Standing only in their compression suits, the Reynolds each held black items slightly larger than harmonicas, if harmonicas also had a set of goggles attached. Both brothers shivered at the thought of what the items did.
“Mustaches. Ugh,” Shane said.
“Please refrain from referring to them as mustaches,” Carlos said over the com. “They are highly specialized rebreathers that—”
“Shut up, Carlos,” Max responded. “You’re not the one that has to put this thing on and let those tendril thingies get all jammed up into your sinuses then down your throat, into your trachea, and all that crap!”
“That was an apt description of what these things do,” Shane said.
“I listened during the first briefing,” Max said. “Try it.”
“I might do that,” Shane said with a smirk.
“Here goes absolutely nothing,” Max said and he affixed the “mustache” to his upper lip. The item instantly reformed to fit his face. Then tendrils shot out of the device and up Max’s nose. Max bent over and put his hands on his knees during the process. There was a good amount of gagging and muffled cursing before he straightened up again. He gave his brother a thumbs-up.
“Screw you,” Shane said and copied what Max had done, including the gagging and cursing.
“Testing com,” Max said.
“I can hear you,” Carlos said.
“Me too?” Shane asked.
“Yep.”
“Good. Now get off the com and get us Gunnar,” Max snapped. “Done talking with you.”
“Whatever,” Carlos said, and the com went dead.
“We might have wanted to chat first about the rifles.” Shane looked at the two experimental weapons on the ground next to their packs. “He said they could be twitchy.”
“I wish we could use our own rifles,” Max said, picking up one of the weapons. “This just doesn’t replace the feel of having a .300 WinMag in my hands.”
“Speak for yourself,” Shane said, picking up the other weapon. “My .338 MacMilan beats your WinMag any day.”
“Agree to never agree with you ever,” Max said. “Mainly because you’re stupid.”
“Hey, boys,” Gunnar Peterson, Chief Science Officer for Grendel, called over the com. “Ready to hunt a snake?”
“Don’t,” Shane said, pointing at Max.
“I wasn’t going to say ginormous hell snake,” Max said with a smirk, which was hard to do around the mustache rebreather on his face.
“Goggles.” Shane depressed a button on the side of his rebreather. “Oooh, night tech. Nice.”
“Yeah, you’ll need that,” Gunnar replied. “When you get into the water, you’ll want to stay close to the river bank. Find a deep hole and dive. Then look for the den opening. This type of snake will burrow into the riverbed to create an underground home to give birth in.”
“It stays in the water the whole time?” Max asked as he activated his goggles. “Oooh, yeah, this night tech is great. It’s adjusting to the daylight and shadows at the same time. Sweet.”
“Titanoboa does not stay in the water the whole time,” Gunnar replied. “The entrance tunnel to the den will be submerged, but the main area will be above the waterline.”
“Great,” Shane said, not convinced it was at all.
“All we have to do is get in there and kill it, right?” Max asked.
“And make sure it’s alone,” Gunnar replied. “Hopefully, there aren’t more.”
“Ballantine said the lab only created one,” Shane said.
“Yeah, but it’s Ballantine and that golf pro-looking dude always lies,” Max responded.
“Too true, bro,” Shane agreed.
“Just double check,” Gunnar said. “Shit! I gotta go, guys. Darren is calling and needs help with something.”
The com went silent.
Shane hefted his futuristic-styled rifle. “This had better fry the thing. I mean it. If I get eaten by a freaking titanoboa because the tech doesn’t work, I swear to God I’ll become a ghost and haunt Carlos for eternity.”
“Right there with ya, dude,” Max said as he held his rifle close to his chest. “Ready?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
The brothers shook their heads, looked at the river one last time, shrugged, then jumped in.
WITHOUT THE SPECIALIZED goggles, visibility in the river would have been close to nothing. With the specialized goggles, visibility was slightly better than nothing. Only slightly better.
