"James, get the gun."

James all but threw the backpack to the floor and dropped to a knee. He tore through their cache, clumsily shoving handfuls of shells into his pocket. When he uncovered the handgun, he gave it a once-over to make sure it was intact before he passed it to Harry's waiting hand. As soon as he'd tucked the piece against his side, Harry accepted the two magazines, and stuffed them in his jacket.

Harry licked the corner of his mouth, darting his eyes over the moth in quick study. "Remember the moth I fought on the roof?"

James stood; the shotgun clacked. "It looks like shit. You didn't say it looked like this."

"Because it didn't."

"You're really gonna use that thing?" he questioned, jerking a nod at the pipe.

"Always be prepar— oh shit, MOVE!"

They dove to either side and cleanly escaped the grub projectile. It ricocheted off the wheels where they'd split, bounced thrice across the floor, and disappeared into the deep. The two spread out as James blew the first shot. Pitched chittering from the moth sounded more annoyed than hurt, and hurled at him another fat, oversized maggot. James darted, cocked, and aimed.

The moth descended from its airborne throne, its wings thrusting bouts of wind that disrupted James's stability and aim. Ducking his head and twisting away, he quickly fled to the far corner and the single valve it housed. Being tucked in there diluted the wind enough for him to take back some control. He pivoted and almost got to shoulder the stock when he was forced to leap to the right, or else be squashed.

But in the hurry to save his hide, James briefly hooked himself on the nearby wheel. Though he freed himself in no time, the blunder put him in a downright surly mood. Glaring back at the beast, he sucked in an agitated breath, locked onto his target, and fired. Its cry preceded another slimy present for James of which herded him back to the corner. Hatefully firing round after round, the buckshot had already failed to keep the insect's interest, and left James muttering and cursing to shift to a far more important man.

It was Harry's turn. The moth propelled itself backwards, rotated, and swooped in. Harry condescendingly beckoned it in. When it was so close that the gales made him squint, his jacket billow, and tested his balance, Harry lunged for the body. The power behind his steel bat's swing would've made a professional baseball player shed a tear. Thin gangrene ruptured upon the delivery, and prevented a peeking worm back into the crowd.

Rhythmic gusts upset his equilibrium and Harry went bumbling backwards towards his own corner of the room. Somehow working against time and gravity, he managed to throw his arm up to protect himself and sharply turn, all whilst tripping over his feet. During those mere seconds in which this took place, the winds carried black spray from the torn wound and strings of ooze from its dead, flopping legs.

The mist sprinkled the leather and the ichor splattered his arm and back like spilt soup. Harry yelped the instant they made contact. Hot venom bloomed over his arm, shoulder, wherever he'd shown his back. Glancing showed no damage to the jacket itself and yet, the burn felt like an agonizing veneer on his bare skin.

But he wasn't going to let a little pain scare him. Snarling over clenched teeth, he kept his spine to the current as the creature's wings hinged back, and used the short, breezeless window to whirl around. A bulging, squirming family of larvae crunched beneath the bludgeon's impact, and for a moment, made his stomach turn.

The polluted moth dedicated its fury to the man it'd fought long ago. Harry stood his ground in the squall, half-listening to the shotgun's steady pow-pow-pow at his left.

Meanwhile, James discovered that no matter how many shells he unloaded, they seemed to be doing nothing. All his buckshot appeared to do was tickle the body and help dislodge a trio of grubs the color of mucus near Harry's feet.

Harry ignored them at first; he had bigger fish to fry. The insect's segments contracted, and movement in his peripheral vision caught sight of James diving out of the path of an organic cannonball. But in going to repeat his attack, he realized he'd been foolish to overlook the bugs on the ground, and Harry found this out the hard way. One of the engorged, milky bodies uncurled during his distraction. It started a journey over his boot, rubbing up on his shin, and doting upon Harry a fun-filled surprise.

He abandoned his swing midway to choke on his gasp. But Lady Luck had always been a good friend of his and saw to it that he, in his haste to pedal backwards from both moth and grub, stayed on his feet. He did, though, let the strong wings whisk his body into the wall where he hooked his fingers in the lattice above his head, and held fast.

