by David Wood
Fatigue turned her muscles to water. Her lungs burned with each inhale and exhale. She wondered if she had enough left in her to make it back to safety.
Please, she begged silently to herself. I just want to get out. Let us escape!
Then they burst into a clearing in the fog and her stomach sank, her mouth fell open in shock.
“How the hell did we get turned around?” Aston said, spinning on the spot, staring into the swirling whiteness.
They stood at the edge of the glimmering green sea, the mist a wall around them, seemingly held back by Digby O’Donnell, kneeling in the water not ten feet away. He still held aloft the glowing green thing. From close up, Slater saw it was an idol of some kind, but its glow must have provided heat as well as light, and a lot of it. Dig’s hand holding it was red, almost fleshless in places where the skin and meat had been burned away. His other hand repeatedly dipped into the ocean and came back up to splash his face.
O’Donnell cried out, a wail of pained ecstasy, and Slater realized he wasn’t washing his face. Blood and fish scales dripped from his cheeks, as tears poured from his eyes. Even his tears glittered greenly. All around him, fish and other creatures swarmed as if drawn to him. Flaccid jellyfish and pulsing shrimp, wriggling worms and fanning stars, and dozens of fish of all sizes, all glowing from the inside out with that incessant green light. And Dig repeatedly scooped up whatever his hand found and crammed it into his mouth, chewing manically, his cheeks bulging, the green brightness showing through the stretched skin, ichor running over his chin..
“He’s eating them all,” Aston said in disgust. “He’s not right in the head.”
Slater wondered if there had ever been a greater understatement.
“Dig!” she shouted. She moved a little closer, brushing off Aston’s hand as he plucked at her arm. “Digby! You have to stop whatever it is you’re doing!”
He made no sign that he’d heard her, just gathered more glowing creatures and crammed them into his packed mouth. He crunched and chewed, as much of the masticated mess falling back into the ocean as whatever he managed to swallow. The other things swimming around him were in a frenzy, snapping it up, eating their unfortunate fellows only to be grabbed and bitten by Digby themselves.
Aston came to stand next to Slater. “What are you doing?” He waded knee-deep into the water and reached out to slap Digby’s shoulder. “Dig, what’s going on?”
Finally, the man turned. His eyes glowed bright green. “Yog-Sothoth!” he cried. “Through all time and space, he comes!”
“What the hell is he saying?” Tate demanded.
Aston looked back to her, refusing to believe Digby could be this delusional. “Yog-Sothoth. The man is obsessed with At the Mountains of Madness. It’s a story by H.P. Lovecraft about...”
Tate scowled. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what it’s about! I’m putting an end to this.” She raised her pistol and took aim at the back of Dig’s head.
Slater opened her mouth to protest. She couldn’t allow cold-blooded murder, could she? But then surely Digby was beyond redemption, beyond saving. His mind had surely snapped and who knew what would happen to his body after the amount of infected sea life he had consumed began to spread through his cells. But her unspoken protest was unnecessary.
Before Tate could squeeze the trigger, a thick, shining black tentacle snaked out from the wall of mist in front of them and grabbed her. Her body arched, mouth agape in shock, as she was wrenched away, back into the fog, so quickly her cry of alarm was whipped from her throat as she went.
Slater screamed out the mercenary’s name, finding herself knee deep in the water next to Aston as she staggered forward in some pointless attempt to follow the woman. There were two quick gunshots, then a blood-curdling scream that stopped midway. For a moment there was silence but for the roiling sea and Digby’s maniac giggling and chewing, then Tate’s body came flying back through the air. It landed with a slap on the ground at the ocean’s edge. The top of her skull was gone, as if bitten off, her brain nowhere to be seen.
“Oh, God,” Slater said. “That’s what the journal meant by eating people’s heads? It eats their brains?”
More gunfire sounded through the thick fog behind them. Slater looked that way, wondering how many of the three mercenaries remained alive. All of them? Was Larsen dead? Were they shooting at mantics or the black tentacles that so easily plucked people from the shore?
