Studying them closely, Hunter could imagine that thousands of years ago the fixtures had indeed resembled either tigers or wolves, but time and erosion had faded the finer features. A large section of the wall was completely smooth, and, gazing down, Hunter could see where it had broken away from the cliff long ago. Crumbled sections of granite, some weighing hundreds of tons, lay scattered across the valley floor.
At first glance the cave seemed inaccessible, but Hunter could see the remains of a trail, now unusable without climbing equipment, that had once led to the opening. Yet, while it would doubtless be a difficult climb for them, Hunter knew the creature could have easily clambered apelike to the entrance.
Rolling thunder rumbled over them and Hunter glanced back to see the storm approaching more quickly, streaking the black-gray wall of cloud with hazy lightning.
"We'll rappel from the top!" Chaney shouted, bringing the Blackhawk to a steady climb. "Looks like it's only about eighty feet, and we have gear for that!"
Removing the headset, Hunter walked into the bay to see Bobbi Jo and Takakura sitting somberly, holding fresh weapons. Bobbi Jo had armed herself with a dozen new clips and a Beretta 9-mm pistol. Hunter knew the sidearm would be all but useless against the creature, but he understood her thinking.
All of them were taking whatever they could find, mainly because they had little choice. Brick still carried the Weatherby, but the big ex-marshal was conspicuously low on rounds, with the bandoleer already half emptied. Still, he compensated for the shortage with the huge sidearm—a Casull .454—that would undoubtedly penetrate the creature's armor-like skin.
As the helicopter settled smoothly on the summit, shuddering slightly at a blast of gathering wind, Hunter turned to Takakura. He saw that the Japanese was armed as before. The katana, now well-used and proven to be an effective weapon against the creature, protruded from behind the Japanese's powerful right shoulder, and he carried a variety of primary weapons—a Beretta semiautomatic pistol plus at least six phosphorous hand grenades and a heavy rifle that Hunter didn't recognize.
Chaney angled into the bay and Brick threw open the port. Then Hunter bent, roughly lifting Dixon. Frowning with terrifying menace, Hunter reached over the CIA man's shoulder and lifted an M-16 and clips. Then he gave them to Dixon, knowing he wouldn't be stupid enough to attack them.
"It's game time," Hunter nodded, ignoring a half-spoken protest as he roughly shoved the agent out of the bay.
Hunter quickly grabbed a large Harris M-98 .50-caliber Browning sniper rifle from the bay. Similar to the Barrett, the Browning was a devastating weapon, easily capable of hitting targets at well over two thousand yards.
The .50-caliber rounds left the barrel at five thousand feet per second, and could penetrate an inch of steel plating. Plus, the gun's lethal effectiveness with the creature had already been demonstrated. But it was at least four feet long, with two-thirds of that in the barrel, so he had to make it more manageable for the close confines of the cave.
Reaching into a toolkit, Hunter lifted a lug wrench and unscrewed the bracing, sliding out the last seventeen inches of heavy barrel. The rifled extension is what provided long-range accuracy, but that kind of accuracy wouldn't be needed. The heavier section that was forged to the receiver would be sufficient for this kind of close-range fighting.
Then, working efficiently though it was an unfamiliar weapon, Hunter removed the scope and shoulder stock, leaving only the pistol grip. It took him two minutes, and when he was finished, he had a compact weapon that still held devastating power. As an afterthought Hunter reached back and attached two thermite grenades—phosphorous-fed incendiaries with a five-second fuse that vulcanized anything they touched—to his belt.
"Let's go!" Chaney said, quickly tuning the radio to a frequency beacon. "We need to get in there before this storm comes down on us! Everybody knows how to do this so we won't waste time! I'll go down first, and Dixon, you come down right after me! Hunter, you come next and let us know real quick if that thing is close or if it's even in there! I don't wanna be down there with my thumb up my ass when it walks up behind me!"
Slinging the Weatherby, Chancy shouldered a small Alice-pack loaded with flares and lights and was gone, descending over the ledge as if he'd done it every day for years.
