He carefully reached in and slid his hand down along the desiccated body. He grimaced as he carefully dragged something out of a small leather wallet. He opened it and began to read.
“Alexi Domnin.” Mike snorted softly. “From the 1972 expedition. Katya told me he was one of their caving party, and their youngest member. She said he was ‘taken’.” He stepped down. “Looks like this is where he was taken to.”
“Poor guy. Hope he didn’t die in pain,” Jane said.
“There’s more.” Penny crossed to another cocoon that still glistened. She tugged some of the sticky webbing away. “Hey, this one is fresh, and, oh my, look!” She stepped away.
It was a woman, youngish, and she only looked asleep.
“Has to be one of the Russian team,” Mike said.
“She’s alive, but unconscious. Looks like they haven’t got to her yet,” Jane said.
“Maybe just been stung and paralyzed,” Alistair replied.
Mike leaned in even closer and spoke softly to her in Russian. “Can you hear us?”
Her eyelids fluttered and he waited, but after a while of no response he tried again, this time reaching in to touch her cheek with the back of his fingers.
As soon as his hand touched her flesh, the woman’s eyes sprung open and she screamed, loud and piercing. The group fell back and Alistair cringed.
“Be quiet,” Mike hissed to the woman and placed a hand over her mouth.
She did as asked but her eyes rolled. After another moment, her face crumpled into gulping sobs.
“Let’s get her out,” Mike said and began trying to break away more of the resin.
After several minutes of tearing, cutting and hacking, they managed to open a big enough hole so they could drag the woman out. They eased her down and Mike cradled her as he gave her a sip of water.
“Who are you?” Mike asked in Russian. “Can you understand me?”
The woman coughed and she took another sip of water. She nodded. “Mila Golobev, with the Russian expedition. I am a scientist of biology.” Her face crumpled again. “They left me.”
“Ask her how many are in her team?” Harris asked.
Mike translated, and the woman looked up at him. “Nine, nine of us.” She shook her head. “No, eight now, without me.”
“Ask why they’re here.” Harris’ face was grim.
“We already know that,” Mike said.
Her eyes darted from Mike to Harris. “I’m just a scientist. Not a soldier. I just do as I’m told.”
Mike translated, but wondered how much English the Russian woman actually understood.
She coughed again and sat up. “I feel sick.” She held her head and screwed her eyes shut.
“Take it easy,” Jane said soothingly.
“Mila, how many days were you trapped?” Mike asked.
Mila shook her head. “I was asleep. I had bad nightmares.” She looked around. “We need to get out of here. We were attacked by hundreds of creatures.”
Mike turned to Harris. “She said they were attacked by hundreds of creatures, and we should get out of here.”
Harris frowned. “From where?”
Mila pointed up to the ceiling and just made little frightened squeaks in her throat.
Jane followed her gaze and saw the bulbous things hanging from the ceiling. “Is that them?”
Mila nodded and put a finger to her lips. “Be quiet. They wake up, then they come. From everywhere,” Mila whispered in heavy English. She gripped Mike’s arm. “Maybe all my friends are dead. Don’t let it happen again. Get us out.”
Mike turned. “I agree.”
Mila doubled over and held her stomach.
Penny crouched beside her. “Were you stung?”
The Russian woman’s face crumpled in pain and her scream was agonizingly loud.
“Shut her up,” Harris demanded, looking like he was going to hit her with the butt of his rifle.
“Back off,” Jane said and tried to give her some more water.
From behind them, Bull racked his gun. “I got movement, boss. In front and from both sides.”
“Multiple signals here as well,” Ally replied.
Harris looked at the path ahead for a few seconds, and then decided. “The hell with it, we go back, regroup.”
Mila screamed again, this time low and sounding like a wounded animal. All around them came the mad scuttling sounds and the resin mesh began to vibrate like piano wire. A breeze began to waft along the passages.
