“ARE WE LOST?” whispered Terry to Colin as they rounded another turn in the tunnel.
“Don’t think so…” Colin whispered back, pausing a moment to shine his light around into the darkness ahead.
“Feels like we’re doublin’ back in the direction of the house,” Matt complained.
“We’ll know in a minute,” Colin replied. “Should be an arrow painted on the wall if we’re headed in the right direction.”
They hadn’t gone very far after that when they arrived at a narrow bend in the tunnel. After rounding it, the group emerged into another natural underground cavern. This one was much larger than the others with an exceptionally high ceiling.
“Shit!” Colin whispered, as loud as caution would allow. “Dammit! You were right, Matt. Wrong fuckin’ tunnel.” There was a bit of grumbling from the group before he added, “But, the good news is, I know where we are now.”
“So do I,” Matt announced. He pointed to the darkness on the opposite end of the cavern. “This way out.”
He turned to Colin and said, “I’ll go first. I know these tunnels as well as you n’ Terry!”
“Be my guest,” replied Colin with a sweep of his hand.
A hero in his own mind, Matt led the group forward while Colin dropped back to join Terry and JB at the end of the column.
“Hey!” Terry said to him in a hushed voice. “You gonna just let him take over?”
“A good leader knows when to let others contribute to the group,” Colin whispered back. “It’s good for morale.”
“Jesus! There’s just the six of us! We ain’t got no morale!” Terry chided.
As they proceeded into darkness, the light from the group’s flashlights reflected off the glistening moisture that was weeping through the porous rock of the nearby wall. There were scores of large boulders that dotted the cavern’s floor and blocked their flashlight beams from revealing the entire space. Matt had picked up his pace, and while Jess and Duane followed closely behind him, JB, Terry, and Colin had hung back while they had their private discussion.
JB, walking between Terry and Colin, was trying unsuccessfully to shake his growing unease, and as a result, had redoubled his vigilance. He put a hand on each of their shoulders and whispered, “Not so fast, I got a feeling’.”
“You too?” Colin said softly. “I can smell it. Somethin’ ain’t right.”
They had stopped walking now, and JB said, “You can smell it?”
“Hell, he’s got a nose on him,” Terry whispered. “Says it’s a family thing.”
JB concentrated on smelling the air, and he did detect a very faint odor of something other than the sweaty and the musty cave, but there was more than that. His situational awareness had grown along with his apprehension, and something else had caught his attention. It was only a slight movement near a large outcropping of rock at the far end of the cavern, but it was enough.
He extended both eyes and ramped up the sensitivity of his retinas; then he zoomed in. The alien was partially concealed by the boulder, but the rotating motions of the stalks on its head were what had drawn JB’s enhanced vision.
JB was stunned by both the speed, and the accuracy with which the alien had found him. He had only enough time to shout a warning because as Matt and the others approached, the alien had emerged from its hiding place. Before any of them could react to JB’s admonition, the alien began firing from out of the darkness.
Without waiting to see what he knew would be a slaughter, JB reached forward and grabbed Colin and Terry by their bandoliers. He yanked them forcefully down onto the ground and practically threw them behind a pile of large rocks. The two men, surprised by the ease with which JB had manhandled them, also had no time to react as all hell began to break loose.
The alien may not have been expecting the group of heavily armed men that had come between it and its target, but there was no hesitation in its response. None of the three men had time to fire off a shot before the alien’s powerful weapon cut them into pieces. They didn’t even have time to scream before they were all down, and the cavern became filled with the stench of incinerated flesh.
“Let’s get out of here,” JB shouted hoisting Colin and Terry to their feet. They were too stunned by the swiftness of the events to do anything but retreat with JB back into the tunnel they had just exited.
They rounded the bend in the tunnel before another blast blew a rush of superheated air past them, nearly knocking them off of their feet. The turn in the tunnel had protected them from the energy pulse that had instead struck the tunnel wall, leaving behind a cannonball-sized hole of melted rock.