It took them almost no time and then Hunter was standing deep inside the cave, staring at a tunnel that seemed to lead deep into the mountain. Behind him, flares burned red to the strong smell of sulfur, hissing loudly in a darkness made moist by mist.
Gazing down, Hunter saw where the shale had been disturbed by something passing this way. And he reached out, lightly touching the ground to discern the faint indentations.
Yeah, it was here . . .
He grinned faintly; he'd taken a chance, but he'd been right. It had retreated to the only place that it thought it could rest without being hunted and hounded. But they couldn't let it escape. For if they did, then it would only continue to kill without end or reason, feeding its lust for blood with more and more blood.
It had to end here. For each of them.
Chaney s voice was unnaturally subdued. "What do you think?" he asked. "Is it here?"
Hunter looked ahead into the darkness. "It's here. It didn't beat us by much. It's gone into the cave."
From the rear Brick growled, "How could it know the way?"
"A lot of animals can find their way back to where they were born," Hunter said, concentrating. "It's like they have some kind of genetic code that compels them to return to a certain place at a certain time. I've seen it before. It's nothing new." He rose and they moved forward, careful to keep the light as far ahead as possible.
As they moved, the tunnel widened, some corridors branching off into inky blackness. But Hunter could read the tracks now, even in the flickering half-light, and knew it was moving on a true course, deep into the vastness of this abyss. Its trail, occasionally marred by blood, was uninterrupted as the tunnel took a downward slant. No, the thing wasn't veering from side to side, distracted or confused by the connecting passages; it was holding a certain path.
Hunter realized vaguely that the thing's nocturnal vision was even more extraordinary than he'd guessed. And, unfortunately, that gave it a distinct advantage in this gloom.
"Wait," he said, lifting a hand.
No one moved or breathed.
"What is it?" Chaney whispered.
Hunter said nothing, staring hard into the darkness, and still they didn't move. Rising, moving along the walls, shadows lent an eerie atmosphere to the broken stone. No sound but the hiss of flares weighed in the air. Hunter finally spoke.
"It's there," he whispered, lifting the Browning. "Somewhere far ahead. I heard it."
Takakura had edged forward. He didn't look at Hunter as he spoke quietly. "What did you hear? I heard nothing."
Shaking his head, Hunter scowled into the vast dark ahead of them, stretching out infinitely to defy their torches. "I don't know. It sounded like ... I don't know ... like it was attacking. Something like that, and it wasn't close. But it wasn't far." He paused. "Another mile. Maybe two. We'll find out."
Dixon's voice was tremulous. "Jesus Christ, people, this is seriously not a good idea ... Look, let's just blow this place and bury the thing! You know, we seriously don't have to go mano a mano with this thing again!"
"I do." Hunter looked at him for a moment. "And that's what I've never liked about people like you, Dixon. You sent hundreds of people to their deaths, and yet you don't have any idea what death is. Do you know why you kill so easily, Dixon?" Hunter let the question settle. "It's because you do your killing with machines – with numbers so you can spare yourself the blood and the horror and the work. And that's why you don't appreciate anybody's skin but your own." Hunter shook his head, leaning closer. "Whoever or whatever gave you the right, Dixon, to decide who deserves to live? That decision belongs to God – not man. And especially not you!" Hunter leaned back, openly revealing his contempt.
"Fool."
The silence that followed was more condemning than Hunter's tone. And, shaking his head once more, he added somberly, "No matter what, Dixon, I'm gonna see that you're held responsible for everything you've done. That's a promise."
Turning away slowly, Hunter heard Brick grab the CIA man's shoulder and move him forward. The ex-marshal's burly voice had a grim intonation of doom. "Move on, boy," he growled. "You signed up to serve your country, didn't ya? So serve it."
Eventually the passage became almost like a shattered stairway, narrower and more defined.
