The fire took hold and burned higher, only ten meters back from the cage. They could already feel the heat of it. The grass grew right up to the edges of the cage, and the cage floor was densely covered with a decades-long accumulation of dead branches and twigs and leaves and grass, far more than they could hope to throw out through the bars. It would burn like kindling when the fire got to it.
‘Options,’ Buzz said.
‘Grenade,’ Mallory said. ‘Might take out the bars.’
‘Probably take us out too, though,’ Meathead said.
‘Alternatives?’ Buzz asked.
Meathead was using his plasma cannon as a lever between two bars at the back of the cage, heaving on it with all his huge strength, but the bars were not budging. He looked at Buzz and shook his head.
‘Grenade distraction and then run for it?’ Grey suggested.
‘Maybe.’ Buzz was looking again to the fire, which was burning higher and brighter. In normal circumstances the human team would be laying down a fucking tidal wave of suppressing fire, Neb knew, so just standing there and doing nothing felt terribly wrong.
Fuck. Neb was desperately tired. He tried to use his overlay on the cage itself to see if there was any useful information to be found, but the dissonance between the real and virtual worlds being so close together made him stumble. He saw Buzz glance at him but no-one said anything or moved to help him. The fire outside burned higher, and the smoke stung their eyes.
Neb’s body was shaking from some combination of fear, exhaustion and adrenaline comedown. I shouldn’t have stopped running, he kept thinking. I should have found a way to keep going. In his mind’s eye he saw again that long black creature scuttling across their path, and he shuddered. He had been sliding on his back, chest bursting, head pounding, but by some strange instinct he had tried to examine the thing in his overlay in the instant it was in front of him. It had almost been a panic reaction, trying to control the one thing he could control. Now in the cage he found that he had been successful -- the thing was listed in his interaction history.
Boxium serpent, Level 10. Commonly known as a lowcrawler. Native to the Essar cluster. Once kept on R-176 as entertainment. Extremely tough metallic-infused exterior, resistant to most forms of attack. Feeds primarily on cretarc quadrupeds but is a prolific hunter. Mostly nocturnal. Mates twice per five-year cycle, and is --’
‘Ready in there, humans?’ the goblin voice called. ‘You should never have come to the Game. You are inferior, and everyone in the Cluster knows it. You should be honored to die by our -- FUCK!’
Anna had fired, and there was a yelp of pain from the goblin.
‘FUCK YOU!’ he screamed. ‘If any of you survive we’ll make you fucking wish you hadn’t! We’ll choke you with the last beats of your own heart, we’ll take your bones and…’
‘He got a little close to the fire,’ Anna said. ‘Could just see the shape of his head. But that was my second last bullet.’
‘Good shooting, soldier,’ Buzz said. No-one asked her what the last bullet was for. They all knew.
But Neb was barely listening. All he could think was: I shouldn’t have stopped running. He felt sick about it. He had thought he was fit. He had told himself he would fight through any pain and any discomfort in his search for knowledge about the Main, and then he had fallen at the first hurdle. The others were probably right -- it would have been better to bring a real soldier.
Fuck it. Reflexively, as if to distract himself, he went back to the world where he actually belonged: information. He opened his overlay again and read the rest of the entry about the lowcrawler.
His breath caught in his chest.
He didn’t say anything to the others, but left his post and moved to the front of the cage. The goblin leader was still spitting threats and invective. The fire was only a few meters back from the edge of the cage. Smoke tasted acrid in his throat. The others were so surprised to see him out of position that at first no-one said anything.
‘Doc, what the fuck?’ Buzz said, when he noticed. ‘Get back to your post right goddam now.’
But Neb didn’t obey the order. Instead he pulled his combat knife from the holster on his right thigh, held out his left arm, and sliced deeply across it.
‘What the ever-living fuck, Doc!’ Buzz yelled.
Blood sprayed and pulsed from the wound and he immediately felt dizzy. But he held firm, holding his arm out and resisting the instinct of his body to clamp his right hand down tightly on the wound. He felt the world wobble and dim, but still he did not retract his arm. His blood dripped down the bars of the cage and pooled on the ground outside. I should not have fucking stopped running. He held on now through the pain, through the dizziness, through the desire to scream.
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
‘Gray -- grab him,’ Buzz ordered, and she was there to catch Neb just as his legs finally gave out and he fell, and ease him to the ground.
‘Keep back from the bars,’ Neb said weakly. ‘Everyone. Keep to the middle.’
No-one moved.
But then Anna said: ‘Oh fuck me.’ She was looking at Neb with a strange expression on her face. ‘You know something. About the creatures outside. The one that crossed our path.’
Neb nodded, clutching his arm as hard as he could while blood welled through his fingers. ‘Yes. The lowcrawler.’ He coughed, his body shaking. ‘I was able to examine it in the overlay.’
‘How the fuck did you do that? You only had a fraction of a second.’
‘I know. I don’t know. I just did it.’
‘And it can smell blood?’
‘Yes. Very well.’
‘How far away?’
‘Three kilometers. More, depending on conditions.’
Anna looked up at the others, then back to Neb. ‘How many of them are out there? How many lowcrawlers?’
‘I have no idea,’ said Neb. ‘But my guess is probably a fuckload.’
Outside, there was a goblin scream suddenly rose and then was suddenly and completely cut off.
