I cower against the back wall, throwing my hands up to cover my face as though these thin stalks of flesh could do anything to stop a bullet.
Dr. Smith stands no more than five feet away, a point-blank shot should he choose to take it.
Gradually, however, a look of confusion slowly creeps its way across Dr. Smith’s face, an awkward furrow of his brow as something particularly distracting flutters through his mind.
“For he bears not the … rod in vain?” the doctor continues, shaking his head. “Do you remember?”
I do remember. It’s beareth not the sword in vain from Romans 13:4, but I don’t respond.
“Do you remember, Annie?” he continues.
Who the heck is Annie?
Dr. Smith shakes his head, struggling to rattle something loose within the depths of his mind. He’s growing more disoriented by the second.
“Was I supposed to pick up the eggs?” he asks, then catches sight of the gun in his hand.
Dr. Smith lowers the weapon. “Annie?” he asks, tears filling his eyes. “What’s this?”
The doctor awkwardly opens and shuts his mouth, curiously working the muscles as though he’s never felt them before. He looks worried.
“I can’t—I can’t grow,” he stammers. “Grow good soon. That’s true.”
Dr. Smith takes another step toward me, but his gaze continues to drift. Words keep tumbling from the man’s mouth, but every passing phrase makes less and less sense until they’re gurgling out in awkward grunts.
My mind darts chaotically, but I can’t help returning to Dr. Smith’s revelation about the worms and their selective breeding program. The creatures have been propagated for varying degrees of memory loss, gestation rate, fertility, and lifespan.
Now, the man has inadvertently volunteered himself as the ultimate human trial, a host to every variable.
Dr. Smith begins to shake, convulsing wildly. He fires his gun into the floor several times, rolling through a series of deafening blasts that quickly transitions into the hollow clicks of an empty chamber. He won’t stop pulling the trigger, however, fitfully jerking his appendages like a ragdoll.
Dr. Smith coughs loudly, a spurt of flies erupting forth in a wild black plume.
The man’s gaze meets mine, as though I might provide some guidance in his state of utter confusion, but all this does is repel me even more. Flies are crawling across Dr. Smith’s eyes, spilling from his tear ducts as he struggles to wipe them away. It’s not long before the insects are pouring from his ears and emerging from unknown places under his clothing. He continues to cough as the mass of humming mayflies overwhelm him, but no matter how desperately he struggles to clear his throat, he finds himself even more obstructed. He is choking, gasping for air but inadvertently swallowing more and more of the black insects.
Soon enough, there’s just too many flies for air to pass through. Dr. Smith slams to the floor, convulsing wildly as flies continue to pour from every orifice of his body. Their drone is overpowering, the sheer mass of the swarm elevating from a buzz to a terrifying roar.
I’m still frozen in shock, and the only thing that pulls me from my trance is fear of what might’ve happened to Willow and Saul in the opposite chamber.
Keeping my distance from the roil of insects, I edge just close enough to flip the desk’s LIGEIAN TANK switch, unlocking the central room. I stagger to my feet and carefully exit the office.
Here, the worms don’t seem very concerned about my presence, barely acknowledging me with their squeaks and gurgles as I tiptoe around their deflated bodies. After expelling every egg they had, the creatures are spent.
Reaching the other side, I push through the door to find Saul and Willow resting against a familiar stone wall, struggling to catch their breath. An assortment of mechanical parts are scattered haphazardly around them, a broken machine stripped down to the cogs and gears.
Willow jumps up, rushing forward and throwing her arms around me. We hug for a moment, my eyes drifting across the chamber behind her in stoic recognition. I see the huge metal slab and the straps that wrapped around my wrists and ankles. I see the rolling pedestal that once held a diabolical machine and now sits empty.
“We did what we could,” Saul offers as Willow and I release our grip on each other. “Bent and warped as many pieces as possible. I’m taking the important stuff with me.”
My friend motions to his backpack, which is now stuffed with mechanical parts.
“I opened the cells,” I blurt. “We gotta go. Security’s coming.”
“They’re probably already here,” Saul counters, his expression faltering slightly.
He’s right, and I know it.
Saul puts down his bag and pulls out the flamethrower. “At least this time we’ll remember what happened,” he announces, preparing his weapon and eyeing the exhausted worms that litter the central chamber.
13
JUDGMENT
Because we’re no longer bound by the need for silence, the way out is much faster than the way in. The futuristic cellblock is wide open, captives freed and nowhere to be found. Hopefully, they’ve escaped deep into the woods by now.
Our feet slam against the metal floor of this long underground passage, shadows cast upward from the cold blue glow below. They look enormous as they whip across the walls.
Saul, Willow, and I are well behind the fleeing prisoners, and with little time to spare our focus is on the quickest getaway possible.
So long as it’s not too late.
The answer comes as we emerge from our underground bunker, screeching to a panicked halt at the top of the staircase.
We’re surrounded, a cascade of floodlights aiming down at the building from every angle. Brilliant illumination pours in from the windows, and the front door sits wide open before me.
I shield my eyes, barely noticing the two figures who stand on either side of us.
“Oh good, we were just about to come down and get you,” a woman says gruffly. “Now we don’t have to. Hands up.”
We follow their orders, returning to the world above in a complicated mixture of victory and defeat.
We’ve been caught red-handed, and Kingdom of the Pine clearly has no problem enacting brutal judgment as they see fit.
That said, we’ve managed to exterminate the worms, trash their demon-summoning machine, and set a whole dungeon of prisoners free. We did what we came here to do, despite fumbling the escape.
Our captors pat us down, removing Willow’s cameras and stripping away Saul’s tools, including the flamethrower. They’re likely searching for Dr. Smith’s weapon, but find nothing.
This must be the security force, a well-armed tactical squad that’s suspiciously absent from any starry-eyed Camp Damascus infomercials.
“Come on out,” calls a strangely familiar voice through a booming megaphone. “Let’s get a good look at these little rascals.”
We step onto the front porch, shielding our eyes as they adjust to the brilliant lights that strike down from every angle. The captors behind us push roughly onward, keeping pace as we stumble toward the open field of the north cabins. There’s a crowd of figures surrounding us, but I’m too disoriented to comprehend much more than an abstract parade of silhouettes.
As I approach, a cold wave washes over me.