The Original’s Retribution
DAVID WATKINS
Copyright © 2016 David Watkins
All Rights Reserved
No part of this novel or any of its contents may be reproduced, copied, modified or adapted, without the prior written consent of the author. Any similarity to persons, either living or deceased, is entirely coincidental.
ISBN: 1534700889
ISBN-13: 978-1534700888
For Josh and Ethan
Chapter 1
1
Fuck me, it’s dark. Corporal Jamie Bryant looked at the hole in the ground and couldn’t help but shudder. Trees stood tall in a circle around him, dark branches merging in the twilight. Bryant could see some detail in the leaves, but that was about it. He turned back to the hole and leant over it. Loose earth fell to the floor of the cavern far below. He knew from the notes that it was only thirty feet, but right then, looking into the darkness, it felt a lot deeper.
“Let’s get this done,” he said. He looked at his team. All were in full camouflage and carrying large packs on their backs. The biggest man, Collins, was also carrying a flamethrower. They had tied ropes around the trees, secured with figure of eight knots.
Parker and Wills clipped themselves onto the ropes and abseiled quickly into the hole. “Clear,” Wills whispered over the comms. Bryant and Collins nodded at each other and trusted the ropes to hold them.
Bryant’s mood did not improve when he hit the cave floor. The cavern was roughly circular, with a black hole in one wall. He didn’t want to go near that. Not yet. He’d read the file: they all had.
“Look at that,” Wills said. He pointed at the only thing in the room: a large stone slab. Carvings littered the base of it and Bryant nodded. Definitely the right place then.
“Get some photos then, don’t just stand there.” Bryant scanned the rest of the cavern. Exactly as Knowles’ bunch of idiots described it. The slab was clear, rain had washed off any remaining dust or earth and the items it had on top of it were long gone. Bones, massive bones. Bryant shuddered at the thought.
The file had been very detailed. A man had died in here, bitten by a poisonous spider that shouldn’t exist. Another man had landed on the bones and when he’d come out some very bad things had happened. Not going there. I’m not sure I believe that part of this tale.
He heard the whine of Wills’ camera, the IR flash preserving their night vision. The carvings were exactly as described. Bryant knew that the brass believed it was The Green Man on the carvings, but it looked an awful lot like the Devil to him. Bryant was not a religious man, but he felt a chill all the same. He was more concerned by the complete lack of cobwebs in the cavern. More ridiculous things in a report full of them.
“Done,” came Wills’ reedy voice.
“Get ready Collins.” Bryant took a deep breath and walked to the dark opening in the wall.
2
His thermal imaging gear didn’t do much to alleviate the dark. Bryant stopped in the mouth of the passageway, willing the gear to make sense of the blackness. Nothing there. It’s just dark. He grinned to himself. Scary stories in government files had successfully unnerved him. Just take a step forward, nothing to worry about.
Something moved in his peripheral vision. He turned his head, studying the rock walls of the passage. Nothing. Jumping at shadows now. Another movement in the corner of his eye made him turn again. This time he saw a thick black strand sticking out of the wall. Bryant watched as the strand unfurled, defying gravity until it was almost perpendicular to the wall. Another strand followed, then another. Each one was at least a centimetre thick.
Not a strand.
No.
A leg.
Lots of legs.
Bryant watched agape as the wall seemed to sprout the black strands. Large black bodies squeezed out of tiny cracks, more and more pouring out of the walls until the spiders were in full view and the passage covered in their grim bodies. They varied in size, but each was much larger than any spider he had ever seen; certainly they were far bigger than anything ever discovered in Britain before.
Not quite. This has been seen before.
And someone died.
Bryant did not want to think about Harry Meyers at that point, but pictures flooded his mind anyway. Meyers had been part of Knowles’ team and had paid the price for the other man’s incompetence. Knowles had ordered them into this cave with no idea what he was letting his men in for – unforgivable. Meyers had been attacked by the spiders and the photographs had made for grim viewing: his face so swollen that each orifice was shut; red welts covering his face and each one an area the size of a fifty pence coin. The report had not been specific about how many bites Meyers had received. It was clear that he had died due to the massive amount of venom in his system. Meyers, the first - but not last - of the fuckwits to die.
“Holy crap,” Collins said, appearing next to him.
“Christ,” Bryant said, “I nearly shat myself.”
“That’s a lot of spiders.”
“Yeah,” Bryant said, “Not showing up on thermal imaging either. Switch to white light.” He blinked as the cavern suddenly lit up. Collins had pulled a head torch on whilst the others flicked on the torches attached to their Picatinny rails under their weapons.
“So it’s true then.”
“Yeah, looks like.”
They paused, mesmerised by the mass of spiders in front of them. Wills and Parker peered past their shoulders and swore in unison.
“Makes you wonder what else is true in that report then,” Wills said.
“Men who can turn into wolves? Seriously?” Parker said.
“Shut up you two,” Bryant said. “We’re here to investigate this cave, so let’s get to it. Brass wants to know what’s down this hole and we’re going to tell them.”
“What about them?” Wills pointed at the spiders. “I ain’t walking through that.”
