Inhabited (34 page)

Kristin tore the shirt and began stuffing it into the bottle. She had no idea if her idea would even work. When she got the first half in, she left a foot of t-shirt dangling from the mouth. She moved by touch—the taillights were too far away to do her any good.

Kristin found the matches in her pocket. She was about to strike them when a horrible image streaked across her mind. She imagined her pants catching a spark. They were likely still soaked in gas from her crawl. She pictured her burning legs lighting up the last agonized moments of her life.
 

Kristin moved her hands away from her lap before striking the match.

The shirt burst into flames immediately. Kristin lifted the bottle carefully and used the light from the flame to illuminate her shot. When she was sure she had a sense of it, she threw the bottle towards the Jeep.

Nothing happened. She could see moving shadows. The bottle was still lit, but it was too far from the vehicle to catch.

The plan was terrible—she was willing to admit that. She hoped for some giant Hollywood explosion that would somehow blast a hole right out of this underground dungeon, but she hadn’t even managed to catch the Jeep on fire. Kristin sighed and began to crawl over the rocks so she could retrieve her bomb.

“It’s a fuse, not a bomb,” she whispered.
 

She crested the last rock and paused. A persistent yellow flame was burning away at the end of the bottle. It was lying on its side on one of the few flat parts of the cavern. Kristin blinked and then stared. The thing wouldn’t stay still. As the shirt burned, the rock under the bottle swelled and tilted and then shifted again. The movement was slow, but it was visible because of the moving bottle. The bottle rolled back and forth. Kristin held perfectly still and realized that she could feel the rocks grinding underneath her.
 

The bottle finally gained enough speed to bounce up over an edge and tumble in the direction of the Jeep. Kristin watched for a second, mesmerized, before she realized the implication.

She scrambled back over the rocks.

-o-o-o-o-o-

She crawled as deep as she could and wrapped her hands around her head. Nothing happened. She waited another minute and then crawled under the low rock. She saw the dancing flames—something had caught. It could only be a matter of time before the gas tank blew.

She waited.

At one point, she heard a big expulsion of air and she ducked into her protective crouch again. Still, nothing happened. She straightened up and watched the flickering light grow. The light played strange tricks with the shape of the cavern. The walls themselves seemed to be undulating. Kristin imagined that she could feel the floor shifting.

Air began to rush past her from deeper within the cavern. It was feeding the flames. She put her arm up over her mouth and nose so she could breathe through the fabric. The air was getting thick and acrid. Only the fresh air from deeper in the cave was really breathable.

When Kristin coughed the first time, she realized what a horrible mistake she had made.
 

She slipped and fell to her butt.

Kristin whipped around, looking all around her in the yellow glow from the flames.
 

It wasn’t a trick of the light—the floor
was
moving. Dirt filtered down on her head. She realized that the whole cavern was moving. She moved forward, even though it was towards the heat of the flames. She didn’t want to be caught under one of the low rocks as the space grew and shrank. It seemed like the cave was trying to chew her up.

I
N
J
USTIN
’
S
DREAM
,
HE
was falling. His eyes flew open and he realized that the dream was true. The ground was shifting beneath him and he was slipping down the side of the hill. He flipped over and clawed at the hillside, but it was no use. The loose sand and gravel flowed like a river and he was caught in the current. He was sliding back down towards the road.

Justin looked over his shoulder and saw hungry shadows waiting for him. The sun was beginning to color the sky in the East. He imagined that the light was magnetic and was drawing him towards it.

His foot caught a solid rock and he steadied himself. Just as he exhaled, the rock slipped. It became part of the avalanche. Justin rolled as he fell. He tumbled back towards the road.

He landed on the shoulder and dirt cascaded down onto his legs. Justin scrambled to his feet. He couldn’t stand the thought of being buried again.
 

The road itself began to shake and Justin dropped into a low crouch to stay upright.
 

His head whipped to his right when he saw a new shadow appear in the middle of the road. He ran. Another shadow was spreading behind him.

Justin stopped and spun in place, looking for a safe direction to flee. There was nowhere to go. A crack started to form in the dirt. His patch of road began to tilt. This was just how the Jeep was taken, and now he was going to be consumed by the same ravenous patch of road.

Justin saw one chance—he could jump the new hole and maybe escape down the road. Yes, there were shadows down there, but anything was preferable to the chasm in front of him. He ran, even as the ground was falling away.

A new light, even brighter than the emerging dawn, was coming up from the hole in the ground. It was a child’s conception of hell—a burning orange light coming from a crack in the soil.

Justin leaped.

The ground betrayed him. It shifted again and his momentum was sucked down by the falling earth. He didn’t clear the gap. He crashed into the far ledge with his upper body. His legs were dangling down into the chasm.

Justin dug his fingernails into the dirt and pulled.

A hand closed around his ankle.

R
OGER
TRIED
TO
OPEN
his eyes, but they were filled with sand. He coughed and spat out a mouthful of dirt. When the hand closed around his wrist, he screamed.

The voice in the darkness was gentle.

“Organic goes to the right. Metal goes in the middle. Synthetic goes to the left,” the voice said.

“Let me go!” he yelled he pulled his wrist from Carlos’s grip and tried to get up. His head hit the rocks above and stars swam across his closed eyes. He blinked, scraping his eyes with sand, and saw nothing. There was nothing but blackness around them.

He heard a smile in Carlos’s voice. “Organic to the right,” Carlos said. Something cold was pressed into Roger’s hand. He ran his fingers over it until he recognized the shape. The toes were what tipped him off. It was a foot, severed at the ankle.
 

Roger screamed and dropped the thing.

“No,” Carlos said. “To the right.”

