The Rifleman - Bk1 - Ch.58

Chapter Fifty-Eight

Down Under

“Everyone get ready,” Wesley called as he readied the shovel. “It will probably attack the second one of us touches down.”

“No shit!” Dolin snapped.

“Shut up, Dolin!” Another woman called over. “You dozy bitch.”

“Ah, kiss my ass, Rachael, you stuck up—” Dolin started.

“Focus!” Malin yelled. “Or do you want to die?”

Silence, tense and full, fell over the slowly lowering trees. Wes exchanged a nod with Malia, and they both crouched.

“NOW!” Malia leapt, with Wesley a split second faster. 

He landed, spade first, choosing pit again, and once more, the ground opened beneath his feet. A dark space below, no light source that he could see as Malia and he plummeted into the depths.

Instantly, the walls exploded with fleshy tentacles, the rich red-brown of the jungle soil shooting out at them. Malia deflected those aiming at her with speed and grace, spinning in the air like an acrobat on a wire.

Wesley, lacking those kinds of acrobatic skills, no matter how much his stats were boosted, simply shifted form.

The second he was in wisp form, Wesley felt the first tentacle attempt to strike his leg. The tip opened slightly, a row of fangs dripping a viscous clear mucus raking through the wispy form that had replaced his leg. 

Jolt through the leg sent it flailing wildly away while more and more struck out. It was like skydiving through a net of living flesh.

Only Malia's constant spinning sword dance kept them moving.

“Light!” Malia called as they dropped into the darkness.

Wesley cast a single charge of Improved Flare and allowed it to imbue his entire body, turning him into a veritable beacon in the dark cavern.

“Oh, fuck me,” Malia swore as the light revealed what they faced. 

“This has to be a joke, right?” Wesley’s echoey wisp form voice suited the scene below them perfectly. 

The cavern was not a cavern at all. It was a creature—a single, awful nightmare of a creature. The vast opening around them was covered in a fleshy membrane, thick and rippling with a faint pulse, while the tentacles were long, wriggling frills around the edge. Whatever it was had plastered itself across the walls of this bowl-like cavern, with the tentacles disappearing into the earth above. 

Below, in the very center of the membrane, things moved in a thick green-brown liquid that had gathered in the very center. 

The stench of decay and half-digested meat rose up to meet them as they fell.

Wesley thanked whatever luck he had that caused them to fall slightly off center, meaning that they would land well above the liquid rather than in it. 

Malia would have killed him for dumping her in that mess, even if they did survive this fight. 

He wrapped an arm around Malia, casting extra charges of Improved Flare until he glowed like a sun. Their fall slowed enough for them to land without a massive impact on the warm flesh.

Yes, it was warm, almost hot.

“Oh, Player’s ass!” Malia gagged. “That smell!”

“Yeah,” Wesley nodded, dropping wisp form as he unslung his rifle. “I’m more worried about those things.”

Malia turned to see long, thick tentacles covered in the rotten-smelling waste-filled liquid that formed the central liquid.

“Ah, shit,” Wesley grinned. 

“Not the time!” Malia swore, but she grinned.

“Allow me,” Wesley raised his rifle. “Also, duck!”

The single shot, sizzling and glowing with the energy of his final Improved Flare charge, left a light trail as it passed next to the tentacle and into the surrounding air.

“You missed—” The rest of Malia’s complaint was drowned out by the loud WHUMPF of gasses igniting.

Wesley and Malia were thrown back, slamming against the warm flesh as a high-pitched, almost supersonic scream echoed around the chamber.

“You son of a bitch!” Malia groaned. 

“Shit,” Wesley warned. 

“No!” Malia rolled frantically over as a rain of superheated former meat showered the cavern.

“Yeah, I’m gonna pay for that,” Wesley winced as he shifted into wisp form to avoid the spray.

“I hate you so much!” Malia growled. 

“Hate me later, kill this thing now?” Wesley offered with a grin.

“Fine!” Malia snapped, but she was already starting to smile. 

Wesley nodded, dropping into a firing stance as he called his two sims down into the pit.

