Brian Keene - Urban Gothic

She had no way of knowing. In fact, all that Heather knew for sure was that her legs hurt, her back hurt, and her eyes felt gritty from sweat and dirt. There were blisters on her palms and knees, and the cut on her foot was bleeding again. Lantern smoke drifted lazily into her face, obscuring her vision and making her choke. Each time a new round of shaking overtook her, Heather’s teeth clamped together. She’d bitten her tongue and the insides of her cheeks several times. The slow, steady taste of blood made her stomach roil.

Heather wondered how much farther she’d have to climb before she could escape this nightmare. By all rights, she should have been above ground by now. And yet here she was, still stuck in a damned tunnel with the weight of the entire city over her head. She wished it would all just come crashing down, squashing everything flat. Even that would be preferable to this miserable, torturous scurrying around in the dark. Heather stifled a laugh. Her brother would have loved this shit. He was always playing his dungeon crawl games online. He’d have been right at home here.

A deep, thunderous rumble echoed from somewhere behind her, reminding Heather of her immediate danger. She forced away the self-pity and crawled on, clinging to the hope that she’d get somewhere if she just kept going the same direction she was headed. Then again, it wasn’t like she had much choice. There were no branching tunnels. Her options were moving forward up the slope or retreating back the way she’d come—and she knew what awaited her there. All roads have to lead somewhere. That was what her dad always said, at least. She wondered if her parents were worried about her yet. Would Kerri’s or Steph’s parents be looking for them? Would they have called the police by now? Or Javier’s mother, maybe? No, she worked nights, and Javier hadn’t seen his father since he was three years old.

The air changed up ahead. She felt it shift, running across her face like the touch of light fingers. The sensation was amazing after what seemed like forever in the stifling dampness of the caves. The lantern flickered and hissed, and the flame danced around as if also enjoying the breeze. She had no idea what was up ahead of her, but if there was fresh air, then surely that meant there was a way out.

Heather’s spirits soared. She forgot all about her family, about Javier and Kerri and Brett, and focused solely on survival and escape. She crawled faster. Then the air shifted again, bringing a new stench—a thick, pungent odor of rot and filth, stronger than any she’d smelled so far tonight. Despite her best efforts to ignore the scent, Heather gagged, choking. Ropes of spittle hung from her open mouth. Her stomach heaved. If she’d had anything inside it, she would have vomited. Instead, the muscles in her abdomen cramped, expanding and contracting painfully. Heather wiped her lips with the back of her hand and gasped, trying not to gag again. The flickering lamplight glinted off the sharpened butter knife. She focused on it. When she’d calmed down again, she proceeded onward, breathing through her mouth as she crawled. That didn’t help much; she could taste the repugnant aroma on her tongue. Soon, whatever was ahead of her became too much. Her eyes watered, blurring her vision, and her gag reflex refused to stop. She closed her eyes and fought the urge to puke.

At least her uncontrollable trembling had ceased.

She turned around, raised the lamp, and looked back down the tunnel and into the darkness. If her pursuers were still back there, they were being quiet. She was so close to the surface. She had to be! But she didn’t think she could make it any farther, struggling against that reeking miasma. She debated turning around and returning to the small room.

Heather was still considering her options when she heard chattering laughter behind her, coming from the same direction as the stench. The sound was high pitched and excited. She spun around again, holding the lantern high and thrusting the butter knife out in front of her. Shadows scurried toward her, growing larger with each passing second. Then the creatures skittered into view. Heather shrieked, and something tore in the back of her throat. The things that came for her were obscenities, barely even capable of being called humanoid. These weren’t mere mutations, like the others she’d seen. These organisms were utter blasphemies.

The one at the very front of the horde was horrific enough to leave her staggered, even in the dim light of the lantern. The monstrosity had no body that she could see—at least, not in the traditional sense. Instead, it consisted of a giant head, three times the size of a normal human’s, with a thick, tubular mass of pink and gray flesh beneath it. Something that might have been large fingers or tiny legs or maybe tentacles flailed and bumped. The creature slithered closer. Heather saw its sides expand and contract as the muscles within hunched and strained. Despite its odd extremities, the thing was fast. The appendages beneath its tumor-like body helped propel it forward, clinging to the tunnel floor and pulling with frightening efficiency. Heather gaped, unable to move. The beast was almost mesmerizing in its atrociousness. It stared back at her with wide, wet eyes the size of tea saucers. Its gibbering, drooling mouth was pulled back in a sneer. Gobs of green-yellow snot dripped from its bulbous, misshapen nose.

She barely had time to absorb the shock of the first beast before the second came into view. It had nothing in common with the first. Her mind flashed back to her junior year, and Mrs. Atkins’s biology class. One day, while discussing birth defects, Mrs. Atkins had shown slides of several different fetuses that had failed to mature. The second creature to scramble down the tunnel toward her looked like one of those fetuses brought to life. The eyes in its head were enormous. Its eyelids were so thin that she could see the eyeballs moving clearly beneath them. The mutant’s nose and lips were translucent, and like its eyes, they seemed much too large for its hideous face. The head itself was bloated and misshapen, more of a lopsided oval than anything resembling round. The beast crawled forward on small warped legs and arms. Heather cried out in disgust and horror. Clearly, it should have died in the womb, but it hadn’t. Here it was, an affront to nature and evolution, hurrying along behind its friend and baring blunt, stumpy teeth that filled its mouth. They flashed in the lantern light as it licked its thin lips and squeaked.

A third creature had a harelip that split its upper mouth all the way to its flared nostrils. It had no nose—just two gaping holes where its nose should have been. Uneven teeth and gums were visible through the harelip. Its body was stunted and wrinkled.

There were worse things behind the first three. She heard them gasping and wheezing, squealing with high-pitched voices. Their labored breaths echoed off the tunnel walls. Their fingernails scratched against stone. They poured toward her, a mutant tide of crawling, hopping and in some cases, slithering monstrosities, mewling like hungry babies—which was, in effect, exactly what they were.

The combined stench of the horde grew overwhelming as they bore down on her. It snapped Heather out of her stunned paralysis. She flung the lantern at them and pivoted around on her knees, facing the opposite direction. She heard glass breaking and metal clanging as the lantern caromed off the rocks behind her. There was a brief but bright flare, and the creatures screamed. Heather screamed, too. She bounced off the tunnel wall with bruising force and started crawling back the way she’d come. She hurried, heedless of the damage her mad scramble across the stone floor was doing to her palms and knees. The light dimmed and then fizzled. Darkness enveloped the tunnel once again. Heather didn’t care. She knew the way back to the room. There were no branching passageways for her to get lost in. Most importantly, in the darkness, she couldn’t see the pursuing horrors.