As a young girl, I’d had a reoccurring dream about running from something in the dark, but no matter how fast I ran, I moved as slow as molasses. The thing behind me would always catch up, and just as I turned to face it, I would awake screaming. Over the years, I either forgot, or grew out of the dream, and by the time I was in high school, it became a distant memory.
Now, however, it all came flooding back with visceral clarity.
I threw myself down the opposite hallway, my shoes sliding over the greasy floor with a frustrating lack of traction. Each breath came short and tight through the suffocating gas mask, and I fell multiple times, only to claw my way back to my feet with hands covered in the clammy jello-like mucous. Darkness flew by, my red headlamp the only illumination I had in the depths of the nest, and everything blurred into a horrifying ticker-tape parade of black, red, and gray shadows. Pain flared in my knees from the rough tumbles I took to the cold tile, and my heart raced so fast, I thought it might explode.
Can’t slow down, its right freaking there.
Several yards behind me, the Echo Pupa slithered with ease across the slimy floor, and air sucked into the maw on its cavity-ridden head with the sound of a wet-toilet plunger. Overhead, the ruined school building shook, as more adult Echo Spiders skittered around in frantic search for whatever had cause the disturbance below. A small, reasonable part of my brain wondered if they communicated like honeybees, talking with their babies through ultra-sonic noises between the rubble. If that was the case, then the entire nest knew I was here.
Heaps of debris loomed out of the dark, blocking my passage to the right, so I veered left, down a narrow hall choked by shattered cinder block, fallen timbers, and jumbled bones.
Dried marrow and charred wood snapped under my filthy boot heels, abandoned classrooms on either side of me that yawned in the dark, waiting jaws to swallow me whole.
Something wriggled at my elbow, and I screamed under my mask to stagger onward, too afraid to look back. The disgusting parasitic squeals blasted in my ears, the pupae close enough I could reach out and touch it. It would be on me in seconds, and I wouldn’t have the strength to fight it off, the beast too close for me to whirl around and shoot.
An unblocked door jumped out of the shadows to my right, and I hurled myself inside, the worm moving too fast to pivot, and it glided past me down the hall.
With hands that shook so hard I could barely manipulate my own fingers, I shoved the wooden double doors shut, and spun the little metal deadbolt.
That’s not going to do anything.
Stepping back from the door, I gasped air through the stuffy filter on my gas mask and took in the room with my flickering red headlamp. I didn’t have much time, the bug would be back any second now, and if I couldn’t find a way out, the most merciful thing to do would be to stick my Type-9 in my mouth. There had to be another way out, or at least, something I could use to barricade the door better.
Various black-topped wooden tables filled the room, with stainless steel sinks at their center, likely a former science lab for chemistry students. A white dry erase board hung from a wall behind the old teacher’s desk, and there were still faint black markings on it from old equations that had never been solved. The chairs around the room were scattered everywhere, along with ripped textbooks, torn papers, and spatters of rusty red blood that formed a trail into one lonely corner.
Something glinted from the dusty curtains of blackness, and I took a cautious step closer.
Yikes.
He sat slumped against the wall, the gray uniform on his body stained with clumps of brownish mucous, black goo, and dried red blood. The soldier wore a Kevlar helmet with broken night vision goggles on the front, and a plate carrier adorned in several empty magazine pouches. A long black rifle lay not far from his right hand with its bolt locked open on another empty magazine. Brass casings littered the floor around him, and two other Echo Pupae lay to one side of the room, rotting in the stillness of death. Both his legs had been gnawed to the bone, everything missing below the exposed yellow kneecaps.
“Come on, give me something.” I knelt to scour his pockets for ammunition or grenades, but as I did, two objects fluttered from the man’s cupped left hand onto his stiff knees.
One was a little yellow and black plastic remote, much like a walkie talkie, and at a push of a button, its tiny screen lit up from whatever automatic shutdown it had been in. In the corner of the screen, the battery showed a low charge, but it still worked, at least, for now. The other was a tiny green notepad, its white pages-tinged pink in the light of my headlamp, speckled with flecks of dried blood. Hurried writing lay scrawled over the lines on the paper, and despite the eerie slushing from the hall that told me the Echo Pupae was circling back, I picked up the little booklet with tender fingers.
They’re all dead.
