Chapter 5 The Roots Beneath

The old hatch behind Black Vale's disused grain mill was covered in rust, rot, and red ivy.

Detective Vex stood over it, soaked to the bone. His fingers bled from wrenching away the roots strangling the steel lid, each tendril snapping with a wet, meaty pop like tearing sinew. When the last one gave, the hatch groaned open, releasing a gasp of foul, fetid air, like the breath of something long dead... or never born.

He descended into the dark with a flashlight and a .45 drawn.

The ladder dropped him into a concrete corridor lined with mossy pipes and rusted biohazard signs. Water dripped from the ceiling. Ivy was everywhere, some of it the width of a human leg, pulsing faintly as though it had a heartbeat.

He moved slowly, the sound of his boots muffled by layers of decomposing leaves. Carvings lined the walls, symbols in chalk and dried blood. Cultist markings. Offerings. Names etched into the stone.

At the end of the corridor, he found the first corpse. Or what was left of it.

A naked man hung from the ceiling by his intestines, coiled like butcher's rope. His face had been peeled off in one seamless piece and nailed to the wall beside him still wearing a rictus grin. His exposed muscle gleamed under the flashlight.

Carved into his chest in ragged, overlapping gouges:

"THE ROOTS REMEMBER."

Vex gritted his teeth, stepped around the slick pool of blood, and continued.

The Harvest Chamber

Deeper underground, he entered a massive chamber: walls of concrete choked with ivy, roots stretching across the ceiling like skeletal hands. Metal tanks lined one side, some shattered, some sealed. Inside the ones still intact, pale figures floated in green fluid, their limbs twitching spasmodically.

Human test subjects.

One tank cracked open with a hiss. A corpse spilled out, hitting the floor with a meaty thud. It writhed shoulders dislocating backward as vines erupted from its spine. Its jaw snapped open, revealing no tongue, only a black flower blooming from the throat.

It lunged.

Vex fired. Once. Twice. Three times.

The thing's skull cracked open like a melon, splashing the walls with brain pulp and thick green sap. It collapsed into twitching pieces, still wriggling. Vex stomped its skull until it stopped moving.

From above, he heard a scraping sound.

He turned.

A figure stood on the far catwalk, bare-chested, eyes glowing faintly red.

Dr. Orel Kess, ex-biochemist for ValeCorp. Presumed dead in the month October 19th year 2019.

He stepped forward, barefoot, veins black with root-strands pumping under his translucent skin.

"You're early," Kess said, voice like wind through leaves. "The harvest wasn't supposed to begin until solstice."

Vex raised his gun. "You did this. You grew them."

"No." Kess smiled. "They grew me."

He raised both arms, and the vines surged like a wave.

They smashed into Vex, flinging him into a tank. Glass exploded around him. Chemicals burned into his wounds. Vines wrapped his throat, his legs, tugging him downward.

He fought, kicking, biting, clawing. His hand found a scalpel on the floor. He slashed wildly, severing a root, then another.

Hot sap sprayed across his face, stinking of rot and copper.

He rolled, still slashing, and managed to wedge his pistol between two roots. He fired point blank into the mass, until the chamber filled with smoke and screaming.

The Sacrificial Pit

Half-conscious, drenched in blood and chemicals, Vex stumbled deeper into the lair where the roots grew thickest.

There he saw it:

A pit the size of a swimming pool, filled with viscera, bone, and soil soaked with blood.

Human skeletons entwined with roots.

Corpses decomposing in reverse skin regrowing, eyes re blinking, teeth pushing up like seeds through gum tissue.

A body rose from the mulch... Bella's.

Alive.

Or something close.

Her mouth moved. Ivy slithered from her throat, forming words with her breath:

"We are awake."

Vex raised the last of his ammo. His hand trembled.

Bella stepped forward, her skin flayed, her left arm a whip of bone and vine.

"We forgive you," she said, smiling through a blood-stained mouth. "Now lie down. Let the roots take hold."

Vex didn't hesitate.

He pulled the pin from his backup grenade and hurled it into the pit.

He turned and ran.

Behind him, hell bloomed.

The explosion ripped through the chamber flesh, bone, and centuries of red ivy detonating into a firestorm.

Screams echoed, not from mouths, but from the roots themselves howling like children left in the dark too long.

The last thing Vex saw before the ceiling collapsed was Dr. Kess burning, vines spilling from his mouth like serpents as he laughed, melted, and screamed all at once.