by Greig Beck
There was a soft ground cover like a fleshy clover on the broad, flat riverbanks, and twenty feet back there were types of wildflowers—some had iridescent bells that looked like stained glass, others had upward-facing white cups with blood-red stamens, and some even had an occasional crimson bulb that was like a tulip but with a closed end and a soft glow inside like it was lit within.
Loche checked his GPS. “Okay, people, this is the last green area before we hit the desert. We take a break, recharge, and then we head out.” He looked about. “Croft, Angel, take first watch. Jane, can you check that water is drinkable? If it is, I want everyone to fill their canteens before we set out.”
Jane nodded and quickly searched for her water-testing kit.
Matt settled the children in the shade, and Loche shucked off his heavy pack. “Everyone else, take a break… but leave one eye open. And no one rest underneath any goddamn red apples.” He dropped his pack, sat in a pool of shade, and briefly glanced upward.
After Jane had given the stream water her seal of approval, Mike and Jane sat together, and he lay down with his head on his pack. She did the same and turned to him.
“Wish I never found that stupid manuscript, or met with Katya, or brought you down here.” He sighed. “I’m sorry.” His voice trailed away.
She saw his eyes glistened. “It’s funny,” she began. “Sometimes, I think we never left. That we stayed and we only dreamed we went back to the surface. That in reality we’ve been here the whole time.”
“That’d be a nightmare,” he replied.
“I don’t know, is it? You said that we’d do something that no one else has ever done before. That we’d see wondrous things. And you were right.” She sat up and hugged her knees. “There are terrible dangers and unbelievable wonders.” She held out an arm and pulled up her sleeve, exposing the red, crusted lesions. “But there is a price to pay for the knowledge and adventure.”
“A terrible price,” Mike sighed.
She lay back down. “I have one request.”
He propped himself up on an elbow. “Anything. What is it?”
“Next time, ask someone else to come with you.” She laughed softly.
Mike reached out and took her hand. “We’ll make it out, don’t worry. And I don’t know if this is hell or paradise, but I do know I’m glad I’m sharing it with you.”
She smiled broadly and brought her face a little closer to his. “I can tell you one thing—it isn’t paradise.” She lay back and looked around. “But this place looks familiar.”
“Yeah, I thought so too,” he said and eased up on one elbow. “I think this was the oasis before we set out onto the desert.” He drew in a deep breath. “It was the calm before the storm.”
“But then we had the Y’ha-nthlei on our asses.” She looked around. “But where are they now? I don’t think we wiped them out.”
“Neither do I. But really, if we never see them again, that’s a good thing.” He turned at the sound of splashing from the stream and saw Loche step into the shallow water, quickly bend forward, and grab hold of something then throw it up on the grassy bank.
The silver torpedo thrashed and flipped. “Fish,” Loche said.
Sure enough, it looked like a small mackerel, with a strong body and yellow fins. There were a few catfish-like feelers around its nose, but other than that, it looked normal.
“There’s more.” He turned to Matt Kearns. “Matt, get in here and help me grab a few more. We’ve got a lot of mouths to feed now.” He paused before going back to his task. “Croft, start a fire.”
In ten more minutes, the two men had caught a dozen good-sized, fat fish, which Loche expertly cleaned with his knife, finding no scales, just a leathery skin which he stripped and then threaded onto sticks to hold over the fire.
The smell was intoxicating after living on food bars and dried fruit, which was rapidly dwindling anyway. The children looked interested, and Matt pulled off several cooked fish pieces and loaded a broad leaf up with the hot white flesh and then handed it to them.
“Try this.” He lay it down before the group of children who simply stared at the strange meat.
Matt picked a small piece up to put in his mouth. He spoke softly in their language and their eyes went to the food again. He smiled and mimed rubbing his stomach. “Yummy,” he said.
Jane watched as one of the older boys reached for a small piece and sniffed it before popping it into his mouth. He chewed thoughtfully, and then spoke softly to the other children.
That seemed good enough as the other children’s hands darted out, grabbing handfuls and stuffing it into their mouths.
Matt turned. “They approve.” He stood to go and get another fish for them.
Each adult then took a portion on a broad green leaf and ate with their fingers. Jane smiled as she ate, the oil coating her lips.
“Okay, maybe here there are some aspects that might be paradise.” She pushed another fingerful of flaky white meat into her mouth and looked over her shoulder. “But I still have the feeling we’re being watched.”
In ten more minutes, Loche called the end of rest time, and they packed up, heading hopefully on the last leg of their mission.
While he had Janus and Matt bury the remnants of the fire and the meal, he showed the GPS positioning tracker to Jane.
“Our second party is coming right at us. And about two miles out. We might even intersect with them on route.” Loche straightened, took one last look around, and then threw his pack over his shoulder. “Mr. Angel, take us out, please.”
They set off along the stream’s shoreline until it eventually pooled at a pile of boulders and then was sucked below the ground. Then another quarter-mile and they came to the last vestiges of the forest. The group stood on the border between the jungle and the desert.
“I remember it wasn’t far from here—half a mile, maybe a little more,” Mike said. He put a hand over his eyes and squinted out onto the shimmering, red, hard-packed earth. “The last time we set out across the desert, the red clan were watching. I wonder if they know we’re coming.”
