Brothers in Stone (Stone Soldiers #2)

by Martin, C. E.

  The Colonel lifted one of his boots and kicked at the spike that had impaled him a moment before. His leg was fully healed now, and propelled his boot with terrific force against the thick spike. The three-inch-diameter metal groaned under the impact, bending, then breaking off, almost at the wall.

  The other spikes immediately stopped retracting. The bent, broken first spike could no longer retract straight backwards. It jammed in place, along with the other two spikes,

  Kenslir let his rifle hang by the strap around his neck and shoulders. He bent over and picked up the spike he had broken off. The spikes were nearly eight feet long. His broken segment was just over six feet long.

  “Apparently, this place is booby trapped,” Kenslir whispered, showing off the spike. “You guys better stay at least twenty feet behind me.”

  Victor reached out and touched the steel spike. He recoiled immediately. “Its old too.”

  “Too?” Josie asked.

  “He thinks these walls are thousands of years old,” Keegan said.

  “They probably are,” Kenslir said. “Makes sense, when you consider the age of our target.”

  “Age?” Victor asked. “How old is he?”

  Kenslir set the spike down, then turned and walked back down the tunnel, past the spike trap. Josie waved for Keegan and Victor to keep up.

  “Older than the walls,” Josie answered.

  Keegan and Victor exchanged puzzled looks and headed on. As they rounded the corner, they saw the corpse previously skewered by the spikes, still clutching his electric lantern.

  “That explains the light,” Keegan said.

  The tunnel continued on a short distance, then made another turn, this time to the right. Kenslir was standing at the turn, peeking around the corner. More light was coming from around the corner. Another electric lantern.

  In the center of the corridor, just ahead of Kenslir, there was a large rock. The rock was at least four feet in diameter and nearly four feet tall. A drag mark on the ground showed the rock had been pulled into place. Recently.

  Keegan stepped up next to Kenslir in time to see Josie turn away, covering her mouth as if she were about to throw up.

  Around the corner, almost ten feet away, a body lay on the floor. It was pulped and crushed from the shoulders down, as if an immense weight had fallen on it. The arms and head remained intact, stretched out, still clutching the lantern. Blood was everywhere, violently squeezed from the corpse.

  “Deadfall,” Kenslir explained, motioning toward the crushed body with his shotgun.

  “Where?” Keegan was looking up at the ceiling, but couldn’t see any panels or seams anywhere.

  Kenslir stomped his left foot down, beside the large stone, then drew it back quickly.

  The entire roof above the corner intersection of the two passageways, a massive block at least ten feet across, dropped down. It slammed against the large rock dragged into place by whoever had been in the tunnel before them.

  Keegan gasped at the sight of the deadfall. It was massive. She couldn’t even begin to guess how many tons it must weigh.

  After a few seconds, the stone began to raise back upwards, slowly.

  “What now?” Victor asked.

  “We crawl.”

  “Crawl?” Keegan looked down at her business suit. Her slacks were already covered in dust and she was sure her heels were ruined.

  “Or I could throw you across,” Kenslir said. “So you don’t trip the floor switch.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Keegan was still covered with dust and sand after having to crawl on the floor of the cavern like an animal. She was sweating despite the cool air in the tunnel. Her suit was ruined.

  Ahead of her, Kenslir had stopped again at a bend in the passageway—which was again illuminated by the dim glow of a lantern just out of sight. Keegan wondered what ancient trap they would face next.

  Kenslir examined the turn in the corridor carefully. It appeared to be a regular stone floor. He could see no bodies, and no hidden seams. He leaned forward, looking around the corner to the left.

  Up ahead, another twenty feet away, there was another body. It lay on the floor of the passageway, on the other side of a strange patch of floor, measuring twenty feet across. This unusual segment of floor appeared to shimmer and glow in the lantern light.

  Kenslir stepped around the corner and cautiously approached the shiny floor. Josie, Keegan and Victor followed behind him.

  “It’s gold!” Josie said in surprise.

  And she was right. The floor was made of small, ten inch by ten inch tiles, laid out side by side, with just the thinnest of gaps between them. And they were all made of gold.

