Those Who Went Remain There Still (16 page)

XV

The Dead and the Damned

Meshack scrambled to catch up with us. He was alone.

“Carlson?” I asked.

“Dead,” he answered.

Behind and below us, I heard the most terrible wet snapping noises, and the sound of thick things being torn. I heard the clatter
of beaked jaws clicking together. I didn’t ask anymore about Carlson.

Instead, I asked, “How many of those
things
did you see?”

He said, “Three for sure. Three at least, including the one we hurt. Probably more.”

“We didn’t kill it?” I said “we” as if I’d had anything to do with it. Among them, I was the only man unarmed, and I knew that I was the least helpful from a defensive standpoint.

“Doubt it,” he replied. “But it might not follow us anymore. You said Titus was dead.” It wasn’t a question this time.

“He’s dead,” I confirmed. “He was the first one we lost.”

“And now Carlson. So it’s the four of us, then. Two Manders, and two Coys.”

I shook my head. “No, not divided that way. There’s four of us, that’s all. No us-and-them down here.”

“Easy for us to say. You convince
them
we’re all together, and maybe I’ll reconsider my math.”

I slipped, and grabbed at a pointed bit of stone out of reflex—trying to steady myself; but I took it with my injured hand, and the pain was absolutely blinding. In my other fist I held another man’s lantern. Was it Carlson’s? I couldn’t recall. I remembered picking it up, but nothing else about how I’d come to hold it. It was running low on oil, either from being sloshed or simply from being burned.

“Meshack, how many candles do you have?”

“Some,” he said, which was a less precise answer than I would have preferred. “Hey Manders!” he called ahead. “Y’all still got some candles, too? Or more oil?”

The huffing, puffing, and panting up ahead slowed and Nicodemus said over his shoulder, “You running low?”

“Naw, just asking.”

“Gentlemen,” I begged. “
Quiet
.”

“Like they don’t know where we’re at,” Jacob complained.

He was right, of course. They were swarming up behind us, the three monsters or however many. They’d been distracted by Carlson’s body but it wouldn’t hold them long.

We caught up to the Manders, who were slowing down from exhaustion—while we were moving faster because we’d been bringing up the rear, and we had the things on our heels.

“Where are we going now?” Nicodemus asked. “Where are we trying to get to?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“You’re the one who pushed us this way!”

“I know!”

“But you don’t know what to do? Then why’d you make such a fuss? You ain’t never been here before neither,” Jacob fumed.

The way widened, and Meshack and I moved side-by-side, up to overtake the Manders. “Because,” I told Jacob when I was right beside his face. “We can’t keep going down. We can’t let them bury
us here. We’re going to have to outthink these things, or they’re going to pick us off one at a time, until there’s no one left to shoot or shout!”

“What happens if we get stuck? Up don’t mean out,” Jacob argued. “We can get ourselves penned up against the ceiling just as easy as the basement floor.”

“You’re right,” I said. “But…I had a feeling.”

“A feeling?”

“Yes.” I also had a vision, but I couldn’t tell him that part. It wasn’t a vision like a dream, like a prophet’s guide or mystical knowledge. It was a vision of a man in a buckskin suit; and he was holding an axe over his shoulder and holding up his arm, as if to block that downward way.

If the spirit was Daniel Boone—and I was choosing to believe as much—then I had to assume he meant us no harm.

“Boone didn’t die in these caves,” I breathed. I hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

Meshack asked, “What?”

“I was only thinking aloud. Boone didn’t die in these caves. He died an old man in his bed. He made it past this cave. We can make it out.” That’s what I said, but it was thinking on my feet. What I meant was,
Boone didn’t die here—but he’s come back. He knows what’s down here, and maybe he knows how to beat it.

Boone hadn’t wanted us to keep going down. He was trying to send us up.

If Meshack knew I was lying, he kept that information to himself.

Our passage narrowed again, immediately and harshly. On the other side of the tight spot there was another opening, and another set of forked paths. I counted four. Jacob pointed out a smaller route down in the floor that seemed to lead back too, so that made five alternatives, none of which looked better than the rest.

