The buzzing grew louder. Close to the edge of the abyss he frowned and hunkered, still stunned by its size but now terrified by what might be down there. He turned left and right, trying to pinpoint the sound, but did not identify it until moments before the first helicopter swept into view.
The big Mi24 attack aircraft and troop carrier appeared above the ridge line across the valley, closely followed by two KA-52s in escort formation. Help had arrived, and he hadn't even had a chance to call it in.
Their helicopter pilots must have reported the forced change of destination the moment his unit left the aircraft back at the scientific station. Budanov didn't know how long had passed – he guessed little more than an hour – but that was plenty of time for this new unit to be scrambled and sent their way.
He knew how much trouble they were all in for disobeying orders and scrapping an important mission, but right then he didn't care. Something amazing and terrible had happened here. But for now his main concern, his only concern, was for the surviving members of his unit.
Budanov popped a flare and waved it back and forth several times, then tossed it onto a pile of rocks close by. He was ten meters from the hole's edge.
As the three aircraft circled the valley and hovered for a while above the massive hole in its floor, Budanov edged closer. He kept his weapon ready, convinced that at any moment one of those tentacled things would surge up from the depths and come at him.
If it does I'll blow it apart.
But nothing came. He reached the edge, leaned over and looked down, and saw only darkness in that intimidating pit. The walls seemed sheer, and there was no sign of life. He thought of lighting another flare and dropping it over the edge... but he was afraid of what he'd see.
"Hold tight," he said, but there was no one to hear his words.
As the helicopters swung around and came in to land in a clearing three hundred meters away, Budanov jogged toward them, ignoring his aches and wounds. He wondered how long it would take to make them believe.
* * *
Their descent into the pit seemed to take forever.
Vasnev's screaming faded to a whimper, and Yelagin might well have been dead. Demidov tried to keep tabs on them both, alerted to where they were by the strange, shimmering luminescence emanating from the tumblers bearing them. Their bodies glowed, reminding Demidov of deep sea creatures – just as compelling, equally mysterious and alien. She couldn't help seeing beauty in their flowing movements, even though the tumbler held her with painfully tight tentacles clasped around her stomach, left arm and both legs. It was pointless struggling or attempting to escape, but as they descended deeper and deeper, she had time to plan.
She could not simply submit to whatever was to come. Vasily and his companions were likely dead, but while there was even the slightest chance they were still alive, Demidov and the remainder of her unit had to fight.
She had a knife in her boot and a grenade still hanging from her belt.
"Oh, my God," Yelagin said from over to her left. "Look down."
Demidov was glad to hear her friend's voice, but when she twisted and followed her advice, cold fear slithered through her veins. Down beneath them, far down, a faint glow was growing in size as they continued their descent. To begin with it might have been just one more tumbler, but as they drew closer she could see many separate points of illumination. It wasn't one. It was hundreds.
"Yelagin," Demidov said. "Vasnev. We need to get away."
"Captain, there are tunnels in the walls," Yelagin said.
"You're sure?"
"I just passed one. The glow of this thing lit it, just for a second. I don't know how far it went but..."
"But that's enough," Demidov said. "Vasnev? You alive?"
"I can't..." Vasnev said. "I can't believe..."
"You don't have to believe," Demidov said. "Do you still have your knife?"
A grunt that might have been an affirmative.
"We can't let them get us down there," Demidov said, wondering all the time what these things heard of their voices, what they thought, and whether there was any way they might comprehend. She guessed not. Hoped not. They were something no one had ever seen or heard of before, how in the hell could they know Russian? "If they get us all the way down, we're finished. Look down, scan the rock face, and when you see—"
"There!" Yelagin said. "Just below us. A ledge."
"Right," Demidov said. She'd seen it. A narrow ledge like a slash across the wall, similar to many they might already have been carried past. But this one was where they would make their stand.
As the creature carrying her flowed down the wall, limbs reaching and grasping, sticking and moving, Demidov slid her hand down her hip and thigh, bending slightly, to reach the knife in her boot.
