Escape From The Center of The Earth (To The Center Of The Earth Book 3)

by Greig Beck

“Yes,” she shot back, and then looked up, her eyes now open and seeming to shine silver in the darkness. “I want to kill them all.”

  “I think we will leave that for another day, yes?” Zhukov replied. “At least with the sonic alarms we can keep them at bay. We should be okay for extraction.”

  “Maybe.” Ally quickly finished with the clothing and bent to pull on and lace the boots. “When they walked me, they were always on guard,” she said. “There are other things down here even they fear. And it isn’t us.”

  “Captain,” Igor said and pointed his light at the ground. “There were others.”

  On the ground were more stake marks and human-shaped stains on the cave floor.

  Ally nodded. “Other people would be found.” She shook her head. “The ones who go missing in the deep caves when spelunking. It seems not all of them fall off cliffs or get lost in the labyrinths. Many are captured by the monsters and the women kept here… at least for a while.”

  “Did you see, ah, I mean, did you hear others when you were a prisoner?” Valentina asked.

  “Yes.” Ally straightened. “In the end, they were all eaten… alive.”

  “Oh.” Valentina looked away.

  “This is why I don’t do caving as a hobby,” Fradkov commented.

  Zhukov exhaled. “We’re done here. Let’s back out to re-join the rest of the team, and immediately evac to the surface.”

  Ally took a step in the boots and stumbled a little. Valentina caught her. “Are you okay?”

  The American woman nodded. “Just… just, the thought of going home makes me feel strange. A little scared, that I’m going to wake up and find I’m still here, tied down.” She exhaled and shut her eyes again. “I had the rescue dream so many times.”

  Valentina rubbed the frail American woman’s arm.

  Ally’s jaw set and she straightened. “If we are attacked, kill me. Do not let those freaks take me again.” She turned. “And, Captain, I’ll take that gun now.”

  “When we re-join the others.” He turned. “Igor, lead us out if you please. Andropov, cover our rear.”

  The big man nodded. Fradkov rolled his damaged shoulder, waiting on his instructions.

  “Okay?” Zhukov asked him.

  “Nothing a week at the Black Sea can’t fix.” He grinned but looked pale.

  Doctor Valentina approached and stuck a needle into the meat of his shoulder near the wound.

  “Ow.” He looked away.

  Zhukov snorted. “Russia’s bravest.”

  “Antibiotics, and a painkiller,” Valentina said. “Keep the bandage on it, and I can stitch it when we have more time.”

  “Igor, you’re up.” Zhukov motioned forward with his head.

  Igor turned and got down low to begin maneuvering his way back through the cave. Then went Fradkov, Ally, Valentina, Zhukov, with the huge Andropov at the rear.

  Halfway through and they began passing by the smaller side caves again. From the rear of the group, Zhukov noticed the American woman lift her head to sniff the air—and then he knew why. Just then, from one of the caves a grotesque head lunged at Fradkov, again, and the young man yelled his fear and shrunk back.

  The American woman, teeth bared, was already crawling over the top of the screaming man, and as she went she snatched his gun from the holster, fired several rounds into the thing’s face, and then lunged in after it, screaming her fury.

  The rapid gunfire in the small hole was near deafening and between the blasts he heard the woman screaming, die, die, die, as she fired.

  Someone—Igor, he thought—engaged their screecher, and Zhukov felt insanity creeping in as the cacophony of noises shredded their nerves. He sucked in a huge breath and then roared, “Get her out of there!”

  Fradkov grabbed the woman’s ankles and yanked her back. Ally then reappeared, her face dripping with blood. She panted heavily with her bloody teeth still bared.

  She nodded as she handed Fradkov back his gun. “I wish I had more bullets.”

  “Don’t do that again!” Zhukov yelled. He then winced. “And shut that off.”

  Igor stopped the screecher, and except for the group’s heavy breathing, silence returned. Igor kept the box ready; however, it seemed the screech-blast had obviously sent the grotesque creatures far into the dark labyrinths, as there was no sign of them.

