by Bill Schutt
“Death snow,” Wang had called it. And, though MacCready had personally witnessed its effects, he found it difficult to comprehend how the same fluffy snow mimics that swirled so harmlessly around him during his entire time below the mist became the fury behind the storm that burst upon the Chinese.
He was thankful that the death snow did not follow them. It had in fact withdrawn with the last Chinese helicopter, but its arrival at the landing area communicated that the minds who had conceived a killing wind, and who commanded it, were on the move.
Past sunset and throughout the night march, Mac had not seen any other Morlocks, but from the way Alpha kept pressing the group forward it was clear that the danger was quite real, and likely gaining on them. The little mammoth, too, was looking increasingly nervous—making frequent stops to sniff the air, before heading off at an ever-more-hurried pace.
By the time the first rays of sunlight touched the ground, Alpha led them far from the cliff-side trail and into a narrow corridor through an ancient seabed of slate. Soon after, what some of the others might have perceived as claustrophobia-inducing walls gave way to an open plain. They crossed over what seemed like miles of stone flakes mixed with the shells of oysters and clams, but these mollusks had been off the menu for more than seventy million years. In silence and with great haste, they eventually followed Alpha from the flatland into a maze of mountain passes bordered on either side by vertiginous walls of rock. Here and there, the walls dripped skyscraper-sized streamers of green icicles.
No time for stopping and looking or asking questions, Mac thought, noting that other sights along the way were just as puzzling. Soaring outcrops of colorful mineral veins appeared to be studded with leafy plants, but they were really primitive lichens and mosses—ranging between blood red and purest white.
“The Hardy Boys,” his botanist friend Bob Thorne had called these organisms, which had a talent for growing anywhere and under any conditions. “I’ve studied lichen that can grow on a dead guy’s skull,” Bob had informed Mac.
At this point, with the sun having passed high noon and with shadows just beginning to lengthen, R. J. MacCready was simply grateful that none of the local flora had behaved badly.
Despite the apparently desperate push for speed exhibited by the fleet-footed mammoth, Mac found time to make several more observations. He was disappointed that there were few if any animals among the lichen and white “moss”—though he knew this was generally the case for such environments—including the most species-diverse regions of all. He recalled the initial shock he had felt during his first trip to a rain forest, this particular one located deep within the Malaysian peninsula. As a graduate student, he’d come to study an oversize species of hairless bat by the name of Cheiromeles. He had been anticipating something like a Cecil B. DeMille crowd scene—this one starring monkeys, lizards, and every form of tropical wildlife he knew to inhabit the region. What he got was heat, humidity, and land leeches—hundreds of leeches. But these were not the wormlike parasites Mac had encountered while swimming in Adirondack ponds as a child. These bloodsuckers were six-inch-long hunters, as fast as they were active. And as he soon determined firsthand, their bite made the most pain-dealing bee seem like a mosquito by comparison.
Thinking about the tiger leeches brought back far more recent and even more uncomfortable memories of inchworm grass and skin-piercing bites.
Next topic, Mac told himself
Shifting mental gears, he noticed that Sergeant Juliano was acclimating well to the harsh terrain. Mac knew that the relative lack of wildlife suited him just fine and the little guy actually looked quite content to be where he was. Even the appearance of a lone raptor, soaring overhead, went essentially unnoticed. It glided high enough on an updraft, and disappeared fast enough, that the feather-phobic sergeant never had a chance to complain about it.
Also on the plus side of the ledger was the fact that breathing was becoming easier—far easier. Mac estimated that they had descended at least a thousand feet from the zone Jerry had once called “where helicopters go to die” and now the benefits of additional atmospheric oxygen were becoming noticeable.
Another positive was the ambient temperature—which here and there seemed to have risen high enough to melt an igloo (if there’d been one present). As a result, although the tall massifs that surrounded them were topped with ice, the mountain ravines through which they passed were intermittently bare of snow.
Mac noted the change, then forgot about it until they were passing over an outwash of white earth.
