Mutation

by Michael McBride

  This was his chance.

  He jumped down to the bough below him. Wrapped his arms around it and swung his legs over the side. Let go and fell to the ground. Rolled to cushion the impact and used his momentum to accelerate into the clearing. He broke the cover of the trees and sprinted toward the pyramid. Caught one last glimpse of the moon, little more than a sliver, and dove through the opening into the darkness.

  49

  JADE

  Giza, Egypt

  Jade drew her legs away from the creature, but Anya wasn’t fast enough. It caught her by the ankle and dragged her across the bare stone. Grabbed her by the shirt and lifted her into the air. She screamed and thrashed to no avail, her toes nearly two feet off the ground.

  It cocked its head from one side to the other as though appraising her. Raised its crocodilian snout and drew in a deep inhalation. Produced a deep rumbling sound that resonated from inside its chest.

  Anya clawed at its eyes but only succeeded in tearing off its mask, which clattered to the ground at its cloaked feet.

  The being that looked upon her was only human in form. Its eyes reflected the moonlight with an iridescence all their own. Its skin was dry and scaled, like a dead fish left to rot on the shore. There was no hair on its head or brow, only areas where the scales appeared to have sloughed off, exposing the bare bone in places. Horizontal folds stretched from the edges of its wide, thin-lipped mouth all the way to ears that were little more than membranes framed by a vaguely human-shaped conch. The scales on its chin were longer and sharper, almost like a beard.

  It opened its jaws wide enough to reveal sharp teeth that lowered from where they’d been flattened to the roof of its mouth. They extended from flesh sockets, long and hooked, like the fangs of a rattlesnake. The fold in its cheeks allowed it to open its mouth even wider, stretching its lower jaw past its apparent limits.

  Anya screamed as it brought her face to within inches of its own. It savored a breath through its teardrop-shaped nostrils and extended a tongue with the slightest fork at the tip. She turned her face away, but there was nothing she could do to prevent it from licking the open wound across her hairline.

  Its slit pupils widened and it issued a hissing sound. Extended its fangs even farther from its gums.

  “Get away from her!” Jade shouted.

  She grabbed Anya around the waist and attempted to pry her from the creature’s grasp.

  Evans lunged at it, but it moved in a blur, driving its elbow into the side of his head without so much as loosening its grip on Anya’s shirt. He pushed himself up from the rock, dribbling blood from his mouth.

  “Enlil bitaltu!” The woman in the golden mask shouted. She stood at the base of the rock formation, staring up at them from the sand. “Kima parsi labiruti!”

  The creature bared its fangs, gripped Anya by the throat, and drew her to its chest.

  “Mine,” it said in a deep voice that resonated from its core.

  “She belongs to Anu.”

  The being hissed and tossed Anya to the ground. Jade rushed to her side and scooped her up before the beast changed its mind.

  “Doctors Evans, Liang, and Fleming,” the woman in the golden mask said. “How fortunate you could be here to bear witness to the end of your world. And the birth of ours.”

  “If you release that virus, every single one of us will die,” Jade said.

  “Not every one of us.”

  The woman turned without another word and struck off across the desert. Jade had been so preoccupied with the creature that she hadn’t heard the masked men climb up onto the rocks behind them. She felt the barrel of a rifle against the base of her skull.

  “Do not try anything you will regret,” a man said from behind her and shoved her toward the edge of the cliff.

  He aimed his weapon at her the entire way down to the ground, where a man in a featureless tan tactical mask was waiting with a zip tie to bind her wrists behind her back. Anya and Evans were similarly restrained and driven out into the desert ahead of the men, who walked behind them with their rifles raised. Two others flanked them, bringing the total number of armed escorts to five, plus the woman in the golden mask. She’d already lost sight of the cloaked figure.

  “Are you all right?” she whispered.

  Anya walked with her head down and tears dripping from her cheeks. She nodded her head, but couldn’t seem to find the voice to answer.