Trench, in dazed grief and disbelief, managed a hoarse whisper, “What kinda fire-power is that?”
Terry replied grimly, “An’ we ain’t never fired a shot! Damn FBI! That’s murder!”
There was another, more powerful blast at an upward angle that struck the roof of the tunnel. The blue-white energy pulse fused a portion of the ceilings of calcified sand into glass, which immediately began to crack and crumble. When it fell to the ground, it took a large chunk of the tunnel roof with it. The hole that it left in the ceiling widened causing large pieces of it to tumble down.
The rumble of falling rock grew louder as the roof of the tunnel behind them began to fail in a chain reaction of cascading rock, sand, and dirt that was progressing down the tunnel like an unraveling thread.
“Cave-in! Run!” Terry yelled, but his warning was unnecessary, as the three of them were already plunging blindly ahead, choking on the dust. They kept running, with no other thought than to outrun the tons of falling earth as the tunnel collapse continued behind them.
Meanwhile, the massive underground destruction beneath the surface of the Trench Estate was spreading, weakening the ground above. A significant portion of this potential sinkhole extended well under the area that the FBI had set up for its mobile operations center. Backup had arrived, and the entire Trench Estate was now teaming with agents from Homeland Security and the ATF.
Law enforcement was busily sorting through the dead, and interrogating the living when, without warning, the ground under their feet began to liquefy. There was utter pandemonium as men and vehicles disappeared into the ground as the earth swallowed up suspects and arresting officers alike.
Underground, this unexpected seismic activity caught the alien by surprise. It had remained in the cavern while it considered the next course of action. Even though it had thought that its quarry had been eliminated by the second blast, the locator device indicated that it still survived. It might have been disappointed… But there was no alien equivalent to that human emotion. At that moment it became far more concerned when it sensed the cavern’s ceiling above its head had begun to give way.
The collapse of the cavern’s roof happened in slow motion as gravity finished what the tunnel collapse had started. As the ground above caved in, the alien retreated to avoid the rain of rock and sand. It scanned its surroundings, searching for a way out, but there was none, for the fractures in the surface had grown larger and falling debris blocked the way back to the tunnel from which it came. The collapsing earth took men and vehicles along with it as the ground continued to slip away beneath their feet. Moments later, the alien found itself illuminated in the headlights of a black SUV that had made a soft landing into the cavern atop a pile of dirt and gravel. The agents inside the vehicle were surprised, but relatively uninjured due to the slow speed of their descent.
The men in the SUV recovered quickly, and on seeing the tentacle nightmare lit up in their headlights, they immediately began to fire their weapons. The hail of bullets had made no impression on the alien; its medical protocols quickly repaired the damage to its body almost as fast as it occurred. Without hesitation, it began firing back with devastating results. There was more gunfire as others, who had also fallen into the sinkhole joined the battle.
Minutes before that had happened, JB and the others had been running full-out through th
e tunnels with the cave-in at their heels. Even so, the earsplitting groans and screeches from the wooden trestles as they gave way and the roar of the crumbling earth spurred them on to run even faster. The dust in the air made it almost impossible to breathe, but they kept on going… Threading their way single file through a series of narrow, twisting corridors, barely able to see. Still running, they heard the roaring and rumble gradually diminish until it stopped altogether. Even so, they didn’t cease their flight until they reached another section of tunnel, where the passageway grew wider, and the air became more breathable.
Now, instead of the rumbling of the cave-in, they heard the distant sounds of gunfire. Only JB, with his enhanced hearing, could hear the telltale sizzle from the alien’s weapon as it answered the gunfire with energy pulses that superheated the moisture out of the air.
“Shit! It’s up there, fighting all of ‘em,” JB pronounced grimly as the sounds intensified. Unlike Terry and Colin, he wasn’t out of breath.
“What is? How can you tell?” gasped Terry.
“I can. Take my word for it,” JB replied.