  “Is he looking for treasure?” Keegan asked. “What is this place? And why aren’t you sweating?”

  “It’s a burial chamber of some kind, I’d guess,” Kenslir said. “Or maybe it’s a mall. Who knows. It’s been here a long time.”

  Kenslir stepped forward onto the gold floor. Nothing happened. He took another step. The rubber soles of his tan boots made no sound on the gold plates.

  Kenslir walked forward carefully, expecting a plate to sink under his weight at any moment and unleash some new terror. But nothing happened.

  Finally, he had crossed the chamber and could see the body better. It was charred black. And there was an acrid smell in the air, like ozone.

  Kenslir whirled around in time to see Josie stepping forward. “Stop!”

  It was too late. Josie was two steps in. Standing with both boots on the gold floor tiles.

  But nothing was happening.

  Keegan and Victor had worried looks on their faces. Despite what Keegan thought of Kenslir, she was glad to let him take the lead in these strange tunnels. She held onto Victor’s sleeve, to keep the postcog from going forward.

  “What?” Josie asked. “Is it dangerous?”

  Kenslir knelt down slowly, then licked his left index finger and thumb. Lowering his hand slowly, he spread his fingers wide so he could touch two tiles next to each other.

  The hall suddenly flashed bright blue and white as massive arcs of electricity flashed up from the floor, dancing across Kenslir’s hand. His skin turned gray then black as the electricity coursed through his hand.

  Kenslir pulled his hand free, breaking the current, then stood slowly. His hand faded from charred black to stone gray, then back to flesh tones again.

  “It’s electrified,” Kenslir explained. He lifted a foot so the sole of his boot was facing Keegan and Victor. “You guys have rubber soles?”

  “Electrified?!” Keegan said. She didn’t believe it. “How could a prehistoric building, if that’s what this really is, have electricity?”

  “The Baghdad battery,” Victor said.

  “What?”

  “The Baghdad battery,” Victor repeated. “It’s this jar they found in Iraq or something, made of clay with wires and stuff. It was a huge alkaline battery. “

  ”A battery? thousands of years old?”

  “I take it you aren’t wearing rubber soles?” Kenslir said. He slung his rifle across his back and walked toward Keegan.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Carrying some dead weight,” Kenslir said. He reached down and grabbed Keegan behind the knees with one hand, and put the other around her shoulders. Before she could protest, Kenslir had her off the floor.

  “Let’s go,” Kenslir said, turning and carrying Keegan across the gold tiles. Keegan fumed quietly but said nothing as Kenslir carried her.

  Victor carefully followed, walking gingerly on the tiles.

  “You’re grounded, relax.” Josie said, smiling. She walked along with Victor.

  Kenslir sat Keegan down on the other side of the trap and turned to Josie. “Any closer?”

  “Yep, a lot closer, and still that way,” Josie said, pointing down the tunnel. They could make out the dim glow of lantern light some hundred feet away.

  Keegan was brushing herself off, and straighte
ning her clothes as Kenslir unslung his shotgun and again took the lead.

  After a few minutes, they reached the final bend in the tunnel. Kenslir immediately noted the twin grooves in the walls of the corridor. And the body cut in half, laying in a pool of blood.

  “How many more of these are there?” Keegan demanded.

  “Eight or less,” Kenslir said. “That’s all the tracks I saw.”

  “What’s this one do? Blades?”

  “Let’s see”, Kenslir said, stomping the floor in front of him.

  There immediately came a hiss and the sound of spraying water. As the team watched, a jet of water sprang from the wall on the left, moving forward, through the groove on the left wall, spraying across the chamber into the groove on the right.

  “Water? Really?” Keegan started to walk across. “I could use a drink right now.”

  Kenslir held out a hand, stopping her. “It’s under pressure. High pressure.”

  “So?”

  “So they use a CNC water jet to cut steel at the Corvette plant,” Kenslir said.

  “What?”

  “High pressure water can cut steel,” Kenslir said, then pointed to the two halves of the corpse on the floor. “Or flesh and bone.”

