The Invasive

by Michael Hodges

  “Are you coming?” Angela asked. “The note said apartment eight.”

  “Why are we doing this?”

  “Because it’s the only thing we can do.”

  They crept up the blackened stairs past the charcoaled woodwork, and Bishop flashed back to all that smoke and heat and the frantic barking which increased the panic and swirling vision. He reached out to a charred wall to ground himself.

  “You OK?” Angela asked, looking back.

  “I’ll be fine,” he said.

  A moment later, they reached the hallway to the second story. He wanted to turn and run. The blackened beams mocked him, the torched yellow plaster leaping at him in twisted, haunting shapes.

  Angela walked ahead of him, peering into each blackened room. Bishop wondered why in the hell she was doing this.

  Then Angela stopped and put her hands to her mouth. Her eyes lit with the wonder of a child gazing upon a Christmas tree on the big morning.

  She waved to Bishop frantically.

  Why was she doing this? Did she hate him? Bishop swallowed and stumbled down the hallway, claustrophobic from the panic.

  He followed Angela’s pointing arm, and there inside the apartment of Robert Jenkins was a dog, curled up in the corner on a burned comforter. The dog was scratched and bloodied, but clearly alive.

  Bishop bolted into the room screaming his lungs out with unbridled happiness, and Yutu shot up from his deep, healing slumber and wagged his tail. Then the pooch leaped into the arms of the man who had saved his life, whimpering and yipping.

  Angela joined in, crying with complete disbelief. In a time of madness and death, here at Robert Jenkins apartment on Main Street, there was something for the world to behold.

  Bishop held him in his arms, squeezing him. Yutu licked his face.

  “You’re such a good boy,” Bishop said, burying his head into Yutu’s neck. “Such a good boy.”

  The mangled, burnt apartment building was a million miles away. All Bishop felt was love.

  “I missed you so much,” Angela said with a huge grin, patting Yutu on the head as Bishop held him.

  Bishop stared in wonder and happiness, a big, fresh grin stuck across his face. All the anxiety and death peeled away as he watched his beloved Yutu.

  “I thought I lost you, boy, I’m so glad to see you again!”

  “He came back to find Robert,” Angela said.

  Bishop nodded as Yutu licked his face. Then Yutu twirled in place and licked and bobbed at Angela.

  “How did you do it, boy? How in the heck did you escape?” Bishop asked.

  Yutu barked, for although he could not understand humans, he knew The Man was asking him a question, and a bark was the only way he could reply. And then Yutu smelled something on The Woman—something he’d known a long time. He sniffed her pocket and wagged his tail.

  “The ring,” Angela said. She took it out, let Yutu sniff it and then hooked it onto the metal ring of the collar she’d taken from Denson’s General Store. She clipped the collar onto him, and Yutu puffed his chest out and raised his muzzle, proud of his prize.

  They left the apartment of Robert Jenkins and piled into the truck.

  In the front seat, Angela’s serious eyes met Bishop’s.

  “We need to bury someone,” she said.

  Bishop nodded.

  They parked back at Denson’s and let Yutu out of the vehicle, and Yutu immediately raced towards the decayed body of The First Man.

  Bishop and Angela allowed it because it’s better to know than not to.

  Yutu nuzzled and cuddled with The First Man, yipping and yowling.

  In the late afternoon, Yutu moved away from Robert Jenkins and towards Bishop and Angela, and they knew it was time to bury the body. Tools were procured from the general store, and a proper grave was dug for a good man and good dog owner. They rolled Robert Jenkins into a blue plastic tarp and lowered him into the grave while Yutu looked on with his paws at the edge, tilting his head as the tarp was lowered.

  Yutu remained until the last patch of dirt was thrown upon the good man and even until Bishop started the truck. It was only when Bishop gave the truck a bit of gas that Yutu bolted from the grave and to the vehicle, leaping inside as Angela opened the door.

  The road was free of the terrible creatures.

  “Like Colbrick said, sometimes life just throws a surprise at you,” Bishop said.

  “I like this surprise,” Angela said, hugging Yutu as he sat on her in the front seat.

