We walked alongside the path through the woods. It seemed to be in varying states of decay, but we weren't actually following it because I thought people were using the thing. They'd just be asking for a quick death if they did that.
No, this thing had to be ancient. Something from a time before creatures capable of killing a grown man littered the land. At least that was my hypothesis. The reason I followed it was simple. People like living in certain areas, especially when everything has long gone to shit. They want water, food and shelter, and this path likely led to those things.
So we marched onwards through the foliage, until after several days we eventually came upon the end of the treeline where a vast field stretched out before us. Sadly though, it wasn't empty.
Scarecrows littered the field, at least that's what I assumed they were. I was too far away to tell for sure. They were positioned randomly amongst the various plant life growing throughout the field, and sure, they were creepy, but they weren't what concerned me. The plant life itself did that. Strawberries, corn, bananas and pretty much every edible plant I could think of littered the area.
David scanned the horizon for a moment before shrugging and beginning to move forward. I quickly stopped him, causing him to turn to me.
I pointed towards the field, "Are you trying to die?"
"What? I don't see what you're getting at."
"Do you not see all of the plants out there?"
He turned towards the field for several seconds before turning back towards me.
"...I do, and your point is?"
"What the hell do you mean?"
I rubbed the bridge of my nose in irritation.
"Okay look, that stuff should be extinct out in the wild, long torn apart by some monster who didn't feel like getting into a life and death struggle just so it could get a meal."
David rubbed his chin.
"Yeah, I guess that is strange."
"This is a trap."
David looked from side to side, seeing nothing but the same field stretching for as far as he could see to either side.
"But do we really have a choice here? You're the one who wants to follow the path so badly."
I sighed, we could just turn around and go the other way. Cut our losses and waste a day of travel, but the likelihood of encountering something on par with this in the other direction was almost absolute. So with reluctance I turned back towards David.
"We push forward, but be careful. Don't get close to any of the scarecrows and definitely try to not step on any of the vegetation."
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We moved with caution through the field, but even the way most clear of scarecrows brought us close enough to get a good look at them, and upon closer inspection they unsurprisingly weren't scarecrows at all. They were the dried out remains of human corpses.
They stood upright unassisted, and their skin had long turned leathery under the harsh rays of the sun. They were honestly rather disgusting, but didn't seem to react to us as we moved across the field.
The fact they were corpses didn't exactly fill me with confidence. Although I guess the silver lining here's that this means there actually were actually humans in this general area.
"David, are these things undead?"
"No, undead have a certain scent to them. These are just corpses, undead can't come out in the sunlight."
"Lucky us."
Our eyes darted throughout the field as we moved, keeping careful watch over our surroundings and especially the corpses. I kept expecting them to come to life at any second, but they didn't, and not long later we'd managed to make it halfway across the field.
The vegetation was thicker here, and it was becoming harder and harder to avoid disturbing it. Then from up in the sky the cry of a bird rang out as it dove straight towards us. I cursed, and it reached me in less than a second, where inches from my face it was caught by David who quickly crushed it in his hand.
I looked down towards the ground where blood and gore now littered the area, but that wasn't important, what was important was that David had thrown caution to the wind in order to catch the bird and was currently standing in a patch of strawberries.
We both froze, looking frantically around us for any changes, and for several seconds there was none. Then, as if their strings had been cut all the corpses throughout the field collapsed to the ground.
That was enough for me. I didn't need to wait and see what was happening and neither did David. As the bodies fell we began to sprint towards the other side of the field.
Something was happening, I wasn't quite sure what, but it couldn't be good.
All around us the corpses began to stir and convulse as golden beetles poured out of every opening the bodies had. They were about as big as my fist, and each body seemed to contain an unnatural amount of them.
I ran harder, pushing myself to go faster, but we'd barely made it twenty yards before the beatles had begun to cover the path ahead of us.
Several of them had latched onto David as we ran, causing him to grunt in pain and quickly crush them as we moved.
I grabbed a grenade and quickly flung it behind me, only taking a second to glance and see where to throw it. The wave of golden carapace that had covered the land greeted me.
My eyes widened and adrenaline flooded my body. This wasn't something we could deal with, this wasn't something anyone could deal with.
So we ran further into the field, but were quickly running out of places to go. Everywhere I looked the ground was being covered by the shimmering bugs.
It was no wonder all this food had been left untouched. Nothing short of a dragon could actually deal with something like this.
I glanced towards David's and our eyes met for a moment. We both knew what we needed to do, and in the next moment we ran in opposite directions.
There were thousands upon thousands of the things, trying to latch onto my clothes as I ran by, and trying to make me slow enough for the golden swarm to catch me.
Small cuts began to accumulate all over my body as I ran, and it was becoming more and more difficult to see through the dense vegetation.
Then without warning the ground fell out from beneath me, and I was sent tumbling down into a hole in the ground as wide as I am tall. I fell for some twenty feet before it began to level out, sending me rolling along the damp earth.
I quickly pushed myself up, spitting dirt from my mouth as the sound of beatles crawling echoes down the hole.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out a flair, quickly lighting it and rushing down the passage.
The flair was the only source of light down here, and the sound of insects was the only legible sound.
I ran until the tunnel became too cramped to do so. Then I began to crawl, and when I began to fear I wouldn't fit through the passage I clawed at the walls until I did.
The beatles didn't relent. Some of the faster ones were already beginning to catch up to me, which I quickly crushed using the but of my pistol.
Only once I'd made it far enough, once the tunnel was narrow enough did I stop crawling and begin to frantically open the small sack tied to my belt with bloodied hands.
Their skittering movements were deafening, echoing off the walls of the tunnel and giving me false presumptions of how far away they truly were.
I pulled the gorgon head from within the sack and placed it upon the ground, setting down the flair beside it to illuminate its surroundings.
Then, only once it was properly facing the tunnel I'd crawled through did I light another flair and move deeper into the tunnel.
Sadly for me, gorgon heads are a depreciating asset. They need to be used almost immediately or be properly processed to get much use out of them. Mine was half blind and had been sitting in that bag for almost a full day. I could only hope they'd block the tunnel with their statueified bodies before the head loses its potency.
So I moved further into the tunnel, deeper into the darkness. It felt like I moved for hours, and the sound of the bugs had long since subsided.
That's when the tunnel finally came to an opening. To a cavern comparable to hell.
Hundreds of bodies stood in the small, cramped room. They stood amongst a mountain of vegetation, and at the very center was a large mossy stone with a spear sticking out from it.
The spear had an aura to it. It was hard to explain, but if I had to I'd probably say that it felt like life, specifically the good parts of nature.
I didn't need to think twice, I already knew what it was. It was an artifact. The very item I'd died eighty-six goddamn times trying to find, and now there it was sitting in a mountain of flesh-eating bugs.
I sat in my tunnel and weighed my options. On one hand, I had absolutely nowhere to step once I actually entered the room. Plants would get crushed, the bugs would leave the bodies and then that'd be the end of this life.
But on the other hand, all I need to do is touch it, to hold it in my hand for a moment and it would be mine. Whatever happened after that would simply be the cost of gaining the item.
The problem is whether or not I could actually reach it before getting killed by those damned beatles.
The spear was about thirty yards in give or take, and I could make that distance quickly enough.
After a moment longer I shrugged. Not everything in life could be thought through perfectly. Some things took risks, and this is simply one of them.
With that I stretched as well as I could in my cramped tunnel, took some deep breaths, backed up a bit and proceeded to throw every explosive I had on me into the room.