’d trained his flashlight on the wall to their right, was painting the damp brown surface with slow swaths of honey-colored light. “I can just see myself talking to those jerkoffs from the state conservation board. ‘Sure, I’ll take your money, fellas, but before you build your state park, I think you should know that all those legends about the Wendigo, the Night Flyers—”
“Night Flyers?” Emma asked.
But Red Elk had stopped. “Well, hell’s bells,” he said in a soft voice.
All the yellow beams converged on a point about ten feet ahead of them, where the wall on their right disappeared.
And a huge hole began.
Greeley stared at Red Elk. “You said he blocked it off. Your dad blocked it off.”
“He did,” Red Elk said in the same soft voice.
Greeley nodded at the opening. “Then what the hell is that?”
“They must’ve unblocked it.”
A gravid pause as they took it all in. “Oh Jesus,” Greeley said. “That means they could be anywhere, they could be—”
“Shut up,” Colleen said.
“—ahead of us, behind us…if they know about this tunnel they could be laying in wait for us anywhere. Maybe they’re leading us into a trap, letting us get this far—”
“Shut your stupid mouth, Marc!” Clevenger hissed. His head was tilted slightly, the man listening to something that Jesse now heard. Something that might have been the clicking of toenails on stone, the steam-shovel breathing of a predator barreling toward its prey. Sound down here was tricky, but to Jessie it seemed to be coming from all directions.
“Oh shit,” Greeley whimpered, “oh shit.”
Clevenger said to Red Elk, “Back to the house?”
Red Elk cocked an eyebrow. “What house?”
“We don’t know that they followed us.”
“They did.”
Clevenger motioned down the long stone corridor ahead. “But if we go that way…you said it was three miles…we’ll be so strung out…”
“And the opening,” Colleen said. “For once, Greeley’s right. They could be anywhere, just waiting for us.”
“Going back to where we started is certain death,” Red Elk said in a firm voice. “Ahead and here—” Nodding at the hole, “—could be either one.”
“Pretty crappy choices,” Colleen said.
“Frank’s right,” Debbie said.
Colleen said, “‘Stand by Your Man’, huh?”
Debbie ignored that. “That explosion took out a mess of them, sure. But how many did you say were chasing you?”
“Well over a hundred,” Jesse said.
“You think all of them died in the blast?”
Clevenger said, “Of course it didn’t kill all of them. But there would be wreckage to dig through, rocks to move…”
“Take them all of ten minutes,” Red Elk said.
Clevenger expelled weary breath. Red Elk’s flashlight slanted through the dust motes they’d kicked up, frontlighting the professor from below. It made skeletal hollows of his eyes, his mouth a ghastly cache of wrinkles. Before, he’d seemed so virile, a warrior poet. Now he looked like a haggard old man.
“Okay,” Clevenger said. “We go on, but we should put one of the armed people in the rear just in case.”
“Makes sense,” Red Elk agreed.
The clattering intensified, and now there was no mistaking the growl and chuff of the creatures.
“Come on,” Red Elk said and surged forward. Clevenger came next, followed by Debbie, Emma, Ruth and Greeley. Colleen dropped back next to Jesse. When they made it to the hole he shone his light inside. It was hard to tell because he refused to stop moving as he passed, but to him it appeared as though the tunnel in there quickly narrowed.
“Jesse,” Colleen said from directly behind him.
He glanced at her but she had raised the revolver, gripping it with both hands, reminding him of a cop on a firing range. Only Colleen wasn’t wearing earmuffs, and she sure as heck wouldn’t be shooting at paper.
The guttural woof and staccato clatter doubled in volume, trebled. The creatures were coming from behind after all.
And he and Colleen were the only two back here to face them.
Jesse unshouldered the knapsack and reached inside for the cleaver. He opened his mouth to alert the others, but then he closed it, agonized with indecision. Should they give up the only thing they had going for them—a modicum of surprise—or should they attempt to martial all their forces to meet the creatures en masse?
How many? he wondered, straining to sort out the echoes floating toward them. Three? Ten?
Doesn’t matter, a cynical voice declared. One is enough. Or don’t you remember the playground?
His whole body shaking, Jesse kneeled beside Colleen and raised the cleaver.
“Won’t do much good with that,” she muttered.
“Wanna trade?” he asked.
Colleen shook her head. “You’d probably shoot me.”
“Guys?” a voice called. Clevenger.
Jesse turned to shout a reply, but Colleen stilled him with a warning look.
Something clicked just ahead of them. Colleen swung her gun up and aimed.
Jesse thought he’d prepared himself sufficiently for an attack, but the sight of the creature loping toward them like some freakish white panther made every fiber of his being thrum with terror.
The creature halved the distance between them.
Jesse’s muscles locked. He became aware of a high-pitched humming sound, and it wasn’t until the creature tensed to leap that Jesse realized it was coming from his own throat.
