Sorry for the time delay. Had some file problems.
Any second now she was going to go running back, leave her skin behind and go dashing her bones to pieces on the wall.
That was…actually a horrifying image. It made the ceiling falling on her seem…not as bad in comparison. Well, she'd still be crushed to death, struggling for air.
Her chest was just…tightening…
Pen solemnly kept up the lead. Lauren thought about if being a fugitive involved a whole lot of situations like this. It made her wonder if this was actually any better than the civilian life she'd run from. But at least she wasn't dead. That was still a plus in her book.
Yeah…
And they weren't being watched. Well, while they were in a tunnel—not to undermine how she was still struggling not to hyperventilate but all things considered, not being hounded by violent "policeman" and floating eye-bots and not being forced to listen to Breen talking all day was pretty good. It had been a while since she'd thought of the positives of running away…
She was hungry again. The yawning emptiness inside her protested as the wall texture changed the farther they went, and she was convinced that she had begun to starve to death.
"H-hey." She called, picking up her pace a little to catch up with Pen, who had briskly pulled ahead. "Do…Do we have any food?" Her voice sounded a bit too tentative to her ears.
Pen cocked her head as she looked back. "Of course we do. Give me some credit, I didn't leave without rations. Here." She unclipped a pouch from her belt and tossed it over to Lauren—who proceeded to awkwardly juggle it in her hands long enough to look like some kind of idiot, and then, a little red faced, check its contents. Nothing special, a few chunks of some suspicious looking meat and a few granola bars.
They had granola bars. A grin tugged at the corners of her mouth, and she struggled to hide it before Pen commented. They were probably stale, but what the hell. She peeled back the wrapper and bit down into the thick mass of granola and bitter chocolate chips, wincing a little. It was like…chewing tar. Except she'd never had tar. But that sounded right. She handed the pouch back to Pen, who accepted it back wordlessly and continued walking.
Very diligent, her new companion.
Busy managing the snack she was having and wondering how old it was, her mind was occupied enough to not tear itself to pieces. She almost missed the point where the environment changed; the walls were smoother—these were water carved caverns…With glowing crystals at evenly placed intervals.
It didn't look right.
She noted some dimly lit holes along the upper portion of the walls—like little tunnels for creatures to nest in.
Her stomach turned. Halfway through her granola bar she decided that she didn't really feel like finishing it.
"It's kinda pretty down here." Pen said absently.
Lauren was feeling the onset of another panic attack, and braced herself against the wall, trying to control her breathing. She must not have done a good job, because she heard from up ahead, "…Are you okay?"
"YES, my lungs just-SPASM periodically because of all the beatings—" Wait, that sounded worse than claustrophobia. "I mean I—" Her voice choked. She hated it. What she wanted to do right then was make herself as small as possible, curl up in a little ball and just not move. Ever.
Something squishy and wriggly dropped down onto her head and started frantically pulling through her hair. She shrieked, everything in her arms clattering to the ground and Pen's footsteps echoing off the walls as she ran back.
"Ge-GET IT OFF. GET IT OFF." Unhelpfully, she thrashed about until her head smacked against the wall, and she collapsed to the floor making vague, scattered curses. Whatever it was fell off her head, but she couldn't see it, curling into a ball and clutching her scalp. She sifted her fingers through hair and searched for any punctures or—or eggs.
"Wait-wait, Lauren, it's okay! It's okay!" she heard Pen say, her voice in some bizarre swing of girlish enthusiasm. "It's okay, it's just a chumtoad!"
A what?
Lauren peaked out from behind her fingers—and brushed some of the hair that she'd been rooting through out of her face—to see a small, purple…She would have said frog, but its legs were wrong, and it had one large, bulbous eye instead of two, there on its head like a fat, red dewdrop. It aimlessly, lazily flopped about, and with one scoop of her arms Pen plucked it off the ground.
"It's just a little chumtoad." She was giggling now, curls bouncing and looking every bit the stereotypical ditzy blond. Lauren found her laughter alarming. Not the least because it was contagious. At first she just knew that her lungs were shaking—it took a second to recognize the noise that came out, it sounded more like she was gasping. Like an oppressive weight been choking her down, and she hadn't noticed until her breath had come bubbling up through her lungs again.
It was just a chumtoad.
She quit smiling when her cheeks started to hurt. It wasn't that funny. Her face flushed.
The chumtoad had fallen back to the floor again, absolutely oblivious to everything going on around it and absently moving about around them.
"We must have hit a nesting ground," Pen said finally, catching her breath again. "Probably best to be careful, there might be more dangerous creatures in the tunnels up ahead."
Lauren nodded, grateful that she hadn't descended into hiccups, clambering for her shotgun. It figured their escape route would have a catch. Here's hoping there was a way around it without wasting all their ammo or losing an eye because she wasn't careful with her firearms.
They collected themselves and started back off, Lauren a bit more wary of their changing environment and no longer appreciative of the features that were surely from an alien planet, save for the apparent harmlessness of at least one of its creatures to the extent that Pen didn't find anything wrong with turning her back on it.
