Tej heard a noise behind him and turned just in time to see two Nagas screeching towards him with claws outstretched ready to rend him limb from limb.
Suddenly a rope leaped up and the Nagas ran into it. They stopped inches before they could reach him: close enough that Tej could smell the foul stench of their breath. Behind them Rose and Campbell strained against the ropes. They pulled the Nagas back and then Rose charged away taking his end of the rope with him. At the same time Campbell hauled on his end and the rope straightened like a bowstring. The two Nagas were catapulted screaming into the void.
Tej and Campbell ran back to Rose and slid in behind the limited cover of the fluted basalt column.
Rose reeled in the rope and wound it round his waist. He slipped another titanium bolt into his bolt gun. Tej and Campbell fired back at the Nagas.
‘How many more of those things are there?’ Rose asked.
‘Who knows?’ Campbell replied. ‘As long as we have more rounds than they have monsters we’ll still have a chance.’
Rose popped the empty clip on his SCAR. ‘No chance of that,’ he said. ‘I’m dry already.’
‘Me too,’ said Tej. He flung his SCAR down and drew the MP-9 machine pistol. Rose had the nine millimetre semi-automatic, but that was all. And the Nagas just kept coming.
Campbell was still carrying the aluminium briefcase slung across his shoulders.
‘Let me take that,’ Rose said. ‘We’ll have to make a run for it. The path may still lead us out of here and if not we can make a stand with the others. Khamas and Frank still have rifles.’
Campbell grunted his agreement in between bursts of fire at the Nagas behind them. Rose took the aluminium case and clipped it onto his climbing harness through its D-rings. As one they surged from their hiding place and sprinted down the path.
The Nagas were close behind: too close. They weren’t going to make it! The creatures seemed to defy gravity as they raced along the cavern wall above them. They dropped down onto the path in front of them.
Campbell barged the first Naga out of the way, but another reared up before Rose. Instinctively he raised the aluminium case up in front of him like a shield and then the beast was on him.
Gripping the case with both fists Rose kept the beast's snapping jaws away from his throat, but he felt its claws rake his chest--the black talons cutting through his thick clothing and into the meat beneath. He lashed out with a boot and felt the crunch of bone, but the creature only shifted its weight to its remaining limbs and renewed its attack with even more ferocity. It seemed to be impervious to pain. A creature made up of teeth and claws and wiry sinews.
With a mighty effort, Rose pushed the creature away and flailed at his belt for any kind of weapon: a knife, ice-axe, anything. His fist closed around a pistol-grip: not an automatic, but the compressed-air bolt gun.
It would have to do. As the creature launched itself back at him, Rose caught it by the throat--ignoring another slice of pain down his side. He pressed the bolt gun up under the creature's triangular jaw and heard the click of the cover guard releasing the firing mechanism. He pulled the trigger and a four-inch long, toothed titanium bolt drove through the creature's head, its tip breaking through the top of the thick skull. A spray of blood showered Rose like a rain of black treacle.
The creature staggered backwards, its screeches distorted to a final gurgle as it stubbornly refused to die. As it fell backwards, it trailed a length of rope from the bolt embedded in its skull. Rose had kept the bolt gun ready since the climb with a carabineer clipped through the eye on the bolt's titanium collar. The rope tied to the carabineer unspooled from the rope bag strapped to Rose's pack as the creature finally fell backwards and lay dead.
Rose clutched at the ragged tear beneath his ribs. His glove came away bloody. The cold chilled his exposed flesh and steam rose from the wound like from a jogger on a cold morning. But there was no time to tend the wound. Rose saw Tej falling back, the Steyr automatic blazing in one hand and his kukri flashing in the other. Campbell had managed to escape the melee and was providing covering fire from behind them, but against so many opponents, their situation was hopeless. It was time to flee. Rose dropped his empty SCAR and turned to run but only got a couple of steps before one of the Nagas sprang on him, knocking him from his feet. They rolled, man and monster, towards the edge of the underground ravine. Before Rose could do anything about it, they fell into the yawning blackness.