Yanni had stopped abruptly and was kneeling with her hand held flat against the stark, chalky-looking dirt. She broke what had been an hours-long silence. “Mac, feel this ground.”
MacCready squatted down beside her and placed his hand down next to hers.
“Jeez, this ground must be twenty degrees warmer than the air,” he said.
“What is this stuff?” Yanni asked, gesturing toward the stark white soil.
“It’s calcium carbonate,” Mac said, noting that there were an assortment of fungal puffballs growing on it, each nearly as pale as its surroundings. And given that there were no dark-colored rocks to absorb sunlight and heat, Yanni asked the very question Mac was beginning to compose.
“So where’s this heat coming from?”
“Must be from below,” Mac replied. “Geothermal wet spots, maybe? I’m pretty sure carbonate needs warm water to form.”
“Kind of like Yellowstone?” one of the Devil’s Brigaders added.
“Yeah, kinda like that.”
A pair of sharp whistling sounds and a loud grunt terminated the discussion. Mac turned and saw the same man whose question he had just answered stagger forward and drop to his knees. An eight-foot pike had torn through a point directly between his shoulder blades and now extended out through his abdomen. Surprisingly, there was no blood. The soldier’s expression showed nothing like pain—only shock at the strange object that had seemingly materialized in front of him. He locked eyes with Mac, then fell forward, his body sliding toward the spear point that had just embedded itself in the white earth.
Now there was blood.
A groan caught Mac’s attention and he turned toward it. Another spear had pinned Sergeant Juliano to the ground.
As near as he could tell, at least a dozen Morlocks had found them. Mac and Yanni ran straight for Juliano.
“Your two friends aren’t stopping!” Captain Pederson called out, pointing toward Alpha and the little mammoth.
“And we can’t, either!” Yanni shouted back, noting that neither of their guides had broken stride and, if anything, they were sprinting ahead at an even quicker pace.
Some of their pursuers were trailing along the floor of the ravine. Others were apparently making a camouflaged approach, using the surrounding cliffs as launching points for their assault. They were also exhibiting an astonishing, perhaps even desperate degree of accuracy.
Especially, Yanni thought, since they’re hurling their steel pikes from something like two hundred yards away—a feat that would have been impossible even for the most talented warrior in her village.
As if to emphasize the point, another sharp whistling sound provided a half-second warning, enabling Pederson to turn a kill shot from a lance into a glancing flesh wound to his shoulder.
“Fuck this!” he shouted as he, Mac, and Yanni bunched together in an attempt to drag the wounded Juliano out of firing range. The particular spear that had pierced the sergeant’s calf was hastily removed with no time to consider the additional pain or damage they’d just inflicted and not even enough time to wrap the wound.
Seeing that Mac, Yanni, and now Captain Pederson were struggling, Jack quickly doubled back. Drawing his sidearm, he fired off several rounds into the surrounding cliffs while the leader of the Devil’s Brigade took careful aim at what he determined to be the Morlock ground position. Without shifting either his aim or his gaze, he passed Jack three more bullets, announcing
regrettably, “Those are the last I can spare you.”
“They’ve tested our logistics,” Jack said, making his out-of-breath pronouncement while grabbing a handful of Juliano’s parka and more quickly dragging him along.
“I know it,” Mac replied, still supporting Juliano between himself and Yanni. Ignoring his shoulder wound, Pederson was now bringing up the rear—ever watchful for more projectiles.
“They know that in a pinch, we’ll leave our dead behind,” Pederson said. “But not our wounded.”
“Which serves their purpose by slowing us down,” Mac added, with a grunt.
The rain of metal seemed to have paused.
“They’re probably regrouping, no?” Juliano said, exhibiting a degree of calm that belied his deteriorating condition.
“Sounds right,” Pederson agreed.
Up ahead, Nora Nesbitt and the surviving Devil’s Brigaders had been ordered to maintain at least eye contact with their nonhuman pacesetters, and the invertebrate biologist was now waving her arms to signal their position.
