by Greig Beck
Yang spun. “Tell me!” he roared.
As one, came the reply: “The mountain bows, the ocean splits before us; we are PLA Elite.” The men shouted the words, the loudest coming from the giant Mungoi, the ogreish man’s wide-spaced eyes furious in their fervor.
Yang held up a fist. “We fear no pain, fear no challenge, and fear no death.” After a moment, he dropped his hand and looked up above his head into the cave roof as if seeing the light of day, miles above.
“We are too deep, there will be no rescue attempt.” He waited, letting the words sink in. “We have been given a mission, and we will complete it.” He looked back at his men, but let his eyes rest on Shenjung Xing.
“Mission success first, then, we obliterate the enemy.” He pointed to the dust covered Han Biao. “You.” Then he nodded to the endless black depths of the cave. “Lead us out, fearless warrior.”
*
Hours passed, and the caves led ever downward. Shenjung Xing started to feel a coil of nausea from exhaustion, and wished now that he had spent a little more time exercising instead of researching.
Yang pushed them hard, and Shenjung guessed it was to ensure that physical exertion would leave little room for claustrophobia, dissention, or fear. Sweat streamed as the warmth rose upon the hour, and sometimes the walls closed in so much that he and the soldiers had to move sideways through massive fissures in the walls that looked ominously like they were about to close back up, crushing their insignificant bodies to paste between giant slabs of unyielding granite.
At times he felt like a rat running through a maze in the dark, and often they had to skirt around massive chasms that dropped away to fathomless dark depths. At one, Yang called a halt. The PLA captain went to the edge and crouched. He held up a hand, and the watching soldiers immediately quietened. He closed his eyes, and after a few seconds he half turned.
“Doctor Shenjung, come here, please.”
Shenjung approached and crouched beside him.
“Listen,” Yang said without turning.
Shenjung stared down into the depths, slowed his breathing, and concentrated. Then, there it was, the constant movement of liquid far down below them.
“Perhaps an underground river.”
Yang grunted. “This is good news. Water comes from somewhere and goes somewhere.” He stood. “Now we have two options – follow its source, or its destination. Either could be a way out. And a way to the sub.”
“Maybe not,” Shenjung said. “Its origination point might not be a place, but instead could be a thousand hairline cracks in the deep rock that allows seepage.” He also got to his feet.
“Then we have an easy choice – its destination will be our goal.” Yang put his hands on his hips, his chest out. “Following a river is easier than trying to push upstream anyway.”
Shenjung sighed. “Its destination could be nothing more than a buried sea, and we …”
Yang quickly held a hand up to his face, then leaned closer. “Comrade Shenjung Xing, we need to keep the men’s spirits high. Do you not agree?”
The man’s sudden movement made Shenjung momentarily jerk backwards. But Shenjung knew that hopelessness and fear would be a bigger threat to them than falling into a hole.
“Yes, yes, you are probably right. Perhaps it will lead to the surface somewhere.”
Shenjung looked back down into the shadowy depths. We are heading ever downward, he thought. And far away from the light. He turned to look up at the roof of the cave above him, feeling the oppressive weight of the millions upon millions of tons of stone. He hoped Soong made it out.
“Yes,” he said at last. “Water moving that fast will be a powerful erosion factor – and water usually finds its way out.”
Yang grunted. “Then let us find that river. Our mission depends on it.”
And perhaps all our lives, thought Shenjung.
CHAPTER 30
“Take five.” Casey Franks used a forearm to wipe her brow, and then motioned for Aimee to follow her.
The cavern they were now in was dust-dry and the size of a football field. The HAWCs immediately sat and sipped water, sparingly, but no one ate – all resources were finite now. Casey continued to walk Aimee a few paces away, and Soong stood watching with arms folded, looking edgy around the McMurdo soldiers and the HAWCs.
Casey blew air through compressed lips and stepped in closer to Aimee. “I’m flying blind here. We keep tracking the sub, and blow the shit out of anything that gets in front of us. But then what? I have no idea how to climb us back out.” She grimaced. “I can incapacitate an armed combatant in three seconds, can pilot a chopper, a tank, and even disable a nuke if I have to, but down here, that asshole Hagel is right; I’m outta my depth.” She raised her eyebrows. “Your report – you’ve been down here. You made it out. What am I supposed to do?”
