Just like that, it was over. Fifteen seconds, maybe, from contact to cease-fire. Echoes of gunfire rumbled throughout the tunnels for a moment longer; then it was quiet. My hearing was amplified by electronic earpro, but all I could hear was the ragged breathing of my teammates.
“Everyone okay?” I asked, removing the half-empty magazine from my rifle and placing it in my pocket. “Cheng, check your men. I think they crapped their pants.” I slammed a fresh magazine home and turned to Barb. “You okay, bro?”
He was wide-eyed and still had his carbine pointed down the tunnel. His light, bobbing slightly with his breathing, was fixated on the two dead Al, and the trail of black blood the third had left as it retreated down the tunnel. “Y-yeah,” he managed, looking at me a moment later. “That was intense.”
I grinned. “Hell, yeah, we’re in the shit now. Congrats, bro, you just got your monster hunting cherry popped.” I turned to Cheng. “Your guys okay?”
He nodded in the affirmative. He had been berating Flamethrower Guy, the one who screamed.
“Okay, tell ’em to move out. I want three pulling rear security, and Flamethrower Guy up here with me. Tell him if he sees anything moving ahead of us in the tunnel, burn the motherfuckers. Don’t hesitate, don’t wait for me to tell him to fire, just burn ’em. Okay, follow me. We got us a trail, hopefully lead us back to their lair.”
We proceeded down the side tunnel cautiously, lights illuminating the way. I had Barb snapping chemlights and leaving them on the floor, leaving a visible trail should we somehow get turned around or lose our lights. Using bright lights and fire easily gave our position away, but they were an advantage. Cave dwellers like the Al can see in the dark. Their eyes are so sensitive that our lights would blind them, hopefully get a deer-in-the-headlights reaction like we did before. Plus, almost all foul, unearthly things feared fire.
We were still descending as well. The exploratory shaft angled downward a few degrees. It was cold enough down there that our breath misted. The electric lights strung along the shaft had all been ripped down, probably by the Al. Up ahead, illuminated by very bright tactical lights, I could see the end of the tunnel, where it opened up into a natural cave system. As we approached, the air changed, becoming damper and fouler. We were definitely close. Somewhere, echoing off in the distance, the sounds of water running could be heard, or maybe felt through the stone. There was an underground river down here, somewhere, probably undiscovered by man until now.
The entrance to the cave was barely big enough for a man to pass through. There was another, smaller boring machine parked at the end, left where it had been abandoned. “Alright,” I said, turning to the team. “This is the perfect place for an ambush. Do you guys smell that? I think that’s their lair.”
“How do you wish to proceed?” Cheng asked.
“Do your men have grenades? Good. Tell them I want two frags tossed in, one right after the other. Then, I want Flamethrower Guy to stick the muzzle of his Zippo in that hole and give a good long burn, sweeping side to side. As soon as he pulls back, crack open a couple flares and toss ’em in. Then I’m going in first. Barb, I want you right behind me. Cheng, you next. Take one of your guys. Leave the other two out here for rear security. Leave the dude with the flamethrower, he’s bulky and might get hung up on the rocks in there.” Cheng quickly relayed my instructions to his team as I took off my pack and set it down. “Everybody ready? Let’s do this.”
Cheng’s men moved with precision. Two from the rear came forward, fragmentation grenades in hand. The first shouted what I’m assuming was Mandarin for “frag out” and tossed his grenade in. The second followed suit an instant later. We all turned away from the opening to the cave. BOOM BOOM! The double concussion of the blast rocked the tunnel, kicking up dust and causing dirt to fall from the ceiling. Even with hearing protection in place, it left the ears ringing just a little.
Flamethrower Guy didn’t miss a beat. He stepped forward and, leaning downward a little, let off a long blast from his weapon into the cave. A high-pitched, unearthly shriek came from inside the cave, enough to chill a man to the bone. We’d gotten at least one of the damned things anyway.
“He says he burned one!” Cheng told me, as he tossed a couple of red flares into the cave entrance.