“I still can’t believe you talked me into ditching those rifles,” Captain Pederson told Mac, as they slowly gained ground on the rest of the team. But it was Yanni who replied.
“Listen careful-like this time,” she said. “Without Alpha, we’re not getting outta here. And if everybody’s packin’ iron, we don’t have Alpha.”
“So how come we got to keep our pistols?” Pederson asked, performing a rather skillful backward run, while covering their backs. It was now all so sickeningly clear that if the Morlocks maintained their distance at the two-hundred-yard limit of spear range, then the pistol, compared to the accuracy of the rifles and Johnny guns left behind, would be rendered next of kin to completely useless.
“It’s called a compromise,” Yanni said.
“Too bad you couldn’t have negotiated rifles instead,” Jack said.
Yanni ignored the remark. “What I’m wondering is why Alpha’s former pals didn’t just overrun us as soon as the first handgun was drawn.”
“Afraid of gettin’ plugged, maybe?” the Devil’s Brigader replied.
“I don’t think so,” Yanni said. “At this distance you can’t hit any of them with a pistol. There’s something else goin’ on—”
Their conversation in retreat was interrupted by Mac. “Incoming! Watch it!” he called, just before a metal shaft smashed down not more than two yards away, propelling a spray of gravel at them. One fragment struck Yanni in the forehead, and a moment later she casually wiped away a thin trickle of blood.
“Yanni, you okay?” Mac cried, nearly letting go of Juliano before instantly correcting himself.
“I’m fine. Just keep going, huh?”
“Their throws are gettin’ less accurate,” Mac observed. “Strange. I think they’re falling back.”
“That’s good,” Yanni responded, “because we need to pull up someplace soon and patch Juliano’s wound.” His face is looking too pale, she left unsaid.
“Don’t worry about me,” Juliano mumbled, barely coherent. “No birds, though, right?”
Jack shot Yanni a puzzled look.
“Everybody hates something,” she whispered. Then she turned to Juliano. “No birds, Sergeant.”
“Spear-slinging giants, we got,” Mac added.
Jack realized that Mac and his Brazilian friend were trying to keep the wounded man awake and talking. “Nine-footers,” he chimed in.
“Well that’s good,” Juliano mumbled. “I hate birds.”
We know, Mac thought. Just hang in there. He and Yanni exchanged concerned looks and picked up their pace.
Thankfully, there were no more reports of “Incoming!” from Pederson or Mac—the last spear having fallen short by nearly twenty yards.
Up ahead, Alpha and the little mammoth had finally begun to slow the pace, but behind Mac and his friends, there appeared an unnerving sight—a line of Morlocks spread out across the floor of the ravine. The giants who had been stationed in the cliffs were presently descending to join what now resembled nothing less than a pack of alpine wolves—ready to charge.
“Jesus,” Jack muttered, checking his ammo, “we’re not out of the woods yet. Nowhere near it.”
The Devil’s Brigaders, having seen the Morlock formation themselves, moved into position for what was beginning to look like a last stand.
Captain Pederson, who was counting his cartridges, nodded toward the line of creatures. “Remember Custer?” he asked no one in particular.
“Fuhgeddaboutit,” Yanni responded.
“Well, it was back in—”
“I know when it was,” Yanni said. “But this ain’t that.”
“Yeah, how do you figure?” Pederson said, chambering a .45-caliber round.
“Because I don’t think they’re coming any closer.”
The Morlock formation, which had swelled to nearly two dozen individuals, surged back and forth in the distance, strengthening the imagery of so many wolves—now held inexplicably in place. It was as if a line had been drawn upon on the ground, across which they could not advance, toward something even a Morlock warrior feared.
By the time Mac and his friends had begun closing the distance between themselves and Alpha, the Morlock and his furry little companion had come to a complete stop. Yanni approached him, and though he was still wary of any physical contact, they did undertake another bout of their strange, hieroglyphic communication—this time presided over by the mammoth and somewhat constrained by the gritty substrate they were using as a writing tablet.
