MudMan (The Golem Chronicles Book 1) (21 page)

The Mudman nodded in approval.

Strangely, though, the remaining three wolves, two females and a male, ventured no closer.

Instead, they tooled around out front, pacing or turning in impatient circles as their swaying mouths scoured the ground like bloodhounds picking out a scent. Whatever they sensed or heard kept them at bay, which was a welcome break. Here, in the narrow temple entrance, Levi and his companions had a much better chance of fighting off the creatures, but it was no sure victory. The wolves were powerful beasts in their own right, and with Levi wounded, a pitched battle could go either way.

Frankly, Levi was surprised they weren’t already trying to force their way in. They didn’t strike him as particularly skittish things—they’d moved in boldly, unafraid—which begged the question,
Why weren’t they pressing their advantage?

Levi looked left, right, up, eyes sweeping over the walls riddled with ancient script. He had a nagging suspicion it was the temple complex keeping the things at bay. The Mudman lumbered forward, crouching down and dropping one hand on Chuck’s shoulder. “Have any of them tried to get in?” he asked.

Chuck shook his head. “Naw. Just hangin’ ’round out there. That mean sonuvabitch right there”—he pointed his pistol at a particularly thickset female with a puckered wound in one shoulder—“eased off the second I got in here.” He shook his head again.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread
, Levi thought. Not in the Good Book, that one, but there was wisdom in it all the same. This couldn’t be a good sign. Despite their apparent lucky break, Levi knew this could only mean trouble—even more trouble than the wolves.

The Mudman needed to think, and he also needed a few minutes to tend to his wounds. “Keep watching,” he grunted. “Let me know if they come any closer.” He moved deeper into the hallway and sat down, leaning his broad back against a wall.

Troubling notions careened through his mind like a rockslide: unspoken worries he had no answers for.
He sighed. Better to deal with his injuries first, then he could decide what the best course of action was. Often, he found, occupying his mind with some simple and concrete task was the best solution when he had a difficult problem to tackle. Give the issue a little leeway, let it drift a bit so he could gain some distance and perspective.

He went to work like a mechanic with a busted up car on his hands. He dredged up a heap of loose gravel and gritty sand and unceremoniously set about packing his gold-soaked wounds. He used his good hand to cram dirt in, packing the material until it formed a brown clot. The cool sand, rough and granular, was a soothing balm for his hurt, a topical antiseptic and bandage in one. Next, he shoved his fingerless left hand into the remaining pile of rubble, corkscrewing his stumpy nubs into the stone again and again
.
A pestle grinding away in a mortar.

The motion was further agony; the corkscrew of his hand reopened the gaping holes where fingers had been, causing the ichor to flow freely again. His stunt with the glass spear had robbed the limb of much of its strength and had caused his knuckles to close improperly. Sometimes, with such an injury, the only way forward was actually a step back. In another few minutes the lacerations would close nice and neat, though he’d be short fingers on his left hand for a while yet. Likely, it’d take a trip to his bloodstone—lounging in the shade of Skip’s knobby tree—to fully recover.

That was a worry for later.

He stole sporadic peeks at the wolves while he worked.

They’d settled down. No more pacing, now.

The remaining members of the pack had dragged over the corpses of their fallen kin, and sat in a rough circle, anteater-mouths sucking out the juices of their dead as they guarded the entryway. Watching them, Levi could only come to a single conclusion: they were afraid to enter the temple. That had to be it. Nothing else fit. The fact that the beasts remained also meant the wolves expected whatever was in the temple to drive Levi and the others out. Once more Levi’s mind circled back to a question he didn’t really want to answer:

What could be in here that even Sprawl wolves didn’t want to cross?

SIXTEEN:

The Temple

“The hell you mean we’re going in?” Chuck asked, eyes squinted, forehead wrinkled, incredulity thick on his face. “I ain’t goin’ in there.” He pointed down the hallway disappearing into black. “I ain’t no dummy. Those things out there”—he waved vaguely toward the wolves—“are scared to be in here. If they’re scared, we should be scared, too, know what I’m sayin’?”

Ryder bobbed her head in agreement. “Gotta throw my vote with Chuck, Big Guy,” she said. “Those things aren’t gonna come in here, so it seems smarter to wait ’em out. I mean we don’t know what’s in here, but eventually those things will go away, then there we are.”

