“You thinking about us going down there?” Darren asked. “Shouldn’t we concentrate on getting the hell out of here?”
“We can’t just leave Agent Caine and the two men with her. It doesn’t look like they were invited here, and I doubt that the mayor will deal too kindly with them should he catch up to them.”
Darren nodded. “You’re right. “Let’s do this.”
“In the meantime, how about we call for backup,” Bass said. “If we’re lucky the cavalry will arrive before we get in too far over our head.”
“My thought exactly,” James said. He stepped over to one of the two phones sitting on the countertop. He picked up the receiver and brought it to his ear. He tapped in the number to the headquarters. Nothing. No ringing, and no busy signal.
“Okay,” James said. “What do I need to press to call out?”
“There’s only certain numbers that are programmed into our phone system here. All of them are to our guys.”
James looked hard at the man not sure if he should believe him.
“Check your cell phones, guys,” James said to Bass and Darren. “Mine seems to have been confiscated.”
“No signal,” Darren said, slipping his phone from his pocket.
“Likewise,” Bass answered, looking at his cell phone.
“I guess we go in without backup then,” Darren said.
“I’m going to leave this decision up to you two,” James said. “We don’t know what we could be getting into. This could be extremely dangerous.”
“Let’s do it,” Bass said. “Like you said we can’t leave this Agent Caine, though she may be dirty, to the mercy of whoever these crazy people are.”
“I agree,” Darren added. “I’m in.”
“Good,” James said. He gazed about the room then to the gray-haired man named Granger who seemed to be the most responsive. “So how do we get to the caves?”
Granger didn’t answer right away. He seemed to be considering his options again. He sighed. “Through the next door down the hall.”
“Very good,” James said. “Now, we’re going to need a couple of tourist guides.” He looked to Granger and the heavyset man.
Granger clenched his teeth and seemed about to refuse but didn’t. “Let me unlock the door,” Granger said. He stepped over to a section of the console and typed in a code on one of the keypads. “Door’s unlocked,” he muttered.
“Before we leave,” James began, “I think we need to get rid of big brother. Let’s break some glass.”
Choosing chairs as instruments of destruction the three FBI agents walked the length of the room smashing the video monitors. After the job was finished James stepped over to the corridor door. “Now we can go.”
Reluctantly, Granger and his co-worker left the surveillance room into the corridor followed closely by the FBI men.
As Granger went through the door that opened to the caves a keen nervousness raced through his body like an electrical current. He hoped he had made the right decision in setting off the silent alarm when he had typed in the code to unlock the door.
CHAPTER 29
It was dark, though not absolute. A languid light from somewhere deep beyond dampened the blackness. It was enough for Stone to make out the rock wall in front of them and the arched openings to the left and right, but barely enough for Walter and Candace to see their own hand in front of their face. It was a testament to Stone’s superior eyesight.
Stone reached out and took Candace’s hand. He could see that she was already holding Walter’s arm with her other hand, helping to steady him.
He was concerned about Walter. He appeared weak and dazed. There had to be something more wrong with him than merely an injured leg. In fact, for the last few minutes, he hadn’t favored that leg. He seemed equally feeble in both legs.
Stone figured that he could help Walter—if he would allow him to—with whatever was ailing him. But now was not the time. They had to keep moving and any treatment Stone might administer with the aid of his computer arm might require a downtime for Walter.
Stone headed to the archway on their left. Just a random choice. There were no facts to go by.
The archway opened to a narrow walkway flanked by sheer rock walls. Above them, stalactites hung from the ceiling like giant daggers. The floor was mostly even. It looked as though stalagmites has once been present but had been cut off even with the floor.
Stone moved gingerly ahead not sure of what to expect. This was the first place, since their descent down the staircase, that still retained most of the rough edges hewed by nature itself.
After only a few yards they came into a large chamber. Instantly lights came to life around them bathing them in soft white illumination.
“Whoa,” Candace breathed.
Stone looked up at the bank of fluorescent lights just in front of them mounted on the wall fifteen feet off the floor. “Sensors,” he said. “Installed below one of the fixtures.”
Candace absently nodded at his comment then peered forward at the now illuminated walkway that stretched forward for possibly sixty feet before disappearing into darkness. About thirty feet from them another walkway diverged to their right.
Walter suddenly straightened, pulling his arm away from Candace.
“You okay,” Candace asked, concerned about Walter’s abrupt action.
“Yes,” he answered. “Yes.” He said this more enthusiastically. He was okay. The shaking in his legs had instantly abated as a surge of strength had just sluiced through his body. His eyes widened as though he had awakened from a good night’s sleep.
“Are you sure you’re alright?” Candace asked, readying to catch him if necessary.
Stone looked questioningly at Walter.
“I’m okay,” Walter said to them. “Really. I feel better then … then I have felt in a very long time.”
“Good,” Stone said slowly. “But how …?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “It just happened.”
Stone stared at him for a few moments as though examining him then turned his attention back to the path. He proceeded forward a few yards then veered around the intersecting path to the right. The others followed close behind him.
