POV Noah

[ Event: Endless Caves has ended.

Attention survivors! Congratulations for not perishing and providing entertainment for the higher powers!

Please read the following announcements:

All challenge completions will be announced and rewarded within the Interdimensional shop. The store will be open in 24 hours within the 72-hour grace period between events that starts now and will not be available again until after the next event's conclusion.

The endless cave network under the Earth's surface will begin to collapse with only 10% remaining after this message. Inhabited areas of the cave will take longer to collapse along with the fastest route to the surface. All monsters from the Endless Cave will live within the remaining 10% of the Endless Caves or will try to reach the surface. All Sky lurkers will be removed from reality immediately. Upon reflection the higher powers have decided that the undead's temporary night vision will be made permanent, note this will not affect their ability to function and see during the day.

Thank you for participating, we at Jeremy’s Wheels hope you enjoyed your times within the Endless Caves :) ]

We all froze for a moment as we took in the message that slowly started to fade, the sound of the earthen passages collapsing rumbles behind us causing the ground to tremble, dislodging large rocks from the ceiling, turing the once stable passages into a deadly hailstorm of stone. Monster’s screams and roars filled the air as they were pushed out of their homes and forced towards the surface in a stampede of chitin and fangs, spelling death for anything in their wake.

“Well, shit,” I mutter out loud.

“That's kind of ironic really, the endless caves coming to an end,” Mia says as she looks around the slowly collapsing cave warily, making Jaob snort in amusement.

“False advertisement really think we can get our money back?” Sam asks in a strained voice before heading towards the non collapsing tunnel as the message fully fades from our vision.

“I doubt they became all powerful Gods by giving people their money back,” Jacob says from the back of the group as he collapses the tunnel to stop the hordes of monsters from getting to us. Or at least slow them down a bit.

“Well that's a depressing thought, I always knew religion was shady.” I chime in while slowly picking up the pace again now that we can see the passages ahead are stable. It wasn't the way we came from but it was better than being crushed to death.

“More or less depressing than spending the apocalypse with Ava?” Mia asks in a joking tone in between deep breaths as she tries to keep up with our running. She never did enjoy PE and hadn't put in as much time training.

“Hey! You're just mad you need me to get wet.” Ave calls back.

“What are you trying to insinuate there Ava?” Ella calls out as she heals herself to remove her fatigue.

“Wait…that's not what I meant and you know it!” Ava yells back in indignation.

After a few more minutes of running the talking dried up as we continued to push ourselves to get out of the collapsing cave system and avoid the stampede of monsters. We eventually saw other groups of people as we were all funnelled out of the earth but didn't give them much more than a hello to alert them of our presence as we passed them. Some groups tried to keep up with us but couldn't keep the pace for long, evidently, they didn't spend as much time training their stamina as we did.

The only time we stopped on our way to the surface was when we had to fight our way through a pack of beasts or slow down for Sam to help a fallen woman before we moved on. When we finally did make it up to the surface we were pleased to see the clear night sky without any sky lurkers and feel the fresh breeze upon our skin. ‘Oh, how I had missed the breeze and open spaces. Those continuous grey stone walls and tight passages were almost as bad as the monsters. I couldn't wait for tomorrow to see by sunlight again.’

Despite our jubilation of escaping the caves and being outside after a week of claustrophobia we still needed to move. An increasingly large number of people, undead and monsters were pouring out into the open and fighting had already started between the humans and those who wished to make them into their next meal.

I tried to look around through the emerging chaos to determine where we were but saw nothing but a high stone wall and large stone cottage houses surrounded by hedges. I had no idea where we were and couldn't make out any landmarks in the dark. I tried to read a street sign a few metres away but had to get out of the way of a couple running past us away from a group of undead that had now set their sights on our small group.

A scream cuts through the air making my head whip around to see a middle aged man get taken to the ground by a cave crawler and have his throat ripped out by its enlarged pincers cutting the shrill cream short as blood oozed from the fresh wound. More and more screams filled the air as fights broke out and humans and monsters alike fell like flies to the chaos and endless beasts pouring out from the depths of the earth as undead began swarming out of the buildings and roads.

“Shit” I hiss out before slamming my hammer down on an undead skull causing its contents to splatter like a burst watermelon. I kick another undead back into a cave spider making it trip and become a tangle of limbs just in time to dodge a cast iron frying pan from a wild eyed man whose head was quickly removed by a spear toughed frog. I flinch back at the sudden loss of human life and back into Jacob who just finished carving up a Tarantula with his knives, a manic grin plastered on his twitching face.

It almost looked like he was in pain until his eyes met mine and I saw the frenzied look dissolve as he looked upon my, admittedly panicked face. Letting out an annoyed puff of air his face lost its wild grin as he scowled at the sounding chaos and took out a fresh pair of knives. “Mia, can you find us a way out of here and somewhere safe!?! Noah and I will clear a path!”

“We need to help these people!” Sam yells out over the cries for help and screams of pain. The others gathered behind Jacob and me, but Sam was still looking around and fending off monsters with his spear.

