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I screamed, scrambling away and tripping over the uneven ground. I swung the gun wildly, using it like a cudgel to beat back the creature trying to coil itself around me. The tentacles kept coming, slithering toward me, emerging from the shallow puddles, from the mud itself. Backed against the wall, I started shooting, barely taking aim. They were slithering up my legs, gripping me, holding down my arms, covering my mouth as I tried to bite. I squeezed my eyes shut as they coiled around my head, remembering my nightmares of tentacles pressing into my brother’s eyeballs —
“Juniper!”
My eyes shot open. Zane crouched over me, one hand pinning my wrists, the other clamped over my mouth. He’d turned off my light. Only the faintly glowing mushrooms provided illumination. His eyes were wide, his teeth bared. Marcus’s body lay behind him on the ground.
There were no tentacles. None at all. There were only the pale creatures on the ridge — and all of them had raised their heads toward us.
Click, click, click.
One of them straightened its neck, with a sound like popping joints. I tried to hold my breath, my skin cold with sweat. Were they blind? Could they see us if we didn’t move? Seconds passed, as the creatures moved their upright heads back and forth, bobbing them like snakes taking aim at their prey.
Then, one of themspoke.
“Who creeps in the dark?” The voice was a harsh, low whisper. The other two clicked their teeth together rapidly, the sound echoing around the cavern. Zane was utterly still, not breathing, not even blinking.
With sudden, jerking movements and that awful sound of popping, one of the creatures scurried down from the ridge. It bobbed its head on that long, spine-like neck, clicking its teeth. “Sweet flesh. Tender, living flesh. Where are you?”
The smell of mold was so strong now, it almost overpowered the stench of the corpse. My head was light — whether from the smell, from struggling to hold my breath, or from fear, I wasn’t sure. The creature moved rapidly but with uncertainty, jerking around the cavern as the others swayed on the ridge above, trying to find us in the dark.
Suddenly, the creature stopped. Its white eyes didn’t blink, and they reflected the mushroom’s luminescent glow. A sound, like a sudden draft or breath of wind, came through the chamber. The temperature had dropped low enough that I shivered.
“The Deep One speaks,” the creature whispered, and the other two abruptly stopped chattering their teeth. “It wants the living flesh. Where…”
I shifted my gun. I had to be ready to shoot.
But that soft sound of movement was all it took. The creature’s head jerked toward me, and itscreamed.
Zane jerked me to my feet, shoving me toward the mouth of the tunnel. He grabbed Marcus, carrying him as easily as a ragdoll. I stumbled in the dark, unable to see without my light as Zane easily got ahead of me. I fumbled to turn the light back on as I sprinted; but my foot caught on a stone and I went down, landing hard on my side.
With the air knocked out of me, I rolled to my back. My light shone up into the pale creature’s face, standing over me.
I fired the gun, the blast knocking it back, but only for a second. The others were right behind it, moving rapidly toward me. Even the one I’d shot shuddered on the ground and rose back up, thick black mud dripping from its head. My bullet hole was swiftly disappearing, melting back together.
I fired again and again, the creatures absorbing the slugs like they were nothing.
I tried to reload, but my hands were shaking and my bullets dropped to the ground, rolling away from me. I scrambled for them in the dark as the creatures surrounded me, their teeth chattering, their heads swaying. My light swung over them, and I realized that mushrooms were sprouting around their hooves.
“Tender flesh,” one whispered, and clicked its teeth. “The Deep One calls you.”
I found a bullet, rolled under the narrow edge of a rock. I couldn’t reach it; my hand couldn’t fit far enough. The creature stood over me as I grasped for it, reaching down a pale boney hand that dripped icy cold water —
A roar shook the walls of the mine, dislodging stones and dust. A shape flung itself over me, slamming into the creature and knocking it back. I scrambled up and away, my light swinging wildly over the chaos. It was Zane, pinning one of the monsters to the ground as the others locked onto his back, their hands gripping him so hard that bruises were blooming across his skin. He ripped at them, his claws tearing into their thin bellies and ripping out roots and mud. He ripped another off his back, gripping its skull and slamming it repeatedly against the stones until mud splattered across the walls.
With one monster twitching at his feet, the others jerked back, screeching and chattering their teeth as they retreated into the dark.
Zane turned to me, and I saw for the first time that the whites of his eyes had gone completely black, their golden color showing like a ring of fire in the night sky. He grabbed my arm and pulled me; but when I couldn’t run fast enough, he hauled me onto his back, sprinting through the cavern’s tunnels at an impossible speed. I didn’t fight him, I didn’t protest. I didn’t care if I had to be carried like a baby — whatever it took to put distance between me and those things. Whatever it took to get out of this awful place.
He let me down the moment we emerged into the cool, fresh air. I wanted to drop to my knees, just to feel the grass under my hands, but I forced myself to stand. The weight of everything was dropping onto me, harder and heavier than I could have imagined. Marcus lay on the grass nearby; Zane had gone ahead and brought him up before he came back for me.
I’d done all this for a corpse. I’d risked my life, I’d risked everything, for rotting flesh.
I swallowed down my shame. I swallowed down the tears that wanted to come, the sobs that wanted to explode out of me. Those things had ruined his body, torn it,eatenit. Marcus never deserved this. He deserved better than this.
Zane rubbed his hand over his head, before he paused to examine the deep purple bruises across his skin. His shirt had been torn, and there were ragged bite marks across his shoulder and his neck. I tried not to stare, but the extent of his injuries just kept getting worse the longer I looked. Deep gashes, bite wounds, and as he slowly clenched and unclenched his hand, I could tell his fingers were broken.
He’d come back for me. He’d…
He’d saved me.
