Hellhole

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Jesus Christ,” Stephens whispers. “What the hell is that thing?”

  The monstrosity lowers its head and cocks it from one side to the other in a predatory manner. Its lips have shrunken from its bared teeth, which have grown long from its receded gums, and its nose has collapsed to the triangular formation of cartilage and bone. The vessels in its forehead throb with the sluggish flow of blood. Where once there were eyes, the sockets are now lined with wispy, filamentous hyphae.

  Rana stumbles backward.

  It matches her retreat and snaps at the air. Its teeth make an awful clicking sound.

  She detects movement in her peripheral vision, but can’t bring herself to tear her eyes from the creature advancing toward her on legs that tremble as though unaccustomed to movement.

  Again, it strikes at her with its jaws. It’s all she can do to keep from screaming, especially when she hears the sound of snapping teeth to her right.

  She turns to see Sydney approaching in halting movements, her face covered with a shimmering mask of blood. Her eyelids have peeled all the way back to accommodate the hyphae sprouting from her irises. She bares her teeth and snaps them.

  “Run!” Rana yells.

  “KEEP GOING, OMEGA,” Randall says, and their descent immediately recommences.

  A shout echoes from the cavern below them.

  It’s not one of his men.

  The voice is undeniably female.

  Dear God, the people who were attacked on the surface...

  They were still alive down here.

  Both of the lights below him swivel in the direction from which the sound originated, but reveal nothing beyond the crevice-riddled stone and several oddly shaped stones from which long fungal appendages grow.

  “Any sign of Alpha or Beta?” he asks.

  “No, sir,” Gamma replies.

  “There’s an awful lot of blood down here,” Delta says.

  “Focus on the mission,” Randall says.

  “It would help if you told us what we were up against.”

  Randall knows his man is right, but the truth of the matter is that he simply doesn’t know.

  The moment his feet hit the ground, he disconnects from the cable and picks his way over the coils. If he trips, he’ll become more of a liability than he already is. His cane is bound to his left leg, effectively immobilizing it. In the process of unstrapping it, he loses his balance and feels himself falling, but Delta grabs him by the back of his suit and rights him. They can all clearly see that he’s not physically fit enough for the field op, but he has to know what’s down here. Not only is this his fault, it’s his responsibility to make sure that whatever managed to survive down here never reaches the surface.

  He frees his cane and balances himself with one foot planted to either side of a deep fissure, at the bottom of which residual chemicals continue to eat through the earth.

  “Gamma take point,” he says. “Epsilon. Zeta. Mark this location and watch our six. Delta, activate sonar. I want to know the second you ping anything else down here.”

  Randall steps over one of the strange rocks. It’s knobby and covered with gray fuzz that almost looks like brittle, broken strands of hair from which the fungus proliferates in spikes. One of the tips brushes against his leg and a cloud of spores billows upward and swirls in his light, tiny golden sparkles like he remembers overtaking Dr. Thompson.

  He shines his light down at the source, but it’s no longer there. It’s now several feet away and looking up at him from a skeletal face only vaguely resembling that of a rabbit, its fur sparse and its skin clinging to its skull. Its hooked teeth are long and yellow and its eyes have sunken into shadows.

  “I’m picking up several distinct signals,” Delta says. “And they’re closing fast.”

  The rabbit rises to its haunches, opens its mouth, and clicks its front teeth against the exposed bone where its lower gums had been.

  “Where?” Randall asks.

  “All around us.”

  RANA SPRINTS THROUGH the darkness, the beam of the small light swinging in front of her, but hardly illuminating anything. She has to watch her feet to make sure she doesn’t trip on the fissures and nearly runs into a fungal growth hanging from the ceiling like a massive spiny stalactite. She’s within inches of it when it unfurls its arms from its chest and grabs the sleeve of her suit, knocking her off stride. She tumbles to the ground and the flashlight clatters away from her.

