The sounds down tunnel made me pause and the roots took advantage of my distraction. A writhing sheath swung down from the stalk and unwound, tugging, prying and nudging me back into the pod.
I re-gathered my strength and resisted, refusing to yield what progress I had made towards freedom. It was like wrestling an octopus with wooden tentacles. For every root I snapped, two more uncoiled to take its place.
Something came bounding out of the dimness. It was a person—a young woman in tights and a baggy shirt that engulfed her slender form. She carried a stick with something sparkly mounted at the tip and a small cloth sack that tinkled as she ran. She stopped below me, her eyes wide and staring.
“You did this? By yourself?” she said, her English strongly accented. Her face was pale and ghostly, punctuated by a delicate chin. Her glossy, black hair was cut in asymmetric wedge, shaved close on the right with her left eye obscured by long, slanted bangs.
I strained to unwrap a coiled root from my neck. “Did what?” I grunted.
She reached up and swiped her stick across the pod. She hadn’t even touched them, yet the roots fell away as if slashed by a razor. She reached in, grabbed my leg and pulled.
She may have looked slight, but she was wiry and strong, hauling me free of that pod with a single tug. I slid and tumbled to the floor of the tunnel. Severed strands lashed at me like angry snakes.
She glanced towards the darkness she had emerged from, to the source of the thumping. “We must go. The Reaper, it is coming.”
I got up and wobbled. My legs felt like jelly. She grabbed my hand and yanked me to my feet. I lurched after her. Conscious of my nakedness, I covered my privates with my free hand.
“Don’t worry about your pee pee. Just run! You think I don’t know what boys look like?”
I recovered my balance somewhat and we dashed up a steep and dark passage. The thumping behind us accelerated. Vibrations shook the tunnel floor. Waves of peristalsis made it feel like we were running across a semi-solid ocean, the roots rippling under my bare feet.
We came to a ledge where the tunnel forked into two narrower tunnels, each about twice the width and height of a school bus. Around each bend, blue and lights flickered and flashed.
The girl vaulted nimbly onto the ledge. “Going up, always go left,” she said, helping me over. “Remember that. Right takes you toward the core. Never go near the core. Never. Understand?”
“O-kay.”
Little blobs of bluish light shuttled in all directions. This tunnel looked just like the one I had seen after the beach incident. A single pod clung tight against the ceiling. A row of shredded nubs marked the scars of old stalks.
Above our heads, a person lay inside the pod, whimpering. The girl glanced up and kept on going. But those sobs got to me. I grabbed the tail of her shirt.
“He needs help.”
She twitched her head. “Nah. This one is hopeless.”
“But you helped me.”
“You are different. You helped yourself.” Her gaze flew down the tunnel. “Quickly now, a Reaper comes!”
A dark, hulking shape appeared at the far end of the larger passage, silhouetted against a wash of orange light. It reared up and ripped a pod from the ceiling, wolfing it down in a series of spasmodic jerks. It groaned and dropped back down and scraped up the passage on stubby appendages like clawed flippers.
