In the Cold

Chapter 5

Tach decided her best bet was to return to the tunnel, use it as a base camp, and spend her days - the ones that weren’t blizzarding anyway - searching for other people. Mio had said there was at least one group, maybe there were other, less presumably dangerous ones.

Getting back to the tunnel was easier without the fog. They avoided the front entrance, just in case there were any lingering squid creatures there. Tach kept the incline to her left this time and as the sun was setting, they found the far entrance.

Tach and Angeline camped in the mouth of the tunnel that night. The next morning, Tach lit the lantern, and they made their way back to the supply pile.

The frozen piles of rock and ice seemed to glow a richer blue now. Angeline wasn’t moving as quickly, and Tach was able to examine the gorgeous, pillars and frozen waterfalls lining the walls.

Tach felt something land on her neck. She swatted it, looking to see something mothlike fall to the ground. Tach hadn’t seen any insects since she left the city, so she marked that as strange.

The blue glow didn’t fade as they got further from the entrance. Indeed, it seemed to get brighter and more intense. Tach smiled. She didn’t know why she was smiling, but something about that colour blue just made her feel calm and at home. More of the moths fluttered past, and as they did, their wings grew longer; lacy and silver, glinting in the blue light. She turned back, and as Angeline crested over a pile of rubble like a dory in a hurricane, A scene revealed itself, A garden of trees and flowers bordered the edges of the cave. More of the moths fluttered through the air, and an aurora of colour shimmered across the ceiling. In the center of the room, stood someone vaguely familiar.

As Angeline skidded to a stop, Tach jumped down, and stared at the newcomer’s face, trying to deduce who she was.

“Janice?” It was one of Tach’s friends from the city, one of the girls who wore red shirts with her. She knew all of them had been dropped in the wasteland, but separately.

“Jan, I’m so sorry! I searched for you for weeks, but then, there was that storm.”

“It’s alright Tach.” Jan smiled, stretching out her arms. “I’m fine. What’s important is that we’ve found each other.”

Tach took a step forward to hug her friend. As she leaned in, a large, heavy hand clamped down on her shoulder, yanking her backwards. She looked back over her shoulder at a large, round, furry face with giant green eyes. She looked back at Janice, in confusion, and screamed.

It was the corpse, the artist, bones stripped of meat, thick blue gel oozing where muscles should have been, eyes glowing orange. In the centre, a dripping, nightmarish maw snapped at Tach’s stomach. She jumped back, bumping into the furry creature, and spun around.

For some reason Angeline was a small elephant, but Tach was already up on the take, her senses couldn’t be trusted anymore. She pulled the shotgun from the loop under her cape and pumped it like she’d seen in movies.

The cartridge fell to the ground, and Tach made a mental note to learn how to fire her gun later. She jumped out of the way as the corpse lunged at her again. One of  the moths landed on her hand, and for a moment she was aware that it had a single orange eye.  

Things snapped back into focus. Tach shook the baby squid monster off her hand and stomped it on the ground. The garden was gone now, the same blue ooze that covered the skeleton crept up the walls and onto the ceiling. Blood. Squid blood.

The furry creature was still there, in fact, there were two of them. The corpse had turned its attentions to them, as had clouds of the baby squids. The pair ineffectively tried to drive them off with makeshift swatters. Tach grabbed her axe from a de-elephanted Angeline and ran at the corpse, bringing it down in a bone-splintering strike. Two halves of the mostly spherical fleshy mass from the torso twitched on the floor, half-mouths chomping at air. It became Jan again for a moment, bleeding out and glaring accusingly.