Test Site Horror

by Gustavo Bondoni

  “Well, she’s gone now, so I don’t need to worry about it.”

  A mechanical groan emerged from the house Vasily had disappeared into, followed by a humming sound.

  “There we go,” Max said.

  They went around the house to where the chairs emerged from the darkness within. “They keep them hooked up all year?” Marianne said.

  “I think they’re welded to the cable,” Max replied. “This isn’t one of your high-tech resorts in America.”

  Vasily jumped onto a chair. He called something back to them in Russian. Max laughed.

  “What was that about?”

  “He says he promises not to look backwards so we’ll have privacy.”

  “You, sir, will behave yourself or I’ll take a different chair.”

  Max grabbed the next chair, angled it for her and, once she was on, jumped aboard. “Too late now.”

  Marianne snuggled in close and said. “You should have asked what I meant by behaving yourself.”

  He kissed her. Hard. Like he meant it. Like he wished they weren’t on a chairlift in the middle of nowhere.

  She kissed him back, and then pulled away as Vasily shouted something. “What is he saying now?”

  “He says to keep our clothes on, because the lift won’t take the swaying. Also, he… gave me some pointers about what I should do to you which flatly contradict his original suggestion. If you don’t mind, I’ll keep those to myself.”

  “Please do.”

  They rode in silence for a couple of moments, about thirty feet from the ground, occasionally passing over a tree which Marianne could have reached out and touched from where she was sitting. The view was simply spectacular: if they hadn’t been seated on a chairlift, she would have been reminded of drone footage of empty wilderness. Trees, occasionally broken by grassy patches, and hills as far as the eye could see. It brought to mind camping trips out west.

  “I can’t believe that it’s so peaceful, can you? How can something so empty be so dangerous?”

  “The emptier a place, the more dangerous it is. Empty places are where the world hides the people who wouldn’t be tolerated anywhere else. They feed on the emptiness; they use the isolation to train their followers. Out here, tendencies become steel-hard beliefs.”

  “You’d think they’d lose all their recruits. I’d be mellow all the time if someone stuck me out here,” she said, snuggling into his uniform and taking in his smell. Yes, there was an undercurrent of sweaty guy who hadn’t showered after a couple of days of strenuous physical activity, but there was also a smell that was uniquely his, masculine yet with a slight hint of vanilla for some strange reason.

  “They use the peace to indoctrinate. Anything pure can be twisted.”

  “What a world you live in, in which even peace is war and violence.”

  “I didn’t create it.”

  “I know. But can you stop talking about it long enough to let me enjoy the view for a while?”

  He held her tight, and she enjoyed the play of the breeze on her face as it tried to blow her hair out of place.

  Her first clue that something was wrong was that Max stiffened and pulled away. Her next was the crack of a gun, a sound she’d grown to recognize over the past day.

  “Is someone shooting at us?”

  “No… it’s Vasily.”

  “Why? What’s he shooting at?”

  “That!”

  Max appeared to point to a tree. She was about to tell him that she couldn’t see what he was talking about when a wing popped into her sight over the leaves. The scale couldn’t be right…

  But it was. The wing was leathery and see-through, and it belonged to a flying thing like the one that had attacked them on the stairs in the main facility. Vasily’s shots didn’t deter it in the least. It flew straight toward them.

  “Damn,” Max said, “we must look like a meal on a string to that thing.” Then he chuckled. “And now you’re going to find out why I kept the spear.”

  Ignoring Vasily despite the continued shooting, the creature made a bead for Max and Marianne.

  She tried to remember what Ronnie had called these monsters. Ptero… she knew it hadn’t been pterodactyl, because she’d heard of those, and this was something different.

  It didn’t come to her, no matter how she tried, and she felt like, somehow, her failure was an affront to Ronnie’s memory. Had she really thought they were out of it? No wonder Max had been adamant that he wouldn’t relax until they were safe on the base. He was more experienced than she was and his instincts were telling him that they were far from safe.

  She couldn’t believe how quickly he’d been proved right.

  Max let go of her—she wanted to scream at him not to do it, to hug her tight, come hell or high water—and stood on the bench of the chair, his legs straddling her on each side. Then, pointing the spear in the dinosaur’s direction, he braced for impact.

  A moment later, the monster arrived. It blocked out the sun and sent a blast of air over them. Even though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t, Marianne screamed.

  Max, on the other hand, seemed completely prepared. As the creature closed on them, he thrust the spear out and it tore through the membranous wing.

  The wound didn’t stop the thing’s momentum, though, and it crashed into the chair, Max and Marianne. The wire holding them up swung crazily, like a mad pendulum.

  Max kept one hand on the spear, and with the other, he grabbed the monster’s beak, trying to keep it from pecking them to death. The claws, Marianne saw, were busy trying to keep a grip on the cable.

  “Shoot it!” Marianne screamed.

  “I can’t. If I let go, I’ll fall. See if you can get the gun out of my pocket,” he grunted back.

  She tried, but it was impossible from where she was sitting. She bent around his leg to try to get into position, but just as she was about to get her hand in his pocket, both Max and the ptero-whatever shifted and she missed. “Stay still.”

