The One Who Endures - Patrick Spiker (top novels .txt) 📗

her thigh. Every time she pulled, there was a sound like the sucking of an empty straw.

“What the hell are you doing?” Derek asked, but he, like Will, could not find the strength to stop her. They were afraid that any touch might make her jerk the wire and cause irreparable damage.

“I...I won’t let it use Anna like that,” she said, pulling out another two inches. The skin puckered along the entry wound. “No. I won’t. I won’t be responsible for that. No way.”

Will said, “It’s already done, Marta, and we don’t know where these wires go. They could be in your heart, for God’s sake!”

“This one is...is cut, see? It’s not...connected...to anything. It...oh, shit, it hurts.”

They watched, helpless, as Marta pulled a foot of wire from her body. A foot and half. Where it fell to the ground, the colored mucus soaked into the dirt. Marta’s stomach heaved every time she pulled, and that slush-slush

sound made Will grimace.

Then, with one more tug, the wire ended. She threw it aside and looked at the resultant hole, which was little bigger than the width of a match; still, blood flowed through her fingers as she tried covering it.

“See?” she said. “It’s fine. The wire was useless. It’s out.”

Quickly, she grabbed the second wire, fortified by the apparent ease with which the first had left. But when she tugged, instead of sliding, the wire remained immobile and she screamed. She jumped back and fell onto Derek.

She was breathing so hard that Will thought she might pass out.

“Okay,” she gasped, “not...not that one.”

They helped her up. From the tiny hole beside her belly button, blood still dribbled, but it was

slowing. She kept a finger over it, applying pressure, and she was smiling.

“Go ahead,” she said, “Do it. It doesn’t hurt that much, and it’ll be out of you. Go on, go on!”

“No,” Will said. “I’m not going to. We still don’t know what it did to you, pulling it out like that.”

Derek, an arm around Marta, said, “I can’t anyway. I’m connected to the two of you, see? My wires are all in use.”

He was right. Will and Marta had been attached to Anna, but Derek was sandwiched between them.

“Will, don’t tell me you want that thing inside you.”

“Of course not, Marta. But not right now, okay?”

“Then what?”

“Let’s find a way out of this damn cave,” he said.

5

They searched the cave. They searched it again. Then they did it a third time.

They found nothing

It took a long time because they had to stay close together so the wires didn’t pull taut. First, intuiting that such knowledge might prove useful, they took turns standing as far apart as possible, and saw that the wires were about ten feet long. Then they started at one wall and felt for any imperfections, hidden buttons, fake stones, or secret windows. Every wall was perfect in its roughness.

They stared down the hole in the room’s center. It was larger than they’d thought, perhaps a foot and a half in diameter, but nothing else could be seen: just inches inside, the light became blinding. Marta reached in and said it felt like regular, warm stone.

When they finished, everyone was sweating. Dirt streaked across their bodies, and their dried blood had turned black. Their hair was tangled. Their combined breathing had turned the air muggy. The chamber stank of body odor and a vague coppery undertone of blood.

Exhausted, they slumped against one of the walls, inches from one another, the wire looped in and around their feet.

Will had thought about pulling the severed one from his body, as had Marta, but he was not strong enough. He hated even getting shots. No way could he yank it out.

“We’re going to die,” Marta said. She was absently feeling along the remaining wire, prodding her skin as if thinking about pulling it again.

As a declaration of their shared grief, no one refuted her statement.

Soon, they found themselves staring at Anna’s corpse. They had managed to avoid touching it while they searched, but it had fallen over sometime; those hollow eye sockets seemed to look upon them with anger. Will couldn’t even see his friend anymore. Her face was contorted, bruised, and whatever muscle tone or contours she’d once had were gone.

The light went out.

The previous darkness had been terrifying, and although Will knew they should be readying themselves for whatever might come, he could not summon the strength. His body was simply incapable of quick action, and so he sat with his friends against the wall as darkness reigned. Marta found his hand and he gripped it, and on his left, he grabbed Derek’s as well.

When the lights came on not ten seconds later, the tribesman was back.

He stood facing them, that same deep-lined scowl on his face, but this time his hands were empty.

Will noticed that, despite being nude, the man retained a sense of pride, as if he were more animal than man, as comfortable without clothes as a bear or wolf.

If he was surprised at all by their escape from their bonds, he did not show it. Probably to him there was no such thing as surprise.

“Insalla

,” he said, repeating the word he’d used before.

“Fuck you,” Derek said.

“Insalla, sai

.”

Derek gave him the finger.

The tribesman pointed at Marta. “Sai

.”

“Leave her alone,” Will said, knowing his words meant nothing. “You leave her alone.”

