Chapter 2 of 5·6 min read·The remaining hours of the flesh storm
The Weight Above Us
The mutant’s forelimb punched through the gel silk and hooked my shell.
I locked my legs against the rib floor. Its claws scraped over the seamback plates I’d fused into my shell, and the pressure shoved me backward a fraction at a time. Behind me, Vey dragged one of the injured beetles toward the marrow pocket. The other was trying to crawl on a leg that folded beneath him.
“Keep moving,” I said. My mouthparts strained around the words. “It’s pulling from the left.”
Vey looked at the limb caught in the barrier, then at the narrow space between me and the wall. “If I get past you, I can reach the pocket.”
“You can barely put weight on your back leg.”
“I know what I can do.” She didn’t wait for permission. She hooked an arm around the crawling beetle and dragged him another body-length.
The mutant hauled. My shell ground against the rib. Its plates held, but the force traveled through them into my joints. The weight I’d gained to survive the storm was now pinning me in place. Every step backward took more effort than the last.
I saw the loose shard of bone then: a pale, narrow sliver lodged overhead above the passage, held in place by three thick strands of gel silk. It was long enough to bar the entry if it fell across it. The strands had stretched in the storm, one already frayed.
“Vey. The anchors above me. Cut them when I tell you.”
She followed my gaze. “That’ll bring the shard down on the entrance.”
“Yes.”
“And on anything still in it.”
The mutant’s second forelimb slid into the gap, dragging a wet fringe of flesh and spore filaments behind it. I could smell the sour rot from here. The creature had been changing in the storm; its joints bent at the wrong points, and pale threads stirred beneath its skin.
“I’ll keep it forward,” I said. “You cut the strands.”
Vey glanced at my shell. “You won’t be able to move once it gets hold.”
She was right. I looked at the mutant’s hooked limb and the space where its next claw would land. “Then don’t wait for me to ask twice.”
A hard pull lifted my front end from the floor. My claws lost their grip. The mutant dragged me toward its mouth, where the plates around its jaw had split into a ring of soft, pulsing tissue.
Vey limped around me, keeping tight to the wall. She carried a sliver of bone in both hands. One of the injured beetles had made it to the pocket; he turned at the entrance and tried to rise, but Vey shook her head sharply at him.
Next
Can Ossik and Vey stop the mutant’s filaments from crossing the barrier before they reach the marrow pocket?
The mutant’s hooked limb tightened around my shell. One of the seams flexed. I felt a fine crack open along the edge of the seamback plates—not through the shell, but enough to let the pressure bite.
I could retreat and let the mutant into the passage. It would have room to unfold. The refugees would have nowhere to go.
I drove my legs down and twisted toward the creature’s limb. My shell scraped sideways across the floor. That small change put the mutant’s weight onto the outer edge of its claw. The hook slipped half a joint.
“Now!”
Vey struck the first silk strand. It bounced, elastic and stubborn. She adjusted her grip and sawed at it. The mutant’s head thrust into the passage. Its jaws opened around me.
I kicked the hooked limb again. Pain burst through my front joints. The claw slipped free, and I dropped hard onto the floor. I turned beneath the creature’s chest, the thick plates on my back scraping the rib overhead. It had forced its head and shoulders through, but its rear body was still outside, jammed against the narrow entry.
The first strand snapped.
The shard shifted overhead. Dust and tiny bone chips fell across my shell.
Vey’s bad leg buckled. She caught herself with one hand, then kept cutting. Her jaw worked as she pressed the bone sliver into the second strand.
“Move back,” I called.
She looked at the third anchor. The mutant was still wedged in the opening, thrashing hard enough to shake the passage. One of its spore-fringed limbs brushed the silk beside her head.
“Vey.”
“I see it.”
She moved toward the last strand instead of away from it. The mutant’s claws raked the wall behind her, close enough to crack the brittle surface. I rushed forward, put my shoulder beneath its reaching limb, and shoved. The effort did almost nothing to its weight, but it knocked the claw aside long enough for Vey to strike.
The second strand parted. The rib shard dropped a handspan and lodged against the mutant’s shoulder. It roared—a wet, rattling sound—and shoved upward.
Vey’s bone sliver slipped from her grip. The last strand still held.
She snatched the sliver from the floor, took a short step that favored her injured leg, and cut again. I saw the strain in how she set her feet. She was not going to stop. I had mistaken her refusal to be carried for stubbornness. It was a way of keeping something that still belonged to her.
I planted myself under the mutant’s forelimb and held it off her.
The final strand parted.
The rib shard dropped across the entrance. Its end struck the floor with a crack, and the middle came down on the mutant’s back. The creature buckled. Its head and forelimbs remained inside the passage, but the shard trapped its chest against the outer bone. The rest of its body thrashed beyond the opening, each blow shaking grit loose from the ceiling.
I crawled backward. Vey followed, one hand on the wall, the other gripping her injured leg. The two beetles in the pocket pulled her the last distance and set her down beside them.
The mutant clawed at the shard. Gel silk strands dangled from the torn barrier, shaking with each movement. One by one, the creature’s blows weakened. It was pinned, not dead, and I could feel the pressure of each strike through the floor.
“We need the opening covered,” I said. “Now.”
Vey didn’t argue. The beetle with the folded leg found a coil of spare silk tucked beneath the marrow shelf. The other held its end while Vey tied it across the gap, working from the pocket side. I took the opposite end and pulled the silk taut. My cracked shell protested when I leaned into it, but the barrier stretched across the entrance.
The pinned mutant shoved once more. The new sheet bowed inward. All four of us held it. Vey braced her good leg and the two injured beetles put their weight against the knot. The silk held.
The next blow came weaker. Then the mutant stopped moving.
For several breaths, none of us let go.
The marrow pocket was cramped, lined with old deposits and lit by the pale ceiling mushrooms. It had been shelter for the three refugees until the storm found the entrance. Now their hands still rested on the barrier they had helped build. The smallest of them, the one whose leg had folded, was staring at my shell.
“That crack needs cleaning,” he said.
I looked down. A thin line cut the edge of my plates. “It does.”
Vey eased herself onto the marrow shelf. “You kept it out.”
“We kept it out.” I checked the weave, then the knots. The correction mattered less than the fact that she heard it. She dipped her head once, tired but satisfied.
We ate a little marrow from the pocket’s wall. It was bitter and cold, but it gave the injured beetles enough strength to sit upright. Vey picked out a soft piece and divided it into three smaller portions, keeping none for herself until the others had eaten. I watched her do it, then pushed my own share toward her.
She eyed me. “You need it.”
“I need the shell to hold. You need to heal that leg.”
After a moment, she took the piece. We ate in the low light while the storm hissed beyond the barrier. It was not a feast, and it was not safe. Still, when one of the beetles asked whether we were staying, nobody looked toward the outside.
“We’ll stay tonight,” I said. “Tomorrow we make this place stronger.”
Vey nodded. “Then we’ll need more silk.”
A strand of the barrier twitched.
We all turned toward the entrance. The mutant had not moved. Something finer was sliding through a gap between the new weave and the rib: a pale filament, wet and searching. Another followed it. They crept along the silk toward the marrow pocket, drawing themselves out of the pinned creature’s body.
I moved to block their path. Behind me, Vey was already reaching for the bone sliver.
The first filament touched the barrier’s inner knot and began to split around it.