  “I’m doing the best I can,” Max replied testily. “It’s quite a bit stronger than I am.”

  Then he did the craziest thing Marianne had ever seen. He pulled his arm away from the creature’s beak and punched it in the neck.

  It screeched and pulled back, just as the chair’s sickening pendular motion pulled the chair away.

  “Max!” Marianne screamed and reached out for him.

  It was like clutching at the wind. The momentum of Max’s weight, combined with that of the monster, tore him out of her grip.

  She watched them tumble into the trees twenty feet down, heard the crash of breaking branches and then the vegetation hid man and monster from view.

  “No!”

  She gripped the rail and sobbed, forgetting where she was in her anguish. Only when she felt something pulling at her fingers and an iron grip tearing her from the seat did she come back to herself.

  Vasily was holding her up, pointing at the chair she’d just been on, as if apologizing for manhandling her. It was already on its way back down.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You. Home,” he replied, struggling with the unfamiliar words.

  “Yes. I need to go home.”

  “Me take.”

  Marianne nodded, wondering what she’d done to deserve any of the sacrifices people seemed to insist on making for her. Would everyone end up dead just to get her out?

  But what could she do but keep going? Lying down to accept her fate was not part of her nature.

  ***

  Max grunted as the ground knocked the wind out of him. It felt like they’d hit every single branch on the way down and that most of them had punctured, prodded, scraped and gouged him without doing much to actually slow him down.

  The only reason he wasn’t killed was that he landed on the flying monster, whose torn wings looked like half the tree was stuck there. If Max himself had taken a bone-jarring hit, the dinosaur had taken a bone-pulverizing one. It lay very still.
>
  Ignoring the pain, he forced himself to his hands and knees and studied his assailant. The head and neck were a greyish-pink color, mottled with black spots. Had he not seen it flying powerfully through the sky without difficulty, he would have thought it was a diseased member of whatever horrific species it represented. The beak, longer than his outstretched arm, was almost the same color, slightly more grey than pink, with smaller black patches.

  That color was only broken up by a band of that looked like grey fur running along the upper torso and the top of the wings which, on closer inspection, turned out to be down-like feathers. Hooked claws protruded from the middle of the wings, and a short, stubby tail emerged from the bottom of its torso. Blood covered everything.

  “Well, at least you stopped me from breaking my neck,” he said. Then, painfully, Max attempted to stand. Miraculously, nothing appeared to be damaged enough to keep him from standing. Only sharp pain in his left wrist told him he wasn’t going to be using the spear to defend himself any longer. Possibly broken, more likely sprained, it was just lucky he was right-handed. And it hurt to breathe. Probably cracked ribs.

  Man, was he going to be in pain tomorrow.

  But that wasn’t his major problem. The major problem was that today still wasn’t over, and he still had to live through it.

  For a second, he debated whether it would be better to hike up what remained of the hill or go down and take the chair. He finally decided to go up. It was slightly closer, and would be much quicker overall. Time was of the essence.

  And besides, there might be more flying dinosaurs looking for a quick aerial snack around.

  Three steps towards the summit, a searing pain shot through him like lightning. He looked back to see a claw trying to tear his butt off. One of the monster’s feet had impaled itself in the flesh of his gluteus, sending fiery agony through him every time it moved.

  He screamed as he pulled away. Then his training took over and he rolled aside to put a bit of distance between him and his assailant and came up in a crouch facing the creature.

  Incredibly, dragging half a forest in its wings, the monster stumbled to its feet. A big, beady eye stared at him for an instant.

  The monster struck, its neck snapping towards him at a tremendous rate.

  Only Max’s reflexes saved him. He turned aside as the closed beak attempted to impale him and then fell back as the same bloodied foot talon raked his legs.

  The gun sprang to his hand as if by magic and he looked for a place to shoot the creature. Normally he’d take a chest or a head shot—from that distance, it would be impossible to miss—but he was worried about that. He’d heard that dinosaurs had a brain the size of a nut surrounded by a wall of brain. Worse, he had no idea where the animal’s vital organs might be. It would be pretty stupid to waste a precious bullet on a non-lethal shot.

  The hesitation almost killed him as the dinosaur’s beak flashed out again. Max thought he’d backed out of range, but it leaned forward and almost managed to impale him. His quick reaction limited the damage to yet another deep and bloody scrape.

  And the monster misjudged the strike, or maybe the branches stuck in its wings changed its center of gravity. Whatever the case, it overbalanced and fell to the floor, neck extended.

  Max was on top of it in a flash. He landed on its neck, both hands taking a stranglehold on the long throat.

  Unfortunately, it was a muscular appendage, as thick as his leg, and his injured left hand wasn’t strong enough to exert any pressure on it. In fact, though his whole weight was on the thing’s neck, he was being pushed off as it tried to lift its head.

  “Oh, screw this,” Max said. He pressed the muzzle of his gun against the back of the dinosaur’s head and pressed the trigger.

  A tremendous heave tossed him away, and he slammed into a tree and likely collected another large crop of bruises for tomorrow, as well as sending a blinding blast of agony from his ribs. He gritted his teeth through the pain and didn’t take his eyes off the dinosaur.