As for the cheeky surprise, Harry quickly became aware that doing anything on his feet was going to be a big problem. The slime that'd smeared his boot and shin left a colony of blisters, so it seemed, overpopulating his foot in a flash. Every scrape and full-on step he took popped them raw and sticky - only for others to balloon in their place. It was hell.

The ongoing blasts from James finally aggravated the moth enough to switch targets. No matter how many times James shot it, and no matter how fragile the moth's segments looked, the scales acted like tough leather layered two feet thick. Despite that, oversized maggots effortlessly birthed themselves from septic lesions, its sloppily oozing legs flopped about, and the gales blew.

Click-clack, boom; wet crunches, angry shrieks; click-clack, boom. A bug he'd wounded served return fire. There were several dense bodies curled up dead on his side of the room, and the new arrival added one more. James periodically glanced at Harry favoring one leg and writhing on the fence. He tried to keep their enemy busy while also conserving his ammo, but without Harry's help, their chance of survival was becoming grim.

Harry ground his teeth, persevering through the agony to locate the grubs around him. Whether it was his full weight on his leg or just a scuff, it felt no less painful than stepping on a bed of glass and coals. Nevertheless, the opportunity arose to practice his golf swing, and he could use the distraction. Any bugs scooting towards him went sailing through the air into the largest, and easiest, 18th hole they'd ever see.

When he was done with those, he was given more to practice with. The moth entertained resident and civilian on their sides of the room as though it were a pitching machine in a batting cage. On their left, James spruced up his dodgeball skills and on their right, Harry called himself Arnold Palmer. If they weren't in such increasingly deep shit trouble, maybe they would've found a little humor in it somewhere.

That being said, Harry was a rather bullheaded man, himself. His stubborn insistence to take his fight up close and personal was about to teach him a stern lesson in keeping one's distance - even if backs were turned. Not unlike a natural idiot, Harry moved in, held his pipe aloft like a two-handed spear, and plunged it into one of the many gooey sores riddling the moth's body.

Three things happened then:

One, Harry's pipe shoveled beneath the mushier scales and volleyed the stuffing balls out;

Two, scooping the weapon out as quickly as he thrust it did mean that spray and spill was inevitable. He'd done some quick strategic thinking in preparation for that, and had deliberately chosen to gouge from an upwards angle. Doing so allowed him to stay behind the mess that burst out.;

And three, he also put himself in the stupid position of being too close to the hindwing.

Harry's body flew into the iron wall. Wing, wind, and a solid beach ball were all in cahoots in how far, and how hard he fell. The larvae ejected partway through his time as Superman, bouncing off his right side and forcing Harry's collision onto his left. His steel rod went twirling in the air, clanging off the rim of a wheel valve, then see-sawed into the wall where it remained at the base of the fence, and far from his reach.

He landed on his stomach. Air whooshed from his lungs and sandpaper shaved them with his next gasp. Harry lay stunned on the concrete, his breaths coming tight and clipped. James witnessed the moment Harry dropped like a sack of sand, and his heart shot up into his throat.

Harry wasn't moving, but his face said he was alive and beyond well. James was suddenly alone in a battle that needed two to win, but the way his companion was dazed and prone - paralyzed, even - insinuated that it was more serious than it looked. That angered him for several reasons he didn't have a spit's second to even name. Shells were loaded by muscle memory, for James's anger blended with anxiety when it was taking too long for Harry to move.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck," he hissed, pointing the barrel where the wings overlapped. His sniper's accuracy hit the bullseye, drawing from the moth a soprano's shrill, and ducked for the ground a little too late.

The nasty cannonball grazed his shoulder, sprung off the wall, bounced into his straightened calves and rolled off his heels. James's knees bowed from the impact, and in the two steps forward, a cigar had been apparently snuffed out on his shoulder, and what felt like a cast of molten wax instantly throttled his lower legs. Pain locked his breath in his lungs. He danced an encumbered waltz, strafing and swaying through a minefield of grubs.

James gnashed his teeth; his knees wobbled, his calves swelling taut around bones just waiting to splinter. By pure chance, James's teetering saved him from a projectile to the stomach, and instead led him to the grate.

Clinging to the iron tense, panicked, and boiling with hate, James looked at the bug inching his way and pushed off hard. Here, he made a simple, logical choice (which was a great mistake) to kick it. By his demand, the grub dutifully exited the scene; but, it would be impolite to do so without a parting gift. So away it went, rolling easily through the gust (since it was too heavy to be affected by it) and dropped off the cliff - and in its wake, James was left with a bounty of suffering.

