Hellhole

by Jonathan Maberry

  The pause was longer than expected, and despite the complete lack of emotion in the artificial voice, Hood sensed a weary resignation. “Major Hood, I will explain everything to you, but you and your men must leave the cave at once.”

  “What about the others? Did they change, too?”

  Mad Dog advanced a step toward him, his weapon coming up. “Who are you talking to?” he growled.

  Hood shook his hand again. “It’s Phantom. He’s going to tell me what’s really going on here.”

  The last was said as much to Phantom as to Mad Dog, but the latter simply echoed the word, “Phantom,” as if hearing it for the first time.

  Phantom spoke again. “Major Hood, you must listen to me. Your eyes are deceiving you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There is something dangerous in the cave, but it’s not what you think. I don’t have time to explain everything—”

  “Try.”

  There was another long pause. Mad Dog was now standing right in front of him, eyes darting back and forth as he scrutinized Hood, searching perhaps for some hint of a reptilian metamorphosis in progress. Hood tried to ignore him.

  “The change is not physical,” Phantom said.

  Hood was beginning to wonder if Phantom was stalling, intentionally wasting his time. But why? Was the man behind the disembodied computer-generated voice secretly in league with Doctor Tox?

  “It looks pretty physical to me,” Hood said, staring at the bullet-riddled corpse.

  “Shortly after they entered the cave, the team began to experience changes in their mental status. Increasing paranoia. Hallucinations. Minor at first, but quickly escalating in intensity.”

  Hallucinations? Hood thought that sounded like the kind of thing an enemy might say. Perhaps Phantom was gaslighting him, trying to get him to question his own sanity. “How did she do it?”

  “She?”

  “Doctor Tox. How did she expose them? What’s her delivery system?”

  Another pause. “Doctor Tox is dead. When the squad entered the cave, only four hostiles were present, and all of them were in the final stage of critical exposure.”

  “You mean they had changed?”

  “There is no physical change. Their minds were gone. They killed and consumed their comrades—including Doctor Tox—and were roaming the caverns like wolves.”

  No physical change. Why did Phantom keep stressing that, when it was so obvious that his own people had been transformed by the teratogenic compound?

  Phantom was still speaking. “Your teammate is already showing signs of critical exposure.”

  Hood jerked his gaze to Mad Dog, surprised. “You can see him?”

  Mad Dog, realizing that he was the topic of the seemingly one-sided conversation, bristled. “Stop talking to him.”

  Phantom’s voice was already vibrating through Hood’s skull. “I can see everything you can see, and far more. It may be too late for him. It may be too late for all of you, but the longer you stay in that cave, the less likely it is that any of you will survive.”

  “I said stop talking!” Mad Dog shouted, showering Hood with flecks of spittle, shaking his rifle emphatically.

  Already showing signs... Was it true? How else could he explain the profound change in his friend’s demeanor?

  But why had Mad Dog been affected and not Rollie or himself?

  Hood raised his hands. “Dale, it’s okay. He’s gone. I’m not talking to him anymore. But we need to go now.”

  “Go? We have to finish the mission. We have to find the bitch that did this.”

  “She’s already dead. The monsters killed her. And they’re all dead now.”

  Mad Dog’s eyes darted back and forth for a moment, then settled on Hood again, narrowing into accusing slits. “You’re lying. You’re trying to protect her.” He shifted the rifle toward Hood’s face. “You’re one of them.”

  Hood instinctively recoiled from the gaping hole of the weapon’s muzzle, knowing with absolute certainty that his friend was going to kill him. He could see Mad Dog’s finger sliding into the trigger guard. “Dale, wait!”

  There was a flurry of motion behind Mad Dog, followed by a sickening thud of impact—the butt of Rollie’s rifle striking the back of Mad Dog’s helmeted head. Hood threw himself flat an instant before the weapon discharged, the bullet sizzling through the air where his head had been a moment before, drilling harmlessly into the wall. Mad Dog didn’t fire a second time, but instead toppled forward like a felled tree.

