Spider-Man: The Venom Factor Omnibus

by Diane Duane

  “I can guess—and no, I don’t want to know. But I wonder what else they might turn up. What else they’re not expecting. I mean, in all the years of digging coal, nobody knew there was gold underneath it.”

  “Not diamonds. It’s the wrong sort of ground. You need some sort of blue clay for diamonds.”

  “Maybe in South Africa you need blue clay. In upstate New York,” Jim shrugged again, “who knows?”

  They looked out across the silent site. It was surrounded by forest, pine, and mixed hardwoods, and somewhere off among the trees some nightbird was singing. “I hear that every night,” said Pulaski. “What is it?”

  “Nightingale.”

  “Here? I didn’t know we had those here.” They fell silent again, listening to the distant trickle of birdsong, sweet and faintly mournful.

  As if in answer came another sound, a quick, sharp crack as though someone had stepped on a twig. But much louder, and somehow more metallic as well. The two security guards looked at each other; the most common source of that particular noise was a car engine cooling after the long haul from town back up to the mine. But neither of them had been down to the all-night doughnut place tonight.

  The sound had come from off to their left, behind the guard hut, and Jim’s right hand slipped inside the still-open flap of his holster. He didn’t draw the heavy revolver, not yet, but even for a man who didn’t like guns, the cold wood and metal of the Ruger’s grip was sometimes very comforting. Times like now. Pulaski looked at him, then reached for his own gun.

  “Come on,” Jim said, and stepped softly around the corner.

  Behind the guard hut, just at the edge of the site, was a little parking lot. During the day it was used by some of the site crews; at night, it was mostly empty. Jim’s car was there; so was Pulaski’s.

  And a bunch of aliens were standing there as well.

  All of them were dressed in close-fitting black, with heads too big for their bodies and huge-lensed eyes that Jim hoped were just some sort of goggles. They looked like the meaner, bigger brothers of those skinny little aliens that turned up on TV specials about government-concealed UFO landings.

  Pulaski brought up his gun at once, but before he could squeeze the trigger, a black-clad arm chopped down on his wrist and the pistol clattered onto the gravel. There was another flurry of movement and then a meaty thud as one of the aliens stepped forward and slammed a gun butt hard against his head. Pulaski grunted, slumped, and followed his revolver to the ground.

  Other dark hands seized Jim Heffernan, peeled his fingers from the undrawn Ruger, and jerked it from the holster, then shoved him down onto his knees. Several weapons were already leveled at him, and he guessed that whoever—or whatever—had grabbed him was already off to one side to give a clear field of fire, if he gave them reason to shoot. Jim froze, and hoped that would be enough.

  One of the creatures held something that might have been the source of the crackling sound. It looked vaguely like a rifle or a submachine gun, but there was a dully glowing strip down one side of its barrel, which made a faint humming noise. The noise was building. Then he heard the sharp metallic crack again, and a little line of fire flared and died among the weeds at the edge of the parking lot. It was plainly meant as a warning, and Jim took note.

  Yet when he whispered, “Harry?” the next warning was both more direct and far less unearthly: a boot rammed hard into his ribs. More of the dark shapes gathered around him as he bent over, wheezed, and sucked for air.

  Jim Heffernan had done his military service in Southeast Asia and West Germany; even though he didn’t like guns, he could recognize, or at least guess at, most of them. But some of the weapons these fellows carried, like the one fired as a warning, were like nothing he had ever seen before.

  A vehicle came rolling into the parking lot. There was no sound of an engine; Jim only knew of its arrival from the sound of gravel crunching beneath its tires. It showed no lights, and even the moonlight reflected only dimly from its black surface. Approximately the size and shape of a big three-axle truck, it had no windows, not even a windshield. The front was a smooth, unbroken surface, and there seemed to be no doors, either, until it stopped and an oval section swung up and away from the thing’s dark hide.

  Out of the darkness within the black truck stepped a shape that made Jim Heffernan’s stomach twist within him, a shape from a childhood nightmare.

