Admit Defeat (TMR fic 2)

Chapter 36

(I probably should have chosen a creepy song, but I couldn't resist~)

The tunnels are pretty much as bad as I imagined. Some of them have a few glass lightbulbs glowing dimly on the ceiling, so we don't have to completely rely on Jorge's flashlight, but it isn't much.

Minho grabbed a brick from a house on our way to the tunnels, and Newt found a piece of wood. I have Jorge's spare knife. Hopefully it will be enough if we need to fight anything.

I walk close to Newt, shivering at the slightest sound and pressing against him. The tunnels are much more straightforward than they might appear to someone unfamiliar with maps, but it's easy for me to keep the paths straight in my mind.

We're silent as we walk, and the darkness is silent around us.

"Help me," someone calls into the dark in a ragged voice. We glance at Jorge, who shrugs.

"Cranks past the Gone don't usually ask for help," he says, but his tone is uncertain.

It doesn't sound like Thomas or Brenda, but I know that if Thomas is within five square miles of someone asking for help there's a high likelihood he'll end up trying to get to them.

So I lead them towards the voice.

"Help me. Help me find the exit." It's a woman lying on the floor, her face pasty and streaked with tears and grime. It doesn't look like she can move right from the way she's lounging brokenly, her neck pulled back at a sickening angle to stare up at us, greasy hair tangled around her panicked eyes.

The sharpness of Jorge's flashlight doesn't help her stark form.

"Please," she rasps. "I need to find an exit before they find me, before they eat me." She's clumsily grasping a bag in her hand, and when she tries to crawl towards us the bag detaches from the ground it was resting on with a wet sticking sound.

I don't want to know what's inside of it. We all take a step backwards, and then she's crawling faster.

"PLEASE!" she screams, her voice still pitched as a plea for help but the volume terrifying as she skitters towards us on broken limbs, bag still dragging and trailing what must be blood.

I can't handle it. What might be in the darkness behind her, where the flashlight doesn't reach? She's coming after us, and-

I break and run. I sprint up the pathway, not too many yards ahead of the others when I crash into someone.

Someone with terrible balance.

Someone who smells like garbage and rot.

Someone who collapses onto the ground hard but gives a wheezing laugh and calls to someone else with him in a singsong voice drenched with unspoken violence.

"I found one! I found us a little mouse to eat!"