Atkins swung back in. “There’s a small ledge to the right, and creepers that should hold our weight.”
“Should?”
“Best I can do.”
Gazette shook his head. “I’m not bloody going out there.”
“Well, that creature is headed this way whether we like it or not. Jump or be pushed.”
“Let’s do it,” said Gutsy, reaching out and grabbing a root. The plant creaked, but held, as he stretched out for another further along. “Well, if it’ll hold me… You follow me, lad,” he called to Chalky, “and just follow the advice of me missus when she’s getting undressed — don’t look down. Many’s the time I wished I’d followed her advice, son, believe me. Brr.” He shook his head vigorously until his jowls wobbled.
Gazette edged out. “I hate heights.”
Pot Shot, Porgy and Mercy scrambled out over the other side.
“You too,” Atkins told Chandar.
“But what about you?” the chatt asked.
“Oh, I’ll be joining you shortly, don’t you worry.”
The chatt scuttled out with a cockroach-like speed that startled Atkins as he watched it use the invading roots to scurry up the passage wall and out of the tunnel mouth. He shuddered, then checked that his men were out of the way.
He ran back down the passage a short distance, intending to bait the creature. He fired a couple of rounds, not imagining that he’d stop it, but just to goad it. The bullets buried themselves in the oncoming flesh with sucking thwups. “Come on, then, you ugly bugger. Come and get me.”
He turned and ran. The great glossy wet bulk, spraying its lubricating oily mist to ease its way, barrelled towards him. He could see the opening ahead. It wasn’t far, but it was further than he wanted it to be. He had grossly underestimated the speed of the thing, and its blind, instinctive need for food. It began to put forth thin tendrils that flailed blindly, closing the distance between them.
As he raced towards the end of the tunnel, he saw Mercy’s face and arm silhouetted against the light. “Run!” he yelled.
How the hell did he think that was going to help? Of course he was bloody running.
As he pounded the last few yards, Atkins felt a tendril wrap round his puttee. No! He was so damn close. A couple of yards shy of the tunnel mouth, he took a deep breath and bellowed his rage and fear, putting everything he had into one last, desperate lunge. He leapt through the curtain of foliage.
For less than the space of a heartbeat, he hung in the air. He saw the blue sky ahead and glimpsed the awful fall to the jungle below, before strong hands grabbed his webbing and swung him aside.
Another heartbeat. He crashed into the cliff wall with a force that winded him; one of Chandar’s precious amphora shattered in its pouch. He saw Mercy’s sweaty, grinning face and grabbed instinctively for the roots in front of him.
A heartbeat later the newly birthed creature, oiling the tunnel as it came with its greasy black vapour, shot out, arcing into space, glands on its body spraying Atkins with the disgusting stuff as it passed.
The limbless thing tumbled down through the air to the jungle canopy below, losing the slug-like shape forced upon it by the constraints of the passage. Freshly extruded tendrils writhed helplessly in mid-air.
Atkins breathed a sigh of relief. “Blood and sand, that was too close by—”
He felt a tug on his leg, and then a wrench that almost pulled him from the cliff. The creature still had a tendril wrapped round his leg as it fell, threatening to drag him down with it. He could feel the root he held tear from its anchorage. Wide with horror, his eyes met those of Mercy.
Mercy made a desperate grab for Atkins’ wrist, but his hand was as sweaty as Atkins’ own. Atkins slithered from his grasp.
“Only!” roared Gutsy, fumbling to free Little Bertha.
He could feel his wet clammy fingers slipping from the root. His eyes still locked on Mercy’s as he shook his head, absolving him of any blame. There was nothing more to be done.
The coarse texture of the root began to slip away under his fingertips.
With a rapidity of movement none had seen from it before today, Chandar scuttled, face-down, over Atkins’ back. The chatt’s mandibles scythed through the tendril holding his ankle, and the creature crashed down through the canopy below and was lost from sight. Atkins felt Chandar’s vestigial claws bite deep into his tunic, gripping him long enough for hands to reach down and haul him back up.
They clambered back into the tunnel and the shocked party caught their breath.
Gutsy looked at Chandar and shook his head in wonder. “Jesus, Mary and Joseph, I didn’t know they could do that. Did you know they could do that?”
Slumped against the tunnel wall, Atkins looked up at his saviour. “Thank you.”
The chatt sucked in a chestful of air. “It was Kurda,” it lisped.
Atkins nodded, still catching his breath. He regarded the chatt for a moment. “What is that place?” he asked, waving a hand at the crater beyond the tunnel mouth.
Chandar hissed and sank down on its legs. “Forbidden. That place does not exist.”
“Well, it clearly bloody does exist. It damn near killed me!”
“It is forbidden to the Ones.”
“I like the sound of that,” said Gutsy. “Anywhere the chatts can’t go has got to be good.”
Mercy snorted. “I wouldn’t be too sure. This world would kill you at every turn. If you ask me, there’s probably a bloody good reason why they don’t want to go there.”
Atkins got up and stepped towards the chatt. “You’ve been windy since we came across the Gilderra enclave. When the Zohtakarrii captured us, you knew then where we were, didn’t you? You knew about that place down there, that crater.”
“It is forbidden, forbidden to speak about. It does not exist for us. Other Ones, like the Zohtakarrii, whose territory borders it, patrol to make sure no One goes in and nothing comes out. It has been that way for spira upon spira.”
Atkins stared hard at the chatt, but its facial plate gave nothing away. It had no expression to read. He had no choice but to take what it said at face value. For now.
“Let’s get moving before another of those things decides to corner us here again.”
In the birthing gallery, two creatures were cracking the dead chatts’ chitinous shells. Another freshly-birthed horror had fallen upon the urmen bodies, gripping them with extruded tendrils, and sucking the meat from them, leaving nothing but ichor-covered skin and bone, like discarded greasy chicken carcasses. Such was their voracious appetite that they paid no attention to the Tommies.
Atkins tapped the air with a finger, pointing towards a passage on the opposite side that seemed to run upwards. They skirted the repulsive, shapeless things and, once the section was safely in the tunnel mouth, Atkins ordered Pot Shot and Mercy to throw a brace of Mills bombs into the centre. The creatures exploded in balls of flame and silent thrashing tendrils that shrivelled in the heat.
They followed the passage as it curved upwards, until Atkins felt sure they had climbed more than the hundred or so feet that would bring them back to ground level. Light blossomed in the distance, filtered through hanging foliage. With the point of his bayonet, Atkins parted the curtain of leaves and vines. “Blood and sand, not again!”