“Think I got something here.” Max swam through the murky water towards a deep depression in the submerged part of the riverbank. “Yeah. Hole. Big hole, dude.”
“How big?” Shane asked.
“Three, maybe four, meters across,” Max said.
“Big snake needs a big hole.”
“Dude...”
“I’m on your six,” Shane replied. “I’ll follow you in.”
“Thanks, bro,” Max said and kicked his legs hard and fast.
With his rifle at the ready, Max dove through the pitch-black entrance to the hole and kept diving as the hole became a tunnel. If he didn’t have the specialized goggles, he wouldn’t have been able to see more than a few inches in front of his face, if that.
Max swiveled his head from left to right, increasing his field of view as wide as possible, but all he saw were the walls of the tunnel. No signs of any type of animal life, especially not a giant snake.
“Main coms are out,” Shane said. “We’re going too deep for a signal. Only peer to peer, bro.”
“Roger that,” Max said.
“You seeing anything?” Shane asked.
“Nothing but nasty water,” Max replied. “You?”
“Your ass.”
“Nice.”
“It is. Way to keep up on your Pilates regimen.”
“Boy’s gotta stay fit.”
“I hear th—”
“Hold up,” Max snapped and stopped swimming. His rifle gripped to his shoulder with one hand, he reached out and steadied himself by grabbing onto a stray tree root that poked from the tunnel wall. “Movement.”
Streaks of red filled Max’s vision, the goggles’ tech extrapolating images from the data they were receiving.
“Snakes!” Max shouted as the images solidified. Four very large serpents were headed straight for them.
Max opened fire, shredding the first snake with laser fire. His eyes went wide at the devastation the experimental rifle brought to the creature. Half the thing’s head was sliced off, followed by several feet of the snake’s body as its undulations brought its coils into the rifle’s line of fire.
Hunks and chunks of snake filled the space between Max and the three others coming straight for him and his brother.
“Move!” Shane shouted. He shoved his brother out of the way as a snake struck.
Instead of grabbing Max by the head, its massive mouth closed on the barrel of Shane’s rifle. Bright light illuminated the serpent from the inside and a meter-long gash appeared in the creature’s back. Its mouth let go of the rifle as the body went limp and drifted to the bottom of the tunnel.
Max recovered from his brother’s manhandling and fired over and over, taking the next snake apart bit by bit.
The fourth snake went straight for Shane but missed on its first strike and ended up decapitated as Shane kicked to the side and fired against the creature’s neck.
The Reynolds brothers swept their weapons back and forth, staying put for a good five minutes before Max called, “Clear.”
They surveyed the bloody carnage, then glanced at each other.
“You see what I see?” Max asked.
“Huge snakes but not native huge snakes?” Shane asked.
“Yeah. That.”
“I see it. They were too big to be anacondas.”
“Wrong markings, too.”
“You know what anaconda markings look like?”
“Yes?”
“Way to sound
sure of yourself.”
“I leave my options open.”
“Then what are we looking at?”
“Yeah, well...babies?”
“Ginormous hell snake babies?”
“That’s my guess.”
“Shit.”
“Yep. Shit.” Shane pointed his rifle forward. “After you, bro.”
“Thanks,” Max replied. “Time to kill mama.”
THE FIRST THING Shane noticed when they reached the end of the tunnel and found themselves in a wide pool of muddy river water was that it sure was light underground. The second thing he noticed was that despite what his eyes were seeing, he had a hard time believing a ginormous hell snake had mastered the art of fire.
The Reynolds brothers slowly broke the surface of the subterranean pool and Shane was somewhat relieved to see that the snake had indeed not mastered the art of fire. However, the thirty or so partially naked tribespeople that waited at the shore of the pool, arrows slung and spears at the ready, killed Shane’s relief quickly.
“Feel like testing the compression suits against those arrows?” Max asked very quietly.
“Not particularly,” Shane replied.
“Then we probably shouldn’t test them against the big spears those guys are holding,” Max said.
