The Cerberus Protocol (Hellstalkers Science Fiction Horror Series)

by Joseph Nassise

  At last the doors stood fully open. Now the men had to find out what lay beyond.

  Memphis looked at his men. “D’Angelo and Chavez on point. Everyone else keep your wits. We’re likely to find a bunch of geeks who’ve wet their pants from being stuck in the dark.”

  The soldiers chuckled. That was good. If they saw Memphis wasn’t afraid, they wouldn’t be, either.

  D’Angelo, a stout soldier on loan from the Italians, shouldered his M4 and eased through the opening. Chavez, a native Texan, came up right behind him, covering the right side while D’Angelo nosed left.

  Memphis waved his men forward and strode through the opening with them. D’Angelo’s voice crackled in his ear.

  “It looks like a bomb went off in here.”

  Chavez echoed that sentiment. “Yeah, stuff’s just blasted everywhere. In all directions.”

  Memphis snapped his radio on. “Keep the chatter to a minimum. Just the essentials, guys.”

  “Roger that, sir.”

  Memphis moved forward. Ahead of him, he could see an array of heavy piping that had been bent almost double. The open tubes sprawled across the floor at weird angles, hissing steam still issuing from the cracked fissures that ran down the length of them.

  Five meters on, another set of doors beckoned. “That’ll be the main elevator that leads down to the complex proper.”

  At his right, a British army corporal nudged him. “I don’t think that lift is going to handle all of us, sir.”

  Memphis frowned. He was right. The elevator looked only large enough to carry six at a time. Memphis’s team was a dozen strong. The thought of dividing his forces didn’t sit well with him.

  “Command, is there any other way to access the complex? The main elevator can’t accommodate my entire team.”

  There was a pause and then his ear came to life. “You should see a fire exit door off to your left side. That will give you access to the stairs. You can take those straight down to the lab.”

  “Copy.” Memphis waved the Brit ahead. “Go find them.”

  He watched the English soldier scoot around a toppled desk and chair and push through a pile of scattered papers. Memphis saw what looked like informational posters describing the research being carried out in the complex.

  “Door’s here, sir,” said the Brit over the radio. “Got the stairs right where they’re supposed to be as well.”

  “Good,” said Memphis. “D’Angelo and Chavez, take the stairs down. Everyone else on me.”

  He led the way to the door and saw that D’Angelo and Chavez were already one flight further down. “Not too far, guys. I don’t want us getting separated here.”

  In the stairwell, their boots seemed to echo all the way down into the complex. Memphis looked over the railing and couldn’t see where the stairs ended. How far underground had they constructed this thing?

  “Nobody bunch up. I want us spread out,” said Memphis. The silence of the place seemed absolute and overwhelming. He was vaguely aware of his heart thundering in his ears.

  They descended for almost a half an hour. By the time they reached the bottom of the stairwell, Memphis’s men were all breathing heavy. Sweat ran down Memphis’s face, making his eyes sting. He blinked it away and saw the fire exit door that would lead them into the complex itself.

  Time to switch the guys on point. “D’Angelo and Chavez fall back. Rousseau and Banechek take point.”

  The two new soldiers moved up toward the door. Rousseau held the handle while Banechek readied his weapon. On Banechek’s nod, Rousseau pulled the door handle and they went through to the other side.

  Memphis and his men filed through quickly.

  On the other side of the door, they moved into a wide arc and began sweeping forward.

  From somewhere far above them, Memphis thought he heard a rumbling sound. “What the hell is that?” He clicked his radio. “Command, I’ve got some noise-“

  “The doors, Memphis! The doors are closing you in.”

  “Dammit! Can’t be helped now. We’ll reopen them when we ascend.”

  Memphis paused. And frowned. “Command?”

  He heard empty static on the radio. “Chavez, try to raise Command on your radio.”

  Chavez’s voice came through loud and clear, but he got no more response than Memphis had.

  D’Angelo sighed. “We’re cut off from the outside world now.”

  Memphis swallowed, feeling a slight tickle of unease in the pit of his stomach. “No big deal. I’m sure they’ll get the doors back open in a few minutes. We’ll be fine. In the meantime, we’ve got a job to do.”

  Ahead of them, banks of computer terminals lay in ruins. Memphis noticed for the first time that Rousseau and Banechek seemed absorbed by something on the other side of the room. Memphis moved past that debris and litter.

  “You guys, okay?”

  Rousseau held up his hand. Memphis could see something sticky on it, but the green of his night vision wouldn’t make it out clearly.

  Then he caught the scent.

  Copper.

  He nodded at Rousseau. “That what I think it is?”

  “Blood,” nodded Rousseau. “A lot of it, too.”

  Banechek pointed around them and now Memphis could see the entire wall was splashed with the stuff.

  “We’ve got wounded then,” said Memphis. “All right, we’ll deal with it.”

  Rousseau frowned. “Wounded, perhaps. But I do not see any bodies anywhere.”

  Memphis glanced around. Rousseau was right. There was a lot of blood around the room, but no bodies. He frowned. “Maybe they’ve all gathered in the main complex area to wait for us. They might have set up a triage area to help care for the injured.”

