Broken
It's getting worse.
Twice now, I've woken up to terrifying sounds outside; the sound of gurgling laughs and wet footsteps.
The Floodmen draw nearer by the day.
Elemental and Krim haven't slept in a while, constantly on guard, lest the enemy breaking through into our small sanctuary.
***
We gather around the largest fire in the cave, faces glowing eerily orange in the flames. Tavin sits on a crate, moving a roll of bandages between his fingers, and Bryce is cross-legged on the ground next to him, spinning a knife.
"I'm saying it straight," I say, heart hammering. "We're leaving, very soon. We have to, before we rot down here."
"Finally," Bryce grins. "I was getting bored of being down here all this time."
"Bored?" Krim glares at him. "You live in a cave surrounded by psychos who kill people for fun."
"Yeah and? Routine gets old."
"You're not wrong about leaving," Tavin says. "The gas that seeps through the gaps in the rock is getting worse. Ronin's wound is reacting badly, and our rations will run out soon."
I glance at Ronin, his arm in a sling, but eyes steadfast.
"But where do we go?" Leon asks. "Back into the flood tunnels?"
"Up," I say. "We go back up, to the upper floors."
"Airo's up there."
"Then do you plan to rot down here?"
"We'll be faced with a war on our hands, Sword. There's no telling how much stronger he grows by the day."
"Then we'll fight," I plough on. "We'll fight him."
A silence follows, until Bryce whistles and says,
"Ambitious. So what do you plan to do with the Floodmen? Ask 'em to move aside politely?"
"We'll break through them with force," I say.
"Now you're speaking my language," Luc grins, cracking his knuckles.
"I second this," Mist says, going through her pouch of flint projectiles.
"I wouldn't be so earnest if I were you," Tavin warns. "The Floodmen are different from the other survivors you've fought before."
"How so?"
"First, they are not Facility survivors. They're more like failed human experiments who've lost all rationality. You'll see when you face them. They worship the water."
"Worship?"
"Yes. They offer it everything. People, blood, food, anything."
"All the more reason to wipe them out," Leon says. "This is heresy. There is only one Deity in this world and it's definitely not a puddle."
"They are armed," Tavin continues. "No one knows how they got hundreds of feet below the ground but they are dangerous. They don't fear death."
"Neither do we," Luc says.
Tavin studies him for a minute, then says,
"There's a difference between bravery and stupidity."
"So you're saying we stay here?" I ask .
"No. I'm saying that if you go in without a plan you'll be dead in under a minute."
Great. Love that.
Later, when the others are resting for arguably the final time, I find Tavin checking the crude map he's scratched into the ground using a bit of charcoal. Dots for camps, winding lines for tunnels, crosses for "don't go here or you'll die excessively".
"You're coming with us, right?" I ask.
"Bold assumption."
"You said we'll die without a plan," I say. "You have one but we don't. Shouldn't you come with us? Don't doctors save people?"
As soon as the words leave my mouth, I regret it.
His jaw tightens and he looks up at me.
"And why would I leave an easily defensible position to run into a cave of insane murders with half-healed strangers?"
The tension is growing. I really am terrible at this until Bryce pops out from behind a rock.
"He's just scared of getting attached," he grins. "Isn't that right, unc?"
Tavin throws the charcoal at him and he ducks with a yelp.
"I'm going," he continues cheerily. "You guys are crazy - my kind of crazy."
"Bryce," Tavin says through his teeth. "Go to sleep."
"I will if you let Sword convince you to stop being depressing."
"Bryce."
"…ok."
I stare at Tavin.
"Well?"
He sighs heavily, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
"You want me to tell you why I'm hesitating."
"Yes."
"You won't like it."
"I haven't liked anything in this place."
That earns me a small, humourless puff of laughter.
"This place… it doesn't feel too different. This Facility, it feels familiar, not new to me."
"You mean… you were somewhere like this before? Where?"
He looks at me with his sunken, hollow, feelingless eyes.
"Right now, the world is at war. War against an alien race that has been deemed living blasphemy against the Deity. I was there, I was there on the frontline."
My stomach tightens. A veteran of the Skather War is here before my eyes. From the sounds of it, a combat medic, but…
…a hero of Erisen.
The Facility rule is choking him, clenching around his throat.
"I watched people around me die in swathes. Sometimes being with people who you treasure means you get to be the closest when you watch them die. I…"
He pauses, voice cracking suddenly, and his cold exterior suddenly seems like its melting. As if by habit, he touches the small silver ring on his finger.
"I-" he chokes. "…I… I will outline the plan I've set out for you tomorrow."
"Tavin."
"But I won't go with you."