“Me neither,” Bryant said. He patted Collins on the back. “Light it up big man. Burn them all.”
3
The flames licked the walls. Spiders burned, but didn’t move. It’s like they want this. Bryant refused to let that thought grow. He watched through shielded eyes as Collins moved the flamethrower methodically around the passageway. The heat was immense.
Spiders began to drop from the ceiling, flaming shooting stars falling to the stone floor. The air was filled with a smell like burning hair and the crackle and pop of superheated chitin. Eventually, the flames started to die down and Bryant could survey the damage without squinting. The entire floor was covered with the charcoaled remains of dead spiders. Embers glowed in the corridor casting long shadows on the walls.
The passage ran about twenty feet in length before the fires lit it no more. Bryant took a deep breath and started to walk down it. Residual heat made him sweat, and he could feel the warmth of the corpses under his feet. A loud crunching noise accompanied every step. It was a noise that would stay with Bryant for the rest of his life.
Moving forward, Bryant found himself in another circular cave. Once more, in the centre stood a stone slab but this was smaller than the one in the main cavern. Bryant’s torch was doing a pathetic job of ridding the room of dark places and he could feel his heart hammering in his chest.
A rustle behind him made him turn quickly, rifle unslung.
“Easy,” Collins said. The barrel of the flamethrower was still smoking. His torchlight joined with Bryant’s, forcing shadows to the boundary of the room. Collins let out a low whistle, “Just think nobody’s been down here for years.”
“Cen
turies.”
“What about that Stadler fella?”
“He didn’t come in here, did he? The report said he stayed in that big cave,” Bryant said. “Those spiders, I’m not surprised.”
“How come we’ve never seen anything like those before?”
“No idea. We’re not paid to think, remember?”
Collins nodded at that. He crossed to the slab and brushed a hand across the top of it. Thick dust blew into the air, and the trace of his hand could be clearly seen in what remained.
Bryant walked the perimeter of the room. Piles of rubble sat at several points in the room. He kicked at the bottom of a pile and some loose earth fell through the gaps in the rubble.
“I reckon there are more passages through here,” he said.
Collins nodded. “Probably, but we’re not going there now are we?”
“Nope.”
“What do you want to do?” Collins leant on the slab but jumped up quickly. “It moved!”
Bryant crossed to him. The top of the slab had moved less than an inch. Together they pushed the top of it and were rewarded with a screech of stone on stone. The slab stopped moving after another inch. He swore to himself then turned to the long corridor of dead spiders. “Parker, get in here. You too, Wills.”
The crack and crunch of dead spiders briefly got louder, then Wills and Parker arrived. Bryant pointed at the slab. “Push,” he said.
The four of them heaved at the slab and with another loud screech it slid off the top of the dais and fell to the stone floor. A cracking noise echoed around the chamber and the slab smashed into four pieces.
“Oops,” Collins said.
Bryant scowled at him, before coughing loudly for several moments. He spat phlegm onto the floor, looking for signs of blood. There weren’t any, but he kicked loose soil over it anyway.
“Well?”
Collins was leaning over the dais, looking into the cavity they had just uncovered. “It’s a skull.”
Bryant peered in, letting his light illuminate the opening. It was a few feet deep and ran the length of the whole slab. A giant stone box, like a coffin. In the centre sat a large skull. It had the long mouth and nose of a dog, but he knew that’s not what it was.
“Bingo,” he muttered.
“So it really is true then,” Wills said. “The spiders, now this.” He looked at the other three, eyes wide. “That’s a wolf’s skull isn’t it? It’s the head.”
“How the hell should I know?” Collins muttered.
“Shut up, Wills,” Bryant said. “This is what we came for. Let’s bag it up and get out of here.”
Parker reached into the stone dais and picked the skull up with a grunt. Wills held open a large rucksack, and Parker lowered the bone into it. He zipped it shut and then hefted it onto his back.
“It’s heavy,” he said.
“Well, yeah, duh,” Wills said.
“Just shut it, and let’s get out of here,” Bryant said, more sharply than he intended. “This place gives me the creeps.”
4
Parker got to the passageway first, walking easily despite the weight of the skull. Bryant watched him then looked around the room again. Wills was taking pictures of the stone carvings, which were similar to the ones in the main chamber. Collins was tapping the barrel of the flamethrower and humming some god-awful dance tune. He turned and grinned at Bryant.
“Piece of piss, eh?”
Behind him, something large and black crawled out from behind a pile of rubble. As Bryant watched, more shapes started to move. He looked at the other piles and saw the same thing: masses of black legs and thick hairy bodies squeezing out of tiny gaps. The spiders were back.
“Don’t turn around,” he said. “We need to go.”
“What-”
“Wills, stow the camera. Get after Parker. Do not stop until you get to the ropes. Wait there for us. Got it?”
Wills could see what Bryant was looking at and ran without another word. Collins started to turn to look over his shoulder.
“We run, then you light up this whole fucking place – got it?”
Collins nodded. The cavern was too small for the flamethrower. He had to get some distance or he would risk setting himself alight. He could see the spiders now. They were coming out of the holes in the walls and the gaps in the rubble piles.