  “Why do you think they didn’t kill us right then and there?” Evans whispered.

  Jade glanced up in time to see the cloaked figure ascend the rubble off to her right. Its face was once more concealed beneath the mask. She could only imagine how terrifying this Anu had to be to frighten such a ferocious creature.

  “They need us for something, but I’m in no hurry to find out what.”

  “Silence!” one of the men behind them shouted.

  A sharp blow to her lower back and her legs went out from underneath her. She cried out and collapsed to the sand.

  Evans rounded on their captors.

  “If you touch her again—”

  He took the butt of a rifle to the gut and folded in half with an expulsion of air. The man stood over him, as though daring him to try to get back up.

  “What will you do about it?”

  Evans struggled to his knees, his face suffused with the blood. It took him several seconds and superhuman effort to rise to his feet. He thrust out his chin, refilled his lungs with air, and looked the man dead in the eyes when he spoke.

  “I’ll kill you.”

  The men started to laugh, but the woman in the golden mask cut them off.

  “Enough!” she snapped. “We are running out of time.”

  Jade glanced over her shoulder at the moon, which was barely visible along the outside edge of Earth’s shadow. The surrounding stars had become brighter in response to the advancing darkness.

  Evans knelt in front of Jade, helped her to her feet, and together they picked their way up the loose rocks that had once formed the mesa. What had looked like a frame from above turned out to be a collection of massive rectangular stones stacked one on top of the other, staggered just enough to form a staircase pattern. She couldn’t believe she hadn’t recognized it from the start.

  It was the base of a pyramid.

  Either it had never been completed or the upper tiers had been demolished so long ago that the desert had conspired to bury it.

  A man wearing a tactical mask reminiscent of a medieval knight’s helmet crawled out of the ground at the woman’s feet. His voice trembled with excitement.

  “Wir haben es gefunden,” he said.

  Jade didn’t let on that she understood what he’d said, which took some doing considering she was curious to know what they’d found.

  “Zeige mir,” the woman said and practically shoved him back down the hole in her hurry to descend.

  The creature watched them through the holes where the dead croc’s eyes had once been. The hunger radiating from it was palpable. Given the opportunity, she had no doubt it would rip all of them apart and wallow in their blood. These people had no idea the kind of evil they had unleashed upon the world.

  “Down,” the man behind her said and shoved her over the edge.

  Jade barely regained her balance in time to keep from tumbling down a stone staircase so steep she had to jump from one step to the next. The rocks that had been used to seal the stairwell left little room to pass and nearly eclipsed the tunnel at the bottom.

  A faint aura of light limned the top of the mound of debris, where the woman in the golden mask had flattened herself to her chest in an effort to squirm through the opening.

  Two other men followed her, although with much greater difficulty. They were waiting on the other side when Jade finally managed to propel herself through the narrow gap using only her feet. One of them grabbed her by the sleeve and dragged her down the rocky slope to the floor, just outside of an elaborate doorway. A pair of giant statues stoo
d sentry on either side, their arms crossed over their chests, a crook in one hand and an ankh in the other. They wore traditional striped head cloths with sun discs wrapped inside coiling cobras on top. The features of a falcon covered the upper halves of their faces, while the lower halves remained human. False beards projected from their chins. Coneheaded beings were carved into the walls beside them, their arms raised in adoration.

  “The Tomb of Ra,” Evans whispered, his voice redolent with awe.

  Jade walked through the doorway and into an enormous chamber filled with a maze of pillars crowned with lotus blossoms and covered with hieroglyphics. The walls were similarly decorated, only not all of the paint had flaked off, leaving behind scattered areas of brown, blue, and gold. It wasn’t the magnificence of the structure or the elaborate artwork that held her enrapt, but rather the plain stone sarcophagus at the far end of the room.

  The woman stood at the head, while several of the men were already struggling to slide off the heavy lid. It took multiple tries, but with a screech, it finally slid over the edge and hit the ground with a thunderous boom that caused dust to shiver from the ceiling. It sparkled like glitter as it descended into their combined lights, all of which were shining down into the sarcophagus.

