•••
The team jogged to the door, hoping against hope that it might simply open when it sensed their presence.
It did not.
The door was about four meters in diameter, which meant it was twice Emily's height with room to spare. The fins met in the center, interlocking tightly. Emily placed her right hand against the outer edge of the doorway and ran it up and down the surface, looking for any kind of an activator or release mechanism, but there was nothing obvious that she could see or feel. Then she ran her hand over the surface of the actual door. The interlocking fins were made of a weird gelatinous material; it felt almost like warm wax to Emily. She pushed hard against a fin and felt it give a little under the pressure. When she pulled her hand away it left an imprint on the material that lasted for a half second before moving back to its original form.
"Think we can push through it?" said Mac.
Cleaver, who was by far the largest of the group, said "Let me try." He reached up and tried to grip the narrow edge of one the fins. There was just enough of the edge exposed that he could hold it with the tips of his fingers. Reaching up with his left hand, Cleaver grabbed another fin, then pulled himself up. His feet scrambled for purchase, the tips of his boots pressing against the lower fins. Mac stepped up and helped support the soldier, while Bishop covered the rear approach.
Cleaver allowed his legs to take most of the weight of his body, while, through gritted teeth, he let go with his left hand, placed his hand against the middle of the door where the fins met, and pushed. There was no give at all.
Cleaver jumped down. "Sorry, boss," he said.
"No worries," said Mac. "Maybe there's another route or a way to—"
Mac's words were interrupted as the door began to open.
Mac and Cleaver dived to the left, pushing themselves into a corner, Emily and Bishop to the right. Emily pressed herself as tightly into the space where the wall of the tunnel met the doorway as she could. If they had been a second later, the two constructs that walked through the opening would have seen them. They dragged another man between them; he kicked and screamed, trying to break free, his head moving frantically from left to right. His eyes widened when he saw Emily and Bishop crouched in the corner.
"Help! Oh Jesus, please, help me," he pleaded, as the constructs dragged him along the corridor.
The door began to close again.
"Move. Now!" Mac hissed, pushing Cleaver through the rapidly closing portal. Bishop jumped through next, Emily diving through the shrinking space right behind him. She hit the ground hard and rolled away, catching a glimpse of Mac as he dove through head first.
Emily lay flat on her stomach, eyes closed, the wind knocked from her. When she opened her eyes again and looked up, she thought that maybe she had stepped through a gateway straight into hell. She lay on the rough floor of a large cave. The walls of the cave were not smooth as glass like the tunnels and the birthing cavern; these were uneven, hewn inelegantly from the bedrock, cold, wet. Red algae grew in spots across the walls, boulders that littered the area, and the ground. Water dripped from high above, rolling down the ragged walls and collecting in a smattering of small pools. Stalactites and stalagmites of calcium thrust upward from the ground and down from the ceiling. A dim glow illuminated the cavern from several seemingly random veins of incandescent material running through deep crevices, providing enough light to see by, but only just.
And it was cold, really damn cold.
Bodies lay everywhere; hundreds of them. Some sat slumped with their backs against the cavern walls, their legs stretched out in front of them, others were huddled together in groups. Some were curled up, fetal-like in small nooks created by outcroppings.
Humans! Point Loma survivors.
Emily didn't think they were dead, at least not all of them, because echoing through the chamber was a background noise of quiet sobbing, muttering, and low-volume conversation. Emily searched for Mac. He was a few feet away, in the process of helping Cleaver to his feet. Bishop was standing with his back to Mac, his weapon raised, covering the entrance they had just jumped through.
Surprisingly, none of the survivors seemed to have noticed the four strangers who had joined them.
Emily got to her feet and moved to where the three men stood.
"You okay?" Mac asked.
Emily nodded. Apart from a few grazes, she was fine.
"What is this place?" Cleaver asked.
"It's a prison," Mac said. "The constructs are holding the Point Loma survivors here."
"More like a pantry," said Bishop.
The man was right, Emily thought. This was where the constructs stored their human snacks for the newly born Locusts. She shivered with revulsion.
A group of six men, their clothes torn and dirty, their skin muddied, were collected around the body of a man lying face down several meters away. The men were trying to undress the dead man. They had already pulled off his boots and were now going through the pockets of the deceased man's jacket.
Mac strode over to them. They remained oblivious to his presence until he stepped in close and placed the barrel of his rifle against the back of the nearest scavenger's head.
"Afternoon, gents," Mac said.
The men all looked up at once and gasped in surprise. They scurried away, their faces telegraphing their shock at seeing Mac. Their looks of surprise doubled when they also spotted Emily and the two other soldiers. Although she wasn't sure, Emily thought she recognized two of the men, but they were so skinny and dirty it was hard to be certain.
"How? How did you get in here?" one of the men asked. His eyes were huge, his voice rough, croaky, dry.
"Now that would be telling," said Mac. He turned and faced the rest of the cavern. "Hey!" he shouted, his voice echoing off the prison's walls, "get your shit together, we're here to take you home."