“They're not our priority!” Jacob yells back after decapitating an undead and using its body to trap an enraged stalker.

“We can help them by clearing a path out of this death trap, get people to follow us out!” Ava calls out as I stumble into Ella, the floor beneath us bulging outward to reveal the maw of a stone worm squeezing its way out of the earth. “We need to go now!” I call out, backing away from the heavily armoured monster.

Sam, who finally agreed to the improvised plan, started calling people to follow us as we cleared a way out of the enclosed space that was becoming increasingly filled with undead and monsters. Mia directed us with the help of Sunny who took off into the air to find us a safe route out of this hell hole. We just managed to get out of the street we started in when an all too familiar roar filled the air. My stomach dropped. Looking behind me I see a spider queen making its way over the stone wall followed by its brood of bloodthirsty children. It was one thing to fight the monstrosity in a controlled environment but out in the open surrounded by frenzied monsters and panicking people would slow us down too much and ,most likely lead to injury and even death.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“What the fuck is that thing?!?!” Screams a man in a beanie running alongside us with a cricket bat in hand. Not that he appeared to use it much if the lack of blood on it was any indication.

“Spider queen,” Ava says calmly as she uses her kinetic water hammer to kill another undead lunging for the beanie wearing man.

“What the fuck?!?! Why is it here?!?!?” he yells again before Ella snaps at him to shut up so he doesn't attract more monsters towards our slowly growing group of survivors. I looked behind to find the spider queen to see it fighting a stone worm in a battle of the giants or was fighting the stone worm. The Queen’s webbing now held the heavily armoured monster as she pieced its flesh with her toxic fangs, flooding its bloodstream with its venom.

The fact that the webbing could hold down the giant worm that could literally tear through stone sent a shiver down my spine. ‘I am so glad Jacob can melt through stuff or we would have been so screwed the first time we found one.’

Turning back around I crushed another cave crawler’s head and cave in the ribcage of a pale one, sending it flying into an enlarged spider. It seemed that no matter how many monsters we killed, more just kept coming. Luckily Mia was able to quickly lead us down another street where we lost sight of the Titanic spider and most of the horde. Not wanting to stay in the open with the ever growing number of undead and monsters we ran up a driveway and started running through gardens and fields by jumping over cobblestone walls until we were far away enough to no longer hear the roars and screams of the battlefield.

“There aren't many more houses past this point, did we want to camp out till day or keep going?” Mia whispers while slowing to a stop by a large flower bed in the garden of somewhere called the Coach house. At least that's what I think the plaque says, it's hard to read in the dark and I was more focused on the 15 or so people who had followed us.

“Ah!” Screams a large woman with a ponytail. “They found us!” He gestures wildly at Mias' pets and steps back away from the large spiders and cave crawler.

“Please be quiet. Their pets, she can tame things with food.” Jacob says with an almost audible eye roll as he bounces on the balls of his feet.

“How do we know they won't attack us?” Asks the beanie man as he readies his cricket bat as if he is going to try and kill Mia’s hive-minded pets.

“Those things killed my wife and ate her corpse, I will be damned if I let them live! I say we kill them now before they try to eat us.” A beer-bellied man with a thick unkept beard says in an enraged voice causing a murmur of agreement to ripple through the strangers as more and more of the strangers agreed to kill the friendly monsters.

“I know we just got out of a stressful situation, but there is no need to fear,” Sam starts before trying to explain that the pets lead us to safety.

“Get out of my way kid.” the larger man growls out while squaring up to Sam, in an effort to intimidate the smaller teen. “before you get hurt.”

“That is illogical, they aren't attacking anyone and yet you want to try and fight the people who got you out of that mess while you had your thumb up your ass. You can always just leave instead of pointlessly staring shit.” Jacob says, in a surprisingly reasonable tone. I blink and look at him a moment in surprise. ‘Huh, guess I kind of forgot it isn't actually just an insane man child when talking to other people.’

“Why? So when we turn around to leave you can let them loose on us and take what little we have?” the beer-bellied man hisses out in an enraged whisper.

“Just because you look like Santa on the sex offenders list doesn't mean you can try and insight a mini mob on us because you noticed we have better stuff…” Jacob starts to say before being interrupted by Ella pulling him back as Sam tries to diffuse the situation.

“Alright, calm down guys, the monsters are harmless to you and helped guide us away from the horde…”

I let out a sigh at hearing Jacobs' almost valid point and adjusted the grip on my sledgehammer as I look at the visibly fuming man as he stared daggers at Jacob.

“The fuck did you call me!” Yells the beer-bellied man in a rage, as he starts to slowly lift off from the floor to look down on the irritable Jacob.

“Ok, please stop yelling. I know emotions are running high but…” Sam tries again but is quickly talked over as the group of strangers starts to panic.

“I’m not comfortable being here with these monsters….”

“We should properly get out of here…”

“Has anyone seen Mary?...”

