Forsaken

by Michael McBride

  Black Skull and Silver Alien pushed back the lid of the sarcophagus. It teetered momentarily before toppling down the opposite side of the plinth with a series of deafening crashes. The final impact shook the ground.

  She peered into the coffin and saw little more than a skeletal shape underneath rotted fur and that awful face. The eyes of the crocodile had been carved out, leaving dark holes through which she saw the sunken orbits of a man who had to be nearly seven feet tall.

  “Come out of there,” a woman’s voice said.

  Anya turned toward the source and was momentarily blinded by the light shining in her eyes.

  “We have what we came for,” Black Skull said. “We no longer need them.”

  “Until the remains are safely aboard the plane, we need them alive,” the woman said.

  “You are being paranoid.”

  “And you are being careless.”

  The man narrowed his eyes and appeared ready to argue with her, but turned away without another word. The balance of power had shifted. Maybe there was still hope after all.

  Anya waded toward the wall, careful to avoid the stream of water that bifurcated from the wooden lever. She stumbled over a submerged carcass and nearly screamed. She could positively feel whatever manner of creatures survived in there all around her now.

  “Slowly,” the woman said, her voice muffled by a golden tactical mask with an ornate Celtic cross, the arms of which curled around her eye mesh. The vertical post split her face to her chin. The man beside her, whose face was concealed behind that of a Kabuki devil, thrust his gun into Anya’s face for emphasis. “You two, as well. Do not make me repeat myself.”

  Anya braced her elbows on the wall and pulled herself up. She dangled her legs over the opposite side and waited for Evans and Jade before lowering herself into the water.

  The woman shined her light upon the men on top of the plinth. The shadows retreated from the aura of her beam, along with the serpentine silhouettes inside of them.

  “Wrap the body in this,” the woman said, and tossed a backpack into the chamber.

  Black Skull descended into the water and grabbed it before it sank. He removed a folded plastic sheet and a silver bundle. Tossed the plastic to his partner and unfolded the bundle, which ended up being a body bag.

  “Let the others go,” Evans said. “Please. They won’t tell anyone. I’ll do whatever you say.”

  “My dear, Dr. Evans,” the woman in the golden mask said, “a single hostage is worth less than none. Without demonstrating a willingness to kill at least one of your hostages, you cannot expect anyone to take you seriously.”

  The men carefully wrapped the remains, pelts and all, in the plastic sheet and lifted the bundle out of the sarcophagus. It was long and skinny and seemed somehow unimpressive for all the death it had caused. They stretched out the body bag, slid the remains inside, and zipped it closed.

  A shadow slithered up the wall behind them.

  This time Anya saw it clearly, but so did the woman.

  “Pass the body bag out to us,” she said.

  The men descended the plinth and splashed through the water, which was nearly to their thighs now. They fed the bag, feetfirst, over the wall.

  A scuttling sound from above them.

  Anya looked up as a dark shape plummeted from the ceiling. It landed on Silver Alien’s back and drove him into the water. He emerged coughing and sputtering.

  “What the hell was—?”

  His back arched and blood burst from his lips.

  “Close the door!” the woman shouted. “Hurry!”

  Another creature hopped up onto the top of the sarcophagus, extended its long neck, and opened its reptilian snout to release a shrill cry.

  Skree!

  Others appeared as if from nowhere and converged upon Black Skull, who shoved the body over the wall and turned to face them. They washed over him in a wave of slashing claws and snapping teeth.

  The woman took Evans by the shoulder, spun him around, and shouted into his face.

  “Close that door or we are all dead!”

  Somehow Black Skull managed to break away. He looked back at them, his fiberglass mask jaggedly broken and his face lacerated to the bone.

  “Für die arische Rasse,” he said and pushed the lever.

  The primitive gears on the walls clanked and thumped. The counterweights lowered from the ceiling.

  Feathered reptilian creatures sprinted across the ceiling. They vanished behind the rising door, which struck the roof with a reverberating thud.

  Black Skull’s screams diminished in volume before being cut short.

  Snapping jaws protruded from the holes in the top of the door. The creatures shrieked and flailed as they tried to squeeze through. Clawed appendages scratched at the stone in an attempt to widen the gaps enough to release them from the sealed chamber.

  “Come,” the woman said. “We must not let the sacrifice of our brother be in vain.”

  45

  BARNETT

  FOB Atlantis

  It would take sixteen minutes for the elevator to reach the surface and another sixteen for it to come back down. While half an hour wasn’t an overly long period of time, it felt like an eternity down there in the darkness. Barnett just prayed they were able to do what needed to be done and make their way back in time. There were only five of them left in the ruins, and the furthest thing from what one might consider an elite fighting force. While Barnett could hold his own in a pinch, the idea of being the best among them mortified him. He’d gathered nearly twenty of the best men available for just this contingency, only those who hadn’t been massacred in a matter of seconds during the initial siege were in a completely different hemisphere, preparing to take on an unknown threat in Mexico. What chance did he and four other nominally trained agents have against Lord only knew how many of these infernal creatures?