As they walked, she could hear resounding off the floor a few, irregularly placed, soft little splats of flesh. Was following them? Lauren turned around and looked down. Yes it was.
"Go away."
It hopped up against her foot and stared up at her with that glossy, dewdrop eye.
"Go on. Shoo. Vamoose."
Was that Spanish? It occurred to her addled mind that chumtoads, being from another dimension, were probably unfamiliar with Spanish.
Funny. She was certain that she had never seen one in her whole life, but something about that little purple frog was…familiar. Comfortingly so, actually.
"What exactly does a chumtoad do?"
"Get eaten." The thing pulled itself onto her shoe and let its tongue loll out. "I'm serious, that's all they do. My mom and I—" Pen's voice cut off. She tried again. "They make good bullsquid bait."
Lauren slung her shotgun over her shoulder and bent down to pick the wriggly thing up, cradling it in her arms. It was kind of cute, for…whatever it was. "Do you think maybe we could hold onto it?"
Pen snorted. "If you want. It's eating your rations though."
"It's—it's not a pet." Lauren stammered.
"What is it then?"
Lauren waffled a bit with her reply before muttering out a string of gibberish. Pen laughed.
It wasn't a pet because she wasn't naming it. Although, if she was naming it, she already had the perfect name and everything—but no, it wasn't a pet. The little creature was…what had Pen said? Bullsquid bait.
Although she didn't really like the idea of feeding Ribby to a bullsquid. She didn't even know what a bullsquid was, but she imagined it would look like a crime against nature and rip him to shreds. The thought wasn't appealing.
She wondered if she had ever had a pet before. The cloud over her mind had cleared more than she cared to see, but a lot of things still refused to move into her consciousness, and any experience whatsoever that she might have had in taking care of another living creature that was gone.
Aliens were the opposite of domestic though, so that wouldn't have mattered in the first place…
Not a pet. Not. A. Pet.
The crystals that lined the walls were slowly changing color, making small gradient changes towards red from yellow. Their space widened—not a bad thing—and little pools of some shimmery blue liquid were collected on the ground between thin crevices in the wall. Had that sniper bothered to come through here before recommending it to travelers? Maybe he'd given an indication of where it was going, but you'd think it was worth mentioning that an entire section not that far in looked like the universe had cut and pasted in a cave from an alien planet.
A lot of crazy things had happened since…well, she couldn't recall exactly what happened in the First Days, but even living in a Union city allowed one to cling to some sense of normalcy among familiar architecture and a mainly humanoid populace. This was…well, she had a purple, one eyed toad in her arms, occasionally making croaking noises that were more akin to a pig squealing. And her human companion had pink hair.
Well. Pinkish blonde.
And all of this was much better to focus on than how the ceiling was getting closer to them. She didn't think it was her imagination because she could reach a hand up and brush her fingers over the smooth surface. Ribby was tiny, he and his kind probably didn't worry about cave-ins. Or getting stuck and starving to death.
"Hey Lauren?"
"What?" Conversation. Ribby was alternating between dopey, relaxed stillness and lightly kicking at her arm. He wasn't any good for conversation.
"What did you do before the Seven Hour War? …If that's an okay question."
"What did I do?" This took her aback a little. "Uh…I think it—M-my memory's a little fuzzy on that front, but um…" Nobody had ever asked her that before, and the fact that she didn't know off the top of her head was suddenly a bit discomforting. "I was—it had to do with drinks."
"Drinks?"
"Yeah, like uh…oh shoot." This was going to kill her. "Whaddya call it, like a…"
"I mean, did you make drinks or something—"
Lauren snapped her fingers. "Waitress! Bar maid."
"Oh." Pen sounded disappointed.
…It wasn't like that was the career she'd planned on keeping for the rest of her life or anything-What did it matter what she'd done for a living? "What about you? I mean, not-not before the War, but, before…well…the whole…train…thing."
Pen swallowed. "Well…We—me and my family, we traveled around a bit. Mostly just trying to stay below the radar." She paused and pulled at her hair. "I'm not…sure I wanna talk about it."
"We could talk about the ceiling." Lauren offered. "I think it's dropped a-a foot or two. Have you ever seen anything like these crystal things? I'm not going to grow a third arm by standing near one, am I?"
Pen grinned. "No, but you might turn green."
She was joking. …She was, wasn't she?
"That's a joke."
"Oh."
"It can't be too much farther." Pen mused, gazing at the surroundings thoughtfully. "They wouldn't be good escape tunnels if they didn't lead somewhere. Y'know, quickly."
"How quickly, do you think?"
"How am I supposed to know that?"
The air screeched. Pen paused a moment only to take the safety off of her rifle and Lauren almost jumped out of her skin.
It figured.
More of that hideous, screaming, bug noise. Where had her shotgun fallen?
Oh, there it was. A swift kick wasn't really enough to keep from getting scratched up but it pushed off the claws so she could reach-
Sure, nice tunnel, hidden from Civil Protection, pretty crystal displays, adorable toad-things just falling from the ceiling, sure, great escape route. As long as you don't mind the attacks from monstrous, four foot mantis things (Pen yelled "ant-lions", but they didn't look like ants to her) right when you've let your guard down.