  She rolls onto her back as the creature disengages itself from what almost looks like a briar-lined cocoon and drops down beside her feet. She kicks at the stone. Propels herself in reverse.

  It scuttles after her in strange, disjointed movements, its head lowered and teeth snapping.

  “Get up!” Stephens says, and drags her away from it.

  Rana struggles to her feet and turns to run. Too late she sees the creature approaching from the opposite direction. It’s on top of Stephens before she can warn him, its clawed fingers gripping his suit while it tears at the seal around his neck with its teeth.

  A popping sound, almost like the noise of a silenced pistol, and the air fills with what looks like motes of dust.

  She shouts and strikes the creature repeatedly on the side of its head. Over and over. Until it disengages from Stephens. His mask is covered with the dust, which appears to be the only thing holding all of the cracks together. It disintegrates before her eyes and the creature seizes the opportunity to shove its face through the gap.

  A spatter of blood strikes Rana’s mask, which begins to crack as the dust settles on it.

  She brushes it off and dives for her flashlight, narrowly dodging the slashing arm of the creature from the cocoon, which joins its brethren in tearing Stephens’s suit to get at the man inside. His cries reverberate deep into the darkness, from the depths of which she detects a faint source of light.

  “It came from somewhere over there,” Gamma says. “Approximately two o’clock.”

  “Assume defensive formation,” Randall says. He peeks at the sonar monitor from the corner of his eye. Scattered dots ring the perimeter of the circular map and slowly converge upon the crosshairs at the center. “There are at least six of them. You get a clear shot, make it count.”

  A part of him has always known the fungi survived down here, but never in his worst nightmares had he imagined that the rabbits had, too. The way the parasitic fungi had been able to slow the host’s metabolism to the point of mimicking death must have allowed them to enter a state of suspended animation, during which time they’d ceased all non-essential functions and absorbed their own physical forms to keep them alive. And if the rabbits could survive, then was it possible that—?

  The faint aura of light in the distance coalesces into a single beam. A flashlight. He’s certain of it. Coming toward them. From the same direction as the scream.

  RANA SPRINTS TOWARD the light, which grows brighter by the second. She trips and falls. Pushes herself up, only to fall again. She screams in frustration and has to slow her pace to combat the treacherous terrain.

  They’re still behind her. She feels them gaining ground on her. Hears the clicking of their teeth.

  An image of Sydney flashes before her eyes, the seismologist’s face wet with blood and her eyes... Dear God, her eyes... She’d been dead when Rana found her. And yet that couldn’t have been the case. But she’d been so certain...

  A gray blur knifes through her swinging beam. Toward her feet. Before she can even look down, it strikes her foot and sends her sprawling. She goes down hard, the impact causing the cracks in her mask to expand even more and allowing the furnace-heat to seep through.

  She feels whatever attacked her scurry up onto her back, its teeth tearing through her suit and burrowing into her—

  Rana screams when its hooked teeth penetrate her skin. She reaches behind her. Grabs a handful of what feels like spongy weeds. Hurls it to the ground in front of her. Pushes herself upright. Her mind barely registers it as ha
ving once been a rabbit as she stomps on its skull until there’s nothing left of it.

  The spines on the creature’s hunched back explode in a cloud that shimmers in her beam, just as she’d seen in the moments before Stephens’s death. They’re spores, she realizes, and they have the ability to break through what little is left of her face shield.

  She ducks her head and runs, but the damage is already done. Her visor makes a cracking sound. She tears off the entire hood and casts it aside before the mask shatters and drops the spores into her suit. The chemical fumes flow like fire into her chest and smolder in her lungs.

  The light is so close now that she can make out the silhouette of the man holding it. And beside him, two more figures, whose lights converge upon her. Along with the barrels of their rifles.

  “They’re right behind me!” she screams.

  “Get down!” Gamma shouts.

