Page 38 of Gluttony
Couldn’t she go without him?
Dressed in her white leather battle outfit, she’d neglected to place the half-face bird mask on. Instead, he was treated to the full exposure of her stunningly pale and expressionless face. Unblinking violet eyes studied him.
“The trail will go cold,” she stated simply.
The trail… meaning the educated guess they took based on the pattern of incidents moving across the state. Considering its nature and its hunger, it made sense that the plant would head to a more populated area, and if it was here in the city, it made sense it went underground. More water to drink. More rats to eat. It had sucked most farm animal corpses dry of fluid to leave desiccated husks. The animals were alive before the farmers went to bed, and dead in the morning. Same went for the bodies of water that had been drained, confirming the attacks occurred during the night hours.
Wayne pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. He didn’t really have a choice, did he? He needed his funding to remain. He needed a job. Thoughts flickered to his wife, the debt she knew nothing about, and the hopes and dreams he wasn’t ready to give up on. Not yet.
He had his trusty torch and a can of spray accelerant he would use together with a lab-sized blowtorch to make his own flame thrower. Despair had a net slung over her shoulder, a bullwhip attached to her hip, and some kind of feudal Japanese sword strapped to her back.
“This is insane,” he mumbled. “How do we hunt a sentient plant?”
“Any way we can,” Despair answered, and then booted him down the manhole.
* * *
Despair landed gracefullyin the ankle-deep sewer water of the culvert leading through the underground tunnels. She watched the bumbling scientist flounder on his knees, hands blindly splashing about him.
“My glasses. I can’t find them,” he shouted. Contaminated water splashed into his open mouth and he gagged.
She crinkled her nose. It smelled rather bad there—a mix of mildew, sour trash and human waste. The sooner she was out, the better.
The only light came from the open manhole directly above, but it was enough for her to see the water at her feet and the double-barreled brick walls around them.
More splashing. More shouting.
She clicked on her torch. White light illuminated the tunnel, casting the damp domed walls into sharp relief. Sounds of the scientist echoed down into the black caverns beyond their sight.
Every nerve in her body woke, including the one in her gut. Somewhere in the tunnels, she sensed fading despair like a scrape of nails down the lining of her stomach, getting lighter with each stroke. It must be the creature. She shouldn’t be able to sense a plant, but it had mutated into something else. Back in the lab, it had wanted freedom from the shackles of its life. She’d known, because she’d sensed its sorrow. When she’d released it from its cage, its despair stopped. She’d never thought it would leave a senseless trail of bodies behind. She’d thought the creature would only attack sinners, but even the poor farm animals weren’t discriminated against.
“I need my glasses,” the scientist wailed. “I can’t do this without them. Please.”
Keeping her eyes glued to the direction she sensed the plant, she bent, dipped her hand below the waterline and retrieved the man’s spectacles. She pushed them into his palm and ignored his stumbling apologies and gratitude.
“Shh.” She moved her torchlight around the tunnel. The sense of despair flickered and waned. The plant was there, yet it became less sorrowful. Perhaps more purposeful, more clouded with hunger. Its desire was changing.
Pausing, she listened. Water dripped from curved walls. Cockroaches scuttled. She angled the torch low at the water. Reflections refracted onto the walls, shimmering eerily.
The hairs on her arms lifted in warning. She stepped forward, then thought better of it. She turned, took hold of the scientist’s collar. “Walk.”
She pushed between his shoulder blades and he lurched, slushing forward.
“B-but, my torch,” he protested.
“It’s in the water. It won’t work. Move.”
He shuffled along. Trembling hands moved to unclip his weapons from his belt. With each sloshing step, rats scuttled and squeaked, water splashed, and something… something moved in the shadows.
Slowly, slowly they approached a junction where four sewer tunnels met in the middle. Water sporadically dripped from above, giving a hollow acoustic sound that revealed the sewerage system went on for miles.
Her torch flickered. Darkness threatened to swallow them whole.
She sensed it again and swung the torch in the right direction, just glimpsing movement in the dark. The light flickered again, then went dark.
“What happened?” The scientist hissed into the vast dark.
She hit the torch to correct the light. The beam came back on. When she looked up, the steady stream of light illuminated the space behind the scientist, and incomprehensible black slithering lines moved against the concrete tunnel walls. Adrenaline shot into her system.