  Bishop peered out over the land that his father loved and which he too had fallen in love with many years ago. But he had come to learn one thing as he marveled at the wonderful passengers in this ravaged truck—that no matter how beautiful a place may be, it’s the people and living things you care about that really matter.

  *

  The damaged truck rumbled down Highway 18.

  Behind it, out of the shadowy vegetation, a creature emerged that the hopeful passengers did not see. The animal walked with confidence and carried a muscular hump that connected to powerful claws and forelegs. The head was dish-shaped with a distinguished, blocky snout, and the native animal flashed its sharp teeth. It ambled, yellow claws clacking on the asphalt trail which it did not like, for man had not been kind to it. It was from the hot and dangerous roads that the bear sought shelter, heading west up towards the alpine meadows to seek hiding and food. Soon, it would look for a den, because winter waits for no one, especially in the Apex Mountains.

  *

  “What now?” Bishop asked as he watched Big J Meadow from one of the paddocks.

  “We wait for the feds to show,” Colbrick said. “I suppose they’ll have lots of questions.”

  “Not a surprise,” Angela said, gesturing with a bandage-free hand. “Not looking forward to that, at all.”

  Colbrick nodded.

  As the three survivors gazed across the meadow at a pair of feeding white-tailed deer, Yutu bounded off to the tree line. The affable pooch growled and pulled something out of a shadowy patch of bracken ferns.

  “Whatcha got, boy?” Angela asked.

  Yutu trotted towards them, wagging his tail. Something squirmed in his jaws, and he dropped it at their feet. The little creature squeaked and limped away on six legs. Its tag did not flash.

  The End

  Read on for a free sample of Intulo: The Lost World

  Michael Hodges is an American speculative fiction writer located in Missoula, Montana. His short stories have appeared in over twenty magazines and anthologies, and his debut novel, The Puller, was released on April 24, 2015. The film rights for The Puller were purchased by Hollywood producer Sonny Mallhi, producer of the horror classic The Strangers. Foreign language rights were purchased by Luzifer Verlag, and The Puller was translated and released in Germany. Michael is also a member of SFWA and the HWA.

  Michael is represented by Laura Wood of FinePrint Literary, NYC.

  He also taught a writing panel with Game of Thrones editor Anne Groell (“How to Improve Your Novel’s Ending”, Missoula Con, 2015), and a panel with best-selling Eragon author Christopher Paolini.

  https://www.facebook.com/MichaelHodgesAuthor/

  1

  December 21, 2012 Van Gotts Ngomo Mine, South Africa –

  Frederick Means studied the crumbling rock in his hand for a moment through his magnifying lens, quietly muttering to himself. He replaced the lens in his shirt pocket and tossed the rock to the floor to join the many others that littered the mineshaft. Too many, he thought. He examined the walls and pried loose a stone with his fingers. It took little effort. The rock face was rotten, ready to collapse.

  A bead of sweat rolled into his eye. He took his handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped the sheen of perspiration from his forehead. A rivulet of sweat immediately ran from beneath his hardhat to replace it. He removed his hardhat, swiped the handkerchief across his thinning hair, and shoved it back down on his head, sighing in frustration when another drop
stung his eye. It was a losing battle fighting sweat in the hot, humid tunnel deep beneath the ground.

  “Damn hot,” he complained to his companion, Paul Mbussa, a Zulu driller. The driller’s ebony skin glistened with sweat, but his broad smile revealed ivory teeth.

  “43 degrees Centigrade, baas,” he said.

  Frederick flinched at Mbussa’s use of the Afrikaans word for boss, a term he despised as being too reminiscent of the old days of apartheid. “Nothing ever bothers you, does it Paul?”

  The driller dropped his smile and glanced uneasily at the tunnel roof half a meter above his head. Tiny fractures were already visible in the freshly drilled roof. “Thirty-nine-hundred meters of bad rock like this does.”