“Sexist. Some of the spear peeps are chicks,” Shane said.
“My bad.”
“No worries. It’s dark and you were focused on the spears.”
“That I was, bro. That I was.”
The brothers held their positions, as did the tribespeople.
“What’s the call?” Max asked.
“Rifles are too specialized,” Shane said. "We’ll take down three or four, but they’ll get a lot of shots off before that.”
“Thinking the same thing,” Max replied.
“What are they doing here?” Shane asked. “I thought everyone had these people occupied up top. No point in splitting the team to take out hyper-adrenalized cannibals up there if there are a bunch of the bastards down here, too.”
“We knew they worshipped the damn snake,” Max said. “We just didn’t know it was all smoking torches in a snake cave level worship.”
One of the tribespeople stepped away from the main group and pointed angrily at the brothers. He shouted in a tongue neither of them understood. Then he ran his finger across his throat. The brothers understood that.
The bowstrings tightened and Shane and Max prepped for the incoming projectiles. Then the leader of the tribespeople held up his hands and began to yell a phrase over and over. The phrase was picked up by the others and turned into a monotonous chant. Bows and spears were lowered then dropped as the tribespeople fell to their knees, supplicating themselves on the shore of the pool.
Shane glanced down at the water around him and noticed the ripples were a lot larger than they should have been if it was only the brothers displacing the surface of the pool.
“Max?” Shane said very quietly.
“Yep,” Max replied.
The brothers slowly turned and saw the ginormous hell snake making its way down the surface of a wall behind them, just above the entrance of the tunnel. Then it launched itself at the pool and the brothers.
Last thing Shane saw was a ginormous hell snake mouth coming straight for him.
MAX MANAGED TO get one shot off before the body of the snake slammed into him, knocking his rifle from his hands and sending him flying across the pool to collide with the cave wall. All breath left his lungs. He gasped as he fell back into the pool and sank beneath the surface. Had it not been for the rebreather, Max would have swallowed half the pool.
One side of his goggles was cracked and the other side was useless. The tech began to spark and sizzle in spite of being submerged. Max yanked the goggles off, careful to disconnect the rebreather beforehand. He pulled a flashlight from his belt and flicked it on, sending a thin stream of light into the murk of the pool.
Silt and mud clouded the disturbed water, but Max was almost sure he saw a huge shape moving a few meters below him.
Without pause, Max dove. He pulled a knife from his belt and swam as hard and fast as he could with both hands occupied. Deeper and deeper he went, his ears popping slightly. He had no idea how a pool of water could be so deep in the middle of the Amazon jungle, but he wasn’t exactly about to question the geography. All he cared about was finding his brother.
Then killing one ginormous hell snake.
More movement, but from Max’s right. Max rolled his body and got the knife up in time as one of the smaller snakes struck at him. The blade jammed up to its hilt just under the snake’s chin. The snake’s mouth stayed open, Max’s blade sticking up inside its lower jaw.
Max let go of the flashlight, grabbed the top part of the snake’s jaw, and slammed it down. It took all of his strength, and a little help from the snake as its natural instinct to bite kicked in, but Max got that mouth closed and the blade pierced through the snake’s palate and into its brain.
The snake went limp. Max tried to get his knife loose, but it was a losing endeavor. He let go of the hilt, allowing the snake’s corpse to drift down into the darkness.
Minus a weapon and any form of illumination, Max made the only choice he could. He swam deeper. With his arms butterflying out in front of him, his legs kicking hard behind, he propelled himself into the depths of the pool.
THE PAIN WAS bad, very bad, but it would have been a lot worse if Shane hadn’t been wearing the compression suit. The suit was doing its job: keeping the intense pressure being exerted on his body externally from allowing his organs and bones to be crushed internally. Shane wasn’t a fan of Carlos, but at that moment he said a silent thank you.
Until he felt a rib give, and then he started cursing the tech’s name loudly.
