Extinction Point: Kings (Extinction Point Series (5 book series))

by Paul Antony Jones

  "He'll be okay," Petter said, jogging alongside. Emily ignored him.

  The shock wave reached them thirty seconds later. It rumbled through the tunnel, accompanied by a sound like breaking ice. Petter, who had pulled ahead, urged his own people to keep moving toward the shaft. West and Mooney threw concerned glances at each other and slowed almost to a stop. It was enough of a distraction for Emily to first wrestle her left arm free of West, then escape Mooney's hold on her. She took a step away from the men, her previous anger overtaken now by an immense sense of dread, then two steps in the direction of the explosion. West reached for Emily's arm but she sidestepped him and brought her shotgun up to his head. The look of fear on West's face brought a quick stab of pleasure to her, but not enough to even slightly dampen the furious anger that burned within her.

  "If you ever touch me again," Emily spat, "I will blow your fucking head off."

  West stared down the barrel of the shotgun for a very long second as Emily's finger caressed the trigger. Eventually, his eyes drifted up to Emily's.

  "Get out of here. Go!" she yelled. Both men took off at a sprint in the direction of the surface. When they had disappeared around the next corner and Emily was sure they would not return, she turned and faced the direction of the explosion.

  Above Emily's head, a crack, about ten centimeters wide had appeared in the ceiling. It ran the length of the tunnel for thirty meters or more, before splitting into many smaller cracks that spread out along the left side of the tunnel wall like lightning bolts. As she neared it, the rock above her groaned, the main crack widening by several centimeters, birthing smaller fractures in the wall.

  No. No. No. No, Emily's mind repeated, over and over and over. Her insides felt as though she had swallowed a lead weight. Her emotions—a maelstrom of pain, confusion, and anger—swirled through her body.

  She staggered back in the direction of the explosion.

  All the pain and confusion froze when, from farther along the tunnel, she heard the unmistakable report of a rifle ring out three times in quick succession. Those same emotions evaporated a second later as Mac sprinted into view.

  •••

  "Hi, love," Mac managed to say between panting breaths when he reached her seconds later, sweat and dirt covering his beautifully imperfect face.

  "You're...alive!" Emily exhaled a sigh of relief.

  He planted a kiss on her lips. "The explosion took down a big part of the tunnel, but it's not going to hold those bastards off for long. I heard them clearing away the debris away," he said. "Best if...we don't...hang around...okay?" he continued between kisses from his wife.

  Emily could not stop smiling...or kissing him.

  "Come on, love," he said, pushing her gently away. "Let's get out of here before the whole place comes down around our heads."

  The two of them began to run up the incline of the tunnel. A few minutes later they caught up with the tail-end of the exodus. West and Mooney both grinned as Mac and Emily joined them.

  "Hello boss," said West. He looked sideways at Emily but didn't say a word to her.

  "I thought I told you to get Emily to the surface?" Mac said.

  West blushed, "She convinced us otherwise," he said.

  Mac looked at his wife, who was still beaming at him like an idiot, almost all homicidal thoughts toward the two soldiers having vanished. "Yeah, okay, I know what you mean," he said. He glanced back over his shoulder. "How far to the surface do you think we still have to go?"

  "I'd estimate maybe another ten minutes," said Mooney.

  Mac nodded. "That was my guess. Have you tried contacting the others?"

  "I lost my radio somewhere back there. Major Djupvik said he'd try and organize the survivors’ extraction, so he's heading to the shaft," said Mooney.

  Mac pulled his own radio from his pocket and keyed the microphone. "This is Alpha team leader, does anyone copy?"

  Almost immediately a voice crackled back, "Mac? This is Parsons, we were beginning to think you weren't going to make it back in time for dinner."

  "No such luck, mate," Mac replied. "We're not too far from the bottom of the shaft. Oh, and I almost forgot, we're bringing some friends."

  •••

  Ten minutes later, Emily heard Petter's unmistakable voice calling to them from somewhere in the mass of survivors ahead of them. A second later and she saw the Norwegian major's smiling face as he and two of his Jegertroppen pushed their way back through the crowd toward her and Mac.

