Return To The Center Of The Earth

by Return To The Center Of The Earth (epub)

  Congress had invested hundreds of millions into the upgraded Estonian base, and he wanted to ensure they thought they got their money’s worth.

  When they were around two-fifty feet in the air, Lawrence stared down at the orderly structures and the magnificent fleet of his lethal flock: A-10 Warthogs, F-15 Eagles, F-16 Falcons, F-22 Raptors, and F-35 Lightning Strike Fighters, all lined up in a criss-cross nose-to-nose pattern. Their beauty and lethality made his chest swell with pride. Own the air, own the war, was a maxim as old as military flight itself.

  Lawrence squinted and then blinked several times. His brows knitted together as he tried to focus. The ground seemed to blur a little, and he lifted his sunglasses to rub his eyes with thumb and forefinger, before focusing again.

  But the ground still blurred.

  “You seeing this?” He asked.

  “Yes, sir. Thought it was just the cabin vibrations,” the pilot replied.

  “Drop us down fifty feet,” Lawrence requested.

  The ground shimmered. Lawrence then saw people coming out of barracks and maintenance shops to turn one way then the other, obviously confused.

  “What the hell…” He sat forward.

  The ground seemed to swell upward, cracks appeared in the runway, and then they shot through the light.

  “Lift, lift,” Lawrence shouted.

  “Taking her up,” the pilot replied and began to raise the chopper another hundred feet in the air over the base.

  The cracks were in a circular pattern and running all around the base as if someone struck a pane of glass with a hammer. Light started to show through the cracks in the ground that still rose in the air like a pregnant belly, and then what looked like magma began to spatter onto the tarmac from within the scars.

  “Good God.” Lawrence’s eyes widened. He knew if he were closer to the ground he would hear the screams as people fell flat, dropped into the fissures opening up, or became caught by the magma and then burst into flames like bugs on a hot skillet.

  “Get them out,” Lawrence whispered. But he knew he’d said it to no one.

  The helicopter pulled back some more so they watched now from half a mile, as the radiated heat was becoming a risk to their craft.

  In the next instant the huge blister had risen to a hundred feet in the air, and then burst, as magma and boiling gas vented. In the next second the entire base dropped into the collapsing crater.

  The base comprising of two hundred and twelve people, massive infrastructure, and billions of dollars of air strike power, simply vanished as it dropped into a molten hole.

  Lawrence lowered his hand from the mic button and sat back. He knew he was in shock, as the sights and sounds of the catastrophe seemed a million miles away.

  “It’s all gone,” he whispered, his eyes blurring with tears. “Everything.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Mike smiled at Jane who returned the gesture, and it immediately made him feel warm inside. She’s thawing, he thought.

  He looked up momentarily and felt the heat blast his cheeks and nose.

  But how could anything not thaw in this damned heat? He squeezed his eyes shut and waited until the red dots stopped floating behind his lids.

  They had set out along the face of the monolithic column mountain on a flat, rocky path. Hitch was out at point with the large Bull Simmons bringing up the rear. Harris came next, followed by Mike, then Jane, and Ally who had been ordered to keep an eye on Penny and Alistair.

  In just an hour they were all soaked through with perspiration. Penny wiped a forearm across her brow and eyes.

  “We’re going to need to take salt tablets every second day if we keep losing water, salt, and minerals like this,” Penny said. “I know we took the tablets, but not sure why we couldn’t wear some sort of radiation skin-block as well.”

  “The smell,” Mike replied.

  “He’s right,” Alistair agreed. “Arthropods, especially the land-based ones, have exceedingly good senses of smell, and can detect single atoms of some chemicals for miles.” He lifted his arm. “We’re already taking perspiration bacterial blockers to keep the smell of our sweat to a minimum. But the odor of perfumes, deodorants, and lotions will stand out like a beacon.”

  “And ring the dinner bell,” Jane added.

  “Oh, yeah,” Penny said. “I get it.” She looked up. “Then hopefully we won’t need to be under this blazing inferno for too long.” She paused as she stared upward with one eye closed and the other crinkled. “Simply amazing.”