  Years ago, when he was just a kid, he had been exploring through the woods near his home and had found a dead squirrel. He had known it was dead from the smell, if nothing else. But the squirrel had been moving. When he looked closer, he found that its body was alive with maggots, literally heaving with them. The sight had made him throw up his lunch, and ever afterward, something moving in a way that eyes and sense and reason said was wrong had always produced the same gut-clench reaction.

  He felt that reaction now.

  A man had climbed from the truck; a big man, broad across the shoulders and heavy through the waist, looking not fat but massive. But something else came out with him. At first it looked as though he was carrying two armfuls of wide-bore tubing, but then, as Jim watched with increasing horror, he realized that the tubes weren’t tubes at all. They were arms.

  No. They were tentacles, and they writhed and squirmed as if each one had a life all of its own, rearing into the air or coiling back down again, like snakes, huge pythons like the ones Jim had once seen in the zoo, unwilling to bite the person they were constricting. Unlike the dark metal of the truck and the black clothing of the alien figures, these shone in the moonlight with the unmistakable gleam of polished steel.

  Jim stared, swallowing hard to prevent himself from throwing up again. He had a feeling that retching would be regarded as an insult, and that this weird, ominous creature was not one to take insults kindly. All he could find to say was, “Please, Mister—don’t hurt him. He’s got kids.”

  The aliens moved away, and it was extraordinary how perceptions could change in the space of a few seconds; now Jim saw that they were no more than people in funny costumes, not frightening at all. Not when compared to something really frightening, like the broad man-shape stalking toward him, framed by the writhing silhouettes of its tentacles.

  “Ah, the human condition,” it said in a deep, dark voice. “Easily remedied, fortunately.” Jim gulped. He didn’t know what that meant, just that he didn’t like the sound of it. “Secure him,” said the dark voice. “And his friend with the children.”

  It was done quickly and effectively, not with ropes, but with the plastic binders favored by many police departments instead of handcuffs.

  “Now tell me,” said the man with the arms, leaning a little closer, “that new borehole at the center of the site is recently dug, is it not?”

  “Yessir,” Jim said. “They sank it just two days ago.”

  “And what security arrangements are there for that hole?”

  Jim blinked and licked dry lips. If he told what he knew, he would get fired. But if he didn’t tell—he risked a glance at the slowly writhing tentacles—his employment would be terminated in a far more permanent way. Getting fired was preferable. He could always get another job.

  “There’s a team of two down there. They make their rounds every half hour.”

  “Correct,” said the man with the arms, gazing down at Jim through a pair of spectacles that were halfway between sunglasses and goggles. “Very wise of you not to attempt some sort of foolish deception. Alert Team Two. Have them secure the area.” One of the black-clad men turned and darted off into the truck.

  “And as for you,” he continued to Jim. “To ensure your continued cooperation, you and your friend the family man will accompany us. Bring them.”

  The black-clad men didn’t use their truck to negotiate the network of access roads that coiled and switch-backed along the terraces of the old strip mine. Instead, the group standing around Jim—presumably Team One—grabbed him and went scrambling on foot straig
ht down the walls of the crater.

  If Jim had been scared of the unknown, in the shape of the stranger with the tentacles, he was even more scared of something he knew all too well. Those terraces, sixty and even seventy degrees from the horizontal, had been exposed and weathering for years. The rock was friable—crumbling like old, stale pound cake, likely to give underfoot without warning and send any careless climber down to the borehole at the bottom a good deal faster than intended.

  He had no choice in the matter. He was grabbed by the arms and hustled down between two of the men like no more than a piece of awkward luggage. For themselves, they moved with a sureness that suggested the function of their bug-eyed goggles, able to see every stone and crevice even with only moonlight and sky glow to work by.

  By the time they were halfway down, Jim was past caring about who could see what, and how well. He could see just enough to know he didn’t want to see any more, and for the rest of the descent he kept his eyes shut tight, not opening them until an end to the jolting meant an end to the climb.