As the powwow concluded, and while most of the others were keeping an eye on the distant Morlock pack, the mini-mammoth passed something to Yanni, who nodded and immediately ran back to Sergeant Juliano. Mac and Pederson had by now applied a field tourniquet just below his knee.
“Here, Juliano,” she said, “you’ve got to eat this now, okay?”
Dr. Nora Nesbitt, who had been intrigued by Yanni’s interaction with their nonhuman guides, was suddenly at Yanni’s side. “What’s that?” she asked, as the wounded man began to chew on what appeared to him to be a handful of leftover spaghetti.
“Just a little home remedy Dumbo picked up,” Mac replied, without much thought and without looking up from checking the tourniquet.
“This stuff’s okay,” Juliano whispered. “Sauce sucks, though.”
Nesbitt ignored the wounded man and the chuckles his response had elicited from his friends. “What kind of remedy, Captain MacCready?”
Now Mac turned to face the invertebrate biologist. “Well, it’s not Dracunculus—if that’s what you were thinking.”
“Who’s drunk?” Juliano asked them.
“Never mind, Sergeant,” Mac said. “Just eat up all your spaghetti and you’ll be fine.” Then he addressed Nesbitt again. “Look, if we ever get out of here, there’ll be time to talk about all of this,” he said. “Right now, I think we can all agree that we’ve gotta keep moving.”
Before she could respond, he and Yanni redirected their attention to Juliano, whose breathing was already starting to come easier.
Before departing, Nesbitt also noted the improvement.
Mac double-checked that everyone else was out of earshot, then turned to Yanni. “I certainly wasn’t planning on bringing out that cave pasta—or anything else for that matter. At least not until we’ve had time to really think about it.”
“And time is what we don’t have,” Yanni asserted.
Mac gestured toward the sergeant. “Although your elephant pal just put a crimp on that idea, huh?” Mac said.
“Seems that way,” she conceded, and making sure to keep her voice low, added, “But that might not be so bad, right? Potential cures for polio, maybe even cancer.”
“Yeah,” Mac shot back, “then there’s Wang’s killing snow, carnivorous grass, and probably shit we haven’t even seen yet—all of it sharin’ that valley with Juliano’s spaghetti.”
Deep in thought, Yanni said nothin
g, so Mac continued. “Just imagine this flora and fauna being toyed with in some lab until they change it into who-fucking-knows-what?”
Yanni uttered a short laugh. “Now where have I heard something like that before?”
The answer, of course, was her late husband.
Yanni nodded toward Alpha and the mammoth. “And if anybody finds out what’s really in that valley—”
“—it’ll definitely spell the end of their world,” Mac said, completing the thought.
Misenum, west of Pompeii
a.d. 79
Eleven years after Nero’s death, nine years after Pliny’s return to Rome
At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 24, the first tremors rippled out from Mount Vesuvius. By noon a giant cloud covered most of the eastern sky.
A distress call was relayed to Pliny’s seaside home by flag signal from Herculaneum. The city of six thousand people stood midway between Pompeii and the estate.
Proculus, Pliny thought, before instructing his men to signal back. “We are coming to you, as swift as Mercury.”
As Pliny, now an admiral, prepared to cast off, his seventeen-year-old nephew undertook an assignment that had just been given him. Its subject: what to do with the elder Pliny’s original notes, the same notes from which the secret codex had been compiled. The young man implored the historian not to sail toward the very danger everyone else was fleeing. But Pliny waved him off, leaving the distraught teen with only a quote. “You may steal that one someday,” the older man said, trying to make a joke of the situation. Then, in typical Pliny fashion, he repeated the phrase.
More than fifteen hours later, as the eruption reached its peak ferocity, a family friend on a mission of rescue found the boy at his uncle’s work desk, surrounded by history books and apparently reading. Is he in shock? the older man asked himself, as all around the quaking grew worse and walls had already begun to crack and fail. The teen was not in shock. He had in fact spent the entire night seeking out and sorting through every scrap of paper mentioning the Cerae. He burned them all, in honor of his uncle’s wish that their valley, their world, should remain lost.