  "Good to see you in one piece," Petter said. He ignored the scowl Emily directed at him. "This is everyone?"

  Mac nodded. "Afraid so. Right now, our priority is to get these people up to the surface. I expect some unwelcome visitors before too long."

  Petter nodded. "We're not far from the bottom of the shaft. Just a couple more minutes."

  "Do you have any spare ammunition?" Emily asked as their group continued on.

  Petter nodded. He and his troops pulled out several magazines of ammo and handed them to Mac and his team. Emily reloaded her pistol, but none of the soldiers had any shells for her shotgun.

  An excited murmur rippled through the crowd of survivors ahead of them, their pace picked up and they began to move faster along the tunnel. Emily saw why a few seconds later; twenty meters ahead of where she and her people stood was the bottom of the shaft that led back to the surface. She could make out some of the support team that had been stationed on the surface positioned on either side of the tunnel guiding the survivors into the bottom of the shaft then toward a line of ropes that reached down from the surface. It was going to be a slow laborious act to get everyone back up to the surface, but as Emily got closer she could see that more ropes than the original six had been dropped down. They were now pulling up twenty people at a time.

  "Someone's getting a workout topside," said Mac as they watched a batch of survivors hoisted upward.

  Petter smiled. "Yeah, they've got multiple teams up there pulling these people up. Extra cup of tea for them tonight." He winked at his weak joke but his smile turned into a grin. "Are you heading up?"

  Mac shook his head. "We'll cover the rear. You get the civilians topside, quick as you can."

  Petter smiled at Emily, clapped Mac on the shoulder and turned his attention back to organizing the survivors' extraction while Mac, Emily, West, and Mooney set up positions at the mouth of the tunnel, using the gradual curve of the wall into the bottom of the shaft as cover.

  For the best part of the next hour, the ropes went up with people attached, came down empty, then went up again, while Emily, Mac, and the two other soldiers acted as sentries. Emily found her mind beginning to drift as exhaustion started to take a firm hold on her aching muscles and tired mind. She was jolted back to reality by a hissed warning from Mac.

  "Heads up, we've got company," he said, nodding down the tunnel to where the unmistakable outline of a construct had appeared from around the corner.

  Emily looked back at the group of survivors still waiting for their lift to freedom. She estimated there were around fifty people left at the bottom of the pit, which meant the ropes would have to come down three more times to get the survivors and the remaining military personnel out. Not a problem if there's just the one alien, she thought. We can deal with—

  Another construct appeared next to the first, then two more filed into view. Several mutant-humans moved slowly between the construct's legs like attack dogs waiting for an order. The survivors hadn't noticed the new arrivals, not yet anyway, and hopefully it would stay that way, because the last thing Emily and her crew needed right now was for them to panic.

  West and Mooney both raised their rifles, but Mac moved his hand to the weapons and gently pushed them back down. "Hold your fire," he whispered.

  The constructs' limited perceptions seemed to be holding true, and the humans’ presence had gone unnoticed, so far. It would be a mistake to change that with so many civilians still waiting to reach the surface.


  "Back up, slowly," Mac whispered. His group edged steadily back into the room below the shaft. At the opposite end of the tunnel, the constructs remained still as if waiting for a command, while the mutant-humans milled around them.

  Emily looked back at the rapidly shrinking pool of people still waiting to be lifted out of this hellhole. She quickly counted heads: just ten survivors left. The military personnel who had been tasked with organizing the civilians’ extraction slipped a looped end of the rope under the arms of each man or woman, then, once that person was secure, gave a triple tug on the rope to notify the surface team to start pulling them up. As the last survivor began to rise into the air, the military personnel who had acted as organizers, focused intently on their job until now, finally saw the threat at the opposite end of the tunnel.

  "Shhhhsh!" Emily hissed, placing her finger to her lips as the men unslung their weapons, hot panic glowing in their eyes. "No firing. Stay calm and we'll all get out of here," she said, as calmly as possible.