  They had to deal with the heat and constant bombardment of the glaring red glow for hours until they entered a stand of tall bamboo-like plants that seemed to have a path beaten between them.

  Harris held up a hand. He looked over his shoulder to Mike and Jane. “Natural pathway or game trail?”

  “Probably one turned into the other,” Jane said as she looked up at the plants and then rapped on one. Just like bamboo, it sounded hollow. Their woody toughness and closeness to each other created biological cage bars that would have made the going impossible if they tried to burrow through them.

  Harris stared in at the dark trail. “Some of your beasties were experts in camouflage, huh?” he said.

  “Near invisible,” Mike replied. “Imagine a T-,rex armor-plated, and standing still as stone. And worse, you don’t see it until you’re right in front of it.”

  Harris began to chuckle. “Worst pep talk ever.” He turned back to his team. “Hitch and Ally, two by two. And freaking eyes out, we might have a bogie in the brush.”

  “Yo.” Both soldiers stepped forward now with their rifles tight in against their shoulders.

  The trail they moved along was about six feet wide, but the towering bamboo-like stalks either side of them created a long corridor that closed overhead as the plant’s canopy foliage joined up about fifty feet above them.

  The upside was it gave a respite from the light and the heat. The downside was the gloom. Just a few dozen feet in, the thicket became dark and secretive.

  Ally and Hitch slowed their progress and moved in a crouch like a pair of coiled springs with their guns at the ready.

  Harris let them get a couple of dozen paces ahead out at point, and after a moment Hitch raised a hand and then said something out of the corner of his mouth to Ally. She nodded and tilted her head as though listening. Then she pointed out into the shadowed thicket.

  It was then Mike noticed that the surrounding jungle that was once filled with the constant thrum of life had fallen deathly silent.

  Ally held up a hand, fingers spread, and then changed to holding up just one finger before easing through the bamboo bars and into the thicket. Harris spoke over his shoulder to the group.

  “Stay here.” Harris moved slowly up to Hitch’s position.

  “Stay here,” Mike repeated to Penny and Alistair as he and Jane also eased forward.

  “What’ve you got?” Harris whispered, sighting along his gun at the forest of stalks.

  Hitch kept his eyes on the thicket. “Heard something weird, just in there. Ally went to check it out.”

  Harris bared his teeth for a moment. “You remember that little speech I gave about no one goes anywhere by themselves?” He shook his head. “Idiots.”

  Harris took a few paces toward where Ally had left the trail. And then back, he cocked his head.

  Mike and Jane were halfway to the soldiers but paused. Mike slowly turned; from the other side of the trail and from deep within the thicket came a sound, low but constant.

  “Hear that?” He concentrated, trying to place it. “Celery.” He turned to Jane. “Like when you’re munching on celery.”

  Russ Hitch scoffed. “Hey yeah, that’s the sound, like munching-crunching. But it was over there before.” He pointed to where Ally left the trail.

  “Contact,” Harris yelled and spun with his gun up.

  From out of the thicket sprinted Ally. Her eyes were wide and she sucked in her breath, hard. “They’re
coming; damn eating everything.”

  “Say again?”

  “Things; grub things.” Ally wiped her mouth. “Coming across the ground like a wave, like a wave of maggots, except big. Eating everything, plants and anything too slow to get out of their way.” She turned about. “We do not want to be in front of them when they get here.”

  “Okay people, let’s…” Harris went to wave them on, but then stopped dead. “Ah, shit.” He stared. “They’re coming in from that way as well.”

  “And in front,” Jane said. “We need to go back.”

  Harris looked one way then the other. “Let’s backtrack and go around.”

  “Look.” Penny pointed down the track.

  About two hundred yards back along the way they had just come, a rippling blanket of bodies undulated and squirmed toward them.

  “Oh gross.” Penny grimaced and backed up.

  “Mike, Jane, what are they?” Harris pointed his weapon at the mass.