“Say that again you little shit I dare you…”

“I’m going to kill those fucking monsters dont try and stop me!...”

“This was only the first event, how are we going to survive…”

Luckily, or unluckily considering the increasing loud volume of the complaints, the small mob of strangers only resorted to yelling instead or actually trying to kill Mia’s hive mind, while this meant we wouldn't have to fight the people we had just saved it did mean they were attracting more and more bloodthirsty creatures to our previously safeish location.

“More undead are coming, they can hear us.” I hear Mia say with a sigh.

I rub my hand over my face and let out a low groan of annoyance. “Sam, we need to go, we are running on fumes and need to get out of here. We got them out of the worst of it, It’s up to them now, you tried your best.” I lay a hand on my friend's shoulder in what I hoped was a comforting gesture.

Sam slowly nods his head in defeat “Yeah, let's leave,” With those words, we started to move out of the garden and into a field so we could get back onto the road towards what Mia thought was a house further along the county road.

“Wait, you can't just leave us here?!?” Yells a woman. Ella face palms at yet another person yelling just before the sounds of snarling and clattering teeth fill the air as the undead begin to slam their bodies against the shoulder high wooden garden gate causing it to groan under the increasingly frenzied onslaught.

“We are sorry but we are going to be going separate ways now, Um, Good luck?” Ava loudly whispers towards the group.

“But what about us?” A random man asks as he looks fearfully towards the undead.

“It's a free country, you can’t stop us from following you.” a woman with long hair says before she hurries towards us. ‘These people are ridiculous.’

“I wouldn't recommend it unless you want to be bait against a spider Queen.” Jacob suddenly says with enough confidence to make it sound like it was the plan all along.

“What?” The woman asked while the rest of the strangers looked between us and the undead that were close to ripping through the gate.

“Don't worry it will be easier when we aren't in the middle of the horde, or if you are worried about being bait, well it's that or kill the undead.” I glanced at the group of strangers to see their faces pale and the beer-bellied man, who now had his feet back on the ground, was gasping for air like he just ran a marathon. ‘He hasn't trained his power very much, despite claiming that we would kill Mia’s pets.’

This for some reason annoyed me more than I thought it would. Maybe it was because the man claimed the monsters of the Caves killed his wife and yet was able to barely use his power and clearly was out of shape. He was weak, pathetic really. While I may not have a significant other, if something killed one of my friends I would train my ass off and kill it right back instead of yelling at strangers who risked their lives to save mine. My internal musings were interrupted when Jacob stopped and turned around to face the woman.

“I would recommend laying something by their feet to trip them up and temporarily blind their night vision with a bright light. When they fall, have the cricket-bat man smash their heads in. Happy hunting.”

With those final words of advice, He quickly spun back around prompting us to quickly run into the field and away from the strangers before getting back onto the road and following it for a couple of minutes. If we hadn't just spent a week in the caves the pitch blackness and rustling bushes would have unnerved me, but as it was I was just happy to let those with enhanced senses keep a lookout while I apparated the breeze. A bad habit for sure but by this point, I was too tired to really care.

“That was some serious weaponised incompetence,” Jacob mutters, making a few of us snort in mild amusement.

“Will they be ok back there?” Asks Sam as he looks over his shoulder towards the Coach house.

“They made it this far, I’m sure the 15 of them can handle five undead and get away before the rest turn up,” Mia says with false confidence.

“Yeah, I guess.” Sam starts before turning to Jacob. “You shouldn't have escalated things so much.”

Jacob lets out what sounds like an involuntary wince before answering “Was it too much?” Jacob genuinely asks as if calling someone a sex offender out of nowhere is a polite thing to do. “Even if they were threatening to kill part of our group?”

“Yes, maybe I don't know really, I’m tired but I don't think that helped,” Ella says from beside him.

“Hmmm, noted.” Jacob nods his head before continuing. “I was trying to direct their focus towards me and away from Sam and the things that had been hunting them for the last week.”

“Maybe try and let Sam or someone else talk some sense into people before sowing your particular brand of discord among frightened strangers,” Ella says in a tired voice.

“Right, sorry. I will try to do better. Would help if they weren't stupid though.”

After a couple of minutes, Mia suddenly changed our route down another road after saying there was a light in the farmhouse we were heading to. After another long 10-minute walk through the dark country roads and only a few hostile encounters, we find ourselves at a small group of cottages surrounded by trees and fields called Mill Lane. By this time the sun had begun to come but we were all truly dead on our feet and mentally exhausted. We had been running uphill and fighting all day, and that was before having to deal with a bipolar group of idiotic survivors.

A quick scouting of Mia’s pets made sure there weren't any immediate threats in the area allowing us to enter an empty house which we quickly got to work in securing. It wasn't much but we made an early warning system with wedged door stops and carefully balanced glass on door handles so we could go to bed as soon as possible.

With our basic defences up I headed to bed as Jacob took the first watch and sunk into the first mattress I could find, moaning slightly at the softness after spending a week sleeping on cold stone floors and before I knew it, I was out like a light.