“Oh spirits,” I said, trying to make it sound like a curse—but it was actually a prayer.

My devotion and desperation must have shined through the short exclamation, because Jacob was unconvinced. “Don’t you start none of that funny shit,” he commanded.

“I’m only asking for help. At the moment, I think you’d agree, we could use any assistance we can summon.”

“Then pray to Jesus or something!” he threw his hands up, and the glow of his lantern kicked and wobbled. He was running low on oil, too. We were going to need those candles.

“You first,” I mumbled. I was scanning the narrow, dark premises, seeking some hint of divine intervention that was more easily interpreted than a burning bush or heavenly dove.

“Maybe we ought to,” his son said slowly. “Maybe we ought to close our eyes and try it.”

“Go on then, cast your own little spells and pretend they’re something else, if that’s how you want to handle this,” I said, and I did my best to keep the contempt out of my words, but I’m sure that I failed at least in part. “Do whatever you want, but for the love of whoever you worship,
don’t close your eyes
.”

Meshack was surprisingly silent during our small argument. He was watching it, and watching the walls, and watching the way behind us.

Finally he said, “They’re still coming.”

“And we’re still sitting here!” Nicodemus all but shouted. He blinked frantically back and forth between the options and then said, “Maybe we should split up? Go different directions? They can’t chase us all down, can they?”

Meshack said, “They can if there’s more of them than there are of us.”

“You think there are?” Nicodemus squeaked.

“I’m pretty sure of it, now that you ask.” He looked up at the stone curtains above and around us, and he frowned back at the way we’d come. “We can’t just keep running like this.”

Jacob glanced unhappily down at his lantern with its dwindling light. “What would you recommend then, farmer boy?”

“It’s like my uncle’s been saying, we’ve got to get up and get out. Or, if that don’t work, we’re going to have to find a place to hole up and hold them off.”

“How many bullets you think we brought?” Nicodemus asked, as if he couldn’t believe anyone would be dumb enough to suggest a stand-off.

Meshack didn’t pay any attention to the young man’s tone. “Between what we’ve got left and the pickaxes, we might can hold them long enough to figure something out. I’m not talking about making a stand—I mean we need to buy ourselves some time.” He turned to me, then. And there was a look on his face that was almost desperate. “You’re sure Titus is dead?” he asked.

“Yes,” I swore. “I’m sorry. I know you were friends, but he’s gone. I saw it happen.”

“You saw it happen,” he repeated. He wasn’t questioning me; he was tasting the words and finding them bitter.

A louder clamor and rustle popped and echoed up behind us. “Meshack, gentlemen,” I insisted. “We
must
do something!”

“Maybe we should go back,” Meshack said. “Go back to that little bottleneck there, and hold it like a fortress.”

I thought it was more likely he wanted to go back in case Titus had somehow fought his way through, but I didn’t interrupt him about it. I understood that he hadn’t seen it happen, so he couldn’t have known it the way I knew it.

There wasn’t any time to take such a course. The creatures were rising up, swarming their way through the bottleneck; we heard something stone and slippery crack and break, and we heard frenetic, scuttling claws climbing fast behind us.

“Which way?” Nicodemus demanded, and I didn’t know what to tell him.

“That way,” Meshack said quickly. There was no reason to argue. No one had any better ideas, so I clamored up the way he indicated. It was farther up and not down, so I approved. But Jacob’s earlier objection was rambling through my mind, and I thought that it would be a horrible way to drown—pinned against the ceiling by a rising tide of monstrous great bodies.

There was no right thing to do.

There was no right choice.

So I followed Meshack’s directions, and as I watched my lantern flame flicker and threaten to gutter, I stole a quick peek back at the source.

Meshack was bringing up the rear this time. He was charging towards me, his own lantern jerking back and forth as he pumped his legs as fast as they’d come up the broken and unpredictable
terrain. “Go!” he shouted at me, and I tried, but I was transfixed by the action at the bottleneck.

In the few seconds between Meshack’s warning and his rough collision that carried me back, and up, and away from the scene…
I saw Boone once more.