“If you’re there, Katya, tell them we’re friends, okay?” Jane whispered.
Loche lowered his field glasses. “Nothing significant I can see at surface level. But you said everything was below ground, right?” He turned to Mike.
“That’s right. We basically walked right over them—they had fortified doors set into the ground. Hopefully, they’re still out there,” he replied.
“So do I, because that’s why we’re here.” Loche nodded to his men. “Croft, left flank, Angel, right. Eyes out, gentlemen. Everyone else stay close and keep up. Matt, you’re king of the kids—keep them bunched in nice and tight behind us.”
Matt saluted and practiced more of his language skills with them, this time eliciting some smiles and giggles.
Jane watched as the two military men gripped their firearms a little tighter and set foot out into the hard-packed and brutally hot desert. Loche headed up the middle, followed by Janus, Mike, and herself, and then Matt and his gaggle of tiny red children that reminded her of a lot of little ducklings following an adult bird.
Jane turned briefly back to the forest and concentrated for a moment. There was no sound of war drums or the scuttling of thousands of sharp arthropod feet.
She turned away and moved quickly to catch up with the group. It only took about ten minutes before she felt the scalding heat singeing wherever it touched her bare skin. On her forehead, her hat was sticking to one of the lesions that was now weeping a clear fluid.
Jane looked at her hand, spotting another of the crusty sores—they’re getting worse, she knew, and wondered whether she’d even make it home. She looked across to Mike, who smiled back at her. She had seen his own ulceration. The pair of them were literally rotting before each other’s eyes. And if there was no cure, did it matter if they died here, fast, or made it home, to die slowly?
Think positive, she demanded of hersel
f. Making it home with a cure is first prize, so work with that goal in mind.
“Something up ahead,” Loche said with the glasses to his eyes again.
In a few more minutes, they began to pass across stained soil and bodies, or rather skeletons, and hundreds of them.
They were strewn everywhere, some with shattered bones and missing limbs, or some were totally torn to pieces. Loche stopped and looked around.
“Your red people?” he asked.
“Yes,” Jane replied. She could see a few of the remains wore the adornments she had seen some of the warriors wearing in the labyrinths below ground.
“A last stand,” Matt added softly.
“Who were they fighting? Your shell people?” Loche frowned. “So where are their bodies?”
“They tended to remove their own dead,” Mike said. “But it’s strange. They used to take away all the dead, usually for food. We were just meat to them.”
Loche bent to pick up a dagger, its blade about a foot long and seeming to be carved from crystal. He held it up to the red light to look into its clear depths. He tested its sharpness on his gloved hand.
“It’s beautiful,” Matt said. “A lot of work went into that.”
“And effective.” Loche noted the cut on his glove from the blade edge.
“You can’t see it in this red light, but underground, it’ll probably glow blue,” Jane added.
Loche tucked it into his belt. “Not that we’re on a scavenger hunt.”
Mike turned back to the red earth plain. “The entrance was close by here. But it’s well camouflaged, so everyone keep a look out for a heavy door set into the earth.”
Loche turned and lifted his glasses to scan back the way they’d come. “No sign of pursuit so we can spread out, move in a line, a dozen paces between us. We need to find that entrance.”
They did as asked and formed a skirmish line nearly a hundred feet wide. They moved forward for several minutes, covering the ground slowly.
Jane saw more evidence of a great battle—stained earth, a shattered jawbone, broken spears. But still no sign of any fallen Y’ha-nthlei.
The other thing that gave her a sinking feeling in the stomach was if the red people had prevailed, or even survived, would they not have returned for the bodies of their fallen kin?
If there was enough left of them. She sighed. Not looking promising, she thought.
“Here!” Matt Kearns yelled.
The group joined him at the edge of a slight depression. Below were the remains of a stout door. But it had been shattered.
“Looks like it was hacked to pieces by fire axes,” Croft remarked.
“No, by claws,” Jane replied.
“Well…” Loche pulled his gun from over his shoulder and attached the flashlight under the barrel. “This is why we came. Croft, lead us in. Professor, you on his shoulder with me. Then Janus, Mike, and Jane in tight behind us—they will be our guides and Matt will be our spokesman. Everyone else stay in tight. And Angel, guard our six and mind the children.”
“Aw…” Angel pointed at the moon-eyed children.
Loche glared. “I said look after them, mister. Not play games with them. Just keep ‘em quiet.” He turned away.
“Tell them a story,” Croft chuckled.
“Battle of Midway?” Angel lifted his brows.
Loche gave Croft a nudge. “Go.”
Croft nodded, walked down into the depression, and pulled the shattered door aside. He headed on down and found the ladder still intact.
At the bottom, he and Matt paused for a moment, and Jane and Mike moved their lights around the space. There was nothing but the sound of their own breathing.
There were more bodies, but these were obliterated, just in pieces. Even the skulls were broken into shards.
“They were overwhelmed,” Croft said. “Hey, there’s light up ahead.”
“Proceed,” Loche ordered.
Croft moved in, gun up.