  Rollie stood over him, wearing a fierce expression and gripping the stock and heat shield of his own rifle. “Damn,” he whispered. “He was gonna kill you, bossman. I think he was starting to change.”

  Hood nodded dully, staring at Mad Dog’s unconscious form, searching for any signs of an incipient transformation.

  No physical change, Phantom had said. Increasing paranoia. Hallucinations.

  But why was it only affecting Mad Dog?

  The answer hit him like a slap. “Rollie, put your mask back on.”

  The other man stared back at him in alarm. “No way, boss. I can’t breathe in that thing.”

  “Breathing is what’s going to turn us... To get us killed.” Hood paused to remove his helmet and, with some reluctance, the sunglasses, temporarily suspending his link to Phantom and plunging him once more into total darkness. “There’s something in the air in here that’s doing this to him. To all of us. It affected Mad Dog first because he took his mask off first, but it’s going to hit us, too.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “The lichen,” Hood went on, ignoring the rebuttal. He took his mask out of its carrier pouch. “That’s got to be it. It’s releasing spores... Or maybe a gas. Even if it’s not affecting us yet, it will if we aren’t protected.”

  He brought the mask to his face and pulled the straps over his head, snugging it into place. Wearing it brought on an immediate surge of anxiety. He couldn’t seem to draw a breath. The mask was suffocating him. He had to fight the urge to tear it off and fling it away into the darkness.

  After a few seconds, he managed to get some air into his lungs, but the panic did not relent and wouldn’t, he knew, until he could see again. He spread the flexible arms of the glasses as wide as he could and slipped them on over the clear lenses of the mask. When his ability to see the cavern around him returned, he was relieved to discover Rollie likewise donning his protective mask. “Phantom, are you still there?”

  “Major Hood. You need to get out of there. Now.”

  “We’re wearing pro-masks,” Hood said. “That will buy us some time.”

  “Those won’t protect you from what’s coming.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Something changed in Hood’s view of the cavern. In addition to their immediate surroundings, he saw ethereal shapes like lines drawn with smoke, only instead of floating in the air they were inside the walls—or more accurately, beyond them. Phantom was showing him a three-dimensional virtual representation of the entire cavern system, literally giving him the ability to see through solid rock. A segmented line consisting of bright red arrows appeared on the floor and continued into the passages to reveal a convoluted escape route.

  “Please hurry, Major.” Phantom said.

  “Why?”

  Something new appeared in the ghost image, or rather four somethings, moving with slow determination down other passages in the smoke-like maze. Although they too looked like ghosts, Hood knew they were actually monsters—the surviving members of the Monster Squad.

  “You said they were dead,” Hood accused.

  “To all intents and purposes, they are. And if you don’t move now, you will be too.”

  “You’re just going to leave them here? Like this?”

  “There’s nothing you or I can do for them. If you don’t leave right now, you will be killed. The team may have removed their glasses and severed my link to them, but they are still wearing their battlesuit
s, which utilize adaptive camouflage and bullet resistant metamaterials. You won’t be able to kill them.”

  Hood gestured at the headless corpse of Imhotep. “Tell that to him.”

  Phantom did not respond.

  Hood looked up again, noting the position of the four spectral figures closing on his location. More information was appearing before his eyes—the course, distance and estimated time of arrival for each. The nearest was less than fifty meters—fifteen seconds—away, and moving faster.

  “They’re coming,” he shouted.

  Rollie jerked his rifle up but then started turning uncertainly. Hood mentally kicked himself for forgetting that the other man could not see what he did, and pointed toward the passage from which the target would emerge. “There! Five seconds to contact.”

  It was more like three.

  The ghost image resolved into flesh and blood—it was Bride.

  And yet, it wasn’t.

  Despite Phantom’s repeated insistence that there had been no physical transformation, the thing that emerged from the passage was more beast than woman.