  The group sucked in breaths, waiting for nerves to settle. Zhukov saw Ally looking back at him, a small smile on her lips.

  “Don’t… do that again,” he ordered.

  She continued to stare. There was no apology, but after another second there was a slight nod. Zhukov lowered his brow for a moment, sighed, and then lifted his head.

  “Okay. Ludzkov, continue, please.”

  Igor turned to the front and continued to burrow on through the dark cave.

  Within twenty minutes, they were approaching the exit.

  Zhukov tried to raise Vlad but got nothing but dead air. Must be too many twists and turns, he thought. He was looking forward to seeing the looks on the face of his second-in-command when they emerged with the American woman—a successful mission, he thought with relief, even though they had lost some good people on the way. But during his initial high-level meeting, the mission risk profile estimated a twenty-five percent attrition rate, so he was well under that.

  In a few more minutes, Igor exited, jumped down, and turned to let Fradkov pass by so he could assist Ally. Doctor Valentina jumped down, followed by Zhukov and Andropov.

  “What the hell?” Zhukov frowned and engaged the comms system again. “Vlad, where are you?”

  He looked one way then the other, seeking out any dots of light of his team’s lanterns, but the huge cave was empty and coal dark.

  “Here are their packs,” Fradkov said and reached down to search their contents. He immediately jerked his hands back and straightened, looking at them. “What the fuck is this shit?”

  Zhukov turned and shone his light at the young man. He held his hands out and they glistened. Zhukov then panned his light around them and saw the cave floor and some of the rocks also shone as if they were covered in glutinous oil.

  “I don’t like this,” Valentina said.

  “Me either,” Zhukov replied evenly. He lifted his chin. “Vladimir!” he shouted.

  The word bounced away and then echoed several times before the cave fell again to stillness. The group stayed silent for several seconds after the shout, concentrating on trying to pick up even the faintest response. But nothing came back.

  “Volloch.” Zhukov threw his hands up. “And the only one who had the personnel tracker was Sobyanin.” He cursed again. “Okay, spread out.” He turned to Valentina and Ally. “You two wait…”

  “No,” Ally shot back. “I’m not staying by myself. Not ever again.”

  “Ach, okay.” Zhukov didn’t have time for arguments. “Go through the packs and grab some other armaments, and then stick with me. Everyone keeps their weapons and screechers handy.”

  The captain pointed. “Igor, over there. Fradkov, down there. And we’ll take this quadrant. Yell if you find anything.”

  The team split and headed out quickly.

  Ally put a belt around her waist, and that included a firearm, ammunition, and screecher. Then she loaded a pack with more ammunition, water, and dried food. She slowly put it over her shoulders, and she wobbled a little from the weight.

  “You don’t need that now,” Zhukov said, but she ignored him.

  “Yes, I do.” She approached, steadier on her feet now. “I’m ready.”

  Valentina, who had been crouched beside a smoothed rock examining something, slowly got to her feet. She caught up with them and had something between thumb and forefinger. She rubbed them together and then sniffed and frowned.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I think a type of biological mucous,” she replied.

  Zhukov turned to Ally. “Any ideas?”

  She grabbed Valentina’s hand and s
niffed the fingers. “My night vision is probably much better than yours now, but the gargoyles operated in total darkness, so I never saw anything. But there were times when we were out, that they retreated, fast, as something was coming, something big. I never knew what it was, but it smelled like that.” She pushed Valentina’s hand away and stared away into the darkness. “Like I said, those foul things that captured me aren’t the only predators down here.”

  “Great. So much for our fast extraction.” Zhukov noticed Valentina still staring at her fingers, her forehead furrowed. “What is it now?”

  She slowly looked up. “Remember what I told you when we were higher up? About the nematodes living undisturbed in the cave depths?”

  He nodded.

  “And how I said they seemed to be larger the deeper they were found?” She held out her hand, displaying the glistening slime. “I think this is the same excretion that coats the nematodes.”

  He snorted. “Big enough to chase off Vlad and the men? No. I think it was more likely that the creatures we repelled in the cave ambushed them.” He turned away. “Let’s find them before we lose them.”