***

He was there. He hadn’t left us to die harried and lost in the darkness. The spirit was standing with the shadow of a great, glistening-sharp axe in his hands. His legs were spread, feet planted apart so the apparition of his body blocked the opening—and he waved that axe and I swear, the beasts were hesitating. They crawled over one another to back away from him, and to keep from touching him.

His ectoplasmic axe glistened a sharp and forbidding warning. He whipped it over his head, and back and forth, and down low, and high.

They could see him
.

And he cut his passage with the blade, and they did not push at him—even though they could have surely leaped right through him.

***

“They can see him!” I gasped as Meshack barreled into me. The young farmer clapped one of his long arms around my chest and lurched us both through the next passageway. I didn’t struggle against him; I was only so shocked and bewildered by the sight of it.

I knew that beasts might see a spirit more easily than mankind, but I couldn’t shake the impression that they didn’t only see him, they
recognized
him.

It was a silly thing to think; it was a preposterous detail to assume, but I did—and as Meshack half shoved, half led me away, I silently prayed a universal thanks for the assistance, because it had come to us exactly as I asked. Then, realizing that I was squandering the lead we were being offered, I turned around in Meshack’s prodding grasp and began to run alongside him.

We hadn’t gone more than a few yards when a scream up ahead announced more trouble.

There was nowhere for us to go—and we’d built up enough speed that we couldn’t help but run headlong into it.

It was another one of the hideous bird-like monsters—so we had not three, not four, but at least five of them to contend with—and it had Nicodemus locked underneath one of its massive talons.

He rolled and twitched, and he swung his lantern up against the creature’s leg. It broke, and it caught—just like it had in that first chamber, back at the beginning. This one screamed too, another awful shriek that shook the pretty stone pillars and peaks in the ceiling above us. It spun around, flapping its massive wings and beating out most of the flame.

But it’d been distracted long enough for Jacob to go in low and grab his son. Meshack joined him, seizing one of the man’s legs and yanking him free of the beast that was stomping, crashing, spinning in the tight space.

The whole room reeked of smoke and burning feathers, and it was hard to see for all the blackened air—and now we were one light less than before.

It almost gave me a panic to think of it—yes, a worse panic than the flailing creature with the snapping beak that chomped at the air with a force that would have broken furniture. We were in a new chamber now, a smaller chamber that couldn’t have held even one more body for all the cramped space. Nicodemus was hurt, but for the moment he was more frightened than injured and he hustled up and over a short ledge with his father’s help.

Nicodemus had dropped his gun. It was lying on the ground, half aimed up from a crack where it had settled.

Meshack had his rifle drawn, but when he jerked the trigger something jammed and the long, loud machine didn’t fire.

I was almost relieved. I was beginning to fear for the integrity of our space. One more terrible noise and the whole place might come crashing down, and then wouldn’t we be buried!

But the beast’s neck stretched, faster and harder than any rubber band and it clamped that scissor-blade beak down on Meshack’s rifle. I was astonished when the metal barrel didn’t snip clean away, but it only bent sharply with the shape of the thing’s boney mouth. Meshack held the butt end of the gun and tried to wrestle it away but the bird-beast wasn’t finished with him yet. It kicked up an enormous foot, and my lamplight glittered against the enormous claws that tipped the end of each long toe.

Meshack almost folded himself in half as he ducked away. The claw sliced him, but barely, and cleanly, and across the torso.
The scratch went from his collarbone to his lower left rib and it went red within the blink of a moment.

It could’ve been worse, I frantically assured myself. It could’ve been so much worse! Mere inches lower and deeper, and he’d be holding his own entrails. But it was a fleeting thought, and I gave it no time to take hold or inspire any comfort.

Meshack staggered back against the short ledge that the Manders had scaled as they fled. I could hear them, kicking and fighting against the very rock itself as they strained to haul themselves up, or back, or down, or however the corridor kinked and ran beyond the spot where we could see it.

And there was Nicodemus’s gun on the ground.

I had never fired a gun in my life. No, not even when I was young and I lived in the valley. I’ve always been terrified of them. The noise, the power, the devastation—but there was my nephew, and he had just assisted in the rescue of another man…a man who had then deserted us both.