  They had made it to the center borehole in a matter of minutes, but Team Two had been there before them. The other two security guards had been dealt with as efficiently as Heffernan and Pulaski. Even though Hank Sullivan was unconscious, a lump the size of an egg plainly visible above his left ear, both he and Tom Schultz were propped against the wall of the lowest terrace with binders tight around their wrists and ankles. From the lack of gunshots, alarms, or even extra lights, neither had been able to do anything about it.

  One of the dark-clad men approached the bulky figure with the tentacles and ducked his head in a little gesture that was half bow and half salute. “We’re secure.”

  “Phone lines?”

  “Cut, sir. We took them out before moving in, and the Detex time clocks are receiving a dummy signal from one of the portable computers.”

  “Very well. Let’s get on. I have no wish to be here all night.”

  Bound as he was, there was little Jim could do after that except sit where he had been dropped like so much garbage, and watch—without trying to look as if he was watching. He was the only one. Pulaski and Sullivan were still out cold, and Schultz had slumped forward, head leaning against his knees. He looked like a man trying to pretend all this wasn’t happening, as if by ignoring what was going on around him, it would all somehow go away. Jim knew how he felt. But when all this was over, and assuming they survived it, then the police or even the FBI would want detailed explanations and accurate descriptions. He was going to do his best to provide whatever they required.

  Several of the black-clad men busied themselves around the drilling machinery for the new borehole, with a speed and precision that spoke either of considerable prior experience or equally considerable recent training. Firing up the big gasoline engine that powered its winch, they began raising the drill up and out of the shaft until at last the carborundum-diamond drill bit itself rose from the hole. It was unlatched and swung clear, the engine shut down again; and after that, they waited.

  A few minutes later another group came down the terraces, moving with the same ease as the team that had carried Heffernan and Pulaski. This new group was carrying something else: a long metal cylinder, and for all that it seemed both heavy and clumsy, the team moved in a perfect unison that was almost graceful. They too had evidently practiced before going into action, so that now what they were doing looked easy.

  It couldn’t have been as easy as all that. When they finally came level with the boring machinery, tilted the cylinder upright, and lowered one end to the ground not too far from where Jim was sitting, he could hear and feel the ponderous thud of something far more massive than it looked. The careful way they handled it suggested something else as well: that it was dangerous in a way far beyond mere weight.

  The man with the tentacles strode over to it and raised one of his real arms to touch it in a strange gesture that was almost affectionate, the way one might stroke a pet or pat the trunk of a familiar tree. One or two of the metal arms curved around to touch the cylinder, as if recognizing some odd kinship. Then the man said, “Carry on.”

  The lifting gear that had withdrawn the bore and its bit was now attached to linkages recessed into the shell of the cylinder; then the engine coughed into life once more, taking up the slack, and the cylinder was raised, swung into place, and slowly lowered into the waiting borehole. Jim, still making sure that his watching wasn’t obvious, couldn’t help but be impressed at how exactly the cylinder fitted. Someone knew exactly what equipment was being used here, even down to the width of the bore sampler—and that could change from day to day.

  But what was that thing…?

  As the cylinder dropped out of sight, he was reminded of a huge cartridge being loaded into a massive gun. For a long time after it vanished, the cables supporting it kept unrolling from their drums. He had known in a general way how deep this bore was. Two miles, someone had said once. But until you actually watched how much cable two miles really was, and how long it took to feed that huge length down into the ground, the words had no real meaning.

  The bits and the samplers were always hot when they came back up, sometimes too hot to touch. That was what one of the engineers had told him. The heat wasn’t just from the friction of drilling, but from the massive heat and pressure of the earth itself two-plus miles down.

  One of the pieces of machinery made an odd gulping sound, and Jim looked up. There was no reading of expressions through their hoods and goggles, but there was suddenly an air of expectation in the group.

  “Well?” said the man with the tentacles.

  “She’s hit bottom,” replied the team member who had been operating the crane.

  “Then check the transmitter.”