  “Anu,” the woman whispered and reached tentatively into the stone coffin.

  She stroked the cheek of the solid-gold death mask almost lovingly. It reminded Jade of King Tutankhamun’s, only the facial features were an amalgam of man and reptile. The body was even taller than that of the giant wearing the mask of the feathered serpent, who pushed his way to the sarcophagus, stared down at the body, and then turned to face Jade.

  “Sharaku,” he said, his voice reverberating throughout the chamber.

  The woman in the golden mask walked around the sarcophagus to where Jade stood with Anya and Evans.

  “He says we must make an offering.” She stood before each of them in turn and looked them dead in the eyes through her mask. “But which one of you shall it be?”

  50

  KELLY

  The Hangar

  Kelly ducked back into the shadows, bit her lip to keep from crying, and prayed it hadn’t seen her. She tried not to think about what that awful monster had done to Tess, but she couldn’t shake the image of it crouching over her body. Worse, she feared what it would do to them if it discovered they were here.

  “Wir müssen gehen,” Maddox said. “Bring ihn mit.”

  The man in the camouflage mask took a step toward the naked, vaguely human creature. It rounded on him, bared a mouthful of fangs, and climbed up on top of Tess’s body, like a lion defending its kill.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Maddox said. “For the love of God, would you just grab him already.”

  Camo Mask hesitated, then took a tentative step toward the creature, which moved so quickly that he never saw it coming. He screamed as it tore a mouthful of flesh from the side of his neck, carving through muscles and tendons, severing the carotid, which pulsed arcs of blood into its scaled face.

  Black Mask raised his rifle, but Maddox swatted it aside as he pulled the trigger. The bullets flew wide and shattered the case underneath Kelly and Roche.

  The creature leaped up from the floor, lifted Black Mask from his feet, and slammed his head into the paneled ceiling mere feet from Kelly’s face. She was certain her eyes met the man’s through the lenses in his mask, but he didn’t have a chance to alert the others. The reptilian beast slammed him to the ground with a crack of breaking bones and buried its face into his neck, shaking back and forth like a dog until it ripped out enough soft tissue to reveal a glimpse of the man’s spine.

  To Kelly’s left, Roche eased the barrel of his rifle over the edge of the case and took aim.

  “Enki nahu,” Maddox said and held up his open palms in a placating manner.

  The creature he believed to be the ancient Assyrian god Enki shifted its weight as though preparing to strike at Maddox, but it never had the chance.

  Gunfire boomed in Kelly’s ear and bullets punched through the side of the monster’s head.

  The impact cleaved its body from the ground and tossed it sideways. It slid across the concrete in a wash of its own blood and came to rest at Maddox’s feet, the contents of its skull pouring out onto the shards of Plexiglas.

  “No!” Maddox shouted and started firing.

  “Get back!” Roche said and shoved Kelly away from the edge.

  Bullets pounded the ceiling above their heads. Kelly screamed and scooted backward as fast as she could. Shots continued to ring out, blasting straight up through the top of the display cases all around them. She pointed her weapon over the side and squeezed off a few rounds in an effort to drive Maddox out of range.

  Silence descended upon the bunker. Gun smoke swirled in the columns of light rising from inside the cabinets.

  She heard soft footsteps, even softer breathing.

  Roche’s eyes sought hers. Held them. He waved for her to crawl over the back side of the row of display cases, into the recess where the climate-control systems were housed.

  She nodded her understanding, slid her legs over the edge, and quietly lowered herself into a narrow aisle barely wider than her shoulders. The hum of the equipment drowned out all but the most ambitious noises. She seated her rifle against her shoulder and headed back in the direction of the elevator. Roche lowered himself down behind her without making a sound.

  A crackle of gunfire and bullets sang past over their heads.

  “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?” Maddox shouted.

