Hunt for the Holy Grail

by Preston W Child

  Anabia Nassif suggested they left that laboratory, as there was no way of telling what the substance in the test tube had been.

  Ted Cooper observed, “Well, he looks okay.”

  The crew glanced back at the soldier who had mistakenly toppled the test tube with his gun. He was talking fast in Spanish with his companion. The major had ordered the expedition crew to bed down in a nearby sleeping quarters that they had found.

  They in turn would stay in the room with the rocket.

  The soldier was still laughing when he and his comrade sauntered away, babbling in Spanish, their boots making thick thumping sounds on the tile floor.

  The room was of regular size. Four bunks, two on each side, and a table and chair. A light bulb hung from the ceiling. The wall was painted grey so that when the light was turned off, the room was plunged in darkness.

  Miller gave Olivia the topmost bunk on the right, away from the door. Peter would sleep directly below her. The others took the rest. Ted Cooper pulled a blackened bed from under one of the bunks and put it on the floor.

  “I don’t do bunks,” he said.

  Olivia prepared some food—dried beans and frozen veggies—talking with Nicolai as she did. Miller instructed the Russian who loved singing while eating, that there would be no singing. The circumstances were different now.

  After the small dinner the crew settled down to sleep. Olivia could not fall asleep. With the aid of a pen torch Nicolai had given her, she made notes and wrote. She looked over the bunk and saw a long bed on the floor. No Ted Cooper.

  “It seemed that Ted Cooper could go and come as he wished…” she said.

  She heard a clink and looked over her bunk again. Nicolai’s face was below. He stretched a metal flask at her. “Vodka,” he whispered. “To make you sleep.”

  The suppressed urge awoke with a howl, like a wolf that was lost, far away from her pack. She looked at the flask with longing. She shook her head and smiled at the Russian.

  “Thank you, Nicolai.”

  The man pursed his lips, a hurt expression that looked rather blithe on his face.

  “Anytime,” he said finally and slinked away.

  Olivia listened to the men as they snored. She wished for that. To fall into a deep, dreamless slumber.

  But when she closed her eyes and sleep came, it did with a nightmare.

  Minutes later when she awoke gasping for breath and sweating, Nicolai was there with his flask again.

  “You need a drink?”

  Olivia snatched the flask from the Russian. She gulped half of it and collapsed back into sleep.

  —

  Meanwhile, elsewhere in the facility.

  The soldiers have slipped into the barrack routine. Four played cards on the floor of the rocket room. It was a tag form of card game. A tag consisted of two persons. Two of the soldiers were leading the other two.

  Of all the convenient places in the broad room that any human could lounge, the major had gone to stretch himself on the skeleton of the rocket. It wasn’t quite a risky thing to do. The rocket wasn’t armed.

  Somehow, though, the sight of the major lying prone on the rocket seemed to have some weird effect on one of the soldiers.

  His protestations began with the sudden gesture of scratching the back of his neck where a red patch had materialized earlier in the evening. The patch had the same appearance as common eczema. It was an inflammation, however, that had nothing in common with the other skin disease.

  The soldier's name was Luigi, his rank being an equivalent of a cadet in the US military. He was about the tallest of the soldiers in detail. And the most intelligent, his score in IQ tests reveal.

  He scratched his itching neck, propped his gun against the wall with his other hand and walked around the four who were engrossed in their game. Then he walked past another group who had fallen asleep on the floor all around the base of the platform.

  He jumped onto the platform with one bound and was instantly beside the major happily sleeping on the rocket. He was dimly aware of his increased strength. And of his better vision too. Objects appeared longer, the room, like a tunnel. And the rocket looked like it was moving.

  He needed to warn the major. Wake him up.

  Only problem was, even the major now looked like a serpent.

  Luigi grabbed the major on the neck about the same moment he started foaming from the side of his mouth.

  —

  It was Peter who heard the noise first. He reached down from his bed and tapped the metal. Frank Miller jumped to his elbows. “Oh Christ, what the hell!”

  Peter told him to listen. “Something’s not right.”

  Miller listened. The others were rousing too. Cooper sat up and so did Nicolai, who hadn’t really been sleeping deep. He had heard the noise and chalked it up to soldiers been stupid. He hit the light switch.

  “Soldiers are stupid people, you know,” he said drunkenly.

  The crew ignored him. Peter quickly checked Olivia where she lay. Her chest rose and fell gently.

  The noise stopped presently.

  Miller said, “Maybe it’s nothing.”

  He checked his watch. It was three in the morning. In about three more hours their expedition would continue.

  “Go back to sleep,” Miller said. “We’ll know what happened in the morning.”

  —

  Anabia Nassif made it clear that on no account should they go back in the laboratory where the puddle from the test tube had by then dried into crystal flakes.

  “It is too risky,” he affirmed. “We do not have the equipment to test it.”

  So they told the soldiers they’d like to move to another lab. The soldiers agreed. The soldier with the itch was back in detail. His actions attributed to isolation and low temperature, his condition to allergies. And the allergies in turn were thought to have been caused by the molds in the airtight facility. His comrades administered aspirin. He slept and when he woke up most of his symptoms had disappeared.