  ***

  Fradkov was at the west end of the cave, and to his left he could make out Igor’s bobbing light as he checked along the southern side wall.

  As the young Russian edged along, he kicked something metallic that skidded along the cave floor. He bent to pick it up and found it was a Russian flashlight and once again coated in that same greasy shit.

  “Yech.” He let it drop and wiped his hand on his pant leg.

  There were multiple openings in the wall and roof of the large cathedral-sized cavern, and far too many shadows for them to quickly investigate. He could only think that the missing men must have felt the need to take shelter for some reason. But he wondered why they would go so deep to be out of radio communications.

  Fradkov came to one cave mouth, stopped before it, and held his light up. There was an impenetrable darkness inside.

  “Vladimir?” he called softly.

  He waited and was about to pull back when there came a small sound, a little like crunching gravel. He dropped his hand to his belt to feel the screecher there and also pulled his gun.

  His shoulder still ached even though the doctor had pumped it full of painkillers and antibiotics, and he had no desire for any more wounds down in the labyrinths. Getting one on an extremity might mean an infection before he could return, and a field amputation was not a way to end a career.

  He took a few more steps inside. “Vla…” He stopped himself as he couldn’t bring himself to say the officer’s name out loud.

  Fradkov swallowed noisily and eased forward, even slower now. There was something up ahead. He took a few more steps and could just make out the end of the cave at a wall—or what he thought was a wall—in the flare of his light that seemed to have a strange, spongy texture. And he was sure it was moving. Or pulsating.

  He stretched his arm out, holding the light closer.

  The wall shifted, lifted, and readjusted itself. Then what he thought was a wall moved and at its middle was something that reminded him of his late grandfather’s toothless and puckered mouth.

  “What is…?”

  Fradkov felt the hair on his neck rise, and he took a step back. At that moment, the thing surged forward, perhaps at the detection of his retreat.

  Fradkov went to step back again but skidded on a small pool of slippery mucous and suddenly fell to the side, just as the puckered hole ejected a stream of fluid toward where he had been standing. The stuff spread wide to open like a net but only ended up catching one of his legs. But it stuck.

  The webbing then began to be hauled in toward the doughy-looking hole in the wall that started to bloom open. Fradkov pointed his gun and fired into it, but the mass seemed to just absorb the bullets with little effect.

  He held on, but as his stuck leg was pulled, he felt himself begin to slide on the slime as he was reeled in.

  “Help!” he yelled.

  “Fradkov?” came the faint reply from Igor somewhere outside the smaller cave.

  “Igor, in here, help me!” Fradkov screamed as he leaned forward with his knife and began to saw at the web that was now piano-wire tight as the thing ate it back into what was obviously its mouth.

  He had no desire to be dragged into that maw, and he sawed harder at the sticky bonds. He began to cut them through just as Igor arrived.

  “What is this?” Igor yelled, lifting his gun.

  “Fire, fire!” Fradkov yelled.

  Igor did as requested and sprayed bullets into the thing. In that moment, Fradkov cut himself free, rolled and got to his feet, and immediately began to run, leaving Igor behind.

  Igor stood his ground, rifle pulled in tight to his shoulder, and delivered a stream of rounds into the thing. Fradkov turned at the cave mouth to yell for his colleague, but perhaps in response to its prey fleeing, the thing surged forward at astonishing speed.

  Fradkov could only stare open-mouthed as in one second, Igor was before the abomination, firing a weapon, and the next, the thing lunged forward, bloomed open from top to bottom, and totally enfolded the man.

  Fradkov stared with his mouth hanging open. His friend screamed and then his shouts became muffled. But he still screamed as the mouth closed to return to its puckered state with his teammate now inside.

  “Igor?” Fradkov backed up.

  The thing wasn’t finished and pulsated forward in a sort of peristaltic motion.

  “Help!” came Igor’s faint, wet, and muffled cry from inside the revolting mass. And then. “It burns.”

  Fradkov’s bile rose in his throat. He’d seen enough and turned to run. It just ate Igor alive. And he was still alive in its gut, he thought madly.