They passed along the rubble-strewn corridor until they came to an alcove that had a single blue crystal giving off a soft blue glow.
“Your crystals,” Loche said.
“And yours.” Jane pointed to his waist.
Loche pulled out the crystal dagger that glowed like there was a light inside it.
“Amazing,” he whispered as it illuminated his features.
“Got something here, boss,” Croft said as he peered around a corner. “There’s a large antechamber with a new wall—fortified, I think.”
Loche spoke over his shoulder. “Keep the children here. Everyone else, let’s take a look.”
They followed him and came to a barrier. There were the remains of ancient, dried blood everywhere, but no bodies. But there was a wall, strong, heavily fortified, and still in place.
“This was where they held them, the warriors. Maybe giving their lives so the people inside had time to build that.” He nodded to the wall.
“And then get their people behind it,” Jane said.
“So, they’re in there?” Janus asked.
“Let’s see.” Loche stepped forward. He used the butt of his handgun to rap hard on a wooden beam—three times first, then twice, then once.
“No way they’re going to know we’re friendlies,” Janus said.
“I know,” Loche replied. “But if there is a Russian woman in there, she’ll know it’s humans and not the crab freaks out here.”
He waited, and then rapped again, same pattern. After the echo died down, he leaned his ear up against it.
“Anything?” Janus whispered.
“Nothing.” Loche stepped back and let his eyes run over the structure. He stopped moving and spoke without moving his head. “Jane, Mike, come up here.”
“What is it?” she asked as she and Mike joined him.
He turned his back on the barrier wall. “Top left corner, about eleven o’clock, there’s someone watching us.” He winked down at her. “If they’re anyone you know, now is the time to announce yourselves.”
Jane frowned. “I don’t know their language.”
“But we know the name of their leader, Ulmina… and Katya,” Mike said.
“You’re right.” Jane cleared her throat and stepped up closer to the wall without letting on she knew they were being watched.
“We come to see the great Ulmina. And we are friends of Katya.” Jane waited a few moments and then repeated herself.
Again, she waited, but there was still nothing. She turned to Loche. “Give me the dagger.”
He did as asked, and she turned to hold it up. “We are friends of the Grunda Omada people.”
She waited and again there was nothing.
“Got any dynamite?” Janus asked.
“Yeah, that’ll win them over,” Matt snorted.
Janus cursed as he turned. “Listen, Professor, for all we know, the person behind there might be deranged and the last one of his or her kind.” He stepped back. “We came a long way and spent several hundred million bucks to get here. And lost a lot of good people, just to get some answers… and those answers are behind that wall.”
Loche’s mouth turned down for a moment. “Yep.” He put his hands on his hips. “He’s right. We came this far. Come hell or high water, we need to see what’s beyond that wall.”
“Damn,” Matt said. “If we do, and there’s an indigenous race behind there, they’ll never talk to us.”
Janus bared his teeth. “Jeezus, if only we thought to bring someone who is a language expert.”
Matt pointed a finger at the smaller man. “Hey, listen…”
“No, you listen.” Janus knocked his hand away. “Just fucking make these sawn-off red people understand what’s at stake, Professor.”
Matt pushed him back a step. “Piss off.”
Matt felt he had been suckered. He already had a basic understanding of the language, probably faster than anyone else could have achieved on the planet. But as he had only ever heard the kids speaking scrap
s of it, and their language might have been altered over the many generations they had been slaves, he felt he had little chance of ever pronouncing the words correctly.
He began to pace and surreptitiously looked up to the top left corner of the wall, but the eye had pulled back. Perhaps they had lost interest in watching the strange people squabble among each other.
The others were silently watching him, maybe hoping he could conjure some linguistic magic trick. But he had nothing.
He stopped. Or did he?
Matt turned. “We have something far more valuable than daggers or fluent language.”
Matt called the children over to him. Then he turned back to the wall and walked right up close to it.
“Let’s try something else first.” Matt took a deep breath and cupped his mouth. “Katya Babikova, my proshli dolgiy put’, chtoby uvidet’ vas.”
“Russian.” Jane grinned. “Of course, why not?”
Matt listened for a moment more and then raised his voice even more, once again in fluent Russian. “Katya Babikov, your friends are here from the surface. They need help. And you can see, we rescued some of the red people’s children.”
“Who is it?” came the reply in Russian.
Jane drew in a breath. “That’s Katya, I think,” she whispered. “But sounds a little different.”
Matt nodded and turned back to the wall. “My name is Professor Matt—”
“Not you, who are the people you say are friends?” the voice asked again.
“Mike Monroe, Jane Baxter—they came to find you,” Matt replied.
“Who else is there?” the voice asked.
Matt turned to look at his companions for a moment. “Some soldiers to protect them.”
“Russian?” the voice asked.
“American,” Matt replied. “You are Katya Babikov, are you not?” he asked.
The eye returned and fixed on the children. “Where are the young ones from?”
“The jungle valley,” Matt replied.
There was silence for nearly a minute, and Matt turned to shrug. And then.
“Back up,” the voice said.
Matt looked along the wall of tumbled boulders, fallen crossbeams, and metal plates, and wondered how the hell it was going to open.