Chapter 126: That Sound…
After being shaken awake by Ember, it didn’t take long for my eyes to adjust to the already dim environment. Glancing over at Hunter, I see him slowly coming to his senses.
I yawn and ask, “Has it really been six hours already?”
“Check for yourself,” replies Ember, lifting up her wrist to display her watch.
Not realizing her action and turning on my watch, I immediately get an alert about a low battery percentage. Directing my attention to the top right corner of the watch, I see there’s only eighteen percent left, the power bar now portraying a bold red.
Guess I shouldn’t be surprised. We’ve been underground for a long time, and this thing runs on a solar battery. It also doesn’t look like we’ll be back above ground any time soon… I’ll need to be careful with how much I use this from here on out.
Checking how much time we have left, I’m slightly surprised that we have around twelve hours left. Last I remembered, we had nineteen hours left when I woke up Hunter for his watch and went to sleep myself.
Glancing at Ember, I opened my mouth to say something, but she was one step ahead.
“I gave y’all an extra hour,” said Ember as she rummaged through her backpack.
“Thanks,” I say, grateful but worried that we only had twelve hours left to finish the test.
Twelve hours. We created some distance between us and the snakes, and nobody else from camp has found us either. It was definitely the right move leaving the beacon behind.
Still half-asleep, Hunter wearily grins, “Yeah, Ember, I owe ya now.”
“Oh, get out of here with that crap,” says Ember, who cracks a smile for a brief moment while turning away. “To be honest, I forgot to check my watch, so my watch shift ran a little long.”
Facing us as she stands up, she tosses an oval object toward each of us. Catching the object, I look at it perplexed, trying to figure out what it is before Ember straightforwardly informs us, “It’s an orange.”
Hearing that, I look at the orange and then back at Ember, “Ember, you don’t gotta-”
“I want to,” she interrupts, adjusting her backpack straps to a comfortable position on her shoulders, the gear inside quietly cluttering against each other. “You guys said you're out of food, and we all need to be at our best for this final stretch, don’t ya agree?”
“Then you take mine,” I say, extending my hand toward her. “I'd rather you have it. I’m fine, trust me.”
“Stop acting selfless, Forest. We’re all starving here,” says Ember, who reveals she kept an orange for herself. “Now eat up before I take that orange back, 'cause I’ll happily eat it if you don’t want it. Won’t tell ya again.”
Once more caught in a position of surprise, I can only squeak out the words, “Alright then… thanks… again.”
Acknowledging my gratitude by shooting up her eyebrows, Hunter speaks up as he gulps down the final slice of his orange, “Ahhhh, that was so good. You’re the best Ember, seriously.”
Her gaze falling back on me, Ember jerks her head in Hunter’s direction and teases, “I think I like this guy more.”
Somewhat bothered by her statement, I scoff and break off eye contact with a shake of the head as I begin to unpeel my orange.
“So,” I say, tossing the first slice in my mouth. “What’s the plan?”
“Nothing’s really changed since I told y’all about the snakes. They’re still there, so we go with plan A.”
“I see…” I reply, trying to think up an alternative on the fly.
“Excuse me… but what’s plan A?” asks Hunter, who was never filled in.
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“Right… well,” says Ember, pausing to swallow a slice. “To keep things short… we just run past them.”
“I’m sorry, what? We... run past them? Didn’t you say there were hundreds of snakes ahead?!”
“Yeah, but,” she tosses another slice into her mouth. “They’re snakes, and with that amount, it’s not like they can keep up with us if we just run past them. We also know that they don’t go beyond their designated territory because if they did, they would’ve attacked us by now. So once we get past them, we’re in the clear. Of the snakes, at least.”
“This… doesn’t this sound stupid to you guys? I thought you both were smart. Are you hearing yourselves right now?”
“Loud and clear, but it’s not like we have a choice. You got any better ideas?” proposes Ember.
“Yeah, we could turn back and try and find another way around-”
“No,” I cut in, finishing off my orange. “That’ll take too long, and we confirmed somebody was once ahead of us in this direction.”
