T Lain: The Living Dead

As luck would have it, an earthquake chose that exact moment to strike. Devis lost his balance and they fell to the floor of the cart in a tangle. Their massive vessel gave in to the demands of cruel gravity and tipped onto its side, spilling them all across a field of rusted, jagged metal.

Devis cried out as he felt something pierce his side deeply. All around him, the ocean of rusted metal, corroded beyond belief, roiled like a stormy sea.

Wincing, he pulled himself off the jagged thing that may have once been a long sword and felt blood well inside his vest. The bard pulled a filthy, blackened handkerchief from his pocket in one shaking hand and balled it up. He choked back a wail as he stuffed the cloth ball beneath his vest and into the wound. It might keep him from bleeding to death today only to kill him with an infection in a week.

Mialee! He frantically scanned the area for the elf woman. She’d been about to—

There. She lay on her back, maybe ten feet away. He saw her breast rise and fall. Unconscious, but alive. He looked for the others and found them fanned all around him. All of them but Mialee were moving about, tending to fresh injuries. Zalyn, completely unharmed as usual, floated—floated? Yes, that’s exactly what she did, Devis saw—to Hound-Eye, who had gotten the worst of it. His patch was gone and the empty, black socket reminded Devis of the peril they had yet to face. The little halfling still held Nialma tightly to his chest. Hound-Eye had once again put himself between the little girl and harm’s way, and this time had truly suffered for it. Two ancient, rusted steel bars were rammed up through his torso on either side of Nialma. Halfling blood streamed down his waist and legs. Somehow Hound-Eye remained conscious and calm. Perhaps, Devis hoped, he couldn’t feel it. The halfling had earned that much mercy.

Zalyn/Ehlonna leaned against Soveliss as she shouted more loudly in the din of shrieking metal. Hound-Eye’s body rose slowly into the air, the bars grinding out of him. Twin torrents of claret drained from his back onto the rusted surface of the nightmare floor. Nialma, stoic as ever, watched intently as the possessed cleric finished her lengthy incantation and the bleeding trickled to a drip, then stopped completely. Hound-Eye let out a “Wha!” as he spun in mid-air and came to rest gently on his feet. His other wounds still bled, but he would not die today. Not from this particular impalement, anyway.

A low rumbling grew under the groaning metal, and a small, red-brown hillock rose beneath them. Devis felt with dreadful certainty that the cart had not been upset by an earthquake. Something was alive far below them, and it was moving to the surface.

“Run!” he shouted to the others.

“Where?” Hound-Eye yelled over the din.

“That way!” Soveliss shouted, pointing at a distant, narrow opening that Devis could barely see.

The only light in the cavern was coming from the cleric’s spells and her eerie, glowing body. The others stumbled toward the exit, but Devis headed in the exact opposite direction.

Mialee still lay on her back, her only movements the drawing of breath. Scrambling as carefully as he could over the rising tide of jagged-edged metal, Devis reached Mialee just as something huge and brown, with the head of a massive cockroach, burst through the iron shards behind him. Bars and blades and barrel hoops filled the air. Devis ignored the thumping and stabbing pains in his back as he bent over Mialee’s form.

She lay unconscious, eyes closed. An ugly bump had risen on her head. Devis’s bleeding side made him cry out as he scooped the elf woman into his arms. The cavern reverberated with a keening, screeching explosion of sound unlike anything Devis had ever heard, even in the last few days. The giant, insectoid head reared above the overturned mine cart. With a deafening crash, the creature dived into the metal like a breaching whale. A massive wave rolled toward Devis and Mialee as the creature moved toward them, submerged in the wreckage. The bard faced the wave and saw with relief that Soveliss, Hound-Eye, little Nialma, and the cleric/goddess were nearly to the tiny exit. Devis stumbled across the churning, rusted sea.

“Keep going!” he shouted to the others, though the urging may have been directed as much at himself.

The others were almost out and probably couldn’t hear him anyway. Devis knew with grim certainty that he and Mialee were expendable. He had done his part, and Favrid, Ehlonna, and Soveliss would do the rest. Hound-Eye stood at the crack in the stone wall until the last possible second. Then the halfling flipped him a rough imitation of Clayn’s ranger salute, turned, and disappeared into the exit.

Devis did the only thing he could think of as the deadly wave rolled closer. He charged as fast as he dared into the massive iron cart, still tipped on its side and only feet away. It was between them and the screaming wake spreading out from the giant insect. He held Mialee close and waited for the end with little hope.

As the wave rolled ever closer, the bard felt wet warmth spread over his hands. He groaned and struggled to see Mialee’s face in the dim light from the tunnel far above. She still had not awoken, and now he knew why. The landing had been far worse than he’d realized. Mialee was bleeding to death in Devis’s arms.

The bard felt their iron tomb lurch forward with the arrival of the wave. He clutched the dying elf woman to his chest and prepared to go with her.

Mialee was jolted awake as she felt her body jerk upward. Her stomach stayed behind, and she choked back bile. Something warm flowed down her chin.

That wasn’t bile. That was blood.

Mialee struggled in Devis’s grasp, and fire blossomed around the three jagged wounds in her back.

She felt dizzy and weak. Mialee tried to shout, but could only manage a cry as she realized that they were no longer on the relative safety of the tracks. They had fallen, and then…she could not remember. She summoned the strength to raise one bruised arm and wrap it around the bard’s back, and he started, but didn’t raise his head.

Mialee’s fingertips dug into the leather of Devis’s vest with her last ounce of strength as the two of them rode the improbable wave across the cavern.

Devis’s heart leaped in his chest. Mialee’s fingers pressed against his back. The elf woman lived, but he could feel the blood soaking into his fingerless glove and soaking his forearms.

Acrid, corrosive wind blasted in from the top of the upended cart. They were gradually gaining speed, riding the wave of metal like a sea lion coming to shore. Devis squinted and chanced a glance ahead of them.

The wall of the cavern loomed before his eyes. Just below, he could still see the small crevice through which his friends had escaped. The wave was carrying them straight for it, topside first. If they survived the collision, they should be able to follow the others and the route would be closed behind them by the cart. Devis could not believe his dumb luck, and silently thanked Fharlanghn for hearing his pleas for some good fortune—any good fortune—albeit belatedly.

He folded himself over Mialee’s body, pressed the soles of his boots into the “floor” of their ersatz boat, and braced for impact.

The wave was pushing the cart much more slowly than the explosion that blasted them down the tunnel, but the collision was still strong enough to send Devis tumbling head over heels. He slammed back-first and upside down against the stone. Mialee slipped from his grasp. He winced as her head thunked against the iron amid the ringing, alien screams echoing inside the inky blackness. He reached down and slid Mialee awkwardly onto his lap. The girl’s breathing came in shallow gasps. She might have minutes, or only seconds.