Instinct (50 page)

“How exactly do we do that?” Tim asked.

“The same way that people and animals have always done it,” Robby said. “We’ll drive them back with our hands until there are no more.”

“And that will save the others?” Lisa asked.

“We’ll save as many as we can,” Robby said.

“What does that mean?” Lisa asked.

“Each one binds to an animal and uses that animal as its vehicle to reach the portal and the egg,” Robby said. “We won’t be able to save them all. But, with luck, we should be able to save most of them.”

Up ahead, the tunnel was joined by two others. They came together at a spot where a vertical tunnel came up from below. A column of lava flowed up through the center of the vertical shaft and hit the ceiling, where it split into three streams. The column of lava was completely unsupported. It moved, a cylinder of molten rock, up through the center of the shaft until it hit the dirt above and spread out. Robby leaned over the side of the shaft and Lisa sucked in a breath.

“Careful,” she said.

Robby inspected the other two tunnels.

“This way,” he said, pointing. It was no easy task to follow the path he chose. There was only a thin lip of loose dirt to traverse around the circumference of the shaft. Robby pressed his chest to the side of the wall and moved pretty quick. Dirt tumbled down from the lip and slipped down the shaft, disappearing below. Brad inched forward and looked down. The lava illuminated the depths, and reflected off of liquid far below. He couldn’t tell if it was a puddle or a pool, but there was water down there.

Ty went next. He practically ran, using the curve of the wall to catch him. He reached Robby’s side on the balls of his feet. Cedric followed fast and Tim took a more cautious approach.

“I can’t do that,” Romie said.

“Of course you can,” Lisa said. She left Romie there. She pressed her back to wall and held Brad’s hand until she couldn’t reach him anymore. With one shuffling step she could reach Ty’s outstretched hand on the other side. She took it slow and somehow made it across.
 

“You go next,” Brad said. “That way you can hold my hand.”

“Huh,” Romie barked out a short laugh. “If I fell, I’d drag us both down. You go and I’ll bring up the rear.”

“We’ll go together,” Brad said. He held out his hand. He went first, but they moved across the lip together. Romie was solid. Brad was the one who slipped. The dirt crumbled beneath his foot and his balance disappeared immediately. Brad’s fingers dug into the soft wall, but didn’t slow his fall. Romie held him up for a moment, but then she began to slip as well.

Ty’s hand caught Brad’s wrist and the giant man hauled them up to the passage with ease. Romie’s legs spilled over the edge, but Lisa and Tim were there to grab her and haul her up.

Robby was already moving down the tunnel.
 

It sloped up from the union, and curved to the right. They were spread out as they climbed the tight spiral. The tunnel looped back around until another tunnel split off at a tangent to its direction. There was no lava flowing down the smaller tunnel that split off. Robby inspected the branch, but stayed with the spiral.

Cedric flanked Robby and they climbed together. They came to a spot where another tunnel intersected their path. The lava flow above split, and followed the tunnels to the left and right. Ahead, their tunnel kept going, but it had no lava on the ceiling to light their way.

Robby dug around in his pockets, looking for a light. He always kept a light with him, even if it was just one of those tiny lights. He couldn’t find one.
 

He turned and waited for the others to catch up. They were lagging behind. Above the sound of them climbing and breathing, Robby heard something else. It was a low rumble from Cedric. The hair between the dog’s shoulder blades was standing up, and Cedric was beginning to growl. Robby looked in the direction the dog was facing and then he heard it. He heard a snort from the darkness. Something stamped and then pawed at the ground. Robby had a sense what it would be, even before he saw the eyes approaching from the darkness. The big eyes caught the glow of the lava and seemed to burn with orange fire. Next, Robby saw the moisture gathered at the nostrils of the beast. It stamped again and let out a challenging chuff of air.

CHAPTER 42: PORTAL

P
ETE
TRIED
TO
FOCUS
his eyes and realized he had no sense of his own limbs. Everything was numb. He blinked and got the world to resolve itself back into some kind of order again. His body was wrapped in vines. Around his legs and arms, the vines were graced with deep-throated flowers, turned up towards the gray sky.

He wasn’t injured. He remembered jumping from the roof to avoid being captured. It took him several minutes to recall how the vines had caught him—swelling beneath him to provide a soft landing that turned into a thorny prison.

About thirty feet away, directly in front of him, his eyes were drawn to a tiny sparkling pinpoint of light. It was dazzling, and too bright to stare at, but he couldn’t seem to look away. The light grew to the size of a pea and then a marble. Pete’s brain made the connection, although he hadn’t looked at the thing the last time he’d seen it. He knew this was the same type of thing he’d traveled north to witness before. It was the thing they’d fed a thousand corpses into. Or, at least, it was the much smaller version at the moment.

He tried to pull his eyes from it. He heard Robby’s voice echo in his head. It was a memory from another day. “Don’t look at it.”
 

The light made his eyes itch and burn, and somehow prevented him from blinking. Pete tried to raise his hands so he could rub his eyes. He remembered the vines. He couldn’t move his arms, or legs, or even his head for that matter. With his eyes still locked on the light, unable to move, he managed to investigate his peripheral vision. The light was hovering a few feet over the ground, above a bed of thick vines. Trapped in the vines, in a semicircle around the light, were other people. They were arranged like an audience for the hovering light.
 

It grew bigger.
 

Something thrashed to the right of the light and he heard a low, insect-like crackle and hiss as the vines dragged something forward. He saw it as it came into the sparkling glow. It was
 
horse. The thing was stretched out on its back. Its nostrils were flared and its mouth was open. The lips were peeled back from the horse’s white teeth.

