Love, Death and Robots. Volumes 2 & 3

“It must be,” Dillman said. “Fuck those guys, if they’re even still alive down there. Whatever got Beaumont can get them. We’ll wait outside the caves and pick off any who come out.”

Coulthard held up a hand, a pale green wave in their night vision goggles. “Chill, everyone. It ain’t as simple as leaving. I’m with you. In any other circumstances I would absolutely call an abort. But whatever took Beaumont, it took him from the back.”

“Which means it’s behind us,” Brown said, realisation like an icy wave through his gut. “Or there’s more than one, ahead and behind.”

“Exactly.”

“Does that mean we should carry on though?” Gladstone asked. “Maybe it’s only gonna get worse.”

“Maybe. Or maybe there’s another way out.” Coulthard picked up Spencer’s tablet, checked the display. “We’ve still got a bunch of sensors, yeah?”

Spencer dropped Beaumont’s tags into a pocket. “Yeah, plenty.”

“Okay. We carry on for another kilometre and see if it leads to any branches in the tunnel, any other way out. If it does, we can maybe go around whatever’s in here. If not, we turn around and risk facing it. Spencer, it’s unlikely but do we have any signal down here?”

The corporal pulled out his gear and spent a moment trying to get a response from Base. Then he went wide band, looking for any transmissions. He found none and no one responded to open hails. “Nothing, Sarge.”

“I didn’t think so. Okay, Brown, you stay in the middle. Me and Spencer will take point. I want Gladstone and Dillman on rear guard, but you two walk backwards. We move slow and you don’t take your eyes off the tunnel behind us. Let’s go.”

They moved slowly on again. Brown felt more than a little useless in the middle of the group, but he knew what Coulthard was doing. Protect the guy with the best chance of helping any wounded. Except it looked like whatever was in these caves didn’t leave any wounded. He heard a gasp from Gladstone and turned to look.

“See that?” Gladstone whispered to Dillman.

“Yeah. There!”

Brown saw it too. He lifted his goggles to see with unfiltered eyes. A movement, more a shift of light across the darkness, like a ripple of wan blue luminescence. He caught part of a smooth, glassy sphere, a glimpse of something globular, but it pressed into the wall and vanished.

The others had stopped to watch. All five of them stared hard, but the tunnel was black as death, and still.

“Keep moving,” Coulthard said.

Brown walked backwards as well, eyes trying to scan every inch of the tunnel behind them.

“There!” Gladstone said sharply.

He’d seen it too. A glassy flex of movement on the ceiling about thirty metres back. Closer than before. Almost as if a giant water droplet had begun to swell and hang, only to be quickly sucked back up.

“It’s fucking following us,” Dillman hissed and snapped on his helmet light again.

“But what is it?” Spencer demanded. “Is it even alive? Doc?”

Brown jumped as he was directly addressed. “I’m no expert here,” he said. “Whatever it is…”

His words were drowned out by Gladstone’s screams and Dillman’s shouts of fright as the torchlight reflected back off a huge slithering mass across the ceiling right above them. It ran and undulated like an upside-down river across the rock then expanded, long and pendulous, extruding from the tunnel roof like a clear jelly waterfall. The huge, gelatinous blob unfurled itself and dropped.

Dillman leapt to one side, the deafening bark and muzzle flash of his weapon filling the tunnel as Gladstone tried to run backwards but skidded and fell. He knocked Brown back, who dropped onto his rump in surprise and scrambled away, scrabbling for his weapon as Coulthard and Spencer aimed theirs above his head and let rip.

Gladstone’s screams were bloodcurdling as the thing landed across his legs. Brown tried to see through the bursts of muzzle fire and caught staccato images like through a strobe light. Gladstone’s legs, clothing and flesh alike, melted away inside the transparent blob in an instant, leaving only bones. He tried to batter it off with his hands only to raise fleshless, stark white fingerbones in horror that fell and scattered across his lap. The meat of his arms was gone to his elbows in a second. Tenticular appendages lashed forward from the globular mass and retracted like a frantic sea anemone as it filled the tunnel with its bulk. Hails of bullets from Dillman, Spencer and Coulthard slapped and sputtered into the thing with little effect. It seemed to flinch and flex away from the bullets, then surge forward again, relentless. Only Dillman’s torch beam seemed to really hold it up. Gladstone’s screams cut abruptly short as it reached his torso and then Brown was up and running.