Time slowed. The creature’s mad, emerald eyes fixed on Colleen. She squeezed the trigger. Its head jerked as the pallid, wraithlike body left the ground. Colleen continued firing, tracking it as it rocketed higher, arcing toward them. In the strobing magnesium silverlight, Jesse saw bloody ponds open in its throat, its chest. Two more slugs punched through the papery flesh of its belly. Then it was plummeting toward them, a cascade of fat, ebony droplets spilling out of its body.
> Jesse and Colleen leaped apart. The creature tumbled between them, somersaulted, then without a pause it dove for Colleen. Shrieking, she jumped backward and squeezed the trigger. Its head flicked back, but it kept coming, snarling and seizing her by the leg. It bared its scimitar teeth and dragged Colleen closer.
Colleen gave off firing and lunged away. She managed to get separation between her body and the creature’s snapping teeth, but its pursuit was relentless. It hauled her back.
Jesse raised the cleaver.
The creature’s white arm, like a bundle of thin cables, scraped along the gritty cave floor, compelling Colleen backward by her right ankle.
Jesse swallowed, measured the distance.
He swung the cleaver as hard as he could.
The blade sliced neatly through the beast’s arm, just below the elbow.
The howl that exploded out of its mouth was nearly as startling as its attack had been. It bellowed at the ceiling, its whole body quaking in agony. The sinister features distended, the huge, jade eyes bulging. Jesse noted with revulsion the exposed cheekbone, the membranous flaps of an earlobe that had been torn in half by one of Colleen’s slugs. It lowered its gaze to the jetting stump of its arm.
Then it turned to Jesse.
Its breathing slowed, the quaking lips curling up in anticipatory delight. Jesse was paralyzed. To his right, he heard the frenetic clatter of nails on stone and the industrial chuff of breathing—unmistakable harbingers of another attack. Grinning, the beast stepped toward him.
Gunshots erupted behind Jesse.
The creatures had ambushed the others.
Chapter Seven
Jesse couldn’t swing the cleaver again, couldn’t do anything. The creature seemed to whisper into his brain, hypnotizing him into submission. Its satanic eyes engulfed him, drowned him in their bloody depths.
Colleen placed the barrel of the revolver against its forehead.
Its face twitched in surprise.
She pulled the trigger.
A starburst of liquid exploded from the other side of its head, and for one terrible moment Jesse was certain the creature would keep coming. Its face loomed nearer, the discolored teeth somehow brilliant in the uneven glow of the mining helmet. It kept coming, the eyes sightless now, the noxious body tumbling onto Jesse. Gasping, he scrambled away.
More gunshots from behind. Screaming voices. A slew of capering shadows danced on the walls.
Greeley was the first to appear. Emma came next, dragging Ruth Cavanaugh along like a recalcitrant child. Debbie followed, Clevenger trundling after her and looking older than ever. Last came Red Elk, a fierce grin on his face.
“Didn’t like that, did they?” he said.
“Won’t stop them,” Debbie said, and for the first time she seemed afraid.
Jesse could relate. The first close-up encounter with the creatures tended to do that to a person.
“What are we gonna do?” Greeley said in his newfound falsetto.
“We need to decide,” Clevenger said. “Press forward or go back to the house.”
“The lady or the tiger,” Emma said.
“That’s easy,” Red Elk said. “I’d rather have the lady any day.”
“Wait a minute,” Clevenger broke in. “If we—”
“Listen,” Colleen said.
Furtive sounds from ahead, slithery and dry.
As one, they began to back away.
More sounds, a whole chorus of rasping noises.
“Sounds like a lot of them,” Jesse said.
They’d drawn even again with the gaping hole in the side of the corridor. They all stopped, and Clevenger shone his light inside. Wide at the beginning, it rapidly drew down to a narrow breadth. Jesse thought of a coffin, of being entombed forever.
“Oh hell no,” Debbie said. “I ain’t going in that OHHHHH FUUUU—” Her words devolved into an incoherent gibbering. They raised their flashlights in time to see the white taloned fingers clutching Debbie by the hair, hauling her toward the ceiling.
“Dammit,” Clevenger gasped. The creatures swarmed toward them from both sides. Red Elk dropped the gun to grab Debbie, who was half swallowed by the hole in the ceiling. Colleen whirled and blasted a creature in the face, its teeth shattering in a smoky black spray. Another pounced on Emma. Jesse brought the cleaver down without thinking and buried it in the middle of its steepled back. The heavy blade crunched through cartilage and vertebrae, the creature pawing at its back to disengage the cleaver. Jesse yanked the cleaver free with a pulpy rip and slammed it down again on the creature’s skull. It slumped on Emma, its spidery body convulsing in a seizure.
He reached down, pried up one shoulder to help Emma get loose, and then his blood froze at the sound of someone in supreme terror.
Jesse whipped his head around and saw Clevenger being dragged to the ground by two creatures.
