Dove: A Zombie Tale (Byron: A Zombie Tale Book 2) (18 page)

He swung his light around, stopping for brief moments in specific locations. Each stop on his light show revealed a hand, or arm, or face of another Goner or person. He swept the beam along the inside of the walls, following its gentle curve toward the ceiling where a gaping hole hovered above us. “I think we are in this thing’s stomach.”

I blinked at him, his words not quite registering in my head. “What did you just say? I mean, did I hear you right?”

“Yep! You heard me. I said that I think we are in the creature’s stomach. These are all Goners in the process of digestion. You and I both have acid burns all over us, and it smells like a dead buffalo’s colon.”

I nudged him with my elbow. “How do you know what a buffalo—”

He shot me a glare—not the time or place for snark. Message received, bucko!

A moan caught my attention off to the far left and I nudged Sammy again, pointing. “What’s over there?”

The beam danced across the floor and came to rest on the figure of a man half-trapped in the gelatinous floor. His hands were stuck below the floor surface. He lifted his face toward us.

“Jake!” I shouted and trudged over to him, finding that my feet had sunk into the floor a little. We reached him about the same time. I started clearing the digestive goo from him while Sammy dragged him up and out of the mire.

“What the hell is this?” he screamed, fear blooming in his voice. “Where are we? What happened?”

“I think that thing ate us,” Sammy retorted in a matter-of-fact tone.

“How did we not get shredded up by those damn teeth?”

Sammy and I passed glances to each other and shrugged. “I don’t know,” I replied. “Maybe he had too many tentacles out reaching around that he didn’t want to grind himself up.”

“It just seems strange. I mean, don’t you chew your food?” He had a slight chuckle in his voice, finding a little humor in the situation.

It took both me and Sammy to pull Jake up out of the digestive goo. He finished brushing himself off and took in the surroundings. “How in the hell do we get out of here?”

“Good question,” Sammy responded. “We were just trying to figure that out ourselves. You don’t know any way to make an ancient alien creature gag, do you?”

I gave him a hard stare.

“Hey, just a thought, you know. I haven’t heard you come up with any great ideas, yet.”

“Let me think,” I retorted as I pondered our predicament. “Just let me think.”

“Hello?” Another voice called from deeper in the beast’s stomach. We all spun, Sammy’s flashlight fighting to pierce the darkness.

~ ~ ~

I fell about fifteen feet to the ground below. All things considered, not that fantastic of a drop. But given the utter and complete darkness enveloping me, I wondered if I had made the right choice in blindly leaping after some strange being.

“I can’t see anything,” I whispered to my Symbiots.

My eyes adjusted.
There is some bio-luminescence in this cavern. We are making your eyes more sensitive to it. You should be able to see soon.

And see, I did. None of the subway or automotive tunnels I had traveled through in my life, or my tour of Crystal Cave Park near Kutztown, Pennsylvania could prepare me for this tunnel. Glass-like walls lined the perfectly round tube as if the tunnel had been melted or burned through the rock.

I stood in the middle of the several-hundred foot wide rock tube and stared in awe. Behind me, it arrived with a sudden drop. Ahead, it stretched straight for a short distance, then turned a sharp angle away.

“What could make this?” I asked.

“I have no idea,” called a voice to my right. I turned to see Evan standing in the opening to the prison’s underground corridor. “But I don’t want to wait around long enough to find out.”

“Evan, if you want to go rescue your parents, then we need to get our friends back and start heading to Ohio.”

“I know.” He swept a flashlight around the darkness.

Its light exploded in my eyes and I dropped to my knees, my head pierced by the blades of light. “Dammit! Turn that thing off!” I covered my face with my hands, but the beam’s light still penetrated between my fingers.

“What? Turn what off?”

Another voice came over his shoulder. John. “Your flashlight, dummy! His thingies probably adjusted his eyesight to see in the dark.”

“Oh.” The beam flicked off. “Then how are we supposed to see? We’re not super-vampire-mutant zombie things like him.”