He fired as quickly as his improved stats allowed, his M1 Garand in constant movement, destroying the tentacles that dove at Malia as she ran around the center, her sword held out and down behind her, carving a long, bleeding line behind her. 

The Sims arrived, falling slowly into the pit. Their rifles fired as they stood in thin air, their aim as true as his own or near enough.

The damage mounted quickly, with tentacles not seeming to regrow. Whatever this thing was, it was clearly a highly specialized ambush predator. This part of it was simply not designed to have people moving and able to fight. 

Wesley worried a single time. A single massive tentacle remained in the center of the pit, somehow saved from the explosion. It must have been too far under the mass of dead tissue to be more than stunned.

It reared suddenly, turning to strike at Malia.

Wesley saw it and called his sims.

“On my mark, A.P. Rounds. All of them,” Wesley aimed carefully, leading the striking tentacle slightly. “Now!”

Wesley dropped his first shot slightly, tearing off a massive chunk in one side of the tentacle, then pushed his second charge higher, severing the central mass. The combined firepower of the sims completed the job, with inertia severing what little flesh remained intact. The end slapped down into what remained of the liquid, sending a wave of stinking mess….

“That WAS NOT on purpose!” Wesley called to a horrified Malia as it washed over her. “Sorry!”

She turned, fire in her eyes, and for a second, Wesley was worried she might actually kill him, but a shudder through the creature they stood on signaled its death. That might very possibly have saved his life just then, and Malia started to smile just a little.

//////////////////

“If you tell me to stand downwind, I’ll stab you,” Malia said as she picked her way carefully over the polished stone left behind after looting the creature. “Fair warning.”

“There is no wind,” Wesley said with a carefully neutral look on his face. The Errant Knight was a lot more Errant-looking than Knightly right then. She was caked in filth, and the smell was not exactly subtle. It was even more noticeable with the actual creature removed. 

“Any idea how we get out of here?” Malia asked, looking up at the distant ceiling full of earth and a single wide hole but no actual way to get out. 

“Not at the moment,” Wesley admitted.

“Can you wisp up there and drop a rope?” Malia suggested,

“I might be able to,” Wesley said thoughtfully. “But I’m not entirely certain how stable that soil is. I might just end up burying us.”

“So no wisp tricks,” Malia sighed.

“Nope.” 

They stood in awkward silence for a moment.

“What exactly was your plan?” Malia asked. “Just curious.”

“Honestly?” Wesley asked. “I thought we’d all die down here. I just figured it was worth a try.”

“Let’s try to plan for not dying next time,” Malia looked up. “Do you see any tunnels or anything?”

“Well, yeah,” Wesley noted. “We both do.”

“Any other tunnels?” Malia asked with a sigh.

“You see the same place I do,” Wesley said with sympathy. “You want to lead the way?”

“Because I stink already?” Malia asked archly.

“Yes,” Wesley said with a grin and ducked the half-hearted slap on the back of his head. “But also, I doubt it is an actual shit-pit.”

“Why?” Malia asked as they both eyed the single hole in the smooth stone cavern's bottom.

“Because I can’t imagine that thing had an asshole,” Wesley said honestly. “It seemed to just rott stuff and digest it all in that central pit.”

“It definitely had an asshole,” Malia said with conviction.

“It did?” Wesley asked.

“Well, it did once you got here,” Malia chuckled and walked down toward the pit. 

“I walked into that one, didn’t I?” Wesley grinned and followed along a few steps behind.

The pit wasn’t so much a pit but more a hole bored in the top of a tunnel. Wesley dropped in to do some scouting, finding the entire thing clean and smelling faintly fresh, almost with a hint of something like pine.

“Clean, and I think we have a way out as well,” Wesley reported as a few clumps of soil fell down around them.

“What the hell is that?” Malia looked up just in time to see one entire section of the roof give way, dropping a series of screaming and panicking soldiers into the cavern.

“Cover the hole!” Wesley called, summoning his three charges of My Shield over the small opening. 