They stopped abruptly, almost in unison. On either side of them were rows of large cell-like doors composed of long black rails embedded in a foot of rock. At the nearest door, two hands were clutched around the metal bars. A face, at first hidden in the shadows, slipped close to the door and looked over at them. Then, the man’s other two hands came to rest on the bars beneath his first two.
CHAPTER 30
“So,” Bass began as the five of them headed down the stairs. “Are you two aliens?”
“What? What do you mean?” the big man asked nervously.
“Shut up, Branson,” Granger muttered.
“You two can’t be aliens,” Darren started, “real aliens are little green fellas.” He laughed. Bass joined him in a hearty burst of laughter.
James didn’t laugh. He barely heard them. His mind was busy reflecting on the curved stone staircase that descended in a wide spiral. It was a roughly hewn work that consisted of uneven and sometimes broken steps. But it wasn’t the lack of skillful work that he reflected on, it was the magnitude of the work that it must have taken to carve out all this rock. It must have taken a lot of time and labor to do this. What was down here that was so important that the mayor would spend so much time and money connecting his house to an underground cave? What great secret was in this cave?
“Hold up,” James said as they neared the bottom of the stairs. When they had all stopped, he slipped a few feet past them to the edge of the wall and peered down the corridor.
The corridor was long and wide. Large, round pendulous lights hung from the tall ceiling scattering most of the darkness that must have once lived here. But there were still spots of shadows lurking against the walls between the beams of light.
James studied the hall. It looked empty, bu
t he couldn’t be certain about the dark spaces. He stared at them one by one to try to catch a hint of movement. After a minute, when nothing stirred, he felt somewhat confident that no one was lurking in the shadows.
He motioned for the rest of them to follow him as he stepped cautiously into the corridor. He noted that there were doors on either side of the hallway. Three on the left and three on the right. A horrifying vision suddenly struck him. He could almost see the people slipping out the closest door, large powerful rifles pressing ahead of them. And, behind them a group of armed assailants coming down the stairs.
James looked back. There was only Granger and Branson, and the other two agents. No one else on the stairway. He tried to feel relief, but it didn’t come.
“You two up ahead,” he said to Granger and Branson. As the two men moved a few yards in front of them Granger looked back and smiled.
That was odd. At once it all seemed wrong. “Keep your eyes open,” he said to the other two agents as they slipped a few yards to the left of him. He said it quickly and louder than he had intended.
The words had barely slipped from his mouth when a dark figure dropped down upon them from the shadows above the light fixtures. It landed in a squat next to Bass and before they could react it sprung up like a shot and backhanded Bass across the chest with a powerful left hand. The force knocked Bass into Darren and both men toppled backward. Bass’s gun left his hand and bounded across the floor as both men abruptly left their feet. Darren landed hard on his back. Bass landed on top of him.
James swung his gun in the direction of the figure that had dropped down suddenly upon them. He fired out of both instinct and terror.
It was incredibly fast and for an instant, it seemed surprised and confused that it had been shot. Then it turned on James. In a flash, oversized hands grabbed James underneath his arms, lifted him in one fluid motion, and flung him across the corridor into the wall seven feet off the floor as if he were nothing more than a department store mannequin.
In that instant, James saw the face. It looked mostly human, but the head was larger and the top of the skull mostly flat. The eyes were in the shape of a cats. The pupils were deep black. Its face was the color of ash.
James’s head hit the wall a split moment after his back smacked into the rock. A grayness instantly washed over him. He fell landing on his feet, but with his legs partially splayed and a consciousness teetering on the edge he couldn’t keep his balance. He dropped the rest of the way to strike solidly on his butt in a sitting position on the rock floor.
Darren pushed Bass off him with a groan. Bass rolled onto his stomach and struggled for a moment to catch the breath that had been knocked out of him.
Darren pressed up to his knees with his gun in hand at the same time the creature turned back to him. Its black eyes seemed to grow even darker, deeper, like a fresh nightmare about to happen. It sprung toward him, moving preternaturally quick. Somehow Darren was able to squeeze a shot off just as a hand full of claws raked across his neck.
Bass bolted to his feet galvanized by the second burst of gunfire. He saw the creature only a few feet in front of him but when his foot touched something, he looked down to see the body of Darren at his feet in an expanding pool of blood. At once he was both nauseous and weak and felt as though he were about to fall. At that moment the creature’s hand swung in a wide arc at his head. In that split-second, Bass closed his eyes. At the same time, another blast of gunfire resounded through the cave.
The creature fell off to the side without striking its mark. It rolled over the concrete floor and expelled a guttural groan like the rumble of thunder. Then suddenly it was on its feet. It leaped over to the cave wall and scurried upward like a giant cockroach. It disappeared above the light fixtures quickly fading into the dark shadows.
Bass stood there, frozen, for what seemed to be forever. Then he heard a voice.
“Bass. Bass, get over here!”