We thought this place was abandoned, had it rigged to blow, and they pounced on us, dragged our whole squad into their nest. I managed to break free before the little ones could latch on to me, but the larva stung me several times, and now my legs won’t work. Talk about shitty luck. Charges were all set, we had the item in our grasp, and now the freaking spiders have it. I’m running out of ammo, and the only reason they haven’t got to me yet is my K-9 tracker. Poor Dusty might be gone, but every time I hit the tone button, it scares them off. Not that it matters.
I can feel the poison in my system, I know I’m done for. If command finds this, we had the item in our commander’s truck, number M43, along with the clacker for the C4. Most of our charges should be intact, since I don’t think the mutants understand what they are. Find it and blast this place, no matter how many of us are in here. With those things eating their way into our boys, there’s nothing we can do for them anyway.
It’s in my arm now, almost like a living thing. I tried cutting it out with a knife, but it’s too deep and . . .
His writing faded into unintelligible squiggles there, as if the solder’s hand had spasmed or frozen. I hated to think about what he’d endured, being paralyzed, left alive in the dark to wait for death. Even if he was from ELSAR, no one deserved this. But part of his scribbles tuck in my head, and a dangerous prickle of optimism filtered through my fearful thoughts.
The item. His squad had been sent to recover something, and if this note was still accurate, that ‘something’ lay in the scrap heaps above me, just waiting to be rescued. It could have been reference to anything, but there was too much at stake for me to brush it off as mere coincidence. My hunch had been right, at least, so far.
But that meant I had to go through that door . . . and the giant spider-slug was in my way.
“Let’s hope this works.” I slipped the nylon lanyard for the remote around my wrist as the door heaved with impact from outside.
Wham.
At last, the dried wood caved in, and the ugly head of the worm slithered through, bobbing back and forth as it tasted the air in search of me.
Panic rose in my mind, but I forced it away, and held the tracker-collar remote up, its stubby black antenna pointed at the monstrosity.
It’s still in my way.
Hesitation struck out of nowhere, a horrific realization that hit me like a ton of bricks. I couldn’t act yet, I realized, not with that thing blocking my only door out of here. The worm would have to get close, enough for me to get past it, which meant if this desperate improvised weapon didn’t work, I wouldn’t even have time to scream before it was all over.
In my head, I pictured Chris’s smile, felt his arms around me, heard his laugh. One more time, I needed to see him just one more time. This couldn’t be it for me, not like this.
I wouldn’t let it be.
“Here!” I coughed through my mask, finding my voice and shouting both to attract its attention, and shoved the fear from my mind. “I’m right here!”
Surging forward, the greasy black monster ploughed between the desks, its throat gaped wide, little tendrils splayed from each side of its underdeveloped mouth, ready to pull me in.
My thumb pressed the tone button, and the remote screen lit up.
A high, piercing shriek of pain ripped through the air, and the worm’s charge fumbled into a spasmodic thrash. It threw itself from side to side, smashing chairs, splintering the desks, and covering everything around it in a fresh coat of brownish-red mucous.
Seizing my chance, I darted past it, climbed over the ruined door, and sprinted back into the slimy hallway.
I turned left upon reaching the main corridor and caught the rustle of movement in the shadows down the hall I’d first come from.
The crimson beam of my headlamp caught several black coils of wriggling flesh oozing their way up the greasy tiles, and my guts writhed.
Okay, now they’re angry.
Adrenaline pumping through my veins, I clawed my feet at a nearby floor mat that wasn’t as gooey as the rest of the hall and raced onward as more screech-thuds resounded overhead. The entire nest was on high alert, and I doubted I’d find many more rooms to hide in. It was do or die time.
From the abyss, a set of stairs materialized, and I gave a shout of joy beneath my mask. It looked clear, I could see gray light somewhere toward the top, which meant I could get out into the scrap heap and then—
Flash.
Bright white light blinded me, and all four of my limbs locked as if I’d been hit by a taser. Dread filled my mind, and no matter how much I internally screamed, I couldn’t so much as draw a breath.
“Look for the light.”
A chorus of whispers called to me from somewhere up the stairs, and voices spoke with disembodied volume from all different directions, as if bouncing around inside my skull. Soft tendrils of words poked their way into the folds of my mind, slithered into my memories, neither happy nor sad, violating every thought, every idea, every dream I had. There were so many of them, and only one of me. Why bother to fight? It was warm here, safe, comfortable. There was no point in resisting. I could just relax, let unseen hands lift me up, and everything would be glorious and bright.