  Frederick flinched, remembering why they were so deep in the new adit, a short side tunnel drilled perpendicular to the main ore-bearing rock. “Yes, it is much too friable. I can easily crumble it in my hand. I don’t need a pick to scale loose rock from the walls. It sloughs away on its own. I see lots of kimberlite, some limestone, and greenstone, but hardly any harder dolomitic rock. I told Verkhoen it would be too dangerous to tunnel here, but he ignored me. Even if the gold vein continues this deep, I doubt it would be profitable to extract it.”

  Using his iPad, he snapped several photos of the rock face as proof with which he could confront Klaus Verkhoen. The often-captious Van Gotts Mining Corporation CEO resented any challenge to his authority, treating them as personal attacks. He had a long memory and no qualms about using his considerable power for petty and often brutal reprisals.

  Mbussa hesitated, looked around to see no one was within earshot, and spoke quietly. “The younger Verkhoen is much like the father, Heinrich. He is ruthless and determined. More people will die here.”

  Frederick thought of the hundreds of miners, mostly poor blacks, who died each year from cave-ins, falls, lung disease, and machinery accidents, all for a shiny yellow substance for which men had fought and died for centuries. There had to be a point at which a human life was worth more than a few flakes of gold per ton of ore.

  “Not if I have anything to do with it,” he said. “I informed Verkhoen this morning that I would go directly to the Board if I must.” A surge of determination swept over him, like a righteous cause. He could do something about it.

  Mbussa frowned and shook his head slowly. “Verkhoen will not like that. He is a dangerous man. Not good to cross him, baas, or Duchamps.”

  Frederick thought of Henri Duchamps, Verkhoen’s Chief of Security, a cold, calculating, vile man willing to do anything to further his career – Verkhoen’s watchdog. Inside he cringed, but he laughed aloud to assure Mbussa he was not afraid. “All he can do is sack me. Eve has been begging me to quit and take a job back home in England.” He shook his head at the idea. “No. Engineering some grubby coal mine in Wales does not interest me in the slightest. South Africa is where the real geology begins.” He pointed to the walls of the shaft. “Why, some of this rock around us is as old as the Earth. The Kaapvaal Craton is a piece of the original continental crust 3.6 billion years old. There is some speculation the gold field itself was brought about by a meteorite impact.”

  Mbussa looked unconvinced. “Gold from the sky, baas?”

  Frederick nodded. “Possibly.”

  “Our village sangoma says our god, Unkulunkulu, fell from the sky into a great swamp. I believe the gold is a lure to entice men into his underground lair where his demon, Intulo, devours their souls.”

  Frederick blustered. “Superstitious claptrap. You should know better than to listen to a witchdoctor, Paul. You are an educated man. ”

  Mbussa looked chagrined. “Yes, I went to the white-taught schools, but inside I am still Zulu. The old legends are in my blood. Sometimes, when the earth moans and the rock speaks to me, I hear strange voices.”

  “It’s just the rock strata groaning under pressure, especially this rock.” As if punctuating his words, a chunk of rock fell from the roof and landed at their feet. “I think you had better gather the men. We should leave. The shaft will need additional shoring if Verkhoen insists on digging here.”

  He glanced at the stacks of fifty-meter-long nylon bags filled with viscous slurry of liquefied mine tailings lining both sides of the tunnel to support the roof. They were easier to use than hydraulic chocks and longer lasting than wooden pillars and beams; nevertheless, the bags were subject to the same laws of physics and gravity. Already, dewdrops of grey slurry coated the surface of several of the bags as the enormous pressure forced it through the tightly woven material.

  He shook his head sadly and sighed. “I don’t see how I can stop him.”

  Mbussa smiled and changed the subject. “Have you told your wife yet?”

  Frederick replaced his iPad in its carrying case slung from his waist, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a small black box. Opening it, he produced a gold ring and showed it to Mbussa. “Not yet.” Mbussa examined the ring, admiring its perfection. “Gold from this mine,” Frederick said. “I had it made in Johannesburg. There’s an inscription inside.”

  “What does it say?”

  He dropped the ring back in the box, pocketed it, and smiled. “That’s for her eyes only. It should make a nice Christmas gift.”

  Mbussa laughed. “She will love you forever.

