The World Keepers_7_A Real World Roblox Suspense Page 8

  Now I know where the other dead Roblox characters are.

  There are body parts littered all over the floor, heads, arms, legs, torsos with nothing else attached.

  Torsos with some other things attached.

  I think that might be worse.

  The bugs hunch on squat legs as though in rest. Some are eating. Some are moving silently through the throng. Some are completely still, looking for all the world like a wild animal ready to pounce on anything that moves.

  There is a constant chittering noise in the background. Not loud like the angry sound they were making when they attacked the van, but softer….

  “Chud a dud, chud a dud, chud a dud.” They chirp softly, almost as if to say “I am fed, I am content, I know I have more food waiting when I need it.”

  That’s where the rest of the bugs were, here, in this cave. They were here with the rest of the food, with the characters they have captured alive, keeping them trapped and hanging, like so much meat on the hook.

  “Psst!” I hear a noise off to my right-hand side, and I move my body in small motions that cause me to spin a bit on the thread of webbing. Characters are hanging all over the place, I can only assume most of them are alive, and I search for the person trying to get my attention.

  “Jed, over here.” I hear the call again, the voice sounds vaguely familiar, and as my eyes adjust to the darkness, I’m able to make out some faces. Most have their eyes closed, but one has his eyes open, the one trying to talk to me.

  He hangs as I do, head facing the floor. His face is red, as mine must be, from the blood rushing down from his extremities.

  “Dude, come on, I need to know if you’re alive, and I need to know if you can help me, so come on.” The voice is familiar, and now I know why. It’s Dirk, that little turd who kidnapped my dog.

  “He’s also the little turd that sent the cops in the other direction so you could get away.” my brain reminds me.

  “What do you want, Dirk?” I whisper in his direction.

  “Oh, thank goodness!” he says, the vehemence in his voice causes his cocoon to start swinging anew, and he has to fight to stay facing me.

  “Thank goodness, what?” I ask him. “I’m here, you’re here, but in case you haven’t noticed, we’re both hanging from the ceiling. Neither of us has any hope of getting free, so how exactly does it help that I’m in this with you?”

  I know it’s not his fault I got caught, but he’s just such a jerk, I can’t find it in my heart to be kind to him.

  “Well, I guess thank goodness for nothing, it’s just nice not to be alone anymore.” He shuts his eyes as he says it, and I feel a momentary rush of pity for him. It can’t have been easy, being here by himself.

  “How long have you been here?” I ask him, just to make conversation.

  He opens his eyes again, looking almost grateful that I haven’t just shut him out. “I’m not sure, 2 or 3 days I think.”

  “Why did you come into the game? Surely you knew something was up before you decided to join it.”

  Dirk is also a Jumper, I’m not sure which kind, but I do know that he can leave the game through a portal, like me. I also know that he can remove the beacon from a game because I saw him do it when Kat hid one on him without his knowledge.

  “I did know, I was hoping that you or Kat might be in here, that I might be able to talk to you, but I didn’t think it would end up like this.” If he had use of his arms, I’m sure he’d be gesturing to his surroundings.

  “Well, I’m all ears, and I’ve got nothing but time, so talk.” I tell him.

  He’s silent for a while, and I figure he was just bluffing.

  Once a bad guy, always a bad guy.

  “I have the beacon for you.” he says, and I perk up.

  “You have this beacon, the one we need to take out of this game for it to reset?” I ask.

  I know Kat asked me to keep them safe, but honestly, I don’t care how the beacon leaves the game, whether it’s with him or me. I do not care, as long as it means things reset and I’m no longer in a bug’s pantry.

  “No, I don’t have this one…..I wish I did.” he says wistfully. “I’d be glad to take it out of this place.” He looks around, then at me. “I have the one from Soro’s. The one Kat hid in my shirt so I’d take it out of the game.”

  Huh, odd that he has it. It seems like his “masters” would have given him orders to do something with it once they found out about it.

  Unless he didn’t tell them.