  Banechek didn’t seem convinced. Memphis nudged him. “Keep it together, soldier.”

  Banechek’s eyes met his and the Slovak soldier’s expression was grim. “Memories of another time and place, sir.”

  Memphis knew he was referring to the genocide he’d seen growing up. He nodded. “Stay on your toes. This isn’t the same thing.”

  “Smells like it is,” said Banechek, but he moved off with Rousseau and together, they headed for the main complex area.

  Memphis watched them go and then hustled his other men to keep pace.

  “Entering the main complex,” came Rousseau’s voice in Memphis’s ear. Did his voice sound funny? Memphis hoped that his soldiers weren’t letting their imaginations take over. Fear is a dangerous thing in combat, he mused. It’s always present, but if a soldier can’t control it, then the battle is lost before it’s even begun.

  “There’s more blood in here,” squeaked Banechek’s voice.

  Memphis frowned again. Their voices. What was making them so squeaky?

  He heard Chavez chuckled. “Sounds like the boys up front are a bit scared.”

  Memphis clamped down. “That’s enough, Chavez. Everyone move into the main complex area.”

  They cleared the doorway and entered the complex. The emergency power was working here, providing enough light to see by. The night vision goggles were pushed up, out of the way, and the men had their first glimpse of the massive room around them.

  Memphis gaped at the sheer size of the place. It was at least a hundred feet wide, the ceiling at least two stories above them. He could make out huge video displays, pipelines, tubes, wires, computers, and more, but all of it had been damaged, in some places extensively.

  It was noisy here, too. Hissing steam and other gases filled the room. Memphis cleared his throat. “Stay alert” he said and froze at the sound of his own voice. His, too, sounded high-pitched.

  He almost laughed, finally remembering. “That’s got to be helium in the air. Must be a leak somewhere.”

  It sounded almost comical as his men shook off the fear they might have been feeling. Memphis glanced around the room. He could see blood splashes in chaotic patterns on the walls.

  “No bodies,” said Rousseau in his ear. “W
here could they be?”

  Memphis shook his head. “I have no idea. I would have thought they’d get everyone together in this room.”

  “Unless they know something we do not know,” said Banechek.

  “Like what?”

  Banechek frowned. “Like whatever it was that caused this destruction.”

  Memphis sighed. “I think you might have listened a little too much to the protesters up above. This is just the result of an accident. You know how these scientists get. Stubborn. They think they know it all. And then they cause a massive explosion and waste hundreds of millions of dollars doing it.”

  But Banechek didn’t look convinced. Memphis eyed him a moment longer and then waved his men together. When they had collected around him, Memphis smiled.

  “Nice work, so far. Take five and then we’ll push on. Get some water down. Make sure you’re ready to go. We need to find the scientists.”

  Memphis hunkered down and reached for his water bottle. The cool, clear liquid tasted wonderful and he swallowed half of the canteen before replacing it. From the inner pocket of his combat jacket, he reached for the dark chocolate he always kept there. The bitter-sweet taste flooded his system with a quick jolt of sugar. Memphis relished the effect and got to his feet again.

  Most of the ambient noise in the main complex area seemed to have dropped off. Memphis glanced around at the pipes, but the steam seemed to have dissipated. He cleared his throat and his voice sounded a bit more normal. The helium must have vanished as well.

  He noticed he was sweating. And indeed, the temperature, which had been almost cool when they’d entered the main complex, now seemed warm by comparison.

  Memphis’s heart seemed to beat slower. And he felt almost subdued, as if something was slowly increasing the pressure in the room.

  He snapped his M4 up into his hands. The men around him must have felt something similar, because he was aware of them getting to their feet. He could see the confusion on their faces.

  Fear even.

  Something was happening.

  In the next instant the room plunged into absolute darkness.

  Memphis was just about to order them all to hold fast when the darkness around him came alive and his ears filled with the bloodcurdling cries of his men.

  Death had found them.

  Chapter Four

  The room around him dissolved into chaos. Men were screaming and guns were firing, but over both of them Memphis could hear the savage cries of strange beasts as they shrieked in primeval challenge, the sound chilling him to the core. It sounded like there were at least half a dozen of them, maybe more; he couldn’t be certain given the way the sound was echoing off the walls around him.

  Fear scurried up his spine and threatened to overwhelm his thinking, but he fought it off, knowing if he gave into it everything would be lost.

  He found the goggles pushed back on his head, wrenched them down in front of him, and flipped the switch. The sight that met his eyes nearly froze him where he stood, as the NVGs illuminated a scene straight out of hell.

  One of his men was down before him, blood and guts spilling out of the gaping hole where his chest used to be. Memphis stared at the injury for only a second before his gaze was drawn to the thing crouched over the body, like a lion over its kill. That’s where the similarity ended, however, for the thing before him would never be mistaken for a big cat.

  It was long and lean, more like a panther than a lion, but it was built lower to the ground and had four legs on either side of its torso rather than two. Its face was vaguely humanoid, if you looked past the long snout full of crooked teeth, and in its eyes there gleamed a crafty intelligence that told Memphis this was something more than just an unusual animal.

