Ruger’s remark went ignored. They heard Prall call out from a short distance away. “Better come and take a look at this, Abbott.”
Prall had found two of them in close proximity to each other. At first they looked as if they were merely featureless pits in the floor, and if they had been anywhere else but here, they would appear to be nothing more than small empty concrete swimming pools.
“How deep would you say?” Abbott asked, peering over the edge.
Prall estimated, “Ten feet at most.”
The pits were rectangular, about eight feet by ten feet, and off center in mathematical relation to each other. One was at about a thirty degree angle to the other. The walls were smooth like polished rock, unobtrusive, very drab.
“Shine the light down there,” Abbott said.
When the darkened pit was illuminated by the carbide lamp, it revealed an open doorway that they hadn’t seen from above. Almshouse repositioned himself to shine the light directly into the opening, but the beam was absorbed into the blackness.
“See anything at all?” Abbott asked.
“No. Nothing.”
“Not from up here,” Prall responded, standing next to Almshouse to see if he could observe anything.
Ruger and Grimes had been inspecting the other pit area. “This one’s the same,” Ruger said. “There’s another opening at the bottom.”
“The two connected?” Abbott asked.
“No,” Ruger replied. “Looks like this opening is going off in another direction. That way.” He pointed.
“That’s assuming they’re straight through,” Lisk said.
“They must have been filled with liquid at one time,” Almshouse suggested. “Maybe their water supply.”
“Could be,” Abbott responded.
“Want me to go down and take a look?” Prall asked.
Abbott contemplated for a moment, and everyone remained silent awaiting his response. Abbott peered around the chamber. The rest of the internal structure which they hadn’t yet examined closely appeared to look much the same—intestine-like conduits, gray-green ooze, and thousands of the strange purplish nodules.
Slowly Abbott nodded affirmative. “All right,” he replied. “But lets just make a quick recon.”
Lisk was already retrieving the nylon rope from the gear pack. Prall quickly secured it around his waist. Abbott and Ruger both simultaneously looked around for something to guide the rope against for leverage to lower Prall into the pit. There was nothing secured to the floor in proximity to the opening.
“Guess we’ll just have to lower him over the edge,” Ruger said.
“I can drop down,” Prall said, peering over the edge. “You’ll just have to haul me back up.” Abbott nodded affirmative.
Almshouse and Grimes kept the light beams trained on the area where Prall landed feet first, then Grimes tossed the one lamp down to him. Overhead, the ambient lighting didn’t alter with occupancy of the pit. The sound of his striking the floor sent an echo reverberating through the pit area.
“Anything goes wrong,” Abbott ordered, “we pull him out of there as fast as we can.” Prall attached the line.
Cautiously, Prall stepped toward the dark opening, weapon trained ahead in one hand, carbide lamp in the other. The beam shined into the blackness. Prall moved to the edge of the opening and stopped, waving the beam back and forth, all around the perimeter of the jamb. There was a deathly silence inside.
Abbott was growing impatient. He called down, “What’s there, Prall? What do you see?”
There was another moment of silence before Prall responded. “Nothing. There’s absolutely nothing here. It’s a tunnel. Looks like it goes in a long way. Same walls. Same floor. About five feet clearance all around.”
“Same dimensions as the doorway back there,” Lisk muttered.
“How far can you see in?”
“Twenty feet maybe,” Prall replied. “Want me to go in?”
Again, there was a moment of precautionary silence as Abbott contemplated. “Yeah,” he responded. “Be careful.”
“You crazy, Abbott?” Ruger protested in a low voice. “You’ve no idea what’s in there.”
“We had no idea what was in here, either,” he replied calmly.
Prall called up from the pit, obviously several yards inside the tunnel. “The tunnel lit up inside. I don’t see any light source.” A moment’s silence. “I’m twenty feet in,” Prall responded again, the pitch of his voice now lower due to the increased distance. “Still nothing. I don't need the lamp.”
Abbott turned to Lisk and asked, “How much on that reel?”