  No, I’m getting ahead of myself. This is probably some evil plot on his part that will end with my dying for real.

  “So what, Dirk. What has that got to do with me?” I ask. I’m not giving him any satisfaction here.

  He looks at me for a minute, weighing his words. “I know you need them. I know you need enough for everyone. If you take me with you, you can have mine.”

  “Dirk, I don’t even know what that means!” I say. “What does “enough for everyone” mean? Who is “everyone”? And once I have enough, what am I supposed to do with them? You think I know so much, but I’m totally lost!”

  I swing my body around, moving so that I’m facing away from him as much as I can. If my life is about to end, I don’t want it to be while I’m looking at Dirk.

  “I’ll tell you then, just promise me that you’ll take me with you when you go. You have to promise me, or I’m not going to tell you anything.”

  The bugs around us start to skitter and chirp. Their legs are scratching along the dirt and rock of the cave, the sound echoing off the walls, seeming to go on forever.

  “Fine, Dirk. I’ll take you….wherever it is we’re supposed to go, but ONLY if you tell me stuff that’s actually useful. And if I think for one second you’re double-crossing me, I will end you. I promise you that. My dog hates you. I’d love to get you two together again.” I bare my teeth in a nasty smile, then realize it doesn’t matter because he can’t see my face anyway.

  “I didn’t do that to your dog!” he yells, causing the bugs to skitter and crawl closer to us. Any sound he was making stops as he immediately stills, realizing the threat.

  “I didn’t do that to your dog.” he whispers it this time. “I didn’t realize what they were doing if I had, I’d never have gone along with it.”

  “You knew enough to know they were affecting our minds.” I tell him. That’s enough for me to judge him guilty.

  “Yes, I admit it. I did know that, but I thought it was just all in fun. Make snotty kids play stupid games, make them treat me with some respect, make them lose for once in their charmed lives.”

  He’s so angry that I feel a little sorry for him. I don’t know what kind of upbringing he’s had, but it can’t have been good, not for him to feel like this.

  “I didn’t know about the other stuff though. I didn’t know they were kidnapping some of us. I didn’t know about the lab or the experiments. I didn’t know what they were doing with the serum.”

  He trails off, and I hang there thinking about everything he said.

  “They have Kat, you know.” I tell him. “They have her in a horrible place, they’ve drained her blood and stuffed her into a liquid filled tube. God knows what else they’re going to do to her, or what they’ve done to the people in the other tubes.”

  At least I assume they’re people, though when I saw them in the video, I couldn’t identify them as anything that ever lived at all.

  He’s silent for a minute. I hear him swallow, then his voice hitches and he says “I’m sorry,” his voice hitches again, “I’m sorry, I didn’t know, let me make it right.”

  “I don’t know how you can make it right, Dirk. Now’s a heck of a time to decide to turn a corner, seeing as how we’re probably never getting out of here alive.”

  My voice is soft when I say this, but the bugs react anyway, all of them standing up almost at once. Some crawl over to where we are, climb the walls, then climb each other to move even higher up the dark
earth.

  I can feel antennae touching my exposed calves and feet, and I shudder. One runs gently over my face, and I have a moment of insanity where I want to jerk my head and try to bite that sucker in half.

  As if sensing my thoughts, my anger their chirping gets louder “Chud A Dud, Chud A Dud…..” I stay at still as I can, hoping beyond hope that I am not their next meal.

  “Let it be Dirk, let it be Dirk.” I whisper to myself.

  “I can hear that, dude!” Dirk yells, apparently unconcerned about silence.

  “Jed…..” Man, I’m even hearing things now, the stress is getting to me, either that or all the blood pooling in my head is making me loopy. I could have sworn someone just whispered my name.

  “Jed…..”

  “So can I go with you?” Dirk asks again. He sure seems confident that we’ll be getting out of here alive.

  “Shhhh!” I tell him, straining my ears to make out the voices I thought I heard above the din of bug legs skritching and scratching. There it is again, softly at first, but louder as the seconds pass.

