by Guy Riessen
“Inside? That’s sick, man,” Derrick said.
“Or it could be part of the Primary? What if the Primary actually extends down below the ground, and we’re just looking at a different part,” Sarah said.
“From the inside? Like a DCV colonoscopy?” Howard said.
Derrick groaned.
“Not helping, Howard. Let’s keep moving,” Sarah said.
Howard stood, and everyone fell into line behind him. He stepped into the tunnel. “Ugh,” he said, his boots sinking slightly, “it’s kinda spongy.” He rocked on his toes, testing the surface.
“If it’s this soft and possibly organic, it explains why it’s not reflective on the scanner,” Derrick said.
They followed Howard into the tunnel. The first side-passage was on the right, so they kept close to the left wall. Strands of the viscous slime dripped and caught in their hair, stretching thin then snapping and dropping wetly to their clothes and skin. The sticky fluid was cold, clammy, and smelled like rotten meat and wet leaves. They moved farther into the main tunnel.
Howard directed his light into the opening on the right. Pulling the rifle butt up to his shoulder, he sidestepped left. “Oh, shit!”
Three black and dripping tendrils whipped out of the tunnel and wrapped around his rifle, torso and legs. A six round full-auto burst ripped from his rifle as the tentacles yanked Howard off his feet.
Sarah dashed forward as Mary and Derrick moved up to look down the side hall.
The slime dripped and fell in sheets and looped strands, slopping to the floor. Howard wrestled with his barrel as the prehensile member wrenched it back and forth in his grip. He fired another shot which sounded flat in the corridor, the soft walls absorbing the echo before it could travel far.
Thick black ooze splashed out where Howard’s bullets hit the center of a fleshy column of wriggling loops. Dozens of human mouths opened in the tower of corrupted flesh and screamed, hollow tooth-lined pits. The screams were loud even above the chattering gunfire. Scattered around the column’s mouths were eyes of different shapes and sizes that glowed with an unholy yellowish light, blinked, and stared with pupils pulled to tight points.
Mary leapt into the side tunnel as Howard struggled against the writhing mucous-drenched appendages dragging him toward the towering undulating monstrosity of putrefied flesh that stretched from floor to ceiling. She pulled her tac knives from their sheaths and slashed at the tendrils. Severed, they flopped and writhed on the floor. The main stalks yanked back toward the tower of mouths and eyes, leaking gouts of black ichor. Though severed from the main column, the tendril-ends gripped Howard ever tighter. Sarah scooped her arms under his shoulders and hauled him back into the main passage.
Dragging Howard back, she turned her head to the others and said, “Move quick. There may be more.”
The screams from the creature were ripping through the passageways.
“So much for sneaking in. I think we just rang the fucking doorbell,” Sarah said as she wedged her knives beneath the constricting flesh and peeled the severed tentacles from Howard.
Mary said, “That thing had eyes ... maybe flash-bang grenades would work without too much risk of collapse? If we could blind it, maybe we could rush past?”
“Worth a try,” Howard said as he pried and yanked the last tendril off his rifle. The black ichor hissed and bubbled where it struck the floor. “Damn. Might want to avoid getting that shit on you if you can help it.” Howard held up his sleeve where some had dripped onto his arm. There was a singed hole burned through the fabric.
Derrick dug into the pouch at the back of his belt. He pulled out his two flash-bang grenades and handed them to Howard.
“Thanks, buddy,” Howard said.
Howard signed them to form up again, and they started forward. This time before sidestepping in front of the first passage, he pulled the pin on a flash-bang, counted to five, then reached around and tossed it into the darkness. They turned away from the opening and squeezed their eyes shut, reflexively covering their ears, even though the earpieces would clip the volume of the grenade to a reasonable level.
There was a bright flash and boom. A thin white smoke billowed out of the passage. Howard sidestepped into it. His laser sight quickly moved over everything before he waved them forward and they all moved past him.
Rushing past, Derrick looked down the passage. The column of flesh was burned, like a hotdog dropped into a fire at a campground. Its skin peeled and curled back from the blackened meat that split and leaked black ichor. The eyelids were crisped and torn, revealing goo dripping from the now-empty eye sockets. Even the walls, floor, and ceiling of the corridor itself were blistered, bubbled up with some unknown yellowish fluid. The walls were cracked and peeling where the fluid-filled pockets had burst and dripped in thick rivulets to the charred floor.
