The Jade Queen

by Jack Conner

  The scrape of stone above alerted him -- the creature had raised its thick, almost stone-like arm for a swing that would bash in his brains and had scraped the arm against the ceiling. Lynch dodged aside, heard air ripping like silk behind him, then the clang of the stone-like arm on the metal bars that blocked off the passage. Lynch hit the wall. A wedge burrowed into his shoulder. He’d hit the corner of a beam.

  The creature howled at the pain of bringing down its arm on metal. Lynch swiveled to face it. The creature’s reek filled the tight quarters. Lynch did not want to use his last bullet, but if he did he could not afford to miss.

  Lynch lowered his head and barreled forward. He rammed the creature, drove it growling against the wall. Breath burst from its lips as its back struck. He cocked his left elbow, ready to swing his hook upward and disembowel it. Meanwhile he pressed his pistol against the creature’s temple, ready in case he needed it.

  Lynch was too close for the creature to employ its club arm, and Lynch was so confident that its other arm was useless that he was surprised when something scrabbled at his hook arm and seized his wrist in a firm, vice-like grip.

  A snapping sound, right before Lynch’s face. A spray of moisture. The creature had bit at him! The movement almost threw off his gun, but he adjusted.

  The creature snapped its jaws again.

  There was nothing for it -- Lynch squeezed the trigger.

  The gun roared, and the wretch screamed. Its pain drove it to new heights of fury. It shoved Lynch back bodily, this time slamming him against a wall. The blow drove the breath from his lungs. The creature still had a firm grip on his hook wrist, immobilizing the deadly weapon.

  Lynch had underestimated the thickness of its skull. It had been thick enough to shrug off a bullet.

  It snapped in his face, he heard the chomp, felt the spray of spit, and he remembered the brief glimpse he’d had of its teeth, too long and all clustered together, as if they were too many for its mouth, gnarled and broken, stained and sharp.

  Lynch kneed it, as hard as he could, in the groin. He cried out as his knee struck something that was near as hard as the monster’s arm.

  Lynch felt the upper half of the creature draw back, even as its lower half still pressed Lynch against the stone; it was giving itself room to raise its club arm, then bring it down. The blow would crush Lynch’s skull.

  Lynch made a fist -- his right arm was free -- and drove it with all his strength at where he judged the creature’s throat would be. It had been the one soft place he’d seen, and now, with the creature’s head flung back, it would be exposed. His knuckles scraped off the underside of the jaw, but his fist crashed forward, right into the thing’s Adam’s apple.

  It stumbled back, gurgling wetly.

  Lynch found its lumpy, misshapen head. Warding off its blows, he fingered its face until he located an eye, half hidden under a ridge of bone, and scooped it out of its socket.

  The creature screamed, a raw sound with its injured throat, knocked him away and fled down the hall, issuing horrid wet noises as it went.

  Lynch slumped against the wall, breathing raggedly. Blood trickled down the back of his head, his shoulder blades, even the side of his face where one of the bars had struck. The bars . . .

  When he could, he lurched over to the partition that had blocked his way. He had been following echoes, but the bars had not rebounded any noises. His fingers explored them, feeling cold, encrusted iron, and in the center of the bars a narrow barred door, locked.

  When he found the keyhole, his stomach clenched.

  And without even a bullet . . .

  Down the hallway, more shuffles issued, then a groan and a sort of gibber. Had the one he’d injured told others where he was, or had they heard the sounds of fighting, or simply smelled him out? Whichever, the noises grew louder. Closer.

  Lynch attacked the lock with his hook. Its steel point sliced into the locking mechanism -- twisting, turning. At first there was nothing. Nothing! Then, mercifully, tumblers clicked. Not open yet, but progress.

  The shuffling and moaning increased in volume.

  He probed, twisted, his hook scraping off the lock’s innards . . .

  “Come on, come on, damn you.”

  The creatures gibbered excitedly. They had caught his smell.

  The lock gave. He swung the door open just as the stink of the creatures reached him, and a moment after he slammed the door he heard the things crash into the bars. One of their protruding hands slashed at his arm as he danced back. His heart pounded madly.