  Frederick hoped so. Eve Means was his wife, a biologist working for the South African Department of Education, a menial job for someone with her credentials. She hated South Africa with its politics and lingering racial prejudices. He had hoped she would come to love the country as much as he did, but to no avail. For him, a mining engineer with degrees in both geology and engineering, South Africa was paradise, albeit lately paradise at a price.

  She was six years younger and much too beautiful for a man like him. When he had first met her vacationing in Brighton, he instantly fell in love. He courted her relentlessly like a teenage suitor, and in the end, she had accepted his proposal. She was his life.

  The ground jerked sharply beneath his feet, and the walls shuddered and groaned. A loud wail repeated farther down the tunnel. Frederick knew the sound had not issued from a human throat.

  “Intulo!” Mbussa cried out. His face was a mask of fear, as his eyes studied the tunnel.

  The ground began to tremble more violently. The walls crackled as shards of rock became stony shotgun pellets peppering the frightened miners. Dust motes caught in the beams of the lights careened through the air like glowing charged particles shot from a cyclotron. The lights strung along the wall did an epileptic jig; then, flickered and failed. Frederick switched on his helmet lamp, as a blinding cloud of dust swept down the tunnel. Rocks cascaded from the roof, bouncing off his hardhat. Rock slurry sprayed from the crushed bags, drenching him in thick mud. He felt Mbussa’s strong arms shielding him from falling rock as he and the burly driller crouched together. After a minute, the trembling stopped, but the choking dust remained.

  “Cave-in,” Frederick said, coughing savagely. “Probably from a small tremor. According to the seismograph, there have been clusters of small quakes over the past few days.”

  Mbussa looked at him in the lamp’s diffuse glow, nostrils flaring as he sniffed the air. Slurry covered all but one of the reflector patches on his jumper. His helmet lamp played along the walls and down the narrow tunnel, now filled with rock and debris, blocking their escape. He shook his head. “I smell cordite. It was a blast.”

  Frederick looked at him in incredulous horror. “An explosion? Don’t be ridiculous. Who would …?” His legs weakened as realization hit him. “Verkhoen,” he groaned as the answer became obvious to him. “He wants to silence me, keep me from going to the Board. He can pretend to dig us out, wait until we’re dead, and start all over again. Bastard!” He worried about Eve. What hell would she go through, worrying about him?

  One of the miners who had been farther down the tunnel ran up to them, his lamp bobbing in the dark like a cork on the water. His mud-covered face was a m
ask of fear.

  “It was an explosion. The whole shaft has collapsed,” he exclaimed before coughing violently from the rock dust. Frederick waited impatiently for him to stop. “The tunnel is filled for fifty meters or more with rock. They will never get through.”

  The man was near panic. Frederick knew he could not let the man’s fear infect them all. It was up to him to quell his own fear and take charge.

  “Quiet!” he shouted and waited for their muttering to die out. “Listen. They will dig us out, but we must conserve our air.” The shaft was short and held little air in reserve. Rescue would come too late. He dredged his mind to recall blueprints of the area. “There is a second tunnel crossing directly beneath this one on 137 Level. The company sealed it because of water seepage. We must drill a small hole into the shaft to test the air for methane and carbon dioxide. If the air is good, it will help keep us breathing for several more days, more than sufficient time for a Proto-Team to reach us.”

  The rescue teams were trained and equipped to deal with emergencies, but Frederick knew it took time to organize a team and transport them through the kilometers of mineshafts. More time would be lost while they determined a course of action. Every cave-in was different. Proto-Teams had been lost by moving too quickly.

  He didn’t need to tell them that if the lower shaft was completely flooded, as it had been when the engineers had sealed it, they risked flooding their own shaft as well. They would drown as had the two miners caught in the flood two years earlier. Even considering the risks, it was their only chance for survival. A Proto-Team couldn’t rescue them until they first removed the tons of debris sealing them in.

  The portable generator powering the air compressor for the jackleg drills was distant enough from the collapse to avoid damage. Its small gasoline engine would foul their air quickly, but in addition to running the compressor, the light stand it powered would beat back the solid wall of darkness, providing a degree of comfort to the frightened miners.