Suddenly Rose jerked to a stop. The creature he was fighting lost its grip on its intended victim and plummeted away with a scrap of red fabric from Rose’s jacked clutched between its claws as a prize.
Rose ignored the pain from the bruises swelling under his harness straps and looked up. The rope from the bolt gun stretched upwards over the lip of the ravine, presumably still buried in the skull of the dead monster above. The other end was clipped through the belay plate at the front of Rose’s climbing harness. The rope bag flapped empty against his pack, all its stored slack used up.
A noise to his right alerted him to one of the Nagas, crawling towards him on the cliff wall. It moved slowly, methodically, as if it knew that its prey was trapped. Another patter of falling rocks to his right heralded another creature advancing on him from the other side.
Stuck on the end of his swinging lifeline between the two advancing monsters, Rose felt like a fly cornered between two spiders.
There was a jerk on his harness. The creatures on either side of him shrieked as Rose was yanked up the wall out of their grasp.
‘Thank you, Campbell,’ Rose said, guessing that the big Scot would be the only one strong enough to pull him up the wall. He readied his ice axe, ready to heave himself over the lip of the ravine.
A shape peered over the edge. It wasn’t Campbell!
Above him, the hulking Asura gripped the rope. Rose could see the slabs of muscle on its arms bunching as it hauled him in, as easily as a fisherman landing his catch.
Rose looked left and right. The Nagas were still there—pacing him, climbing up the cliff back to their master on the trail above. Below, the ravine dropped away beyond even the reach of the miniature sun that hung near the cavern roof.
With monsters on three sides, and a bottomless pit below, it looked like Rose’s struggle was over. He only had one chance. Remembering the sound he had heard when he first entered the cavern, Rose did the only thing he could. Steadying his rope with one hand, he pressed the sharp serrated edge of the ice axe against it and cut it through with one slice.
CHAPTER 26
Campbell watched helplessly as the Asura reeled in Rose’s rope. From his position on top of a large boulder overlooking the trail he had seen Rose fall. He had also seen the rope trailing over the edge snap taut and had dared to hope that the Captain might yet be saved. But the enemy was just too numerous. They over-ran Rose’s last position, swarming around the rope like ants. It was almost a relief when the Asura pulled up the cut end of the rope. At least Rose had been able to choose his path from this world.
Tej peered over the edge of the ravine, searching for any sign that Rose might still be there: clinging on, or perhaps traversing the wall towards them. But there was none. Even the Asura had given up on its prize. It flung the rope into the darkness, kicking the dead carcass of its servant over the edge in a fit of pique that was almost human.
‘Let’s get out of here,’ Campbell urged. ‘There’s nothing we can do for him now.’
Tej stood, tight lipped for a second, staring at the giant creature and its attendant legion of abominations.
‘You were defeated before, Asura,’ he stated. ‘You were beaten and driven into the darkness below the world of men. I swear it shall be so again. He spat, voluminously on the cave floor in their direction and turned and followed Campbell down the trail.
◆◆◆
The path continued into the depths of the mountain. The giant horseshoe cavern was only the first of a series of fracture chambers that ran connected
through the body of the mountain like organs. The far wall of the cavern drew closer and closer, squeezing the chasm at their side until it was nothing more than a wide crack in the rock and then it was gone with only a glassy fault plane to mark its passing.
The path opened onto a wide plateau. Behind them the alien flare still glowed behind the rocky knife edge of the bend. The walls glittered with feldspar and quartz, gleaming glassy green and purple where the flare’s light reflected: rock the colour of bruised flesh. Elsewhere, pockets of shadow crept up from deeper in the mountain, shadows nested on the walls like bats. In the shifting torchlight they slinked around the razor-edged rock: squatting in hollows and turning every indentation of the cavern wall into a possible exit, hiding place or drop off. And all around them angular fault planes cut the rock into facetted, jewelled teeth.