  Except for the red patch that was steadily spreading on the back of his neck. And itching him so badly.

  —

  Their perambulation brought the crew to a circular chamber with stone walls and spiral steps that wound down into the darkness below. There was only one florescent here. The temperature there was lower than the rest of the facility. In fact, the coolness seemed to reach up the steps at them.

  Expedition expert Victor Borodin stepped forward. He breathed the air.

  “Water,” he said. “There is water down there, or very close.”

  Itay Friedman joined him close to the landing on the step. He looked at Miller and nodded. “I agree.”

  “Then let’s get down and see. For all we know we just might find a ship or a boat,” Ted chirped, being in good spirits.

  Olivia noted this fact in her notes, along with other Ted irregularities. She stood back. Peter noticed and asked her, “A phobia for water?”

  “No, for heights,” she said. “I can’t go down there if it’s dark.”

  “You must fear the dark too,” Nicolai pointed out.

  Victor Borodin took the lead. As he went down he found another switch on the wall. He turned it on and the chamber became awash with bright light, all the way down to the bottom where they could see stone floors and nothing more.

  “You think it’s safe?” Olivia asked, still uncertain.

  Peter gave her his hand. “Come on, take my hand.”

  Slowly they went, round and round, until they hit the bottom. The draught became stronger.

  It was a subterranean cavern hewn out of the ground. Olivia looked up from where they descended and estimated that it should be at least fifty meters into the ground. Stonework covered both the walls and ceiling of the place.

  There was a chasm in the middle; the sides fell down into black water. Metal railings stopped anyone from falling over. The crew gathered around it and wondered at the sight of what looked like a ship below. It was suspended fr
om props and bars over the black water under it.

  “Is that a submarine?” asked Olivia.

  “It’s a U-boat,” Borodin explained. “The German version of the regular submarine.”

  Liam Murphy queried, “What’s the difference?”

  Miller said submarines are designed to travel underwater but U-boats are designed to travel on the surface. “Yet they have the capability to travel underwater,” he said.

  “They had great success in the early parts of the First World War. And in World War Two, they almost turned the direction of the war too, until the US joined. These things bled the English navy. This is smaller, being an earlier version, compared to certain versions, though,” Miller said.

  Olivia took photos of the boat.

  The boat was shaped like a regular ship in the hull. Top side, it looked like a camo with a cab on it. Olivia made sketches of it. She showed it to Peter, who made some adjustments in the hull.

  Frank Miller went round. He found a small gate with a step at the end of it. The step went down onto the pier by the boat. Here the air was fresher.

  “Hey, you can’t go down there!” called one of the soldiers.

  He came running towards Miller, his gun raised up. Another one joined him. He glared at Miller and prodded him with the muzzle of his gun.

  “What, your major said we could explore everywhere except the rocket room!”

  “No, go back!”

  “I’m gonna have a word with your superior, this is unacceptable,” Miller fumed.

  The crew grumbled all the way back up, amusing the soldiers who enjoyed their little vacation outside their base. Miller requested that they let his crew get some air outside the facility.

  “It smells awful in here.”

  “No, you can’t leave,” the major snapped. “I have orders to keep you here until I’m instructed otherwise.”

  Ted Cooper yelled, “Are you fucking shitting me!? You can’t hold us against our wish, we are American citizens!”

  The soldier’s face was deadpan, suddenly like an automaton. The crew grumbled. Nicolai started singing, his voice deliberately and annoyingly off-key. Although it grated on Frank Miller’s nerves and the others, Miller ignored him. Liam Murphy asked the major if he could take a dump on the ice outside.

  The major said that it would be impossible in the circumstances.

  Liam said he would do it right where he stood. The major shrugged and invited him to be his guest.

  “Is anyone interested in shitting?” the major announced.

  Red-faced Ted cussed.

  The soldiers laughed at the joke.

  —

  But they could continue to explore up top, as directed by the major.

  The three soldiers, now assigned to them, wondered at the sudden compliance, and the apparent good spirits of the expedition crew.

  “Good show, Ted,” Miller murmured.

  “Yeah, thanks.”

  Miller asked Friedman for Kruger’s map. Huddled together, the group ascertained the extent of their present discoveries and how much ground they have covered.

  The map indicated that there was still a lot of ground to cover. While the men devised a way around the rest of the facility, Olivia pondered over the noise from the previous night.

  “How about a picture?” she said, showing them her portable camera.

  “Anyone?”

  The soldiers looked at each other. A small discussion in Spanish. Faces relaxed. Gun butts took seats on the floor. One managed a pandering smile. They arranged themselves in a tight row of three. Snap.

  “Thank you.” Olivia grinned at the men. “This goes in the paper, how about that? You’d like to see yourselves in the papers someday, right? Heroes.”

  “Yes, CNN?” asked the ranking officer.

  “I work for the Miami Daily. CNN is big. News like this one would probably break on CNN, yeah.”

  Olivia leaned against the wall. Behind the men, there was a doorway. It led back to the U-boat pen. Another door on the opposite side went off to the rocket room and labs. Olivia reckoned that the major couldn’t hear them here.