  The water jet had finally reached the end of its cycle. The pressure ebbed and the water jet fizzled out, dripping onto the floor before stopping completely.

  “Run,” Kenslir said.

  Josie and Victor immediately took off, across the corridor and around the bend. Keegan just stood there looking at Kenslir, confused.

  The Colonel looped an arm around Keegan’s waist again, and picked her up, then jogged around the corner and rejoined Victor and Josie.

  “What was that for?!” Keegan demanded when she was let go. She straightened her jacket and adjusted her belt again.

  “It takes time to build pressure. No idea how long,” Kenslir explained.

  “Guys, I think this is it,” Victor said.

  Keegan, Kenslir and Josie all turned to look down the corridor. It continued on another thirty feet then opened into a vast chamber.

  Kenslir took point, his shotgun held tightly against his shoulder. Keegan walked behind him, her own pistol out. Josie and Victor crept along as well, some ten feet behind their superiors.

  Kenslir entered the chamber and checked right and left, pointing the shotgun wherever he looked. He even checked upward, at the high ceiling. The chamber appeared empty, and was illuminated by half a dozen lanterns scattered about.

  The only feature of the huge chamber was the large sarcophagus on a raised platform in the center of the room. And the eight corpses strewn around the sarcophagus.

  Kenslir approached the sarcophagus slowly, noting the natural cave entrance on the other side of the chamber. He pointed his rifle into the sarcophagus, but it was empty, save for a large volume of dried blood.

  Keegan had walked over as well and was examining the sides of the sarcophagus.

  “What writing is this?”

  “Not important right now,” Kenslir said. He was looking at the entrance to the cave. It was encrusted with limestone drip. A natural cave that had eroded the wall of whatever the structure was they were standing in. The cave extended on some distance, swallowed by darkness.

  Kenslir slowly aimed his shotgun toward the tunnel entrance. “Everyone head back,” he said quietly and calmly.

  Josie felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Her breath became visible again—plumes of cold air.

  “What?” Keegan asked, looking around. She stopped looking when she saw two small lights in the recess of the cave entrance. There was no way to tell how far away the lights were or how far apart they were.

  At least not at first.

  The lights suddenly blinked. They were eyes. Below the eyes a red glow began to grow.

  Kenslir began firing his auto shotgun at the cave entrance, yelling over its loud booming. “Run!”

  As the white phosphorous rounds filled the cave entrance, something roared in pain. The fire in its throat bellowed out, at least ten feet, but not far enough to reach Kenslir. The creature quickly corrected that, charging forward despite the rain of burning phosphorous being flung at it by Kenslir and his shotgun.

  When Keegan saw the red-scaled dragon burst from the cave entrance, she immediately turned and began running.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Ketzkahtel had been in the natural cavern, quietly waiting for his brother to finish processing all the memories of the modern world. It was a long, boring process.

  When the black-haired, green-eyed human, Antaean, entered the sarcophagus chamber, Ketzkahtel was filled with a mix of fear and excitement. Fear because this Antaean person had already killed him once before, but excitement because the shapeshifter now had help. His twin brother.

  The dragon unleashed a stream of fire from the cavern as Kenslir fired his auto shotgun. The slugs from the weapon bored into the dragon, then began burning. Horribly burning.

  Ketzkahtel’s fire winked out and he roared in pain. The projectiles pumped into his body burned hotter than any flame. His shapeshifting tissues tried to heal around the bits of phosphorous, but they couldn’t. It just burnt the tissue over and over again.

  Worse, the inhuman soldier was firing more and more of the burning material at Ketzkahtel.

  The dragon charged forward, ignoring the burning pain and expelling another plume of fire. The man called Antaean ducked behind the stone sarcophagus, avoiding the flames and reloading his horrible weapon.

  Ketzkahtel circled around the sarcophagus. Every movement was agony as the phosphorous burned inside him. He opened his mouth to unleash more fire.

  Kenslir popped up from behind the sarcophagus, firing again. His rounds went right down the dragon’s mouth, blowing out the back of his throat. Ketzkahtel couldn’t even scream in pain.