McCarthy staggered onto the plateau, nearly barrelling into Marinucci when he stopped to survey the route ahead. She stopped, hands on her knees, panting hard. The thin air was taking its toll on them all. She gulped like a landed fish, but the breath wouldn’t come. She felt like she would die right there from sheer fright and exhaustion
‘Which way now?’ Khamas asked.
Marinucci scanned the rock walls ahead with the torch clipped beneath the barrel of his SCAR. Shadows squirmed around the spotlight like living things.
‘There!’ Marinucci said.
Ahead of them and to their left the cavern walls ached upwards, unbroken except for one thing: a shadow, like a thousand others except that this one was perfectly circular, a tunnel.
The entrance was surrounded by a carving. An inner ring showed seated figures, their features distorted by wear; the outer ring was wider and depicted a stylised ring of fire. With the black tunnel mouth at its centre it gave the impression of a total eclipse of the sun. The corona blazed around the perimeter of the dark umbra that was their only way forward.
‘How do you know where that leads?’ Yvonne asked. ‘What of there are more of those things down there?’
‘I’ve seen carvings like that before,’ Marinucci replied, ‘—outside the entrance to the lake cave.’
‘Do you think that could lead back to the lake?’ McCarthy asked.
‘Maybe. We’ve been heading mostly West since the glacier, as far as I can tell anyway. We’re not far off.’
‘Then what are we waiting for? That’s our way out!’
Marinucci grunted. ‘Nothing’s ever that easy. Wait here while I check it out.’
He set the beam of his torch to its widest possible setting and disappeared into the tunnel.
Khamas stayed behind with the other rifle. He climbed up a natural staircase of gigantic, hexagonal dogspar crystals to a point where he could overlook the trail and waited.
‘Do you think that there’s really a way out through there?’ Yvonne asked.
‘Let’s hope so, because there’s nothing but trouble behind us. We have to keep moving forward.’
‘The mandala will lead us to safety,’ Hadeeqa said.
‘What makes you say that?’ Yvonne asked. ‘This whole fucking mountain could just be a huge warren for those things back there. That could be their front door for all you know!’
‘Is that what you think?’ McCarthy asked. ‘And you still let Frank go in there?’
‘Well someone’s got to!’
‘Please, ladies,’ Khamas said. ‘My daughter is correct. The mandala is a definite sign of the human civilisation that once lived here.’
‘Oh yeah? And how do you know that those things aren’t what killed off your precious ancient civilisation?’
‘I do not know. The fact is that no permanent settlement has ever been discovered at this altitude. The closest comparable settlement would be Harappa, but that was abandoned in 1700BC. If a contemporary civilisation existed in the high mountains then their history has been completely lost.’
‘Like I said: wiped out… no survivors.’
‘Perhaps. But the path will lead us back to their city by the lake. Of that I am certain.’
‘I hope so, for all our sakes.’
There was a movement on the trail. Shadows loomed large on the far cavern wall: the shadow of something large approaching, much larger than a humans and oddly mis-shapen. Khamas tightened his grip on his rifle.
Garrett staggered around the bend with Morcellet on his back and all but tumbled the last few yards to the plateau. McCarthy grabbed him and he stared at her, wild eyed and panting.
‘Get out of my way!’ he cried. ‘We have to keep moving.’
‘It’s okay,’ McCarthy replied. ‘You’re safe now.’
‘Safe?’ queried Yvonne. ‘There’s nowhere on this mountain that’s fucking safe.’
McCarthy ignored her. ‘We’ve found a way out. Frank is checking it out now.’
Garret calmed down. His manic energy drained away and he sagged and let go of Morcellet’s legs but the Frenchman refused to let go.
‘Take your weight, you damn fool. You’re choking me.’
Morcellet’s hands were clamped together so hard that Garrett had to physically force them apart before he could shrug the Frenchman off his shoulders like a rucksack. McCarthy put her arms around Morcellet and helped Garrett lower him to the ground. Her hands came away bloody.
Morcellet slumped forward: his back was a mass of red. Hadeeqa screamed a startled yelp. Garrett pulled Morcellet’s head back; his eyes were open and glassy, his face slack.
