The Aeschylus

by David Barclay

  His other friends were dead too, but he didn't think they minded. They were so peaceful here, sitting in the dark, in the Thinking Place. With him.

  By now, he had quite a collection. Hans Junior had three companions just like himself: Friedricke, Lucas, and Hellen. Well, maybe Lucas didn't count since he was just a head. And Friedricke, being the oldest, had started to crust and stink. At least there were no flies here. That was another reason this Thinking Place was better than the one at home.

  He had birds, a whole row of them on a string. He had penguins, a sea leopard, and a weird-looking starfish he had pulled off of the shore. The centerpiece of the lot—aside from Hans Junior, of course—was a bird that was jet black and nearly featherless. He had found it by the chasm. His Thinking Place was, in fact, right outside the chasm.

  The bird had been alive when he'd found it, and he had put it up with the others, driving a nail through its breast. He named it Jesus because it lasted so long. It lasted three days, struggling and screeching there against the rock. Hans had watched it for hours. Unlike the others, it didn't seem to tire and give up. It just beat its little wings and kicked and kicked until the third day, when it finally keeled over and died.

  Hans had never been down into the laboratories at the base, but he thought maybe they had more birds like this one. He'd heard the Slimy Things in the crater had something to do with it. A lot of the soldiers were afraid of the Slimy Things, but not him. He'd almost touched one, once. When he first came to the crater, Hans remembered walking beneath one, reaching a finger up to stroke it. The flesh of the thing had parted just beyond the reach of his fingernail, revealing a cleft in the tissue. How strange it was. It looked like a man's thing, but it had parted for him like a woman's. He had yanked his finger away, then. He remembered his mother telling him how dirty women's things were, and that they carried diseases. He wasn't afraid exactly, but he didn't want any diseases.

  That cleft had been so strange. He wondered what would happen if he could plant an explosive in one of those things. Not a big boomer like a grenade, but something like a firecracker. He had collected quite a lot of explosives over the past few weeks. He was pretty sure no one would ever find them, either. They were buried beneath a group of loose rocks in the corner. Hans had done similar things when he had lived at home with his mother, and no one had ever found those. The explosives you could get in the army, however, were much better than the ones you could get as a kid. It made him giddy to think how much fun he could have.

  Boris didn't know about the stash. Hans had only brought out little bits at a time, like when they'd made that penguin bomb. He was smart enough to know that Boris had certain rules, and stealing from the army might break one of those rules, even if it was in the name of good fun.

  So far, he had only had fun with the animals. Maybe he would try people soon.

  Yesterday aside, Boris had been a good person friend. Hans didn't have many person friends. Maybe they would pee together outside again, and Boris would let him see his thing. He'd been meaning to ask, but it always seemed to slip his mind. They had been getting sauced a lot.

  Hans walked back to the entrance to the cave and stepped out into the open air. It was hard to tell how late it was, but he would have to get back soon.

  Stepping up the path, he paused to climb over a hill so that he could see the crater. It never ceased to amaze. He put his toes over the gap and looked down into the darkness. Hans felt no fear. It was actually kind of inviting. Then, he heard a truck start up over by the base, and several men shouted over the whine of the engine. If it was getting busy, Zimmer might be looking for him. He'd have to go back.

  Sighing, he removed his feet from the edge. Not today. But soon, maybe he'd find out what was down there. Or somebody would.

  Chapter 15: Cold Day in Hell

  The Aeschylus:

  Present Day

  1

  “Come in Delta. This is Alpha team leader. Please respond, over.” He paused. “Delta team... goddammit Reiner, where are you?”

  Mason was half a second away from ripping the mic out of the console, but he stopped and threw it to the floor of the chopper instead. He thought he had come to terms with Reiner's disappearance on the island, but now back on the rig, the unreality of it hit him again. He'd had men die on him before, but he'd never had one up and disappear. Still, not a single fucking answer to be found.