This is when it stops me, she thought. It'll know what I'm doing, sense the violence, and one wrench of those limbs will tear me in half.
But the creature seemed unaware of the weapon now grasped in Demidov's hand. The ledge was close; they were running out of time. Without trying to make out whether Yelagin and Vasnev were ready, she slashed at the tentacles pulled tight across her throat.
The creature squealed. It sounded like a baby in pain, but Demidov was committed now. She cut again, then grasped the thing's body with her left hand – soft, fleshy, wet – and stabbed with her right. She felt the blade penetrate deep into the thing's hide and the squeal turned into an agonized scream. Working the blade hard to the left and right, she gutted the beast.
From a little further away she heard other screams. She hoped they weren't human.
Demidov fought, slashed, thrashed, cutting limbs and seeing them drop away into the darkness like exclamations of pain. A gush of warm fluid pulsed across her throat and face. She tried to close her mouth but wasn't fast enough. She tasted the dying thing, its rank spice, its hot sour blood, and as it dropped her and she fell, she puked into the darkness.
She slammed onto the ledge and the breath was knocked from her. Spitting, wiping a mess of gore and puke from her face, she rolled back against the wall and looked up.
Glowing like a ghost from the gore covering her, Yelagin was climbing down the rock face just a couple of meters above. She dropped and crouched beside Demidov.
"Captain!"
"I'm fine. Vasnev?"
"Vasnev fell. I saw him go, still fighting the thing that had him."
Demidov rolled again until she could look down... and wished she hadn't. She guessed they were fifty meters above the hole's base, and it was pulsing with the glowing things, all of them shoving forward to congregate around one place at the foot of the sheer side. Vasnev was plain to see, splayed across rock, broken, splashed with luminous gore. If the fall hadn't killed him, they soon would.
"We should go," Yelagin said.
"Go where?"
"A cavern. Just past the end of the ledge, I think we can make it. I saw it as I watched Vasnev fall."
Demidov stood, the two remaining soldiers holding onto each other to protect themselves from the dark, the fall, and the terrible glowing, monstrous things that lived in the depths. They moved carefully along the ledge, and just where it petered out was a crack in the rock wall. Standing before it, a waft of surprisingly warm air breathed out at them, as if this whole place were a living thing.
"What the hell was that?" Yelagin whispered.
"Doesn't matter," Demidov said. She had already heard the sounds from below, and a quick glance confirmed her fears. The things were climbing again. Coming for them, ready to avenge their dead. "We've got no choice."
Yelagin tucked her pistol into her belt and climbed away from the ledge toward the crack. Demidov followed. She had never been great with heights. Inside an aircraft or tall building was fine, but if she was on the outside, then the great drop below always seemed to lure her with the promise of an endless, painful fall. Knowing what was coming for her from below only made matters worse.
"Here," Yelagin said. She wa
s braced in the crack, back against one side and feet against the other, and reaching for Demidov with her left hand. Demidov grabbed her gratefully, scrambled, and soon they were inside.
It opened into more of a tunnel, relatively flat and leading directly away from the great hole. The wet, stinking remnants of the things they had killed still provided a low luminescence on their clothing and hair, and Demidov hoped the effect would last. They both carried flares, but they would burn harsh and quick. She couldn't imagine anything worse than being trapped down here in smothering, total darkness.
She tugged the grenade from her belt.
“Are you fucking crazy?” Yelagin asked.
“What choice do we have? They’re coming!”
Yelagin drew her sidearm again and put it into Demidov’s hand. “With respect, Captain, you blow the mouth of this tunnel, you could kill us quicker than those things out there. You’ll trap us in here, if you don’t bring the ceiling down on us. Hold them off as long as you can. I’ll see if the tunnel leads to something other than a dead end.”
Demidov nodded, switched the gun to her right hand and the grenade to her left. The bullets wouldn’t last very long.
