by Greig Beck
After scanning the surrounding walls for several minutes, Alex called the group together. Silex refused to join them and sat at the back of the small cave, watching the team from under his lowered brows.
“OK, there are multiple caves all around us—one or more must lead back to the surface. I figure we don’t have too many opportunities to make a wrong choice and double back. So, how do we narrow our search and make a higher value choice the first time?”
Monica was the first to respond. “Should be simple really; there are two indicators we can use. The first is change in temperature. The further we descended the warmer it became. Therefore, we should choose a cave that seems cooler than the rest, signalling that it leads to more topside Antarctic surface temperatures. The second, unfortunately, runs counter to the first. Warm air rises. We need to find a vent that is channelling warm air to colder temperatures. It will be like a wind tunnel. If the wind is strong, this will mask any colder air we could detect at this level.”
“Any others? Dr. Kerns?” Alex could see that Matt had something he wanted to share with the group.
“There’s a third indicator as well. Though we crossed paths several times, I don’t think that Hunahpu came down the river the way we did. We know from the near-surface caves that at least one of the brothers returned. If we find any carvings or glyphs indicating the place he made his ascent then it’s definitely the right cave. Or at least it was ten thousand years ago.”
“OK, good. If we find one of the tunnels with two of the indicators you mentioned then the chances are high it’s the one we need. Tank, give me some density readings starting from our present position in a two-mile grid search. Everyone else, we’ve got about ten more minutes of rest time before we need to push on.”
Mumbling to himself, Silex focused on Alex’s back with a look of such venomous intent it almost sent tangible waves of loathing across the cave floor. “You’ve forgotten who’s in charge, you grunt. This is mutiny. Just want the applause and the girl. Nice day’s work, glory-boy. Well, you aren’t going to hobble me and leave me for the spider crabs.” While the main group was huddled at the mouth of their small cave ledge, Silex reached into the uncovered grave mound of the fallen warrior. He tested the blade against his hand and finding it still intact he slipped it into his belt pouch. He mumbled once again to himself. “You just wait, you just wait.”
After a few minutes Tank was able to report that one of the larger caves, about a mile and a half to their west, was showing air movement in a single direction. Warmer air was being sucked in at a rate of about five knots—not significant, but enough to indicate a pretty good updraught.
“Temperature change?” enquired Alex.
“None I can detect, but as we expected this could simply be because of the constant warm air being drawn through the tunnel,” replied Tank.
Alex looked towards the large cave opening that Tank had indicated—it was not the easiest cave to get to. There was a section, about 200 feet in length, where there was no beach; the water came right to the cliff wall. They would have to either scale the rock face, or wade through the shallows—if they were shallows. He didn’t think the team would relish the idea of swimming in that water or even wading through shallows, given Mike and Takeda’s fate.
Alex turned to the group. “OK everyone, we have a route selected based on Ms. Jenning’s insights on air movement. Unless we have any better ideas I suggest we break camp and move off immediately.” Alex waited for a few seconds, scanning the strained and dirt-encrusted faces before him. With the exception of Silex, they looked tired but still fairly strong and Matt was now openly holding hands with Monica. He hoped he could get them both safely to the surface so they could share a happy ending—something good had to come out of this.
They repacked and prepared to make their way along the shore on the first part of the trek. Alex could see the fatigue etched into their faces as they all groaned to their feet and started to walk—all but one. “Please keep up with us, Dr. Silex.” Alex waited for him to catch up; he wanted to keep the group together, but more than that, something in Silex’s eyes convinced Alex that this was not a man to have at your back.
In the near dark the small group walked silently along the black beach, the squeak of the sand particles beneath their cave boots making a noise like they were a small group of rusting robots in need of oiling. Everyone was tired and looking only at the sand at their feet; the group was retreating into their own thoughts—all except Tank and Alex, who were on high alert, never taking their eyes from the sand, water, cliffs and ceiling. This was an extremely hostile environment.
Aimee thought of Tom again. Did he make it here? Was he still alive by then, and did he climb down or was he dragged? Maybe he had hidden; could he still be . . . No, that was silly. He wasn’t alive anymore, none of them were.
Matt and Monica also walked in silence, but sneaked a peek at each other from time to time to smile and give reassurance. Matt was worried about Monica and thought he would need to provide protection for her, while Monica knew she would have to be looking out for Matt. They were determined they would get to the surface and be sipping drinks on a warm beach before the week was out.
Dr. Adrian Silex was also silent, though his cracked lips continued to move in a feverish monologue of hate. His mind formed wilder and wilder conspiracies—they were planning to steal his imaging technology designs and then leave him here to die like an animal. Why was it that only the soldiers had guns? They were supposed to be taking orders from him, now they seemed to be the ones giving orders. If he had a gun he’d be the one giving the orders again. If anyone was going to be getting out it was him—everyone else could go to hell, and he might just make damn well sure of that.
