by Greig Beck
Fradkov looked about to burst into tears. “I saw it eat Igor.” He shook his head. “I’m not…” He clamped his mouth shut.
“We’ll make it. Just stay where you are, soldier,” Zhukov ordered.
“No, I can make it.” Fradkov looked up, his eyes round. “I’m fast.” He turned back to Zhukov. “I can go and get help.”
“You hold it together, soldier,” Zhukov warned.
Fradkov took off his pack and handed it to Ally. “For you.”
Zhukov frowned. “What are you doing?”
Fradkov then brought his hands together as if beseeching his superior officer. He started to back up on his toes. “I can make it. Promise.”
“Hold your damn position. That is an order.” Zhukov’s voice was low and menacing.
“I’ll get help,” Fradkov whispered, nodding. He then reached down to snatch up a rock in each hand. He turned. The worm was just pulling its head from the cave, its body once again fattening to its former size.
The young Russian threw another rock and began to run, his destination around the back end of the worm and along the western wall.
His throw was a good one and the solid rock bounced once, twice, and then into one of the smaller caves. The worm immediately swung its head after it and fired a jet of white liquid into the cave.
The young Russian ran fast, but lightly, keeping up on the toes of his boots. He was halfway there when the worm began to pull away again. Fradkov threw the second stone, once again the heaviest vibrations attracting the huge, glistening nematode.
“He’s going to make it,” Valentina said.
Fradkov slowed a little as he approached their exit cave and just as he went to cross in front of another large void, from within its impossibly dark depths a jet of white sprayed out to cover his head and shoulders in a sticky mesh.
“I knew it,” Ally breathed out. “There’s more of them.”
The young man screamed and planted his boots as he wrestled with the mesh that was solidifying around him. Zhukov could see him begin to be reeled in, and then from inside the cave the monstrous head of the new worm appeared.
Its puckered end opened and Fradkov was drawn closer as it bloomed open, waiting to accept its prize.
Then from another cave, another worm’s head appeared—it seemed Fradkov’s bouncing rocks had attracted more worm attention than he expected.
The wrestling man raised his rifle and fired several rounds into the thing, but even though he couldn’t have missed the gigantic pillowy body, they had no effect.
“Shit.” Zhukov went to run to the young soldier’s aid, but Ally grabbed his arm.
“There’s too many.”
“I have to save my man.” Zhukov pulled a grenade, knowing the risks, but it was his last option.
Before he had a chance to deploy the explosive, Fradkov skidded on some gravel, immediately losing his tug-of-war with the giant worm. Without his pull back, the cord leading to the worm maw was quickly reeled in. The man was dragged along the ground, picking up speed, as the fleshy end fully opened to accept him.
Valentina looked away as the screaming young man went headfirst into the pillowy mouth. Another worm appeared from another cave and pulsated its way out, and then lifted its gross head in the air.
“It knows we’re here and is sensing for us,” Ally whispered.
Fradkov was then pulled fully into the thing’s mouth and his muffled cries continued but already seemed far away.
“There’s too many. We can’t outrun them. We can’t hide from them or get around them. We need a damn exit. Now,” Zhukov said and turned to Ally. “Well?”
She watched as several of the huge things began to snake toward them. Ally looked back over her shoulder briefly.
“You heard of Winston Churchill?” she asked.
“Of course. Wartime English leader,” Zhukov replied.
“He had a saying for times like this…” She began, “…when you’re going through hell…”
“You keep going,” Zhukov finished.
Ally sighed. “I know one place that the worms won’t follow. Or the freaks.” She turned. “But it really is hell.”
“We don’t have a choice. Anything is better than here,” Zhukov shot back.
Ally stared at him for a moment before turning to the dark caves behind them. “This way.”
***
Ally ran back to the cave, which led to the gargoyle-like creature’s nest. At the entrance, she quickly ripped open one of the other dropped packs and started to pull out what she needed.
“Carry as much as you can,” she ordered.
Zhukov grabbed two, and Valentina another. Then they climbed into the hole, but after a few minutes she took a different route from the nest destination and crouch-ran as fast as she could manage.
Her legs screamed in agony from all the sudden use they were getting, but she knew that there was no option, and while she felt pain, she knew this was no dream. And besides, pain was something she had become accustomed to.
Every second now, she revelled at being free. Her only disappointment was she wouldn’t be able to slaughter every single one of those damn demons after what they had done to her.
After another moment, the cave opened up a little and they could move upright. She pulled Zhukov and Valentina past her and stopped to stare into the darkness. Her eyes were better dark-adapted then either of her companions, but there was still nothing but an impenetrable blackness beyond them.
After her eight months suffocated by total darkness, she had other developed senses, which she now used. She could smell the worms coming and hear the crush of stone as the gross bodies pulsated along after them. How much time did they have? she wondered. Seconds, minutes, more? No, not even that, she guessed and turned away.
“Hurry, they’re coming fast.”
In another few minutes, she reached her destination and the small group exited into a cavern that was perhaps fifty feet around. There were multiple exits, but the only thing of significance was the massive dark hole in the center of the cave floor.
Ally stared at it, feeling a sense of dread.