Perfect timing came from the other side. James staggered in the swells to the sound of popping bullets' uneven tempo. Naturally, the moth redirected. He was so disoriented that he'd forgotten how many more living bugs were in his company. Scanning the ground, there were a lot more worms than he remembered. The majority of them were already dead, confusing his perception, but he found a nearby couple slinking in for an unwelcome meet and greet. Like Harry'd done with his steel, James made an impromptu club out of the shotgun's barrel, and aggressively rejected their salutations into the trench.

A third, unfortunately, wanted to surprise him - and surprise him, it did. James accidentally stepped, and tripped, over the one waiting at his heels. Like an old slapstick routine, his arms and legs flailed about and, as though the backpack were a magnet, slammed again into the wall. Clenching his jaw to the point where his teeth wanted to crack, he endured the raging onset of serrated barnacles replacing his shoes, and the icepicks that rammed through his bones.

James scrunched his face so tightly that his eyeballs strained. The pain throbbed in his legs like a battering ram, gradually edging itself higher and higher. He swallowed a billiard ball of spit, recollecting his priorities and focus on the man he was supposed to be protecting. Popping his eyes open, he blearily looked around to try to figure out a way to swing this shitshow in their favor.

But that goddamn grub that'd tripped him snuck into his peripheral vision. It made him so angry that it stoked the bonfire borne from the lava in his legs and frustrations that never ended. James wiped his forehead, sweating like a roast pig, and took care of the bug with as little care as possible.

This whole event took place in mere minutes - but to father and soldier, it could've been decades. Although James couldn't see how bad Harry was doing on the other side of the room, he knew they needed to hustle along. He darted his eyes about, and did a double take when they glimpsed the concrete trail between cliffside and rust - they'd crossed one just like it before from the opposite side of the room. That was their ticket out.

The resident supported himself on the wall and cocked his gun. One buckshot shell whizzed through the moth's delicate wingspan; a follow-up sheared the broken antennae from its head. Screeches awarded him blood audibly pulsing in his eardrums and dull hammering in his skull. But crucial symmetry had been stolen from the beast, and it became a fisherman's bauble on rippling waters as it swam backwards over the dark.

James pounced on the chance.

"HARRY!"he barked over the shrieks. Harry was fully visible to him at last and when he looked up, James was reminded how fear could cut a man's guts to shreds. God on high - he looked like death itself was making a perverted joke out of his suffering. James could relate to that all too well. He jabbed his finger to his left, indicating where they'd come in.

"I'm gonna take it that way!"They were too far apart and the warbling too loud for Harry to hear a full sentence. His brow furrowed low and he darted his eyes at their enemy in flight, then to James.

Exasperation over Harry's pinched, confused face didn't live long under the barrage of fire hollowing James's bones. James refused to waste any more energy on yelling, shook his finger again, and prayed Harry would get the point. To his relief, his expression told him he understood.

So James became easy bait to a monster seeking vengeance.

The moth ascended high and tracked the escapee. James may have impaired its gait, so suspension required more care now, but the unfair advantage in size and flight counteracted its shortcomings. It performed each beat with intent, generating downwind that was meant to thrust James into the chasm. His journey traversing the length of the room was already set to be slow, and the grueling cocktail of pain, wind, and fear of falling would delay the trip longer than anticipated.

Pops continued to sound off, but even though the ginormous monster slugged along, Harry was still too much of a rookie to handle shooting straight under intense pressure (and pain). He should've been able to fill the beast with far more bullets; however, his shaking arms neglected to make a worthwhile impact.

It was embarrassing.

Harry aimed for the thorax and got nothing out of it. The trigger abruptly lost its tension and clicked and clicked and clicked; his supply was clean out. He fumbled to unload the empty magazine through memories muddled by pain and lack of consistent practice. His whole right side and back felt like they were being eaten by a swarm of horseflies, and the jabs of a blacksmith's red hot poker riddling his arms made it seem like the only reason why it was still attached to his shoulder was by the sympathy of deteriorating muscle.

Harry had just snapped the magazine in and pulled the slide when an insistent crash on the grate wall at his left nearly startled him out of his skin.