  Again, he fired a fusillade of bullets straight over the top of the cabinets.

  His footsteps echoed from all around them at once. He tossed aside a spent magazine and slammed a fresh one home.

  The recess branched to the left and paralleled the intersecting hallway. She started in that direction but pulled up short when a flurry of bullets punched through the back of the cabinet right in front of her face. It took every last ounce of restraint to keep from screaming.

  Shattered glass rained to the ground and crunched beneath Maddox’s tread as he walked.

  “You dare murder the god who saved humanity from the Great Flood, the deity who would save us from extinction and usher in the next phase in mankind’s evolution?”

  Maddox fired again, only this time farther ahead. He didn’t know where they were. He was testing them, trying to get them to give away where they were hiding.

  Kelly glanced back at Roche in time to see his feet disappear over the top of the case. Maybe he’d be able to line up a clear shot, but if Maddox even sensed he’d gone back up there, he was in big trouble.

  “Show yourselves!”

  Another barrage. Bullets ricocheted from the floor, hammered the ceiling, shattered glass. Maddox was losing his patience, firing indiscriminately.

  More crunching of shards as he walked past the case in front of her, toward the main corridor, presumably right into Roche’s line of—

  Maddox fired wildly again, seemingly in all directions at once. She dropped to her knees as bullets streaked past over her head.

  A grunt from somewhere above her.

  Maddox must have heard it, too. He remained silent and still, listening for a repeat occurrence so he could line up the kill shot.

  She looked up toward where she’s last seen Roche. A rivulet of blood slowly trickled over the edge and ran down the back of the display case. He’s been hit, but she had no idea how badly. For all she knew, he could already be dead or in desperate need of immediate medical attention. She couldn’t afford to wait any longer.

  Subtle crunching sounds.

  Kelly pressed her back against the case behind her, aimed her weapon at the rear wall of the case in front of her, toward the source of the sounds on the other side.

  Crunching, barely audible over the hum of machinery.

  Maddox stopped moving. She kept the barrel aligned with where she’d heard him last.

/>   Roche’s blood dripped to the floor with a faint plat . . . plat . . . plat . . .

  The crunching commenced again.

  She tightened her finger on the trigger, imagined Maddox walking just on the other side of the case, maybe three feet away.

  He stopped again. Right on the other side of the cabinet, directly beneath where Roche was hiding.

  “There you are,” he said. “Why don’t you come down from there so we—?”

  Kelly screamed and pulled the trigger. She swung the barrel from side to side and up and down until the magazine ran dry and the carbine whirred. The back of the case was destroyed, but all she could see through it was an empty corridor, its concrete floor covered with broken glass.

  A pool of blood slowly expanded into view.

  She dropped the rifle and climbed up on top of the case as fast as she could. Roche had squirmed to the edge and aimed his rifle down at the ground, where she could see Maddox sprawled on his back in a wash of blood. There had to be half a dozen entry wounds on his chest, so many it looked almost like his rib cage had been cracked open for surgery.

  “I think you got him,” Roche said.

  Kelly threw herself on top of him and nearly knocked him right over the edge. Wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him over and over. She felt him tense and recoiled just far enough to see the rictus of pain on his face. There was a spatter of blood on his cheek, which called attention to the gunshot wound near his clavicle, just inside his shoulder girdle.

  “Oh, God,” she said. “We need to get you to the surface.”

  She climbed over the other side and dropped to the ground with a crunch of the broken glass that had saved them. Roche swung his legs over the edge and made it halfway down before losing his grip. His heels hit first, and he toppled backward to the floor. The front of his shirt was positively drenched with blood. When he didn’t immediately try to stand, she knew he was in trouble.

  He groaned and cradled his injured arm to his chest. She grabbed his free hand and tried to pull him to his feet. He made it to a sitting position before needing to battle through a wave of pain. She ducked her head underneath his arm, held onto his wrist, and strained to stand up with his weight draped over her shoulders.