“Now what?” Zhukov asked.
She continued to stare at the pair. “Do you know where I came from? Where I had been before those freaks captured me?”
Zhukov glanced at Valentina and then shook his head. “No. I thought you had been caving, and then those things found and took you. It wasn’t relevant to the rescue mission.”
She spoke without turning. “Believe me or not, I had been on an expedition to the center of the Earth. My team traveled there via one of these things called a gravity well. It transported us all the way there and back.” She finally turned to the captain. “This is one of them.”
“To the center of the Earth?” Valentina swallowed. “This is not possible. Maybe you dreamed this while…”
Zhukov exhaled loudly. “Really, Lieutenant Bennet, I think you…”
Ally held up a hand and turned to the cave they had just exited from. “It’s nearly here. It won’t stop chasing us until it corners us or runs us down.” She snorted softly. “Or we simply run into another form of predator.” She smiled at the doctor. “Or maybe I’m still in a dream now.”
They could all hear the approaching worm now as there came the sticky sound of something pressing itself into their narrower cave.
“Then I am in the nightmare too.” Valentina grimaced as she kept her eyes riveted on the cave behind them.
Ally turned and stepped to the void’s rim. “This hole does not have gravity in the same form as we know it. We will float, fly, all the way down to the center of the Earth, and it will take us an entire day.” She looked up and gave them a broken smile. “The worms won’t follow, or the cave freaks. We can hide out there, for a day, or week, or however long…” she lowered her voice, “…we can survive this.”
“I’m not jumping into some bottomless black hole in the ground. That’s suicide,” Zhukov said and
raised his gun, turning back to the exit.
“Staying is suicide.” Ally picked up a rock and tossed it over the pit. It floated in the air.
“Look,” Valentina said.
Zhukov turned back and could only stare.
From within the cave, there came a crush of gravel, close, and then a jet of sticky, white fluid shot out to strike the soldier’s arm.
Ally lifted the gun she held and fired a deafening stream of rounds back into the exit cave and across the mesh snaring the soldier, cutting it.
“Take my hand,” she yelled as she let the gun hang from the strap over her shoulder.
Valentina took her left hand and shut her eyes tight. Zhukov took her right.
“Now.” She pulled them both in with her.
CHAPTER 12
Matt Kearns floated and dreamed.
He had tried to stay awake watching the nothingness pass by the tiny porthole windows in the submersible, but after an hour, the occasional blue fleck of unknown luminosity from the dark and weightless depths had become monotonous, and then hypnotic, and then his eyelids had drooped.
He had been overwhelmingly excited about the prospects of meeting a new race. He dealt with ancient and long-dead languages, and was undoubtedly the best in the world at his craft, but the idea of finding an unknown language, one not developed on the world’s surface, and the race of people still alive who spoke it, was astounding. How did their language evolve, what were its roots, and were there other dialects? Plus, as it had a written form, were there books, records, or libraries? So much to see, so much to learn.
He had wondered then about the crustacean-like creatures that had been referred to in Mike and Jane’s report. Were they intelligent enough to be communicated with? The questions had dazzled his mind and then after staring at the small window trapped within a fog of his own thoughts, he had finally let it all go and slipped into a slumber of nothingness.
And then the nightmares began. In the dark space of his mind, there was the huge, hulking form of something with glowing red eyes like pinpoints at the heart of a fire. It probed his mind, and it knew him, and worse, it awaited him down in those depths far below them all.
Hours slipped by. Then more hours. The two DSVs moved together at speeds of up to three hundred miles per hour.
Then just twenty-nine hours later, it was like reverse thrusters had been applied as they came to the floor of the well and the gravity surge eased to first slow them and then to stop among a field of other floating debris of rocks, huge bones, and metallic debris that might have once been a submarine.
Captain Loche and Albie Miles in Abyss-1 were already awake, as were Joni Baker and Nina Masters in Abyss-2.
“Proximity sensors, geographic sounding, and sonar mapping, double-time,” Loche said. “Let’s wake ‘em up.” He pressed a small button, and the lights of the craft came on, as well as a gush of cool air.
The soldiers were immediately alert, and gradually Matt, followed by Jane and Mike, sat forward, blinking several times.
“Are we there yet, Dad?” Matt asked and leaned to the side to see out the large front view port. His mouth dropped. “Holy shit.”
The portholes and the front viewing window were blood red. All red. And the deep-red twilight glow coming into the craft made the inside of their submersible look like it was some sort of gothic hell house.
“Depth, two-twenty feet. No obstacles, no large underwater signatures within one mile in all directions,” Albie reported. “However, I do see some metallic forms on the grid… possibly a debris pattern.”
“Show me,” Loche said, then waited.
Albie scooted them toward the bottom where there were the edges of something sticking from a flattened sheet of bright yellow steel that could have been cloth. Or flesh.
“I think we now know what happened to our missing DSV.” Loche sat back.
“It’s flattened,” Albie remarked. “Those little guys can take up to 5,551 psi, around 378 atmospheres. What could do that?”
“What indeed.” Loche looked over his shoulder to Jane and Mike.