It was her. Harry's dumbstruck stare followed her dash to a horizontal valve wheel on her side of the fence. She gripped and wiggled it, her faceless head snapping down at the wheel, to Harry, and to the singular valve station nearby. When he didn't clue in, she slammed on the wheel again, struck her fist on the wall, then pointed demandingly at the lonely valve the travelers hadn't understood.

Harry glanced back at the ongoing chase. James needed his help. Every second lost was one more second to failure. But the girl was relentless, and his gut told him to heed her, so he turned heel and raced to the valve.

He flipped his jacket out of the way to tuck the gun against his left side. Harry took the wheel, tried to turn right, and again, was interrupted. Looking impatiently at her, she shook her head and in the air, exaggerated twisting a wide, invisible wheel to the left. Her hands clamped down again. Harry spun left first; she spun to the opposite right after.

Then she halted him and bounced on her arms, counting one, two, three - and together they cranked. The wall separating them squawked and twitched the floor as it began to lift. Harry was shocked. He hadn't noticed that the fence had been portioned into sections, not that it mattered now. As soon as there was enough space, the unholy girl speedily wriggled through the slat, mounted the stationary iron wall, and skittered at lightning speed for the other side.

The din had attracted their enemy. Harry stole his gun from his belt and a couple victorious shots later (finally!) , he was crossing the bridge. He dropped the firearm to his side and pawed at the wall to help safely pull himself along. Of course, she beat him to the punch light years ahead and, like a squirrel, launched herself off the rust straight for James. Their bodies surged into the four barrel drums in the corner, causing an airborne grub to miss James entirely, and for him to waste a precious shell.

From there, she snapped a glance over her shoulder, made sure another wasn't coming, then hopped off the stricken conduit half laying on the ground. Picking up the bug uncurled beside them, she raised it high and hurdled it back. Her aim and brawn was so true that she caused the moth to teeter and briefly dip into the cavern.

By that time, Harry had reached the party. He took the opening and fired for the wings, which he missed, but the bullets weren't misused. They penetrated and felled the front line of the parasites in their host's septic holes. The maggots behind the wounded began to shove those out to make room for themselves. In their haste, they effectively lost not only the useless, but a few of their healthy own, and all went plummeting into the nothingness below.

The girl scurried past Harry and took post in front of the pile of barrel drums and the fallen resident as the role of protector. Harry reached for James's wrist with a tremulous hand, then upon contact, winced hard to his companion's yowl of pain. James instinctively tried to retract, but Harry just reinforced his grip.

Deflecting the grubs seemed like child's play to her; however, the endless pelting they'd gotten used to seemed to be slowing down which, of course, made her job easier. Instead, and quite worryingly, the moth appeared to be preserving its munitions. By the way it hovered and strafed, it had, perhaps, even begun to carefully calculate its next attack.

That was a case confirmed when the organic pellet struck her with such precision that she went somersaulting backwards like a bowling ball. A fallen barrel stopped her with a sickening crack; but James's legs were draped over that very same barrel. As a result, the collision folded his body in extreme agony into the barrels supporting his back, worsening every little move he made to the point that he could only croak. James tore his hand from Harry's fingers, as panicked as a rat caged in a trap.

Harry's legs quivered from the precarious effort of keeping upright whilst leaning over to try to snatch James's wild arm. "James!"he fretfully barked. "James, stop! Stop!Let me help you!" Though his own arm still threatened to dismember itself from his shoulder, he grappled with James to latch onto and restrain the conduit's wrist in spite of his sweat-slicked palm doing them no favors. When James finally held on to Harry's wrist, they battled their respective tortures for security in one another to win the unwieldy fight for his freedom.

In the interim, the girl scrambled to her hands and knees. Harry glanced over, and watched her try to find a good grip on the rim of the steel drum imprisoning James in the heap. Her mammoth strength was paradoxical to her twiggy body, but it was what ripped the cylindrical container out from under his legs, and allowed James to get to his feet.

Harry caught James's tottering body with his own. The crouched anomaly suddenly leapt and twisted in the air with catlike grace, and booted an airborne projectile from its mark. She landed facing them, her sickly body tense and horrifyingly wounded. Nevertheless, she seemed unfazed, pointed frantically at the full, heavy barrel she'd extracted, then at the guns they held.