Levi grunted and folded his arms.
Idiots
, both of them. He wanted to chastise them for their lack of forethought.

Outwait the wolves … Not likely. Scavengers like that could be very patient, especially since they had shelter and a ready supply of food.
Idiots
. He took a few deep breaths, pushing away the growing surge of irritation building up inside his chest.
Better a patient person than a warrior; one with self-control than one who takes a city
, he reminded himself
.

“Wait for them to leave,” he replied, flat and cold like the arctic tundra. “And what if they don’t? How long will our supplies last? You’ve got water and food for a couple days, maybe? I’ll survive, but I can’t promise you two the same. Those creatures out there … well, they
do
have food and water. More than enough for a few weeks I’d wager, so I can’t imagine they’ll be in any rush to leave.”

“Yeah, but—” Chuck said.

Levi held up a massive clay mitt. “I’m not done. Even assuming those things leave, an assumption that could cost us everything, it doesn’t change
anything
. We’re out here for one reason, to find Professor Wilkie.” He shot Ryder a level look. “If you want to figure out what happened to you, we need to find him. He’s our lead. Our only lead. Since his body’s not out there in the tents, it might mean he’s inside here somewhere. And, even if he’s not”—he shrugged beefy shoulders—“maybe this place can tell us a thing or two. Understand me?”

He pulled out the photo of the altar he’d lifted from the professor’s work tent, unfolded it, and tossed it onto the floor, glossy side up. “Could be,” he continued, “this temple is somehow related to whatever the Kobocks are up to.”

Ryder solemnly considered the words, chewing at her bottom lip while her hands caressed the barrel of the snub-nosed pistol. “There’s no other way?” she asked after a time.

Levi shook his cue-ball head. “Outworld’s a big place, kid, but some things are buried too deep. We don’t find this professor, we don’t find the answers.”

In his mind, he could see rain beating down from above as he crawled from a body-filled pit, lumbered to a concrete pill box, and saw the strange altar with its ruby eyes within.

“And we both need those answers.”

“Alright,” she said with only a slight pause, “I’m in.”

“Yeah, but—” Chuck said again.

Levi ground his blunt teeth and lumbered toward the man. “You,” he said tersely, “don’t have any say. One, this isn’t a democracy. Two, if it was you’d still be outvoted. And, three, you’re my guide—I’m paying you to take me where I want to go, and where I want to go is that way.” He gestured toward the hallway behind them. “Lead me or don’t get paid.”

Chuck frowned, muttering under his breath as he kicked at the stone floor with one foot, ornery and stubborn as a mule. “Fine, you lumpy, ass-ugly son of a bitch. But I expect better compensation. So make me an offer or I’ll sit my black ass right here and take my chances.”

The Mudman paused, jaw clenched, brows knitted. In general, he disapproved of sin in all its various forms—adultery, fornication, idolatry, murder—but greed, he found, was the most useful, rivaled only by vanity. For a few green bills, bills not even worth the paper they were printed on, people would risk bloody death. He didn’t care about the money, and since this place was undoubtedly dangerous, having the guide along could be the difference between life and death. “Fair enough,” he replied. “Double the rate. Twenty grand, even.”

Chuck turned and surveyed the ancient stone walls, eyes boring into the temple as if he could somehow discern the threats ahead. “You need me more than I need you,” he said, a shifty grin tracing his lips. “Twenty-five and I’m in. Otherwise”—he frowned, a look of complete indifference—“like I said, I’ll take my chances with the wolves.”

“You get twenty or I
throw
you to the wolves. Then we’ll see how much you need me,” Levi replied, stretching out his tree-trunk arms and popping his meaty neck with a
crack
. He didn’t care about the money, but Chuck was a sneaky sort and fear could be nearly as good a motivator as greed. Both greed
and
fear would be best of all.

“Bullshit.” Chuck’s grip tightened around the massive pistol in his hand. “You wouldn’t do that.”

He glanced at Levi, studying the Mudman’s deadpan features. “Come on, man, you’re just playin’, right? You wouldn’t do it? No way.” Levi flexed his good hand, fingers curling and uncurling. Chuck turned to Ryder, worry growing. “He’s playin’ right?”

Ryder gave him a waggle of her shoulders.

