The Keepers Book Two of the Holding Kate Series (20 page)

“Dirk, please, listen to me,” Mel pleaded. She had never seen the fearless Dirk act like this.

“We have to find the weapons and our flashlights.” Pitched high, Dirk’s normally deep voice thinned in fear.

“Dirk.” Mel lowered her words to a calm whisper. “Dirk, it’s okay. We’re okay. I need you to stay calm and listen to me.” She tugged on his massive arm and turned him to face her, but his head whipped around in all directions, eyes darting.

She grabbed his face. “Jump Commander Dirk Johnson,” she spoke firmly.

His aspect shifted and his shoulders relaxed slightly.

“Dirk, what is this place?”

“Giant stinging bugs, scorpion type things, like wasps but giant. It’s like, it’s like an enormous ant farm with giant poisonous bugs.” Clicking sounded at the end of the hall. “My friend was stung and killed. We were separated from the others just like this.”

“Dirk, how did you get out?”

“She died in my arms, and then the sphere fell. I was eleven years old.” He drew air through clenched teeth, disgust etched across his brow. “Later they told me everyone but me got stung and died.” He whipped around to the sound. “I thought they stopped using this site after that. That is the jump that made them decide to put in safety protocols. They almost shut down the village because of it.”

“It must be the infiltrator sending us to dangerous sites.”

“We’ve got to get out of this corner!” He peered into the depths of the hall.

“Come on!” Mel took his hand, and they backtracked to the nearest turnoff, away from the lights. She had a feeling the lights attracted them. At least she hoped the light drew them and not the body heat.

QUANTUM PERSPECTIVE SOURCE (QPS): DONNIE DUDGEON

“What the?” Tara’s leg sank into a hole up to her knee in a brittle place in the black floor. Donnie rushed to help her. As he grabbed her arm to lift her out, she screamed like a banshee.

“Augh! Donnie, get me out! Get me out!”

He looped his arms under her armpits and levered her out. Kicking and screaming, she ripped her pants leg open. She had four welts the size of grapefruits down her calf.

“Gross! What is that?”

“It burns! Oh crap, it burns!” She thrashed about on the floor. He knew it had to be bad for Tara to make a fuss.

A buzzing sound drew his attention to the hole in the floor, and a head the size of a large cabbage poked through. They yelped, and the mutant popped out and hovered above the nest as three more enormous wasp creatures followed. In the green glow of the lights above, their long pincers and stingers threatened a toxic and painful danger.

Donnie jerked Tara off the floor and they ran for their lives. At the corner he looked around to see if the bugs followed. The giant insects hovered in some strange communication, then whirled around, focusing on Donnie and Tara.

They ran.

Turning and twisting through the corridors, Donnie and Tara couldn’t shake them.

“They’re still coming!” Donnie yelled and dragged Tara along with him.

“Down here.” Tara pointed. “Turn at every junction, we’ll lose them in the maze.”

Donnie turned right, then left, then left again, two more rights. “We are far enough ahead of them now. The last three turns came before they could see which way we chose.” He slid Tara to the floor and placed his hands on his knees to catch his breath. Before two breaths, the three wasps whipped around the corner.

“Go, go, go!” Donnie wrenched Tara up and dragged her along.

“Donnie, do you think they imprinted on us or something? How could they have known?”

“Just keep running.” No matter how many turns they made, the menace followed without hesitation.

Tara stumbled, her strength waning.

“Keep going, Tara. Can you still run?”

She nodded shakily. Donnie adjusted so more of her weight would be on him, and they ran as fast as they could. The buzzing grew louder as they closed the distance. They turned several corners and wove through the place like a wad of string. At times, so far ahead of the threat they could not have known which turn they made, the beasts relentlessly pursued.

Tara dragged her leg behind. “Donnie!” she rasped and fell to the floor. Jerking and seizing, Tara’s whole body writhed at his feet. The sound of the giant bugs intensified, so he picked her up and ran. They toppled through a door, and it slid closed behind, shutting them off. Donnie prayed it would stay closed because he didn’t think they could go any further.

The pitch black room blanketed them. Donnie just cradled Tara in his arms and whispered prayers. He couldn’t see anything and had no way of tending to her stings. They needed to find the med kit or Corey, ASAP.

“God, please, help me know what to do,” Donnie whispered, pressing his cheek to Tara’s forehead as she writhed in pain and clutched desperately at his arm.

A neon strip of blue light flickered over a door on the other side of the room. Donnie flinched at impending danger. Mel and Dirk burst through the door and spun around to push it closed behind them.

“Mel!” Like the sun breaking through a cloud, she beamed at him.

“Donnie!” She ran across the room and slammed into him with a hug.

“Tara! What happened?” Dirk slid to the floor beside Tara and took her hand and gawped at her leg. “No, no, no, not again!”

“She’s still alive, Dirk.”

“Not for long if those are wasp stings.” His expression mixed horror, panic, and sadness. “How long?”