He turned slowly to where the voice was coming from. He saw James sitting on the floor against the corridor wall almost twenty feet away. He shook himself out of his momentary stasis. He saw his gun on the floor and quickly picked it up. He looked about. There was no one else in the corridor, not even the two guards. Apparently, they had slipped through one of the several doors along the hall walls.
Bass squatted down next to Darren. Darren’s head lay in a puddle of blood. The dark, glutinous liquid still leaked slowly from a neck that had been ripped apart. Bass was suddenly paralyzed by indecision. He desperately wanted to do something to save Darren but knew that Darren had already passed.
“Bass!” James repeated. “Over here!”
Bass pressed to his feet struggling to push away thoughts of Darren. He refused an inclination to look down at Darren once more knowing that it would only debilitate him and stumbled across the corridor to James. At the wall, he twisted about and put his back to the wall.
“You okay?” he asked, looking down at James.
“Okay,” he answered as he struggled to his feet.
“Darren’s dead,” Bass sobbed. His eyes filled with tears. He swallowed hard pushing back the harsh emotions that were attempting to overtake him. “What … what was that thing?” he managed.
“Don’t know,” James said. “But it’s still out there somewhere. I … I think we need to get out of here. Go back the way we came. Get some reinforcements. This is much bigger than what we bargained for.”
“Yeah, but Darren … We can’t leave him here.”
“I know how you feel,” James began, “I don’t want to leave him here either but if we try to take him with us, we might not make it ourselves. We’ll come back for him. I promise.”
“No,” Bass protested. “We can’t leave him. It’s not right.”
James ran his hands across his eyes as they began to fill up with tears. “I know it’s not right.”
The truth began to sink into Bass. If he were to carry Darren, then he would be unable to help James should the creature or anyone else decide to attack them. And he had to face the fact that Darren had already passed. They could come back and get him later provided they could get out of this place alive.
“You’re right,” Bass conceded. “We’ll come back for him.”
“Alright,” James said. “Let’s make a run for the stairs.” He sighed loudly. “Go!” They bolted headlong across the corridor to the foot of the stairwell. “Go!” James said again and whipped around to face the interior of the hallway, his back against the stairs. He readied his gun half expecting their attacker to come back for round two.
Bass went a few yards ahead, sidling up the steps to both keep an eye on James and what might be coming at them from the stairs above.
James began a single step backward when he spotted a young woman easing out of one of the doors down the corridor. For a moment he worried that she might be the next victim of this creature, but then he figured that more likely she was part of this compound. Probably the only ones in danger were he and Bass, and Candace and her group.
Backing up the stairs they finally arrived at the metal door. Thankfully no one tried to stop them.
James exhaled a heavy breath. He hadn’t realized that he had been holding it in for most of the way.
“Okay. Okay,” James said. “Let’s get out of here and face whatever army of guards lies before us.”
“Problem,” Bass said. “The door’s locked.
CHAPTER 31
“What do we have here?” the voice inside the cell said.
Walter and Candace could say nothing at first. They simply stared at the man with four arms.
“Who are you?” Stone asked.
“Walter,” the man said, ignoring Stone’s question, “are you feeling better?”
“Eh … yes,” Walter answered.
“If you haven’t figured it out yet,” the man with four arms began, “you’ve been bitten by that arachnid-like thing that you kicked.”
“How do you know tha
t?” Walter asked.
“It’s part troglodyte and part something else,” he continued, ignoring Walter’s question. “It got into the machine and somehow merged with pieces of metal. I can’t explain how.”
“Like a living machine,” Stone said, thinking about his computer arm. It wasn’t far from being a living part of him.
“Anyway,” the man continued, “it injected you with a rather unique poison. The potency of which could kill one out of four of its unfortunate victims.”
“I guess I’m one of the lucky three,” Walter said.
“Not exactly. The poison works on the nervous system. But because of your unusual abilities, it reacted differently with you.”
“So, my abilities are what saved my life.”
“Not exactly. Your psychic abilities were not protecting you they were enhancing the potency of the poison. You’d be dead now if I hadn’t intervened.”
“What did you …”
“I healed you,” the man with four arms interrupted. “I have powers that far exceed what abilities you have.”
“That being said,” Candace began, “why have you been imprisoned?”
The man laughed. “Good question. Long story.”
A sudden staccato ‘thump’ like the sound of a sledgehammer hitting a side of beef came from somewhere off to their side.
Walter, Stone, and Candace all turned to see where the sound had come from.
Across from them and three cells down a large man with a huge, nearly flat head stood momentarily pressed against the cell bars. Then he backed up a few steps and slammed the top of his head against the bars.
The man came erect and looked over at them with a vacuous expression. He carried broad shoulders and a barrel-like chest. His arms were like thick tree limbs.
“That’s hammerhead,” the four arms man said. “Not his real name. I call him that for obvious reasons.”
“And what’s your name,” Candace asked.
“I don’t remember my birth name. There’s a lot of things I don’t remember. But you can call me Hands.”
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