“Just don’t shine it in my eyes, dweeb!” I shouted at him. “Keep the light at my back and we’ll be fine”

We can adjust your sight to accommodate the flashlight.

One by one, John, Evan, and Esmerelda climbed down the rubble and debris from the collapsed wall and into the tunnel. Evan switched the light back on, and I advanced a few paces to keep out of its beam.

“So what do you make of this place, Evan?” I tried to put the perturbation at his folly with the light from my mind.

“I’ve read about places like this.”

“Really?” Esmerelda’s inquired.

“Yeah. But only in fiction. This is like something straight out of the stories of Howard Phillip Lovecraft.”

“Who?” John and Esmerelda spoke in unison.

“H.P. Lovecraft, the famous early twentieth century horror writer?”

“Never heard of him.”

Evan stopped in his tracks. “You’ve never heard of the Necronomicon? Of Cthulhu? The Great Old Ones? The Watchers from Beyond? At the Mountains of Madness?”

The both gave him blank stares. John clapped Evan on the shoulder. “Sorry dude, I’m not a complete dork. Just a good student.”

Esmerelda chuckled. “I don’t have time to read that garbage.”

“Garbage? Lovecraft’s fiction has inspired thousands of horror writers. Some of the best writers today have followed in his footsteps and have taken up the mantle of the Cthulhu mythology he created.”

“Sorry,” she responded. “No dice. Maybe if we survive this, I’ll take a look at one of his books or something. But right now I’d rather figure out how the hell we’re getting out of here and save my niece and John’s father than argue the literary merits of some dead writer.”

“On that note,” I cut in before anyone else could continue, “you were saying about this reminding you of something from Lovecraft’s fiction?”

“Well that’s just the thing. Lovecraft had a style of writing where he seemed convinced that he himself had seen and read the Necronomicon, this book that explains the mythology he created. People have hotly debated this aspect of his fiction. But in those debates, people keep pointing to some of the creatures mentioned in his stories and suggesting that they may actually have existed and fed Lovecraft the stories he wrote, making him their troubadour. Of course, the ones who proffered those theories were always laughed at as nut jobs and whackos.”

I scanned the absurdity of the tunnel around me, marveling at its perfection. “Given the current circumstances, I would be willing to hear more of what these nut jobs had to say.”

“Exactly,” Evan responded. “The basic gist of what these people suggested is that Lovecraft somehow learned about a pantheon of demonic demi-gods who exist in a parallel dimension and are always seeking a way to enter ours and take it over. More contemporary writers, like Brian Lumley, with his Titus Crow series and the Hero of Dreams stories, have worked this pan-dimensional angle and even hinted at the mathematics and science behind travel between the dimensions. In his fiction, people have the ability to cross that boundary within themselves through the subconscious mind—as an extension of some cosmic collective unconscious. Further, the diary of an early twentieth century antiquarian named F.J. Whitcomb was recently published under the title
The Search for Charles Abbott Hart
. In it Whitcomb described a world outside his own where humans had evolved into some grotesque perversion of anthropomorphic forms. They captured genetically pure humans and experimented on them, then ate them.”

“So what does that have to do with what we’re looking at, Evan?” I needed to reign him in and get him back on track.

“One of the creatures mentioned in these stories resembles the thing that dug this tunnel.”

“And?”

“And if those stories are accurate, in any sense of rationality, it has its own minions and this isn’t even the worst of what’s out there.”

“So what you’re saying is that you think this is one of those inter-dimensional demonic demi-gods.”

“Not precisely.” His voice shook and he wrung his hands. “What I’m saying is that this thing is an inter-dimensional demi-god’s cute little puppy!”

~ ~ ~

The flashlight beam illuminated only so far down into the creature’s cavernous stomach.

“Hey!” Sammy called. “Who’s down there? Show yourself!”

