Neil pulled the rifle closer into his coffin-sized crevice, and when the next creature came to grab his gun barrel, he gave it a shove, twisting it, and the fast-moving creature ran into the bayonet. Its gut opened up in a flash of brilliant red before it disappeared into the blackness, whimpering. A moment later there was another brief scream and the liquid, rending sound. Neil was now very familiar with that sound. It was the sound of feeding.
They came again and again for the gun, and they received more burned hands and more sliced abdomens. But there were a lot of them out there. Neil wondered how long until the electric cart arrived, and if he could really last that long.
The answer came soon enough. The next time two creatures rushed out of the blackness together and snatched the rifle, whisking it into the blackness.
Neil knew he would never see them when they came for him. He would never see anything again. He resigned himself to death, as easy as that, but he couldn’t endure the horror of being eaten alive. Far better to spill his own blood first. He wrenched the snaps off his utility knife sheath, then felt something cold take hold of his wrist.
He grabbed for the knife with his free hand, pulled it out, then felt his hand get pushed into the rock wall. Some hand bones broke and the knife fell. It clattered on the cave floor next to his foot, but it was as irretrievable as if it were a hundred miles away.
“Do it fast do it fast do it fast.”
They didn’t do it fast. They took him along, gathering their dead and feeding off them. Neil was dragged deep into Shaft G.
The creatures ate frequently, until the corpses started to stink. Even then the bodies were carried along with the band of creatures as they traveled through utter blackness, deep into the earth. The warm caverns became hot.
Neil didn’t know how far they went, but it was a long distance. Impossibly long. Not that he cared. What did he care about some deep caves? He was going to die, and he was going to die horribly.
He tried to crush his own head against the cavern walls and only succeeded in giving himself a headache. After that the creatures kept him firmly in hand.
They marched through hot streams and ice-cold waterfalls. He began to starve. How many days was it? Five? Seven?
One day he saw a light ahead.
He heard human voices, speaking English, and he dared to hope that he might be saved.
Neil Velick waited at the entrance to the cave where the light was. There was a creature there, like the ones who captured him, but different. He was talking. He made the same creature sounds as the others, but these sounds came together in a way that made Neil Velick know it was intelligent speech.
The creatures, and Velick, stood at the gate while the speaking one went through the entrance. Inside, in a dim glow that was brilliant as the summer sun to Velick, he saw structures. He saw a machine.
Then he saw a human man. The man was wearing clothing. The man had hair. And truth be told, it was just a teenager.
“Hey,” the kid said by way of greeting. Neil Velick tried to say hello and only croaked.
“What do you do?”
“What?”
“Job. You worked in the Pit, right? You a radiological expert? Nuclear-materials handler? What did you do there?”
“Security,” Neil said, very confused.
“Security guard?”-The kid turned on the talking creature. “You worms went all that way to the Pit and came back with nothing but one security guard?”
“I sorry,” the talking creature said in English so guttural it was like listening to someone choke. “Waste of time,” the teenager said.
“Please, let me go,” Velick pleaded.
“Dude, you couldn’t find yourself topside again in a million years. You’re food. Deal with it.” The kid said to the talking creature, “Send ’em back to the Pit and tell them not to come back without five prisoners. This many.” He held up his hand with splayed fingers. “Got it?”
“Yes, got it.”
The kid stepped through the door and was gone. “Where are you taking me?” Velick asked the talking creature.
“To the feeding,” the creature answered.
“Kill me first.”
“No. You must stay fresh. We like fresh.”
When Velick finally was eaten, he was still quite fresh. The band that had gone to all the trouble of bringing Neil fresh from the surface never got their teeth into him. They were on their way back to the Pit for more prisoners.
This time they came back with five struggling hairy things, and, to their amazement, they didn’t get to eat any of them. Not one.
When Harold Smith gave Remo a picture of a bloody cave floor in Kansas, he wanted to know what it had to do with finding and delimbing United States Senator Herbert Whiteslaw.
“Nothing.”
“Then I’m not interested.”
“People are being killed on the site of the biggest commercial radioactive waste storage facility in the United States. That doesn’t interest you?”
“Real world to Smitty, we have a rogue U.S. senator to deal with.”
“Remo, hush,” Chiun insisted.