“We’ve got incoming, boss. Move it up a level.” Bull replaced his rifle’s magazine with one carrying explosive rounds.
“Move it, double time.” Harris pointed. “Leave the Russian.”
“No,” Mike replied.
Between them, Mike and Jane carried Mila, who now muttered incoherently. She opened her mouth and let out a long burp that ended wetly. When Mike glanced at her, he saw vomit on her lips that was streaked with blood.
“She’s got internal injuries,” Mike said.
Penny dropped back and ran beside her. “Harris, we need to stop and lay her down. She’s bleeding out.”
“The hell we will,” Harris shot back. “Not until we’ve got clean air. Now, move your ass.”
They moved as fast and quickly as they could in the confined space, but still probably had several hundred yards of the resin labyrinth to negotiate. Mike and Jane dragged the woman whose head lolled forward and bloody sputum dribbled down onto her chest.
Mike was worried that if she had ruptured organs, then their jiggling would certainly be doing her even more damage. And down here that would prove fatal.
They entered a larger space, and Bull opened up, firing off several explosive rounds and blowing the bulbous spider-like things apart.
Smoke began to fill the sticky amber tunnels and between Jane and Mike, Mila began to first cough up gobbets of thick blood and then what looked like small chunks of meat. The almost-black blood splattered their legs, and when the Russian woman started to convulse, Mike simply stopped and lay her down.
“She’s hemorrhaging,” Mike yelled.
Penny used the woman’s shirt to try and wipe away the blood, but looking at it, she frowned.
“This is stomach lining.” She frowned. “What’s happening?”
Ally stood over them, legs planted and firing non-stop to give them some cover. Harris swore furiously and pulled his team back as well.
Harris fired in full automatic, drawing squeals of pain from the monstrous things. He yelled over his shoulder, “Goddamn leave her.”
“Not a chance,” Mike said. He held the woman as she convulsed but noticed that the woman’s entire face looked swollen and one of her cheekbones bulged.
Mike and Jane held the Russian woman down as she bucked and jerked, while Penny tried to stem the flow of blood. Alistair knelt by them looking like he wanted to help, but all he managed to do was to look pale and he seemed about to pass out.
Suddenly Mila’s scream became a wet gargle, and she grabbed her stomach and chest. Penny also placed her hands there, thinking the woman was having a heart attack.
Penny frowned and leaned forward. She then jerked her hands back from the woman. “There’s something in….”
Mila threw her head back, and then with a wet, bone-crunching noise something erupted, first from her stomach, and then to everyone’s horror, from her left cheek.
“Focus!” Harris roared as some of his team’s attention was dragged away from the unfolding horror around them to glance back at the Russian woman.
Jane fell back, teeth clenched in disgust, and Penny held up the bloody shirt she was using as a rag, looking like she wanted to stem the spurting blood and viscera but not wanting to go near the things that were emerging from the wound.
From her cheek, a head emerged. Then from her stomach, and yet another from her thigh. The small creatures forced their way out of her flesh and clothing as Mila shuddered on the ground, her body twitching as her nervou
s system short-circuited from the trauma.
“They laid eggs in her,” Alistair yelled. “I knew it.”
In the next few seconds, more larvae began to emerge and Mila’s body lay still, looking deflated. The blood stopped flowing as her heart gave out.
One of the long grubs fully emerged and plopped wetly to the ground. Sticky strings of viscera still hung from it, and there were several sharp legs at the front, but the curling tail flicked open and closed like some sort of deep-sea crustacean. They flipped off the body and then used their tiny legs and a peristaltic wave motion to head back into the center of the hive.
Harris swung his barrel around and blew one away with a single shot. “Get back,” he said evenly.
The group moved back from the Russian woman’s corpse as the other grubs began to leave her body. Harris shot each of them, even one coming from her thigh, where the bullet obliterated it, plus the meat of the woman’s leg.
Penny looked horrified, but Harris glared in return. “She’s dead.”