“Outstanding,” I said, readying my weapon. “Let’s do this. Barb, you come in right after me. Move, move, move!” You can’t hesitate in a situation like this. Whatever things were still alive in there, hesitating only gave them time to regroup or retreat. If they crawled away into the cave system, we might never find them. I crouched down, weapon first, and jumped down into the cave. The entrance was a couple of feet above a damp stone floor.
It was quiet, save the snapping, crackling, and popping of the burning Al on the floor a few feet ahead of me. The stench, the smoke, the burning hair and flesh, the unnatural stink of unnatural things, it was enough to make even an experienced hunter gag. One other Al was dead on the floor, closer to the entrance, but as I swept the cave with my weapon light, those two were all that I could see.
Barb slid down into the cave a second later, taking up a position next to me. “Nice entrance, Leeroy Jenkins.” He was followed by Cheng, who gagged at the stench.
The cave itself was big, probably fifty feet across. There were several other exits, leading off to God-knows-where under the earth. “This is definitely their lair,” I said, studying the ground by fire, flare, and flashlight. “Look.” There were mutilated corpses of both people and animals. Bones covered the floor, many of which looked gnawed upon. Some of the bodies were strung up, as if being saved for later.
“Did…did they make ropes out of their hair to hang the bodies with?” Barb said, a look of disbelief on his face.
“Looks like it.”
“Where did they all go?” Cheng asked. “We can’t have gotten them all.” Two of his contractors had followed him in.
“No,” I said, scanning the room, trying to shine my light into every nook, cranny, and tunnel entrance, “I don’t suspect…we…” I panned my light up to the roof of the cave, some twenty feet above us. “Fuck me.” I forgot to look up.
The rock of the ceiling was just as porous as the rest of the cave. There had to be a dozen of the things up there, big ones and small ones, looking down at us with shining red eyes and glinting white teeth. One was right above me, grasping the roof of the cave, her head turned all the way around like an owl. Black, ropey hair hung from her head. I raised my weapon just as she let go, and all hell broke loose.
The Al hit me like a hundred-pound sack of flour. I fell flat on my back from its weight, and the ghastly thing landed right on top of me. My rifle was pinned to my chest, between the Al’s body and mine, and I couldn’t bring it to bear. It took both hands to force her face away from my throat. Her jaw was nearly twice as wide as a human’s and she snapped hungrily at me. The creature was spindly and effeminate, but was a hell of a long stronger than it looked. She tried to bite my face off. It took all of my strength to keep her at bay, and I was quickly tiring.
I couldn’t tell what was going on around me as I struggled for my life, wrestling with the thrashing beast. Gunfire roared in the cave. A blast of fire from the flamethrower. Men screaming. Al shrieking. More gunfire, shouts in English and Chinese. A terrible clacking sound as the Al on top of me snapped its jaws like an alligator, its hot spittle dripping on my face.
At least I was wearing goggles. There was no way I was going to win this fight and I knew it. The thing was stronger than I was, and I was getting tired. The rest of my team was getting slaughtered all around me from the sounds of it, and there was no time to lay on the floor and get my face eaten! Grunting, gritting my teeth, I used all of my strength to push the thing away from me, my gloved hands up under its chin, until I could lock my elbow out. I dropped my left hand down to my side, finding the butt of my sidearm on my left hip. I pulled the revolver, a Ruger GP100, clear of its holster and stuck the end of its five-
inch barrel under the Al’s chin. BOOM. A contact shot from a full-power .357 round was enough to blow the Al’s head open. Black ichor and brain matter splattered all over the cave and poured onto my face. It had the texture and smell of wet, sloppy swamp mud.
I sat up, spitting the foul ooze out of my mouth, and pushed the Al off of me. Lining up the revolver’s glowing tritium sights, I put two rounds into an Al that was charging for me, dropping it. I swiveled to my right just in time to see Barb shoot the last one to the ground with his .45.
He ran over to me a moment later. “Holy shit, dude, are you alright?” He helped me to my feet. My load-bearing vest, goggles, and armor were all spattered with the black blood of the Al.