“Dude!” Max’s voice rang out over the com. “I’m swimming blind! Keep shouting!”
Shane kept shouting as a second rib cracked.
Shane found he was having difficulty breathing. And it wasn’t because of the cracked, and cracking, ribs. The ginormous hell snake had its body wound around Shane and was tightening on his every exhale. It was typical constrictor behavior; something Gunnar had told the team before they set off on their nightmare mission. Another aspect of the snake’s base behavior was to clamp onto the head of its meal while it coiled and squeezed.
Shane was lucky that part, at least, hadn’t happened.
Then all luck ran out. The top half of Shane’s body was suddenly plunged inside the ginormous hell snake’s massive mouth. It slammed closed just below Shane’s shoulders, the constricting coils tightening severely. Shane screamed. Then, the coils loosened.
Shane didn’t have time to sigh with relief, mainly because his ribs were screeching in agony, but also because the only reason the coils were easing up was to make it easier for the snake to swallow him.
And send him down yet another dark, dank, nasty hole he didn’t want to be in.
“Dude!” Shane yelled, but only static answered.
MAX SLAPPED AT his belt and realized he still had a trick up his sleeve. He pulled free two glow sticks, cracked them one-handed, and tossed them out in front. They lit barely a few feet of the murky water, but those few feet were enough.
Max’s eyes widened then stung as silt and dirt scratched at his corneas.
There it was. The ginormous hell snake. Dead ahead.
Max glimpsed what might have been a boot, but he couldn’t be sure. He hoped he was mistaken, that it was a product of his stinging eyes, because that boot could only be Shane’s and it was being swallowed by the snake. Max had no knife, and no rifle, which meant no way of slicing the snake open to retrieve his brother. Max dove hard and fast anyway, kicking with all his strength for the snake.
Being an ex-Navy SEAL, Max improvised.
He reached the snake, grabbed a handful of its lip, and, using the grip as ballast, punched the creature in its right eye, over and over and over.
T
he snake thrashed in the water. It tried to get away from Max, but he held tight to the thing’s lip and continued pummeling the snake’s eye until it finally popped and milky blood poured from the crushed orb.
The snake opened its mouth wide and Max snatched his arm away, barely getting it out before the maw snapped shut. The snake swiped at him, opening its mouth again, but Max dove under the coils and swam until he was sure he was clear of its fangs. He stopped, spinning about.
The snake’s upper jaw slammed into his midsection like a freight train. Max was shoved through the water until his back hit solid earth. He coughed hard and tasted blood through the rebreather’s tendrils. Then the glow sticks’ meager light faded, plunging Max into darkness.
The snake slammed him against the earth once more. Something in the rebreather broke. River water started to fill his lungs, choking him.
Definitely broken, then.
Grabbing the snake’s top lip, Max flipped himself onto the creature’s head. He planted his boots and kicked off from the snake as hard as he could. His body launched upward, Max dug deep for all the strength his arms could muster. He swam and swam, his lungs becoming heavier with each stroke.
Far above, the pool’s surface beckoned. Max aimed for the flickering torchlight. He kicked. He paddled. Kicked, then paddled. His body was numb from exertion, but that didn’t stop Max. He’d been in worse situations.
When his head broke the surface, his first thought was to hope he didn’t catch an arrow to the eye. His second thought was that he should capture a spear from one of the tribespeople. His third thought was...what the hell just slammed into his boots?
Duh. Ginormous hell snake.
Launched into the air, Max’s body was ejected from the pool violently. He tumbled over the water and onto the shore, landing in a heap on top of several tribespeople who were still prostrating themselves at the altar of their ginormous hell snake god.
Before the cannibals could regroup, Max rolled off his human landing pad and staggered to his feet, throwing punches at anyone and everyone that came at him. He cracked jaws and broke cheekbones, before he was overwhelmed by the warriors’ greater numbers. They pressed him to the ground.
Hellhole Page 29