“Wow. That, like, totally worked, man,” Derrick said.
“Looks like a photophobic SWERV to me,” Mary noted.
Howard moved quickly past the next three side corridors, a flash grenade tossed into each, leaving a scorched and blistered tunnel after each one popped. Looking back, the whole tunnel was loose and sagging like wet worn-out wool stockings. The rich color of earth was now a drained and dull gray.
As Derrick walked up to Howard, he said, “It’s dead, Jim.”
“Not quite,” Howard said, dipping his head forward and shifting his rifle to peer around the bend where the corridor continued. “Oh shit! Move quick! Popper incoming!” Howard shouted, pulling the pin on his last flash-bang grenade. He tossed it forward, squeezed his eyes shut and ran after it.
There was a bang, clipped by the earpiece filter, and Howard grunted. As the others ran toward the bend in the tunnel, they heard Howard’s rifle rip at full-auto until the magazine emptied.
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
DERRICK, MARY, AND Sarah raced behind Howard, around the bend in the tunnel. The smoke filling the middle of the corridor made it difficult to see. Howard crouched low, below the smoke, and slammed a new magazine in. They moved up past the still-sputtering grenade casing that rocked and hissed in the slime puddled on the floor. Howard continued forward firing from his half-crouch.
“Two down. Humans. One, maybe more, still up and armed.” Howard’s voice cut through their earpieces.
Sarah jogged forward, then ducked down as the acrid smoke billowed out along the ceiling. Mary stayed with Derrick as he hobbled up from behind.
“Open room. Dais in the center near the back. We got possible hostiles behind the dais. Smoke is thick. Howard, you got anything on the QQ?” Sarah added.
“Offline, Sarah.”
“Derrick? Get in here and scan!”
Derrick and Mary moved in. He was leaning on his cane. He couldn’t crouch because of his leg, so he was bent over at the waist. They were standing near where the room opened out from the tightness of the corridor. Here, the ceiling was a meter or so higher than in the tunnel.
The walls and floor appeared to be regular dirt and there was a shirtless black man on a stone dais in the center of the room. His chest was torn, like it had been ripped open by a chainsaw. As Derrick entered the room, the man’s head turned toward them. His eyes were wide but unfocused. Blood poured out of his open chest cavity and down the sides of the dais. Red bubbles frothed at the top of the wound near his neck. The man’s eyes went waxy, and the bubbles stopped.
Then, on the wall behind the corpse, Derrick found his eyes drawn to a blackness within the dark shadows of the room. A place where the gray shadowy dark sucked away into nothing. A place where sinewy claws might grab your skull and haul you halfway to eternity before the gateway schunked closed like a guillotine dropping through a noble neck.
Derrick suddenly felt the room spin, as if gravity went topsy-turvy but only right around his head. He stumbled forward, his leg buckling as his cane clattered away. Mary grabbed his elbow and steadied him as he whispered in a voice hoarse with dread. She shouted, “Watch it, y
’all there’s a gate in here!”
“Got a visual on the gate?” Howard said.
“Negative,” Sarah said, “damn, Derrick ... is the guy on the altar our mystery man from the pit?” Sarah asked as she moved to the left and Howard moved right.
Derrick focused on the corpse on the dais and said, “No. It’s not the same guy.” He turned his head toward Mary and said, “Help me move to the dais.”
“Wait for clear, D,” said Howard.
“No!” Sarah shouted.
Derrick grabbed at Mary, looking her in the eyes. His pupils were constricted even in the dim light, and his eyes were bloodshot. She could see the sweat beading on his brow. She nodded, wrapping her arm around him, she moved with him, straight toward the table of black stone. Derrick could feel the presence not only of the gate, but someone ... something ... more. Something corrupt. Something with a foothold where it should not be.
Howard and Sarah moved quick when they saw what was happening, trying to move around to the sides.
As Mary and Derrick reached the center of the room, he caught a glimpse of someone ducking low behind the dais and he felt a drug-addled jolt in his memory.
