by Nick Thacker
Jen and Dr. Pavan realized immediately that Nelson was right; the gunshots were loud. She had never felt the pain she now felt in her head—it was as if someone was standing on her skull, crushing it down into her body. Dr. Pavan recoiled and squatted down. Jen fared worse, dropping completely to the cave floor as the shots were fired.
Unfortunately, the scientists were fast. As Nelson’s gun fired, Jen saw the group moving as one, approach them. She blinked in response to the deafening shot, and when she opened her eyes again, they were there.
Right in front of her.
They were quicker than their smell, which assaulted her nostrils a split-second later. She thought she’d become accustomed to the smell of the waste, but this was worse. It was the rotten, decaying smell of flesh, of hygiene gone unnoticed not for a few days, but years.
She choked, crab-walking backwards into the recesses of the cave pathway. She didn’t get far. She bumped into Dr. Pavan’s body, both of them collapsing into a heap as Nelson and Carter fought.
It wasn’t much of a fight, though. Jen watched as the action played out, time standing still. In the span of a second, the people—creatures—pounced on the two soldiers. Their fingers scratched at faces, fingernails an inch long digging into skin. They continued to scream, each competing with another, the sounds supplemented by primal grunts and glottal stops.
Jen thought she heard herself scream, but it was hard to tell. She watched in horror as Nelson and Carter were pushed back, finally falling onto the floor. Nelson’s face was contorted in rage as he tried to fight off the attack. Carter’s was locked in a deadly focus; a will to live that belied the situation he found himself in. They punched, kicked, and pushed, Carter trying to reach for his sidearm. Nelson still held his assault rifle, but he had the wherewithal to not fire it, knowing that an ill-placed shot could be devastating to his own team.
Dr. Pavan found his feet, and he rushed forward and lunged at the nearest attacker, a woman of about thirty years who was at the outskirts of the cluster. He tackled her with a forceful head-butt to her waist, and the pair rolled onto the ground and continued the skirmish. A few seconds of desperate scratching and screaming from the woman went by, and Dr. Pavan finally gained the upper hand. He held her head in both of his hands, lifting it six inches off the cave floor. He slammed it down again and again until the woman no longer moved.
He started to stand but was quickly overtaken by the scientists. Two men in long-sleeve buttoned shirts rushed toward him and smothered him with their bodies, falling on top of him and the body he was sitting on. Another second went by, and Dr. Pavan’s body disappeared in the thriving mass.
Jen willed herself to move, but couldn’t. She was riveted to the floor, watching the scene unfold in horror, when she heard a gunshot. It wasn’t from Nelson or Carter but from farther away. There was no immediate reaction, but a second and third shot soon followed.
At once, the scientists and workers began to scatter. They shrieked and screamed but eventually started running the same direction—up the same path from which Jen and the team had entered. Jen pushed her body up against a slight indentation in the tunnel wall, but the running bodies kicked and pushed her anyway. She raised her arms above her head to protect her face, but through them she saw Carter rolling on the ground, also trying to avoid the stampede.
She looked a few feet farther, and finally saw Dr. Pavan’s body.
It wasn’t moving.
More seconds ticked by, and the last of the scientists cleared the tunnel section. Jen rolled over, laying out on her back in the middle of the floor, then finally came to a sitting position. She lolled her head back and forth and felt for injuries. Satisfied she was relatively unharmed, she stood and approached Carter.
He groaned, but seemed unhurt as well. Together they rolled Dr. Pavan onto his back. The man’s eyes were closed, but he was breathing. Jen shook him gently, trying not to hurt him or alarm him.
He slowly opened his eyes, looked up at the two of them, and smiled. “Ouch. I’m going to feel that one for a few days.”
“Are you alright?” Jen asked.
“I am. Very sore, but I don’t think anything’s broken.”
Carter and Jen checked him out a bit more, and concluded the same. They sat back and let the man recover.
“I’m fine, too, mates, thanks for asking.” The voice—Nelson’s—came from just beyond the opening to the cavern.
“Hog, that you?” Jen asked.
“Who else would it bloody be, Jen?” He stood up and stretched, his six-foot-plus frame extending to its full height. He cracked his neck, back, and fingers, as if he were a skeleton popping its own bones back into place.
Carter nodded, then stood. He pointed his flashlight into the open cavern. “Hello?”
He lifted his gun in his other hand. It wasn’t an ideal firing position, but now he could point with both the gun and the light. He called again. “Hello? Anyone there?”
Finally a voice echoed back. “Boss? That you?”
“Saunders?”
“Yeah. Just the two of us. We’re coming over; don’t shoot.”
Jen felt relief wash over her body, then she shuddered as she relived the past minute.
Carter’s light eventually found the two bodies approaching from the opposite side. The orange glow illuminated them until they were within twenty feet. Rachel Saunders appeared, followed by a startled and sleep-deprived Erik Statnik. The man’s hair was disheveled, and his eyes were drooping. He waved, but his face remained expressionless.
“Thanks, Saunders,” Carter said. “We were a little overwhelmed back there I guess.”