Colin was still choking on dust, but he ran his flashlight beam over the walls of the tunnel. Terry blinked away tears as the events of the last few hours hit home. “Jesus! All of our guys… Dead!”
Nobody said anything for a heartbeat, and then JB said, “An’ most of them FBI guys too, I reckon…”
“Unless we want to join them, we gotta get out of here,” Colin said flatly, training his flashlight beam on the tunnel wall where it illuminated a faint, yellow arrow that had been painted onto the rock. It pointed in the direction they had been heading. “Gentlemen, will you look at that! We’re going in the right direction.”
Then, as if to underscore his urging, there was the dull, muffled sound of a distant, explosion. The blast, though seemingly far away, was still powerful enough to make the timber supports sway and squeal with the rumbling earth and shake even more dust and dirt from the tunnel walls.
Without waiting to see if the timbers would hold, they fled onwards until well after the shaking stopped. The section of the tunnel they were in appeared to be undamaged, but they kept moving regardless. Finally, when they felt it was safe to do so, they stopped. JB did not need to rest, but Terry and Colin needed to catch their breath and cough the dust out of their lungs.
“Holy fuck!” Colin said, in-between hacks. “Somebody musta set off the C-4!”
“I told you not to keep it in the refrigerator!” Terry snapped weakly, and he and Colin shared a knowing look.
They didn’t have to guess at the outcome if that was the case. The powerful explosives would have left little more than a smoking crater in the ground where the historic Victorian home had once stood.
“How much further do we need to go?” JB asked, ignoring their ragged gulps for air. Throughout the ordeal, his Sawbonites had kept his blood oxygenated and his muscles free of lactic acid. He was neither out of breath nor fatigued.
“Not sure,” Trench replied, still coughing and gulping for air. “It’s been a while… But if we’re at where I think we are, then… A little ways past the next cavern… Is the exit to the shoreline.”
“Are… You… Sure? Terry gasped, even though he was a long way from catching his breath. “Look… What… Happened last time!”
Several more minutes passed before Colin could reply. When he did, his voice was grave. “What other choice do we have?” Then he turned to JB and asked, “You think it’s your alien that’s after us?”
“Not after y’all… It only wants me,” JB said. “And, no matter what, it won’t stop until it kills me or dies in the process. Far as I can figure, there’s only one way out of this.”
“What are you sayin’, JB?” asked Terry, who had finally regained his breath. His eyes were wide with anguish, and his features were covered in a muddy mix of dirt and sweat. “You sayin’ it’s real?”
“How the hell do you kill a thing like that?” Colin interjected.
“There’s only one way. Y’all got to fuck it up beyond repair,” JB replied, without the slight trace of humor.
Colin made the connection and said, “It’s got those sawbones inside it too?”
“Yep,” replied JB. “Unless it gets super-seriously injured, its Sawbonites’ll fix it right up… Though not as fast as mine.”
Terry gave his partner a questioning look and said, “Colin, you believe him?”
Colin ignored Terry’s question and asked JB, “How are yours better than theirs?”
“Don’t know why. Just know I can do stuff with ‘em that them aliens can’t.”
At that moment JB wasn’t concerned with what they thought of his story, he only wanted to save their lives. He knew the thing hunting him was relentless. That was a fact and not another one of his flawed assumptions. He wondered if there was a way to use that against it, but he could only think of one idea that had popped into his head half-baked.
He said, “Lookit here… That alien’s comin’ for me no matter what. So I’m thinkin’ that our best, an’ maybe our only chance, is to kill it while it’s fixin’ on tryin’ to kill me.”
As JB explained his plan in detail to Terry and Colin, there wasn’t a trace of skepticism in either of their grim expressions.
“Simple and practical,” said Trench approvingly after JB had finished speaking.
“Yeah,” agreed Terry. “But dangerous as hell.”