No more fear.
No more struggle.
All I had to do was put down that nasty piece of plastic.
This is nice. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, staying here. It’s so warm, like a big blanket of . . . hang on . . . why are my ankles cold?
Something in my head sputtered, like a faulty wire, and I blinked on dry, itchy eyes.
Cold braided steel brushed against my legs, and in an instant, my brain was mine, and flared with primal alarm.
“No.” I jammed my finger down on the tone button, and the light stuttered, before flickering out entirely.
Bwwwooonnnggg.
Half-blinded in the sudden resurgence of darkness, I blinked in shock at the sea of rusty steel cables that wriggled on the floor, falling from where they had snaked up my legs and around my shoulders, ready to reel me in like a fly in a web.
At the top of the stairs, a huge satellite-dish head twitched and jerked, the spotlights around the rim of its dish flickered uncontrollably, and its siren cut in and out with static. Under its head, the tentacle-like cables seized, and the Echo Spider staggered, like it couldn’t keep its feet, sending chunks of debris raining down around me inside the stairwell.
On wobbly legs, I charged up the steps, clicking the tone button in rapid-fire taps, and with the other hand, pulled my Type-9 from its place next to my hip.
Brat-tat-tat-tat-tat!
Yellow bursts of flame lit up the dim stairwell, and bullets stitched across the Echo Spider’s dish, smashing one of the spotlights with a shower of sparks.
“Get back!” I screamed, my voice hoarse and shaky, but too desperate to care. Hannah Brun had been switched off, and instead someone else had taken over, a vicious, crazy, animalistic version of myself ready to do anything to survive.
Confused, and in pain, the enormous metal creature retreated with a cacophony of enraged foghorn blasts and chitters, the ground shaking as more of its comrades bore down on the stairwell entrance.
Nope. My stairs. Go away, go away, go away.
Up to meet them I ran, half staggering, but not stopping for a second. Cool air from the outside met my neck and bare hands, the familiar sky above. All around me, tall stacks of metal stood bound together with sticky tendons of black, sheet metal, angle iron, and rusted I-beams. Doorknobs, refrigerators, and bicycles rested next to huge towers of cars and trucks toward the center of the mound. Black membrane held things in place, along with various swollen pods that wriggled and heaved, more larva growing in their core. In one corner, a Pupae lay nestled in a sling-like cradle of ebony ligaments, half-fitted with a fresh set of metal legs, the steel driven into the vacant holes in its body, a dented satellite dish laying nearby.
Four adult Echo Spiders waited from behind various columns and piles, white light flooding in from every angle the instant I surfaced.
Shutting my eyes, I raised the remote and clicked the tone button, waving my arm in a circle, as the Echo Spiders bellowed in alarm.
Brat-tat-tat-tat!
I sprayed bullets at them, and darted into the interior of the nest, dodging sticky pools of black tendrils stretched like webs between scrap. Dozens of larva pods split to spill the worms inside whenever I got too close, and steel legs jabbed from the adults above me, an ironic twist of insects trying to squash a human as I scuttled through their home.
Squelches and shrieks rang in my ears, mutants closing in from every side, but as I ran, a flash of color caught my eye.
High up, five cars off the ground in a teetering stack, an armored truck sat, its glass shattered in places, one of the doors bent at the hinges, the others bent and twisted, every tire flattened. It bore the same gray paint job as the uniforms of its former inhabitants, but the white-lined black number painted on the door stood out among all the chaos clamoring for my attention.
M43.
Bingo.
My hands slid on the smooth metal of the bottom truck hood, but I jumped up to gain purchase, remembering the one time I’d gone indoor rock climbing with mom and dad. I scaled the rickety tower with frantic limbs, found hand holds on open windows, mirrors, fenders and wheels, my arms and legs aching with the strain. I paused only to click the tracker controller, spiders and worms so close I could feel the cars shake as they clambered after me. The Echo Spiders flashed their lights and stomped ever closer to physically rip me from the tower, but I was in the zone, moving with a fluidity I didn’t know I had, giving 110% to every motion.
Crash.
A microwave whizzed past my head, impacting on a truck cab a few feet from me. Broken glass peppered my hair, the Echo Spiders throwing garbage at me with their cable tentacles like kids chasing a pesky racoon away from their backyard.