Alex tried to keep the group as close to the cliffs as he could and away from the unfathomable black water. On the glistening walls in among the hanging fronds of mosses and lichens, lice-like creatures the size of his fist wriggled into crevices to hide as the small group passed. At the water line, something brightly coloured caught Alex’s eye. He called a halt, leaving Tank to stay with the team. He carefully approached the water. Lying still on the glass smooth surface was what at first glance looked like wood, but it had tendrils of orange material through it. There was more than one; roughly about ten feet long, they must have been organic as they were giving off a disgusting ammonia smell that made him hold his breath. Looking across the surface of the mess, Alex could see hundreds of the worms they had encountered in the upper caves that had so effectively ended Mike Lennox’s life. Some of them were as thick as his wrist and looked like small blind snakes.
Alex kneeled to get a better look and could make out metal objects that might have been rock climbing cams, coloured canvas and perhaps the broken handle of a gun. Alex knew Aimee was approaching before she kneeled down to examine what Alex was looking at.
“It stinks.” After Alex spoke he turned to look at Aimee; a single tear was streaking her dirt-stained face.
“That’s Tom’s jacket in there. I’ve only ever seen this type and size of excretion as coprolite—fossilised shit. Oh god, this is all that’s left of him and probably the entire party he came here with.”
“I’m sorry, Aimee. I know he meant a great deal to you.”
Aimee sniffed and wiped her cheek, then looked up at Alex. She started to laugh softly as tears welled in her eyes.
“You know, if anyone knew how to get himself into shit, it’d be Tom.”
Alex smiled at her as she looked back down at the large excreted packages. “At least now I know and can stop worrying. His suffering is long over.” A strong ammonia smell engulfed them. “Phew, that smell is a mixture of the cephalopod feces and ammonia. They compress and package all the indigestible items from their meals and expel them.”
“Great. Don’t tell me we’re right in the creature’s lair.”
“Maybe, maybe not—they’re very rare. Cephalopods usually hide them or deposit them away from their
homes to throw off predators. However, they’re usually tiny, so I doubt predators exist for these things.” Aimee rubbed her eyes as if to clear away the image of Tom’s last seconds on earth. “This thing has got to be hundreds of feet long and though it might not be close, this must be near to where it lives. We need to get out of here or we could end up in the next pile that it excretes.”
“I hear you. Let’s go.”
Twenty-one
They came to the end of the beach and stared fearfully into the small bay that blocked their path. As expected, no one wanted to wade into the water to test its depth. Monica cracked her last glow stick and threw it out towards the centre. The water was crystal clear but the stick sank until it was just a dim, glowing dot some fifty feet down. There could be no wading; they would have to swim.
Aimee had also been looking into the water, but at something that looked like rice washed up onto the black sand. She walked quickly down to the water’s edge and scooped up a handful, sorting through it and squeezing some between her fingers as she brought it back to show Alex. “This is strange. These look like abyssal shrimp. They’re still quite fresh, but all dead. These things only exist in deep water, and I mean deep; down to the hadal zone, twenty thousand feet plus. You see them all the time when they’re drilling in the ocean trenches. Strange, the water’s far too warm for them down here. These guys are from our world, not this one.” Aimee looked down into her hand. “Hmm, how did you guys get here?”
“Could they have been washed in somehow?” Alex looked quickly into her palm at the small crustaceans and then turned to focus again on the dark water in front of them.
“Washed in?” Aimee seemed to ponder the question as she walked back up to where Matt was standing.
Alex noticed the team was standing well back from the small inlet. After what he suspected lurked in those depths even he was against taking to the water. Looking up, all Alex could see was an almost vertical rock face covered in some odd-looking plants and mosses. He knew his great strength could carry him across the cliff with minimal handholds but wasn’t sure about the rest of his group.
Monica, who had also been looking up at the rock face, moved down the beach to Alex. “There are plenty of choices. How high do you want us to go before dropping back down?”
“I don’t know how far up we need to be to feel safe, so I’ll take the route that’s quickest and anything above the water line,” he said.
“OK, the safest wall traversal I can see starts at the sharp rock just there and goes vertical for twenty feet, then travels across to that reddish-looking bush, and then continues up again for another ten feet.” Monica continued to map out the cliff trail for Alex; he admired her expertise as handholds and ledges he missed in his quick scan were now visible once they’d been pointed out by a rock climbing expert.
“It’s only about a hundred fifty feet or thereabouts, but we’ll need to climb vertically in some areas and given our level of fatigue that’s going to be extremely taxing. I’ll hammer in a guide rope, but whoever is bringing up the rear will need to unhook the line so I can draw it forward and re-use the tether.”
“I’ll do that.” Alex volunteered as he knew he was the only one other than Monica who could get across the wall without any guidelines.
“I’m going next to Monica.” Matt was quick to offer to keep close to her so he could do his best to keep her safe, and Monica was happy for him to be there so she in turn could keep watch over him.
“OK, Dr. Silex, you go next, followed by Tank, and then Dr. Weir.” Alex wanted either himself or Tank to be close to Silex at all times. He was becoming more remote from the group by the hour and Alex now considered him another potential danger that must be contended with.