  While he and Vy had been at the island, the rest of the team had rounded up the bodies on the platform. Not counting the Argentinian military, there were sixteen. Sixteen workers out of two hundred and thirty-eight. That didn't jive with what their contact had told him. It didn't jive with the level of damage here. It didn't make any goddamned sense at all.

  He swung his feet out onto the helipad and saw it had gotten darker. Another few hours, and the sun would be setting for the first time in months.

  Hal was waiting for him outside. “What do you want to do?”

  Mason grabbed the man's mouth, fished inside, and pulled out his gum. He threw it to the ground. “Get in the goddamned chopper, McHalister.”

  The pilot frowned.

  “Now!” Mason screamed.

  Hal crawled into the S-70 and took the pilot's seat, knowing better than to speak another word. Mason didn't want to hit him; he wanted to hit Reiner. He'd given the man a simple set of orders: scout the perimeter, investigate the island, return to the platform and offer air support as they secured the upper decks. He'd been dependable for years, and now... now, he was just gone.

  Nothing about this mission made a goddamned lick of sense.

  “Maybe it's not that bad, sir.” The new kid was hobbling towards him, bent over a crutch Melvin had made him out of scrap metal.

  “What's that, Worsch?”

  “Maybe it does make sense, and we're just not seeing it.”

  Mason grunted. He'd either spoken aloud without realizing it, or the expression on his face said it all. It wasn't like him to start slipping.

  “Maybe the workers aren't dead. Maybe they got into the boats, evacuated the facility, and drifted out to sea. I mean, if they're not here and they're not at the island, it's the only thing that makes sense.”

  “And Reiner?” Mason asked.

  “I don't know. Maybe he landed somewhere you guys couldn't get to on foot. The radios still aren't working.”

  “Kid ain't dumb,” Melvin said, coming over to stand by the chopper. “But you ask me, I think it'll be a cold day in hell before we find out what happened to that fool.”

  Nick shrugged. “At least we're all secure here. What did you do with our guests, anyways? I haven't seen Kate or our football buddy since you guys came up.”

  Mason looked at Melvin, and Melvin shrugged. Did Black Shadow really not tell this twerp their plans when they brought him in? Christ, their leadership was going to Hell in a hand basket.

  He was saved an explanation by Hal, who had deemed it safe to speak again. The man returned to the bay of the helicopter. “Well, we got one bird that does work. And if you gentlemen don't mind, I'd like to run a systems check on her before we light out.” Whatever he was going to say next was interrupted by the sound of an approaching engine. He stuck his head to the windshield, his eyes fixed on the approaching object. “I'll be goddamned.”

  Five seconds later, he was dead.

  2

  Peter gleeked another strand of tobacco across the drilling equipment, and it landed all of the way on the other side. He grinned. He had, after all, been practicing since he was twelve.

  “Got any more of that stuff?” Christian asked.

  “No more whacky tobacky, man. But I got something else for you.” He produced a pill, round and orange, and held it up for inspection. “I was saving this for when we had the all clear, but I guess this is as good as it's going to get. You want one?”

  The other man shook his head.

  Peter shrugged and popped the thing into his mouth. He bit down hard, letting it split
down the middle. The sensation hit his teeth first like it always did, running ice across his gums. He swallowed.

  Shivered.

  Laughed.

  “Oh-doggy!” he yelled. The yellow gold was good stuff.

  Christian sighed, settling back down on the box he was sitting on. Peter slapped him on the shoulder. He liked Christian. Melvin would have have lectured him, or at the very least given him shit for calling his dip the whacky tobacky. “Whacky tobacky means it has weed in it, motherfucker,” he'd told him. “You as dumb as you look, you know that?” That always made Peter laugh, and it got Melvin madder than hell. But Christian didn't say much. He was laid back. Cool, man.

  Now, Peter thought there was something wrong with him. The big guy was huddled up, hunched over like he might hurl. At first, Peter thought he was just coming down off of the battle high, but this was something else. “You don't look so good. You all right? Sure you don't want a little pick-me-up?”

