And then Casey touches me—and Battle’s gone. I felt him go. Bode armed sweat from his forehead. So where is he? Why did he leave? His stomach pulled to a knot of anxiety. Sarge, I need you. Please, talk to me. If he was hovering somewhere around, however, Battle remained mute.
Ahead, Bode saw that the tunnel was now very wide and much higher, enough so he had clearance for a good roundhouse swing. He’d be able to take a pretty good shot at whatever might hurl itself from the dark.
That’s all wrong. It shouldn’t be this way. This isn’t like any tunnel I’ve ever seen, or worried about.
A soft sound drifted out of the dark: a whispery rustle that was not the sharp scrape of a boot. He pulled up so suddenly that Casey smacked into him. “Hey,” Casey said.
“Quiet!” Bode held his breath, trying to listen above the boom of his heart. He probed the darkness with his light, but there was nothing in front, on the floor, or behind. Yet the sound kept on, papery and dry and somehow not only louder but larger: a scurrying, rhythmic shush that grew and grew and …
“What is that?” Emma whispered. “Where is it coming from?”
“I don’t know.” He didn’t want to think about rats or snakes or …
Then his heart stuttered as he heard something new: the spatter of pebbles raining like fine hail onto rock.
Oh shit.
He aimed his light straight up.
BODE
Dead End
THE ROCK DIRECTLY overhead was alive—with scorpions.
Big as rats, with bulbous black bodies and pincer-claws long as fishhooks, they seethed over the stone. Diamond teardrops of glittering poison dripped from enormous barbs at the tip of shiny, curled tails. But instead of mandibles, these scorpions’ heads were unformed and smooth as mirrors. Then, in the next instant, gashes appeared and split to become mouths.
Jesus. Bode felt the cracks in his mind widening, his thoughts splintering. The glassy surfaces peeled back to reveal eyes: dead eyes, black eyes, the eyes of cobras, the eyes of nightmares. Faces, they have faces.
“RUN!” he screamed, much too late.
As one, the scorpions dropped from the ceiling. Bode felt the hard bodies bouncing off the padded arms and shoulders and chest of his jacket. They bulleted off his scalp, then slithered over his face. One landed on his left shoulder, hooked, and held on. With a wordless screech, Bode swung the flashlight like a club. The heavy stock batted the thing from his shoulder, and it tumbled, pincers flailing. These just managed to snag his pants, and then the thing’s tail was stabbing him again and again, the pointed barb working to pierce the tough olive canvas of his fatigues. Still shouting, Bode battered at the thing with the butt of his flashlight. Losing its grip, the thing did a flip and landed on its back. Its spindly legs churned, the pincers snapping uselessly at air. Its many eyes glared up at Bode, and it let out a rasping, almost mechanical chitter that sounded eerily like an M16 cycling on full auto.
“Die!” Bode brought the sole of his boot smashing down. He felt the soft belly give as the scorpion’s body burst in a viscous spray of thick, yellow fluid. Cursing, he ground the thing into paste. The others were screaming and flailing and stamping; the floor was turning sludgy with slick, gooey, foul ichor. The only reason they weren’t dead—not yet, anyway—was their clothing. But their faces were exposed, and their hands.
“Get them off!” Emma shrieked. Her hair was a living tangle. “Get them off, get them off, get them off!”
“Emma!” Spinning her close, Eric swatted scorpions with his bare hands, crushing them like overripe grapes beneath his boots.
“Bode, we got to go!” Casey bawled. “We got to get out, we got to go, we got to go!”
Bode didn’t need convincing. “Go back, go back the way we came!”
“We can’t!” Still hugging Emma close, Eric aimed his flashlight back down the tunnel. “Look!”
Whirling round, Bode followed the light—and what he saw made his guts clench.
The floor was moving now, too. The scorpions were there, a remorseless, black, undulating river. Driving us forward, Bode thought wildly. Just like the fog, making sure we keep going this way. We should be dead by now, but we’re not. They’re herding us.
No choice but to keep going. “Move!” Bode grabbed Casey, spun him, and then gave the boy a vicious shove to send him on his way. “Go, kid, go go go!”
“Casey, wait!” Eric shouted. “Emma, quick, give me the lighter!”
“What?” Bode asked, but Emma had already tossed the lighter to Eric, who was yanking out his torch. Bode thought, Yeah. He grabbed his own unlit torch. “Emma, the matches!”
She jerked out the box; the dry chatter of wood inside cardboard was like dice on stone. She worked out a match, struck it; the match flared, and then her torch caught with a small hoosh as flames fled up the rags in liquid, orange-yellow runnels. Eric was already swinging his. The creatures didn’t like the fire; rearing on their hind legs, they hissed. Their pincers snick-snapped, the clawed jaws clashing like scissors. A few got too close, and then the air was alive with a pop-pop-pop, the scorpions bursting in sprays of stringy yellow mucus. Several tried shooting beneath the flaming arc of Eric’s torch, but then Emma was right there, by Eric’s side. Together, they swept their torches back and forth, keeping the scorpions at bay while Bode jabbed at the ceiling.
The things retreated, but Bode knew they couldn’t keep this up forever. Their torches were too weak, and the second they turned to run, the scorpions would sweep after them. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Eric strip out of his parka and shout to Emma, “Give me your coat! Take off your coat!”
“Devil Dog!” Bode bawled. “What the hell you doing?”
But it was Emma who answered. “Gas!” She yanked off her jacket. “Our parkas are still wet, and we’ve got a jar of gasoline!”
“Guys, get ready to run!” Tossing their parkas into the roiling mass, Eric threw his torch after, then spun on his heel. “All right, Bode, Casey, go, g—”
The parkas went up in a flaring yellow ball with a solid, heavy whup! The scorpions’ reaction was instantaneous. The ebony wave shied as the air filled with stuttering pops loud as gunshots. The scorpions’ screeches became a keening wail as a thick, sooty bloom pillowed through the tunnel. A second later, the jar of gas, still zipped in one pocket of Eric’s parka, erupted like a flash-bomb: a great, hard, brilliant bang.