  Bride’s careful braid had come unraveled, unleashing a tangle of snakes that writhed about a face that was no longer even remotely pretty, but deathly pale, like that of a reanimated corpse. The rest of her body was covered in scaly chameleon skin that rippled through random color changes. Her eyes bulged from their sockets, the irises surrounded by whites that glowed with an unnatural green light. Those eyes found Hood and Rollie. Her lips peeled back to bare her teeth in a feral grimace, and then she started forward again.

  Hood quickly brought his weapon up, but as he placed the front sight on her, he understood that the monster he was seeing was not real. Whether it was that realization, or the filtered air blunting the hallucinatory properties present in the environment, the illusion of a beast fell away like a veil, revealing the woman—

  Delilah!

  —that she really was. There was still madness in her eyes, but also a fear so primal that it made Hood’s heart ache.

  She doesn’t know what she’s doing.

  He lowered his rifle and extended a hand to her, hoping that she would understand. He thought he saw a glimmer of recognition in her eyes....

  And then her face dissolved into a froth of red as Rollie opened up on full auto.

  Hood retched into his mask as the nearly headless corpse fell back. Rollie moved toward her, firing the whole time. He unloaded the entire magazine into her, and then reloaded and kept shooting. Hood raised a hand, desperate to end the carnage, but Rollie did not stop shooting until there was nothing left of Bride’s head.

  Hood sank to his knees, struggling to catch his breath. “Why—?” was all he managed to say.

  Through ringing ears, he heard Rollie shouting, “Is that all of them?”

  He raised his head and, fighting a wave of vertigo, looked around until he found three more ghost images—two moving through the maze of passages to his right, and one closing fast from their rear. He pointed weakly to the passage behind them. Rollie quickly reloaded, then turned and aimed his weapon down the tunnel, but after a few seconds, he glanced over at Hood. “Bossman, are you gonna help out here, or what?”

  Hood struggled to find his voice. “Rollie, we can’t do this.”

  “The fuck we can’t,” Rollie snarled. “Kill or be killed, boss, and ‘be killed’ is not a fucking option. So suck it up and help me exterminate these things.”

  Hood’s head was swimming. He knew Rollie was right... Knew that if they did not kill the Monster Squad, they would never leave the cave system.

  They killed and consumed their comrades...

  But he couldn’t bring himself to think of them as the enemy. They were American soldiers. Brothers in arms. And they were sick. Under the influence of a mind-altering substance. Maybe if he and Rollie could lure them out of the cave... Get them into the fresh air... Get them medical attention.

  The ghost image was approaching fast. Twenty-five meters. Twenty.

  Hood tried to speak, tried to articulate his plan, but the words refused to come.

  The ghost materialized, a slender figure that could only be Vlad, the Russian-born sniper. Unlike Bride and Imhotep however, Vlad had left his balaclava on, hiding his face from view. Hood barely had time to register this fact before Rollie opened fire.

  Vlad went down under the hailstorm, writhing and curling like a worm on a fishhook. His arms came up, covering his head, and he let out a wail that was audible even over the roar of Rollie’s HK, a wail that was not silenced by the relentless assault. As he lay there, thrashing and squirming, large dark spots began to appear on the fabric of Vlad’s coverall garment and matching balaclava. The bullets were wreaking havoc on the adaptive camouflage. But Vlad was still alive. The rounds weren’t getting through the metamaterial.

  Rollie’s gun abruptly went silent. Hood saw him button out the magazine, letting it fall to the ground in his haste to reload, but he wasn’t fast enough. In the instant that the punishing attack ceased, Vlad uncurled from his fetal ball and bounded up, springing at Rollie.

  Hood shook off his paralysis and opened fire, aiming at Vlad’s chest. The rounds drove him back, eliciting another howl of pain, but this time he did not go down. Instead, he hunched over like a sailor leaning into the wind and started inching forward again.

  Hood’s magazine ran out, but Rollie was already firing again, taking up the slack long enough for Hood to change it. The concentration of fire on Vlad’s chest had turned his upper torso completely black, but now blood was oozing through the fabric. Bullet resistant or not, the unceasing ferocity of the assault was finally taking a toll on the Russian. He managed another halting step, then his agonized howl went silent and he crumpled to the ground, unmoving. Hood immediately let go of his trigger. Rollie kept firing until the magazine ran out.

