Slime Devils, Pt. 3 of 14.

         Jesse picked up his burdensome gasoline can again but was fast in following close behind Scott.  Richard and Mark followed in respective order at a little slower pace.  All of them had to take one big step over the bottom two feet of the penetrated wall to enter the nearly ink-dark chamber; Sylvia's flashlight was quickly seen still on.  However, she was nowhere in sight and did not respond to their calls.

         They walked further in carefully, and Jesse frantically looked about into the surrounding blackness and said, "Oh, dear god, I just know something's wrong.  I know it."

         "So do we," Richard said and picked up the flashlight.  "Let's hope the problem's not too serious."  

         "Yes, and that it can be easily corrected.  Then, we can -- whoa!"

         "What's wrong, Scott?  Did you find something?"

         "Yeah," he replied and moved his light horizontally down in front of him.  "There's a ledge here in front of a whole pool of water or something."

         "Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Mark said.

         "Move back.  I'll take a better look first to be sure."

         Before Scott could do the urgent duty, another sudden tremor shook the place.  Only a small amount of debris fell from the ceiling nearly five meters overhead, but much of the floor under them collapsed.  The terrifying event was gone in just a matter of seconds, and by then, Mark was the only member of the group still in the chamber.  The others had fallen out of sight, and he called out to them -- promptly.  

         "We're down . . . in here," Richard loudly said.  "There's another level and -- ouch!"  

         "Hey!  Are you all okay?  What can I do?"

         "Just . . . stay there a bit, till we look over the situation," Scott replied.  "Keep calm too."  

         "How's your ankle?"  Jesse said, and patted dirt out of his clothes.

         "It'll be alright.  The thing just got twisted some in the fall.  You hear something?"  

         "No."

         "I do," Scott said.  "It's coming from this wall behind me.  Hand me the flashlight beside you, and I'll check it out."  

         The noise was a faint dull "thump-thump" sound and was irregular in occurrence.  When he used the light and that of his hardhat up close to it, they discovered the wall to actually be a thick almost transparent barrier of the hardened "resin."  It was like solidified wax and contained the pool securely along its nearly ten-meter visible length.  As he moved his probing bright beams, another more alarming discovery was quickly made.

         The lights came across Sylvia's form on the other side of the big wall.  A diaphanous membrane, part of the sticky surface film, was clinging to her backside and was loosely wrapped around her long legs and lower torso.  Their simultaneous finding of suspended globules of air from her misshapen plunge, still very slowly ascending to the surface almost two meters further above, showed them that she was not immersed in water, but rather, a stored body of viscous more deadly slime.  Thus, her vigorous movements were made additionally useless, almost graceful ironically, to give her the appearance of a fragile tethered puppet.

         The rims of her large glasses gleamed at them when Scott repeatedly moved the light across her panic-stricken face to try to catch her attention, but Jesse and Richard were more successful at the task by pounding their fists against the wall.  Her squinting eyes opened wide then, and she quickly reached forward and twisted about to get up close.  The tenacious film clung to her more in the process, and her body took a more horizontal position, seemingly overpowered and partially enveloped by it.  

         Although Jesse and Richard continued to call out loudly to her with high hopes of seeing her escape the overwhelming trap, Scott was considerably more pessimistic.  None of them could make any fast rescue from their positions, and he knew that it was already about a long minute since they heard her flashlight drop.  Her wanting facial expression also showed pain next, and only after another short few seconds, she exhaled most of her air forcefully outward into the denser slime medium as a single large light-gray bubble that ballooned from her agape mouth at them.  They did not have to hear her to know that the exhalation was a desperate greatly muffled scream.

         Sylvia shook her head and exhibited another brief furious struggle next, and Jesse pounded harder on the wall and cried out more fervently in the meantime.  Nothing more could be done.  She put her open hands fast against her chest and then stretched while taking in the awful smothering substance.  Her movements were more random and slow afterward, and she appeared much more spent.  Before Scott moved the lights away from the heartbreaking sight, the adhesive film tightened around her shapely body, squeezing the little remaining air out of it; she was mercilessly jerked backward out of sight, to leave only her ornate glasses hovering under the oval bubble of her surrendered final breath nearby.  

         "Did you . . . see that?  What the hell could -- "

         "Shit, Scott.  How could we have missed it?" Richard sharply said.  "I hope Arlene's not near as bad off down here either."

         Mark swiftly but carefully let himself hang down into the opening in the floor above and jumped the remaining four feet to their level.  He saw Richard holding a sobbing Jesse in one of his strong arms and solemnly said, "Oh, good heavens!  Did we lose her?"

         "Yeah," Scott quietly replied, "and who knows who else yet."

         "Damn this awful place!" he replied while grimacing with anger.  "What now?"

         "Let's wait here another minute first.  Then, we'll see."  


Continued to Pt. 4.