  The woman throws herself to the ground a heartbeat before the entire unit opens fire. Only they aren’t all shooting at the same target. Randall detects movement all around them. He glimpses pale, skeletal creatures with wiry fungal growths protruding from their cadaverous forms as his men’s lights pass over them. Hears high-pitched screams, like air leaking from so many ruptured valves. The clicking of teeth.

  “Get her to the cable!” he yells.

  “They’re blocking our retreat!” Epsilon shouts.

  “What’s going on down there?” Omega asks.

  A naked figure darts from the darkness, tackles Zeta, and the two tumble across the eroded rock. It all happens in the blink of an eye, but even after so many years Randall recognizes the face of the man he found dead in his lab. The memories of wrapping him in a tarp and dumping him into the well haunt him. He turns his head until the beam mounted to his helmet shines straight into the monster’s emaciated face. Stephen Waller, the civilian scientist in charge of the locust-breeding project, stares back at him from the eerily sentient hollows of his missing eyes, his lipless mouth dripping with Zeta’s blood.

  “I’m sorry,” Randall whispers.

  A shot from somewhere to his left collapses the side of the entomologist’s head and hurls him outside the range of the light.

  “There are too many of them!” Delta shouts.

  A mutated rabbit clips Randall’s heel and he loses his already tenuous balance. The ground rushes to meet him. He lands with a snapping sound he hears as much as feels. One he knows means he won’t be getting back up again. His rifle clatters into a crevice beyond his reach.

  Epsilon grips him around his chest, underneath his armpits, and attempts to drag him to his feet, but the fractured bones in his hip shift and produce pain beyond anything he’s ever imagined. He cries out in a voice filled with more anger than pain as Epsilon slings him over his shoulders.

  “Put me down, goddammit!”

  His subordinate ignores the order and blindly fires upon the creature blocking their way. The bullets impact squarely with the chest of a man in a HAZMAT suit, but barely serve to slow him down. His white teeth are a stark contrast to the blood flowing from his ruptured eyes. He bares them and gnashes at the air. Collides with Epsilon and sends Randall once more crashing to the ground.

  Epsilon jams the barrel of his rifle underneath the man’s chin. A burst of compressed gas and the monster’s head jerks back. The contents of his skull splatter against the ceiling.

  The woman scurries to Randall’s side. Her eyes are wide with terror and blood flows freely from lacerations on her cheek. He recognizes Dr. Rana Ratogue from the newscast that alerted him to location of the earthquakes and, later, from the intel provided by the Army when the USGS was unable to reach her.

  “Clear a path!” she shouts at Epsilon. “I’ve got him.”

  Epsilon bellows and charges into the darkness. Gamma rushes to catch up with him. Their lights converge on a skeletal man, whose deformed face quickly vanishes into an explosion of blood and bone.

  “Someone answer me!” Omega says. “What in the name of God is going on down there?”

  “Prepare for emergency extraction,” Randall says through teeth gritted in agony.

  Rana grabs him by the wrist and drags him after them. Delta clasps his other arm and they cover the uneven ground at a much faster rate. Randall bites his lip to keep from crying out from the pain. It feels like his joint is made of shattered glass, which slices the muscles and tendons with even the slightest bump on the rocky earth.

  Another man in a HAZMAT suit emerges from the darkness behind them. Delta fires repeatedly and drives him back into the darkness.

  “There’s the cable!” Epsilon shouts through the speaker.

  “Fire up that winch, Omega!” Gamma shouts. “We need to get out of here in a hurry!”

  “They’re still coming!” Rana screams.

  The creatures are little more than shadows passing through the darkness beyond the reach of their lights, but Randall can tell there are at least three of them, and they’re gaining ground in a hurry.

  They abruptly stop and he turns to see Gamma holding the cable in one hand and his assault rifle in the other. The hole above him appears even smaller than before.

  Randall grabs Rana by the sleeve and pulls her down to him. He unfastens his harness and slips it over his head.

  “Take this,” he says. “It attaches to the cable that’ll take you back to the surface.”