  He imagined them pressed against the bars, squirming, eager to feast on his blood, or whatever it was they wanted, and a shudder coursed through him.

  Warding off their unseen blows, he fingered the door, found the lock, and turned it with a satisfying click.

  Then, surprising himself, he laughed.

  “Missed your dinner, boys, did you?” he called. “I hate to run out on you, but I’ll tell you what -- I’ll see if I can sneak a few Society bastards down here for you. How does that sound?”

  Chuckling at his own wit, he set off into the dark.

  ***

  Talking alerted him. He hadn’t heard anything but his own footsteps and the occasional drip of water for what he judged to be a quarter of an hour, when the unmistakable sounds of people, not creatures, echoed down the halls. He had been enveloped in darkness for so long that the first light he saw seemed bright as day -- a shaft of illumination spilling from a corridor ahead. Cautiously, he followed it, winding down various tunnels, blinking as he drew closer to the source. The sounds grew louder, too. The light had reflected down several hallways to reach him and it took him a surprisingly long time to find the chamber it spilled from. His eye had adjusted to the dark very well.

  Carefully, he peered around the corner, into a medium-sized room, low-ceilinged but broad, its ceiling held up by thick beams. Openings led into dark halls, only one of which was lit. It sloped downward, delving further into the earth, shortly disappearing from sight. It must have been either from or to this hallway that the men had come. About a dozen stood in the chamber, looking exhausted, some sweaty, from which Lynch deduced they had just returned from the tunnel and were not about to go into it. Half a dozen wore the black uniforms of the fist-and-sun troopers. The other half appeared to be civilians -- all men, all flushed and sweaty, covered in grime. It was these men that looked the most pleased with themselves. They talked excitedly as they smoked cigarettes or leaned against the walls. One inhaled on his cigarette with particular fervor as he strode back and forth, gesturing expansively, smoke shooting from his nostrils.

  “. . . must be the oldest of them all, I am sure if it. And that formation, that is a courtyard or I’m a monkey. Perhaps it is there that we will find the statue of M’kai.” He laughed, and it sounded manic. “I cannot believe -- after all these years -- ”

  Another man laughed, tall and round-shouldered. “It is incredible, is it not? Personally I think M’kai is waiting for us further south, and you know what? I don’t care! We’ve found . . . it.”

  Awe fell over them. They looked like boys who had come across their father’s stash of Christmas presents to discover they had gotten far more than they had expected.

  Only one of them did not wear this expression. A short, balding man with a jutting white goatee, he leaned against a wall and cleaned his glasses with a flap of his dirty shirt. Not looking at the others, he said, “You and your . . . find.”

  The man who had been pacing scowled at him. “Speak up, Albert! If you have something to say, spit it out.”

  The tall, round-shouldered man looked offended. “How can you doubt it?”

  The short man shrugged. “What have we seen? Some old ruins? You’re mad to think there’s anything more.” He put on his glasses, blinked at the lot of them. He seemed to realize his mistake, that they had taken offense. “Listen, I’m happy to be here, happy to assist you however I can. Commander Higgins says it will help
the Fatherland, and who am I to doubt him? But, just the same, I do not expect to ever meet your Queen.”

  Lynch pricked his ears.

  One of the other men, stout and black of hair, stepped aggressively toward the man identified as Albert. “You’re a fool! If we did not need you, I would wring your neck like a chicken’s.”

  Albert smiled wryly. “Then well for me you do.”

  A metallic crackle filled the air, and the men glanced upward. Lynch had not noticed it before, but a speaker drooped from an overhead beam, and wires trailed from it to meet the wires that ran from the blazing halogen lights.

  Eliza’s voice issued from the speaker: “Mr. Roark, I require your assistance. Are you there?”

  Albert combed a hand through what remained of his snowy hair and beamed up at the ceiling, as if he could see Eliza. “I am here, my darling.”

  “I need you in Bay Twelve. Operation Condor is commencing.”

  “I look forward to it, my sweet.”

  “Heil Hitler.”

  Albert raised his hand, palm outward. “Heil Hitler!”

  Lynch narrowed his eye.

