11. Poppy
POPPY
I don’t step behind the tree line.
I don’t like taking orders, for one, and for two, I’m not sure his plan is a good one.
Vael is a mountain of muscle, sure, and I still need to lick him all over, but this thing is a tentacled battering ram.
I hold my branch out like a spear. I refuse to sit in the brush like a damsel in distress while my mate takes on this nasty thing.
“Strength in numbers,” I yell at Vael.
“Now is not the time for arithmetic,” he yells back.
I sigh.
The beast lunges.
Tentacles whip through the air, snapping thick trunks like twigs. Vael moves with terrifying speed, his red wings flaring to catch the wind as he launches himself over the creature's back. His tail slams down, a heavy blow that cracks the black armor along the monster's spine.
“Hell yeah, bitch,” I cheer him on. “That’s my man!” I’m not going to lie, I forgot he had wings until just now. That’s pretty handy in a fight.
I give my stick a dismal look.
The creature screeches, a sound that vibrates right through the bones in my feet.
Oof. Okay, maybe I don’t got this.
I scramble backward, keeping my eyes locked on the fight. I want to help, but as I watch Vael dodge a swinging tentacle, I know in my heart I would just get in the way.
Everything is going wrong.
I’m not a survivalist.
I’m not a fighter.
I’m not even a good friend.
I thought I was executing a perfect exit strategy for my friends. Instead, Ellison is bleeding in the woods, Lily is trapped with a purple-skinned dude who looks like he wants to literally eat her, and I am stranded on a death trap with a hot alien who looks at me with disgust.
A hot tear slips down my cheek.
Then another follows.
I don't sob, but the weight of my selfishness finally breaks over me.
This is my fault. All of it. I ruined our lives.
I might be the reason we all die, too.
The monster thrashes, its circular mouth snapping inches from Vael’s wing. He unleashes a roar. He is entirely focused on the fight, and I grit my teeth, hoping with everything I have that he wins.
A shadow falls over me from behind.
Before I can even process that, something cold wraps around my waist. The branch slips from my fingers.
I inhale to scream Vael's name, but something slides over my mouth, choking out the sound.
My feet leave the ground.
With sickening force, I’m jerked backwards, the leaves tearing at my jumpsuit. I can hardly see Vael still fighting, a blur of red scales growimg smaller and smaller by the second.
I thrash against the restraint, but something pricks the side of my neck.
Heaviness floods me. The jungle blurs, the metallic screech of the monster fades to a dull hum, and everything goes completely dark.
Cold stone presses against my cheek, and the ambient aroma is giving "dumpster behind a seafood restaurant in mid-August."
I blink, wiping a smear of mystery slime off my forehead.
Above me, the rock ceiling is a jagged dome stretching hundreds of feet up, ending in a giant, circular hole that lets in a vertical beam of actual sunlight.
My woozy brain tries to find the word for this thing, and it takes me far longer than it should. A cenote. Terrific. I am trapped in an underground pit on a reality TV show turned death trap, and everything echoes with the aggressive slosh-slosh of a subterranean pool.
I look toward the water, my brain glitching at what I see.
Fins. Pale silver, too large fins are slicing through the dark surface. I peer at the water as one surfaces, my heart picking up speed.
They look like sharks, if a shark had four separate sets of dead, unblinking eyes and a total disregard for any evolutionary rules I’m familiar with. Which, to be fair, aren’t many.
Why are there sharks inside a cave?
Did the producers run out of budget for land monsters? It makes no sense, but the immediate terror is a solid ten.
I sit up, my head pounding from whatever cosmic roofie I was hit with.
Oh, shit. That’s right. Something took me here.
Fresh fear rushes through me, cold and terrible. I scoot backward, trying to figure out where whatever took me is—when I see it.
A few feet away, my kidnapper is spread across the rocks.
And by spread, I mean smeared.
The absolute unit of an alien insect completely obliterated itself.
I narrow my eyes. It didn't get taken out by some epic apex predator, either.
From the looks of the skid marks near the skylight, Mister Human Centipede Sr. literally tripped over its own stupid tentacles at the edge of the drop, lost its footing, and pulled a full Wile E. Coyote straight down into the cavern.
It fell two hundred feet and exploded like a watermelon.
My lip curls in disgust, he is everywhere. Bug protein shake is splattered all over the walls, and chunks of its translucent noodle arms float in the pool like oversized boba, getting actively vacuumed up by the four-eyed space sharks.
How the fuck did I survive the drop?
Slowly, I turn, because I don’t want to know and need to know all at once.
“Oh, fuck me sideways,” I mutter, pulling a chunk of bug off my suit.
Yup. Nasty ass bug boy broke my fall. I retch, then make myself stop somehow. I can’t afford to dehydrate.
Scrambling onto my feet, my boots slide in a puddle of bug grease. I am a total disaster… but I am alive. God, I hope my friends are.
I hope Vael is. My throat starts to close up, and I shake my head.
"Okay, Poppy, stop," I say out loud, my voice bouncing off the damp stone, sounding incredibly pathetic.
"Get it together, girlie pop. Standing in a puddle of exploded bug juice crying is not hot girl behavior.
This is so dumb. You have a law degree and passed the damn bar in four states. Figure it the fuck out."
I have shelter, thanks to the cenote’s architecture. I need water, and food, and… well, fuck it. I have that too. Even if it gives me the ick.
I march over to the bug’s severed head. It’s foul, but adrenaline is a hell of a thing. A flexible tendon sticks out of its mangled neck like a bungee cord. I grab it and yank, throwing my whole weight into it until it snaps free with a sickening pop.
That’s nasty work.
Next, I grab a jagged rock, channel my inner cavewoman, and smash a needle-sharp, silver tooth straight out of its shattered jawbone. The thing is curved into a hook.
Arts and crafts for fucking survivors, baby!
I rip a vine off the wall. Well, it takes about ten minutes and a lot of cursing, then tie the tendon to the base of the tooth with a triple-knot that would hold up in the goddamned Bering Sea on a goddamned crab boat.
For bait, I use my fingernails to scoop out a chunk of the creature’s vertical eye-slit. It's still pulsing with a faint green glow. Ah yes, the forbidden neon gummy worm. Unhinged? Absolutely. But it's all I've got.
The silver sharks surface, their eight collective dead eyes locking onto the glowing eye-meat in my hand.
I balance the makeshift harpoon line, calculate the distance to the center of the feeding frenzy, and tighten my grip. I am getting out of this fucking hole, and I am going to save my girlies.
But first? Shark fin soup. Minus the ecological implications, obviously.
I’m not a monster; I’m a lawyer.