The man whirled and knelt, picked up Anna’s body. He cradled the mummy-like shape in his arms and turned around.

“Sai

,” he said, and then lowered his head and kissed the corpse.

No, Will realized a moment later, he wasn’t kissing Anna but sucking

on her. His lips were parted wide, and he moved back and forth along the leathery skin of her face, forehead, down her chest, inhaling all the while, as if the body had been laced with some kind of drug which he now ingested.

This continued for perhaps a minute, and then he hurled the body against the left wall. So hard was the throw, and so dry were the remains, that upon contact Anna shattered. A silent explosion showered dry, pale flecks through the air, and there was nothing left of their friend but the haze settling to the ground.

Quickly, the tribesman walked over and knelt in front of Will, not three feet away. His jewelry rattled.

No longer did he scowl. Now his eyes were wide, his lips parted. He extended a hand, made a sweeping gesture, and nodded.

“What’s he doing?” Marta asked.

“Who cares?” Derek said. “I know we said we’re gonna die, but guys, I don’t want to die because of him

.”

“Quiet!” Will ordered.

The tribesman had locked eyes with him, but in no way were those black spheres human eyes. This may have been a human body, a convincing guise, but his gaze betrayed him. The man was not a man at all.

“I think...I think he wants us to do something,” Will said.

The tribesman pointed to himself and said, “Onon

.”

“Onon? Is that...your name?”

“His name

?” Derek said. “Are you out of your mind? He has no goddamn name, this is all a trick, and we have to get away!”

Will slapped his friend’s arm. “Shut up!” He pointed at the man and said, “Onon?”

The man nodded. “Onon. Insalla, Onon, insalla sai

.” He reached down and grasped the wire between Will and Derek, gave it a squeeze, and then pointed at each of them in succession.

“You’re right,” Marta said. “He wants us to do something. What, though?”

Will shook his head. “I have no idea.”

The tribesman—Onon—stood, spread his arms, and looked to the cave’s ceiling. Will couldn’t stop a sliver of excitement as he imagined the stone falling apart and daylight streaming in.

Onon rushed forward, bent down, grabbed Derek by the neck and groin, and hurled him headfirst into the wall. There was a sickening thunk

. Blood sprayed everywhere. It happened so fast that no one reacted.

Then the light went out again.

Marta was immediately atop Will, hugging him, screaming into his ear about not wanting it to happen again, how she would rather die, and he had no idea what she was talking about—

—and then the wires heated up. And he understood. It was happening again.

Though he knew what to expect, the pulses still shocked him. It was worse this time. Derek’s theory seemed to be correct, and with every throbbing ball of something

that streamed into him, Will saw in his mind’s eye the corpse of his friend, his skin wrinkling and everything still living being transformed and shuttled into him and Marta, who had let go and was writhing on the ground beside him.

He couldn’t do anything. It was useless to fight, and thankfully this episode was quicker.

Soon the hole emitted light. Yellow, sad light.

Derek was dried and dead. Marta was on the floor beside Will, curled into the fetal position, not unconscious but moaning the same word over and over: “No, no, no, no, no, no...”

Will sat up. He didn’t feel dizzy or sick, as before. No, he felt strong. Fantastic, even. His mind was alight with new thoughts, new decisions, and a strange amount of pride. He felt as if he could punch through a wall with ease.

Yes, because you stole your friend’s energy. His life. You took it, and now you benefit while he’s dead.

He rose and turned Marta onto her back. She was bleeding again from her mouth and nose, and now her ears had also begun leaking.

A drop of blood fell onto her chest, and Will was shocked to reach up and find that he, too, was bleeding.

They were alone now. And strung between them was a single wire, somehow formed while the lights were out.

6

Marta wouldn’t leave.

Will was at the wall, hitting it in frustration.

When the lights returned, they had discovered an opening in the stone, about four feet high and five feet wide. There was a tunnel beyond, but they couldn’t see where it led because there was no light inside. Like the teleporting tribesman, this opening appeared to have been there all along; its edges were smooth.

Will hadn’t believed it at first. He kept staring at it, convinced that if he tried to crawl through it would seal shut, locking him in eternal blackness. Then, when he got the courage to enter, Marta refused to go.

She wouldn’t explain herself or even look at him. She sat cross-legged, staring at her hands, silent.

Had there not been a ten-foot length of wire between them, he would have left. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t jump at the chance to leave this hellhole. For a moment he considered leaving anyway, dragging her along like a disobedient dog, but was discouraged from that because he didn’t know if the wires were strong enough to pull a human being.

Will had just about run out of patience when she whispered her first words in a long while: “You scare me.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You’re not you anymore.”

“What?”