“You with the police? Did Alan send you guys?” A man walked with cautious footsteps, his hands held up in surrender in front of him. “I’ve been waiting for a couple days for a rescue team. Are you them?”

Sammy kept the light shining at the man. He wore jeans, work boots, a grimy t-shirt, and a long-sleeved safety vest. He ducked his head to one side, sliding his hand up to block the light from his eyes.

“Who are you?” Sammy demanded.

“My name’s Roger.”

I took a few steps forward, crossing in front of the flashlight’s beam.

“Dove, don’t!” Sammy reached for my arm, but I shrugged away. Jake stepped forward and stood at my right shoulder. The flashlight danced behind us as Sammy worked his way to my left shoulder.

“Who are you people?” Roger’s voice took on a distinct tone of annoyance.

“I’m Dove, this is Jake, and this is Sammy. What are you doing in here, Roger?”

“I might ask you the same thing, Dove. If that’s really your name. What are you doing on SEPTA property?”

Sammy broke into one of his awkward guffaws. “You think you’re on a SEPTA line?”

“Hey, I work for track maintenance. What are you guys doing down here in the tunnels?” Perturbations rose in Roger’s voice. “This area is for authorized personnel only.”

Sammy snorted. Roger shifted, lowering his hands to his sides and balling his fists. “Don’t laugh at me.”

“Where do you think you are, Roger?” I tried to keep my voice as level and easy as I could.

“I’m on the Market-Frankford Line. Where do you think you are?” He pinched his brow tight and grimaced.

“You’re not on Market-Frankford, Roger. You’re in the stomach of some creature.”

It took a moment, but then Roger started laughing. “You’re pulling my leg, right? I mean who the hell comes up with a story that stupid?” He snorted and covered his mouth, laughing harder. “You guys really had me going there for a minute. You’re here to get me out, right?”

We three stood there, staring at him. Impassive. Stoic. None so much as flinched. His laughter ebbed. Slowed. Stopped. He searched our faces, one after another, for any sign that we joked with him. The color washed from his face. “You’re not joking, are you?”

“No,” Jake spoke first. “We’re not joking. Haven’t you noticed anything strange?”

“You mean other than the fact that the tunnel collapsed to the east about three days back and when I woke up all my coworkers were gone?”

“So you don’t know anything about what’s happening in the world right now, do you?”

“No. I lost radio reception when the tunnel fell. It died yesterday. My cell phone hasn’t had any reception down here, either.”

“Well, Roger. I don’t think you were in a tunnel collapse. I think you were swallowed alive. You’re inside a monster’s stomach. Did you notice anything strange before that? Before the tunnel collapse?”

“Nothing beyond the ordinary. Maybe a few more weirdos than usual wandering down on the tracks. But that’s about it. Why? What’s going on?” His voice gave a slight tremble.

“It seems the zombie apocalypse is upon us, Roger,” I called out. “For days the streets have been filled with the teeming dead. Like you, I only noticed it today. But these guys have been knee-deep in it for over a week.”

“Zombie? What?” His voice rose several octaves. “That’s ridiculous. Now I know you’re messing with me. You almost had me fooled.”

“It ain’t no joke!” Sammy shouted. “There’s Goners everywhere. Up there, out there, in here. Look under your feet.” He shined the beam at the gelatinous goo at Roger’s feet. A cadaverous face stared up at him, it eyes still rolling back and forth. “The dead are walking and you are in the gullet of some other-worldly being that makes Godzilla look like a play toy. I don’t know how the hell we survived, but here we all are. Now you can either accept that fact and help us try to figure out a way out of here, or you can go climb your way down this thing’s colon and wait until it digests you and poops you out.”

Roger stared at the face beneath him. “That’s Alan. What the hell happened to him?”

“Well that should answer your question, too then. Alan didn’t send us, because Alan is a damn zombie!” Sammy sniped.

“Hey, Sam. Take it easy on the guy, huh?” Jake snapped. “This ain’t been an easy day for anyone.”