WebWorld (4.8)

“No, no, no.” Tristan whispered.

“He doesn’t have to be dead.”

His face was wrapped, covered, his whole hanging body was.

Tristan grabbed my knife. He did it so smoothly I didn’t even feel it slide out of my belt. “Stay put” he said, “I’m getting him out of these. Just don’t move.”

“Be careful. It… it attacks, it fights back.”

“Good for it. I’m up for a fight. Just stay where you are. I’ll get him, I’ll come back for you. Okay?”

“Okay.”

But I couldn’t. I could picture what was going to happen. He’d left the machete by my hand in case of self-defence. A pretty forlorn hope. A thoughtful gift. He was getting to like that little gardening sword. I wrapped my fingers around it. Stupid or not, hell or high water and other calamity notwithstanding, I’d decided Tristan might need my help, and if it killed me, I was damn well going to give it to him.

Getting onto my feet was both worse and better than I thought it was going to be. I taught myself a whole new lesson in pain, and the world spun so violently I thought something was happening – out there, not just here in my body. On the other hand, my legs held. They creaked and shrieked agony at me, but they held me up.

Up ahead, Tristan had reached Greg. He was tough, Tristan, I’d got that much figured out. He didn’t waste any time now, he got the point of the knife under the gum-wrappings and tore a hole over Greg’s mouth and nose. He pressed his cheek up against his friend’s face and held his breath, listening for Greg’s. There was a moment when time paused, both of us waiting for Tristan’s senses to catch up with our desperate hopes. He didn’t say anything, he just wrapped his arm around Greg’s waist and started sawing at the strings that had him trapped.

It was what I knew it would be. The chamber reacted to our theft of its dinner. I saw the whole inner surface shudder as if taking a breath, as if being wakened by an intrusion. The gum started inching its fingers back towards Greg’s face, while long ropes began to detach themselves from the walls.

“Hurry up,” I warned Tristan.

He looked around him, “Got it, got it.”

I caught up in a few steps. It was dizzying doing it, but I slashed the nearest of the ropes holding Greg. There wasn’t much strength in my arm, because the blade mostly bounced against the rope, but I slashed again, then again, and I could see it fraying, even as a clear, pinkish sap started well up around the wound.

Oh, no you don’t. It wasn’t going to regenerate on my watch. I wrestled the machete into both hands, and brought it down with overbalancing force. But the rope snapped. I was useful after all. The chamber was pulsing, and cloudy formations of gum were beginning to grow across the floor.

“Did I mention…?”

“Yeah, I got this,” he sawed another knotty binding away.

I staggered at another one, swung the machete, only grazing it, but I knew this thing was mortal. I’d seen it bleed.

Living threads hovered off the walls. One of them struck at Tristan. He was just able to dodge it as it came over his head. It recoiled and struck again, slashing his right cheek.

“Hold it off me, damnit!”

No point in telling him that this was actually my best rendition of that. But I went head-to-head with this thing – albeit it one of us headless, and the other almost legless and seriously off his game. It lashed out at me like a whip, and I felt the burning sensation shoot the full length of my face. I waited for my head to split, and for one full side of it to fall onto the ground in front of my feet. The same tendril retreated for another attack. I followed it. I launched myself towards it, slamming it against the wall. I could feel the wall starting to mould around me, sticky floss flowing and clinging. I tried not to feel that. I held the tendril in place with my shoulder and hacked it until it stopped moving.

Another one hit me on the back of the head. I spun, wrenching myself off the wall, and slashing – missing wildly – at the same time.

Tristan called out: “Come on!”

The words registered, but not the intent. I was supposed to do something.

“I’ve got him, let’s go!”

Right. Yes. I propelled myself forward, almost tripping, but following Tristan out of the opening into the tunnel. I could feel it thinking about closing in and trapping us, I could feel a kind of hunger coming out of it, but not a simple kind, as if something like loneliness were guiding it. But not of a benevolent kind.

Having to support Greg’s weight on his back, and then having to drag it behind him, half carrying, as the ceiling sunk back to not a little less than a metre in height, meant that Tristan could travel about as fast as I could. I wanted to help him with Greg, I wanted to point out to him that he was bleeding, but it was effort enough just to hold onto consciousness and try to think straight.