Though practically hanging onto consciousness by a thread, James caught on in an instant. He pushed off Harry and, stepping behind the awaiting receptacle, gave it a swift kick of his heel and sent it peeling for the trench - and the moth. That's when it clicked for Harry too, but James was the straight shooter here; the resident had braced the stock on his shoulder at once. They were fortunate that the moth had restarted the descent at the right time, swooping in to be met by the drum exploding into flame.

The moth reeled back. Grubs flew everywhere like rotten, blazing candy from a piñata. Ducking to shelter themselves against the fiery hail didn't stop them from forcing their overworked bodies to situate another drum. Blinded by sweat and fever, the two men endured how the raucous bleating pounded their heads, and got ready for round two.

James punted the barrel, but his weakness and their poor positioning arched its path instead of rolling head-on as it should've. His face pinched, trying to see and blink through the salt dripping down his face to find the would-be bomb.

Two shells went wasted. James's shotgun quaked no better than a fall leaf, robbing him of his priceless marksmanship at the undeniably worst time. The drum toppled right off the cliff, unharmed, into the bottomless nothing.

The moth's own wings fed its cluster of flames, nulling its previous hope for strategy. It discharged bugs as angrily as a toddler throwing a tantrum, no longer having the luxury of biding its time. They all had played enough games. Harry and James had filled their score board long ago, and were earmarked for immediate death.

Causticity devoured the air and those who breathed it. It partnered with the smoke to suck oxygen from the atmosphere, whittling their vigor and drying up their lungs to pitiful sacs.

Their wretched protector also believed that enough was enough. Stalwart yet desperate to keep these two important souls alive, she reared up on her knees, threw her arms out to her sides, and displayed her melting belly to the moth. Her hands were virtually bone, her heels protruding through shredded skin, and she fearlessly challenged their enemy to do any better than that.

This girl had moxie by the truckload. She expertly caught a grub rocketing ablaze straight for them and launched it back, not much caring whether or not the moth took damage. Grubs alive and dead littered the floor, and she took to clearing those within their immediate area, all of which were promptly returned to the flying behemoth.

Concurrently, the men's sufferings were winning out. Manhandling the barrels was as simple as moving boulders. Harry was stepping to place alongside James to assist dispatching the third drum when James's knees finally gave out. Taken aback and instantly demoralized, the author bent over James and tried his best to pull his crumpled guardian back up.

"James, c'mon buddy," Harry dismally pled. "We can do this, c'mon up..!" Stupidly putting down the firearm, he angrily nudged the damn drum from them (where it rolled to a place where it'd've made perfect dynamite, yet it was gone, gone away), latched onto his military jacket, and tried in vain to even sit him up proper - but James was a dead weight. He knew James was, thankfully, alive, for his eyes fluttered and fixed Harry with a look haggard, guilty, and apologetic.

"James, please, I know it hurts, I know, but we're so close, we're so fucking close-"

All of a sudden, a white hot brand sank into Harry's thigh and volleyed its heat to his chest. He shot straight up; James dropped to the floor. His spine arched hard, pulled as rigid as a tree, the muscles in his back tight as marble, and his throat blockading his air behind his tongue.

Harry fought for breath while the girl snatched the maggot by his feet and threw it - then accosted his burning thigh. Screeching his vocal cords rough, he lurched from her hands and wobbled into the standing, leftover oil drum. He shook like a woodpecker's neck, hitching his breaths, and shot a scathing glare back at the girl.

She pointed at the boiler and took off. Harry not only shoved off the barrel, but heaved it to the side, banished it to the quarry with a kick, and started after her; then remembered his gun. He quickly backtracked and snatched it up. Thanks to the pain hunching his posture, he passed unharmed under a ball of fire whizzing overhead.

Snapping a glance back at James, he found their nemesis lingering too near his body. Harry opened fire on it with the goal in mind to both piss it off and keep its eyes on the prize he and the girl made. It worked.

But successfully diverting the moth from James also drained his ammo for the second time.

Harry braced on the vessel, his desert-dry lungs rattling his chest while he discarded the empty magazine and smacked the last one he had into place. The girl got Harry's attention from her perch behind his head, and when he twisted to look up at her, he was literally faced by how she was truly the worst off of them all.

