Chapter 13: Lost in the Dark
The ground was slick under foot, Paulie’s hands and knees slipped through slime and splashed through layers of congealed muck in that dark stinking tunnel. He could hear the sounds of distant cracks. Shots still landing all around the space they had been before crawling into this dank and rotting hell.
From just up ahead he thought he heard a muttered curse. The swear echoing through the space around him over and over till it was overcome by others. It was dark. Far too dark for him to even see his hand had he held it directly in front of his face. He kept crawling though till his head smacked into something soft directly in his path.
“Hey! Watch where you are going!” Jakiikii hissed, he realised he had smacked right into her butt in the dark and grinned.
“Well if you were not taking up the whole damn tunnel maybe I would not have to.” He chuckled slightly. He could feel a cold sweat breaking out on his skin though, the dark.. the closeness..
He coughed, his breathing growing quicker now that the immediate threat of death had passed. Last time he had been locked up like this..
Paulie saw a face in front of him. It was Jakiikii, he could see her. Immediately he felt the soft and comforting mental embrace of the alien woman around his mind like a warm hug. He smiled, then looked down to see what was making the light. It was her commie, the wrist worn device was glowing brightly in the otherwise pitch blackness of the underground hole.
He pointed at it, “Hey, since when did these things have a flashlight?”
She shook her head. “Since forever. Come on, turn yours on. It is in the settings menu under the utilities option.” And she turned back around, her lithe body and six arms making the maneuver possible where Paulie might not have been capable of replicating the same action. He lifted his device and then wiped off his other hand as best he could, gagging slightly from the stink of the surroundings once more. Once they were out of here he was going to have to take a napalm shower to get the stink out.
He found the aforementioned setting quickly though and activated it just as the darkness began to return, that snake old sickness creeping along the edges of his mind. Even as it was once more thrown back he thought he could feel dark tendrils like wispy fingers in his mind trying to pull the blanket of fear back over his mind. He shook his head and threw them off. Sighing heavily as the small device lit his surroundings in a sudden stark white light. He took a calming breath. That was better, now all they had to do was find a way to get out of here.
He started crawling again and soon came to a T-junction. He stopped, looking both ways at once before shaking his head slightly. Both were dark, Jakiikii had gotten ahead of him a little sure. But had she gotten that far ahead?
He reached up to scratch his head before stopping and thinking better of it, replacing his filthy hand back on the damp, muck covered floor with a wince of pain. He whispered as loud as he dared, “Jakiikii? Jakiikii, where are you?”
No response. The cold sweat started to return, he was alone. Alone and utterly at the end of his tether. He was hurting, his bones ached and his side was stabbing him with pain every breath. What was he supposed to do? Maybe he could call her on his assistant.
He lifted the device to his lips. “Call.. Jakiikii” He spoke softly.
It just chimed at him and he groaned as a ‘no signal’ warning appeared on the screen.
“Freaking stupid-ass weak sauce shit-ass alien techno bullshit.” He cursed colorfully, one hand smacking the ground in frustration which only served to splatter the foul smelling substance that coated every surface into his face and mouth.
He spluttered, spitting and hacking for a few seconds as he heard a noise from up ahead. He pointed the light in the direction of the sound and thought he saw something in the distance move, but he squinted again and saw nothing. Maybe it was just his fears manifesting as visual hallucinations?
There was another noise, this time from the other side and he whirled. From the darkness bright circles reflected the light back at him. Eyes!
“Geeze, are you trying to blind me Paulie?” Jakiikii complained as she swiveled her eyes around, pressing the petal-like eyestalks tight against her skull as he pointed the light back towards the floor.
He muttered, “Sorry. I thought I saw something.”
She shook her head, “You did see something, me.” He nodded, completely serious. “Come on, you big gobgrey.” She seemed to snort as he started to follow her. He realised her light was off, probably why she had been so hard to spot until the last moment.
Paulie nodded to himself as he crawled on after her. He had seen something though, hadn’t he? He glanced over his shoulder into the gloom and shivered. If there was something else down here with them then it was keeping its distance. He thought about the duigong that had slipped away first. Maybe it was just them.
They continued moving for a while before coming to another junction, this one a four-way. Jakiikii seemed to look both ways before shaking her head sadly. “I have no idea where we are right now.” She grumbled. Her husky tenor vibrating off the close walls and making his ears buzz for a moment.
He scooted as close as he could without indecently invading her space and asked, “Maybe if we keep going left we will end up at an exit?” She shook her head. “Why not? I read about solving mazes once.”
She turned a few eyes one-hundred-and-eighty degrees to look at him without moving her head. “Sure, and in normal circumstances that would work. But the issue is that we are not in a maze but an interconnected grid-like sublevel. If we only take left turns we will loop in an endless circle. So we need to avoid the entrance we came in, and simultaneously find another one somewhere far enough away to be safe. Right?”
He grinned, then frowned. “What?” He thought it over, but as he was hurting he found himself getting distracted more and more. He was tired, it was getting hard to focus.
He jerked, something was gripping his face. Two cold hands smeared with gutterslime. Jakiikii’s face pressed against his, her eyes staring into his own from only centimeters away.
“Paulie, stay awake. Oh zalc, please don’t pass out. I can’t drag you out of here alone.”
Paulie nodded groggily. His face was cold, but his shirt was warm. Warm and sticky.
He chuckled, she was being so silly. She was cute when she was silly. He told her so, one hand of his own reaching up to touch her shoulder.
She slapped him, not hard but hard enough to shock him. A spike of adrenaline surged and he shook his head, suddenly annoyed.
“Hey! What was that for?”
She looked concerned, panicked even. “Paulie. Listen to me, Paulie.. you big beautiful dummy. I need you to stay alert okay? Please, stay with me, we can get out of here.” She pleaded with him.