A noise leaked from Mila’s throat and Penny pointed. “No, she’s still alive.”
Harris swung around and fired point blank at Mila’s forehead, punching a hole right through it. “She’s dead now, so everyone on their goddamn feet and let’s get the hell out of here.”
Penny still held the woman’s bloody shirt, and she tossed it, covering the woman’s ruined face. The doctor hovered over the mutilated corpse for a moment more.
Harris fired a round at Penny’s feet to get her attention and his voice boomed. “Leave that corpse before you end up just like her.”
The group ran, firing as they went, and as the resin thinned, so too did their pursuers. After another moment, they were back where they started, and Mike swung back but to his relief saw that nothing seemed to be following them out.
“That was a bad idea,” Mike said as he bent over on his knees and sucked in deep breaths.
“I think we should go around,” Jane said.
“Yeah,” Harris said as he drew in a breath all the way to the bottom of his lungs. “Why don’t we do that?” He turned. “Reload and take a breath everyone.”
Harris walked to one side of the burrows into the resin labyrinth and then to the other. In a few minutes he called up Bull and Hitch. “Scout me a path. Be back in ten.”
The two men shot off, one to the left and the other to their right, both looking for an opening in through the vines, thorns, and massive, interwoven trunks.
Bull was back within five minutes and Hitch followed a few minutes later.
“No go,” Bull said. “Too much of that damn vine growth that’s like barbed wire on steroids. Take us hours and a ton of skin to go twenty feet.”
“Got a pathway, but steep, and leads down into the jungle valley,” Hitch said. “A lot of movement down there, but looks passable.”
Harris raised his eyebrows. “I’m guessing once again this is all new ground for you two?”
Mike and Jane nodded.
“Big help.” Harris exhaled through his nose and walked a few paces out to where Hitch had just come in. He stood with his hands on his hips staring out at the mad green tangle. “Can’t see a goddamn thing.”
The jungle was thick, dominated by large trunks of trees with weird bark like popped rice that was strangled by thick vines covered in barbs like fishhooks. There were also fronds of palms that would have covered an entire house. Unseen creatures moved through the dense canopy, and hidden within the foliage was the buzz, squeak, and click of life.
He checked his wristwatch. “Goddamit,” Harris barked. The soldier then exhaled and shook his head. “No choice. Hopefully we can intersect with their trail up ahead.”
“We need to take some time to rest. We’ve been traveling now for ten hours,” Mike said.
Harris cursed under his breath and checked his watch one more time. “Okay, but first we need to move away from this entrance and find a safe spot.” He wiped his brow. “Bull, Ally, find us a defendable campsite.”
On a massive, dripping frond in front of them, a creature that looked like a large hand, with sharp legs, no discernable head, but yellow eyes covering its back, edged a little closer to Harris. He spun and fired. The thing was blown apart.
“Fuck off, I ain’t in the mood.”
*****
It was another hour before they found a suitable tree with limbs that were wide enough for them to climb up into and camp at least fifty feet from the jungle floor. There were a few bugs encountered on their way up but they seemed more frightened of the humans and exited the scene quickly.
Mike and Jane sat together, and Jane shared a half-smile with him. Mike reached out and laid a hand on her forearm.
“How you doing?”
Jane’s mouth turned down. “This place takes everything from you. We were lucky last time, and we just gave mother luck the middle finger by coming back.”
He scooted a little closer to her. “I know. This place is Hell. But even though I think Harris is a manipulating asshole, I believe him.”
“He’s not that bad.” She turned her face from him. “And I believe him too when he says that the Russians are trying to destroy our military bases and care nothing for the hundreds or thousands of our people’s lives that are lost.” She used a thumb and forefinger to rub her eyes for a moment. “I couldn’t live with myself if I ignored that.”
Mike wholeheartedly agreed with her but still didn’t like the way she seemed to get behind the military leader.
“Maybe,” was all he replied.