“I can see things swimming out there,” the chemist, Maxine Archer, said almost reverently. “I think they’re fish.”
“They might be. Or might not,” Jane replied.
As if in response, one of the things swam closer and then right up to Matt’s porthole. Its head clonked against the glass.
“It’s hard, covered in a bony exoskeleton,” he observed. “Like a primitive fish of the surface ocean’s Devonian period, I think.”
Mike craned forward. The thing lifted its head as it tried to taste the glass and instead of a mouth, there was a set of hard, furiously moving mandibles. From underneath a shelf-like bony brow, eight small, black eyes peered in at them.
“Or not a fish at all, but an arthropod,” Mike said.
Something around six feet long zoomed out of the red twilight to snatch the smaller shelled fish, shake its head a few times like a dog with a bone, and then kept going in a cloud of dark blood and bone fragments.
“Rule of tooth and claw. Just like home,” Loche said.
The pilot listened to his comms for a moment. “Roger that, Joni.” He half turned. “Abyss-2 and crew at optimal and awaiting orders, sir.”
“Miles, find me my coastline.”
Albie pinged the western distance, sending out a radar wave. It bounced back almost immediately.
“Less than one mile, west southwest, sir,” he replied.
“Good.” Loche nodded. “Send up an airborne drone and let’s take a look.”
“Yes, sir.” Albie worked the controls for a moment, and then pressed a button that lifted a small panel and joystick. “Airborne drone-1 away.”
Above the craft, a pod sped to the surface, where it bobbed for a moment before opening. The bird-sized drone lifted off and immediately the small screen on the console came to life.
“Putting it up on view,” the pilot remarked and each person’s small screen displayed the camera’s visual feed aspect.
The drone continued to lift for two hundred feet and then hovered. Above them, the sky was a cauldron of fire—no sun, no clouds or serene blueness, just what looked like violently boiling magma… exactly as it was.
“Panning left.” Albie moved the airborne drone in a slow pivot. There were a few dots of things flying in the distance, but without any further information, they could have been gull-sized or airplane-sized. Then came the towering column of the gravity well they had just arrived within, which looked like a massive tree trunk, miles wide, and rising from the sea to vanish up into the seething redness above them.
“Take us to shore, all ahead, ten knots,” Loche said.
“Surface, sir?” Albie asked.
“Yeah, let’s do it,” Janus urged.
“No, let’s stay down for a while longer.” Loche overruled him as he stared hard at the screen. “But we’ll rise to one hundred feet and send the drone ahead.”
The drone that had been hovering over the top of the submerged craft now sped away, throwing back images of the placid red ocean below it. It crossed over a pod of long-necked creatures swimming just below the surface and also something hundreds of feet wide that moved like a carpet being pulled over the ocean bottom. Jane wondered whether it was a single organism or thousands of small creatures all moving tightly together.
Then there came what first looked like reefs, but as the water shallowed a little more, it could be seen that those “reefs” had straight lines and angles and what could possibly be cobbled laneways between them.
“Water shallowing rapidly, sir,” Albie observed.
“Take her up to negative ten.” Loche rubbed at his chin. “Anything else airborne?”
The pilot checked and shook his head. “Small signatures, bird-sized, but nothing to concern us.”
“Okay, let’s slow to three knots.” Loche glanced at the drone’s image as it now passed over the shoreline. “And there it is.” He turned
. “Your city.”
Mike and Jane nodded as they watched the images appear, and Matt also seemed transfixed.
The drone dropped to about a hundred feet above the city. The shapes were eerie, nightmarish, and bore no semblance to any architectural standards that human beings knew.
“Could not look any more alien if they tried,” Janus observed.
Some of the buildings were recognizable as a habitable structure. But others were of no Euclid design employed by mankind, and their angles and even proportions just didn’t make sense. There were more that didn’t look built at all, but more grown, or excreted, as if some sort of hard resin had been used.
“Take it lower,” Janus requested.
Loche dropped the drone down to hover just over the tallest building. Though the drone was near silent, it still gave off a faint whine like a giant mosquito and should have at least brought something out to investigate.
“Can we take it inside one of the dwellings?” Janus asked.
“That’s why we use the drones, Mr. Anderson. Taking her in.” Loche lowered the drone to street level and headed toward a section where the ancient, cobbled street met in a form of intersection.
He turned the tiny craft in a full rotation, and then approached one of the squat buildings with a dark oval opening.
“Here goes nothing.” Loche switched on a powerful light on top of the drone and maneuvered it in.
The craft floated into the fifty-foot-wide room and hovered in its middle. There were oddly shaped items scattered about, but it was impossible to discern their function.
“Is that supposed to be furniture or objects of art?” Janus asked.
“No, there, on the wall…that’s their art,” Matt replied.
The drone approached one side of the room and there, pinned to the wall, were shells of creatures, skulls, as well as animal hides. The drone pulled back a few feet and panned the camera along the mounted remains.
“Ah shit,” Matt breathed out.
There was the small skin of a human, still reddish-brown, but it even had the facial features, as if the skull had been removed, cleaned, and then later sewn back into it. There were no eyes, and the mouth was just a gaping toothless hole.