The climb was not quick and, as Monica said, it was very tiring on already exhausted muscles. Though the fingertips of their caving gloves afforded an excellent grip, it was slippery, and every inch of the way was covered in moss or greasy, moist lichens. Startled cave lice like armoured many-legged rats scuttled out from handholds or leaped past their faces to the water below. Monica guided them along the easiest path she could have found and, true to her word, every ten feet she inserted a cam and threaded a guide rope for handholds. She hitched the rope at chest level so the team could stay flattened to the wall—a height that proved very useful as some of the ledges they inched their way along were less than a foot wide.
After climbing, crawling and inching their way forward for over an hour, they stopped to catch their breath. They were over halfway across the stretch of dark water and they found themselves on a slightly wider shelf. The small resting ledge afforded them space to crouch or sit down carefully as its two-foot width was perhaps the widest place they were likely to encounter on the climb. If not for their fatigue and concern for their predicament, they would have said the view was almost magical. In some places they still could not quite make out the ceiling of the giant underground cavern as it was indistinct in the heights and obscured by a light mist. The enormous black sea stretched away into the distance and they could see hundreds of beaches like their own—some barren, others moving with the sea scorpions they had previously encountered, and some with other strange animals that would have been a paleobiologist’s dream. While they watched, high up in the mist something with the wingspan of a small plane looped down and back up to disappear again into the primeval fog.
“This place makes the Galapagos Islands seem boring. Imagine a biological expedition here to map and study the environment. How many new species would they find, or old species we haven’t seen for millions of years? And what secrets are beneath that water.” Aimee seemed to be musing to herself. “There may even be ancient species that have followed some completely different evolutionary path and turned into something totally new by now.”
“After what we’ve seen, I’m thinking they should bring a harpoon cannon,” offered Matt.
Under Tank’s enormous weight the ledge silently cracked and was held to the rock face only by tendrils of the strange ferns that grew all along the cliff walls. It just held as he passed, but when Aimee set her foot firmly with all her weight on the weakened rock it gave way. At that precise moment she also took both her hands off the rope so she was tipped outward as the ledge disappeared from under her. She flailed her hands back at the rope but she had already moved too far out from the rock face and was beginning to fall.
Alex flew towards her and caught her by the wrist, managing to swing her down and back up to the ledge. Alex watched as her pistol flipped up and out of her belt and pinwheeled towards the water. “Grab on,” he hissed through clenched teeth. It wasn’t that Aimee was heavy, but the angle he held her at while precariously holding the rock ledge with one hand made it a very difficult manoeuvre. To make matters worse, loose rock was falling around them and a fist-sized chunk struck Alex on the side of his head. Luckily the damage to his skull was minimal due to his cave helmet but his infra-red scope was knocked off and fell slowly to the water nearly fifty feet below.
Aimee couldn’t stop shivering. She felt her reserves were almost gone now. She hated heights, she hated small places and she hated the dark. She kept her face pressed against the cold stone wall for a second until her heart rate slowed and then looked up at Alex. He immediately made her feel calm. Who was he? How could he be so quick and never seem to fatigue or falter?
Monica clambered back across the rock face, passing over Matt and Silex as she scaled nimbly down to hold Aimee close to the wall. “OK, I’ve got you.” Monica had Aimee round the waist and both of them were able to rest and slow their breathing against the cliff; however, they now found themselves about ten feet below the main group.
After Alex had released his grip and let Aimee drop into Monica’s hands, he was about to lower himself down to their ledge when he noticed the wave—it wasn’t large, no more than a foot high, but it shouldn’t have been there. There were no winds or moon to pull any tides down here. Something large was coming at
them under the water.
Matt had clambered down as well and brought the end of the rope with him. Aimee had settled enough to begin climbing again, and Monica was planning her new climb path now that she, Matt and Aimee had to take a different route across the rock face.
It was at that moment that Silex decided to act—Tank was preoccupied with watching the group beneath him and Alex was looking down at the water below. Silex edged himself closer to Tank and in one swift movement he unclipped and withdrew his sidearm. The polymer-framed 9 mm was a light, lethal-looking pistol and was a no–gas compression model. Tank reacted instinctively and reached for his holster; it was a mistake. Silex had been hoping he would do this and responded by swinging his other hand at Tank’s now exposed neck. In the scientist’s hand was the golden dagger from the fallen Aztlan warrior and he struck with the speed of a snake. Tank managed to bring his shoulder up slightly and avoid a death strike into his carotid artery but the knife still plunged several inches into the trapezium muscle bunch between his shoulder and throat—painful and potentially debilitating but not lethal, especially for someone with Tank’s enormous muscle mass. However, it threw Tank off balance and he started to slip. He fell to his knee but managed to keep his other hand clamped around the rope. Silex took off across the rock face, throwing all caution to the wind, or perhaps with the carelessness of the insane.
Seeing Silex’s attempted murder of his HAWC, Alex almost screamed with rage. He felt as though his chest was about to burst as the furies demanded he go after the scientist; he wanted to tear the man limb from limb, to utterly obliterate him. They should have gone another way, he should have been watching the man; but then he would have lost Aimee, he would have lost them all. He couldn’t be everywhere. He held on to the cave sill and brought his fingers together; some of the rock broke off and exploded to dust in his fist. Not now, he thought. He breathed deeply and the rage began to settle again.
