I’m about to push up from the floor and make for the door when I hear it; over the sickening slapping, skittering noises above, a scream splits the air.
I throw a wild glare around the room, keeping myself low enough to avoid the growing, swelling dark cloud above (and whatever the fuck is inside that cloud). My gaze passes over the knocked-out Spike, who is being shaken awake by Paul, before it lands on the man screaming.
It’s Jamie—one of the weeds working on the bomb.
Something …
Some…thing has uncoiled from the black cloud and wrapped around his scrawny bicep. It … it looks like some sort of black, razored tentacle dripping with a clear slime.
Flashes of the film Alien invades my mind and I instantly recoil.
The razored edge of the tentacle pierces into Jamie’s arm deep enough that a pool of blood is swelling on the floor, and each time he jerks against it, his scream twists with searing agony.
He’s lost it, now. He’s writhing, kicking, screaming out for help. It’s Harry who jolts up first, and he grabs his looted samurai sword as he rises up.
Winks of the silver blade catch in the light before he brings down the sword and cuts the tentacle from the cloud. A strangled hiss shudders through the cloud. And it writhes as though its alive.
It’s all I need to hear and see before I’m shoving to my feet. I barge into the kitchen door, crouched low to avoid the fog, and fumble with the door handle.
By the time I’ve wrestled the door open, a crowd of us has gathered, and we’re all scrambling out of there.
I don’t know who’s behind me. I just bolt through the flat, my boots smacking on carpet, and I barrel into the hallway. Rushed footsteps follow me all the way down to the main floor, but I pause before I head for the front door—the same door that leads out onto the street, where those tentacle things came from.
A sweaty hand snatches up my wrist. I swing a glare over my shoulder and I see Spike. He looks as pale as the whites of his eyes, the terror of what just happened betrayed in the tremor clinging to him.
“Back,” he manages to wheeze.
Paul rushes up behind him—he must have stuck around in the kitchen, waiting for everyone to get out before he fled. His breathing is hard and rough when he says, “There’s a back exit. This way—”
He turns and runs through the lobby to a narrow metal door. The group regathers for a moment before we all rush after Paul. I don’t get a second to look at the faces around me, to see who made it, or if Jamie was killed by whatever that thing was.
The front door to the complex is blasted open.
In a heartbeat, the skittering and slapping sound of those tentacle critters invades the space, and we’re all racing through the backdoor to safety.
The sound of the backdoor slamming shut vibrates through the narrow corridor we pile into, but I don’t pay it any mind—I spear through the hall, sticking close to the heels of Laura in front of me. Her brown hair whips back, smacking me across the face, when she does a double take.
I take the opportunity and barrel around her. Now, I’m caught up to Paul—and just in time.
The critters have reached us. The backdoor rattles just as Paul shoulders the last of the doors, the one leading out into the lane behind the complex. It caves in on the last hit, and we go piling out into the dark.
Instinctively, I snatch onto the hem of Paul’s t-shirt. Someone grabs onto the back of my dress, and it’s a domino effect. Those of us who survived to make it out to the lane are grabbing onto each other, single-file, and we take off running blind.
I can only assume Paul is doing the same as me—free arm spread out, feeling for any walls we might slam into. But we make good work of sticking to the middle of the lane. We don’t slow down as we follow the curve onto another road, then cut back to the start of the village.
No one dares turn on a torch. Last time we did, those critters came crashing through the flat window, and did god-knows-what to Jamie.
Jamie. I wonder if he’s still alive. I wonder if Harry grabbed the bomb they were working on before he got the hell out of there. Or is he lost behind in the flat with those critters from the pits of the darkness?
No time to waste on thoughts of others. The skittering sound, clicking and clacking, is at our heels, gaining closer.
My outstretched hand smacks into something solid and I suck in a sharp breath. My heart skips a beat as I recoil.
Paul felt it, too. He stops suddenly and, one-by-one, we all smack into each other. I get the worst of it, my forehead cracking right off the back of Paul’s skull.
Wincing, I fight the instinct to touch the sudden ache springing on my head, and feel out my free hand through the darkness. Each clacking sound grows louder with the picked-up pace of my thrumming heart.
It’s a car, I realise.
Paul confirms this when he shouts, his booming voice breaking the suffocating darkness, “Take cover!”
So we do.
I might be the first to move or the last. In the dark, it’s impossible to tell. All I know for sure is something happens to my hearing—I can listen only to a high-pitched ringing sound, not the scramble of people—as I drop to the cobblestone, then roll myself under the abandoned car.
The skittering passes overhead.
The clacking and slapping skulks right by me, so close that I have to press my sweaty palms to my face to stifle my breath. One noise too loud and I could be a goner.
I just shut my eyes on the gloom, listen to the ringing in my ears, the critters sweeping past me, and feel the pulse of my blood swelling throughout my body.
Curling my body up into a ball, I squeeze my eyes shut tighter and slowly, start to hear the others over the ringing. A scream that sounds so far away that it could belong to a street on the other side of the village; a struggle, boots and hands smacking against the ground, a hard grunt. Then … silence.
Critters got one of us.
I don’t know who. I don’t care, as long as it isn’t me.
*
A part of me distantly wonders if it’s better to be killed by the dark fae than these strange new critters, born of darkness.
Time passes, and we stay hidden all over the street. Not all of us could fit under the abandoned cars. I can only picture some of the group tucked up in doorways, hands over heads and sprawled out over the road, maybe some ran off.
But finally, the critters leave, taking their sickening sounds with them. They roll off into the distance, in search of new victims.
Fleetingly, I let myself ask, ‘Did the dark fae bring these things into this world to finish us off—the surviving stragglers?’
Not that it matters. If Harry survived and grabbed the bomb, we’re all dead soon anyway. And if he didn’t, it won’t be much longer before we die. It’s an unescapable fate that awaits us all. For me, I would just rather it be on my own terms. And deep down I hope I won’t coward out at the last minute.
We wait a while of silence before the first of us moves. It isn’t Paul, who’s tucked up at my feet. It’s someone across the street, if my hearing can be trusted—and it’s a pretty well-honed skill after so long in the dark without sight.
It only takes one of us to start moving before we’re all creeping out of our hiding spots. The sounds of boots and sneakers scrape over cobblestone, and I’m very aware of how quiet the noise is compared to usual. We have definitely lost some more people.