The tunnel was narrowing, and it felt… awake. It wasn’t still anymore, it rippled with life, and it bulged all over the place.

“It’s hemming us in,” Tristan said, “it’s trapping us.”

“This could go on for miles.”

“Shit. I know.”

“It could be still growing.”

“We’ll have to cut our way out.”

“They’re listening.”

“What?”

“Spiders. Roaming around in here, listening.” I said it with something that rang of authority, though I didn’t know where the idea had come from.

“They don’t speak English.”

“They speak… they…” it was crawling just there at the edge of my mind.

“Suck my dick!” he yelled at them, “Let’s hope you understand that!” He turned back to me, “Look, we could be following this maze for days, we don’t know how wide it spreads. We have to try cutting through the walls.”

I raised my eyes towards the ceiling. “What about up?”

Tristan nodded. He used our fallen bodies as something to brace himself against. I was squished up against Greg, cheek to cheek, and I could feel the heat of his breathing against my skin. It was a small flutter of a breath, but it was there. He was hanging on too. I could smell burnt flesh, which I tried not to think about. “We’re going to do this,” I told him softly, “we’re getting out of here. Trust me.”

Tristan swung the machete at the ceiling, and when he’d grazed it enough, he slid the blade into the cut and sawed at it, grunting, like he was unpicking steel-cable stitches. I hauled myself up by his other arm and started helping, or at least as best I could manage, with the knife. The slit we made fought back. It determinedly closed at itself, its edges coming to life like invisibly small insects, reaching to clutch each other’s hands.

I don’t think so. I thrust my arm up through the gap, fist clenched. The folds of gum closed around me, and they gripped, they squeezed. I could feel numbness start to prickle over my hand; but they couldn’t close properly now. Tristan forced enough of a gap for me to push my upper body through. There was darkness at first, and then – thank God, absolutely thank God – there were stars. A sky. Tristan hooked Greg under one armpit and dragged him out into cold and glorious open air.

We weren’t out of the woods yet. We’d cut our way onto the surface of a huge mound of gum, and it was moving, changing position. Already folds of it were cascading our way. I could feel it starting to clinch around my legs as I knelt. But I could also see what I thought was the edge of this.

“Get up.” Tristan snapped at me. “Get Greg up.”

He was a limp, awkward weight; and my own body wasn’t much better. I spread my legs wide enough to give me balance, and then I half-hauled Greg onto Tristan’s back. I could hear some sort of popping sound, and what sounded like voices. It was a sort of soft, growling, guttural chant. And I could hear a breeze blowing, though the air was actually dead still.

“This way,” Tristan dragged us across the whitened surface. It felt as if it was doing everything it could to trip us up. There was a moment when a bulge of it managed to catch Tristan’s foot and we had hack it away, hoping to avoid the flesh and bone underneath. A hidden tendril looped around Greg’s dragging right arm and I was afraid we might break it trying to hack and stamp the thing off.

For a moment I saw a woman. She wasn’t real. Not even pretending to be. An ephemeral mirage, wavering, long-faced, bluish, slightly whiskered. Somehow still beautiful. Reaching towards me.

Don’t go. Please don’t go. Please don’t go.

Who the fuck are you?

I’m yours… yours-yours-yours. Don’t you remember?

It was a vision that came and went over seconds, but it felt real. It snagged somewhere in my head. I could hear the eight-legged skittering sound of the spiders moving around.

We cleared the gum-structure, jumped half a metre to the concrete below, and hauled Greg the last few metres onto the grass. Not that we were safe. Not that that made us the slightest bit safer. But we stopped there for a moment, catching our breath. Despite our precarious position, Tristan took the time to hook a knife under Greg’s bindings and cut them away from his neck and throat to keep from constricting his breathing. He bent over to check Greg’s breath and heartbeat. He shone his phone-screen over Greg’s face to assess the damage. I saw the extent of it for the first time that moment. There was no doubt that what had happened to me had happened to him. And then some. Bloody puncture marks surrounded his mouth and his lips and jaw were covered in shocking blisters – huge, wet, ugly things, which I realised I must have too, although surely not as bad.