I decide not to push it further and head back. As I walk away from him, I glance back at his form hunched around the fire, and he looks old, broken and fractured.
Even though he's only a few years older than me.
When I get back to the group, Nyx shifts, sitting up. She's awake.
"What did he say?" she asks softly.
"He won't come."
***
For a plan, we really don't have much.
Tavin sketches it out on a rock.
"There's a ledge just outside, narrow but pretty stable, along the waterline here," he's saying, pointing. "Floodmen patrol all along the other side…"
His voice is drowning out, and I'm finding it difficult to pay attention. My mind keeps wandering to his story.
"You must hit fast, and hit hard," he continues. "You can't get drawn out into a long battle with them. Try and push them into the water - even if they worship it they're not immune to it."
"I'll be tossing people in all day," Luc grins.
"You'll be first if you get cocky."
Luc shuts up.
"Theres a vertical shaft about four hundred feet down, abandoned. It should lead up to the higher level since we dropped down in when the shifts were occurring above. Your goal is not to wipe the Floodmen out, it's to reach this shaft and escape with as many of you alive as possible."
"Love the 'as many as possible' part," Neo mutters.
"Anything else?" Elemental asks.
Tavin talks a bit more about tactics, the escape route, and more, and once he's done we gear up, grab the last supplies, and prepare to leave.
"Are you sure you're not coming?" I ask him one last time.
"Go," he says flatly.
I turn, and leave the soldier behind.
If he's really that adamant then I won't pressure him. I'll focus on the task at hand.
It's time to wipe the floor with some Floodmen.
***
The second I step out of the safety and warmth of Tavin's cavern, I instantly regret every decision.
It's dark, cold, wet and silent in a way that makes your skin crawl. We traverse the tunnel that leads out of our sanctuary for the last few days, moving quietly without talking. Luc takes the lead, I'm second, and Krim brings up the rear. We come out into a larger cavern, with a long, black underground river running through the centre into the dark.
"Let's move," Elemental whispers.
We keep moving forwards, but I can't shake it. That eery feeling like I'm being watched.
"Something's off," Luc mutters.
He pauses and we glance around, straining our eyes into the dark.
It's Jora who sees them first, followed instantly by Mist, our team's two rangers.
Then we all do.
Fucking hell.
They're perched along the walls before us like pale spiders, not monster nor beasts, but humans. Tens of them, bodies shrivelled up and skin wrinkled, pale-blue like drowned corpses. Hair hangs from their heads like wet ropes, and their eyes are sunken deep into their skeletal faces, wide and bloodshot.
There are patches where their skin is transparent. They have gnarled fingers and limbs too long.
Some kind of mark spirals across their bodies in a darkish liquid that resembles drying blood, and I realise I'm looking at a crested wave symbol.
They're clinging to rock with their hands, digging into cracks with nails sharpened to points. One hangs upside down from the roof, head dangling, water dripping from his nose.
He grins at us. There's blood in his teeth.
"Warm…" he rasps like a snake. "Warm blood."
"Back up," Leon whispers, but no one moves.
One by one, the Floodmen start dropping down, until there's a wall of them in front of us, at least fifty of them. They're crouching low, knobbly fingers gripping coral and bone-tipped spears.
"These things… are people?" Neo shivers.
"No," Luc corrects quietly, clenching his fists. "They were."
"Fun," Bryce mutters, definitely afraid.
One Floodman suddenly twitches, head snapping sideways like a puppet pulled too quickly, his legs and arms bending at inhuman angles.
He hisses:
"The water has sent you. The water wants you. And to the water, we will give…"
Man.
Screw this place.
Then Luc says loudly:
"New rule!! The WATER SAYS: MOVE, OR GET FUCKING MOVED!!"
He cracks his knuckles, and the Floodmen stare at him.
All at once they scream, dozens of throats howling, shrieking, gurgling and screeching. The sound tears at my ears, and then they launch themselves from the walls and ledges, rushing towards us in a frenzy.
***
"FORM UP!!" Elemental bellows.
I don't even think, but my feet skid on the slippery rock as I move into position behind Luc.
We're standing on the widest ledge in the cavern, on our right-hand side of the huge river, at last twenty feet across in width but barely moving, but the enemy don't care. They're sweeping towards us, grabbing and swinging off stalactites in the roof and bounding forwards.
"That is disgusting!" Nyx exclaims.
Luc hits them first, and he punches the first one so hard I hear his spine explode, and the 'man' goes flying back into another, both of them tumbling with a splash into the water.
"GET 'EM!!" he screams, and suddenly everyone's fighting.
It's absolute chaos again. Floodmen are howling, piling towards us, climbing over their own dead.
