AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The chew-this-juicy-morsel-in-a-jumpsuit part hadn’t come, however. Miya vaguely recalled the feeling of being dragged along uneven ground as she had swum in and out of consciousness. Her head definitely hurt like she had taken a hit at some point.
A mental check of her body led to the conclusion she wasn’t wounded, just bruised. That creature must have taken her down into the well, dragging her along for a bumpy ride through the tunnels Therak had mentioned.
Therak! Had he won the fight? Had he… lost? How much time had passed since she had last seen him, bleeding but still kicking Sakhin’s naked ass?
However much time had passed, she didn’t have a lot left on her side. Any second now, the megagull might decide it was done waiting for dessert. Said dessert had to get out of here – wherever here was.
Just a tiny-biny problem: Miya was immobilized. She couldn’t move either her arms or her legs, as if she were tied up from knee to shoulder. And she probably was, she simply couldn’t see a damn thing in the dark. Her imagination conjured images of being enclosed in a spider’s cocoon, and she shook her head to get rid of those.
At least she could still move her head. Strangely, she could turn it in all directions, no ground under her to limit her movements. Meaning the feeling of weightlessness was not due to her being dizzy from the hit to the head.
Miya was suspended in mid-air. By the pulsing in her temples, it was safe to conclude she was hanging upside down.
This time around, her helpful mind produced the image of a piece of meat in a slaughterhouse left to hang to make it taste better. The question was when would the meat be taken down for consumption? And, more importantly, by whom? Her heart threatened to burst out of her chest as she remembered Therak mentioning these tunnels were full of ‘the little ones’.
Miya wasn’t going to be gobbled up in one bite by the megagull. Nuh-uh. She was going to be torn to pieces by its little version multiplied by a dozen. Or a hundred. And the scariest part of all was that plunged in complete darkness, she couldn’t see the danger coming. Couldn’t brace herself for the pain to come. She couldn’t even hear whether she was alone at the moment or not, because her heart was beating deafeningly loud. At this rate, she might hyperventilate before anything else.
Then again, giving herself a heart attack might be preferable to what the local residents had in store for her…
The universe chose that moment to prove her wrong. As a tiny light came to life to her left, Miya realized the dark in here had been an act of mercy.
There, at an arm’s length from her, was a human woman wrapped from chin to toe in semi-transparent purplish goo. Her face was as white as a corpse’s under the light attached to the pocket of the guard vest she was wearing. But that wasn’t how Miya knew the woman was dead, albeit well-preserved.
What cued Miya in was the lack of screaming on the colonist’s part while tens of minigulls with barely formed wings and minuscule tails were crawling along her body. The sounds of their needle-like teeth chewing through the goo echoed in the underground space.
When the emergency light fizzled out under the same toothy assault that must have activated it to begin with, Miya welcomed the darkness for a second. Then she wanted to scream her lungs out, but she couldn’t produce a single sound. Her throat was constricted in terror, her mind was reeling, her pulse was galloping at a speed she wished she could run away from here.
But there was no getting away. Not this time. She had cheated death too many times to count today.
Turned out that of all the ways she had expected to die lately, she was going to go out like baby food. Fresh meat skillfully caught by mommy – or daddy – by the well to be carefully seasoned and preserved with purplish goo before being hung in the pantry until it was time to be served to the kids. Only the best food for the sweet babies so they could grow big, strong and capable of tearing into other megagulls. Or into foolish colonists digging where they weren’t supposed to.
Or into a stupid pilot trying to help a badass assassin when she couldn’t even help herself.
Miya felt tears trickling down her forehead. They had been so close to escaping together! Now she was going to die, and Therak might be dead too. If he wasn’t, he was surely on his way to Alfatar Station already.
It was one thing to want to fly with her rather than the autopilot when she was already in the pilot seat, and another when he had to take the huge risk of looking for her, wounded as he had been. And why would he think she was still alive, anyway? He had to be suicidal to come in this deathtrap of a tunnel system. Someone who didn’t take unnecessary risks going on a suicide rescue mission? No, Miya could not hope for a rescue if Therak had won against Sakhin.
She was totally screwed.
When another emergency light came to life next to her and illuminated the earthy ceiling, she saw her end crawling her way. Time to feed the kids under the watchful eye of mommy or daddy.
31
Leaking
Miya didn’t know where to look first. At the few monster babies straying from the colonist’s corpse to come get a bite of something fresher?
At the tailed megagull on the ceiling right above her, spitting additional goo on her feet?
At the hissing tailless megagull that had just entered the cavernous space? Judging by the answering hiss of the creature seasoning her, the newcomer was not a family member.
Splendid. They were going to fight over her. Or what was going to be left of her once the baby minigulls were done with her in the meantime.
Miya squeezed her eyes shut, choosing to not look at any nightmarish creature whatsoever. She also tensed up, bracing herself for the inevitable pain, and prepped herself to scream her lungs out.
Screams filled the underground space. But not hers.
She opened her eyes, but darkness ruled down here once again and the pained screeching and shrieking was coming from all sides. Was the echo multiplying the sounds from the two megagulls fighting, or were the sources of the animalistic screams many to begin with?