Without warning he pushed hard against Mary, knocking her back, away from the danger. Derrick stumbled forward, keeping his eyes away from the featureless abyss, and he flopped across the cooling body on the dais, shoving it off the far side of the stone platform.
Derrick gripped the dead man’s belt loops as the tumbling body dumped over the far edge. The man’s heart and lungs were gone, but his intestines pushed up through a slice in his diaphragm, falling in loops from the corpse’s exploded chest.
Derrick screamed as his thigh smacked against the edge of the dais and he was dragged up and over. Biting the inside of his lip as his vision spun, he tugged the thin wire from the side of his watch. It flopped loosely from his wrist. His watch face flickered over to sensor mode.
As the corpse and Derrick crashed down on the far side of the altar, Derrick stared into the barrel of a gun held by a man crouched near the wall. The man’s piercing blue eyes sighted down the pistol’s barrel.
The Frenchman!
Derrick tumbled forward, letting the momentum whip his legs up and around, crashing them down onto François, as the pistol fired. Derrick felt a bullet tug at his hair, then grab at his shoulder pulling him slightly to the left. Derrick kicked out with his good leg, catching the man under his chin.
The Frenchman’s head snapped back, and he jabbed his elbow into Derrick’s injured thigh. The pain was unbearable, and Derrick’s vision tunneled to red as he screamed again. The man grabbed at the edge of a green stone rod half covered by the corpse. The iwisa! Derrick rolled his hips and slammed his good leg into the side of the man’s neck, spinning him around. Derrick kicked out again, hitting the Frenchman, spinning him to the left and making him stumble to his knees with the unholy blackness of the gate in front of him. The man looked over his shoulder, his eyes locking on the iwisa.
Inches away, the black nothingness of the open portal yawned. A hole in the fabric of reality surrounded by twisting and maddening lights that hung in the air a meter away from the wall. It defied Derrick’s brain to analyze how it did not change perspective no matter how his view shifted.
François made a grab for the stone rod and Derrick cracked the heel of his broken leg down on the Frenchman’s fingers. François jerked his hand back, losing his balance, and he tumbled, falling into the blackness as the gate’s diameter started to shrink. Pain shot through Derrick’s entire leg, lancing up like fire along a fuse, all the way to his skull. The world spun, and the edges of his vision faded to black. He shook his head. The room settled.
A leprous scabbed arm shot back through the empty infinity of the gate, its sinewy clawed hand scrabbling left and right, reaching for Derrick’s skull. Derrick’s stomach heaved, he tasted sour bile burning at the back of his tongue.
No! Derrick knuckled his eyes, coughing and spitting. The arm was human, and its fingers touched the iwisa and grabbed the rod. Derrick shouted and scrabbled to roll off the dead body, his hand wrapped around the hilt of a dagger pulled from the top of the dais by the falling corpse. Rolling his torso toward the portal, he swung the knife in a tight arc, its blade stabbing through the hand and into the dirt floor.
Even though Derrick expected a scream, there was no sound coming from the portal. Just empty horrid black.
The lights rippling around the edges of the foul oval were mesmerizing, dazzling to the eyes yet horrifying, like the glowing electric worms that presaged Derrick’s migraines. He tried to pull free of the body, but his shirt tangled in the dead man’s splintered ribs. He flopped and tugged, and heard the tearing of fabric as he yanked free and reached for the iwisa.
The gate continued to shrink, and the hand suddenly jerked back. The flesh of the hand tore itself away from the knife, slicing free from bone and tendon. The iwisa rocked, but the hand didn’t have a grip. Blood poured from the ragged knife wound as the hand slipped back through the gate.
Derrick looked away even as he rolled onto his side. He couldn’t do it. He saw the creature take Phyllis. He saw the top of her skull, spinning slowly around. A white bone bowl slick with blood, and filled with sliced gray lumps covered with red capillaries. He could see her hair, tangling, knotting as the hemisphere of gore slowly spun to a stop.
Derrick ground his teeth together and shouted through his gritted teeth. No words, just a ragged scream as he plunged his hand deep into the blackness.