  Mac appeared at her side, his voice a whisper. "Everyone get themselves ready, we're heading up."

  Mac insisted on providing cover while one after the other, the remaining military personnel placed the looped rope under their arms and gave the three-pulls signal. Emily looped hers under her arms but held off on signaling she was ready until Mac arranged himself at the rope next to hers.

  He gave her a wink then tugged three times on his rope. Emily did the same.

  She felt the rope tighten uncomfortably under her armpits, then her feet left the ground and she began to quickly rise upward. Above her, a cluster of barely perceptible heads, silhouetted against a circle of blue sky, had gathered around the lip of the pit, watching as she and the others rose toward the surface.

  They were half-way up the shaft when there was a sudden high-pitched twang followed by a short cry of horror as the soldier to Emily's right was suddenly in free fall, his hands windmilling as he fell, the frayed braids of the worn climbing rope he had been attached to trailing behind him like a severed umbilical cord as he plummeted toward the bottom of the shaft. Whether it was shock or simply a last act of patriotism to humanity, Emily did not know, but the soldier did not scream as he fell, even though she could see his eyes were wide with terror, his hands reaching upward toward his comrades.

  Emily closed her eyes, unwilling to watch the doomed man's final seconds, but she could not block her ears from the sound of the sickening wet thud when he hit the bottom of the shaft. When Emily opened her eyes again, the man lay motionless below her feet, a pool of blood rapidly expanding around his shattered body. Seconds later, she felt an icy chill roll down her spine as, far beneath her feet, a construct lumbered into view, then a second joined it. Both moved to the dead man's body, their proboscises moving over him, probing, examining. Moments later, Emily's breath lodged in her throat as the unmistakable bulk of a Locust joined them.

  From above her, Emily heard someone scream, then several yells of warning. She turned to look at Mac as he tried to signal for them to be silent, waving his hands frantically, but it was too late.

  A volley of gunfire echoed through the tunnel, bullets whipping past the humans still suspended from the ropes, cutting down one of the constructs. Less than a second after that, a wave of constructs and mutant-humans rolled into the bottom of the shaft and began to climb toward the surface.

  •••

  "Take my hand," Mac yelled, reaching for Emily. He heaved her up and over the lip of the pit, pulling her away from its edge. Emily scrambled to her feet, slipped the loop of rope from around her chest and dropped it at her feet. The Point Loma survivors were being herded in the direction of the beach and the base camp by Petter and his crew, while a cadre of sailors stood around the edge of the shaft, firing down at the ascending aliens. Emily pulled out her pistol and joined the other fighters at the shaft's lip.

  From the shaft, constructs screeched as they were hit and fell from the wall, spiraling to the ground far below, trailing streamers of blood behind them. Some hit others on the way down, dislodging them, and they went spinning off to their destruction. The mutant-humans were harder to hit; smaller and faster, they dodged and darted as they scrambled ahead of their masters. One appeared just below Emily's feet. She fired her pistol pointblank into its head, splattering gore across her pants. The body fell silently away into the depths, plummeting down to where she now saw the second and third Locust had joined the first. The alien masters seemed content to allow their minions to fight on their behalf, staying out of range of the human's weapons, for now at least.

  "There's too many of them," Mac called out to Emily, then yelled to his men, "Prepare to fall back to cover." He waited a few seconds until they had cleared the nearest threat from the shaft then yelled, "Fall back! Fall back now!"

  The guns fell momentarily silent as Emily and the soldiers slid down the side of the berm encircling the shaft and sprinted in the direction of the desiccated remains of a house twenty meters from the opening. The only sound Emily could hear over their feet pounding across the ground and the panting of their breath was the click, clack, click, clack of the constructs as they moved up the face of the shaft.

  To the right of the ruined house, an arroyo formed a natural trench. Scattered along its edge were several large boulders that could provide minimal cover but would be better than being caught out in the open. Mac pointed at the nearest boulder and altered course toward it. Emily followed closely behind him. She ducked behind the boulder and slid down beside Mac and a couple other men. The rest of the team took cover behind their own boulders, dived into the trench, or ran into the ruined house.