  Albert straightened his shirt and smiled at the others. “I suppose we shall have to take this argument up later, gentlemen. If you will excuse me . . . ”

  Three troopers stepped forward. “You will require an escort, sir.”

  Albert shook his head. “I don’t need to travel through the Black Sectors to reach Bay Twelve. Your illustrious company isn’t needed. Besides, my colleagues will need your protection to reach Sector One.”

  One of the troopers cleared his throat. He was medium-sized but had a large, protruding, barrel chest. Icy blue eyes stared out of a Scandinavian face with a long, tapering chin. “I insist on accompanying you, sir. Operation Condor . . . I am acquainted with it. It is nothing to take chances with. Indeed, it could mean everything. And sometimes the Bone Men break through.”

  Albert sighed. “So it is, Captain. Then come! We cannot keep my sweet waiting.”

  ***

  Albert lit a lantern and set off into one of the tunnels, the Captain at his heels. Lynch marked the direction they traveled in, circled back down the halls he had come through, found a connecting tunnel in the direction they had taken, and hoped he had been fast enough. His heart beat rapidly, and sweat stung his eye as he moved through the black hallways. Eliza! Could she be a Nazi sympathizer? A spy? He couldn’t believe it.

  If the Society of Mars was allied with the Nazis, then their object would be to bring down the government or force it to surrender to Germany. Is that what Operation Condor was about? Yet if the Society was in league with Hitler, then why was the Prime Minister their ally? Surely he was a patriot, if nothing else. And how did any of this connect to the murders, the disappearances, the strange experiments? And what in hell were these men doing down here? Albert had said something about a dig. Could they be about some archeological project? They had been dusty enough.

  Lynch found the light of Albert’s lantern and moved closer. Albert would lead him right to Eliza. Lynch had to find her, had to find out if it was true that she was aiding the Nazis. It couldn’t be, he told himself again.

  And if it was . . .

  He tasted something bitter.

  If it was, he would kill her himself.

  He came upon Albert Roark and the Captain quietly. Albert walked in the lead, holding the lantern. All else was darkness save that gently bobbing light. The Captain walked just behind, his MP 41 raised and ready. The passage was too narrow to admit them both abreast, and the ceiling low. The stock of the Captain’s submachine gun pressed into the meat of his upper right arm while his right hand gripped the handle and trigger guard. His left hand gripped the stock, and it pointed left, into the wall beside Albert. The Captain appeared tense, ready, and Lynch felt sure he watched for the telltale gleam of eyes in the darkness ahead, eyes caught by Albert’s light.

  Lynch followed them -- slowly, silently. The Captain was on edge, and though his attention was focused forwards, it could shift behind quickly enough. Lynch half-expected at any moment for one of the so-called Bone Men to fall on him.

  Roark and the Captain paused over something in the path. Sprawled and misshapen, a corpse lay crumpled against the wall, its features twisted, its body bearing the disproportionate shape of the Bone Men.

  Albert shone his lantern on it, cupping his mouth and nose, though Lynch smelled nothing; Albert was overly dramatic. The Captain crouched beside the body, using gloved hands to turn it over. Disgust seized Albert’s face.

  “Can we not just go on?” he said. “Leave it.”

  “I want to see how it died. If others killed it, there may be more of them down here. Also, I want to see how long it’s been dead. A week, I’d say, thought it’s harder to judge down here. No bugs to aid in decomposition.”

  “Can you tell how it died?”

  The Captain said nothing, but Lynch could imagine his frown. “From his condition, I suppose. I see no sign of injury.”

  “That is reassuring,” Lynch said, having crept up on the distracted Captain.

  The Captain shot to his feet, started to whirl about. Lynch stuck out a leg directly in the path of the Captain’s legs as they rebalanced him to face his attacker, and the Captain tottered. Lynch shoved him up against the wall. Used his hook to pluck the gun’s strap and lift it over the Captain’s head and arm even as he fell to the side.

  The man rebounded, knife in hand. It glittered by the light of the lantern, sharp and deadly. It plunged directly at Lynch’s midsection. He blocked the thrust with the MP 41, and the knife blade scraped off the wood of the rifle’s stock. Lynch slammed the barrel end of the weapon into the Captain’s face, sending him back against the wall.