O’Donnell was laughing again, high-pitched and crazed. “We join, we commune, through Yog-Sothoth we see all,” he said in a screeching, inhuman voice. “All will come to him. All will serve him.”
“Digby, please!” Slater said. “You have got to stop this!” She began to wonder if Tate had had the right idea, and fingered the bloodstone knife in her jacket pocket. Was she capable of murder? Of plunging it between Digby O’Donnell’s shoulder blades? Would it even help now?
“We just have to get away,” Aston said, pulling at her sleeve. “Try to run again, put this water at our backs and find the cavern wall. Follow it until we find a passage away from... this!”
Slater looked from Digby to Aston and back again, her brain spinning in neutral. Any second she expected a thick tentacle to snatch her up and part of her almost welcomed it, an end to this insanity. But no, she wanted to survive. They all needed to live, no more death.
“You don't understand,” Digby said, turning to face them at last. He no longer seemed so dazed, his eyes still bright, unnatural, incandescent green, but focused. “I can see it all.”
“What do you mean?” Aston asked. “What can you see?”
“I see what he sees. I see everything that Yog-Sothoth observes. I see wherever his minions look, every one of them at once. My mind is legion.”
“You can see through their eyes?” Aston asked. “All of them? The mantics?”
Digby grinned, nodding. “That’s how I found this!” He hefted the idol in his burned, mutilated hand. “And how I found this!” He used the idol to gesture out around them, taking in the whole infinite cavern, the shining sea, the creatures it contained. “I am one with all of them. Every fish, every mantic, every living thing that has ever eaten and joined, I see through them and they through me.” He shrilled crazed laughter. “Every single thing. I see the caverns, the passageways, the door in the lake, the lift to the surface. I see you, us through so many different sets of eyes right now. From the beasts, too!” He made another sweeping motion, this time behind them.
Slater and Aston spun around, saw a crowd of mantics standing behind Jen and Syed where they trembled on the shore. The creatures swayed gently, otherwise immobile, watching them, but blocking their retreat.
Slater startled at the sight of them, Aston raised his dagger.
“Could he be telling the truth?” Slater asked.
“Maybe. I don’t know. There’s a fungus that turns ants into zombie drones. It’s essentially a natural form of mind control. Fungal cells inside the ant's head release chemicals that essentially take command of the insect's central nervous system.”
“All right. I don’t need a lecture right now. All I wanted to know was is it possible?”
Aston shook his head. “It shouldn’t be. This is a far cry from zombie ants. But he does seem to have control of the mantics.”
“Don’t worry,” O’Donnell said. “They won’t harm us here, not now. Through him, through my connection, they do my bidding. I am with them. I am them.”
“If that’s the case,” Aston said, “you can have them show us the way out. Let’s all get out of here!”
O’Donnell laughed again. “There’s no need! Soon we will all be one with him!”
“Digby, it’s not a god!” Aston yelled at the man. “I don’t know what it is, but what you believe is a fiction. That thing, that monster out there, is some mutant, yes, but it’s no god. Some kind of cephalopod, a giant octopus, some presumed extinct mega-fauna, that’s all. But whatever it is, it doesn’t have some greater plan
. It’s just another predator and it wants to eat us!”
“Yes!” O’Donnell agreed. “Eat us! But it is a god, Sam. Oh, in fact, it’s more than a god. And it will make us all one with its glory.”
Slater felt faint. “Sam,” she said. “You were right. Let’s just go!”
“But how will we find our way?” Jen Galicia said.
Aston shook his head, squared his shoulders. “If Dig here is telling the truth about seeing through their eyes, I can only think of one way.”
Slater looked over at him, read his expression and intent. “Sam, no!”
42
Aston swallowed hard, a little appalled at the course of action he was considering. But he could think of nothing else. They would almost certainly die down here, one way or another. Lost and starving, or killed by mantics. Or even killed by the Annaki. He wasn’t sure if the Annaki had led them here to show them a possible answer to questions or to sacrifice them to this creature, but either way, he had lost all trust for the strange, pale race. He couldn’t help feeling a little like a cow led to slaughter. But if they were going to survive, they needed to be proactive. Running blindly along the dark passages wasn’t the kind of proactive they needed. They could go in circles for days, and then starve. Assuming they avoided all the other kind of deaths in the meantime. The chance of finding another way out was surely lowest on the list of possibilities. After all, how far had they come? How deep had they gone?