Aimee ran one hand up through her slick hair. “What we do is survive.” She knew that their options were to wander around in the caves until their food, water, and lights ran out, and then just sit down and wait to die. Or maybe die horribly, but quickly, somewhere lower down. She looked past Casey to the lounging HAWCs, all armed and formidable. Casey was the same. If she gave them a choice, it’d be to face the horrors, to fight, and then perhaps prevail. None would choose lying down and dying in the darkness.
“We found a way out before. It’s sealed now, but only by ice and snow. Hammerson knows where that is.” She exhaled. “First we need to find our way down to the sea.” She worked at sounding confident. “You’ve read the reports, you know what to expect. But we can make it.”
“Yeah, I’ve read the reports. I didn’t believe them.” Franks raised an eyebrow. “The monster under the ice, huh?”
“You guys better wise up.” Aimee sighed. “I’ve been there, and I’ve survived. You like to fight. Well, you’ll damn well get your chance.” She gave Casey a crooked half smile. “High risk of death, for the chance at life. Good deal, huh?”
Franks smiled back, the scar on her cheek making it look like a permanent sneer. “Fight or die. Yeah, I’ll take that.”
Aimee looked over Casey’s shoulder. “The caves are still sloping downwards. That’s where we need to go. Once we find the sea, if we’re anywhere near where I last was, I can find our way to the tunnels that lead close to the surface. Then we need to get a message out for them to dig down to us.”
Casey put a thumb in her belt. “Hey, on the bright side, if those warships face off up there, this may be the safest place to be.”
“Maybe.” Aimee reached out to grasp Casey’s shoulder, and pulled her a little closer. “Just remember, as we get nearer to the water, we may encounter the predator mimic.”
“The what?” Jennifer tilted her head. “The predator what?”
“Great,” Franks said. She half turned to Jennifer, but kept her eyes on Aimee. “It’s nothing.”
“No, it’s not, Lieutenant.” Aimee straightened. “And if we’re going lower, then I think everyone has a right to know what we might have to deal with down here.”
“It’s not gonna help,” Casey said, folding her arms and looking away.
“What isn’t?” Dawkins said, coming closer, trailed by Big Ben Jackson.
Aimee could feel their eyes boring into her. Even the other HAWCs were watching. What she had told them at McMurdo could never prepare them for what may still be down here, lurking in the darkness. She didn’t want to frighten them, but maybe if that fear led to caution, then maybe, just maybe, it was a good thing. She drew in a breath.
“Back up at the base, I told you that I had been down here before. Of the several dozen people that went into the caves, only three of us made it out alive. What I never told you was what tracked us, and killed nearly all of us.” She folded her arms tight on her body, her eyes rooted to the cave floor as she spoke.
“The thing was an apex predator of extraordinary size and intelligence. It doesn’t exist anywhere on the surface, and hasn’t for millions of
years. It was similar to the orthocone cephalopods …”
“Cephala-what? Hey, I missed my last science class, Doc. What the hell is that?” Dawkins glanced from Aimee to Ben Jackson, and then back.
Aimee faced Dawkins, her gaze level. “A cephalopod is from the Mollusca family – octopuses, squid, cuttlefish, and Nautiloids. They’re old, been here for nearly half a billion years, give or take. This thing is like that, an orthocone, one of the oldest from our fossil record, but they were nothing like this thing. Down here it’d grown big … very big.”
“How big can it be, if it can fit in here?” Jackson glanced sideways.
Aimee tried to remain dispassionate, and let the scientist in her take over. “Ben, we can’t fit into anywhere smaller than our skulls. But this thing is boneless and made up of pure striated muscle mass. It’s enormously powerful, and can also flatten its cell structure down to be able to fit its tentacle tips in just about anywhere.” She grimaced, but quickly corrected herself. “And size? Maybe blue whale, maybe bigger.”
“Oh fucking great,” Dawkins said. His mouth stayed hung open and his chipped tooth was now showing. “And it’s down here, now?”
