Elbows in armpits, Clarence shuffles backward, dragging the corpse of an expired scientist with him. What the poor schmuck was doing in the small electrical room, he’ll never know. How they ended up dead, he doesn’t care. He needs them (or more specifically, he needs their palm) to work the hand scanner next to the only exit outta there. The door had been easy enough to pry open from the outside, but once it had closed behind him, it had, for whatever reason, sealed itself shut. He blames human architecture for being as fickle as its creators.
However, Murphy’s law is also at play here, apparently, because he pauses when he feels the ground begin to rumble, blinking up to stare at the opposite wall for a moment. The facility is dilapidated and nestled deep underground, so perhaps a certain amount of subterrestrial distress is to be expected. Only, it doesn’t stop. In fact, it rapidly intensifies. With it, Clarence can hear the faintest sounds of rocks being expeditiously cleared away, the sides of something wet and slimy moving unseen against them.
An all-too-familiar sound— for his dearly departed meat suit, anyway, as it conjures memories in his mind that aren’t his own: a set of reinforced double doors bursting open at the end of a long hall.
There’s barely time enough to give one last desperate yank toward the door, mustering as much strength as the professor’s feeble little body can, before the space explodes with concrete and dust and the gnashing maw of a hideously large gray rock worm. Without hesitation, Clarence shoves the dead man forward as a tribute, the motion causing him to land on his backside, where he immediately begins to backpedal.
This buys him seconds at best, the worm greedily and effortlessly devouring its first meal, and then quickly lurching at the next.
Clarence (internally kissing his newly acquired, pasty ass goodbye already) throws an arm up to shield his face, as if this gesture would accomplish anything at all.
Huh. What amazingly useless things, these human instincts.
@specimencollectionv2 ( Rennick ), this shouldn’t have taken me a week but it did