Creaking and groaning, the stack swayed dangerously, and I lost my grip on the car bumper I’d been holding on to.
Oh shi—
The world rushed past me, air howled in my ears, and I flailed in desperation.
My fingers snagged at an old-fashioned metal side mirror, and I cried out in pain at the sudden jolt in my shoulder, both legs kicking in mid-air.
Something wet and heavy latched onto my shoe, and a suckling maw tried to chew its way through my boot, the black worm thrashing to bring its tail-stinger to bear. If it stung me, it would be all over.
I brought my other boot down and sent the creepy larva flying with a satisfying squish.
Thanks to the brief moment of respite, I swung myself higher on the pickup truck, dodged a hub cap thrown by one of the adults, and climbed higher.
My palm slapped the handle of the armored truck’s door, and I dragged myself inside just as rusty cables lunged for my ankles from below.
Clicking the tone button to shoo it away, I squeezed into the cluttered interior of the military vehicle and gasped for air beneath my gas mask.
I can’t keep this up. How am I going to get down from here? Come on Hannah, focus, find the box and get moving.
Worming my way past the blood-coated seats, I slid under the steering wheel, and through a square door into the rear compartment.
Bits of gear, backpacks, and equipment lay everywhere, reminiscent of our truck after its tumble from the cliffs. Spare bottles of water, a few dented ammunition cans, and a box labeled 40mm were jumbled across the floor, but in the corner to my left, I picked up the outline of a slumped human torso.
Like his doomed comrade in the school, this soldier lay dead, mangled, with half his spinal column poking from under his uniform jacket. He’d covered himself in a bundle of nylon tow straps, wedged between one seat and the metal bulkhead, which had likely saved him from being whisked away to the larva chamber. Still, death had taken him, maybe moments after his clever ruse was completed, the poor man a mass of blood, torn flesh, and lifeless, milky eyes beneath his gas mask. His plate carrier held a few round grenades in two pouches on his chest, and next to the man’s exposed hip-bone lay a little green square with a spring-loaded plunger and a single stubby antenna. Molded into the plastic on one side were the words ‘Firing Device Electrical M57’, and it seemed the soldier died before he could squeeze the trigger, speckles of blood all over it.
Breathless, I shoved the junk aside to snatch at the detonator, and my heart stopped as something else caught my eye.
No way.
There it sat, a black plastic box about the size of a small handbag, tucked just behind the dead soldier’s back, perfectly concealed by his last act of courage. Even smeared with his dried blood, I could still make out the faint white letters beneath the rusty-red stains on the polymer lid.
LBD01106.
“Yes!” In spite of everything, I hugged the box to my chest, and choked down a sob of joy. I’d done it. This was our ticket home.
Creeeeaaak.
The world swayed, metal groaning under the strain of sudden impacts, and my heart fell into my stomach.
They’re going to push it over.
More titanic blow rippled up the haphazard tower of vehicles, and the greasy black membranes holding it all in place started to snap. Though wary of my tracker collar remote, the Echo Spiders weren’t about to leave me alone, and shoved at the pile of metal with their forelegs, rocking it back and forth like hounds baying at a tree. They couldn’t climb up to get me, so instead, they would drop the entire tower down around my head.
Frantic, I shoved the box into my backpack, along with the little detonator. Both the soldier’s grenades went into my cargo pockets, and I crawled on hands and knees for the rear compartment door.
Everything tilted, the back doors flew open, and loose objects rolled past me as the tower leaned a little too far. Out the back doors of the compartment, I could see another tower sliding closer as mine fell, and a sickening realization struck me.
I have to jump.
My shoes slid to the edge of the door, and the ground rose to meet me, as every black sinew holding the metal pile upright snapped.
Thump-thump.
I gripped the edge of the door, the backpack pressed between my shoulder blades, and sucked in a deep breath.
Thump-thump.
I had no idea how to gauge the distance, when to jump, or even if I’d make it. But one thing was for certain; if I fell to the ground, with its vast covering of scrap metal, bricks, and concrete, I’d break every bone in my body. In spite of the distance, in spite of my brain screaming that I was way too high off the ground, and the Echo Spiders clustering around to finish their assault, I knew I had no other choice.
With a pulse roaring in my ears, I flung myself out of the truck as the tower collapsed, and tumbled through the air toward the next scrap pile, nothing beneath me but sixty feet of cold, poisoned air.