She heard Yelagin move away behind her, using the luminescence from the tumblers’ blood to see. As the footfalls faded, fine tendrils whipped up over the ledge, and the first tumbler spilled into the mouth of the tunnel. Demidov took aim, dead center, and pulled the trigger.
* * *
"We're to place you under arrest and take you back to base," the Lieutenant said. He hadn't given Budanov his name. He hadn't even seemed keen to give the private any medical aid, but his medic had come forward and started tending Budanov's wounds anyway. While she bathed and dressed, another man – a civilian – took careful photographs of the injuries. Two others had disappeared into the snowy woodlands, each of them guarded by a heavily-armed soldier.
Budanov had warned them, but they didn't seem to believe a thing he said. All but the civilians, who looked terrified and excited at the same time. More fucking scientists, Budanov thought. That's why we're here in the first place.
"But my captain and the rest of my unit might still be down there," he said. "The things took them down, and perhaps—"
"Your fault," the lieutenant said. He seemed eager to move, shifting from foot to foot and scanning the snowscape. One of the men had thrown Budanov a thick coat, and he was eager for the medic to finish so that he could cover himself. All he wanted now was somewhere warm.
Demidov and the others aren't warm, he thought. They're down there. Cold, afraid. Maybe dead. But I have to know for sure.
"Can't you at least look?" he asked. "Get one of the KA-52s to hover over the hole, shine a light down?"
"We're not staying long enough for that," the lieutenant said. He was a tall, brash man, young for his rank, but Budanov sensed a good military mind behind his iciness. He knew what he was doing.
"You were coming here anyway," Budanov said. "Before you heard from our pilots. Isn't that right?"
"Not for long," the lieutenant said again, staring him in the eye for the first time. "Just long enough for these white-coats to get what they want, then we're getting the fuck out. You're lucky we're taking you with us. Your pilots left an hour ago when they heard."
"Heard what?"
The lieutenant glanced aside. Frowned. One of his soldiers ran across and stood close, muttering something into his ear.
"Everyone, back to the chopper!" the lieutenant shouted.
"But we're—" one of the scientists said. He was hunched closer to the hole, examining something hidden in the snow. One of them, Budanov thought, and he wondered whether it was one he'd shot himself.
"Do as I fucking say!" the lieutenant said. He looked rattled.
"What is it?" Budanov asked. Bullets were his only answer.
The KA-52 that had been circling the site dropped low over the hole and opened up with its big cannons, tracer rounds flashing into the darkness and impacting the wall. The explosions were so powerful that Budanov felt their vibrations through the solid ground, and snow drifted down from trees as if startled awake.
"But we don't know—" one of the civilians shouted.
"We do know," Budanov said. He stood, and just for a moment he fought every instinct that was telling him to flee.
I can't just run, he thought. I have to help. They'd do the same for me.
He turned his back on the helicopter and sprinted into the trees. No one called him back; either they didn't see him going, or they didn't really care. That lieutenant had been scared, and he'd had more on his mind than capturing an AWOL soldier.
Skirting around where Zhukov's body had been marked with a red flag, he saw a heavy white rucksack, dropped by one of the civilians. Coiled around its handles was a thin nylon climbing rope. He ripped it open, and inside were various devices and sample jars, and a radio.
As the cacophony of gunfire from the KA-52 ceased, the radio hissed into life.
"...leaving in three minutes!" It was the lieutenant's voice. "Ground Cleanse commencing eight minutes after that. You do not want to be here when the MiGs arrive."
Oh Jesus, they're going to blast the hole to hell!
Budanov crouched and ran closer to the wound in the land, tied the rope around a sturdy tree, and wondered just what the fuck he was doing as he threw the coiled mass over the edge and started to abseil into the darkness.
He descended nearly a hundred feet before he paused on a ledge, taking advantage of the glow from far below. From his pack he drew a couple of pitons and hammered one into the rock face as quickly as possible. Tying it off, he set his heels at the corner of the ledge and prepared to drop deeper. The seconds were ticking by in his head. How long since he’d heard the transmission? How many minutes remaining before MIGs started bombing the shit out of this hole in the frozen heart of the world?