“I think so,” I said, patting myself down. I turned on my headlamp and checked for blood. “No bites. What about you? Are you bit?”
“No,” he said, eyes wide. “Why? Will…will I turn into one of them?”
“What? No. No, no, you just might get a nasty infection. Al don’t multiply that way. We don’t actually know how they multiply.” I shook my head, remembering to focus. “Cheng? You alright, man? Who’s left?”
Cheng stepped forward, out of the darkness, a moment later. He, too, was covered in black ichor. His hand was clutching a bleeding wound at his neck, but he seemed otherwise okay. “I’m here. I’m afraid I’ve lost two of my men.”
Scanning the room, I saw them. Amongst the dead Al were two humans, Flamethrower Guy and one of the other security contractors, facedown in pools of blood. One of them had his arms ripped off, and it was all I could do not to vomit. My knees were shaking. “Well then,” I managed, turning away. “Did we get them all?”
“No,” Cheng said. “Some escaped through there.” He pointed at one of the tunnel entrances at the far end of the cave. It was little more than a crack, barely wide enough for a person to slip through. I noticed then a slight breeze moving through the cave, toward the crack, and realized then that that was where the sound of water was coming from.
“I’m not about to chase these things all the way back to hell,” I said, “but we can take a quick peek through there.”
Once again, I was the first one through the breach. I found myself on a rocky precipice, overlooking an unbelievably huge cave. Shining my light around, it extended as far as I could see. It was so vast that I couldn’t even guesstimate how big it was. It was too dark and there was no frame of reference. On the far floor, hundreds of feet below me and maybe a quarter mile away, there was a strange cluster of rocks, angular and cyclopean. They were the size of buildings…and looked unnatural. An unearthly glow, pale and blue, emitted from…something…in the center in the cluster of—it hit me then—structures. This was a city. And underground city! My God…
“What…what is it?” Barb asked, stepping up next to me. “Where is that light coming from?”
I shook my head slowly, in awe. The source of the light was obscured by the structures, some of which went all the way to the ceiling of the cave, hundreds of feet above me. The main cluster of them sat on the island in the middle of a great underground river. “It’s a city, man. An ancient, subterranean city.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Barb said, the realization hitting him. “This far belowground, there’s no way ancient people could have dug this deep.”
“It wasn’t built by people,” I said. “It wasn’t built by people at all. Hey, Cheng,” I said, turning around. “What—” I fell silent. Cheng’s two surviving security men had their M4 knock-offs pointed at Barb and me.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Cooper,” Cheng said. His carbine was slung, but he had a pistol in hand. “I’m afraid you’ve just stumbled upon what will inevitably be declared a state secret. It’s nothing personal, I hope you understand.”
I glanced down at the cliff behind me. It was hard to tell in the dark, but the rocky outcropping seemed to jut out above the underground river. Is this it? I thought to myself. Either get murdered or Butch and Sundance it off a cliff into a city of the Old Ones? Not for the first time, I found myself questioning my career choices.
BLAM BLAM! Two shots rang out, startling me. My head snapped up in time to see Cheng’s two men hit the floor, each having been shot in the head. Cheng stood over their bodies, Glock 19 in his hands and blood on his face. Did he just shoot his own guys? Barb and I leveled our weapons at him instantly. A Mexican standoff between two Americans and a Chinese. Hilarious.
“Just take it easy,” Cheng said, raising his hands over his head. He didn’t drop his gun. “I’m on your side.”
“What the fuck is going on?” I asked, keeping my rifle trained on him.
“I’m with the CIA,” he said calmly. “I’m also a liaison between the CIA and the MCB. Please, lower your weapons.”
I didn’t lower my rifle. “Why did you shoot those guys?”
“Because they were going to kill you, Mr. Cooper,” he said, holstering his pistol. “Don’t you get it? This is what they were looking for.”
“This city?”
