“It’s some kind of aircraft,” Jade said.
“Spacecraft,” the woman said.
“Wir müssen uns beeilen,” Knight Mask said. There was no mistaking the tone of desperation in his voice. “Wir haben keine zeit mehr.”
The woman grabbed Anya by the upper arm and dragged her through the ragged orifice into a room adorned with intricate hieroglyphics featuring animal-faced gods with sun discs balanced on their heads, humans and creatures with oblong heads raising their arms in adoration, and behind them, saucerlike objects cutting across the sky. The designs were covered with grayish-green flecks reminiscent of lichen and striated with horizontal lines that almost looked like a series of high-water marks.
The vibrations intensified. The humming became louder.
“Faster,” the woman said and shoved her up a narrow staircase, the steps covered with dust the same color as the lichen. It let out upon a narrow stone passageway that extended a seemingly infinite distance ahead of them. The men carrying the body were already several hundred feet away, silhouetted by the flashlight of the man leading them into the darkness.
It struck Anya that they were heading to the southeast, which meant that if they continued on their present heading, they would eventually reach the pyramids.
Another rumble and a stone block fell from the roof, admitting a mound of sand.
They had to slow to climb over it, which allowed Evans to catch up with her.
“Look at the walls,” he whispered.
He’d noticed the sedimentary lines on the block walls, too. Worse, he’d made the connection that she’d missed until that precise moment. If the pyramid ahead of them functioned like the one in Antarctica, then it would need a means of generating power. She recalled the contraptions with the thick pipes extending down into the ground, machines that had looked almost like industrial water pumps, and felt sick to her stomach.
They were in big trouble.
The ground shuddered and more sand cascaded from above. She felt a sudden change in pressure, followed by a sensation of sound she felt more than heard, a deep resonance like distant thunder.
The blond woman stopped. Held perfectly still. She slowly turned and looked at Anya. No, past her. Her inhumanly blue eyes widened in recognition.
“Lauf!” she shouted, and broke into a sprint in the opposite direction.
Anya ran as fast as she could and prayed it would be fast enough. Their footsteps echoed from the confines until they were eventually drowned out by the rumbling sound, which grew louder and louder until it became a roar.
She glanced back and wished to God she hadn’t. It looked like a black wall had formed behind them, only when it rushed into the range of their lights, she could see the whitecaps and debris churning before it.
“Go!” Evans shouted and waved her on.
Anya pushed herself harder than she ever had in her life, despite repeatedly scraping her head against the ceiling.
Ahead of them, the light ceased moving, shined back in their direction, then into an opening in the wall. The men transporting the body disappeared inside of it. Anya was practically on top of it when she finally saw the steep staircase and the square opening at the top, through which the men dragged the body.
The woman shoved aside the man with the knight mask and started climbing. He shined his beam past Anya and into the tunnel as the leading edge of the floodwaters raced past his feet.
Anya jumped onto the bottom stair, braced her shoulder against the wall, and ascended the steep steps.
The thunder of the advancing water was deafening, like a subway train speeding through a tunnel. Waves broke against the wall beside her, filling the air with frigid spray.
Knight Mask shoved her to the ground. Climbed over her in his hurry to reach the top.
It took everything she had left to stand without the use of her hands and stagger upward through the rising water, the current driving her sideways against the wall.
She glanced back to see Evans putting his shoulder into Jade’s lower back, trying to push her above the level of the water, which had already risen past his waist. It raced onward behind him, getting deeper by the second. She caught a blur of movement and the tail end of a scream as one of the masked men was carried away.
Anya reached the top of the staircase and stumbled into a chamber straight out of her worst nightmares. A waterwheel spun in the mouth of the well to her right, flinging water into the air and splashing it out onto the floor. Stone gears turned, driving a lodestone ring around an iron post, slowly at first, but incrementally faster as it broke through thousands of years’ worth of dust and dirt.
The chamber was nearly identical to the machine room beneath the pyramid in Antarctica, with the notable distinction that there were bones everywhere, human and animal alike. Broken long bones hollowed of their marrow. Skulls with fractured craniums where something had bitten through them to consume the brains. Every surface of every bone was scarred and pitted from being scraped by teeth, just like those in the nest Subject Z had made for itself in the tunnels beneath the Antarctic research station, only there were so many more that they’d been piled against the walls all around the room.
The woman in the golden mask commandeered a flashlight from one of her subordinates and shined it across the carpet of dusty remains. While she said nothing, her body language hinted at a rising level of doubt that hadn’t been there before. The loss of her ordinarily unflappable confidence made Anya realize that the woman was no longer in complete control of the situation. Whatever lay ahead of them would be as much a surprise to her as it was to the rest of them.
She caught Anya looking and shined the beam directly into her eyes, forcing her to turn away.
“Start walking,” she said.
The entrance to the descending corridor had been completely sealed with rubble and packed earth and largely hidden behind a drift of broken bones, but there was an earthen orifice on the other side, where the Antarctic pyramid had shown signs of unfinished construction. Anya battled toward it through the sunspots staining her vision and climbed over mounds of remains so old they’d hardened into solid masses. The rocky walls were coarse and irregular. Recesses had been carved into them to display deformed humanoid skulls with vaguely reptilian aspects, only the majority of them were considerably smaller, with cranial sutures that had yet to fuse.