Pete expected the animal to be absorbed into the light, but he was wrong. Instead, the ball of light rose up. Pete’s eyes helplessly followed it upwards as the horse moved forward. The vines wrapped the animal’s body and it disappeared in a wave of green foliage. Its head tipped up and was the last to be absorbed down into the vines.
 

The light flared as the horse made a strangled cry from somewhere below.

Pete felt the vines under him began to move.

He tried to yell, but the vine around his throat barely allowed him enough air to breathe. The most he could managed was a croak. He was being conveyed by his bed of vines towards the light. The closer he got to the light, the more it filled his head. He couldn’t see the other people and horses trapped in the vines. He could barely see the bubble of snow that surrounded the light’s area of influence. All he could see was its dazzling brilliance.
 

He’d heard the stories from Robby. Inside that light, he might see all his deceased friends and relatives. The draw of the light had been powerful enough to attract Christine, and Brynn, and Nate. Maybe he would see them too. He remembered as the vines drew him even closer—the horse hadn’t been allowed to join the light, and it seemed that it wasn’t his fate either. The vines thickened at his feet and ankles, and then blanketed legs. He felt them creeping over his whole body, until only his head was exposed. At this point, he was close enough to the light so his head was tilted back so he could still see it. Still, he moved forward and down. His legs were numb, but he could feel them moving down.

Finally, his head descended too, until he was wrapped in a cocoon of vines and he descended under the ground. He sensed the dirt walls on his sides, just beyond the grip of the vines. He smelled the damp earth and felt its coolness as he went lower. He was being consumed by the ground.

Pete was able to blink now that the light wasn’t capturing his attention. He squeezed his eyes shut against the tickle of the leaves. The itch wouldn’t go away. He knew that the itch was burned into his retinas, and would have to heal like a sunburn. He didn’t dare to hope that he would live that long.

As the light from the sky was blocked by the vines and the walls of earth around him, Pete saw an orange glow through the vines. There was a column of lava that he caught glimpses of. It seemed to be running up the wall as he descended.

The walls opened up. Pete wondered if the horse was below him. He wondered if the horse had fit down this same tunnel.

As he moved, the only sound he heard was the terrible rustle of the leaves. To Pete, it sounded like the wings of a thousand black beetles rubbing together. It was the dry-mouthed sound from a nightmare. Not more than a few seconds later, he heard something much more horrible. From somewhere deep in the shaft, he heard the slosh of a thick liquid. It was followed by dripping and then another splash.

He didn’t want to know what the liquid was, or what could possibly be living down there to make that sound.

Pete realized that his head was free. The vines weren’t gripping his skull anymore and he could turn and look where he wanted to. He looked up, hoping to see a round circle of sky up there. If it was still there, it was blocked by all the vines. Below him, the vines seemed to end just beyond his feet. But maybe they went lower—that’s as far as he could see. The orange glow of lava didn’t penetrate much beyond his current position.

The vines carried him deeper.

He heard the sloshing again and his blood ran cold. He couldn’t tell if it was the progressing numbness in his legs, or if his feet were being slowly dipped into whatever liquid was down there.

A new light drew his eyes downward. He saw it. The tunnel was like a well, but this one had only dirt walls instead of stacked rocks or bricks. Only an insane person would drink from this foul well. The dirt walls were visible by the green glow. The light looked fuzzy around the edges, like it was from a foreign spectrum that his eyes couldn’t quite decode. It lit up the rippling water.

Pete couldn’t see whatever it was that reached up from the dark and closed around his leg. He was surprised to feel any sensation from his numb leg at all, but he felt the cold, slimy grip of whatever it was. He heard water dripping from it as it curled up and around his leg, replacing the grip of the vines. He imagined a giant octopus down there, bleached white from never having seen the sun. It must be the thing giving off the troubling green light.

Like a million tiny needles, he felt the thing penetrating his clothes and then his skin. It seemed that whatever gripped him was working its way between the cells of his legs. Still, the slimy grip advanced higher up his body. It entwined around his waist, and then torso. He saw that he was very near the water now. Pete realized that his head was close enough to the water’s surface that his feet must actually be in the water. He slipped farther down and felt his consciousness fading away.

✪
 
✪
 
✪
 
✪
 
✪

The pain flooded every cell of Judy’s body. She wanted to retreat into her memories, but the light kept her present. She couldn’t turn away from the light. It was still growing. What had started out as a pinprick, like a hole in the tapestry of reality, was now the size of a basketball. She felt it burning into her eyes, but she couldn’t look away or even blink.

When the vines started carrying the man towards the light, Judy recognized Pete. She had known him vaguely from Portland, but more as Robby’s friend. He was one of the optimistic followers who had gone along with Robby’s plan to save the world. Now, he was being carried off towards probable death.

The light swelled as Pete disappeared into the vines under it.

Judy felt herself moving forward. There was no sense in struggling. The vines were clamped tight around every part of her body, and effort only brought more pain.
 

She wished for the hypnotic ticking noise again, but of course it didn’t come. The memories it brought had come with sadness and regret, but also comfort. There was comfort in knowing that she hadn’t wasted her life. The memories had convinced her that there was no grand scheme to things. It was a feeling that she suspected many times before, but somehow seeing her childhood again through her adult eyes had been the final nail in the coffin.
 

Even what should have been the happiest moments of her life were scorched at the edges by disappointment. The upper limit of her joy had been locked in place by that reference point.