  Its long, thin tail thrashed in annoyance at being disturbed in the midst of its feeding and as it swayed back and forth he could see that it was covered with dozens of wickedly sharp-looking blades. When Memphis dared to meet its gaze with his own the creature opened its mouth and shrieked a challenge that clearly defined who was predator and who was prey.

  Then it came for him.

  It was fast, blindingly fast, as it surged across the distance between them and if Memphis had stopped to think about his response he would have already been dead. Years of training, years of anticipating being on the sharp end, took over in that instant however and almost without thought he jerked his weapon up and jammed his finger down on the trigger, sending a stream of gunfire directly into the creature’s face at extreme close range.

  The force of the gunfire flung the thing away from him to crash against the nearby wall. Astoundingly, it was injured but not dead; as Memphis watched, it climbed shakily to its feet, dripping blood and gore but still clearly in the fight. He brought his gun to bear and gave the creature another long burst.

  This time it went down and stayed down.

  In the green luminescent glow of the night vision goggles, Memphis could see that his men were fighting for their lives all around him. There were at least half a dozen, possibly more, of the eight-legged creatures; it was hard to determine their exact number in the face of all the confusion.

  At least two of his men were down, the beasts fighting over the bodies like wolves over a kill. The rest didn’t seem to be doing much better, as the creatures shrugged off anything that wasn’t a direct hit at almost point blank range.

  Whatever the hell they were, they were as tough as tanks.

  And on the heels of that realization came another — if he didn’t rally the troops soon, none of them were going to live through this.

  “NVGs!” he cried, and then, “On me, on me.”

  Memphis didn’t know what those things were, or where the hell they had come from, but he did know that if the team stayed here they were going to be slaughtered to a man. The door they’d used to enter the room was blocked by more of the panther-things, but there was another door on the far side of the room that was unguarded. He didn’t know where it led, but right now anywhere was better than here.

  The survivors formed up around him. With their goggles in place they could see again and were able to offer more of a coordinated defense. During the fighting retreat across the room they only lost one more man, the British corporal whose name Memphis couldn’t seem to remember, when one of the panther-things came rushing in from the side and at the last second leapt upward, sailing over the corporal’s head and slashing downward with its tail as it went past, leaving the man’s head nothing more than a bloody ruin.

  The men burst through the door and into a narrow hallway that was a far better situation tactically than the wide-open expanse they’d left behind. They gained a few seconds of respite by slamming the reinforced steel doors closed in their wake but Memphis had no illusions that the doors would hold the things for long. Even as he was glancing around, taking a quick head count, something struck the door from the other side, putting a large dent in its surface. Another blow or two would either pop the lock or bust it loose in its frame.

  They needed a plan!

  His head count showed they’d lost four men; three during the initial attack and the Brit during the retreat. Two others were wounded.

  At this rate of attrition, if they didn’t find a defensible position soon, they weren’t going to live to see daylight.

  Think, Stone, think.

  But there wasn’t time. Even as he worked to come up with a viable solution, the door behind him burst open, letting the creatures into the hallway.

  They opened fire as they backed down the hallway, their massed fire taking down the first two creatures through the door and hindering the others that were fighting to get through.

  “Rousseau! Banechek! Grenades!” Memphis yelled “The rest of you get back!”

  The two men in question stepped up next to Memphis while the rest of the survivors headed for the door at the end of the hall. Rousseau and Banechek began firing the grenade launchers mounted under the barrels of their M4s, sending half a d
ozen high-explosive rounds into the shrieking creatures, while Memphis supported them with automatic fire from his M4.

  The grenades went off with a ear-shattering roar, killing of the creatures outright and wounding several of the others. Memphis got off several well-aimed bursts with his M4 before the magazine ran dry and he was forced to change it out.

  That was the moment the panther-things chose to counter-attack, rushing forward out of the haze of the grenade attack and snapping at the trio. One of them took out Rousseau with one of those leaping strikes, only to fall from a blast of Memphis’ newly reloaded M4. Another clamped its jaws around Banechek’s leg and pulled him off his feet, dragging him back down the hallway and disappearing among the multiple creatures still swarming toward them before Memphis could do anything.

  Another corridor, another fighting retreat. All the while Memphis was constantly trying to raise someone on his radio headset, praying that they had gotten the door upstairs open and were sending another squad down to help them, because right now that was the only way he saw them living through this disaster.

  What the hell were these things?

  That was when he made the mistake.

  It was a simple one, really. A left turn when he should have gone right, but he couldn’t be faulted for it given the fact that he had no idea where they were or where they were going. The left tunnel just felt better to him and, like men in combat the world over, he trusted his gut.

  Except this time his gut was wrong.

  Memphis led the surviving men of his unit into another room only to discover it was a dead-end.

  The only way out was through the door they’d just entered.

  By the time he realized it, however, the beasts were upon them.

  And this time, they brought company.

  He could see it lingering in the hallway behind the beasts, a shadowy figure half-again as tall as a man, with what appeared to be spikes jutting out all over its body. It exuded such an overwhelming sense of menace that Memphis had to literally keep himself from throwing down his weapon and running off in a blind panic. One of his men was not able to resist the feeling and just like that, they were down to five.