He felt a burning heat in his shoulder. And the thought of what might happen to his arm finally made the vomit burst from his mouth, splashing the floor and wall to his left. He blanked his mind, shutting off any lines to memory or even present thought.
He stretched his arm as far as he could, grabbing for the disappearing hand. The small sensor wires of his watch whipped and flailed, following his hand into the darkness like whipping tails, as he reached into the contracting portal.
It felt like his hand was wrapped in something lukewarm and thick like overcooked hot chocolate cooling on a stove. Or like the rotten and jagged tooth-filled mouth of the Boogeyman.
He swung his hand around in the blackness, expecting to feel a slime covered tongue, grasping and grabbing for anything he could, but there was nothing. Only tepid horrible, grotesque thickness, coiling and slipping along the flesh of his arm.
“Derrick! No! Pull back!” Howard shouted as he rounded the altar at a full run, his rifle up and aiming for any target.
From deep within his self-induced haze, Derrick heard his friend and yanked his hand back as the black hole of the gate snapped closed with a thunderous crash. Derrick held his hand up. The color drained out of his face when he saw blood pouring from the missing tip of his left middle finger.
“Hang on, buddy, that finger’s not too bad, and the gate’s closed” Howard said as he ripped the small first aid kit from his shoulder strap. He manipulated Derrick’s left shoulder, and Derrick heard fabric rip. “Shoulder wound, grazing shot. It’s not bad, D. Didn’t penetrate ... you’ll have another scar to dazzle the ladies with when you regale them with stories.”
“Regale?” Derrick heard Sarah’s voice.
“Yeah. Regale. What?” Howard answered as he shifted to look at Derrick’s finger. He thought he heard Mary snigger.
Derrick’s vision swam. Sarah was leaning over him, applying a hemostatic bandage to the end of his finger. “Can’t feel it,” Derrick said, “But, man, I guess my driving will be more polite now.” His words slurred, like he had a wad of gum in his mouth.
“It’s amazing, even shock won’t shut Derrick up,” Sarah said.
“Nope—never seen anything that has,” said Howard. “Finger wound is from the portal ... I think. He had his hand kind of inside it when it snapped shut.”
Derrick’s eyes were clearly unfocused, and looking in slightly different directions, his lips were pulled back from his teeth in an approxim
ation of a human grin, “See? Lookitthis.” He held up his hand.
“Yep, we’re getting you bandaged up, D. Hang tight,” Sarah said.
“No, no. Not ma-hand, look,” Derrick said weakly, shaking his wrist. Wires dangled and danced from the side of his watch.
“What ... oh?” Sarah’s eyes followed the silver wires to their abrupt end. “The sensors are gone?”
“Yeah, but I got readings ... I got readings, Sarah. My hand was in the, uh ... gate ... for a couple seconds before I had to pull it back.”
“What the hell, Derrick? Why didn’t you just toss the sensors through like last time?”
“The guy who held me in the cabin, François? The Frenchman? That was him. He escaped into the gate. I tried to grab him, but no go, man.”
“You sure it was the same guy? François? Wait, never mind,” Sarah said, “of course you are. Well, hot damn, if we can trace your data again, we’ll get another shot at that asshole.”
Derrick nodded, his eyes half-lidded for a second, then he opened them and said, “Artifact.” He nodded his head toward the corpse. Sarah followed his gaze to where the green stone of the iwisa had rolled out from under the corpse. Howard pushed loops of intestine aside and rolled the body over. He pulled the blade free from the ground and rolled the iwisa over to Sarah.
Howard looked down in the dim light cast from their rifle flashlights. His eyes were wide as he held the knife up for Derrick and Sarah to see. “Damn, D. Check out what you pinned the dude’s hand with.” The blade didn’t gleam in the light. It was gray and streaked with blood from the Frenchman’s hand. Its tip was dark with moist dirt.
Derrick said, “Wow, H! That’s your 3D-printed dagger.” He let his head lower back down to the cavern floor. “Karma can be a mean SOB, can’t it?”
Sarah leaned over and tugged at the corner of a velum sheet that peeked out from under the corpse.
Howard suddenly noticed what she was tugging at. “Hey, careful, that stuff’s delicate,” Howard said.