  “We’ve never seen them before,” Jane said. “Alistair?”

  “Huh?” The young man seemed momentarily mesmerized. “Some sort of larval stage of fly or beetle.”

  The large grubs were a milky-yellow and bulbous-looking, exactly as Ally described: like giant maggots. Except these were nearly three feet long and had a hard, shining head and pair of scythe-like pincers that they used to cut down anything biological in front of them, and then feed into their mouths: plant, fungus, gastropod, or small animal. Their foraging and consuming was the source of the crunching noise they had heard.

  “They’ve got us hemmed in,” Bull said. “We need to make a hole. Burn ‘em.”

  Harris shook his head. “There’s too many. We’d exhaust our ammunition.” He looked about. “And we’re not starting a fire while we’re in the center of a damn bamboo thicket.”

  Harris spun to Jane and Mike. “I know you’ve not seen them before, but now would be a good time to hear from those voices of experience.”

  “Climb,” Mike said. He dropped his pack and removed a length of rope that they all carried. “They’re not touching the bamboo. So everyone do what I do. And hurry.”

  Everyone did as asked and had the rope in their hands in seconds. Mike cut two four-foot lengths, walked to one of the stout pole-like plants and tied one end around his left boot front. He then looped it round the long trunk and tied the end to his other boot. He then used the second piece of rope to loop around the trunk at shoulder level and wrapped it around his hands.

  “We use gravity and we climb… like this.” He pulled the rope tight in his hands and it gripped the bamboo-like pole as a demonstration. He then lifted his hands and dragged the looped rope higher and pulled. The rope tightened and locked on as his weight came down on it, gripped the trunk, and he pulled himself up a couple of feet. When he was up, the rope around his feet tightened against the trunk, allowing him to rest his arms or use them to move the rope higher and scale up another few feet.

  “Like New Guinea coconut tree climbing,” Mike said. “Our weight locks the rope against the trunk.”

  “I get it.” Harris had already tied his ropes and began to climb by Ally, Hitch and Bull. Penny was also making slow progress, and Jane was already five feet up from the ground.

  Only Alistair couldn’t quite get the hang of it.

  Penny turned, frowning. “Hurry up, Alistair.”

  “I am. But I just, can’t…” he looked over his shoulder. And probably shouldn’t have. The grubs were now only a few dozen feet from him, and Mike could see the jungle being mowed down around them with the only thing untouched the obviously inedible trunks of the bamboo.

  The giant, voracious bug larvae were consuming anything below three feet. They’d make short work of a soft human being.

  A small creature that looked like a kangaroo with a hard shell tried to leap over the grubs, but only managed to land amongst them. Before it could leap again, it began to squeal and was pulled down. The grubs in its vicinity flushed a brilliant red as they gorged themselves on the poor creature’s shell, flesh and blood.

  No matter how many times Alistair tried, he just couldn’t get the concept of pull, hang, climb, and then repeat. And the more nervous he got, the more he fumbled.

  “He’s not going to make it,” Jane said from twenty feet up. She turned to look down at Mike.

  “Damn it.” Mike grimaced as he watched the near-panicking entomologist. “Alistair, untie yourself.”

  “What?” Alistair said. “But…”

  “Shut up and do it, quickly. And then run to the bottom of my tree-trunk.” Mike relaxed his feet and handgrip on the trunk, and the rope loosened, causing him to slide the dozen feet he had scaled back down the ground.

  The young man even struggled to get his shoes out of the rope-locks, and just watching him gave Mike a knot of tension in his stomach. The grubs were now just five feet from him.

  “Hurry up,” Mike yelled.

  Alistair stepped out of the rope loops, tripped, and fell flat on his face. He crawled forward and then got up to run the last few feet.

  Mike was waiting for him. “Climb on my backarms over my shoulders and around my chest: not my neck. Then wrap your legs around my waist.” Mike looked over his shoulder. The grubs must have detected them, as they had turned and all were swarming toward their tree. “Ready?”