  The air in the cave was thick with smoke, but through it Hood could see two more spectral figures moving beyond the walls—Wolfman and Sharky, running side by side, closing in for the kill.

  Hood felt sick to his stomach. There was no turning back now, no hope of any outcome better than the death of two more brothers in arms.

  But was that even possible? Taking out Vlad had required a sustained assault from both him and Rollie, and dozens of rounds—maybe even hundreds.

  Hood choked down his bile and changed out the half-empty magazine in his rifle for a full one. Running out of ammunition wasn’t going to be a problem; he had four more full mags. The real concern was that the weapon wasn’t designed for sustained fire at full auto. He could feel the heat radiating from the barrel and upper receiver. The more rounds he put through the rifle, the more likely it was to jam or even blow up in his face.

  But there was no time to wait for the rifle to cool down, and no alternative but to meet the approaching threat with overwhelming force. He pointed to the indicated passage. “There! Two of them. Twenty seconds!”

  He counted down by fives, and then when he got to five, he shouted, “Get ready!”

  Sharky was first to emerge, his filed teeth bared in a feral grimace. He had removed his balaclava, which meant a lucky headshot might be enough to end the threat—end his life—but luck was not on their side.

  Rollie and Hood fired simultaneously, but the first round only grazed Sharky, creasing his scalp. He immediately ducked under the rest of the rounds, doubling over as if to run on all fours. Both men tried to track him, but Rollie’s weapon burped once and then went silent.

  Jammed.

  Some of Hood’s bullets hammered into Sharky’s exposed back, sending him skidding into a fetal curl.

  A new sound joined the din, the lower boom-boom-boom of Rollie’s secondary weapon, but he wasn’t shooting at Sharky. Hood flicked his eyes in the direction of the muzzle flash and glimpsed Wolfman’s snarling face in the entrance to the passage. The impacts sent the Monster Squad field leader sprawling forward but seemed only to piss him off. With one arm thrown up as if to w
ard off the attack, he pushed off the wall and leapt at Rollie.

  Hood swung his HK around to meet this new threat. He managed to squeeze off four rounds before the trigger went slack, the magazine exhausted, but the combination of his fire and Rollie’s was sufficient to halt Wolfman’s advance, if only momentarily.

  Then Wolfman did something unexpected. Instead of renewing his attack, he veered toward the still-dazed Sharky, grabbed hold of his coveralls, and commenced dragging him back into the mouth of the passage.

  Astonished, Hood let off the trigger. Rollie however, kept firing, hammering bullets into the retreating figures until they melted into the darkness of the passage. As soon as they were out of direct view, they transformed once more into ghost images, huddled in the smoke-like passage.

  Hood just stared at them. What had he just witnessed? Compassion? Intelligence? Loyalty? Certainly not the behavior of mindless rage-beasts.

  “What are they waiting for?” snarled Rollie. He holstered his pistol and then hurriedly tried to clear the jam in his primary weapon. After prying the crooked round free, he released the bolt and started forward. “Cover me!”

  “Rollie, wait!”

  But Rollie either didn’t hear or chose not to listen. With his smoking rifle at the high ready, he advanced toward the passage.

  In the darkness beyond, the two spectral figures stirred, clearly sensing Rollie’s approach. Hood could see them moving, shifting position in preparation for a two-pronged attack, crouching like lions getting ready to pounce. Rollie might succeed in killing one of them, but the other would be on him before he could switch targets.

  “Rollie! Get back here!” Hood shouted. “It’s an ambush.”

  That got Rollie’s attention. He hesitated a moment, and then took a step back, lowered his weapon, and took something from a pouch on his chest rig—a green sphere about the size of a baseball.

  “Rollie, don’t—”

  With a deft twist Rollie popped loose the steel safety band and then yanked out the retaining pin, letting the spring-loaded spoon fly free.

  “Frag out!” he shouted as he lobbed the grenade into the passage.