“Ten, maybe fifteen minutes.” Donnie watched Mel take water out of her backpack and proffer it to Tara a drop at a time. She smoothed her hair back and kissed her cheek. He had seen her minister to their children in the same loving maternal way. His heart swelled at her kindness.

She crawled around Dirk and poured water on each of the boils and made sure no stinger remained. Donnie grimaced.
I should have thought to do that.

The water roused Tara. She moaned.

“We have to get her out of here.” Dirk pointed at the door Donnie and Tara came through.

“Not that way dude! They’re probably still out there.”

“We can’t go that way.” Dirk nodded to the door they came through.

“Giant scorpions!” Mel shuddered.

“We can’t stay here. She needs Corey or the med kit or both.” Donnie force out an exasperated huff.

They all turned to the third door to the room and then back with brows raised in question.

“Let’s see what’s behind door number three!” Dirk lifted Tara like a rag doll and they stepped to the door.

QUANTUM PERSPECTIVE SOURCE (QPS): TRIP CARSON

Kate and Trip were locked in a black room.

“No opening of any kind,” Trip explained as he finished running his hands around the perimeter of the cube. Stepping to the center of the room where he left Kate, he stumbled over a lump in the pitch black. “Hey, I think I found one of our packs.” He strapped it on.

Kate reached out in the darkness and took his hand.

“Well, I’ve been trapped in a box before, haven’t I?” He gathered her in his arms and whispered into her hair.

She sighed a laugh, remembering the invisible box she had trapped him in on her personal jump. “Where are the others?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”
Where is the weapons cache? That is what I want to know.

The sound of a sliding panel scraped across the room and clicking noises scuttled toward them.

“Trip.” Kate shuddered in fear, moving behind him. She pressed into his backpack, breath hot on his shoulder.

“Stay behind me, Kate. Be as quiet as you can.”

The clicking moved toward them, then split. Part of the sound went to the right and the other went to the left.

“Trip!” Kate whispered.

“No noise!” he growled at her. The clicking sounds stopped.

Blinded in the heavy darkness, he listened. He honed in on the sounds, trying to discern if they were in trouble. The clicking on the right resumed, but also a whirring sound that he couldn’t make out. He had heard something similar and wracked his brain to figure it out.

The same noises repeated on the left and then it seemed the strange racket split again. They were surrounded by whirring sounds all around and clicking echoes on the right and left.

Trip wanted to plant his fist in something, but without light he had no clue what he might be swinging at.

The whirring hovered closer and pressed in on all sides. Kate grabbed his shirt and he could feel her hand trembling as she latched onto him.

Trip had decided to strike out when the clicking charged, and his right foot flared with stabbing pain. Kate screamed a bloodcurdling sound and collapsed at his feet. Trip began swinging blindly. His fist connected with something and he heard it smash against the wall and slide down to the floor.

The whirring and clicking faded away to the same corner of the room it had come from. A panel slammed closed. Trip turned around and knelt down beside Kate and felt around her face, arms and body.

“Katie girl, are you okay?” His hands brushed over her. “Kate! Kate!” He shook her shoulder.

Silence.

Darkness began to creep into his heart, as though the black of the room leaked, contagious. He dropped his cheek to check her breathing and felt for a pulse in her neck. Her pulse raced too fast and her breath was too weak, but she lived. His hand brushed against something on her neck, just below her earlobe.

A large bulbous growth had sprouted. When he touched it, it burst and a foul smelling fluid poured into his hand.

The sound of the whirring suddenly made sense. Some enormous insect got Kate.
What the heck? Medicine! I gotta find some medicine!
He wiped the pus fluid on his pants and jerked his backpack off. Plunging his hands into it, he blindly groped objects, the extra jumpsuit, crackers, and water. He set the water to the side.
Where is the flashlight?
His hand brushed against a cold glass item. Wrenching it out of the pack, he felt ridges and angles cut into the gemstone vial. It had been in his backpack since orientation. Like Kate’s large iron key, and Corey’s Gladius sword, this strange vial had been assigned to him. Trip hesitated for only a second, then uncorked the bottle and poured it into Kate’s mouth and over the sting.

He waited.

Her breathing slowed.
That’s a good thing, I hope.
He felt her pulse again, and it too, slowed to a regular rhythm.

He treated the sting on his foot and waited.

After what seemed an eternity, Kate gasped for breath and sat up.

“Trip?” She groped for him in the blackness and latched onto his arm.

“I’m here Katie girl. They’re gone. You’re okay, you’re okay.” Relief stole over him. He couldn’t stand the thought of losing her again.

“Trip,” she whimpered and reached for him. “Why? Why does this keep happening to me?”

Trip wrapped his arms around her, and she leaned into his embrace. Her body, warm and soft against his, played havoc with his emotions. A war raged inside of him. Loyalty battled passion. This thing between them endured, strong. Too strong. It wouldn’t be denied, no matter how hard he tried to stuff his feelings. This thing lurked huge, overwhelming, and honestly, he didn’t want to fight it.