Acid burns. Like stomach acid. My mind – always so much help in these moments – conjured up a memory of some animal that vomited acid into its victim to pre-digest their body before it fed. And it fit. It clicked into place like a jigsaw puzzle. I could see the same thought registering with Tristan. But if our insides were already liquifying, there was sod-all to be done about it now. At least the buggers weren’t going to get to eat what they’d prepared earlier.

Tristan said, “he’s hurt pretty bad, I think. How’s that for a revelation?” He shook his head at himself, he muttered “focus” in a breath I probably wasn’t meant to hear. “But he’s alive. Now all we need to do is get him home.” He looked around the swamped, white carpark. “Now all we need is a mode of transport.”

#

The car we found was on the road just beyond the carpark. It was smallish, but unlocked, and it seemed to start when Tristan managed to rub the right wires together. “No,” he said, “I don’t know how to do that from before all this. That was just trial and error.” He watched the gage as it rose with the engine, stopping at about two-thirds full. “Jackpot,” he murmured - once again, I think, not for my benefit.

We had Greg stretched across the back seat, with me in the well of those seats, my head resting on his shoulder, assisting the seat belt in keeping him fairly still, and watching the rise and fall of his chest for that moment when it stopped happening. The position sent needles of fire through my back, shoulders, and all four limbs. As the car moved, there were moments that brought a sharp whimper from between my lips and a muttered apology from Tristan as he drove on.

The car looked as if it had belonged to a woman. There was as handbag on the passenger seat, and a pink travel bag in the back.

“Let’s hope she doesn’t still need this,” Tristan muttered.

It occurred to me that the most likely way that would be true would be if she was dead or dying, probably tangled up in that same web that’d nearly gotten us. We were graverobbers, I guess. But in this brave new world we’d entered, that was how it went. It was better to be robbing the dead than the living.

#

It was hard to be sure of the time. The clock in the car looked like it hadn’t worked in a while. But it was well into night time, the stars were bright and had full hegemony over the sky. I couldn’t see a moon from where I was crouched.

But there was noise. There were engines sounds to be heard. And hints of music. The road gangs were out in force, and we’d be easy targets. I could see occasional bursts of their headlights through trees or in the distance over hills.

Tristan said, “Nah, we’re not doing this. We’re not going to stand a chance.”

“What then?”

“We’re staying under cover until morning.”

“He’s not doing that well…” I ventured.

“Fuck it. I know. But I don’t think we can defend him. We’re going to have to park up for the night. Look out for somewhere concealed.”

It was pretty convincing, the darkened pool beneath a hillside, that actually seemed to open up into a small cave. It had Spider-Lair written all over it, but we checked it out thoroughly to be sure of not even the lightest infestation. Only after that Tristan helped me over to a little outcrop of rocks where I could sit, and lay Greg out on the ground between us. From the way he was moving I understood that he was injured – maybe not badly, but enough that it was starting to drag on him. But he stripped the cocoon away from his friend, and did the best job of first aid he could, with only token help from me. My hands were as useless as if they’d been swollen or paralysed. They shook glaringly. It was a half-assed job, but we did the best we could.

Tristan lay his jacket over Greg, and came to sit down next to me. “Holding on?” he asked me quietly.

“Yeah, I think so.”

He looked at me for a few seconds, “Yeah, you don’t look as bad. You don’t look good, mind, but nowhere near as bad.”

“Thanks, I can never resist a compliment.”

“I’ve only known Greg a few months… I don’t know why… why you just sorta bond with a guy. Fucking moronic really.”

“He’ll make it,” I pretended to believe.

“Sure. Sure. We got this far. We did our jobs.”

“Yeah, we did.”

“Get some rest,” he said to me, “don’t die in your sleep.”

“I’ll be okay,” though lying down to try and sleep felt like sinking into the ground, it felt like letting gravity wrap itself around me and drag me into the magma, which for some reason would be really quite cold. I reminded myself that I shouldn’t die, not here and now; it wouldn’t be fair to Tristan.

 

Picture credit/discredit: author's own work