  Roche had demonstrated his usefulness, and Tolliver had served in the Marines prior to joining Unit 51, but he’d been recruited for his other skills. The same was true of Louis Delaney and Rudy Monroe, who’d spent time with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Their expertise had been integral in draining the lake and the tunnels underneath. He only hoped they were every bit as good at undoing what they had done.

  Assuming they survived that long.

  The control room for the dams was at the opposite side of the base from Barnett’s command center. The mere thought of heading back there made him sick to his stomach, but it was their only play. If they didn’t take these monsters out, it was only a matter of time before they found their way up the elevator shaft or through the seemingly endless tunnels and escaped from this mountain. He couldn’t afford to loose any of these monsters upon the outside world.

  “How long are you going to need?” Barnett asked.

  “Five minutes,” Delaney said. “Ten at the most.”

  “You’ll be lucky to get three.”

  “This isn’t just a matter of flipping a switch,” Monroe said. “These dams were designed to stay closed. We have to shunt the pressure and lower the barriers, and even then we still have to disable the water gates and self-closing flood barriers. Think of all of the redundancies and fail-safes we built into the system. Every single one of them has to be manually overridden.”

  “How long will we have after that to make it to the elevator?” Roche asked.

  “You don’t want to know.”

  They advanced in a pentagon formation, with Barnett at the point. Roche and Tolliver brought up the rear, walking backward to make sure that nothing outflanked them. With the way their footsteps echoed from beneath the boardwalks, they couldn’t risk going any faster or they’d bring the whole population down on them.

  Just because they couldn’t see the creatures didn’t mean they weren’t out there in the ruins at that very moment, hunting them from the anonymity of the shadows. Their direct attack had been hugely successful. They’d taken out more than half of Barnett’s team dur
ing its aborted attempt to reach Subject Z’s cage and the subsequent flight to the elevator. Perhaps they recognized the danger posed by the weapons the men carried and were patiently waiting for their opportunity to strike. More likely, however, they had as many victims as they could handle and were right now suspending the bodies in those horrible nests and laying their eggs inside of them. He and his men couldn’t afford to take that chance, though. Not if they had any hope of living through this nightmare.

  The base materialized from the pale red glow, a dark shape squatting at the foot of the stone escarpments that encircled the lake. There was no way they were going in through the front door again, which meant their only choice was to circumnavigate the outer perimeter and enter through the machine room at the rear of the complex, the approach to which was a narrow corridor between the back of Building Five and the stone cliff. The machine room had been built into the mountain itself to prevent the noise and vibrations from adversely impacting the fragile ice dome overhead. It was connected to the main structure by a short corridor with an external door.

  If their plan succeeded, however, they wouldn’t have enough time to take the circuitous route back to the elevator. They had no choice but to head straight through the base, regardless of anything standing in their way.

  Barnett climbed over the rail and covered the others while they did the same. The smooth rocks clattered underfoot. There was absolutely nothing they could do about the noise. He watched the rooftops as they neared and worked his way deeper into the shadows clinging to the stone escarpments. There was no sign of movement from either the base or the ice dome.

  They rounded the side of the complex and passed out of the range of the emergency lights. The darkness was cold and smothering. The walls closed in from either side until they were inside a passage maybe five feet wide. It was the perfect place for an ambush. They kept their weapons trained on the roofline above them as they approached the dead end, from which the sounds of their footfalls echoed.

  The door at the top of the staircase was locked. Barnett typed the override code into the control panel and it opened with a hiss of pressurized air.

  He stepped back, rifle at his shoulder, and waited for something to lunge out at him. When nothing did, he went in low. Swung his weapon to the left, then to the right in the wan red glare. The reinforced door to the machine room remained closed. He could barely feel the thrum of running water and forced air on the other side. The door to the right remained closed, as well. It opened with the same code and granted access to the hydrological control room.

  A desk ran the length of the rear wall. The chairs had been overturned from the stations, each of which featured a pair of computer monitors and was positioned beneath an array of screens mounted to the wall. The images on them reminded Barnett of electrical schematics and represented the various pipes and tunnels through which the lake had been diverted. Each was individually labeled, and the water pressure and temperature were monitored at discrete intervals.

  “You’re on,” Barnett whispered.

  Delaney and Monroe assumed their stations and set to work, their trembling fingers flying across the keys.

  Barnett turned his back to them. The corridors to either side of the room offered glimpses into the adjacent buildings. The end of the passageway to the central hub remained sealed.

  There was no sign of movement.

  Roche and Tolliver took up position in the mouths of the outer passageways. Neither of them took their eyes from the sights of their rifles for a second. The only sound was the typing of keys, which was far too loud in the silent base.

  The lights radiating from the monitors behind Barnett changed from green to red. He glanced over his shoulder to find alarms flashing from every screen and console.

  A klaxon blared.

  The warning lights on the panels to either side of the room lit up. Pressure gauges spiked. Individual components issued beeping sounds.

  “I’ve got movement over here,” Tolliver said.