They are slow at the moment. Waking up? Waiting for numbers? Bryant shuddered. The pictures of Meyers flashed through his mind again. Rumour was when they cut him open, all of his internal organs had liquefied.
All of them.
Just a rumour right?
“Let’s go, big man. RUN!”
5
Bryant sprinted into the corridor, which now seemed twice as long as it had just minutes earlier. The crunch underfoot barely registered as the terror at what was coming out of the walls took over all his senses.
Bryant had seen combat many times. In Afghanistan, he’d been in some hairy situations. Some of his black ops had been worse, but he’d fed off that. It had given him a buzz.
This was different.
This was affecting him on an almost primal level. He heard Collins behind him, struggling to run and carry the weight of the flamethrower.
Spiders were coming out of the walls. Hundreds of them, pouring out of every hole or crack, regardless of size. The spiders also varied. Some were as big as his hand; some were larger still. Impossible.
He emerged into the main cavern, sprinting for the ropes. Collins stumbled out after him, tripped and fell. He pushed Bryant in the back and sent the smaller man crashing to the floor. Collins rolled onto his back, lifting the barrel of the flamethrower and squeezing the trigger with a roar. The cavern lit up as suddenly as switching a light on. Flames roared into the tunnel, incinerating everything in their path.
Bryant leapt up, but could feel a million legs on him, could feel the spiders in his hair, on his arms. He brushed at himself, rubbing himself all over. Two spiders fell to the floor and he stamped on them quickly. The crunch of their bodies breaking was overpowered by Collins’ roar and the sheer noise of the flamethrower. Bryant looked at his friend, who was now kneeling. His back was covered in spiders, their legs running over his back in some bizarre parody of the wind.
The thick clothing and tank of fuel had saved his life. The spiders could not find a way to bare skin. Bryant brushed them off with his gun and stamped on them as soon as they hit the ground.
“Come on!” Wills shouted from behind them as soon as the roar of flames died down. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
Bryant couldn’t agree more. “You bit?”
“No,” Collins said. “Don’t think so.”
“I think you’d know.”
“Yeah.”
They ran to the others and clipped onto the lines.
“You last,” Bryant said to Parker.
“You’re kidding me?”
“No, you’re carrying the skull,” Bryant said. “Nothing happened till you left that other cave. You stay, until we’re out.” Knowles report had said the same thing. His man hadn’t been attacked until the bones left the cave. What is this?
Parker did not look pleased, but Bryant pointed to his own stripes. “You stay.”
“Just hurry up then.”
The motors above started whining and the three men rose into the air. Bryant took one last look over to the corridor and saw more spiders gathering there. He shuddered. I hope I’m right. As soon as he cleared the top, he unclipped and shouted down, “Clear!”
He had never seen Parker move so fast.
6
They ran through the woods as quickly as they could with the equipment they were carrying. Bryant jogged at an even pace, trying to keep them moving fast without leaving Collins behind. Never the fastest man, the weight of the flamethrower was slowing him down. A wide path led all around the perimeter of the woods and they made better time when they reached it, leaving the undergrowth behind. By day this was a
popular dog walking spot, but in the dead of night, they saw no-one. Just as well. How would we explain this? A bird exploded from the trees near them and they all started, before nervously laughing. They were out, had survived the cave and accomplished their mission. Nevertheless, Bryant had never been so pleased to see a gate in his life.
The Landrover sat with lights out the other side of the gate. Evans was leaning on the door, smoking. He wants to stop that. Bryant said nothing as he ran up to the car.
“Alright boys,” Evans said.
“Get the engine started. We’re leaving this shithole,” Bryant said.
“What’s-”
“Now, Evans, now.”
Evans took in the men’s expressions, tossed his cigarette and climbed into the driver’s seat. Wills threw the motors and ropes in the boot of the Landrover, then helped Collins take the flamethrower off. It was considerably lighter than earlier.
Bryant helped Parker take the rucksack off. Parker tried to shrug it off himself, but Bryant patted him on the back and slid the heavy pack off. Parker clambered into the back of the car, asking Collins to move over.
“Just sit in the middle.”
“For fuck’s sake, if he’s in the middle, I can’t see out the back”
Bryant listened to them argue. The tension and fear were easing now and there was no sign of the spiders. He opened the rucksack and looked at the skull. This better be worth it. He slipped his glove off, reached into the bag and drew his hand across the teeth. They were still razor sharp and a thin red line appeared on his hand. Not enough. Stadler was impaled. One of the canine teeth stood proud of the others and Bryant knew what he had to do. He masked a coughing fit, to hide the noise of him driving his hand down onto the teeth.
Searing hot pain lanced up his arm and it took him two attempts to yank his hand free of the teeth. Sweat broke out on his brow, and he fought the temptation to scream. He looked at his hand. A perfect ‘O’ sat in the middle of his palm, filling with blood. Later he would be proud that he didn’t make a sound. He quickly wiped his blood off the tooth then resealed the pack.
The Original's Return (Book 2): The Original's Retribution Page 1