“Two hundred feet,” Lisk replied. “It’s marked at ten foot intervals.”
In silence they watched as the cord continued to reel out. Prall was now out of voice range and had ceased talking. Grimes and Almshouse were positioned on the floor to get a straight angle into the opening. They watched as the lighting diminished behind him the deeper Prall moved into the interior of the tunnel. It was now dark again in the pit. The cord continued reeling out at the same slow pace.
Several minutes passed before the cord stopped, then went limp. They waited for a few moments. “Pull it taut. Get his attention.”
Lisk pulled. The unthinkable happened. The cord was unattached. “Jesus…” Abbott cursed, angrily at first, then changing his facial expression to one of grave concern.
Abbott and Lisk looked at each other. “How much left?” Abbott asked.
“He’s in about a hundred and a quarter.”
“Stay by the line,” Abbott ordered, slinging his weapon over his shoulder and positioning himself along the pit edge to drop down. Ruger started to protest, but Abbott was down before he knew it.
Almshouse tossed down the other carbide lamp. “Just in case.”
“Hold it!” Ruger shouted, and everyone stopped, including Abbott who was about to enter the tunnel.
“Wait,” Ruger said. “You can’t go in there alone.”
“You stay put, Ruger,” Abbott ordered.
But before Abbott could say anything more, Ruger had plunged over the edge, dropping to floor with a loud thud. “You don't order me to do anything anymore, Abbott,” Ruger responded.
Fuck you then, Ruger, Abbott said to himself. Let our visitor friends deal with you, too.
“Just one request,” Ruger said, smiling nervously. “You go first.”
There was no time to argue now. Abbott looked up at Lisk. “Don't reel the cord back just in case we have to drag somebody out. If you don’t hear from me in fifteen minutes, get the hell out of here, Al. You know what you have to do.”
“Check,” Lisk replied.
“Let’s go, Ruger,” Abbott ordered.
Cautiously, they entered the portal. As anticipated, the tunnel was bathed in a low, soft lighting. Like in the chamber above, they couldn’t detect from where it was emanating. It illuminated a new area about every twenty feet, turning off behind them as they moved further into the interior.
It was difficult moving through the tunnel. The five foot overhead clearance was obviously not engineered to accommodate the human frame. Both men were over six feet tall, and it was uncomfortable moving in a semi-crouched position.
Abbott followed the orange cord lying limply along the center of the floor. He had been counting the black ten-foot interval marks. Five…six…seven…they were at least seventy feet inside the tunnel. Each time a new area was lighted, it gave off only enough light to illuminate the immediate area. Ahead there was still pitch blackness.
“Notice something different?” Ruger whispered, breaking the silence of the past few minutes.
Abbott stopped. “Yeah. This whole place.”
“No. I mean our sounds aren’t echoing anymore. The walls seem to be absorbing our voices.”
“You’re right,” Abbott replied. Abbott switched on the lamp to see how the lighting reacted. It diminished rapidly, compensating for the lamp. It made the lighting condition worse.
He switched it back off, and the lighting returned to its former low level intensity.
They moved forward again in silence. Abbott kept counting. Eight…nine…At the hundred foot mark, Abbott began calling, softly at first, “Prall…Prall…” but there was no response. And then, at the one hundred seventy foot mark, they came to the end of the tunnel. A portal opened up into another identical pit. The end of the cord lay outside the portal in the center of the pit area. Crouching just inside the entranceway, Abbott pulled it toward him. He inspected the end closely.
“Cut?” Ruger whispered.
“No,” Abbott whispered back. “Untied,” showing the end to Ruger. Abbott tossed the end back inside the tunnel.
Cautiously, silently, Abbott moved into the center of the pit, standing up and stretching his aching back. The walls in this pit were not as high, only about seven feet. There was no sign of Prall. Abbott turned around and kept to whispering, “It’s a passageway.”
“Yeah,” Ruger nodded agreement. That had to be the primary purpose. “And my guess is there might be a whole lot more of them if we look long enough.”