Mist is cutting them down with flint shards straight to the skull before they can even close, thinning the herd alongside Jora, notching arrows and killing one with every shot.
"O Anastasia," Leon says from next to me. "Guide these hands of mine, and forgive me for what comes next."
He draws his dual hatchets and flies into the fray, blades hooking into flesh and tearing apart limbs.
One of them comes for me, coming low, using the wet stone like he's ice skating. His feet slide perfectly as his spear jabs for my gut.
Remember what they taught me in these few days.
I twist, dodge the spear, grab the shaft and bring my other hand on it, snapping it like a twig. He doesn't hesitate and grabs at my throat with his claw-like nails, and I bring my knee up with a crack into his ribs. He reels back, and using the chance I cut him across the throat.
He falls down in a puddle of blue-black blood.
That thing ain't even human anymore.
Another comes at me before I can even blink.
My body's moving on its own, driven by pure instinct. I parry the thrust, and slash him. Once. Twice. Three times. His blood sprays across my face.
Beside me, Nyx slashes another one across the leg tendons, dropping him to his knees, then slits his elbow joints. Unable to move, all he can do is stare as she kicks him into the water, which is now a frothing mass of writhing Floodmen as we knock more in.
"BREAK THROUGH!!" Artee yells, twisting one's neck. "LET'S GET OUT OF HERE!!"
He slides across the stone, wrenching a spear out of a corpse and follows Luc, who takes the lead. We're definitely winning, but they're still coming in droves, clambering out the water.
"KILL THEM!!" I yell, slicing the fingers off one trying to get back onto the bank, fuelled by pure adrenaline.
We move forwards, breaking through them, feet pounding against the wet rock. Some of them are behind us, chasing us down, after Mist and Jora bringing up the rear.
"Leon, stop them with me!!"
"Right!"
We turn and face the flood of Floodmen moving towards us, and the ranger duo hurtle past.
"Sword!!" Nyx yells somewhere behind me.
"Let's finish this quickly!!" Leon yells.
He meets the first one head on, splitting their head in half with his hatchet. I dodge a thrust, then another jab from the side.
There's a writhing mass coming at me, but I swing by blades back of forth, clearing them out of my way. Their thin and crusty bodies over no resistance.
I pivot against the stone, cutting them down with wide, arcing slashes.
It's not exactly difficult to fight them. Biologically, they're just weak starving husks that can barely exert half their strength, but I can't let my guard down.
I sidestep a couple more blows, and land a quick horizontal slash to one of them. He goes down in a spurt of blood, and I spin on my heel, twisting round and stabbing the second through the abdomen.
"SWORD!!" Leon suddenly yells.
I glace back, but then wet, bony fingers close around my wrist. The Floodman in front of me smiles.
Then he drops backwards and I go headfirst into the freezing water.
***
The cold hits me like a shockwave. I have no idea where I am or which way up I am or who's here with me, but all I know is I'm in deep shit.
FOCUS!!
I force my strengthened muscles to move and break the surface spluttering.
"Sword, grab my hand!!" Leon yells, reaching out, but I'm too far out into the river.
His eyes widen.
"Behind!!"
I whirl around with a splash, and cold fingers close around my neck, pressing into my windpipe. It's another enemy this time, one already in the water, and he screeches in my face. His breath stinks of rot, and then he pushes me under.
My hands claw at his face, and I dig my hands into everything I can - pressing my thumbs into his eyes and feeling the softness give way under them.
His grip loosens and I tear his hands off my neck.
Resurfacing, Mist appears at the bank and launches a lightning quick volley into the water, headshotting three enemies around me.
"GRAB ON!!" Bryce yells, hurling a length of rope into the river, and my hands close around it.
He and Luc wrench it with all their might, dragging me across the surface, and Nyx, Leon and Krim pull me out.
"You good!?"
I touch my neck and feel a stinging cut. Probably from that man's grip.
"Yeah, just cold. I'll warm up with all this exercise. Anyone got a weapon?"
Bryce hands me a backup shortsword from his belt and we pound through the cavern, following the river, breaking through the main force of the Floodmen. Mist and Jora take care of any stragglers that leap at us, and we keep going forwards.
"UP AHEAD!!" Elemental yells. "Tavin's tunnel!!"
The tunnel to the shaft. Our fucking way out!!
"GOOOO!" Leon yells, overtaking me.
"THAT ONE!!" Neo screams, and we skid and fall over each other in our haste to get through.
One pursuer charges in, but I disembowel him brutally and Krim dismantles his jaw with a straight kick. He spins, and falls with a splat.
"Let's go," I say, and we leave the river behind, running along the tunnel.