Aimee looked at him, her eyes unblinking. “We thought we killed it, but all I really know is that we buried it. So I just don’t know for sure.”
“Oh god.” Jennifer turned to glare at Casey. “What did you get us into?”
Casey’s expression was flat. “Hey, I’m here.” She held up her gun. “And we’re also damn dangerous predators.”
“Dr. Weir.” Big Ben Jackson cleared his throat. “You said it was a mimic; what did you mean by that?”
“Yes, I did.” Aimee nodded. “Perhaps another evolutionary adaption to allow it to get close to its prey. It has the ability to mold parts of itself into shapes; even human shapes. It tricked some of our team, got close to them, and then attacked. So don’t trust everything you see in the dark.”
Casey scoffed. “Hey lady, down here, it’s all dark.”
Aimee stared hard, and Casey held up a hand. “Okay, okay, we got it.” She went to turn away, but Aimee grabbed her elbow.
“One more thing; stay out of the water.”
“The water? I thought you said it hunted in the caves.” Casey frowned.
“No, this is something else,” Aimee said softly.
“Something … hey.” Casey spun to Soong who had appeared silently behind her and touched her shoulder. “What is it?”
“Excuse me.” The woman bit her lip. “But my colleagues, Lee Pinying and Bo Xingmin … they are not here anymore.”
“Not here?” Casey then tilted her head back. “Oh for fuck’s sake. Is it too much to ask that we at least try and stay together?” She looked over Soong’s head. “Rhino, Hagel, Parcellis, find our Chinese friends; they’ve gone for a walk.”
*
“That PLA soldier, he was one of us, but didn’t care if we were killed in the blast or not.” Bo Pinyin slowed as he spoke, fiddling with his pants. His shirt was already open, his tattooed chest wet from perspiration.
“No, not one of us.” Lee shook his head. “To them we are nothing. But remember, if the Americans are successfully ambushed by the PLA, we tell them that we were taken hostage by them.” He half turned. “And hurry, they are getting too far in front. I do not like this place.” Lee held up his lantern light. “And I can barely hear them anymore.” He turned back to the darkness, his brow creased. “Hurry up!”
Bo Pinyin was standing over a small opening in the cave floor and wall, his fly open and a solid stream of urine disappearing into the crack. He grinned in the light.
“Maybe it will drip down on Captain Yang’s head?”
Lee turned away. “Just hurry.” He wished he’d never come. The job was a lucrative contract, but now it seemed there wasn’t enough money in all of China to make it worthwhile. Behind him his colleague grunted, and Lee turned back to rouse on him again. “Hey …”
Lee was at first disgusted by the man thrusting his hips into a crack in the cave wall. He looked like he was trying to violently fuck the wall, but his face was warped with agony and horror.
“What are you doing?” Lee approached – one, two steps, and then three. He held up his lantern light. Bo was grunting and pounding himself right into the wall. Lee reached out for him, but just as his hand alighted on his shoulder, there came a weird sensation of suction against his calf. He looked down and saw his foot spanned the crack that Bo had urinated into, but now something was rising from it to encircle his boot and leg. At its very tip there was a small dark orb, and Lee knew immediately that it saw him as clearly as he saw it.
“Yi, look!” Lee quickly turned to his friend, but strangely Bo wasn’t there anymore. He yelped and tugged, but the thing suckered on tighter, and then something dug into his flesh.
He screamed now, the pain becoming infinitely worse as the thing wormed its way further up his leg, and dug in deeper to the meat of his thigh. Then it started to drag him down. Lee’s scream quickly turned to a long howl of agony.
*
Rhino and Parcellis checked their weapons, as Hagel leaned against a wall, chuckling. “Hey, Franks, seriously? After hearing the doc’s Halloween stories, you want to split us up?”
“Get moving, or I’ll make you go alone, wise guy.” Casey went to turn away, just as the hideous scream ripped through the darkness, making even the toughened HAWCs cringe.
“What the fuck was that?” Dawkins looked about to panic and Aimee grabbed him by the sleeve, hanging on tight. She looked to Casey.