Ribby, the cute, stupid little creature, was springing around from place to place, croaking in a panic and trying not to get slashed to ribbons. He knocked into a few of their antenni, disoriented them for a good kick when Lauren could get one in between hyperventilated gasps.
This tunnel was too small to fight ant-lions in.
She fired, and the buckshot hit dead on—spraying over the walls, ricocheting off the stone and booming into Lauren's eardrums so all she could catch was ringing.
Tunnel acoustics, right, very bad idea.
She had been standing there, breathing hard with her shotgun falling out of her arms and more blood caking over her face for she didn't know how long when a red-smeared hand tapped her arm.
"They're dead. We have to hurry before more show up."
Lauren gave a start. Her hearing had come back. Pen looked like hell, and Ribby was croaking like he had chronic hiccups.
"This normal for you?" she breathed, scrabbling with slippery fingers on her gun.
"Only if we go underground." Pen leaned down and picked up Ribby. "They have a nest, farther in."
"I'm never going underground again."
"I understand."
There was no glorious light at the end, but there were little flickering lightbulbs and a trapdoor, which was good enough. Lauren almost skinned herself stumbling up the stairs, knocking her head on the metal before Pen had a chance to push the release button.
She shot her a dirty look before she could get in more than a few snickers.
To her abject dismay, what awaited them was just another enclosure, falling ceiling tiles and broken light rods. No windows, sealed door.
"What?!" She shrieked, ducking her head down and stumbling out of the hole and onto the floor. "I came all this way to die here? Why couldn't the antlions have gotten me first?!"
"Calm down." Pen said, coming up behind her. "There has to be a way out of here."
"That's—easy—for you to say!"
"It's easy logic, Lauren." She rapped her fist on the big steel door. It creaked inward, for a fraction of an inch. "They…kept it unlocked?"
"You mean you expected them to lock us in?" Lauren asked, stumbling to her feet.
"Well, until they knew we weren't gonna kill anyone…"
"I don't care. They left it unlocked. I'm getting out of here—"
Bodies. Everywhere.
Lauren jumped back, missed the door, tried to push herself through the wall. They were so close to her, corpses with blood and slashed flesh, lying there like they could get up any minute and crowd her with the stench of death.
"What happened here…?" Pen breathed, taking two steps forward. "I mean this-this is kind of sickening."
Notably, Pen was not the one gasping for breath and hoping she didn't vomit.
Most of them were men and woman in combat fatigues, jury rigged armor and yellow lambda insignias on their arms. Some others were soldiers in gas masks—identical and in black bulletproof vests. They looked more like broken mannequins with pure white skin and clear fluids leaking from their wounds instead of blood. Some horrible dolls that had been sent in to kill and left behind by their fellows.
"You mean it's not obvious?" Lauren squeaked, trying to iron the fear out of her voice. "The Union came through and killed everyone."
"I know that. Calm down." Pen ordered, beckoning for her to get up with her rifle. She pointed over to Ribby, who had started cheerfully bypassing the piled people with his extraordinary jumping skills. "You see? Even your chumtoad isn't scared, and his kind gets eaten by everyone."
"But he doesn't have brains!" Lauren snapped. "Of course he isn't scared! Why would they eat him if he didn't have brains?"
Pen shook her head. "You have clearly lost your mind. Let's get you into some fresh air. Do you see the door? That door leads outside. Let's go."
"Wait. What if outside is worse?"
She threw up her hands in exasperation. "Then stay here."
Well, that was not a real option. She stuck close to Pen, realized that she'd dropped her shotgun and thought about going back for it. Through the corpses. Decided not to.
The exit was a beaten wooden door, and it swung open like it was about to fall right off its hinges. The state of the sky said it was afternoon. Maybe late afternoon. Not many plants, and mostly crushed grass.
"…A lot of dead people." Lauren observed.
"That's great." Pen muttered. "We find a Resistance post and everyone in it is dead."
Ah. The surviving militants. "That who they were?" Lauren peered at them closer. She thought about the encircled lambdas on the half the walls in every city she saw, graffiti nobody had bothered to scrub away. She'd figured it wasn't important if the Union didn't fear it enough to hide it from everybody else. Just a bunch of people who thought they could make a difference and still failed to actually save anyone. Even themselves, apparently.
"Mom and Dad always talked about joining up…We could never find an active outpost though…" Pen kicked at one of the dead doll soldiers. "Just a bunch of houndeyes and rogues."
Lauren kept quiet. She'd keep her disparaging opinions to herself.
Ribby knocked against her leg and she looked down. The pudgy thing was shivering a little. Could normal reptiles shiver? Whatever. She scooped him back into her arms and tried to ignore the slight chill in the wind.
"They might have left something useful in the base." Pen mused. "The Combine have already swept through here so they won't come back; it might be a good place to stay for the night."
"Do we really have to stay in the base filled with corpses?"
"I'm sure we can find a room that's empty."
Lauren sighed. "You're lucky I'm exhausted."
Pen put on a lopsided smirk and rolled her eyes. "Yes, I suppose so."