  Christian shook his head. Then, he stood up with a sudden force. “You hear that?”

  At first Peter could only hear the wind, then he realized his buddy was right. There was something like... like a sucking sound.

  And then below them, a bellowing yell. No, not a yell, he thought. A scream.

  “Jin!”

  They rushed over to the railing, looking down to the level below. Peter's first thought was one of sheer delirium, and his mind jumped to his dealer. He gave me the wrong batch. He gave me the wrong batch. Good God, he gave me the wrong fucking batch!

  They were coming from the tentacles. Hideous, blackened shapes were dropping and slithering from the tentacles like roaches. They crawled over the supports, naked and deformed, dropping onto the catwalks in droves. Peter's eyes darted to the left and right hoping—praying—that he taken something that had melted his mind. But that was stupid; nothing worked that fast. Below him, Jin was being pulled into a tentacle and... devoured, Peter thought crazily. He was being sucked inside and eaten by whatever lay within, the ropes hanging off his body like strands of cheese.

  The blackened shapes moved across the platform, scurrying and stumbling like animals. But they weren't animals. Those shapes, no matter how twisted and blackened, had once been people.

  Peter had a sudden memory then, as clear as anything he had seen in his conscious mind. He was six again, standing with his parents outside of church. “Is there really such as thing as the devil?” he'd asked his mother. She had told him that there was, and that he should always be a good boy, because the devil was watching. But he hadn't been a good boy, had he? Jesus Christ, he killed people for a living. And now, the devil was here.

  Christian fired. It snapped him back to reality, the rifle blazing fire beside his head. Vy hit one of the shapes, sending a spray of black blood through the air. They were fast; within moments, he had abandoned the fast-moving targets and was spraying the tentacles, sending streams of black and green fluid raining through the lower levels.

  Peter grabbed his grenade launcher and clicked the safety off. By the time he had his head straight, there was no need to look down over the rails. The things were crawling up the stairs. They were crawling up the drill shaft and over the catwalks, and they were running straight for them.

  3

  Hal's body exploded in a red spray as the bullets tore through the cockpit. The front of the chopper was mangled in an instant, the glass shattered and the metal perforated with holes.

  Mason hit the deck before he knew what was happening. The other chopper—his chopper—was hovering thirty feet from the platform. A shape stood at the open bay door, turning the mounted fifty caliber in a deadly arc. Mason stared at it from his back. Up until this morning, he would have believed nothing could surprise him any more, but he was wrong.

  Across the pad, Nicholas was yelling something, and he read the kid's lips: “Markus!” he was shouting. “It's Markus!”

  At first, it didn't register. The shape in the chopper doorway looked like Reiner, but it was too gaunt, too discolored. And it was wearing a grin, a cutting, eerie rictus unlike anything Mason had seen on the man. That grin bore a hole straight through him. I'm going to cut you in half with this thing, old buddy, that grin seemed to say, and I'm going to enjoy it. I'm going to enjoy it. I'm going to enjoy it!

  Mason jumped to his feet and tore ass across the helipad, throwing one arm around Nick. A spray of gunfire cut the ground behind them, missing the kid's legs by inches. Mason lugged him into the stairwell and threw him into the corner like a garbage bag. Melvin was already there, staring like a dog in headlights.

  “Can you get a shot off?”

  Melvin stuck his head up to helipad level and was greeted by another barrage of gunfire. “No!”

  Mason slung the AR-15 around his shoulder. He could hear the chopper circling. The Aeschylus was big, but the hostiles could move around the derrick and get a better vantage. Hostiles was the only way he could think of them. Anything else, and he'd have to stop moving and sort the shit in his head out.

  Calle looked at him. “What do you want to do, boss?”

  “Draw their fire.”

  “Say what?”

  “Draw their fire!” he barked.

  The kid looked at him from the floor, his eyes wet with pain. “Where are you going?”

  “To find the other fifty cal. Now get moving and make yourself useful, goddammit!”