  “Jed! Can you hear us! Jed! Are you in here? Jed! If you can hear us, answer me right now!”

  It’s Thomas!! I’m elated, and then I’m terrified. No, not Thomas, not here, they’ll never make it.

  “Thomas!” I scream at the top of my lungs, making the bugs go WILD.

  “CHUD A DUD!, CHUD A DUD!“ It’s deafening!

  “Thomas! Go back. There are too many bugs, GO BACK!”

  I wish this were the point where I could tell you that I had some previously forgotten object sitting in my pocket and that I happened to remember said object at the last minute. I'd also love to tell you that I was able to heroically wriggle my hand enough to reach it, pull it out and use it to cut myself free.

  None of that happened.

  “Thomas, go back! Go back!” I’m yelling it over and over again, but no one is yelling back at me anymore. The bugs are so loud, I can hardly hear myself, and my hopes that they were able to hear me dwindle as the time stretches without any response.

  I’m swinging wildly from my web tether now, moving my body all sorts of ways, bending at my waist as much as I can to get myself going in a circle, like some freakishly morbid upside down hula hoop.

  I face the back of the cave, then the side, then the front, the other side, and the back again. Nothing, no one is there. I keep swinging, back, side, front, back.

  Dirk is doing exactly what I’m doing, swinging himself around and yelling. I know this because I see his mouth moving each time he comes in to view, his face in a rictus of strain as he apparently hollers at the top of his lungs.

  I can’t hear him though. All I can hear is the bugs.

  My swinging motion brings me around to the front again, and this time I see something I didn’t see before.

  One of the bugs isn’t moving. It’s laying there, looking like it’s dead, while it’s roach brothers and sisters run all over its body. Some just scuttle over. Others stop and pull off a leg or section of wing with their mandibles, lifting their front legs to hold it steady as they chomp and chew.

  Horrible.

  The next time I swing around, I see even more bugs laying still. This becomes the pattern as I continue to make my little circles. The bugs against the back wall of the cave gradually push forward, drawn to the easy meal that is being laid before them. Even easier than me, apparently, since the bugs aren’t moving and squirming.

  I continue to rotate, and gradually, the din of chittering fades, and I can both see Dirk’s face as he screams and hear what he’s saying.

  “Help! Whoever you are, help! We’re in here!” He yells it over and over again, not caring that whoever is out there is risking their lives.

  “Jed! Are you there? Jed!?” It’s Thomas again, and I try my hardest to stop spinning as I face the cave entrance.

  “I’m here! I’m here! On the ceiling!” I say as I see him looking all around, trying to find the source of my voice.

  “Oh my gosh.” There’s another voice I never thought I’d be so grateful to hear.

  “Carina! Carina, is that you!? Is Adrian here?!”

  Probably better questions for when I get out of this mess, but I need to know he’s here. I need to know that I’ve got a for sure ticket home! Adrian will port me out whether I’ve found the beacon or not, I’m sure of it.

  “I’m here, kid!” Adrian’s voice booms out from the cave entrance, where he’s apparently trying to keep everyone back until the coast is clear. Thomas isn’t having anything to do with that though.

  “Hey!” Another voice chimes in, “What about me? I’m the one who brought the guns! You’d think you’d be more grateful…..”

  “Julia! Are you okay? How did you guys get away from the bugs? You know what? Don’t tell me yet, get me down, and then tell me!”

  All of the bugs in the cave are limp at this point, but I remember what Julia said, and I know they’re not dead, not yet.

  “Can someone cut me down? Do you guys have a plan for this sort of thing?”

  I don’t even know how they’re going to get up here to me, let alone get me down without me breaking my neck.

  “I’ve got this, no worries.” Julia says. She holds up her bare hands, appears to whisper something to herself, and another gun appears in her grip.

  “I’m an excellent shot, Jed.” she says, “Try not to worry about this, okay?”

  “Worry about what…” I’m not even able to finish the sentence before I feel a rush of wind by my face, and dirt shrapnel sprays my eyes. I squeeze them shut, opening them a few seconds later to the view of a metal dart buried in the ceiling six inches from my head.