‘OH SHIT!’ Buzz yelled. ‘Get to the middle of the cage, right fucking now. Meathead, heal the Doc!’
They had very few orbs, Neb knew, just a couple that remained from what they had scavenged from the goblins. ‘No, don’t use it on me,’ he began,‘I can --’
‘Shut the fuck up, Doc,’ Meathead said, touching the orb gently to his wounded arm, then lifting Neb to his feet and pulling him back to the centre of the cage.
They stood back to back in the center of the cage, pistols in their hands. The cage had seemed large a moment before but now it felt terribly claustrophobic. The world was silent but for the crackling and burning of the fire coming closer. All of their faces were golden-touched in its light. It was only a meter or so back from the edge of the cage. The moment hung and hung. The heat and smoke from the fire was almost intolerable.
‘Keep back from the bars,’ Buzz said, as if sensing the desire to press away from the fire. There was no sign of the goblins. Had they run for it?
Then the world was filled with screams of pain and fear as the lowcrawlers arrived in a wave. There were cries and nightmarish rustlings amongst the grass. Then the lowcrawlers crashed against the sides of the cage, clambering up over each other in their desire to get to the human meat within. The creatures had beak-like jaws and six legs and long straight feelers jutting from their heads. To Neb they were like a cross between a beetle and a crocodile. They made a clacking, rasping sound that was like a guttural cry of pain. The feelers of the creatures stretched through the bars and at the end of each one was a sharp, serrated black blade, coming within centimeters of the humans and testing their ability to control panic. The creatures did not seem to care at all about the fire, moving through it as if it wasn’t even there. It burned and raged higher and hotter, thick smoke billowing into the cage.
‘Hold your fucking positions,’ Buzz said, coughing. ‘Keep to the middle!’
Outside a green goblin was suddenly visible. It ran towards the humans murderously with a blade in its hand but was swamped by the lowcrawlers and eaten alive, chomps taken from his body until the screaming stopped. Neb looked away, feeling sick.
‘Fuck me,’ Meathead said.
More and more of the lowcrawlers gathered at the bars of the cage, stacked in a hideous wall of black-glinting mouths and feelers and grasping claws. They tried to bite through the bars with their huge shearing jaws but the metal held. The things reached inside with their long tentacles, swinging them towards the humans, and the team had to constantly dodge and move around in an unstable little knot, as if they were collectively drunk. Outside the fire raged around them, up to the bars now, heat and smoke becoming overpowering. The flames rolled and billowed over the lowcrawlers, but it was as if they could not even feel it. Meathead fired at one experimentally with his pistol, but it was like shooting at stone. Neb looked around at the huge insects and their gnashing, clacking maws and the blood-orange wall of flame that was pushing in on them, and thought: This has to be what hell is like.
Then outside, the lead goblin appeared. He was badly injured in one arm, and he looked at them with a hate that Neb could not have imagined before. He screamed, a bestial sound of distilled pure loathing. Anna was the first of the humans to react. Her pistol was in her hand and she fired, but too late. With his remaining hand the goblin threw a burning branch through the bars into the center of the cage. Then he turned and ran.
Gray and Mallory stamped on the branch frantically, Gray grunting as she picked up a deep cut from the blade on a lowcrawler feeler. But there was nothing they could do -- the flames took hold on the dry twigs and grass and sprang up as if in answer to the wall of fire outside. The roaring noise of the fire and the clacking of the lowcrawlers battering and snapping against the bars was hellish. In the chaos of the moment Neb saw Mallory unholster his sidearm, take one round from it, and pass it to Anna. She took it without a word and loaded it into her own weapon. Everything that was to be said was in their momentary glance.
This looks like the end, Neb thought.
The fire within the cage forced them back towards the grasping wall of lowcrawlers reaching between the bars and the roaring fire outside. ‘KNIVES!’ Buzz roared. ‘CUT THOSE FUCKING FEELERS!’ Meathead was first to react and he sliced his huge combat knife through the reaching, razor-tipped feelers of one of the lowcrawlers. A gout of greenish-yellow puss washed over him like it was coming from a firehouse and the lowcrawler shrieked in pain and rage, pulling back from the cage.
‘Well that’s a fucking hideous,’ Meathead said, wiping the liquid from his face and spitting some out. He immediately chopped off two more feelers.
Neb half smiled to himself. He had thought things could not possibly get any worse, but the first lesson of being a solider is that things can always get worse.
They found themselves drowning and choking in spurts of the hideous, thick liquid as they cut and slashed at the blade-tipped feelers of the lowcrawlers. Each of them picked up deep cuts and scrapes, and their blood just drove the lowcrawlers into even more of a frenzy. Severed feelers built up on the ground at their boots. The fire roared within and without, and the smoke was so thick they could barely keep their eyes open to see what they were doing. They were forced back into the a, no further retreat possible, desperately fighting off the grasping lowcrawlers that moaned and clacked against the bars.
This was it. Fuck.
‘Mallory,’ Buzz said, a strange quietness to his voice.
The big man glanced over, then took a grenade from his inventory and passed it to their commander. The scene raged out of control -- the roaring fire, the grasping, biting lowcrawlers, the acrid, stinging smoke, the gouts of pus from each freshly-cut feeler, the overpowering heat of the flames inside and outside the cage.
Buzz put his finger on the grenade activation button, and stood tall.