Leading cautiously and in complete silence, Hunter no longer searched the shadows because the connecting corridors had faded. Now they were on a definite pitch that was carrying them directly downward, and in the distance Hunter saw specks of white light on the wall where the tunnel bent into blackness. Approaching stealthily, he lifted a flare and saw tiny leechlike creatures clinging to the moist stone.
The air was warmer, and utterly still. Hunter realized they must be at the base of the mountain, if not beneath. Yeah, they had come at least three miles through the cavern and were probably at the final chamber; this didn't appear to be a maze cave. Rather, the entire serpentine structure indicated that it led inevitably to a cathedral-like cavern.
Hunter had explored similar caverns and knew from experience what could be expected. And then, as the path turned sharply around a huge stalagmite, they saw it.
What was more amazing—the faded, titanic images painted on the sweeping cathedral walls, the underground lake that burned with a strange green tint, or the last and most terrifying discovery of all—Hunter could not say. But the last was, without question, a sight that chilled his blood and made his skin tighten.
Heaped in endless dunes and mounds and bleached crests, scattered across the vastness of the underground mausoleum, were hundreds of thousands of stripped bones—skeletal specters of some hideous subterranean slaughter. The scent of ancient decay, of old death, hung hauntingly in the blackened atmosphere, and as Hunter stared over the skeletal underworld he could almost count every bony finger pointing motionless into a dome of darkness, could almost register every crushed skull, shattered spine, or splintered bone.
To himself, he nodded.
Yes, it made sense at last, and he understood completely. Just as he knew that this ghastly tribute to mindless savagery was all that remained of the greatest predators ever to walk the earth.
Together they stared over the ghostly remains of a long-ago carnage that must have been the ultimate of horrors to behold. None of them broke the silence.
Scattered across the shadowed chamber, bony arms stretched silently from heaps of twisted, shattered skulls and taloned hands even now locked in combat—all that remained from a ten-thousand-year-old rampage that had decimated a nation, an entire species, in a single devastating battle.
Staring somberly, Hunter could read the scene, knew what had happened in this dark moment of history. Without equal in might or ferocity, this predatory species had stormed without rival to the height of the food chain, conquering all the world as they knew it, fearing nothing. With physical supremacy rivaled only by their inherent savagery, they had killed all that could be killed, leaving only themselves. Hunter saw the severed heads and dark skulls shattered by the sweeping black claws still buried in bleached bone.
It was a war, but it was only themselves that they destroyed.
Insatiable in their lust for blood, uncontrolled because the nexus of mind that powered their ferocity had no restraint or regard even for their own kind, the predators had eventually directed that unlimited thirst for blood and physical rage into this.
Hunter imagined that it had begun with a single attack that had somehow spiraled through the cavern like a forest fire. For once the rage was fueled it had met no barriers of consciousness. No, it had been pure and unbridled, and it had caught and spread as they blindly turned one upon the other, each rending and striking with that inhuman strength to slaughter the next.
Head bowed. Hunter imagined the wholesale battle as it must have been—monstrous forms slashing to dismember and slay only to be slain in turn. And he thought, dimly, that it had probably happened in the space of a few hours. The remorseless conflict had raged until there were only three, two ...one.
Finally the wounded survivor, if any, had perhaps wandered into the mountains and died or simply remained here and perished from age or some pestilence. It didn't matter; what happened here had been their death. Their own ferocity had been their doom. There were no questions remaining.
Chaney's voice was strange.
"Well, now we know," he said in an unnatural voice. He shook his head, attempting to control his tone. "They actually killed themselves off! And all at once!” An awed pause; “Must have been a hell of a fight."
Takakura shook his head, frowning across the ghostly maze of shattered bone, the slashed or shattered skulls staring emptily toward the torches. He gazed somberly upon a twisted heap of slender skeletal arms and legs that lay in a larger dune.
"Such stupidity," he said.
"No," Hunter remarked. "Not stupidity. They were never mindful enough for that. They were without minds, really, as we understand it. They were just creatures of impulse. They killed on a whim, a thought, the slightest inclination. Whatever controlled them wasn't the conscious mind. It's what all of us fear inside ourselves. The beast, the rage we control because it terrifies us.” He nodded. “We've evolved beyond that. But they hadn't. They were the closest thing to the unconscious mind of man that this world will ever know."