  “How much longer?” Barnett asked.

  “Two minutes,” Delaney said.

  Tolliver shouted and fired into the corridor to the left.

  Barnett approached the control panel that would open the door to the mess hall and prepared to type in the override code.

  He saw something move from the corner of his eye, followed by the flash of discharge and the crack of gunfire. Roche backed away from the corridor to his right.

  “Don’t give up ground,” Barnett said.

  “There are at least two of them over here!”

  Barnett hoped that by allowing them to converge from the sides, it would clear a path straight up the middle.

  Tolliver fired several times in rapid succession.

  “I can’t hold them off!” he shouted.

  “How much longer?” Barnett asked.

  “We’re going as fast as we can!” Monroe shouted.

  The ground shivered.

  “What was that?”

  “Millions of gallons of water preparing to come flooding back in here,” Delaney said.

  Roche fired again. Bullets ricocheted from the ceiling of the outer corridor.

  “We’re out of time!” he shouted.

  More lights flashed and countless alarms joined the chorus.

  The earth shuddered.

  Barnett leaned against the wall to keep his balance.

  “Come on, boys.”

  Tolliver yelled and shot into the darkness. A silhouette knifed through the strobe of discharge. Scurried from the corridor. Scaled the wall.

  Barnett whirled and fired in one motion.

  The creature lunged from the ceiling and caught Monroe by surprise. He tumbled from his chair and tried to push it away, but it was too fast. His scream became a hiss when it opened his throat.

  Delaney jumped up and backed away from the console. Raised his rifle.

  A spray of blood spattered his chest and face as Roche shot the monster from behind before it could attack.

  Delaney lunged back to his station, typed one final command, and clicked the mouse.

  “Go!” he shouted.

  A deafening crack.

  The ground dropped out from beneath them.

  Barnett typed the override code for the door and sprinted through the corridor before the inner door even opened. He watched it rise and through the gap saw the toppled tables—

  A reptilian form streaked straight at him. He pulled the trigger again and again until its head bucked and it slid across the ground toward him.

  He jumped over it. Veered left. Skirted Agent Young’s half-consumed remains. Sprinted straight through the main corridor toward Midnight and the open front door.

  A rumbling sound in the distance grew louder by the second.

  The floor shook.

  He fired into the main building and burst into a room crawling with creatures. They scrambled up the walls and across the ceiling. Leaped from the swinging nests.

  Barnett shot in a fan pattern in the hope of clearing a path to the door.

  Something struck his back. He reached over his shoulder, grabbed a handful of feathers, and flung it aside. The hatchlings were nowhere near as large and ferocious as the adults, but considering how much they’d grown since he’d first seen them peek from the nests, it wouldn’t be long before they were.

  He blew through the door and hit the deck at a sprint, certain there would be dozens of them waiting to converge upon him.

  The rumble became a roar.

  Jagged chunks of ice plummeted from above and shattered on the deck, destroying the wooden slats in the process. Megalithic stones tumbled from the ruins and pounded the ground.

  There were several creatures to his left, although they didn’t appear interested in him. They all stared off to the north, past the pyramid and across the ruins.

  Barnett followed their lines of sight to where a massive wave reared up against the ice dome. It appeared to hover momentarily before crashing dow
n upon the dry lake bed.

  “Holy shit,” he whispered.

  The churning wall of destruction raced outward toward the ancient city.

  46

  EVANS

  Teotihuacan

  Several men, similarly dressed in black fatigues and tactical masks, met them inside the maze and helped carry the body bag with a disconcerting amount of reverence. Evans tried to figure out a way to overcome their captors while they retraced their route, but by the time they swam through the narrow tunnel and reentered the Sacrificial Well, he’d burned through every last ounce of energy and couldn’t have so much as raised his hand to swat a fly. For as scared as he was, he felt worse that there was nothing he could do to save Anya and Jade, who looked every bit as defeated as he felt. They’d barely been able to crawl from the water and had been shaking so badly he wasn’t sure if they’d be able to climb the ladder behind him.

  He did his best to remain physically between them and the man in the Kabuki mask, who more than once had offered to shoot one of them to lighten their burden, although the man who brought up the rear in a white mask with a crimson handprint over his left eye wasn’t a whole lot better. They were eager to get as far from Teotihuacan as possible, especially after witnessing what had happened to their comrades inside the tomb.

  The woman, on the other hand, remained icily composed, as though completely unsurprised by anything that had transpired. Almost as though she’d expected it.

  The earthen tunnels were dark and cool. The tools the researchers had used only the day prior to sift through the dirt and sort relics were neatly stacked to the side. Evans imagined the graduate students carefully putting them away with the intention of returning to them the following morning, not knowing that for them tomorrow would never come.

  The mere thought made his blood boil.

  “Just tell me why,” Evans said. “What’s so important about these remains that so many innocent people had to die?”

  Kabuki Mask continued silently through the tunnel.

  “They were just kids. They wouldn’t have even tried to stop you. What kind of monsters—?”