  The grubs were just a few feet from them and Alistair clung onto him like a giant monkey. Mike sucked in a huge breath, threw the loop of rope about two feet up the pole-like trunk and then heaved himself and Alistair up.

  Even though Alistair wasn’t a big man, the strain was more than Mike expected and the rope slipped as it tried to grip the trunk’s smooth, woody texture. Mike rested his feet in his rope stirrups, and then threw the handheld loops higher again.

  Behind him he could hear the crunching of the grubs’ jaws and didn’t want to look back as he knew they were right behind them now. Over the noise of the grubs he heard Alistair’s fear-filled rapid breathing.

  He pulled himself up another foot, knowing he was still far too low. His hands were becoming purple as the blood was being cut off by the strain of the weight on the rope tightening around his hands.

  He used his feet to rest a second, and then dragged himself and Alistair up another foot. Mike looked across to Jane who was twenty feet up and staring down, not at him, but at what was happening below him. He knew he must have been only about three feet up by now.

  “They’re… here,” Alistair wheezed into his ear.

  Mike agonizingly dragged himself up another foot and chanced a look down. He felt his skin crawl as the grubs were actually climbing on top of one another and with each layer it brought them closer to his ankles.

  His hands were now numb as he tried to lift another foot higher, but his shoulders rebelled and he knew he didn’t have the strength.

  I just need to rest for a few seconds, he thought, and rested his damp forehead against the rounded trunk.

  With his skin in contact with the plant he felt the vibrations against the wood and jerked back to look down. A few of the things had taken to chewing into the tough bark: not on any of the other bamboo-like stalks, but just on his. The objective was clear.

  “They’re cutting us down.” He looked up to the others perched on the other stalks, safe. “A little help here, guys.”

  Hitch and Ally begin to fire into the squirming mass, but even striking two of the grubs at once left hundreds to carry on the climb and also the cutting.

  Harris leaned back, using just one hand to hold the straps and reached into a pouch pocket. He drew forth an incendiary flare, bit the top off, punched it against the trunk he was on so it flared to life, and tossed it down at the base of Mike’s tree.

  The effect was instantaneous. The creatures boiled over each other like glistening mud and pulled back from the flare. Harris dropped another one on the opposite side of the trunk, causing the rest of the maggot-like things to create some space around Mike’s
perch.

  Mike looked up and nodded to Harris who winked in return.

  The flares would only burn for a few minutes, and Mike knew it was now a race to see whether the grubs would wait just outside of the ring of heat and smoke as the flares burned out, or if they gave up and continued on in their locust-like devouring of everything in their path as they crossed the jungle floor.

  Alistair shifted on his back, and Mike slid a few inches. “Keep still, or we’re dead,” Mike hissed.

  Mike looked out over the jungle and saw that the moving carpet extended as far as he could see into the twilight-dark thicket. The flares had already burned for several minutes, and from his recollection, modern heat flares burned for anything from three minutes to ten depending on their brand, storage, and price.

  Alistair shifted again, getting restless or sliding.

  “Sorry, I’m slipping,” Alistair moaned.

  Mike just closed his eyes and counted off seconds, trying not to think about the agony in his hands, fingers, shoulders, or his back where Alistair dug in. Alistair started to slip a little more, and a small voice in his head whispered to just let him go.

  In another few minutes, he heard Jane calling his name. He looked up into her shocked face and knew the strain was twisting his features.

  “I can see the end of the swarm,” Jane said and looked out to where the creatures had appeared. “Just a few more minutes. Hang in there.”

  He nodded slowly and lowered his head to the trunk and shut his eyes again. Below him the first of the flares sputtered and went out.

  It was about thirty seconds between flares, so the next would be burned out then. With his eyes closed he counted down from thirty, and every second he expected to feel the nudge on his boot as the first of the worm-like things reached him.

  The crunch of the devouring horde continued on, and then it became everything, as the fizz of the flare was suddenly not there anymore.

  Time was up. He opened his eyes. The grubs were back at the base of his tree stalk.