  The movement that threw him must have been a death spasm. The dinosaur wasn’t moving. He backed away slowly, on all fours, until there was no way it could reach him again. Only then did Max get back to his feet and begin walking, trying not to think of what Vasily would say when he showed up with a punctured ass.

  The first thing to do was to get out from between the trees. It would be much faster to go up the ski slope, even if that meant he was also much more visible.

  The climb was agony and, despite his determination to reach the top as quickly as he could, he had to stop every few minutes to rest his buttock. He kept looking down, but he wasn’t able to see much—the trees directly to his right blocked his view of the base of the hill and the hotel.

  By the time he was about a hundred meters away from the top, he was seriously doubting his ability to reach the summit. He could deal with pain, but the sense that his movements would debilitate him, that each step was tearing a larger and larger hole in a huge muscle made him want to stop.

  So he did what they’d taught him to do in this kind of life and death situation: he lowered his head and took one step at a time. And then another. And another. The pain could wait until he was safe; there was nothing wrong with him that a decent surgeon couldn’t fix. He’d never seen anyone permanently disabled by a muscle tear, why would he be the first?

  He looked up. Fifty meters. The sweat pouring down his forehead had little to do with the heat—the afternoon was still pleasant, and a mountain wind ran across the slope. It wasn’t even caused by the pain, at least not fully. It was mainly due to the fear of hurting himself badly.

  Max wasn’t the kind of guy who’d fold in the face of armed enemies, or wilt under an artillery barrage—he’d survived both and come back for more—but he wasn’t at his best when injured. He expected his body to be at his disposal for whatever feat of endurance or strength he decided to perform. On command, no questions asked.

  He didn’t take sick days, and never admitted to having something hurt. And his men followed his lead.

  His fear was that he wouldn’t be mentally strong enough to reach the top, and when he bent his head again and began to step forward, part of it was training, but even more was shame. He needed to prove to himself that he wasn’t as weak as he felt right now.

  Step. Step. Stumble. Step.

  He was there. Incredibly, he’d reached the summit.

  But where were Marianne and Vasily? He could see the parking lot and the road from where he was standing, and they weren’t there.

  He turned back in the direction he’d just climbed from.

  It looked like the whole Ural countryside around Yekaterinburg stretched out below him, the low hills and the green forests. The grass and the lakes, shimmering in the afternoon sun.

  Marianne was right. It didn’t look like the kind of landscape that would be full of monsters. It looked like the kind of place where you went for a camping trip to get back in touch with your center or your tai or whatever those new age people called it.

  Even the hotel and the house that held the chairlift motor looked out of place in that peaceful country. They were the only visible signs of civilization.

  He turned to search for his companions when something nagged at him and he turned back to look. What was it?

  The hotel was ugly, but not a problem. Likewise the engine room. Then what? His sixth sense told him something was wrong. What?

  “Oh shit.”

  There were two golf carts parked at the base of the muddy trail. Someone had followed them.

  And whoever had followed them had to be behind the monster that was already following them… and that meant the monster was out, too.

  Hopefully, the spider would have lost itself in the countryside to become the Russian Army’s problem, but if that cart was Selene…

  He didn’t think he would be able to deal with Selene right then. He was too badly hurt.

  He needed to find Vasily. Like right now.
He began to walk, painfully.

  “Well, at least it’s all downhill from here.”

  Chapter 12

  Park watched Selene leave the tunnel.

  The entrance was now torn to pieces and very much not camouflaged. The door lay in a pile of rubble outside the tunnel. If no one fixed it, it wouldn’t be long before the urban explorers came calling. They wouldn’t be able to resist a huge underground tunnel smacking of secrets and Soviet times.

  It was almost an industry. He remembered the photos of the Balaklava submarine base he’d seen online, not to mention the tank graveyard right outside Yekaterinburg itself, which caused such a scandal when people decided it would be a fun place to hang out completely drunk. He hadn’t arrived in the city when the authorities cleaned up that mess, but it was legendary among the population.

  And now the tunnel would join their ranks. Assuming no further journalists were allowed into the valley of dinosaurs, but also assuming that no one in officialdom would take the time to explore the unsafe-looking collapsed hole under the tarmac, it would be fascinating to watch the news begin to leak.

  At first, the discovery would be nothing but yet another old Soviet tunnel leading into some kind of bunker. Almost yawn-worthy, and not something to send explorers flocking to see where it went.

  But eventually, someone would go have a look. And they would find a factory floor with traces of radioactivity—urban explorers in Russia were always looking for that—from the Afghan war days… and the wrecks of a couple of modern helicopters at the bottom, plus the rotting carcass of some large animal… which the urban explorers would likely just ignore. They’d assume it was a yak or a bear or something.

  Even the smartest people could be blind to what was right in front of them, of course. But those discoveries would raise a few eyebrows and, again, eventually someone would look up and ask where it came out. After all, a hole that size would have been seen by passing hikers… so why hadn’t anyone heard of the place?

  Eventually, someone would climb the stairs and emerge into the valley of lizards just in time to be eaten by a pack of velociraptors or one of the bigger meat eaters.