  “I think I just peed myself!” I yell down to them. “Good shot, though!”

  There is a rope trailing from the barbed dart in the ceiling, snaking all the way to the floor. It’s plain white but looks like something you’d see a climber use, woven for maximum flexibility and strength. Adrian wastes no time walking up to it. He jumps up, grabs hold at the highest point he can reach, then uses his foot to maneuver the rope over and around his arch. He uses this loop as a step, propelling himself upward, repeating the maneuver over and over again until he reaches me. His arms are straining, his teeth are gritted, but he never slows down. By the time he makes it to where I am, his reddish-blond hair is more red than blonde, the sweat having soaked every bit of his head.

  “How ya doin, kiddo?” he asks me. “Can you hang on for a few more minutes?” He smiles at that, so funny when it’s not him hanging upside down.

  “I’m great, Adrian, just great.” I don’t care that he’s laughing at my expense. He’s here, he’s going to help me, and that’s all that matters.

  “Alright, give me a second to secure you a bit, and we’ll get you down.”

  He reaches down with the foot not currently hooked in a rope loop and drags the end of the rope up to his fingers. Once he’s got a grip on it, he lets out some slack, then ties some kind of rope chair underneath himself. I remember my dad doing it once to help me climb a tree. It was called a “bosuns chair”.

  He hooks an end of the rope over the edge of the dart (it’s shaped almost like a three-pronged anchor) and pulls it tight. When he’s sure it’s secure, he removes his foot from the rope loop and lets his body weight hang in the chair.

  It drops down a bit at first, but he uses the rope he hooked over the anchor to pull himself back up.

  The rest of the rope dangles below him, ending now about 5 feet from the floor.

  “I’m going to cut you out of there, and then you’re going to have to climb down.”

  I’m not sure I can with my injured shoulder, but I just nod, I’ll get through it, one way or another.

  “Do me a favor, dig your hands into the sides of that cocoon if you can.” he says.

  I wiggle my hands to face my palms away from me, then push my fingers into the sticky material, making a tight fist on each side.

  Wild hor
ses couldn’t drag this stuff from my hands.

  Adrian reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a wicked looking knife.

  “I’m going to cut you out from the front, so you don’t strain your shoulders when you fall.” I freak out a little bit at the word “fall”.

  “You’re going to have to catch yourself, so be prepared. I’ll try to go slow, but I have no idea what this stuff is going to do when I start cutting it.”

  He inserts the knife tip right at my collarbone, indicating with a gesture and a grunt that I should hold my head as far back as I can. The process is slow. The web is so sticky that he has to keep pulling the knife out and wiping it on his pants. Eventually, I start to feel some give, and I realize that I am beginning to have to hold my weight with my hands wrapped in the webbing.

  “It’s working. It’s working!” I tell him.

  “I know it is, I’m here too, ya know.” he replies, smiling at me.

  All at once, my legs are free of the cocoon, and I feel Adrian’s hands on my ankles, keeping me from falling all at once.

  “I’m going to lower your legs as much as I can, but they’re going to swing the rest of the way once they’re out of my reach, okay?” he asks.

  I nod. “Yes, okay, I’m ready.”

  “Jed, be careful!” Thomas yells. I bet it’s killing him that he’s not the one up here helping me. I don’t blame him though. I’d have sent Adrian up to save him if the shoe were on the other foot.

  Adrian grabs my ankles, and my whole body starts to get that pins and needles feeling as the blood rushes back into my extremities.

  “Can you stop there for a second?” I ask. I hate to make him hold me up any longer, but I’m afraid if I swing forward now, my hands aren’t going to obey.

  “I just need a second for the blood to get back into my arms, so I have some feeling in them again.”

  He nods, and we stay there for about 30 seconds before I give him the “all clear”.

  “I’m letting go on three, he says. One…..two…...three.” He lets go of my legs, and they swing 90 degrees, pointing at the floor, my hands holding my entire weight.