  ***

  When she’d first been asked to crawl on the sandy floor of the ancient tunnel, Agent Keegan had grudgingly agreed—because she wanted to catch the so-called Valentine Killer so badly. But now she felt herself crawling for an entirely different reason. Self preservation.

  Ahead of Keegan, Josie Winters and Victor crawled as rapidly as they could, the water jet slicing through the air over their heads. The gentle mist coming off the corridor wall as it was scored by the stream of high pressure water might have felt refreshing under different circumstances.

  Keegan finally got past the stream of water and leapt to her feet. Victor and Josie were sprinting ahead of her, the black-haired girl still clutching her briefcase. Keegan sprinted off after them, briefly considering kicking off her shoes.

  Behind the trio, the sounds of battle raged.

  The staccato booms of Kenslir’s auto shotgun had been replaced by the sounds of pain and fury coming from the dragon. The dragon—Keegan still couldn’t believe what she’d seen. An honest-to-goodness, fire-breathing dragon. Now bellowing in pain as Colonel Kenslir showered it with white-hot phosphorous. If he didn’t kill it, he was definitely pissing it off.

  Ahead of Keegan, Josie and Victor skidded to a halt. They had reached the gold-tiled section of electrified floor. Keegan would have run past them, across the floor, had Josie and Victor not grabbed her.

  “No!” Josie yelled. “Your shoes!”

  Keegan looked down at her shoes. Okay, that settled it. She kicked them off.

  “No, Pam!” Victor said. “You’ll get fried!”

  “We can carry her!” Josie said.

  Keegan looked back and forth at the two, then back down the hallway where now the sound of machine gun fire was barely audible over the roaring of the dragon.

  “Hold this!” Josie said, shoving the metal briefcase into Keegan’s hands.

  Josie and Victor moved to either side of Keegan and picked her up. She looped her arms across their shoulders, while they held her behind the knees—one leg in Josie’s hands and one in Victor’s. The duo carried the petite agent slowly across the
golden tiles, their rubber soled shoes protecting them from any discharge.

  When they reached the other side, Keegan all but jumped out of their arms. She pushed the briefcase back at Josie, then grabbed Victor by his sleeve and urged him on. “C’mon!” She was glad she’d ditched her high heels as she could run faster now.

  The trio ran along the tunnel, at last coming to the deadfall trap. Behind them, the sounds of battle had died to just the roar of the dragon again.

  “Time to crawl again!” Keegan said. She sprinted forward and dived toward the ground, as though she were trying to steal a base in a ball game. When her body hit the floor the huge deadfall ceiling dropped—and was caught by the large boulder. The boulder Keegan now realized the dragon had put there.

  When she reached the other side, Keegan stood up then reached back toward Josie and Victor. They grabbed her hands and she helped pull them out even as the deadfall began to raise back up again.

  From out of the darkness, moving at superhuman speed, Kenslir appeared. He ducked his head and sprinted around the corner, under the still-raising deadfall.

  “Keep going!” Kenslir said. He no longer carried the USAS 12 shotgun. Instead, he was holding the bulky OA-93 machine pistol in his right hand. He quickly holstered it and moved toward the large rock.

  Kenslir grabbed the rock and pulled backwards on it. It tumbled over, out from under the deadfall ceiling. Kenslir stomped down on the floor, triggering the deadfall. The huge block fell to the floor, temporarily sealing the passageway.

  Kenslir turned and sprinted off after Josie, Keegan and Victor.

  As they reached the last bend in the tunnel, Keegan felt relieved. She could see the light from the cave that led out to the ravine.

  Josie ran along behind Keegan and Victor still clutching her briefcase. She hesitated at the opening in the cubit-block wall and looked back at Kenslir.

  In the enhanced view from the tactical visor, Josie could see Kenslir stopped in the corner of the corridor, by the steel spikes. He had his machinegun pistol out again and was firing it back down the tunnel in short, controlled bursts. He dropped the banana-clip magazine from the weapon with one hand then quickly reloaded with the other.