  “What about you?” she asks.

  Randall smiles, but it’s not the kind meant for others.

  “This is where the road ends for me.” He shoves the harness into her chest. “Now go!”

  “Sir?” Delta says.

  “Give me your weapon, soldier. I’ll make sure nothing follows you.”

  “We can get medical attention topside—”

  “These things have already proved they can climb up that chute. Someone needs to make sure they don’t do it again. Now get the hell out of here while you still can!”

  Delta offers his weapon and salutes him.

  Randall seats it against his shoulder and sights down the darkness.

  RANA DONS THE harness and cinches it around her chest. One of the soldiers pushes her toward the cable dangling from the hole in the dome and clips her to it.

  Sydney rushes into the light, her features contorted by what can only be described as rage. The old man with the broken hip shoots her squarely in the chest, lifting her from her feet. She lands on her back and sputters blood. Flips over and pushes herself to her hands and knees. Allows the fluid to drain from her mouth before starting to rise—

  A second shot collapses her face inward, like a fist clenching.

  Rana sobs and attempts to rush to her friend’s side, but the cable hauls her into the air. She can only watch as another soldier attaches himself to the cable below her and the old man and lone remaining able-bodied soldier fend off creatures stolen from her worst nightmares.

  A malformed rabbit streaks across the ceiling toward her.

  She barely recognizes the danger in time to swat it away, sending it plummeting to the ground. When she looks back up, she catches a glimpse of a humanoid monster scurrying across the earthen dome toward her.

  “On the ceiling!” she shouts at the man below her.

  He raises his rifle and fires a triple-burst into its spiny back. It loses its grip, but catches her arm as it falls.

  Her shoulders and the back of her head meet with the sides of the orifice. The pressure threatens to snap her spine. She beats at the creature’s fingers until it lets go and she’s able to contort her upper body into the narrow chute.

  “Get it off me!” the man below her shouts. The monster must have caught him on the way down, but there’s nothing she can do to help him. She can’t even lean her head far enough forward to see him.

  “Don’t move!” Gamma shouts, and fires straight up between Epsilon’s thrashing feet.

  Randall hears a steam-whistle scream, followed by the thump of the creature hitting the ground behind h
im. He can’t afford to turn around to make sure it’s dead, not if he has any hope of holding the monsters at bay. The moment they step into the light he’s already shooting, but he can tell they’re only testing him now. Learning from their mistakes. His best shots only serve to drive them back into the darkness and he has a finite number of bullets left. For all he knows, his next shot could very well be his last. He needs to give his men the largest possible head start and hope their suits protect them from what’s to come.

  “Get out of here, Delta!” he shouts. “That’s an order!”

  “Yes, sir,” Delta says, and Randall hears the clicking sound of the harness attaching to the cable. “Everyone will know what you did here.”

  “I pray to God they don’t.”

  Delta rises from the ground behind him and follows Gamma into the orifice.

  A rabbit dashes across Randall’s useless leg. He resists taking the shot for fear of wasting the bullet.

  “Better make this snappy, Omega,” he says. “I’m not going to be able to fend them off very much longer.”

  A man in a HAZMAT suit appears in his peripheral vision and rushes straight at him. He pivots. Takes a fraction of a second to aim. Catches his attacker in the forehead. Knocks him backward, only to watch him rise to all fours. Everything above his right eyebrow is gone, and yet he still snaps his teeth.

  Randall finishes him off with a shot between the eyes.

  “How far up are they?” he asks.

  “Nearing a hundred feet, sir,” Omega says. “The last of them should be entering the concrete casing.”

  Randall turns and sights down a creature that’s now less than twenty feet away. It must have used the distraction to sneak within striking distance. He recognizes its face immediately, as, he’s certain, it recognizes his.

  Dr. James Thompson creeps closer. The fungus grows from his forehead in a configuration reminiscent of a crown. Rather than white, the hyphae in his hollow sockets are a mold-like shade of blue.