Why was she so upset? He was fine, he felt pretty good actually. Warm and fuzzy, light almost. Like he was drifting on a cloud, he smiled at her to show he was okay and nodded. “Y-yeah. I am great, lead the way, girlfriend!” He chuckled at his own extremely clever use of words.
He saw her concern grow as she shook her head. She muttered under her breath but he didn’t hear what she said. He frowned as he thought he heard scuffing noises from behind them again. It was probably just rats, yeah.. just big rats.
Paulie started moving to follow her, he was still smiling. She kept looking back towards him as they moved at a slow yet steady pace through the halls. He was so floaty and soft and light. He was a cloud. He was air itself. He giggled at the thought of it, he wasn’t air. He was feeling incredibly silly though.
“Ohh, oh!” He exclaimed suddenly, making the termaxxi stop and rush back towards him.
“What! What is it, are you okay?!” She asked him, hands going to his shoulders as he grinned widely.
Paulie nodded to himself for a second and then raised a hand as the world started to spin. “I had a funny idea. But then..” He frowned. His hand hurt, he lifted it to look at it closer before his vision darkened and unconsciousness slammed down on him like a physical force.
**********
Paulie was alone. He looked around but saw nothing.
What was going on?
He tried to turn on the light of his wrist device. It must have turned off when he..
‘When he what?’ He wondered to himself silently. What had happened?
He cast his mind back. He fought some alien worm, centipede.. thing. Jakiikii had called it a riiken. That’s right. Then they got chased, and crawled into the dark.
He jerked. ‘Jakiikii!’ he thought as loudly as he could before realising that he had no voice in this realm of darkness. He frowned, why wasn’t the thought troubling to him? Come to think of it, the place seemed at once strange and familiar to him in equal measure.
Paulie drifted around, looking for clues. Looking for answers.
It came to him slowly, as if in a dream. He had passed out, blood loss or fatigue. Either way, the last thing he remembered was Jakiikii’s face. Her look of panic, the look of her fear. Then.. nothing. Emptiness and darkness. He cocked his head. He really did hope that Jakiikii was alright, he wondered if he was dead. Not for the first time. He needed to get back to Jakiikii. She needed him, and he wasn’t going to let a little thing like being dead stand between him and her, if he was dead anyway.
Paulie felt a pang of regret at that. Not fear, not really. He had made his peace with death long ago, in a by-gone time when his soul had been crushed by the overwhelming weight of grief. He had tried to end it all before. He shook his head, best not to dwell on things long buried in the past. He needed to figure out what was going on and get out of here.
Her face appeared unbidden in his mind’s eye and he smiled. Her cute triangular features, those bright eyes so full of character and emotion. He loved her more fiercely than he could describe in words, he would not let anything stand between them.
Not if he had anything to say about it anyway.
Paulie struggled up. Up and up and up through that clinging void that knew no sound. It was like crawling his way through solid rock though, the harder he pushed the more it compressed in front of him and after a few more minutes of floundering her threw out non-corporeal arms in disgust, and glanced down, eyes widening at the sight below.
There was a down. That startled him, below him and impossibly far away he saw some manner of glowing structure. Almost like a castle or bastion, it was hard to make out at this distance. How long had that been there, or was it just another figment of his fraying mind? The structure looked old though, all crumbling walls and collapsed towers.
He shook his head and turned his attention skyward. No, it was of no consequence. A simple apparition born from his own delusion. Nothing more.
He struggled upwards again, not really knowing why. Just that to struggle at something was better than to flounder in nothing. As he did so thoughts of his life passed through his mind. Images of his childhood, shared and hiding from the wrath of uncaring parents. The time he had first known love from another. His Aunt Margaret’s coffee table. That last one made him chuckle. Of all the things to remember, he remembered that battered old thing the most vividly.
For a moment the tension around him eased and he grasped the opportunity to move forwards a bit. Then he was trapped in that dark nothing again.
Another opening!
He clawed his way forward slightly before another cycle overcame him. In this manner he struggled on, over and over until he was panting with the force of his exertions. Then all at once his hands broke through some sort of surface. He had done it, he was free of the morass that had trapped him, if only he could push his head up and through…
**********
Paulie gasped and jerked awake. Visions of darkness and some foreboding structure draining from his memories like water through a perforated steel bucket. He looked around frantically with his eyes, not sure what was happening.
The ceiling above looked like rough concrete. The walls were painted crude white and only a little stained and on the nearer one was a large blue symbol. The same one he had grown accustomed to seeing at the hospital and other medical sites. Comically painted as if to over exaggerate the foundation of this room as some manner of improvised clinic.
He heard a shuffling sound next to him as something waddled into view. It was large, insectoid and with complex wriggling mouthparts like segmented tentacles that twitched and writhed as the five-eyed thing nodded its bone-white head and pronounced in a hissing, clicking tone.
“He will live.”
Now another sound, hooves clopping against a hard surface followed by a loud gasp. All at once he was assaulted by another figure as Jakiikii practically threw herself on his neck.
“Oh Paulie, oh Paulie!” She cried, her body shivering from the strength of her emotion. He could feel her mind pushing against his as if hugging him physically just wasn’t enough.
Paulie tried to reach up and hug her back but found that he lacked the strength to do so, all he could manage was a pitiful twitch at the moment that saw him wincing more than the now dull pain in his hand and side.
She nuzzled her face into his neck as she mumbled, “I wasn’t sure we could get you here. You are so heavy Paulie.”
He frowned a little at her words. “Get me here? Where is here by the way?”
The strangely neat looking duigong stepped into his field of view again, one of their three arms raised as if to gain his attention. “I believe I can help answer that one. You are in my health lab, and you are my patient.”