CHAPTER NINE
Trap
THE SKIRMISH AT the Trench Family Estate had only lasted for three or four minutes. When it was over, there was no one remaining for the alien to fight. Those who hadn’t run away were now dead, not that any of that made any difference to the off-worlder. Its mate had been killed only a short time before by the organism known to Har-Kankar as the Abomination, and now the thirst for revenge had overcome its directive to avoid detection at all costs. The alien did not experience emotions as humans might know them, but its familial bonds and obligations were just as powerful, if not more so. Even with the understanding that it would be punished harshly had not been enough to deter it. Although, it did hold a faint hope that if it were successful in completing the mission, the result would more than justify its actions. If it failed, then it wouldn’t matter. In any event, the Har would have to deal with the outcome.
The alien referred to its location device. The Abomination’s stolen medical protocols may have evolved in ways not yet understood, but they were still emitting a signal that accurately pinpointed their location. The device indicated that its quarry was still under the surface of the planet, and moving away rapidly. Unconcerned, one of its tentacles tapped the device purposely to initiate another of its functions. Then, it programmed the limited-range matter transmitter to transport it a short distance away from the current location of the broadcasted signal. The Abomination, wherever it was, would have little chance of escaping this time.
Before the off-worlder confirmed the activation, it first dialed down the power on its weapon. After its narrow escape from the collapsing tunnels underground, it had no intention of repeating that mistake and becoming a victim of its own making. With another touch of its tentacle, the device energized. The alien disappeared from where it was standing among the carnage that it had wrought and materialized at the edge of a large underground space. It spared none of its attention on the routine maneuver. The tech was smart enough to adjust the transmission coordinates if there was any danger of being atomically reconstituted inside solid matter. Its only concern lay with completing its mission.
It made no difference to the alien that the place it found itself in was pitch black; it didn’t need light to “see”. The off-worlder was completely aware of its surroundings even with the lack of light. Its sensory organs painted a complete picture of everything around it based on the chemical particulates in the air that revealed an entire spectrum of wavelengths; all of which were out of the range of human perception. Immediately, it sensed that the ta
rget was directly in front of it and apparently alone. Without bothering to process any of this, in one smooth motion, it swiftly raised its weapon and fired.
JB had been leaning up against the wall of the cavern, waiting for the inevitable attack. But, he was still surprised when the alien appeared a few feet in front of him out of thin air. He reacted by leaping to the side as it fired, but he wasn’t fast enough, and a noticeably thinner energy pulse raked his side, burning a furrow through his flesh and setting his shirt aflame. JB ran back for cover, but not before another energy pulse had sliced a chunk of meat out of his arm, blackening and cauterizing his flesh.
It fired twice more, but JB kept moving as unpredictably as he could manage, dodging the next pulse only to catch another that carved a deep, disfiguring furrow through the left side of his face. That was too close; he thought as he retreated into one of the several tunnels that adjoined the cavern.
Before the alien could discharge its weapon again, gunfire erupted from Colin and Terry as they stepped out of the shadows from the other end of the cavern. But, they weren’t shooting at the tentacled horror in the middle of the cavern. Instead, they were both emptying their automatic rifles at a furious rate, directing their fire at the roof of the cavern over the alien’s head.
The result was nearly instantaneous, and yet they still kept firing and reloading even as vast amounts of dirt and rock tumbled down in a continuous torrent. The alien, torn between trying to escape the rain of falling earth and getting off more shots, opted for escape. It reached for the matter transmission device, but it was too little too late. Pieces of the collapsing roof had knocked the unit out of its tentacles. Seconds later the off-worlder was buried under tons of rock and sand. However, even though the firing had stopped, the momentum of falling rock, sand, and dirt continued to intensify, and the rumbling was quickly becoming louder and more intense.
“Jesus! Not again! Run! This way!” Colin yelled pointing at a tunnel on the other side of the cavern. With Terry and JB close behind they swiftly crossed to the tunnel entrance, but a curtain of falling sand and earth blocked their path. They were trapped, and the rest of the cavern’s roof was coming down fast.
Alien Roadkill-Homecoming Page 8