“These are the remains of children,” Jade whispered.
Anya recognized the implications and glanced back at her.
“The majority of embryos are nonviable,” the woman in the golden mask said. “Even those who reach full term rarely survive for very long.”
She wanted to ask how the woman knew this, but she didn’t have to; she’d seen the evidence in the woman’s face when she removed her mask.
The pieces started to fall into place. She remembered the wreckage of the submarine they’d discovered in Antarctica, at the end of the underground river leading to an abandoned listening station rumored to be the fabled Base 211, where the Nazis had retreated to regroup after the war; the maps and artifacts on the walls; the stickpin bearing the insignia of the Ahnenerbe—the pseudoscientific branch of the SS dedicated to tracing the Aryan roots of the German people. She recalled the story Hollis Richards had told them about the “Fuhrer’s Convoy”—the pair of submarines that arrived unheralded in Mar Del Plata and surrendered to the Argentinian authorities—and their cargo of heavily bandaged passengers and priceless relics, among them the anthropomorphic face cast of a creature like Subject Z, which might have still been alive when it was created. There’d been signs of an attack on the Germans at Snow Fell and Anya had witnessed the recovery from the hidden chamber inside the pyramid of the savaged bodies of the Americans who’d been dispatched to hunt them.
Something had killed them, something that hadn’t been there when Richards’s team arrived decades later, something that must have been alive to inflict grievous injuries upon what was left of the Nazi army, something th
at had scared them so badly they’d headed straight to the nearest port to turn themselves in, something that hadn’t been on board when they arrived.
All of these people had the same blond hair and blue eyes underneath their masks. Masks they’d been forced to wear because of their startling deformities. She thought about the scars on Maddox’s face, from the reconstructive surgery he claimed to have endured in Afghanistan.
Anya understood exactly what had happened.
“Jesus,” she whispered. She looked at the woman’s back when he spoke. “They took it with them, didn’t they?”
The woman stopped walking but didn’t turn around.
“The Nazis . . .” Anya said. “What did they find in Antarctica?”
“A being unlike any they had ever encountered before.”
53
ROCHE
The Hangar
Roche walked in a shooter’s stance. The pressure of the butt on the gunshot wound to his shoulder was more than he could bear. He could hardly move that arm, let alone hold it extended and steady for any length of time. Both hands were slick with blood, his index finger wet on the trigger. Presumably, the creature was in worse shape than he was, having taking a bullet to the head, but he couldn’t afford to assume anything. He had no idea how quickly the regenerative properties worked, and he most definitely didn’t possess any abilities like that. He was losing blood at a staggering rate. If he didn’t end this quickly, he might not be able to do so at all.
He sighted along the top of the row of cases, barely able to see into the shadowed region beneath the ceiling. For all he knew, the being could have climbed over the back side and fallen into the slender walkway housing the climate-control units. The problem was that it wasn’t a wounded animal slinking off to die. He needed to find it—and find it fast—before it regained the advantage. While he had no intention of dying down here, the most important thing was that he bought Kelly enough time to reach the upper levels, where she’d be able to coordinate the response with the tactical teams that had to be converging on the Hangar at that very moment.
A smear of blood on the ledge.
Roche stepped back and tried to see into the shadows, but he simply didn’t have the angle. He fired a single shot into the gap and heard the bullet ricochet from something before striking a wall in the far distance.
A crashing sound from the shaft behind him. He prayed the elevator held long enough for Kelly to get past it.
He walked sideways, one foot carefully stepping across the other, never taking his sights from the darkness above the display cases. At the end of the row, he turned down the intersecting aisle and searched for any indication that the creature had attempted to cross it, but there wasn’t so much as a single drop of blood.
A narrow hinged door granted access to the hollow space between the backs of the rows of cases. He steadied himself, grabbed the handle, and blew out his breath. A wounded animal was infinitely more dangerous. If it was in there, he needed to be prepared for it to attack. He pulled the handle, raised his rifle, and aimed at—
Nothing.
Machinery idled and air pumps hissed. He could see all the way to the end of the row, but there was no sign—
A faint crimson smear. On the very edge of the cabinet halfway down, on his left.
Again, Roche walked sideways until he reached the next hallway. Sighted straight down another empty corridor. There was no movement in the shadows. No blood on the floor or dripping down the glass cases. It had to be up there in the shadows. He fired another shot, which careened off into the distance. Beneath the echo of the report, he heard a slapping sound, followed by a series of rapid footsteps.
He headed down the row to the next aisle, turned—
There was a mess of blood on the ground where it had landed, a smudged palm print where it had pushed itself back up, and a trail of partial footprints. They disappeared around the side of a display case housing an idol made from the bones of various animals. He rushed to catch up, heard the sigh of pressurized air.
“No,” he whispered and broke into a sprint.
