SNAFU: Hunters

Was Carroll right? Was this Hell? And what would happen to a soul that died there, as he knew he would? Blake had never been a particularly God-fearing man, and the day’s events certainly didn’t fit into anything he’d been taught at his childhood Sunday School. But he still believed there had to be more to the universe than this.

Blake knew in his heart that Carroll was wrong. The world was not a zero-sum game. There was somewhere else, somewhere they hadn’t yet seen; somewhere that gave them strength and that powered the strange rites Carroll had used. A holy space – that was how Carroll had described his protective circle. Well what made it holy? Blake didn’t know but he was sure the answer lay somewhere other than the charnel pit of a world beyond the portal.

Clutching the bag of explosives, he leaped into the portal…

…and hit a solid wall.

The heavy bag ripped from his grip and tumbled down into the darkness as Blake staggered to his feet, standing on nothing at all.

Something was blocking the portal. Something as unyielding as Carroll’s circle of protection.

Of course he couldn’t pass through. The life energy in the joined world was equal. If the titanic might of the world-creature beyond the portal couldn’t pull itself through, then of course Mr and Mrs Blake’s little boy wasn’t just going to be able to jump across.

“Shit!” he swore. He had lost the bag. Far below he could see it caught in a particularly knotted tangle of dark fronds. He saw something open under it, something he would hesitate to cause a mouth but for which there existed no other word in any sane reality.

Blake unslung his rifle and fired.

His rounds tore through the closing teeth and into the bag beyond.

The world-creature spasmed as the high explosives tore into its body. The creatures living in its fronds died in their dozens as the blast wave rolled outwards.

Blake felt the barrier give way beneath his feet and at the same time, some otherworldly suction, more than mere gravity started to pull him into the pit.

Life energy had been lost.

It would have to be replaced.

The blast wave from the detonation billowed upward. The cloud of expanding gasses was not troubled by the metaphysical barrier, and lifted Blake, throwing him clear of the pit.

He scrambled to his feet; he had been willing to die, but damned if he was going to give up a second chance at life.

He turned to run but dizziness swept in as his eyes and other senses fed him contradictory information. It was like a shift in gravity; down was no longer toward the sand beneath his boots but rather behind him as the other-worldly force pulled him toward the portal.

He wasn’t the only one affected by the strange pull. The vast creature at its center screamed and struggled as it was sucked back into the rift. Its tendrils writhed, thrashing and wrapping around each other to form thick cables of living tissue that whipped around entire buildings. The living ropes pulled tight, tension slicing through the blast-damaged structures like a garrotte. Wood splintered, adding to the cacophony as the enormous creature fought to maintain its beachhead in this world.

One of the smaller creatures could resist no longer and fell, screeching toward the pit. Its cartwheeling fall careened into the fore-limb of one of the bigger creatures with a sickening crunch, knocking it from its precarious hold and they both fell across the glistening threshold of the gate between worlds.

Blake kept running but it was as if he was on a treadmill. As fast as he ran, the tendrils sliding beneath his feet meant all he could do was slow his advance toward oblivion.

He saw the shattered house in front of him, saw Carroll and the others clinging to its timbers, but they too were being sucked toward this terrible maw.

Blake felt dirt beneath his boots. He hardly dared look back but he had to see what was coming. The portal was smaller now, barely half its former size and plugged with tentacles. They whipped around, desperately trying to cling on, but the world creature was lost. Too much of it was back in its own dimension. As more and more of it was sucked back through, it had less strength to force the portal open. The universe was trying to right itself.

The glittering circle that marked the boundary between worlds shrunk until it was just a few yards across. The last of the tentacles whipped through like a child sucking up the last strands of spaghetti and the glittering circle fell to a brilliant point of light.

The energy that had been held in stasis suddenly erupted. The point of light burst outward again and everything that had been frozen halfway through the original explosion was freed in a titanic detonation. The circle of destruction raced outwards, scattering the buildings into atoms, the shock-front racing away from them in all directions, chasing away the cloud in an ever-expanding circle half a mile high.