  Lynch raised the rifle -- his grip awkward, his hook more propping up the gun than gripping it -- to riddle the Captain with bullets before the man could come at him again, but he was checked by a surprising source. Lynch had vaguely noted the position of the light changing but had not registered Albert setting the lantern down.

  Albert rushed him. Tackled him to the ground. Blows from his small bony fists battered Lynch’s head. Lynch kneed him in the gut. Air from Albert’s mouth bathed his face. The blows stopped. Lynch kneed him again, took his hand away from the trigger guard of the gun, made a fist, and brought it hard across Albert’s jaw. Albert rolled away.

  The Captain reared over Lynch, knife arm cocked to hurl the blade at Lynch’s throat.

  Lynch squeezed the trigger. The MP 41 fired slowly for a submachine gun but it did so with little recoil, fortunate considering a more severe recoil would have ripped it from Lynch’s hook. The bullets tore into the Captain’s face. Obliterated his skull. Blood and brains spattered the rock wall behind him, and his body crashed against it. His legs jerked, then went still.

  Breathing heavily, Lynch climbed to his feet and stripped the Captain of tunic and jacket before the blood could ruin them, as fluids seeped from the skull down the dead man’s neck. Lynch wiped off the few spatters that had gotten on the jacket, then replaced his own tunic and jacket -- which had become ripped and filthy during his time in the tunnels -- with the Captain’s, lit one of the German cigarettes and eyed Albert curiously. The small, white-chinned man glared up at him from the ground, rubbing his jaw.

  “Barbarian!” the man said. “You killed him.”

  “Did I?”

  “What -- ? Who – ?”

  Lynch leaned forward, offered him his hook. “Need a hook?”

  Albert appeared horrified. He backed away and climbed to his feet, using the tunnel wall for purchase. “Kill me and get it over with.” He closed his eyes righteously, awaiting the lethal strike.

  Lynch laughed on his intake of smoke. “I need you to take me to Bay Twelve -- but I don’t need you that badly. Act up and . . . well, intentionally or not, harm may come to you.”

  Albert opened his eyes and swallowed. “You’ll let me go, once we get there? I don’t be
lieve you.”

  “I’ll have to gag and bind you, but yes -- if you take me where I need to go.”

  Albert composed himself, blinking his eyes rapidly and licking his lips. At last he nodded. “I’ll do it.”

  “I wasn’t asking.”

  Albert strode over the body of the Captain and took up the lantern. It had been set beside the corpse of the Bone Man, and Lynch was afforded a close-up view of its bulging limbs and misshapen, oversized skull. He was reminded of the Elephant Man with his rampant bone growth. The Captain had partly turned the corpse over, and something caught Lynch’s attention. A series of holes dotted the dead man’s back -- four in number, the first one at the base of his skull and the other three descending his spine at regular intervals. Just like Franklin’s. They weren’t really holes, Lynch saw, but wounds. Wounds that had been inflicted some time ago and that had scabbed over, leaving vicious, ugly scars.

  “What are these marks?”

  Perhaps to be away from the smell, or what he perceived as the smell, Albert set off up the tunnel. “I’m not involved in that end of the project. I think they harvest the brain and spinal fluid from various subjects. What they do with them I don’t know. That poor sod must have been one of their fluid cows before they made him a guinea pig.”

  “A guinea pig to what? What are they -- the Bone Men?”

  “Again, I’m not involved in that area. All I know is they used to house them down a certain tunnel. This was before they built the cages. They had thick bars over the tunnel, and they thought there was no way out. But the Bone Men, they’re strong, and they burrowed out. Now they’re all over down here. But again, I’m not in that area.”

  “What area are you involved in?”

  Albert sniffed, as if it should be obvious. “Demolitions, of course.”

  “And you were helping the archeologists by . . . ?”

  “Clearing away the debris, of course. That old city has been buried for centuries. Millennia. God alone knows how long. And I wouldn’t call them archeologists, anyway. Except for Peters.”