The footprints turned down the main aisle and led straight to the pass-through chamber. He ran as fast as he could and nearly collided with the door when it didn’t automatically open, which could mean only one thing: the creature was still inside.
A swishing sound from the other side, as the outer door opened.
The inner door receded into the wall several seconds later, and Roche hurried inside. Waited seemingly forever for it to close behind him and the outer door to open. Stepped out into the stainless-steel corridor.
He moved his rifle slowly from one side to the other, absorbing everything around him from his peripheral vision. Massive partial footprints on the floor. An occasional palm print on the wall. Sparks rained across the open mouth of the elevator shaft. Fluid positively poured from above, spattering the concrete pad loud enough to mask the lower registers of sound.
The floor tilted underneath him. He felt his grip on consciousness start to slip. His arm tingled with pins and needles and his finger was nearly numb on the trigger. The blood loss was catching up with him.
The hallway led to a small landing. He approached slowly, cautiously, clearing the dead space to either side of him before stepping out into the open.
Where was it?
The footprints became less distinct with every step, but they were still clear enough to lead him toward the shaft.
A rumble and a clanking sound. A long metal beam broke loose from high above and rebounded from the walls. Struck the bottom of the shaft. Slammed against the lip in front of him. The smell of smoke grew more intense; the heat emanating from above him was now palpable.
He could only see the bare concrete walls and the cables running straight down them through the open doorway. The spaces directly to either side of the opening and below the ledge wouldn’t be visible until he was right on top of them.
A groan from somewhere overhead. More sparks rained down. The patter of fluid grew louder. He could think of only one source. The hydraulics. And when they failed—
A silver panel screamed down the shaft and landed right on top of the beam with a resounding clang.
Roche advanced upon the shaft from the left side of the corridor. Cleared the front corner to his right. Stepped quickly across the opening and cleared the left.
Where the hell was it?
He leaned just far enough into the shaft to see the floor. Nothing but rubble and puddles of fluid that reflected the flickering glow from above him. He followed the cables upward with his eyes, toward where the distant elevator—
A shadow eclipsed his view.
It struck his shoulders before he could duck out of range, pulled him over the edge into the shaft.
Roche landed beneath the creature’s weight, tumbled down the warped metal plate. Landed squarely on his wounded arm. A bolt of pain struck straight into his hand, deadening it.
He drew his knees to his chest and used his left arm to push the creature away. It snapped at his face with serpentine fangs, flinging droplets of blood onto his cheeks. Its eyes were animalian, feral. The side of its cranium where the bullets had exited was a craterous ruin, exposing what little of its cerebrum remained. It was now a creature of instinct, a beast at the mercy of its hindbrain. A being victimized by its primitive impulses. A killing machine.
Roche pushed it up just far enough to roll out from underneath it.
A girder banged from the wall and slammed down between them.
He used the distraction to scurry out of reach. Onto the rifle. He grabbed it with his left hand. Made a break for the opening.
The creature dove onto his back. Drove him to his chest. Rolled him over. Buried its face into his shoulder.
Roche shouted in agony as its fangs burrowed into the entrance wound.
The rush of blood only seemed to drive it into a frenzy.
He jammed the barrel of the rifle into its chest. Pulled the tr
igger. The bullet hit the wall behind it a split second before a high-velocity spatter of its blood, but the pain didn’t even seem to faze it.
It pinned down his shoulders. Shifted its weight onto his hips. Leaned in toward his exposed neck.
Roche raised the rifle and fired as fast as he could. The bullets streaked past its rib cage and flank, straight up into the shaft, striking the bottom of the elevator and the electromagnetic jaws.
The creature swatted the rifle from his hand and it clattered outside of his reach. Even in the dim light, he could see the corners of its mouth curl upward into a smile, mocking him for missing it at such close range. It opened its mouth inhumanly wide to reveal its horrible fangs.
A loud crashing sound, followed by a thunderous boom.
Roche locked eyes with the monster.
“I wasn’t aiming at you,” he said and looked up the shaft, drawing the creature’s stare.
The electromagnetic jaws released the elevator with a shriek of shearing metal. It plummeted straight down toward them, its couplings sparking from the rails.
Roche pushed the creature with everything he had left. Scrambled out from underneath it. Dove for the ledge and pulled himself up onto the landing.
The elevator screamed and rattled.
The creature scurried up the rubble. Pounced at the landing.
“Enki!” Roche shouted.
It raised its reptilian eyes to meet his, issued a horrible hissing sound.
The elevator slammed down on top of it with a deafening crash, billowing smoke out into the corridor.
Roche waved it away and approached the shaft. Flames had taken root in the mangled metal. In the flickering glare, he caught a glimpse of a hand lying on the floor, severed just shy of the wrist. A second one twitched several feet away, near where the creature’s head had rolled. It rested on its face in the blood flooding from the severed arteries at the base of its neck.
He nudged it over with the toe of his boot. Stared into its hideous eyes as its jaws snapped uselessly at the air. Crouched over what was left of this being that had been worshiped as a god and had nearly been released upon an unsuspecting world by the masked faction that wished to destroy it.
Mutation Page 33