The impact was more than enough to shatter a few bones, and Wesley winced as he heard them break. Being higher tier didn’t make you into a superhero. At least, it hadn’t yet. He had no idea if someone like Earnshaw would even notice a drop of that height. 

He was moving even as the dirt rained down, fighting against the flow as he plucked people out of the soil and cast Emergency Heal on them. 

“Here!” Joy waved as she bounced over the dirt, apparently unhurt. “Rupert’s hurt! Urgent.”

Wesley fought through the still-settling soil and got to Joy, giving her a quick hug and pulsing a Lesser Regenerate through her, even if she did insist she was fine.

Rupert, however, was not fine. He had, with an officer’s luck, managed to land directly on the stone. The young officer had managed to shield his head with a now shattered arm, but Wesley could see the ribs were caved in on one side. 

“Shit, Rupert,” Wesley muttered. “Did no one ever teach you to tuck and roll when you land?”

Rupert couldn’t actually speak, but he did seem to hear the voice, which was a good sign.

Two charges of Emergency Heal and a triple pack of Lesser Regenerate were used instantly, with Wesley being almost sure it would not be enough. 

“Get the sims working,” Wesley told Joy. “I have this.”

Joy nodded, dashing away with her usual boundless energy. 

While Wesley looked after Rupert, then the others, as charges and recharges allowed, his sims cast their own heals on the other injured. In all, they had been lucky. It was a horrible, twisted kind of luck, but it was still luck. 

All the weakest or lowest-tier people were dead long before they started this march through green hell. That meant anyone who had fallen was strong enough to survive the wait for healing charges.

As they recovered, they did what soldiers everywhere do when they had a few minutes spare. 

They started to bitch.

“What the fuck is that smell?” Dolin gagged. “Oh, shit, sorry, Malia.”

“It’s fine,” Malia growled without an ounce of humility.

“What happened?” Rachael called, a kind-looking woman with dark hair that Wesley vaguely remembered pulling someone back over the wall when they fought back at the garrison.  

“She found the ass end,” Wesley chuckled.

“I did not!” Malia snapped.

“Actually, it was pretty much all ass,” Wesley said thoughtfully. “And all mouth.”

“Sounds awful,” Rachael said with a sympathetic look at Malia. 

“It gets worse,” Wesley said, hiding his grin as he turned away.

“How?” Rachael asked, somewhat hesitantly.

“They were both in the same place,” Wesley said in his best deadpan delivery.

Rachael stared for a moment and then began to retch.

“Asshole,” Malia said, trying to hide her own smile.

“We are sure there is no sign of the others?” Dolin asked again a while later as they dug out the dirt on top of his shields that were keeping the entrance to the tunnel clear.

“Sorry, no.” Wesley shook his head.

“Was it all the same creature?” Rupert asked as he sat stiffly to one side, still healing from his wounds. “It doesn’t look like it could have possibly covered the whole area we covered getting here.”

Wesley stopped digging, his face going pale as he realized that the officer was right.

“Everybody fucking dig!” Malia roared. 

They scrambled at the hole until they could see the shields, which Wesley released immediately. The entire time, Wesley was waiting for another of those tentacles to appear. 

Why the fuck hadn’t he thought of it? There was no way this thing had reached them all the way back across the jungle. It was just impossible. The mental image of them, walking for hours over one after another of these creatures, was something that would… well, it would have to fight all his other nightmares for dominance, but it was sure to make the top ten at least.

The moment the tunnel was open, he dropped in. 

“Fuck my life,” Wesley cursed as he saw the mass of tentacles approaching. The tunnel was how the damn things moved back and forth. Malia and he had created an opening, and another one of the things was on its way to take the empty spot.

“INCOMING!” Wesley roared as he called his sims down to join him, firing with everything he had into the squirming mass. Even with the silencing mod, it was still loud, firing that fast in such tight quarters.

“You have got to be kidding me!” Malia stuck her head in the hole, wincing at the sight. 

“Is it clear behind me?” Wesley called frantically. 

“Clear!” Malia called.

“Then let’s get fucking moving!” Wesley suggested. 