Abbott hadn’t noticed at first, but there were two other openings along the wall to his right. The opposite wall had none. “Might as well take a look,” Ruger said, nervously.
“Yeah,” Abbott replied, tossing his weapon to Ruger. “Don’t be afraid to use it. You know how?”
I’m not, Ruger thought, remembering he still had the two handguns hidden in his pocket pouch.
“Prall!” Abbott called loudly. “You up there, Prall?” he said, leaping to grab the edge of the top of the pit wall. Abbott pulled himself easily up to the surface, where he hung by his elbows peering into the dark chamber. This place had the same awful smell as the other antechamber, as if something had recently been slaughtered and the inner organs were left to lie around rotting. Both of them involuntarily gagged back the effects of the smell.
Ruger switched on the lamp and shone it upward at Abbott, then directly overhead. The blackness, as expected, absorbed the beam. “What’s there, Abbott?’ he asked, his heart pounding.
Abbott hoisted himself to the surface, then reached back down for the weapon. Ruger pulled himself up the wall and stood next to Abbott. The lighting had activated. There was no doubt. They were inside another similar domed structure. Two more rectangular pits were nearby, both positioned at odd angles to each other. Abbott shined the lamp into each pit. All three were identical. Seven foot walls, three openings, each one off in a different direction.
They peered around in silence. Inside this dome, there were some similarities, but also different things. The same intestine-like conduits hung randomly from the ceiling. Only here, they all seemed to terminate into a large, cube-like object in the center of the chamber. The floor was perfectly flat, featureless. Off to one side was a huge parabola standing on a pedestal, and extending from the center was a needle-like protrusion, smaller but similar in design to the huge proboscis back in the other antechamber.
Abbott let out a long nervous sigh, and Ruger could detect the same foreboding he himself was feeling. “Jesus, Ruger,” Abbott said. “Do you realize what we’ve stumbled on?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
“Those pit areas must be underground passageways. They must all interconnect with a series of structures. No telling how many there are.”
“You’re right,” Ruger responded.
“We’ve found an alien colony,” Abbott said. “A whole goddamn complex.”
Ruger’s heart thumped wildly. “I’m glad the owners aren’t home.”
Abbott peered around the chamber. “I’d say they’ve been gone for a long time by the looks of things.”
Ruger looked back toward the pit. “How’d they get down there? There’s no ladders.”
“They float, Mike,” Abbott replied. “They float.” Abbott was serious, and Ruger only looked at him.
“How do you know that?”
“Trust me, we know,” Abbott replied.
Ruger was beginning to understand that Abbott and his people knew a whole lot more about these entities than anyone imagined.
Abbott suddenly realized the time. He glanced at his watch. Fourteen minutes had passed.
“Want me to go back?” Ruger asked, recognizing Abbott’s concern.
“No. Just jump down and yank taut on the cord three times. Al will yank three times back. That’s a sign everything is under control.”
“I’m glad you think so,” Ruger responded, jumping down into the pit area and grabbing the cord. He felt it being tugged three times from the other end.
Prall. Where was Prall? Abbott suddenly realized that he had been caught up in the mystery of the new discovery, and had momentarily forgotten about Prall. He called out again, waiting for Ruger to return to his side. Abbott knew Prall all too well. Made his own rules up as he went along. More than likely he was off wandering around the place, but Abbott didn’t notice any of the lighting activated in other areas. Prall wouldn’t have gone down into one of the other pits without first checking out this chamber. Unless he was chasing something. The very thought made Abbott shudder.
There was no telling how many of these structures were down here, assuming they were all interconnected like he suspected. Abbott felt the fear in the bottom of his empty stomach. They had never before made a discovery about alien visitation like this one. At least that Abbott knew about. Question was, what in God’s name was the human race going to do with it?
“Prall!” Abbott called out again, but there was no response. Then suddenly, completely unexpected, Abbott became overwhelmed by the oddest feeling of terror he had ever experienced. It was like a malevolent presence became manifest inside his own being. “My God!” he exclaimed in a terrified whisper, disbelieving. “They’re in here with us!”