  “Was there trouble last night?” she asked.

  “Yes, one of us took ill but is okay now.”

  “Oh. I heard the noise.”

  “He’s possessed by the place,” the soldier said.

  “What’d you mean, what place?”

  “Here.”

  The soldier looked at his comrades. They nod in agreement. Olivia was about to ask them to describe what happened when Miller called.

  “Ms. Olivia?”

  She weighed the situation, and decided it might be the only opportunity she will have to get some background into what happened in the facility. Certainly, this guy must know something.

  She turned to the soldier. “Can you describe the symptoms?”

  The soldier touched the corner of his mouth. “Foaming and screaming, tried to strangle the major.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He’s okay. He is on guard duty.”

  Olivia thanked the soldier. She rummaged in her bag and found four bars of Krackel chocolates.

  “Chocolates?”

  She offered three bars to them, then peeled one and chewed it. The soldiers talked among them for a moment. The lead officer asked her what her name was.

  “Olivia Newton. But you can call me Olivia.”

  The soldiers beamed stained chocolate teeth. “Gracias.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  —

  “The word is 'De nada,’” Peter told her.

  “De nada what?”

  “That’s how you say you’re welcome.” Peter asked her, “What did you find?”

  “Not much, only that the noise last night was one of the soldiers being sick. But I don’t understand it yet. They said something about the facility made him ill.” She looked at Peter. “Do you get what that means?”

  “Nope.”

  They had found another lab. This was smaller. Located along a narrow hallway lighted by large bulbs that flickered and hummed on the walls, a fire extinguisher every quarter of the way, and really low ceilings, it was difficult not to be surprised by the lab as they entered it.

  There were shelves filled with jars of clear liquid. Some of them held live animals in them. Anabia Nassif gazed at one with a large cobra in it. It looked so alive. Corporeal.

  Small animals, bloated frogs, gelatinous insects, skinned birds; open-mouthed, frozen in an eternal scream. In the middle of the room was a long table that stretched the length of the lab. Taps, four of them, each like a hook of sorts, were arranged along the length. Papers strewed the floor. Olivia picked one of the papers.

  It was unreadable.

  “German,” she hissed.

  Olivia asked the marine biologist what he thought of the lab.

  “I don’t know really,” he said, not taking his eyes off the jar of snake. “One minute I want to just stay and learn as much as I want to. The next I have my head spinning with the madness that was laid here, like some kind of spawn.”

  The man shook his head.

  He gestured with his chin at the jar on the shelf, his hands stuck in his pockets. “Just look at this. I wouldn’t even touch it, be infected with the poison of that lunacy from long ago. The madness that had the world in its grip. No, I’m not gonna touch it.”

  Olivia gave the man a sideways glance and frowned. She stepped back a little and brought her camera up. The flare made Nassif turn his head. He sighed and went back to scrutinizing the jar.

  The door they had come in through burst open.

  One of the soldiers that Olivia had spoken with marched in. His eyes settled on Olivia.

  “We need your help.”

  6

  Olivia Newton shot past Cooper, who was just coming in through the door. The others came after her. The soldier who had come to call for help was saying something as he marched ahead of the crew.

  It took Olivia a
few seconds to realize that the young man’s querulous yammering was in Spanish. He was throwing his hand up over his head, spittle flew from his mouth.

  Behind Olivia, Miller was asking what the hell was happening.

  They were escorted into the rocket room. The major, his face was all eyes. His sleeves had been pulled up to the elbows, his fine black hair was a tussle under his black beret. The soldiers had formed a circle. There was someone on the floor.

  “Who’s a doctor among you?” He barged into the crew.

  All heads turned to Anabia Nassif. The man’s shoulder went up; he stammered.

  “I’m a marine biologist, I’m not a doctor,” he protested.

  “Come.” The major pulled his hand.

  The soldier on the floor was thrashing and writhing. His face was busting with veins, eyes popped, swollen tongue held in place by his teeth. His feet twisted and his hands were clawing at his neck. Bright red marks bled there.

  His comrades restrained him with no luck.

  Nassif slipped gloves he got from Nicolai’s box on. He asked the soldiers to hold the sick man tighter. He pulled the soldier's lower lids down. The biologist shook his head.

  Then he touched the soldier's forehead with the back of his hand. Anabia withdrew his hand.

  “He is burning up,” he said. “We need to bring his temperature down. Let’s get him submerged in cool water.”

  The major shifted orders to get cold water running. They went to work. The soldiers pulled a bathtub from some bathrooms in the facility. Filled with water, they carried it into the rocket room. They stripped the thrashing guy and forced his body in.

  The soldier thrashed about the tub. Nassif slinked back, helpless. He hadn’t seen anything like it.

  The major grabbed him. Scared shitless himself.

  “Help him!” he screamed.

  “I can’t, we have no medicine!”

  Nassif rubbed his hair. Frustrated, he walked back from the jerking soldier. His comrades held on, scared eyes seeking the major’s. Finally, Nassif pointed at an adjoining room that the soldiers had kept the crew from exploring. “Lock him in there!”

  “Why?” the major yelled in his face.