  As Fradkov ran, he turned his head to eject the contents of his stomach onto the cave floor.

  ***

  Kapitan Zhukov heard the gunfire.

  “Quickly.” He began to sprint. Ally and Valentina tried to keep up.

  Without giving it a second thought, he flipped the lid from his screecher and pressed the button, allowing the ear-piercing shriek to fill the cavern. He spotted Fradkov coming out of a side cave, and he switched it off as the young man spotted him.

  “It’s coming!” Fradkov yelled while pointing the way he had come.

  “What? What’s coming?” Zhukov switched on his muzzle light and held his gun up.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know.” Fradkov grimaced. “It ate Igor.”

  “What?” Zhukov grabbed the young man and dragged him closer. “What the hell…?”

  Just then, over the sound of grinding gravel, the monstrous worm surged from within the side cave. It continued to disgorge itself, revealing a long, glistening, black body, six feet around, and covered in red streaks.

  “Nematode gigantica,” Valentina whispered as she backed up.

  Already the thing was a good twenty feet out of the cave, but it still trailed inside. It lifted its head as though sampling the air as it tried to locate the humans. Zhukov punched down on the screamer button again, once again fulling the cavern with the agonizing scream, but it did nothing.

  Ally had her hands pressed over her ears and yelled over the screamer, “It doesn’t hunt by sound.”

  Zhukov shut it off as the creature disgorged another twenty feet of itself and slid across the cave floor.

  “Carnivorous,” Valentina said. “Now we know what happened to Vladimir and the rest of your men.”

  “This must be the thing the freaks were frightened of,” Ally said. “I heard it moving but never saw it. I know it’s fast and boneless, so can fit itself into smaller caves. We need to get out of here.”

  Zhukov pointed. “Our way back is that way.” He began to move to the side.

  The cave they originally came in through was on the other side of the worm, and the more it piled out of the cave, the more their way was blocked. It seemed to catch the scent or vibrations of the huma
ns and it began to pulse forward.

  Fradkov pulled at Zhukov’s arm. “It fires a sticky web. Wanted to trap me.”

  Zhukov tried to work out a path around the worm or find somewhere to hide and wait it out. But just then the worm surged forward, fast, curling around a tumble of huge rocks and bearing down on them.

  “Run!” he yelled.

  The two men and women turned to flee, but Ally hobbled, the muscles in her legs still very weak from just occasional exercise. There came a loud splat, and Valentina screamed and then was pulled backward off her feet.

  Zhukov turned to see a long, sticky cord that ended in a mesh-like blob stuck to her pack and trailing all the way back to the front of the creature. The worm began to eat the cord back in while coming forward. At the same time, Valentina was dragged backward on her ass.

  There was no time, so Zhukov jumped for her and ripped the pack from her shoulders. “Leave it,” he said and dragged her up by the arm.

  In an instant, the pack was hauled in and disappeared into the toothless maw.

  Ally was gasping hard and stooped to pick up a fist-sized rock. “Stop. Everyone, stop.” She threw the rock fifty feet to the other side of the cave.

  The group froze as the rock struck the ground and bounced into the mouth of a cave no more than three feet wide, and then kept going. The giant worm swung to follow the new vibrations as the group dragged in huge gulps of air.

  “Ah, shit,” Zhukov breathed out. The front end of the worm elongated and compressed, and it pushed its head into the cave.

  “Yes,” Valentina said. “Without bones, it will be able to follow us into the smallest of caves.”

  Zhukov looked up and then cursed again. “There’s been a cave-in here before, so using explosives might bring the roof down on all of us. We need to get around it. Or hide from it.”

  “You can’t hide from it,” Ally said. “The freak creatures sometimes barricaded themselves in their nests for weeks when I could smell the worms outside. We don’t have that amount of time. We’ll die of thirst.”

  “We throw more rocks to distract it,” Fradkov urged. “Then we sprint to the way out. No choice.”

  “No good. The American woman can’t run.” Zhukov was determined not to leave Ally behind.