“Fine, twenty even, asshole. But I’ll remember this bullshit.” Chuck bent over his pack, unzipped the main compartment, and rummaged around for a heartbeat before liberating a pair of hefty black Mag Lights. He tossed one to Ryder, tucked the other under one arm, zipped up the pack, and hastily slung it over his shoulder.

“If I die, Mudman, I’m gonna haunt you. You hear that? I’ll be pestering your lumpy, gray ass for the next millennium. Ain’t nowhere gonna be safe. You sittin’ on the john? I’ll be there, tappin’ at your shoulder. You tryin’ to get your mack on with some other nasty-ass mud-woman, I’ll be sittin’ next to you tellin’ her what a colossal tightwad dick head you are. And don’t think I can’t do it. I know people, Levi, I know people.”

“Duly noted,” Levi replied. “Now lead the way.”

Chuck clicked on the flashlight and held it up in his left hand, his monster Desert Eagle never leaving his right. He frowned, shot Levi one last evil glare, then turned and stalked forward, muttering obscenities the whole while. Levi motioned Ryder to follow, while he took up the rear guard—just in case the wolves grew bold enough to venture into the temple’s interior. Levi made his way over to the wall as they walked deeper into the building, ignoring the dancing beam of Chuck’s flashlight, instead directing his senses into the blocky stone infrastructure composing the complex.

His awareness spread through the wall, into the floor below and ceiling above, but everything felt muffled, muted. Part of that was due simply to the foreignness of the earth here, but there was more to it as well. Something lived in this place—maybe the odd vegetation he’d see outside?—and it fought off the intrusion of his questing mind. After fifteen feet the tunnel turned into a deeply sloped walkway plunging deeper into the ground, deeper into blankness—the flashlights did next to nothing to banish the gloom.

For ten minutes, they treaded onward, Chuck in the lead, Ryder in the middle, Levi trailing behind, fingers brushing along stone.

The doorway loomed out of the murk in an instant, one moment absent, the next moment present. A gateway, like nothing Levi had ever seen before. A pale-green metal wall, the color of split pea soup, spanned the entire length of the tunnel. He ran a hand over its surface. The metal looked like steel, but wasn’t—the texture was off. Soft, fleshy, spongy, like a piece of overcooked tofu. Even with Levi’s extensive history and long life, he couldn’t put a name to the material. In the wall’s center hung a massive door of overlapping and interlocking green metal plates, the kind of thing one might find in a high-tech military bunker.

Snaking vines—all tangled green, black flowers, and purple leaves—like the ones Levi had seen festooned along the exterior of the temple, ran over the surface of the gateway in a snarl of looping coils. The odd black flowers dotting each vine quivered and undulated as the party drew near, as if they could sense the uninvited approach of these new visitors. A control panel, made from the same green metal,
grew
out of the right-hand tunnel wall, tangles of pencil-thin roots spreading out all around it.

“The hell is this stuff?” Ryder asked, her voice quiet, but simultaneously too loud.

“One giant pain in the ass,” Chuck replied, making sure he was well away from wall and door. “This right here is why I didn’t want to go in. Never seen nothing like this, not even back in the Hub. Even the Cult of Akroid ain’t got nothin’ like this—and those dudes be doin’ all kinds of wonky shit.”

The Mudman ignored both, pushing past Ryder and heading over to the control panel. “I’ll take a look,” he said absentmindedly.

He drew near, but didn’t touch it, not yet. The panel—an inset rectangle, two feet high by a foot wide—did indeed appear to
grow
out of the wall, as if it were organic instead of a contraption of metal or science. Raised nodes ran over the surface in a series of columns like an oversized keypad, though each node was marked with blue fluorescent glyphs Levi didn’t recognize or understand. A small display screen of sorts—dark and lifeless—sat at the top, covered with a gooey and viscous membrane.

Levi extended a fat finger—

“The hell you doin’, Boss-man?” Chuck whispered, an edge to the words. “What if that thing’s like a bomb or something? You gonna blow us all up. I know you two got business in this place, but I’m tellin’ you, we’re better off with the wolves.”

Levi pressed one of the nodes.

Caution, though usually the prudent move, wouldn’t see them through this temple. And they
needed
to make it through this temple. The button depressed beneath his finger with a muted
click
.