Roger felt the tickle of Carlos’s foul breath when he whispered into Roger’s ear. “If there’s still some flesh, you can eat it.” Carlos smacked his lips.

Roger forgot about the rocks and tried to pull away again. He slammed his head a second time.

Roger bellowed with fear and frustration.

T
HE
SHADOW
WRAPPED
AROUND
Florida like a sticky membrane. She kept walking the best that she could, but it suddenly felt like she was moving through molasses. She leaned into the thing and drove her legs forward. There was weakness in the center. Florida pushed her hand forward and felt it pierce through the darkness and touch fresh air on the other side.
 

The shadow began to withdraw, pulling her back into the mine. Florida didn’t waver. Her running coach had told her a simple fact that she applied to many aspects of her life—a marathon was two races. The first race was twenty-one point two miles, and it was the hardest thing she would do. The second race was the last five miles, and it was twice as hard as the first part. Florida was accustomed to digging in. She was accomplished at perseverance. With that in mind, she flexed her muscles and fought the shadow.

She punched her other hand through the hole and felt the shadow weakening.

Florida lowered her shoulder and fought.

The shadow snapped away. It gave up and she tumbled out into the night. She looked around, confused. It had been daylight when she went in, and there had been a table set up with equipment. It was all gone.
 

She didn’t wait for an explanation.

She ran.

-o-o-o-o-o-

The first few turns were uneventful. Florida settled into an easy jog down the dirt road. She wished she had been paying more attention when they pulled in. It was tough to make out the twists and turns by moonlight.

In the next depression, she saw a flowing creek. With her next few strides, Florida realized she had been mistaken. It wasn’t a creek—it was a shadow flooding into the low part of the road. She didn’t stop or turn back.
 

She ran faster.

Florida jumped at the last second, hurdling the growing pool of shadow. She imagined that she could feel it tugging at her feet as she soared over it. Florida increased her speed. By the top of the next hill, she was panting for air, but she kept accelerating.
 

Florida felt the ground move underneath her and ran as fast as she ever had in her life. This wasn’t her long-distance pace. This was her sprint. Her form suffered and her breath burned her throat, but she didn’t allow herself to slow.

She could feel the desert gathering around her. Something was mustering all its strength for one last attempt at taking her life. Florida used the thought as motivation to pump her legs even faster. Her breath evened out as she poured on speed.

She saw the place ahead where the dirt road became asphalt. The black line of pavement ran all the way to the highway. To her, the solid road mean civilization. It was the border where human achievement had conquered nature. If she could just reach it, she thought she might be okay.

There was one more dip in the road between her and that freedom.
 

At the bottom of that dip, the shadows had flooded. She couldn’t see anything of the gravel road down there.
 

Still, she ran towards it.

-o-o-o-o-o-

It was way too far to jump, but she tried.

Florida planted her foot at the edge of the shadow and threw herself into the night. She pumped her legs and her arms, trying to get every last inch out of the leap. It wasn’t going to be enough. She saw the swirling shadows beneath her and knew that she was going to come down in that pool of darkness.

On the hill above her, at the edge of the pavement, a set of headlights pierced the darkness.
 

Florida yelled her frustration as her feet came down in the black. She tipped forward, grabbing useless handfuls of sand and rocks. With one glance down, she saw the awful truth. Her legs were submerged up to her knees. When she tried to pull a leg free it was black, like it had been dipped in oil.

J
USTIN
KICKED
AT
THE
grip that was pulling him down. He could feel the hot flames wafting up on rising air from below. He pulled with all his strength. If the demon holding onto his ankle refused to relinquish its grip, it was going to be pulled aboveground with him.

Justin got lucky. His fingers caught a hard edge buried in the soil.
 

His fingers felt like they would rip from his hand as his fear powered his muscles. Every inch was agony.

“Let go!” he screamed. He thought that if the weight were just removed from his leg, he could easily make the climb.

The hand around his ankle only tightened. It was soon joined by a second hand.

Justin’s fingers trembled with the effort. His grip was just about to fail.

He imagined slipping backwards and tumbling down into the pits of hell. He clenched his teeth and banished the thought.
 

Something soft hit his face.

Justin looked up. A rope was hanging down the slope. He couldn’t see its source, but at that point, he didn’t care. Justin grabbed the rope with one hand and then the other. As soon as his weight was committed, the rope began to pull.
 

It lifted him with agonizing patience. His fingers slipped against the rough fiber and the grip on his ankle never relented. When his thigh crested the edge of the chasm, Justin thought that his leg would be broken in two from the weight. He rolled, taking the pressure from his thigh and shifting it to his knee.

Justin cried out from the pain. He thought for sure that his flesh would be ripped in two between his grip on the rope and the claws holding his ankle.

As his shin carved a groove in the edge of the pit, he saw the fingers for the first time. He heard a woman’s groan.

From above, he heard a delighted cackle. Justin looked up. He couldn’t see the person’s face, but he saw a hunched form silhouetted by red lights from behind.

Justin’s fingers slipped. A layer of skin stayed put on the rope and was torn from his hands. He bit the rope to take some of the pressure from his hands. It smelled of tar and gasoline. He was dragged upwards at the same slow pace.
 

Below him, the person attached to his ankle began to crest the lip. As the weight diminished on his leg, the hands began to climb him. One hand moved to his calf and the other reached up to his knee. Justin looked down and saw her head for the first time. Kristin’s face was blackened with soot. Her eyes were crazy. Her hair was backlit by the flames. She had been transformed into a demon and she pulled as she climbed.

Justin tried one more time to shake her loose. His hands slipped again on the rope. He found a knot at the end and he dug his fingers into it.