Her once-leathery skin slid in greasy clumps from her limbs before his eyes, plopping, and sizzling, on boiler's surface like hamburger on a griddle. Gruesome clots of meat, or intestine, or something else entirely, could be seen through moist, flimsy webbing on her concave gut. Her body threatened to disembowel itself and shed its skin at any given moment - a nightmarish sight that would revisit Harry for years whenever he closed his eyes to rest.

His lips parted, staring at the featureless face that seemed to harden to his gawking. But Harry cycled through awe and despair for the puny, spindly little thing that was inexplicably giving her life for him and James. They meant something equivocal to her; and at that moment, he knew they'd make it out alive.

They'd be forever indebted to her.

She thrust her finger, naught but black and splintering bone, at his firearm. By now, a pattern had been blatantly established, and Harry understood her demands without hesitation. He nodded, and darted his eyes to the fervid moth centered on them.

This was a dangerous game to play in such a tight corner. Everything could go very wrong at the drop of a hat. Harry had a titanic will to live, and that resurging determination circumvented the agony coursing through his body like a storm in the Bermuda Triangle. The wait for the moth to close in seemed to match a millennia, then in the blink of an eye, it was at their door.

The moth had every right to assume it'd trapped them in that corner like a cat to mice. Their compact space got smaller when it drew so near that its heat and smoke whirled Harry's head faint. He was beginning to doubt their little plan. Ever yet, his peripheral vision glimpsed her petite figure begin the vault over his head and safe landing on the other side. But Harry was not petite in any sense of the word, and the tempestuous fires on disintegrating, insistent wings had him doubting her faith in him.

But if he thought about it too long, which was a dangerous pitfall of his, he'd never get out. Gathering some conviction in himself, Harry lunged sideways through his last chance to escape. The narrow gap between fire and wall afterwards shut for good.

The wind pumped on his back and sent him stumbling hard on feet begging for mercy. He scraped along the wall, ensuring enough support to let him pivot, and retreat further away, then farther yet to the other side of the room where James lay prone. Squinting through the sweat pouring down his face, he clasped the handgun in his two hands, and leveled it dead ahead.

Its forthcoming death didn't dissuade the moth from expending all its might on ridding the world of Harry Mason for good. It swung to face him and, quite pathetically, spat the corpse of a larvae, charred and embering, onto the floor. That lull, that useless effort to take him down, was its final mistake.

Harry took a deep breath, locked his arms, and bled the tank.

The boiler detonated and engulfed that corner in inferno. Harry was thrown off his feet by the force of the explosion to skid along the ground on his side, whisking the gun from his hand. It flew, spinning through the air, and went missing in the great big hole in the middle. Corroded, piercing caterwauls gouged a pin into Harry's eardrum, sharply popping it, and deafened the Otherworld's outbreak of hues and cries.

Vertigo spun him on a malfunctioning carousel, but he struggled to his hands and knees, looking up for James. Harry powered through a body broken and running on fumes, got up, and blundered over swaying ground to the conduit.

With his back to the raging chaos, he dropped to his knees, hunching and gathering James up in his arms. He clutched his guardian tight to his chest, but Harry then started to succumb to exhaustion and keel forward - which he subconsciously realized could be used in his favor. Shifting his knees and fueled by adrenaline, Harry all but threw his body over James, shielding him as best he could in all entirety, and pushed his ruddy cheek on James's pale to turn both their heads from the fires.

The wayward father selflessly defended Silent Hill's virulent, longtime resident under his large frame, and kept him safe just as a second blast erupted from that far corner.

The ground trembled. Harry weathered the increasingly violent shakes and the outstanding heat penetrating his jacket and whooshing over his legs. His deafened ears numbed the cutting brays rising above the bedlam, and once the flurry subsided, he boldly peeked past his shoulder.

Adjacent to the boiler, the industrial fan as massive as the dying beast swept it up in its currents. It careened into the jagged edge of the hole, emitted one final wail, then fell out of sight.

Though the scene had been mostly obstructed by bunched, brown leather, a sea of relief drove Harry nearly to tears as he witnessed the gratifying sight of the moth's disastrous, and well-deserved conclusion.

They had won, but not without a hefty price to pay - and it wasn't over yet.