“A little?” she replied. “We couldn’t even see you in that mess. Good thing Erik told me to fire over their heads, or I’d have put bullets into each of you.”
“Good thing. I think we’re a little past the niceties, though. They’re hostile, and protective of their… something. Safe to say if we come across them again, we’re neutralizing.”
“Fair enough, boss. Where we headed now?”
Dr. Pavan was standing now, and the four of them entered the cavern together. “Let’s go back that way. We were heading down to the lower levels.”
“Same here, but we weren’t sure which way to take when we got to the fork. It’s about a few hundred yards back, but we decided to follow along this way. We thought we heard something from this direction.”
She turned and walked away, leaving Erik and the rest to follow along. “Wait,” Carter said before she could leave the room.
“You hit one,” he said, pointing his light toward the giant wall of fecal matter. In front of it, sprawled out on the ground, was a petite, brown-haired woman wearing a lab coat and slacks. She was dead, but Carter approached her and squatted down. Saunders followed and knelt next to Carter.
He reached behind the woman’s temple, eventually finding what he was looking for. “Feel this,” he said to Saunders. She did, frowning as she fingered the hard outline of the small device just beneath the skin.
“What is it?” she asked.
“We don’t know, but we found one on a Russian soldier as well. Nelson cut it out of his head.”
“Weird. So the soldiers and the scientists have something in common.”
“Right, though we have no idea what. The Russians didn’t get here until right after us. They were in the sub that attacked ours, most likely. But the scientists and maintenance crew, Bingham included, have been here for decades.”
Erik realized something at that moment and spoke his concern. “For what it’s worth, the Russian mercenaries seem to be completely functional, whereas these people did not. They were effectively brain dead, from what we observed when they attacked you.”
“He’s right,” Jen said. “Whatever this thing does, it’s not the cause of the strange behavior. It might be a simple tracking device, though. Something to keep tabs on the locations of the people inside the base.”
“Who would need that?” D
r. Pavan asked.
“Someone who was in control,” Nelson said without hesitation.
31
This was easily the most challenging experience of his life. As a 39-year-old man, Dr. Sanjay Pavan’s professional life had mostly been filled with research, teaching, writing, and lecturing. His “adventures,” taking place between residencies and teaching semesters, were certainly exotic and worldly enough that his peers described him as “very active” in the field. He’d traveled more than the typical marine scientist, even well-known biologists, who were known for how much they traveled.
But this was different. Never before had he been involved in a criminal investigation, and never before had the stakes been this high.
His wildest assignments prior to this had him exploring an underwater cave, climbing an Antarctic glacier, and hopping around tropical Caribbean islands. Still, all were officially sanctioned by reputable research organizations and staffed by professionals. He was compensated well, often a year’s salary up front, and another stipend upon returning with completed objectives. Even the most harrowing experience he’d ever had paled in comparison to this.
He remembered it well. They were examining sea floor vents in a tectonically-active region on the Ring of Fire, somewhere off the coast of Japan. It was an uncharacteristically shallow area, so they were wearing scuba gear for maneuverability. A thermal vent opened suddenly below him, and the lower portion of his left leg was scorched by the boiling water and steam that erupted from the fissure.
Everyone else in the group was fine, and his leg was treated and healed well. When he told the story at conferences and lectures, he would often pull up his pant leg and reveal the burn scars—each time to the delight of the audience.
Dr. Pavan was a humble man, born in Sri Lanka and raised in New York City. He had four younger brothers and a sister, and his parents worked for minimum wage to make ends meet. He graduated from New York University magna cum laude and was accepted into the best marine biology program in the United States, but soon became interested in archeology, eventually transferring his focus. Somehow, his humble and charismatic personality—no doubt helped by his good looks—won him a distinguished spot on a scientific vessel at age twenty-six, the youngest professional scientist onboard. He traveled the world for two years on the ship, joining in discovering forty new species of marine plant life, thirty-eight new species of saltwater animals, and defining and classifying previously undocumented rock structures in the Mariana Trench.
When he returned, industry publications ran stories on the findings, using his face and name as the poster child for the tour’s massive success. He found himself on Good Morning America, explaining in lay terms what his role was with the scientists, and was even interviewed on The Tonight Show. He continued his reign of popular marine science with a book on marine archeology, which was respected as a scientific exposé on underwater archeological systems and as an easy-to-understand introduction to the world of ocean sciences.
His popularity and fame grew, but Dr. Pavan was still an academic. He was constantly reading, writing, and lecturing, and he loved his students as much as he loved the subject matter.
When he was asked by Daniel Carter to be an ambassador to the United Kingdom for a “short, exploratory trip to an ocean research station,” he jumped at the chance. He had no idea what he’d gotten himself into.
As he followed along behind Jen and the others through the cave systems, he almost laughed out loud at their predicament. They were trying to find something—but no one knew what—in a research station built five miles below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean, and were trying to escape a crack team of Russian soldiers.
Oh, and they had a psychotic group of scientists trying to scratch their eyes out.
If anything qualified as out of his league, this was it.
