Chapter 8: The Walls have Teeth

Libby tried again: "Come on Claire, focus! Get up! We need to keep moving!" But Claire just sat there, her back to the wall, crying, snot running from her nose. Just like she had for minutes now. Her hands kept wiping up and down her thighs, as if to undo what horrible things that tentacle had done to her. Her gaze was directed at nothing, staring vacantly right through of horror in the center of the room, unwilling to see. She was unwilling to hear, too. "Claire!"
"She's in shock", declared Magda, as if that wasn't obvious enough. These past hours, Claire had been ripped out of her life, stripped naked and hunted, she had witnessed the death of a girl her own age and just moments ago an alien tentacle had forced itself inside her. Right now she was sitting next to a large pile of...

'It’s half a miracle that Magda and myself were still holding up so well', Libby reflected. She dared another glance over her shoulder, couldn't help but take another look at this unreal a pile of death. The ones at the bottom had already started to turn bluish, but the topmost were still warm. All of them were equally dead. She was looking at the remains of probably over fifty young women, as naked as any woman Libby had seen in this place, stacked up onto a pile at least ten feet high as if they were merely toys of some monstrous being that had forgotten them here. A beautiful girl much too young seemed to look right at Libby, the horror and agony of her last moments still visible in her eyes. Her plump breasts were sprinkled with blood. Below them, you could see part of her rib cage and her lungs. Everything below that was just gone.
What had her story been? Had she just been on her way home, her biggest worries being tomorrow’s homework, only to end up here, to end like this? It just wasn't fair. But war never was, especially to the weak. To these bastards, Libby guessed, women weren't even considered casualties of war. They were cattle. Mere tools for reproduction, to be used once and discarded when they had served their purpose. That thought should have made Libby feel angry, disgusted, violated. But it didn't. In fact, she hardly felt anything at all.

'I may be under shock too', Libby realized, 'but at least my mind is still working when my emotions aren't'. And her numbed mind knew that they had to get Claire's working again as well. "Claire, I- I know this is fucked up, but you have to snap out of it!" Magda gave her a disapproving look and said in a practiced, calm tone of voice: "I know things may look dark, Claire, but the bible teaches us that there is always hope, even in the most dire of situations..." 'Oh great, now she starts getting all preachy on our asses'. But then again, Libby herself had no idea what else to say. So while Magda continued elaborating to Claire how God's divine love would protect them from further evil, Libby weighed their options. The room had two exits. The chute they had entered from of was over one them, so taking the other one would hopefully enable them to continue moving further towards more outward sections of the hive.But first, they needed to start walking again, and Claire wasn't too eager about that part.

Libby considered just slapping her when, out of the blue, she jerked back to reality all by herself. "No", Claire said all of a sudden. "No. No! Nonononono, not again, no!" Claire jumped up, and pressed her back flat against the wall, eyes wide with horror. "What is it, Claire? What..." Then Libby saw it, too. Another one? A tentacle had erupted from a wall and was slithering slowly, calmly across the floor. Claire began to shake uncontrollably and Libby felt something warm splash on her feet. A yellow trickle erupting from Claire’s pussy was wetting wetting both their feet. Libby took a step back.

Then the tentacle grabbed onto something – a foot. A jerk went through the pile of corpses when a dark woman's body, one of the more intact ones, was pulled away from the lowest layer. She lay on her belly, her face hidden away by a strand of black hair. Perhaps it was best that way. Slowly, her unmoving body was dragged towards what Libby had taken to be just another organic wall of the hive. But now she saw she had been wrong. A fine, long line was visible along the lower half of that wall, a deepening that looked unsuspicious on its own. But now that the woman’s corpse was moving towards to it, it became obvious that there was more to it. It opened. The walls have teeth. In a heartbeat, the solid wall had become a gaping mouth, round, deep, with multiple rows of razorsharp teeth, one layered behind the next. When the dead woman’s torso entered it, it closed with a wet crunching noise, spraying blood in every direction. The legs were shoved in right after that, with not much chewing involved.

It made sense: The hive was organic after all. It was grown, so it needed sustenance. 'At least they are recycling', Libby thought, instantly hating her tactless sarcasm. Two bites was all it took to devour an entire human body. The mouth in the wall disappeared as quickly as it had opened and the room returned to what it had been before: A fleshy mass grave, disturbed by three naked, unwilling tomb raiders. Now that Claire was on her feet again, Libby saw the chance to leave this horrible place before anything else happened. Anything worse. She took Magda and Claire by the hands, both of whom had fallen silent again after witnessing the latest horror, and half led, half dragged them towards the alien door she had decided on. Like the other doors of the hive, this one opened to the slightest touch, emitting a wet slurping sound the echo of which was muffled by the pile of flesh behind them. Libby, Magda and Claire entered another corridor of black, hard flesh.
This one had a violet tint to it. The police officer still was not sure where the ambient lighting in this place was coming from. It might have been some kind of bioluminescence of the walls and floors themselves. Whatever it was, it illuminated everything very evenly, because while it was not necessarily bright, everything in the hive was easily visible once one's eyes had adapted. Libby couldn't help but take a final look back only to find another pair of dead eyes that seemed to stare directly at her. TIFF?! No. The surge of panic passed as quickly as it come: That wasn't her friend Tiffany. This woman's corpse looked similar, but the longer Libby stared, the more unfamiliar the empty eyes within that ruined face became, and soon her emotions calmed back down to numbness. So she still was able to feel something. 'It's interesting how seeing a dead woman can be a relief once you realize it is not a dead woman you know'. When the door closed behind them, another tentacle was in the process of dragging another victim free from the pile. But Libby decided not to give it further thought. 'We need to keep moving', she knew, looking at Claire, who’s expression was simply blank now. 'We need to stay numb'.