Chapter 18
It looked exactly like the viscerids from the supermarket, with its fleshy body, spindly appendages, shield-shaped head, wickedly sharp claws, and reptile-like earholes, except this one was far, far larger, a little bigger than a wolf.
It opened its mouth and let out a familiar chittering sound that lived in my nightmares, but this one sounded lower, deeper. With its mouth gaped open, I saw the rows of exposed, pointed teeth, and I had sudden flashbacks to how badly Zade and Tyler had been torn up by the nasty little creatures.
Shit.
I suddenly understood why we hadn’t been given a time limit to complete the maze, because we wouldn’t be wandering around for long if we had these things hunting us down.
God forbid there were more than one…
The viscerid two-point-oh continued to chitter and click as it tasted at the air. At least, it would seem, they possessed their smaller counterpart’s lack of sight as well.
That was our only advantage.
But what should we do? There was no way we’d be able to sneak through the maze with this thing sniffing around for us. Not to mention its unnaturally superior hearing.
One wrong move, and we were screwed.
Would we be able to outrun it? The little viscerids had been insanely fast, and this one was much taller, and hence, had longer legs, but it also had more weight.
Surely it wouldn’t be as quick as the smaller ones had been.
But that didn’t mean we’d be able to outrun it for long.
It also looked just as soft and fleshy as the little ones had been, too, but we didn’t have any weapon around besides a rock, and there was no way we’d win in a fight against those sharp claws.
So, how did we get rid of it?
From my peripherals, I could see the other three contestants staring nervously at the creature, and no one dared move because gravel wasn’t at all quiet.
Shit.
Come on, Liam, think… There were lives at risk here.
Suddenly, an idea came to me.
The hole I’d come across was massive, and the spikes inside it looked deadly. If we could lead the big viscerid back to the pit, then maybe we could kill it.
It was just a matter of outrunning it long enough to reach the trap.
I couldn’t voice my idea to the others at all, but I shot both Tyler and Parker a meaningful look and hoped they’d know enough to follow my lead.
They both had confused expressions, but they nodded as if to tell me to go for it.
So, I carefully crouched down and picked up a small handful of gravel. The sound of my scooping attracted the viscerid’s attention to me, but it didn’t immediately pounce like its smaller family members would have.
Instead, it chittered, sniffed at the air, and took another step in my direction.
Kyle glared at me and shook his head, but I wasn’t sure what he was planning to do. Did he think we could wait until the viscerid got bored and left the area? We didn’t have time for that. I still needed to find Sadie and Claire.
The viscerid took another step toward me, and I ignored Kyle’s death stare and gave Parker and Tyler a meaningful nod before I threw my handful of rocks as hard as I could away from us.
They hit the stone wall and scattered, which confused the viscerid. It rushed toward the source of the noise and pounced. I’d seen everything I needed to. It was fast, but we’d be able to outrun it for at least a short distance.
I quickly picked up another handful of rocks and chucked them again, even further away than before, and the viscerid rushed to the site of impact a moment later.
And I took that as my opportunity to escape.
I waved for the others to follow me, and I began running with Tyler and Parker close at my heels.
Kyle broke away and ran in a different direction like an idiot, but hey, better chances for us, I guessed.
Either the viscerid would follow us and die in the trap, or it would follow Kyle, but either way, it’d be out of our hair.
We hadn’t run very far before the viscerid was hot on our trail, and its loud chitters and sounds of pursuit sounded far closer than I was comfortable with.
“Uh, you mind telling us what your plan here is, man?” Tyler panted as he ran beside me. “You do have one, right?”
“Of course I do,” I panted back as I pumped my arms and legs as hard as I could. “Up ahead, there’s a pitfall at the center of the corridor. All we have to do is lead it over and hope it falls in, but try not to fall in yourselves.”
“Noted,” Tyler replied.
“Not to be a downer here,” Parker spoke up in a breathless tone. “But what do we do if the thing doesn’t fall in?”
“Uh…” It was hard to think when it felt like all the blood from my brain was currently being shoved into my appendages. “Just keep running, and I’ll come up with something else.”
“Marvelous,” Parker huffed, though I knew she was upset about the situation and not about my flimsy plan.