He looked back over his shoulder, thinking of all they had been through to get here. They could retrace their steps, possibly. But that would mean returning through the Annaki city. It would mean risking tunnels they knew were swarming with mantics. And even then, he would have to remember every twist and turn, every choice of route they had made, and he would need to remember it all in reverse. He didn’t think he could do that.
So it left only one option. There had to be some kind of hive mentality happening with these creatures. Some chemical connection that was triggered by the consumption of whatever the glowing green substance was that affected them all, some by-product of the vines or the greenium. Or both. Either way, if O’Donnell was telling the truth, it would allow Aston to see a way out. And if Digby was lying or simply delusional, well, they were as good as dead already anyway. And if the green stuff poisoned him, the same conclusion applied. He had to take a chance. It was the only chance he could think of.
Refusing to consider it any more deeply, he waded out next to O’Donnell and looked down into the water.
“Sam, no,” Slater said again, but he ignored her.
Aquatic life gathered around O’Donnell, some gently milling and floating as if in a trance, others feeding off the scraps that fell from Digby’s mouth. Every creature seemed to face the man, like they were somehow in obeisance to him. Or perhaps the man was irrelevant and they faced the burning idol. Fish, crustaceans, jellyfish, even a massive, albino tortoise with glowing green eyes, its shell as long as Aston was tall. They all watched O’Donnell like a dog watches its master.
Aston took a deep breath and ducked a hand into the water. He scooped up a fish about the size of his middle finger. Slater’s voice was panicked, screaming at him, trying to stop him, telling him he had no idea what he was doing, or what it would do to him. Syed joined in, and Jen Galicia too, all begging him not to do it.
“Let’s just go!” Slater yelled.
“We have to know where to go!” Aston said, and shoved the wriggling fish into his mouth. He bit down, chewed hard and fast. The flesh was ice cold and bitter. He felt the thing burst, tasted salt with the bitterness, and swallowed it all down as quickly as he could, suppressing the urge to gag. The others around him fell silent. He realized he heard no more gunfire either, and hadn’t been for a while. No shouting, no scrabbling of mantics. Were Larsen and his friends dead? All he heard was the lap of the shining sea, the bubbling further out.
He felt nothing else.
Digby O’Donnell stared up at him and Aston met the man’s eyes, saw madness there. What have I done? he wondered. Perhaps he hadn’t done anything at all. Would he simply go crazy like Dig?
Heat began to swell inside his gut. A strange dizziness swept over him, making him stagger, and for a moment he leaned forward, convinced he was going to vomit the half-chewed fish back into the ocean. He gasped a breath.
“Sam? Are you okay?” Slater’s hand on his arm was heavy, her grip trembling.
“I’m okay,” he managed, but he wasn’t certain.
He straightened, heard a soft chuckling laugh. Dig had his head tipped to one side and Aston looked into the man’s eyes again, saw the green brightness in them, the glowing idol held almost as if forgotten in Digby’s ruined hand. A slow smile spread across Dig’s face and Aston saw a frown overlaid on it. As if Digby were grinning and concerned at the same time. Then, with a shudder, Aston’s perception caught up with the simple view and he realized he was seeing two things at once. Both his view of Digby O’Donnell and Dig’s view of him, blurred together in his mind.
“The edibles are kicking in?” Slater forced a faint smile.
Aston couldn’t answer. He staggered, cried out in disorientation, as visions flooded through him. He saw the ocean from a dozen different viewpoints, he saw dark tunnels and glittering caverns, he saw the Annaki city and the lift to the surface. He even saw glimpses of the base, too bright to really determine clearly and he cried out. He didn’t want to be blinded like that. The images snapped away. He thought of his friends, and saw them from numerous points of view, through the eyes of the mantics nearby, and through Digby’s eyes. He saw them shimmering through a greenish haze and realized it was the view of every creature that drifted at his knees.