Ruger was just about to climb the wall when he heard the terrified voice. It wasn’t the normal tone of voice he had been hearing from Abbott. There was something up there, and Abbott was confronting it.
Instinctively, Ruger leaped to the surface of the chamber, positioning himself next to Abbott, fumbling for one of the handguns in his pouch.
“They’re in here, Ruger,” Abbott whispered, his voice quavering.
Ruger’s hands were shaking. “Where!? I don't see anything!”
“I can feel their presence,” Abbott whispered again. In the soft lighting, Abbott saw the beads of sweat on Abbott’s brow.
Panic was growing inside Ruger’s body. “Where?” he exclaimed. “For God’s sake, where? I don’t see anything!”
Ruger glanced one more time into Abbott’s face. He saw it suddenly turn pale, horrified. Abbott’s eyes grew large in his head. The words on his lips, barely audible, said, “Oh my God…no…no…”
It was behind him. Ruger spun around. The body of Colonel Prall was hanging suspended in the air ten feet above the floor by a blue beam of light that emanated downward from the pitch blackness above. It must have been illuminated only moments before. Neither one of them had moved from their position to make the lighting activate. Something else had triggered it.
And then things began to happen so quickly that neither man had time to even think about what they were doing, much less than worry now about the ill-fated Colonel Prall. Their reaction to the situation that began unfolding around them in the following seconds was mere instinct. Survival. The human brain was subconsciously conditioned for self-preservation.
More lights began illuminating throughout the chamber before Ruger and Abbott realized what it was that began happening all around their position near the pit. Section by section, each area was slowly illuminating, bathed by a light more ghostly than the light they had experienced thus far. They knew from experience that it was being activated automatically by motion, and Ruger and Abbott stood back to back, turning in unison until they had completed a full circle, but not before they both witnessed the horrid sight that was now culminating into the sum of all their human f
ears.
Prall’s body hung suspended in the ice-blue light as if the center of his large torso was attached by invisible wires, the curvature of his spine falling downward along the natural gravitational plane, his head bent back, his legs and arms dangling listless from his trunk. The body was turning slowly like a hanging mobile, and when his face came into view, even in the upside down position they could see the torment etched on his face. The eyes were bulging from the head, his mouth wide open in an oval though no sound emanated from within. Whether Prall was still alive at that point, they didn’t know. Their parting image of Prall was that the man must have died a horrible agonizing death, for it was now in plain view what it was that caused the chamber to illuminate.
The pallid figures were standing all around in small groups, their stringy forms exuding an eerie incandescence as if they were absorbing most of the ambient lighting and passing it back off through their bodies. The unearthly creatures at first stood unmoving, tightly ranked, and it wasn’t even possible to count their numbers because of their unnatural closeness to each other. Their sound was unnerving, a sound so utterly non-human that it sent a paralyzing fear down the spines of both men. Yet both men sensed, deep within the recesses of their brains, what the sound was suggesting to their cognitive thoughts. Their repulsion was a natural human reaction to the subtle, low vibrating hum of an insect colony.
Ruger’s hand shook so hard that he was unable to get a grip on the handguns in his pouch, and both fell loudly clanking to the floor as he fumbled to pull them from his pouch. The response triggered the attack, as simultaneously the entities began to move forward, each group in unison, guided by some unseen and incomprehensible signal.
They did not walk as a human would walk. They glided freely above the floor as if carried along by an invisible cushion of air. Within each group the harrowing insect sound intensified like the approach of an infestation of locusts, and it penetrated deep into the sensitivity levels of the human auditory system, feeling like a hot needle being driven into the brain.
It hurt. Hurt intensely, and Ruger’s and Abbott’s body each felt a tingling like an electrical shock was surging through their limbs. As the numbness was beginning to take hold, the sound still intensifying, suddenly the subconscious human will to live broke the spell of the alien’s powerful energy surge. Whether this force was physiological or mental, both men were able to shed the paralyzing grip that threatened to overcome them.
The Nexus Colony Page 32