The female HAWC swung back to Rhino, Hagel, and Parcellis, and motioned with her head to the cave mouth. “Double time.”
The three HAWCs didn’t blink, but instead spun and sprinted into the darkness. Jennifer babbled, and Dawkins’s eyes were wide and shining. Only Ben Jackson stood like a colossus in the mouth of the cave, legs braced.
Casey paced, her gun cradled in her arms. It was only a few more minutes before the three HAWCs came back to the huddled group. Rhino lifted one of the missing men’s lantern lights, still glowing.
“Nothing; there’s nothing, no sign of them.”
Soong’s fists were balled at her chest. “They ran off? I don’t believe it.”
Hagel pointed at the lantern. “Without a light? I don’t believe it either. That little tattoo guy was sticking to us like glue.”
“Then what?” Jennifer said. She spun to Casey. “The PLA?”
“Maybe,” Casey said.
“We must look for them immediately,” Soong said quickly.
Casey shook her head, looking off into darkness. “No, we don’t.”
Soong went quickly to grab at Aimee’s arm. “Please, Dr. Weir. We must find my colleagues.”
Aimee gently pulled her arm free, and rested a hand on Soong’s shoulder, looking into the Chinese woman’s face. “They’re gone.” She stepped away from the woman and turned to Casey. “We need to move.”
Hagel hooted. “Oh yeah, that is one stone-cold bitch.”
Casey Franks looked into Aimee’s eyes for a second or two, perhaps reading what was there, before turning away. “Move out. Double time.”
CHAPTER 31
The languid stream moved like oil as it traveled away into the seemingly endless dark cave. Captain Wu Yang walked out into the water to his knees, and dipped a hand, cupping some water and lifting it, shining his flashlight into it and examining it closely. He sniffed, then squinted – there seemed to be tiny dust motes floating in the liquid – rock particles maybe. He flicked his hand, and waded out further to his thighs, shining his flashlight down into the water.
“So, if need be, at least we will not die of thirst.” He turned back to his team. “But for now, do not drink. Only what’s in your canteens.” He wiped his hands, carefully walking from the water and over to where Shenjung Xing stood slightly apart from the soldiers.
“So, Comrade Shenjung, we follow the river, and hope it comes out at the co
ast or surfaces somewhere shallow enough for us to break through, yes?”
Shenjung looked from the water to the PLA captain, and then shrugged. “All options present the same chance of success or failure.” He turned back towards the dark, slow moving liquid. “But I agree that following the stream might take us to an area where we can potentially breach.”
Yang grunted. “We follow the river.” He looked at his signal locator. “Good; this is also the direction the beacon is emanating from, so maybe this is where the American submarine became wedged under the ice.” He lifted his flashlight, squinting into the darkness. “If the cave narrows any more, we will need to take to the water.” He turned, pointing to several of his men. “Switch off your lights. Lead and rear lights only – we need to preserve our resources now.”
Yang clicked his fingers. “Han Biao, Liu Yandong, take the scouting position, one hundred feet. Go.”
The two men half bowed and Shenjung watched as they jogged out along the black sandy bank. Yang turned to Shenjung, his voice lowered.
“Doctor, I estimate we have food for another forty-eight hours. We can survive without that for much longer. Water is now not a problem. But our batteries will soon be exhausted, and our lights will then yellow and fade. We can extend their life by conservation of usage, but …” He turned to the winding watercourse in the pitch cave, before returning to look at Shenjung with a humorless smile. “Darkness has a way of breaking the strongest of us, Doctor. It would be best if we found our way out long before the lights go out.”
Yang heard the faint scream come at them in a wave from somewhere far back, or was it far ahead? Flashlight beams came on, and flicked back and forth, before Yang barked at his men to shut them down.
“Nothing. Rocks settling, or water. Nothing.” He glared, and then turned to Shenjung. The scientist nodded once, but then looked away.
Yang turned back to the darkness, straining to hear anything more. He licked dry lips; he knew a man’s cry of fear when he heard it. Maybe one of the engineers was following them and slipped into a crevasse. He concentrated, but save for the faintest movement of water, there was silence.