One of them had the professor by the head. Another prepared to snack on the white flesh of a thigh. Clevenger’s intelligent face was slack with terror.
Debbie had all but disappeared, Red Elk still clinging doggedly to one sandaled foot and actually being lifted off the ground as she rose into the ceiling hole.
Behind them, Colleen was popping off rounds and shrieking for them to get inside, get inside. Whatever the hell that meant. Inside the creatures’ bellies? he wondered.
“Come on,” Emma said. He stared dumbly at her a moment, then let himself be pulled sideways. Then he understood.
The hole.
Greeley had already reached the spot where the corridor narrowed and was worming his way on stomach and elbows through the gritty, brown passage.
Of course, Jesse thought. When faced with certain death, he’s suddenly full of the pioneer spirit.
Asshole.
Jesse flapped the flashlight at Clevenger. Illuminated, the pair of creatures glowered at Jesse, snarling, like they were annoyed their meal had been delayed.
Jesse took two unthinking strides and brought the cleaver down on the closest creature’s forehead. It bellowed, its scream an earsplitting siren, and batted at the embedded cleaver. The other monster tensed to spring at Jesse. Whimpering, Jesse reared back on the handle to disengage the blade, but this time it was no use.
The creature sprang.
One moment Jesse was on his feet, struggling to extract the cleaver; the next he landed roughly on his side, the snarling creature taking him down. He thrust an arm between the creature’s snapping jaws and his throat, but he knew he couldn’t hold it off. The beast’s fangs clipped Jesse’s forearm, drawing blood. There was a flurry of movement behind him, then the creature’s hideous face swung up, stared at something with sudden trepidation.
Jesse glanced that way in time to see Emma retrieve Red Elk’s gun from the ground, whirl and aim it at the creature. The beast tossed a hand up as if to catch the bullet, but it blasted a hole through its palm and transformed one of the creature’s eyes into a green and black soup.
Shrieking, it flopped off Jesse and convulsed on the cave floor.
Emma hauled the professor to his feet. Clevenger looked dazed but intact. Clutching him by the arm, Emma started forward toward the hole. Jesse paused to locate the others. Colleen had seen them, was hurrying in their direction. She’d left two white bodies in her wake.
Colleen seized Ruth, shoved her toward Jesse. “You go first—we’ll put Zombie Girl between us.”
Jesse threw a glance at Red Elk just as a shower of blood started to drizzle over his upturned face.
“Debbieeee!” he bellowed, but almost as if the unseen creature who’d gotten her had twisted a spigot higher, the blood began to splatter over Red Elk in steaming freshets.
“You take Ruth,” Colleen shouted at Jessie.
Colleen spun toward Red Elk, grasped him by the arm. “She’s gone, dammit, now get moving before they get you too!”
Jesse climbed into the tunnel and dragged Ruth after him. The slimy feel of the tunnel rock seemed to shatter the v
eneer of shock that had encased the small woman. She looked up at Jesse and nodded. Thank God, he thought.
A volley of gunshots pounded the cave walls behind him, and he threw a glance back beyond Ruth’s frizzy head to see if he could spot Colleen or Frank. For an awful moment, he was sure they’d been overcome by the creatures. Then Red Elk’s blood-slicked face appeared and he started down the tunnel after them. Colleen climbed in last, revolver poised and ready to shoot any creature that tried to follow her.
She’s an animal, Jesse thought. Thank God she’s on our side.
Red Elk came to his senses, his will to live—or perhaps his loathing of the creatures—surmounting his grief over Debbie.
“Who’s got my Ruger?”
Jesse peered over Ruth’s white shoulder. “Here,” he said and handed it to Ruth, who examined it a moment like it was an artifact from some long-ago culture. Then she passed it on to Red Elk.
They crawled forward for several minutes. The passage dwindled. Astoundingly, the creatures hadn’t followed them in. Or if they had, they were doing a good job of keeping it secret.
A muffled voice sounded ahead of him. Jesse glanced up to hear it better, and when he did he caught sight of something he hadn’t yet noticed, which went to show just how horrified he’d been when they’d gotten ambushed back there and poor Debbie was eaten alive.
Jesse aimed his light straight ahead.
Emma’s skimpy jean shorts stared back at him.
That lowering feeling gripped his stomach, a sensation not unlike the onset of nausea.
Emma stopped moving and when Jesse halted behind her, his face was only inches from the soles of her sandals. An arm’s length behind her smooth, round calves. Mere feet from her dusky, glimmering thighs. Jesse swallowed.
And stared at the underside of Emma’s jean shorts.
She was half kneeling, half lying on the tunnel floor; the frayed denim spanning from her zipper to her rear end seemed to float like a navy blue island in a tan sea. On either side of the denim he could make out slender strips of underwear. Black ones that didn’t entirely cover the flesh of her undercarriage.
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