  Another one of the team took an object from his belt. It was oblong, with a short antenna at one end, and looked as much like a walkie-talkie or even a cell phone as anything else. He studied it, adjusted a couple of controls, then nodded. “We’ve got a good signal. Five by five. Heat’s no problem.”

  “Then our work here is done. Drop as many cores as you can into the shaft, and let’s be away.”

  The group of black-clad men, no longer separate teams but a single unit of about fifteen, swiftly set to work. They gathered the thirty or so drilled-out core samples that had been placed near the borehole and began feeding them back down the shaft, one after another. The first half-dozen were reassembled into their original carriers and lowered with almost as much care as the cylinder itself, but after that the cores were simply rolled or carried to the top of the shaft and dropped inside.

  Even when every sample around the site had been disposed of, the shaft was nowhere near filled to the top. It would take a lot more than that to completely fill a hole two miles deep. But getting at the cylinder was no longer a simple matter of reversing the winch and pulling it out, not with the better part of two tons of rock plugging the exit.

  The man with the tentacles clapped his real hands together, an expression both of satisfaction and completion. “Let’s be away.”

  Most of his various teams faded at once into the shadows, but a couple of them remained with their leader as he came over to Jim and the others. “You gentlemen will forgive me if I don’t give you a ride,” he said. “But we have miles to go before we sleep.”

  Jim was cold, he ached, and this guy, though still horribly frightening, had proved himself human enough to get on his nerves. “Any promises to keep?” he asked.

  The man with the tentacles smiled at him, a smile Jim Heffernan didn’t want to see again for the rest of his life, but he refused to flinch or look away. If this character was going to kill him, or have him killed, then nothing he could say or do would prevent that.

  “Some say humor is the greatest gift,” the man said, mockery edging that dark voice. “I have little time for it myself, and even less interest in gifts. I am more concerned with what I can take. Nonetheless, gallows humor can be appreciated. If
I were you, I would not linger here.”

  He and his remaining followers vanished into the dark.

  Jim waited a long time before he dared to move, and then every movement was an agony of cramp, or cold, or cut-off circulation from the tightness of the binder on his wrists. A voice in his brain yelled at him: Run from here, run as far and as fast as you can! A feeling of dread rose from him like a fog—or like the wisp of smoke curling out of a gun barrel—from that dark and silent hole in the ground. But he wasn’t about to leave his friends and watchmates behind. No, not even if Hank had Krazy-Glued his lunch box shut last week….

  But he still managed to function. He concentrated first on getting himself as loose as he could. The damn plastic binders were still very tight, but he managed—with some wriggling and a pain that made him think he’d possibly dislocated his wrist or one of the little bones in the hand—to get his crossed arms under his butt, and then, more slowly, to fold his legs tight enough to get them through the looped arms as well. This involved much squirming, pushing off one shoe so he could fit the foot through, and bracing the other foot against Hank, who was convenient and (at the moment) not terribly conscious. After that, when he could get to his feet again, it was just a matter of hopping around a little to get the other shoe back on, and then finding something sharp.

  Fortunately, sharp things were not in short supply around this particular building site. The men in black had left the carborundum-tipped drill bit lying with its end accessible, shoved against a wall, but not flush against it. The disk-shaped digging end of the bit had two sets of blades: the outer set consisting of small plates of industrial diamond and carborundum set alternately in a herringbone pattern right around the face of the bit. Jim picked one blade of the herringbone and started sawing away at the plastic restrainer with it.

  It took a long time. Jim hated the sight of his own blood, but he saw a fair amount of it before he was finished. Fortunately he knew well enough where the big veins and arteries were—the mandatory employees’ first-aid course had been pretty specific about that—and he was careful to miss them. But the palm and heel of his right hand would probably bear the marks for a long time. At first, his hands were so numb from the constriction of the plastic restrainer that they couldn’t feel what was happening to them. Unfortunately, a minute or three after he got the binders off, they began shrieking at him that they hadn’t had enough blood or oxygen for a long time, and were now going to repay him for the favor by letting him acutely feel every injury that had ever happened to them, with special attention to the ones he had just incurred.