Slowly, one after another, heads raised from where they had rested on arms or knees, or from where they lay against the cold ground. One by one, those same heads turned in Mac's direction.
"Over here," Emily called out. She pulled her flashlight from her belt, turned it on and waved it above her head. "Come on, come here to us."
People that had looked dead moments earlier began to stand, then, unsteadily, they walked and stumbled toward Emily and her team, shambling like zombies. Some of them were able to make it on their own, others, too weak to walk by themselves, were helped, until finally a large crowd of stinking, dirty humans stood in an arc around Emily and the team; a sea of pale, disbelieving, gaunt faces. Emily tried not to let her revulsion show at the stench that wafted off the mass of dirty bodies so closely packed around her. Her breath caught in her throat when she first tried to speak. She took a moment, her eyes watering as she stared at her feet, then she breathed in two shallow breaths and lifted her head.
"Is there anyone in charge?" she asked.
A tall man Emily thought she recognized pushed his way from the back of the crowd and limped toward her. His clothes were speckled with blood and dirt, his pants had once been khaki but were now almost black with stains and were torn from the right knee down to the cuff. His face sported an unruly beard and his hair was lank and greasy, reaching to just below his ears. When he spoke, his voice sounded desert dry. "I am, I suppose," the man said. Despite its huskiness, it was his French accent that helped Emily's mind connect the dots of who he was.
"Victor?" Emily said, disbelievingly. "Is that you?"
He nodded, and coughed. "Oui. Yes. I must apologize for my state. I did not expect visitors." He gave a weak chuckle at his joke. Victor Séverin had been the captain of the French submarine, Le Terrible, and had gone on to become a member of Point Loma's council. Unlike most of the council, Victor had treated Emily with respect. He looked as though he had lost north of fifty pounds from the time she had last seen him.
Emily looked around at the crowd of people who stood silently watching her, fear bright in their eyes.
"What th
e hell happened?" Mac demanded, asking the question that had been on the tip of Emily's tongue.
Emily guessed there were probably seven hundred faces staring back at the newcomers, far less than the thousand or so that had disappeared from Point Loma. "Where are the Locusts keeping everyone else?" she asked, before Victor could answer Mac's question.
Victor looked at her quizzically for a second, then understanding flitted across his face as he grasped that she was referring to their alien captors. "All dead...or...worse," he muttered.
Emily's mind faltered. Dead? How could they all be dead?
"How?" Mac demanded, asking the question for her.
"The aliens, they came at night, dragged us out of our beds. Anyone who resisted, they killed on the spot, snapped them like they were twigs. The rest of us, they brought here."
"How long have you been down here?" said Mac.
Victor pursed his lips and shook his head. "I have no real idea. If I had to hazard a guess, weeks." He shrugged. "There's no way to know."
Mac's brow furrowed. "How the hell have you survived for that long? I don't see any supplies."
"There's plenty of water," Victor said, "and we ate the red lichen...and..." his voice trailed off, his gaze dropping to his feet. The man's shoulders heaved as he fought back sudden tears. He steadied himself, raised his head and met Emily's gaze only fleetingly before his head dropped again. It was long enough for her to see the shame and disgust written in them.
Oh, Jesus, Emily thought as she realized the implications of his sudden quietness. Had they turned to cannibalism? Had they eaten their dead?
Emily thought for a second, her eyes moving from gaunt, frightened face to gaunt, frightened face. "You said 'or worse.'"
"What?" Victor seemed confused.
"When Mac asked you what happened to the other survivors, you said 'dead or worse.' What do you mean 'or worse?'"
Victor gave an actual shudder of fear. His knees buckled for a second and Bishop reached out to catch him, but the former submarine captain managed to steady himself. "The aliens, they took many of us. Most never returned, but some did. Those that did, had had things done to them."
"What kind of things?" Emily said.
"The aliens changed them, made them into..." Victor's voice dropped to an almost imperceptible level. "...monsters. They made monsters. The aliens use them to guard us, they take them away sometimes, for what reason I don't know, that's why they aren't here now, but they always come back and when they do..."
Victor began to weep. It was one of the most pitiful things Emily had ever seen; pure fear and disgust and self-loathing. How the man wasn't a raving lunatic, Emily had no idea. She reached out a comforting hand and placed it on Victor's shoulder but he flinched, shifting away from her like a beaten dog.
"No, it's okay," Emily said, "It's okay. We're going to get you out of here." She looked around at the people gathered around them. "We're going to get you all out of here and back to safety, do you hear me?"
"Then we've got to leave now, before she comes back," Victor said, his voice riddled with anxiety.
Mac looked at him, quizzically. "Before who gets back?"
Victor's eyes grew even wider with fear. "Valentine," he whispered. "Before Valentine gets back."
•••
Emily wasn't sure if she had heard Victor correctly. She thought he had said Valentine was coming back. Back from where? The very fact that the woman who had tried to have her murdered was still alive should not have surprised her, but it did. That bitch had the survival abilities of a cockroach, but before she could press Victor further on what he meant, Mac fired off another question.
"Apart from the door, is there any other way out of here?"