  Mason jumped down the stairwell, then bounded out the second level and onto the deck. He could see the heavy gun on the crate where they had left it, near the bridge. In the wake of finding Doctor Grey, nobody had bothered to dismantle it.

  Then a sound from below: someone else was shooting. He stopped. The Aeschylus suddenly felt too big, a thousand miles separating him and his men. He put his hand to ear and felt his earpiece, forgetting it was inutile until his fingers touched the transceiver. A second later, he ripped it out and threw it to the ground, screaming to the sky.

  The fifty cal was waiting for him just across the deck, and he hurled himself at it, sprinting full force until he reached the crate. It was then, in that moment, that he he saw them.

  Human shapes were slithering from The Carrion tentacles and crawling up onto the deck. One of them found footing on the barracks bridge not fifteen feet away. It stared at him as it gained its feet, its eyes nothing but milky pits.

  Mason stared back. The thing in front of him was... it was a woman. He tried to reconcile her figure with the alien look of her skin and couldn't. It was too freakish, like something at a circus sideshow after dark. She hissed, an awful, animal sound from the back of her throat, and that broke the trance. He squeezed the trigger on the fifty cal, and the top of her head exploded.

  Not twenty feet away, St. Croix came hustling up the stairwell with Vy in tow. The man fired a grenade round into the space behind them, shaking the foundations of the platform with fire and dust.

  “To me!” Mason yelled. “To me! To me!”

  Vy sent two more targets to the ground, then followed Peter to Mason's side. Mason didn't know how many were left, but if he had to guess... well, he'd guess about two hundred. Crazy, he thought, and suddenly realized just how well Doctor Grey had been holding it together.

  Mason unscrewed the bolts holding the mounted machine gun and removed the ammo belt. He was about to let it drop into his arms when a human head rose from the railing in front of him. This one was a man, his bald head and mustache covered by black lesions and spider veins. Mason could see a small tentacle growing out of one ear.

  His right hand flew to his knife, and he jammed it through the thing's skull, shoving it straight through. It hissed, the blade showing through the back of its mouth. When Mason yanked the knife away, it dropped backwards into empty space.

  Another explosion rocked the deck behind him, and he could hear St. Croix cackling in triumph. “Put that thing away, you idiot!”

  Before he could say anything, Mason tossed him the machine gun. St. Croix caught it with a
huff. He tossed Mason his grenade launcher, then shouldered the fifty. “Where?”

  “East side! Tripod it to the deck!”

  The three of them ran back across the platform, and St. Croix hit the ground, reassembling the mount before he even stopped moving. The barrel of the gun could shoot just beneath the railing, making the spot an ideal roost.

  The shapes were coming up the stairwells now, and Mason counted a dozen more. Three of them toppled as Vy squeezed off a controlled burst. Mason fired and popped two more. The next wave came in a group, and he shot low, taking out their knees. Whatever the hell they were, however they'd been changed, they died just like men. And so Mason shot them just like men, chewing their bodies to bits with his rifle.

  He looked around and could see the outline of the chopper through the steel supports on the northeast corner. “It's circling into position!”

  St. Croix pulled back the lever on the fifty cal, aiming out through the beams.

  “What is that?” Christian yelled.

  “Be quiet!”

  Mason listened, and he realized he could hear voices.

  He jogged back to the railing, and when he reached the side, he saw exactly where the rest of Doctor Grey's Carrion things were. They were clustered around the metal supports beneath the barracks, hissing and spitting and climbing. In the middle, directly beneath the building, he saw Angus dangling from a hole in the roof. AJ was down to his underwear, clutching a rope that looked made of clothes.

  One of the shapes leapt from the supports and grabbed at the man, but he swung out of the way. The thing fell, banged into a cross beam, then splashed into the water.

  AJ looked up then, his gray eyes blazing. When he caught sight of Mason, he took one hand from the rope and made the little point-and-shoot gesture Melvin had done when they'd locked them in the room.