“But what if that person was wrong too, and they got caught in a dead end!”
“Not possible. I heard their footsteps fade until they were completely out of range. There’s no dead end beyond these snakes,” says Ember, who has just finished eating her orange and is already briskly rounding the corner.
“Hey! Where are you going?!”
“To run by the snakes… thought that was obvious,” says Ember, not looking back as I move to catch up with her.
“This is so stupid… so stupid… what if they’re venomous… what if-” I hear Hunter muttering behind me as he reluctantly follows us.
Walking beside Ember down the empty path, I ask, “Which way did you hear the footsteps?”
“To the right, there are fewer snakes in that direction, too.”
“Then I bet there’s another path that branches out from the left ahead, and our pathway was meant to divert the individual from the exit,” I say.
“That’s possible, but this person had no issues passing all these snakes. They must’ve seen through that idea.”
“Sure, but we can at least confirm that we are probably nearing the exit to this maze if different courses are starting to conjoin. I mean, we walked around in this place for quite a while. We gotta be close.”
“Yeah, I'd say so. At least until that theory is proven wrong.”
“Of course…” I say, looking over my shoulder at Hunter, who is dragging his feet behind us but remaining attentive.
I then feel something in front of me, and I notice Ember had stuck out her arm to stop me. We were nearing the end of the path, and I could already see snakes scattered about on the ground, some coiled up and others slithering around.
“Are you ready?” asks Ember, to which I almost reply ‘no’, but she took off before I even had a chance.
Okay… not cool.
Watching Ember dash and weave around these snakes, my heart began to thump as I knew there was no going back now. Suddenly, to my astoundment, Hunter ran by me as he shouted, “What are you waiting for, man? Do you wanna be left behind? Let’s go!”
Those words were exactly what I needed to hear. My legs were now jolted awake, and before I knew it, I was running. Hunter was right; if I had stood there any longer, I would’ve been stuck where I was or at least gotten stuck in a sea of snakes. Because I was the last to go, the snakes were already flustered and erratic with their movements, and the open pathways Ember and Hunter could maneuver through were quickly being closed off by the snakes.
There were even a few times that some snakes lunged out to bite me, but I just narrowly managed to run past them in the nick of time. In the blink of an eye, I was hunched over, panting and wiping the sweat off my forehead as I stood beside Ember and Hunter on the succeeding path. I hadn’t even noticed how far we had run, but we were a more than suitable distance away from the snakes by the time I could catch my breath and look at our new surroundings.
CLICK!
That sound…!
Already forgetting about the snakes, I stand up and frantically look around, “Hunter, did you hear-?”
“Yes!” he quickly confirms while also trying to pinpoint what sort of trap we’ve set off. “It’s the same sound as last time!”
It doesn’t make sense; Ember said somebody has already been here. They would’ve activated the trap… maybe there was a timer that reset the trap?!
Matching Ember’s gaze, her eyes said it all. She had no idea what was going on.
Suddenly, the path behind us with the snakes is closed off as two sliding doors collide in the blink of an eye, a deafening ‘boom!’ going off.
My eyes squinting with distress due to the ear-splitting sound, I resumed frantically trying to locate the source of the trap. And then I found it. A good distance behind us, maybe forty meters or so, a large compartment had opened up that was tucked against the bottom of the wall. I could have never noticed the difference without heavy scrutiny. Still, this compartment had a slightly different shade of green than the rest of the wall.
Only moments after I spotted this aberration did my heart skip a beat as a fanged mutt leaped out from the compartment and onto the path behind us. The mutt was initially stunned, confused about where it was, but it didn’t take long for it to detect our smell and locate us.
“Run…” I whispered, slowly taking a few steps back and turning around as a pack of mutts spilled out from the compartment one by one. Baring their fangs in our direction, drool dripped from their potent jaws as all they saw in the three of us was their next meal.
“Ember, Hunter, run! Run now!!”
Without haste, the three of us bolted down the path and into unknown danger, all while hearing the bloodthirsty barks from the mutts that were now right on our heels.