Stu's Zombie Radar had gone quiet, now that he had killed the Level 2 Speedy. Curious as to how this one could have evaded his Radar -- he should have sensed its presence the moment he had stepped into the cabin -- he lifted up the trapdoor and shined his flashlight into the darkness of the cellar. It smelled like the grave.
"Careful," Luna warned. She had gotten to her feet and started loading her shotgun. "There could be more down there."
"I'm not sensing anything," he said. He threw the trapdoor open all the way and descended the steps into the cellar. It had stone walls, and a dirt floor, and there was an incredible network of spiderwebs running through the cabin's floor joists. It was damn cold down here, too, and dark.
"See anything?" Luna called.
"No zombies," he replied. "But there's some kind of tunnel." One of the cellar's stone walls had been excavated to create a tunnel, about six feet high and about three feet wide, which ran so deep that the light from his flashlight couldn't fully penetrate it. This explained how the zombie had managed to sneak up on them; it must have come out of the tunnel, from beyond the fifty-foot radius of Stu's Zombie Radar.
"A tunnel? What's it for?"
"Damned if I know." He was curious to find out where the passageway might lead. "Get our stuff. I want to check this out."
Luna complied, fetching their weapons and supplies, but she paled when she climbed down into the cellar and saw the tunnel for herself. "I'm not going in there."
"I'm not sensing any zombies."
"It's not that."
She was plainly terrified, which was unusual; Luna and Lucky both had nerves of steel. "Claustrophobic?"
She didn't deny it. "What if the tunnel collapses on us? What if we get trapped down here?"
"It might lead us to something interesting. A cache of weapons, maybe."
"It couldn't possibly be worth it."
"You can stay here if you want. I'm checking it out." He started for the tunnel.
She grabbed his arm. "Okay. Okay, I'll go with you. But this is the stupidest thing you've ever done." She swallowed hard and, holding her shotgun close to her chest, followed Stu into the dark and forbidding tunnel.
Stu expected it to run perhaps twenty or twenty-five feet, at the most, but it just kept going; indeed, it grew more expansive, the deeper in they went. It soon became apparent that only part of this tunnel had been dug by human hands -- what they were exploring was, in fact, some kind of natural cavern, with a stalactite ceiling and solid stone walls which were marbled pink and yellow.
"I wasn't expecting this," Luna whispered, her voice echoing across the stone.
"Me neither. It's kind of pretty, isn't it?"
"I don't like it. I don't like being underground."
"This cavern's probably been here for thousands of years. I don't think it's going to collapse on us."
"Don't use that word, collapse. I don't even want to think about it."
"How do you suppose that zombie got down here?"
"Maybe it was one of those the townspeople sacrificed to the Cannibal," Luna theorized. "Only he got away, after being bitten."
"The Cannibal's cave is supposed to be further up the mountain, though," Stu said. "You don't suppose..." He frowned. "Do you think this cavern is connected to his?"
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"I didn't until now," she said. "But it's a possibility, isn't it? We should get out of here."
"My Zombie Radar's not going off," he pointed out, lowering his voice to a whisper. He sniffed the air. "And I don't smell anything, either."
"You don't smell anything? What are you, a dog?"
"Oh. I forgot to mention, I bought a new skill, one that improves my sense of smell."
She snorted. "Didn't I tell you that one was stupid?"
"Time will tell," he said, proceeding further into the cavern. He listened carefully for any sounds, and sniffed the air every few seconds, but the cave was utterly quiet, and it smelled like earth and stone and soil; there was no sign of the Cannibal or any other living creatures. It occurred to him that they might be able to sneak up on the monster, if it was indeed down here. If they could catch it while it was sleeping...
Tremlo and the other townspeople had warned him that it wasn't sleeping, however. It was awake, they had said, and it was hungry.
The cave's narrow passages opened up the deeper in they went, until at last they found themselves standing in a grand cathedral-like chamber so large that their voices echoed like ghosts from one end of it to the other. The feeble light from Stu's flashlight wasn't enough to illume their surroundings; he considered activating his Night Vision, but he thought it might be smarter to hang on to it in case their flashlight died -- he definitely didn't want to get lost down here. He may not have been as claustrophobic as Luna, but wandering blindly through this freezing cave, which may or may not have been occupied by a powerful mutate...well, it wasn't an appealing prospect.
And with their flashlight now beginning to grow noticeably dimmer, he decided it was time to turn back. "I think we've seen enough," he whispered to Luna. "Let's..."
He trailed off, because just then he had caught a whiff of something very strange -- it was a kind of musty animal smell, but with a hint of rot and decay as well. It was very faint, but it was there.
He handed the flashlight to Luna. "Head back to the cabin," he told her.
"What? Why?"
"I think the Cannibal's lair might be up ahead."
"So?"
"So I promised to kill it, remember? And I don't want you to get hurt."
"Are you crazy? We're doing this together, you idiot. That's the whole reason I came with you."
"Yes, but..." It had only been a few minutes since she had kissed him, but his attitude toward Luna, he realized, had already begun to change. Previously he had viewed her as a companion, a comrade-in-arms, but now...now she was a girl, a girl he liked, a girl he wanted to protect. Unable to reconcile these sudden conflicting feelings, he simply stood there for a moment, unsure of what to say.
Luna was adamant, however. "You're not going on without me," she told him stubbornly.
He didn't think he could persuade her, so he sighed and said, "Fine. But stay close."
They continued exploring the cave, with Stu following the strange animal-scent. It was growing stronger and stronger. "Do you smell that?" he asked Luna, curious to know whether the odor was now detectable to her.
She shook her head. "I don't smell anything." But as they drew closer to one corner of the cave, she said, "Wait...I think I do smell something. Is that what I--"
She was interrupted by a loud crack; evidently she had stepped on something. She pointed the flashlight at the floor.
It was littered with bones -- a lot of bones, and these weren't animal bones, either; there were three human skulls on the floor, along with the fragmentary remains of several others, scattered about. The surrounding area appeared to be a kind of nest, made up of animal hides, and there were tufts of white fur all over the place.
"White fur," Luna noted.
"I see it," Stu said. This was clearly the Cannibal's nesting place. But where was it? His Zombie Radar was still quiet, so it had to be at least fifty feet away. Fifty feet wasn't actually very far, though, and if this thing was as fast as the townspeople had said it was, his Radar might not give them very much advance warning.
He was just thinking about this when he caught a glimpse of movement to his right, just outside the range of the flashlight beam. It was so fast, and he saw it so briefly, that at first he thought it might have been his imagination...but then his Radar went off, and Luna shouted in alarm, and all hell broke loose.
Something roared in his ear; it was so close that he could feel the thing's hot breath. A second later, something hit him in the chest, blasting all the air out of his lungs and sending him tumbling over the stone floor of the cavern. And a second after that, he heard a gunshot -- Luna had fired her shotgun. She yelped, and the monster roared again.
"Luna!" he shouted. He couldn't see what was happening; Luna had been holding the flashlight, and its beam was spinning around crazily in the dark.
He activated his Night Vision, which instantly illuminated everything in his eyes -- he could see the entire cavern in perfect detail now, and he could see the Cannibal, too, which was looming over Luna. It was approximately as the people of Silent had described it: a vaguely gorilla-looking thing, with white fur, an enormous head, and a gigantic, disproportionately large mouth. When it roared, the mouth practically split its whole head open.
There was an ICON descriptor hanging over that huge head: "Level 39 Mutate."
Was he strong enough to kill a Level 39? He was about to find out.