  "You okay?" Mac asked, trying to look confident.

  Emily nodded, catching her breath.

  "Listen," Mac continued, "if things get hairy, I want you to run, okay? You've got to get out of here...for the kids, understand?"

  "When the time comes, we'll both get out of here," Emily replied. "Do you understand?"

  Mac closed his eyes for a second. When he opened them again, he nodded his agreement to Emily. He edged around the side of the boulder and looked back toward the entrance to the shaft. A few seconds passed in silence then he shouted, "Here they come."

  Emily stood, positioning herself on the opposite side of the boulder as her husband. All along the arroyo, men and women got to their feet and prepared for battle.

  A tidal-wave of constructs and mutants flooded from the pit, spreading out as they bounded toward the waiting humans.

  "Pick your targets," Mac yelled as the creatures continued to advance across the fifty meters of open ground between them. Then, "Open fire!"

  Constructs and mutants fell one after the other as a barrage of automatic weapons opened fire, but not enough to truly stem the advancing wave of walking, scuttling death. Emily estimated there were easily a hundred or more of just the constructs, not even counting the mutant-humans, leaping and running ahead of them. The single advantage the humans did have was that the constructs seemed ill-equipped to handle the rough terrain they now found themselves in, slowed by the weathered ground's furrows, ruts, and ditches, and the litter of humanity's lost civilization strewn all across the landscape.

  "Watch out!" someone yelled from Emily's left, then the voice turned into a scream as a mutant-human leaped over the boulder the soldier sheltered behind, grabbed him by the throat with its multiple sets of hands, and squeezed. By the time his comrade put a bullet in the creature's head, the soldier lay writhing on the ground, his throat crushed, blood and spittle bubbling from his lips, already as good as dead.

  More and more constructs spewed from the mouth of the shaft, a seemingly never-ending stream of alien killers replenishing the ones the humans had already cut down. One broke through the human's defensive line, grabbing a soldier. Emily shot the creature three times and it fell to the ground in a heap. The soldier rolled away, gasping for breath but alive. He pulled himself to his feet, grabbed his rifle and started firing
again.

  "I'm almost out of ammo," Emily yelled at Mac. She was again down to her last pistol magazine. She looked around the edge of the boulder and screamed for Mac whose attention was focused on a group of three mutant-humans who had flanked the combatants sheltered in the wrecked home. He turned and looked in the direction his wife was pointing.

  From the mouth of the shaft, the three Locusts they had seen earlier now pulled themselves up to the surface, their heads turning left and right as each of their single eyes surveyed this alien world that had fallen to them without a single shot having been fired. More constructs climbed from the pit, leaping past their masters and racing toward the humans.

  A deep, bellowing howl sounded across the area, as if the Locusts were announcing their ownership of this new world, and they began to advance. Quicker even than their constructs, the Locusts strode across the ground like ancient giants reborn. The two men who had taken shelter in the derelict house leaped from the ruins and started to run for the trench. The largest of the Locusts spotted them, and angled to intercept the fleeing men, quickly bounding over the space between them. It plucked the men from the ground, one with each of its upper arms, then with a finesse that belied the horror that unfolded, pushed them together like a child who insisted her dolls kiss. Bolts of lightning rose from the blanket of energy that still covered the ground around them, playing over the Locust. The two men did not cry out, but that, Emily thought, was only because they could not scream. Face to face, they began to melt into each other, their skin sizzling where it met, as their bodies melded into a single lump of flesh. Their limbs began to twist and rotate, and Emily realized that what she was witnessing was the very same process that had created the mutant-humans who were so hell-bent on destroying every last one of them. In a matter of fifteen seconds, the two men became a new entity, something that could never, should never, have existed on this world. When it was done, the Locust had created a work of macabre art, a horror that belonged in the halls of hell. The Locust lowered the aberration to the ground as gently as a human might lay down a baby.