The smell of methane lingered and he wondered if he was being slowly poisoned to death. Funny way to go, with bombs on the way.
To hell with it, he thought, and kicked off the ledge, shooting downward at reckless speed.
As he swung toward the wall again, boots shoving off for another rapid descent, he heard gunshots echoing up to him from below. He kicked off again, glanced down into the darkness… only it wasn’t truly dark at all. Far below, a pale white glow rippled and undulated like a strange ocean. Closer, on the opposite wall, the same glow shifted and crawled and slid along the rock, and now he saw them on his side as well. Slowing his descent, Budanov's breath caught in his throat.
He hung on the rope and saw the glowing, many tendriled-creatures coming for him, racing up the rock wall of the hole. He shot a single glance skyward, calculated how long it would take him to reach the top from here, and realized he would be dead soon. In reality, Budanov had known this from the moment he had snatched the coils of rope and run for the methane-cored hole, but now he truly understood what he had done.
Down was his only chance.
“Captain!” he screamed. “Kristina! Vasnev!”
Budanov kicked away from the wall and let the rope slide through his hands, nearly in free-fall. He rocketed downward, and the tumblers raced up at him. All of his choices had been made, now. From this point onward, there were only consequences.
* * *
Demidov slid backward, the jagged rock floor of the tunnel snagging at her pants. The blood of two tumblers cast a ghostly pale illumination in the tunnel mouth. The pistol was warm in her hand as she waited, heart pounding. One of the tumblers she’d killed had fallen backward off the ledge but the other lay twitching just a few feet from the soles of her boots. She dug her heel into the rock and shoved backward again, gaining a few more inches of distance from the dead thing and the ledge beyond it.
It hissed as it bled. That might’ve been the sound of it dying or just the noise of its warm blood staining the cool rock floor of the tunnel, like the ticking of a car engine after it’s been shut down. She whispered sm
all prayers, her voice echoing in that cramped space, and she listened for Yelagin’s return. How would they get back to the surface? If they kept themselves alive long enough, help might come, but what about Vasily and his science team? The hard little bitch she thought of as her conscience told her the man she loved had to be dead, but Demidov wouldn’t listen. She told herself Vasily had to be alive.
Though maybe it would have been better if she could imagine him dead. If she could imagine he no longer needed her, that she could simply surrender to fate, give herself over to the death that even now crawled toward her.
The dead tumbler twitched and Demidov jerked backward, taking aim. She blinked, staring as she realized it was not the dead thing that moved but a new arrival. Behind the cooling, dimming corpse, another tumbler had crept over the ledge and slithered toward her, camouflaged behind its dead brother. They were getting sneaky now, and that terrified her more than anything.
They weren’t just cruel, they were clever.
“I see you,” she whispered.
It froze, as if it understood.
Demidov lifted the gun, still clutching the grenade in her left hand. The tumbler whipped to the right, raced along the wall and then onto the ceiling, clinging to the bare rock. Tendrils whipped toward her face and Demidov back-pedaled hard, sliding backward along the tunnel as she pulled the trigger. Bullets pinged and cracked and ricocheted off the walls, sending shards of rock flying. Two caught the tumbler at its core, splashing luminescent blood across the tunnel floor. Tendrils snagged her ankles from above, others tangled in her hair, and she screamed as one of them curled around her left hand – where she held the grenade.
Should have pulled the pin. Should have just thrown it. Should have—
She shot it again, center mass. Three more bullets and the gun clicked empty.
The tumbler dangled from the ceiling, its tendrils still sticking to the rock overhead. Demidov tried to catch her breath, to calm her thundering heart. Setting the grenade into the cloth nest of the crotch of her pants, she patted her pockets and checked her belt. Still had her knife, but she needed ammunition… and found it. One magazine. She ejected the spent one and jammed the fresh magazine home.
SNAFU: Unnatural Selection Page 17