Victor turned his face toward the roof. "Just those," he said nodding upward. High above their heads, in the unevenly hewn ceiling of this prison, Emily could just make out several large round openings, about the size of a tall man, cut into the ceiling.
"Well oh-kay," Mac said, quietly. "They're not going to be much help. Anywhere...a little more accessible?"
"No," said Victor.
Mac glanced toward the doorway. "Then it looks like we'll have to take the same way we came in."
Victor shook his head. "The door won't open. We've tried to break it down more times than you can imagine."
"That's not a problem," said Mac, "I have a key."
Now it was Emily's turn to look confused. "What do you mean you have a key?"
Mac smiled that sly grin he kept for occasions when he knew he was able to get one over on her. He reached up and tapped a bulge in his jacket's breast pocket. "C4," he said. "More than enough to blow our way out of here...probably. But we're going to need a plan for when we blast the door open. If the constructs can hear the explosion or sense it, there's no telling how many of them might come our way."
"Why didn't you mention using the C4 when we were trying to get into this place?" said Emily.
"Well I didn't know who or what was behind door number one, now, did I? And then the two constructs were good enough to save me the trouble. Besides, it would have ruined the surprise." He grinned again.
Emily shook her head, then followed Mac and Victor to the door. Mac ran his hand over the fins, pushing into the yielding, almost flesh-like, surface. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure I can take care of this," he said. "The question is, what do we do once we're out of here? We're going to have to get everyone to the surface and into cover as quickly as possible."
Emily pulled her radio from her pocket. "Bravo team, do you copy?" she said into the radio's microphone.
There was silence for a few moments, then a voice, crackly and indistinct; "This is brshhhsh team. Shhhhsh have not shhhhsh the target. Over."
"There's so much rock between us and Petter, and I didn't have time to set up a relay on the way down here," Mac said, explaining the bad connection. "Just keep trying them."
Emily keyed the radio again. "Tell Major Djupvik we'll be on our way back up and to rendezvous with us at the opening of the tunnel we took. Tell him we're extracting civilians and we'll need his help to get them to the surface." It took three more attempts for Emily to convey the entirety of the message, but finally she was sure Petter's group had at least received the gist of what was going to happen.
Mac turned and addressed the disheveled survivors. "Listen up everyone. I'm going to blow this door, so I want all of you to move back behind cover. When the door comes down, I want you all to follow Emily and my men to the surface, but I want you to do it in an orderly fashion. Am I understood? If there are people who cannot walk, I want those of you who are strong enough to carry them, okay? Do not move off in any direction other than the one we direct you, and obey our commands at all times. Do that and we'll get you all out of here. Do you understand?"
The survivors, fearful and dull-eyed, nodded or mumbled that they did.
Mac continued, "Now everyone needs to move back and find some cover. Put your hands over your ears and open your mouths wide, like you're yawning. That'll help you keep your hearing safe from the shock wave. Got it?"
The survivors stared wordlessly.
"Let's get these people behind cover," Mac ordered his men.
Bishop and Cleaver immediately shifted gears, moving among the survivors, ushering them behind any cover they could find. Slowly, the survivors began to file off into the darkness.
When Mac was sure everyone was safely out of range of any debris, he pulled two blocks of C4 explosives from his jacket pocket, weighed them in his hand for a moment, then slipped one of them back into his jacket. He retrieved a blasting cap and detonator from another pocket, pushed the cap and detonator into the explosives and then molded the C4 onto the doorway.
"Okay, my love," he said, turning to Emily, "you ready for some fireworks?"
Emily nodded.
"Better move our bums then," Mac said, then yelled, “Fire in the hole!" as he activated the detonator and they both ran for cover.
The explosion was not as loud as Emily had expected; it was more of a dry crump than the Hollywood kaboom. It was still powerful enough to send a plume of dust high into the air and a shockwave reverberating around the cave. She was about to get to her feet from behind the outcrop of rock she and Mac had used as cover, when a warning yell of "Watch out!" from Bishop made her look in his direction. The man was scrambling away but his head was tilted up toward the ceiling. Emily followed his panicked gaze and saw several stalactites wobbling crazily, they detached and fell like giant spears toward where she and Mac had taken shelter. They both scrambled away as one of the stalactites smashed into the ground right where they had just been crouched. It broke into a million pieces and showered them with tiny bits of rock that stung any exposed skin they hit.
Mac picked himself up then pulled Emily to her feet. "You okay?" he asked.
"I'll live."
Mac motioned for Bishop and Cleaver to come join them. The two sailors jogged over to their position. "Keep the civilians where they are until I tell you otherwise. No one gets through that exit unless I give the all clear."
The two soldiers nodded that they understood.
A light fog of dust hung in the air, and Emily coughed a couple of times as she and Mac made their way to the doorway. The C4 had blown a hole in the door big enough for two people at a time to squeeze through shoulder-to-shoulder; but it would be tight. Wisps of smoke rose from the edges of the shattered material.
Extinction Point: Kings (Extinction Point Series (5 book series)) Page 17
