Nightcrawlers

37

Chipney had been taken and dragged off into the depths, deposited here in this womb of fungus that seemed to breathe around him with barely audible susurrations. When he opened his eyes, he was sluggish and tired as if he had just consumed a very large meal. And, oddly, he felt that way—overfed. But that was insane because he had not eaten. He had been dumped here and he lost consciousness. He had vague recollections of one dream piled on top of another, all of them so weirdly hallucinogenic and surreal they were almost psychedelic.

The last time he had dreamed with such almost organic vibrancy was when he had taken Chantix to quit smoking five years before and he had dreamed so much he actually woke up feeling exhausted as if he had run a marathon or plowed through War and Peace in a single sitting. The only other time he had experienced anything remotely similar was when he had dropped acid in college.

It’s the gases down here, it must be the gases, he told himself with a sleepy voice that fumbled over the words, they’re making you loopy.

The good thing was, he was alone.

Absolutely alone.

The mutant things had left.

His riot gun was gone, of course, and he had no light to see by, but he could remember the way he had been brought into this place. God, the floor, the walls… living tissue. It was disgusting. He felt around for the passage and was amazed when he found it in the darkness.

Keep moving, keep going. Let your instincts get you out of here. It’s all you have now.

The tunnel was set with countless passageways and channels and, though he was completely lost, he listened to the internal voice that told him to keep moving up and up and whenever he found an opening above, he did just that.

He was crawling through an extremely cramped, dripping tunnel now that seem to be collapsing in sodden heaps of muck. There were things above him that he kept bumping his head into, hard things, and his fingers more than once explored them and found them to be made of some rotting wood. But it meant nothing to him, not the undersides of slabs he encountered or the swollen tree roots he fought through. Nor even the other things he began to find, things that could be nothing other than mushy, bloated corpses that he clawed his way over and through, fingers digging ruts in ruined faces and valleys in jellied abdomens.

The stench was black and odious, an invasive aura that wound him and held him in fingers of putrefaction.

But he refused to think about it or even acknowledge it. That stuff was for later. Now there was just survival and it was enough for his taxed brain that kept urging him to lie down and close his eyes.

He worked and slid like an eel through rot and decay and then his fingers were reaching into empty air. He propelled himself forward and landed hard on a stone floor that was wet and cold. But smooth, even.

Concrete?

He pulled himself through puddles and began frantically digging in his waders, beneath to his shirt pocket where he kept his cigarettes, his lighter.

He hadn’t dared light it before… all those gases… but now in this wide-open space, why not?

Sanity began to seep back into his mind now that there was the possibility of escape. His lighter was wet and it took a few moments of frenetic action of striking the wheel until finally it began to spark out of sheer friction and dry itself and then, yes, a flame, bright, blinding, a million suns exploding before him.

He opened his eyes into slits and saw.

He was in a mausoleum, a burial vault. The sweating stone walls were set with funerary inscriptions and black cavities into which caskets could be pushed. But they weren’t, of course. They had been torn from their sepulchral berths and scattered over the floor, shattered, their contents taken away. Everywhere there were splinters of wood and tarnished brass handles, shattered lids and shredded streamers of casket silk like party confetti… but no bones.

Not a single sign of remains.

Except for what was laid across the framework of a bier. He saw the brown uniform, the badge, the yellow department logo and knew it was Riegan… Riegan, who’d disappeared out in the field that night.

He was being tenderized in this wormy, palpable dampness.

Chipney found a set of steps and clawed up them. They were covered with a spongy yellow moss. Before him was a rusted metal door and he beat his fists against it until they were raw and bleeding and the lighter burned his fingers and went out.

I’m this close, you idiots! Get me out of here! Don’t let me die now!

“Not now,” he said under his breath. “Oh dear God, not now…”

Then below, the sound of motion, of creeping and rustling as the things swarmed through the hole and into the crypt, filling it with their ravenous, fleshy forms.