"And look what it got 'em," Brick grunted. He, too, revealed astonishment, but was recovering quick. "Guess it goes to show you; be careful what you ask for."
A moment passed, and then Takakura walked forward, igniting another flare and tossing it onto a ledge where it cast a higher angle of light across the room. Shadows vanished at the elevated illumination and, slowly, they moved forward.
Then a familiar scent reached Hunter and he bent, examining a black pool. Vaguely the size of a man, the depression was heavy and stagnant, and he felt the thick liquid with a hand, slowly raising it to his face.
"Oil," he whispered, as Bobbi Jo knelt beside him. "Here," he added, "let me see your flare. Stand back." He touched the wick to the pool and it ignited explosively.
The mushrooming blast swept past Hunter's face before he could jerk back. Shocked, Hunter felt his face for a moment, reflexively checking for injury. But there was none and the fire burned bright, dulling the light of their flares to insignificance. Now the entire room was brilliantly visible, and they saw cave paintings that had endured the centuries.
Faded red images of creatures that had ruled this region long ago were inscribed on the stone—images of beasts running, leaping, hunted, slaughtered. And as Hunter turned slowly he saw that the entire mammoth cave was decorated in the primitive art. Entire frescoes of huge animal hunts— whole herds of buffalo and deer driven from cliffs by hunters in ragged clothing—occupied vast spaces before another image, some kind of cleaning and gutting, was detailed.
Almost every image involved hunting, killing, slaughtering, as if that had been the dominating force of their existence. There were no displays of family or play or societal rights—not anything that would indicate culture or civility. It was simply the bestial exultation of carnage – of slaying and gutting and feasting. And as Hunter saw it altogether he was overcome by the wild, barbaric atmosphere.
Dark images of their own dead were displayed on a nearby wall. He saw the mangled image of a severed skull and felt an undeniable sensation of revulsion.
So, they were also cannibals.
He felt no surprise.
It would only be right. For they had no consciousness, no sense of morality or regard for life. So one of their own dead would naturally be as welcome as another creature's. Flesh was flesh, and any blood was warm enough if drunk quickly.
Staring about, he saw that the cave
emptied into a dozen large tunnels that doubtless led into lower levels, possibly more lakes or even to the outside. He didn't presume that this was the only entrance. In fact, he reasoned that there would probably be much more accessible openings, but most had been half-buried or obscured by the mountain's changing geology over time.
Everyone was fairly scattered now and Hunter searched the ground, looking for tracks. He saw where the creature had entered, how it had hesitated, as if in shock. And he began to wonder about the scream he had heard.
Could it be that whatever genetic memory the creature possessed didn't contain any memory of the war that destroyed it? Was it possible that it had come here expecting to be received by its own kind? He wondered; this scientific madness had created something that was in essence the equal of this ancient species, but it was also the twisted manipulation of nature. It seemed possible that genetic coding, distorted and erased by the unnatural transmutation, had been lost.
It had come here expecting its own species, and had found nothing but a bone-Uttered tomb. So its rage had been expressed in the only manner it knew—by an unchecked release that would have destroyed any living creature, if it had been present.
Hunter nodded; he could use that to his advantage.
Rising slowly, feeling the stiffness in his limbs from the brief respite, he wiped his brow. The heavy humidity, probably close to a hundred percent, was making all of them perspire heavily. Already Bobbi Jo's hair was plastered back across her head. She had ripped a piece of clothing from her shirt for a headband, and her battle-dress uniform was blackened with sweat. The rest were equally suffering.
"All right," Hunter said, turning to them as he racked the bolt on the Browning, slamming home a six-inch, .50-caliber cartridge. "I can track it, but we're gonna have to stay alert. This is its home ground, and it’s gonna use it. So look high, and get a shot off quick if it charges. The rest of us will back you up."
Hunter Page 48