And that was exactly what they did. Wesley walked backward, joined by his sims and the last archer. The tight confines of the tunnel made it impossible to fire into the vulnerable center, only able to hit the tentacles that led the way.

A group would slap against the tunnel, the teeth grinding against the rock wall, and tense, pulling the rest of the body forward.

One after another, the tentacles were destroyed until they could no longer move their own bulk.

“Do we attack?” The archer, Dolin of all people, asked.

“No, leave it like a fucking cork in the tunnel.” Wesley decided. “Let’s pick up the pace.”

As they jogged through the tunnel, lit by orbs summoned by the soldiers, they occasionally passed under a fleshy, bulging, and pulsing section of roof where another of the creatures was set up, preying on those who passed overhead. The one saving grace of the tunnel was that the rock seemed to keep them at bay.

They were running on a slight upward slope, which had to be a good sign. 

Wesley had mentally crossed every finger he had that they were running the right way.

There were two options waiting for them ahead at the end of this tunnel. The first was open air and escape. The exit, in other words. That is what he and everybody else was hoping. 

Option number two in their fifty-fifty gamble was that they would arrive at the source of these creatures and whatever horror spawned these creatures. That was a secret he would be delighted to never know the answer to. 

“There are none of those things above us,” Joy noted, dropping back a little to jog alongside him. “I haven’t seen one in almost an hour. That has to be a good sign, right?”

“Let’s hope,” Wesley said as truthfully as he could. 

“Dowse the lights!” Malia called from the front, and the lights winked out instantly.

For a second, all was darkness, and then their eyes adjusted.

A faint light came from ahead.

“Is that what I think it is?” Joy asked hopefully.

“Daylight,” Wesley grinned at her.

“EVERYONE OUT!” Malia cheered, and they sprinted for the light ahead of them.

/////////////////

They emerged onto grass and moss-covered stone high up on one of the cliff walls. It looked like they had been in the tunnel for hours, with the last light of the day just hitting the opening behind them. 

“Don’t stop,” Malia ordered them. “Everyone get moving down to the next outcropping.”

Wesley got it immediately. They might be out, but the tunnel was still right behind them. A second later, everyone else seemed to get it as well, moving with urgency to the narrow stone stairway down the side of the cliff. 

Up and down they went, moving constantly until over an hour after last-light. Miles and miles of cliff separated them from those things now, and Wesley really doubted something like that could climb.

“Everyone stop,” Malia called a halt. “This place looks big enough.”

Wesley nodded, summoning the safe room into the stone wall of the cliff, with only the front quarter of it sticking out.

“Joy, can you get us some food cooking, please?” Malia asked. 

“Right away!” Joy yawned. “Anyone want to take a bath?”

“ME FIRST!” Malia called, with feeling.

Not a single person argued, which seemed to piss her off even more.

While the others filed in, Wesley stood on the outcropping and looked down at the zone laid out below them.

“Things do not seem to be going well,” Rupert said blandly, coming up to stand next to Wesley.

“No. No, they do not.” Wesley agreed.

Below them, almost three miles down from what he could guess, was a chaotic mess of zone habitats. Some had bled over into each other, while others changed even before his eyes. Fire and lava pushed up through a small patch of fields, only for the area next to it to suddenly turn to deep water, causing a hissing release of steam where they met.

“The city still stands,” Rupert said, his voice tending toward the hopeful.

“It does,” Wesley looked over toward the center of the zone, where the city and its mage lights could be seen in the gathering darkness.

“The garrisons do not,” Rupert added after a moment.

“No, they don’t,” Wesley agreed, feeling the weight of the statement. He had searched every inch of what he could see, and there was not so much as a single light where the other garrisons were supposed to be, and the land was very much NOT claimed.

“I think I prefer growing flowers,” Rupert said with a sigh. “I really do.”

“Smart man,” Wesley smiled and patted him on the back. “Let’s go get some food, a bath, and a really long sleep.”

Neither of them discussed what the group would do next. It was tomorrow’s problem, and Wesley hadn’t got the slightest idea.