She exhaled and leant her head back on her neck. “Just a few years ago I was a biology school teacher and the biggest issue I had to deal with was skinned knees and arguments at recess. Now, every waking moment I have to watch people die, and die horribly. I feel we’ve landed on an alien plant and are a long way from home. And worse, we’re stranded here.” She turned to him. “I don’t want to die here.”
“We won’t,” Mike said, holding her gaze.
Jane continued to stare back for a moment more before nodding and then lying down and resting her head on her pack.
Mike waited for her to say something else. Anything else. But she shut her eyes.
He sighed and lay back and closed his eyes, but knew just because he was bone tired, the knot in his stomach would never let him fully relax.
It was too late to be worrying about coming here. All that mattered was surviving and getting home. And if that meant finding those Russians and letting Harris and his team do a job on them, then the sooner that happened the better.
Mike closed his eyes. Yeah, the soon the better, he thought, and surprisingly, went straight to sleep.
*****
“Goddamn it,” Bull yelled. The huge soldier looked about. “My spare ammo-pack is gone.”
“You probably dropped it,” Hitch said.
“Nah, I looked.” Bull said. “It’s not down there.”
“Bullshit,” Ally spat.
“Damn well did,” Bull shot back.
“No, no, I mean, my handgun is gone, right outta my holster.” Ally also looked over the edge.
“You guys better not be losing your kit,” Harris warned.
“I’m going down.” The female soldier began to clamber down to the ground.
It only took her seconds, and Hitch and Bull covered her as she searched beneath the huge limb they perched on. She looked up and hiked her shoulders. “Nada.”
“Just freaking great. Get back up here,” Harris said.
As the rest of the group was roused, it became apparent that other items were missing: personal items, food tins, even Alistair’s wristwatch was gone from his wrist.
“Anyone want to have a guess as to what the hell is going on?” Harris demanded.
“Could it have been the Russians?” Alistair asked.
“Pfft, not even a ninja could have snuck in amongst us and taken our gear.” Harris looked about. “Must have been…” He blew air. “I have no f
reaking idea.”
“The items were taken not by someone else, but more like by some thing else,” Mike said.
“Boss.” Hitch was crouched over his open pack. “The tracker…”
Harris stared back at the man for a moment before realization dawned on him. “Oh you gotta be shitting me. It’s gone too?”
Hitch nodded.
“Ah, so now you can’t track the Russians.” Alistair raised his eyebrows. “Still think it wasn’t the Russians?”
“It’s not the goddamned Russians.” Harris turned to the young entomologist. “Those guys are down here destroying our bases and killing hundreds of people. If it was them snuck in here, do you really think they’d even blink at the chance to kill us all?”
Alistair looked skyward for a moment. “Well, maybe not,” he conceded.
“We should move,” Jane said.
“Sure, but not until we find that damned tracker.” Harris looked around and then up into the canopy overhead.
“It’s gone,” Mike said. “Forget it.”
Harris’ jaws clenched for a moment as his lips pressed together. He looked like he was barely keeping a lid on a volcanic string of curses, but bit it down.
“The last direction the Russians were headed was northeast to Camp Bondsteel. So until we know different, that’s the way we’ll continue,” Harris said.
“For how long?” Mike asked. “I mean, if they decide to go in a different direction, then we’re screwed. You read my manuscript, right? This place is an entire world; we’d never just stumble upon them.”
“Well, we damn continue until I say stop,” Harris replied curtly.
“Hey wait a minute, that wasn’t part of the deal,” Mike shot back.
“Deal?” Harris turned back. “There is no deal, there’s just national security.” Harris closed in on Mike and jabbed a finger in his chest. “And guess what? You’ve just been drafted.”
“You sonofa…” Mike grabbed the man’s hand and finger still pressed into his chest, not even sure of what he was planning to do.
But three things happened really fast. Harris grabbed his hand and twisted it, just holding him by the twisted arm and forcing Mike down on one knee. Mike felt like his shoulder joint was going to pop out.
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