He sobbed out a noise of confusion, nearly fell, overwhelmed by the mass of sensory input. No wonder Digby had gone mad. How could he do anything but follow the man into insanity? No brain could process this. What had he done?
Dizziness became too much and he fell suddenly sideways. He heard Slater cry out, then ice cold seawater closed over him. He couldn’t suppress a gasp of surprise and sucked in icy brine, started coughing and gagging. Hands grabbed at him and hauled him from the water, dragged him to the stony shore. But the icy shock had been a benefit, helped him to find a center and push away the vast majority of input he was receiving.
As he sat coughing on the shore, he tried to think only of the route to the surface and a series of images flickered through his mind. Then again, and again, like a loop of film on repeat. From one mantic’s view to another, he saw the way out. Was he just remembering now, or was this truly a shared intelligence? A hive mind of incredible complexity? He felt the intent of the awful, chitinous creatures, and realized their malice was gone. He remembered Digby saying how they wouldn’t attack now, how they were one, he and the creatures. And now Aston was one with them too. Whatever impossible biological connection he had made, it gave him that power, and it was a valuable one. He knew the way out and he could protect his friends. How it had happened he might never truly know, but it had happened and he wasn’t going to waste the opportunity. Even if it drove him mad, it was worth it to get the others out, to save Jo Slater. He owed her that.
He looked up into her concerned eyes and smiled. “I know the way,” he said. At the same moment, he became aware of another consciousness, a deep, dark, unfathomable mind. It ached of eons and hunger, of isolation and loss. The giant creature in the sea, the overlord, whatever it was. He imagined the noxious Yog-Sothoth, the thing Lovecraft had imagined, and saw how Digby’s obsession would easily overlay that fantastic fiction on whatever this animal was. But it was no god, that he knew. Like he had told Dig, it had to be some giant, previously unknown cephalopod, a monstrous octopus or squid from some age before modern humans, long since considered over. But this one animal remained, alone and constantly close to starving. Better there was no life here at all, Aston thought, and this thing would die. But instead, it found sustenance in the inhabitants of the caverns,
the offerings of the Annaki to appease it. And it lived on in terrible ravenous loneliness. It felt him, too. He sensed its attention boring down on his thoughts.
Then something seemed to crush his waist. Confused, he looked down just as Slater screamed and saw a slick black tentacle wrapped tight around him. He managed an “Oh!” of surprise and then he was snatched up, rising quickly out over the glittering sea. The speed of the abduction was enough to make his spine pop, his head spin. He was instantly high over the water, and saw a giant writhing black shape just beneath the glittering surface.
43
High above the water, Aston tried desperately to control the flood of sensory input and the fear that threatened to snap his mind. Held fast by the slick tentacle, he hung in the air, disoriented by the wavering motion and the sight of himself from numerous angles. Yet despite the fear, he experienced a surge of elation too. Surely this was what had driven Digby on, this sensation of happiness, of gladly becoming a part of the whole.
The biologist in him quickly assessed the emotion and he realized it was a kind of mental anesthetic, a chemical design to make any creature more willingly a part of the hive, of the gestalt mind. He resisted it, refused to give up his individual thought. “I will use you!” he yelled out. “I won’t become you!”
But his voice was weak and thin, his body shivering with the need to join the horde. He tried to ignore all the other visual input he was receiving, but one signal was too strong. As he looked down on the shadow in the water, that entity looked back up at him and he saw what it saw, witnessed his tiny, insignificant body thrashing high above, weak and useless.
The creature drew him down, drew him in toward it and at the same time it rose to the glimmering surface. He watched himself go down from above even as he saw himself drawn low from below. Was he going to experience himself having his brain eaten?
He heard distant screams from the shore, Slater yelling his name over and over again. His awareness flipped and he saw his predicament from the perspective of the other creatures, saw his friends’ distress from Digby O’Donnell’s crazed eyes. He watched himself from the myriad aquatic creatures moving lazily around the giant creature in worship. It was dizzying, sickening, but one thought remained strong despite the confusion. He was keenly aware that he had only seconds to live.
