Nightcrawlers

32

Iversen broke free of a mutiny of clutching, clawing hands and surfaced, battering at the mutant things with his riot gun. He was out of shot but he brandished it like a club. One of them rose up before him and he smashed it in the face with the butt and it literally came apart, spraying over the surface of the water.

Go, go, go, get away, get away.

These were the words that echoed in his head and he did not try and reason or make sense of any of it. This was survival, fight or flight, and he had to get free of this awful place.

He stumbled blindly up passages, turning into others that looked safe until he found himself in a tunnel with slick, earthen walls, the filthy water up to his waist. In his panic, he was not sure where he had gone or where he was now.

With trembling fingers, he stripped his mask off. “KENNEY!” he shouted. “ST. AUBIN! JESUS CHRIST, SOMEBODY ANSWER ME!”

But all he heard was his own voice echoing out into the darkness.

Thank God his flashlight was still working. He stabbed his beam of light up the tunnel and down the way he had come. He saw nothing but dripping walls, clots of clay dropping into the water now and again. A stagnant mist rose from the soup in lacey tendrils. Without the mask on, the stink was horrendous. Not just rot and decay and stagnant water, but a sharp odor of methane and seeping gases.

He fumbled his handpack radio and tried to get a channel but it was ruined from being submerged. He tossed it aside. He had half a dozen shells in his bag. He fed them into the riot gun and tried to think calmly, reasonably, but the idea of that, of course, was simply out of the question.

In the distance, he thought he heard a muted splashing sound.

He waited, listening intently.

Nothing.

You have to think carefully now, a voice in the back of his head told him. It has never been so important as it is now. Think. Reason. Kenney and St. Aubin are probably fucking dead and maybe Godfrey and the others are, too. You have to proceed like they are. You have to backtrack and fight your way out of here.

Yes, that’s exactly what he needed to do, but the idea of moving, of making noise and drawing those things to him was unthinkable. There was no choice, though. He waited a few more minutes, listening not only for the things but a sound that would tell him he was not alone down there because that was the greatest horror of all: being trapped alone in this flooded tomb.

Move.

He started inching his way back down the passage. He came to where they split and tried to remember which one he had come from. Christ, it was hard to be sure. It must have been the left one, though. Yes, it had to be. If he followed that one down, it would lead into the main passage where he had been attacked. Or had there been another tunnel?

No, no, no! Jesus Christ, don’t second-guess yourself!

He started moving down the passage, only there was really no way to know if he was going in the right direction. Everything looked the same and in his panicked flight he had not taken the time to notice any details. He moved deeper into the passage. The farther he went, the more he became certain that it was not the right one at all. He didn’t remember the walls being so narrow. And the water was getting deeper, the mist more dense.

This wasn’t right at all.

The smell of dank rot was filling his head. He felt almost giddy.

The gases, you idiot. The gases.

He pulled the mask back on and his head cleared after a few moments. He was in the wrong passage. He would have to go back… yet, he wasn’t sure if that was the right course of action. His light showed him that the passage widened considerably just ahead. In his flashlight beam, he could see the mist was moving in that direction, which told him there might be an opening to the surface up there somewhere that was sucking the mist up and out.

He moved forward carefully.

The water went down gradually until it was slopping around his ankles. He came to another set of passages. There were three of them this time. His light showed him that one was basically a crawl space; the other sloped very low in the distance as if it might be caved in. He chose the third. The mist was being pulled into it. He would follow it for a bit and if he saw nothing promising, he would backtrack and take his chances in the main passage.

If you can find it, dummy. You keep taking different tunnels and you’ll be chasing your own tail in no time. Ten years from now someone will find your yellowed bones.

No, Iversen decided that was not going to happen.

He liked this new passage. It was essentially no different from the others—muddy walls and dripping ceiling and abundant foulness—save that the mist was moving faster now in his flashlight beam. He was getting close to the source and he could feel the sweet touch of freedom reaching out for him. Maybe it was all in his head, but he honestly did not think so.

He was going to fucking do this.

The passage widened and he ducked under some gnarled tree roots—and his feet went out from beneath him. The floor suddenly canted downward at a 45° angle like a kid’s slide and then he was on his ass sliding down a forking, nearly triangular tunnel with more twists and turns in it than the ductwork of an old building. He slid with gathering speed, bumping against walls and hydroplaning first on his back then his belly until he finally splashed into the mother of all mud puddles.

He came up with a cry, pawing clay from his face and spitting out mud.

The puddle was up to his waist, a turgid, slimy pool of drainage that bobbed with floating mats of fungi and bloated rats that were feverish with flies. The buzzing was so loud he could barely hear himself think. Slime dripped from the walls and water trickled from the ceiling in a ceaseless flow that sounded like a dozen men pissing simultaneously. The chamber reached as far as his light could see. After three or four abortive attempts at trying to crawl back up the passage, he resigned himself to the fact that he was seriously screwed here.

He was trapped.

His only hope was that rescue got to him before the things did.

Knowing this, watching his flashlight beam steadily dimming, Iversen began to sob deep in his throat as the darkness pressed in closer.