“Yes. There are reportedly rumors of it, found on tablets on the Plateau of Leng in Northwestern China. Look, we don’t have much time. We need to get out of here. The Chinese have been looking for this for years.”
“Why? What’s down there? And why would they hire me if they’re looking for a secret underground city?”
“The mining company doesn’t know what they’re looking for, either. They think it’s just about ore. We don’t have time for this! Will you please come on?”
“You’re outgunned now, buddy,” I said coldly. “Start talking.”
“Without me, you’ll never get out of here alive, Mr. Cooper,” he said, turning his back to me. “Now come on. We have to use the explosives you brought to collapse the tunnel. Between that and the workers refusing to come back, it’ll buy us time. Come with me or stay down here. Either way, I’m blowing the tunnel.”
* * *
So that’s the long and short of it. Using all the explosives we had, including some that Cheng had been carrying, we collapsed the cave entrance and, as near as I could tell, most of the exploratory tunnel. On the long lift ride back to the surface, Cheng warned us not to speak a word of this to anyone. He said it fell under the normal jurisdiction of the Monster Control Bureau regarding open discussion of the paranormal, and he warned that bad things would happen if we didn’t keep our mouths shut. He confiscated our phones to prevent us from calling anyone before we got home. He wanted to make sure the CIA and the MCB had a monopoly on this particular bit on information for the time being.
What he didn’t find was the Roshan network phone I’d bought in Kabul shortly after landing in-country. Network access across Afghanistan was spotty and international calling was costly, but the thing worked. I’d paid cash for it, so it wasn’t linked to me in any way. The first thing I did, once I was able to get away from Cheng, was send Amber a text, telling her I’d lost my phone, but was otherwise okay. I hadn’t heard from her since arriving in-country and wasn’t sure why I was bothering, but I sent it anyway.
The next thing I did was dial a number from memory. It took a few seconds to connect. A woman answered the phone.
“MHI,” she said simply.
It was Dorcas. “I need to speak with Earl Harbinger.”
“Who is calling?”
“Cooper. I used to work for MHI.”
“I see,” she said, sounding bored. She always was an ornery old goat. “I’m going to have to take a message.”
“Dorcas, you tell him that we found a city of the Old Ones buried under Afghanistan and the Chinese are about to find it and I need to talk to him right fucking now!”
She was clearly unimpressed. “One moment.”
After a few seconds, a rough male voice came on the line. “Harbinger,” he said simply. “Calling to beg for your job back, Cooper?”
“No. Listen, you need to know this before the CIA and MCB quash it. This could be huge.” So I told him everything as quickly as I
could. He asked very few questions, but I could tell he was writing things down.”
“Good work, Cooper,” he said after I’d finished. “You get out okay?”
“Yeah, my partner and I are safe. We’ve got a flight out in a couple of days. The CIA asshole was at least nice enough to see to it that I still got paid, so this wasn’t all for nothing.”
“Listen, kid. Get in touch with me when you get back to the States. There might be an opening in the Vegas office.”
I told him I’d think it over and would be in touch, and thanked him. After hanging up, I noticed that I had a text from Amber.
I miss you, baby.
I miss you too, I texted back. How are you?
I’ve been thinking about a lot of stuff, she replied. Please come home. We can work it out.
I love you, I texted back hopefully.
Almost a minute went by before I got a reply. I love you too. Come home.
I’ll be on my way home soon.
For most of us who end up in this life, it was because something horrible tried to eat us. But sometimes regular people have encounters with unearthly forces in unexpected ways. —A.L.
A Knight of the Enchanted Forest
Jessica Day George
It turns out that if you blow up your school, they expel you. Even if no one was hurt. Even if it was only the science classrooms, not the whole school, like the newspaper claimed.
Even if you only did it because your biology teacher was a werewolf.
And it turns out that if you get expelled for blowing up your school, your father decides to quit his job to homeschool you. And if your father decides to quit his job to homeschool you, he is going to insist on doing it in the middle of nowhere, in order to get you away from the friends who led you astray and helped you blow up the school.
The Monster Hunter Files - eARC Page 8
