First Blood

They bumped against him, leathery wings flapping on his face, their high-pitched screeches at his ears. He hit them away, flailed his arms in the air, then covered his head, then flailed again. He wallowed forward, desperate to get out, stumbled, slid to his knees, cold slime up to his hips now, soaking onto his genitals. The bats came and came, an endless swarm of them, tumbling, churning. He reeled to his feet, hands up swatting sightless. The air was infested with them. He could not breathe. He hit out, crouched, shielding himself. They were swirling at him from the right, tapping him, flipping through his hair. He turned his back, crouched lower, his skin creeping. 'Jesus! Jesus!' He shifted to the left, slipped again and fell cheek-bone cracking against a wall. His mind was white inside from the pain of striking, and he barely had the will to straighten, swayed, clutched his swollen cheek as the bats continued swarming at him, past him, forcing him along the wall. Desperate, beaten, and half-senseless, he felt something inside expand and strain and at last rupture, nothing to do with his body, just the center of whatever it was that had kept him going this far, but it was everything. He ceased his fight with them, gave himself up to them, let them push him along, staggered with them, arms slowly sinking to his side, and in that wonderful release from fear and desperation, utterly hopeless and passive, never before so free from caring what happened to him, he came to understand what they were about. They were not attacking him. They were flying to get out. He could not control his laughter, trembling with relief. It had to be night outside. They had sensed it, the leader had given his signal, and as one, they had flushed off the cave roof toward the exit while he was in here with them, terrified that they were coming after him. You wanted a string so you could find your way? he told himself. You blind stupid asshole, you've got it. You've been fighting them, and here every second they've been showing you the way.

He climbed sharp ridges with them, felt for drops, pawed before him. Soon their squeaks and brush of wings became expected and familiar as if he and they had been meant to live in company, until they outdistanced him, a few stragglers fluttering past, and then he was alone, the only sounds the echoing scrabble of his hands and shoes on rock. The sweet cool breeze was blowing strongly on his face, and leaning his face toward it, thinking of how the bats had helped him to this direction out, he began to feel a strange affection for them, missing them now that they were gone, as if a bond had been broken between himself and them. He enjoyed breathing, clearing his nostrils and throat and lungs, erasing the taste of dung in his mouth. The touch of his hands on the rough rock was a clear unfiltered sensation, for the first time consciously real, and his heart beat fast when he climbed and touched dirt, fingering it, wonderfully pebbled and gritty. He was not outside yet. This was silt that rain had washed into a crack in the hill, but he was close he sensed, and he climbed steadily upward, in no hurry, loving the grainy feel of the silt, crawling up a beautiful hillside of it. When he sprawled at the top, he smelled the outside, savoring it: crisp leaves, wind through long grass, woodsmoke in the air. Just a few more feet. He reached carefully forward, his hand stopped by a barrier of rock. He fingered around, and the barrier was on all three sides before him. A basin. How high? It might rise up forever, him so close to being free outside yet trapped. As much as he was easy and content within himself, he did not think he had the corresponding strength to climb high.

Then forget about the climb, he told himself. Don't worry about it. Either you'll make it or you won't. Nothing you can do if the basin is high. Forget about it.