Behind us, the viscerid was still in pursuit, and even though I didn’t glance back, I knew it was slowly gaining on us. Its labored breathing was closer than ever, and if the pitfall plan didn’t work, I didn’t think we’d have enough distance to keep running from it.
It had to work.
We got to the fork in the path and continued straight toward the pit.
“It’s up ahead,” I announced. “Stay close to the center, and then at the last possible second, break off onto either side. There’s about a foot of space so please, God, don’t lose your footing.”
The others muttered their agreement as we pressed forward, and the pit grew larger as we got closer to it.
The creature was so close now I could practically feel its hot breath on the back of my neck, and it made the little hairs back there stand up. But I still didn’t try to look at it. I couldn’t afford to lose my balance now, and we were so close.
The muscles in my legs began to fatigue, but I forced myself to keep going.
The trap was almost directly in front of us.
“Ready?” I called out, and then, right before we reached the open space of the pit, we made our move. “Now!”
Tyler veered right while I shoved Parker in front of me to keep myself in between her and the beast as we went left. I ran directly behind her to make sure she didn’t fall, but despite our narrow walkway, we had enough room to keep our balance, even at top speed.
We all ran until we stumbled into the wall of the other corridor ahead, and then I turned to see if my plan had worked.
Our split off had momentarily confused the beast, and it was just long enough that it had continued to go straight, until it fell directly into the hole.
There was a loud squealing cry that lasted for far too long. It was the sound of a dying animal, and when I quietly approached the edge of the pit and peered down, the creature was impaled on the spikes below and still twitching erratically.
Until, finally, the twitching stopped, and it laid still.
Even though it had just been trying to kill us, I felt bad for the thing. Nothing deserved to suffer like that, but I was grateful we were no longer in any immediate danger.
I breathed a heavy sigh of relief before I turned around to face my teammates, and this was the first time I was able to really glance over them.
Tyler looked much worse than I’d originally noticed.
His entire left cheek was a purplish-green that was steadily getting more blackish-purple by the minute, and he had a nasty cut on his bottom lip as well as his left eyebrow.
Somehow, despite the beating the general area had taken, his eye remained unharmed.
There was also a small cut on the side of his neck, but it looked too clean to be caused by a rock or fists.
I also noticed that Tyler’s glasses weren’t on his face, and I quickly searched the area for the missing eyewear. When I found them, the left lens was shattered, but the right one was still intact.
I retrieved them and brought them over to Tyler, and he thanked me and put them on, but the frames hung slightly crooked on his face.
“Are you guys alright?” I asked after we’d all had a moment to catch our breaths. “What the hell happened back there?”
“Parker and I ran into each other shortly after we were transported here,” Tyler explained. “We decided it’d be safer to stick together while we looked for everyone else.”
“Yeah,” Parker agreed with a nod. “But instead of anyone else, we found Kyle.”
“I don’t know what his problem was,” Tyler muttered and shook his head in disbelief.
“He was like a man possessed. One minute he saw us, and then the next minute he was jumping me, like I’d just threatened his entire family.
Thank God Parker was there to help hold him back, otherwise I would’ve been toast.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re both okay,” I said, but then I glanced at Tyler’s bruised face again and quickly amended my statement. “Relatively okay.”
Tyler snorted.
“Are you going to be able to see with those?” I asked as I gestured to his broken glasses.
“Things might appear a bit blurry,” he said with a shrug. “But other than that, I’ll be able to see just fine.”
I nodded. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about him stumbling around blind.
“Where should we go now?” Parker asked as she flicked her auburn hair out of her green eyes. “We haven’t seen any sign of Sadie or Claire.”
“They’re both smart, so they’ll know to try heading toward the center of the maze,” I replied. “We should do the same and search for any sign of them along the way. But we’ll need to use caution, because this place is filled with tripwires and traps… and apparently giant viscerids, too.”
I really hoped there was only the one that we’d just killed, but my luck just didn’t work that way.
“Yeah, I learned that firsthand,” Tyler snorted again while he pointed at the cut on his neck. “I nearly had a blade take my head off. I barely dodged out of the way in time.”
“I had a similar experience earlier,” I agreed. “But, fortunately, I noticed it a little before the whole near-death thing.”
Tyler grinned at me, and I shot him one back.
“How do we know where to go?” Parker’s question drew my attention back to our current predicament.