He thought back to Lindsay Richards. It was truly unfortunate, what had happened. The woman was early in her career, but no doubt had potential in the field of oceanography. Dr. Pavan had only spoken with her a few times on the submarine ride and found her to be self-centered to the point of being abrasive, but she was nice nonetheless.
But he had no idea what would cause the other scientists to scratch her to death. It didn’t make any sense. The scratches were random and chaotic, and obviously deep enough to draw blood. It was like she had been attacked by animals. He pondered the situation more as the path ahead tilted up and began ascending slightly, heading toward the lower station levels.
Scratch.
He heard a noise from behind him. Close, but still far enough away that he couldn’t place what side of the tunnel it had come from.
He turned, shining his flashlight down the tube of rock. Nothing.
He frowned, then turned again and kept following Jen. She’d picked up her pace, most likely trying to catch up to Erik and the soldiers ahead of her. He started to quicken his own step, but stopped.
He sniffed.
He thought he could smell something in the air. Faint, but definitely something.
It grew stronger. Was it—
It smelled like the cavern where they found the group of scientists, and he knew immediately what that meant.
Scratch.
He heard the noise again and whipped around. He didn’t speak, but he stepped downward a foot or two.
The smell retreated slightly—or was he just growing used to it now? He listened intently for the sound, but couldn’t hear a thing.
He waited five seconds, then turned again. He stepped forward, shining his flashlight up the path.
Jen was nowhere to be found. He listened for their footsteps, but couldn’t hear any. The rock must act as a sound dampener, he thought. He started jogging, but stopped a hundred feet later when he came to a fork in the tunnel.
Did they go this way? He thought, then pushed the question away. Of course they did. This is the only way they could have gone.
But which path did they follow?
He was about to call out for them and follow when the sound came again.
Scratch.
32
Mark awoke, and his body reacted instinctively. His involuntary mind was now in control; his eyes remained shut, allowing his other four senses to quickly assess any danger. He felt by his sides and sniffed. He was lying down on a stiff mattress, the age-old springs pushing into his lower back. The mattress was situated on a cold metal bed frame, and his hands felt the rough edges of the bolts holding it together.
He couldn’t hear anything. Actually, that was the strangest of what his senses picked up. Usually the human ear could perceive even the slightest of sounds, given that a certain calm and focus was attained. Most civilians had no concept of true silence, given that the vast majority of them were constantly surrounded by and bombarded with the noise of daily life.
But Mark couldn’t hear a thing. He opened his eyes. They burned, immediately startled by the white brightness of the room he was in. He shifted, testing to see if he was restrained in any way.
He wasn’t.
He tried sitting up but found that his mind swirled, slowly reacting to the voluntarily demands he placed on it.
He must have been drugged.
Without moving, he looked around. The room was bare, stark even, with just the bed and a chair in the corner. Mark tried fidgeting to work out whatever chemicals remained in his system, but found his physical movements sluggish and delayed.
After a minute, he stood. His strength was diminished, but he was able to maintain an upright pose for a long enough time that he felt comfortable. He continued to analyze his setting.
Assess.
Analyze.
Abstract.
Achieve.
He walked to the corner of the room and looked around. It was perfectly square by his estimate, about fifteen feet on each side, lit by cheap fluorescent lighting in two spots. The ceiling was concrete, and a horizontal metal pipe ran along one wall that intersected with an identical vertical
one. The vertical pipe descended along one wall and ended behind a small water fountain. Below that, on the floor of the room, was a small round hole.
Three of the walls were concrete, matching the low ceiling. The fourth, opposite the bed, was glass, and he had to look carefully to see the outline of a door cut into it. He approached it and pushed. It was secured, and even by using his full weight, he couldn’t get it to budge. A small divot on the opposite side of the door seemed to imply that some particular person could, in fact, open it using a fingerprint or handprint.
It was a jail cell. Clean, pristine even, but a cell nonetheless.
Assess the situation.
Mark’s mind raced. He was in a holding cell. For what reason? How long had he been here? Would someone come to check on him? He knew they would. Whoever had taken him had wanted him alive.
Analyze your surroundings. He knew every feature of the room. There wasn’t much to see. It didn’t take but a few seconds of looking around to know that the bed—bolted into the floor and adjacent wall—and the water fountain were the only features to be found. And he didn’t need to ponder for long what the hole in the floor was meant for.
But why is there a holding cell inside of a research station? he wondered. He sat down on the bed again, trying to piece it all together. Whoever worked here, Bingham and the others, didn’t build this. This must have been planned from the beginning; from long before any of them were hired.
Abstract a plan. He wasn’t quite sure what he was supposed to do. He needed information, so that implied that he wait it out and see what happened. But he also wasn’t alone. Jen and his son were relying on him to find them and figure this all out.
But he had no idea where they were, and whoever put him here was most likely better acquainted with the locale. For now, he’d stay put.
Achieve the objective. He needed information, and he needed it fast. Escape options were reduced to just about one option—remain here until someone came along, then try to persuade them to let him out. But he didn’t need to wait around.