Garrett started slapping him across the face. ‘Wake up! Wake up, damn you!’
Yvonne pushed him to the side and crouched down, her fingers at Morcellet’s throat. ‘It’s no good. He’s gone,’ she said. She looked at his back. Four, no five bullet wounds. He’s lucky. At least it was quick.’
‘Lucky!’ said Garrett. ‘You call being shot five times lucky?’
‘Well it’s better than being torn apart by those things back there.’
‘You heartless bitch!’
‘Fuck you, Garrett. I wasn’t the one wearing him like a bullet-proof vest.’
Garrett lunged at her, but Yvonne slipped out of his reach and he fell to his knees, sobbing great dry heaves. He knelt there talking to himself through his tears. ‘It’s not my fault… They left us… It’s not my fault.’
Suddenly there was the sound of gunfire from inside the cave. A short, quick burst followed by silence. McCarthy jumped. It looked like Yvonne had been right.
There was movement in the darkness. McCarthy backed away across the plateau. Khamas turned from the path behind them and trained the muzzle of his SCAR on the tunnel mouth.
More movement.
Khamas’s finger tightened on the trigger and came within a split second of blowing Marinucci’s head off when he walked out into the light.
‘Jesus, Frank. I nearly killed you,’ she said. ‘What the hell were you doing in there?’
‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’ Marinucci replied, ignoring her. Seeing her exasperated glare, he continued: ‘Well we didn’t find a nest of monsters; there is a way out through there, but it’s sealed.’ He silenced her question with a wave and beckoned her into the depths of the cave with Garrett and Yvonne Gibbons close behind.
It was obviously man-made, or at least man-modified. The floor was relatively level and there was evidence of tool marks on some of the more protruding rocks. Marinucci led the way, flicking on the torch under the barrel of his SCAR as they went deeper. He kept it pointed downwards, letting its beam linger on a few patches of awkward footing until she had passed them. Occasionally he flicked the beam up the wall. She could see that the carvings from the mandala outside continued along the wall, but the glimpses Marinucci gave her were too quick to see details.
‘Just like before,’ Marinucci said. ‘We found friezes like these in the other cave, the one that led to the lake.’
McCarthy remembered the story he had told Rose. A lake, steaming with warm, geothermally heated water with a central spire
of granite rising towards the open roof. She didn’t know which she yearned for more: the warmth or the touch of sunlight on her face. Then she remembered the other feature of that natural cavern. It had another tunnel leading from it—one that led past the wreckage of the crashed Supacat and back out onto the glacier. Her spirits soared. The sudden burst of euphoria even made her forget about Marinucci’s other comment: the bad news.
They came to the end of the tunnel where Khamas and his daughter waited. From floor to ceiling the passage was blocked by a luminous wall of blue.
‘Like I said,’ Marinucci continued, ‘—just like last time. Only now I don’t have a trailer full of explosives to get past this thing.’
McCarthy thumped her fist against the wall. It did feel pretty solid. It’s surface was smooth and convex. It reminded her of an egg shell, only it was obviously much thicker. At one side, near where it flowed seamlessly into the cave wall, its surface was scarred with deep gouges like claw marks: Marinucci’s gun shots.
‘Ricochets damn near killed me,’ he said. ‘But the material’s more like a plastic than anything geological. It absorbed most of the energy from the bullets. The first one took two eight-inch cartridges of Geldyne to get through. If anyone’s been hanging on to a couple of sticks of dynamite for a rainy day—‘
‘Will this do?’
McCarthy turned to see Mark Campbell behind them, his bulk almost filling the tunnel. He held something up to the light: the black steel of a military high-explosive grenade glinted in the torchlight.
◆◆◆
Millicent Carver stood over the carcass of one of the things. Its rank odour, organic and corrupt like spoiled vegetables, wafted up as if it had already started to rot. It was dead: of that she was sure. Is head was connected to its body by only the thinnest scrap of tissue and two arms had been blown off at the elbow—but minutes ago it had been alive and fighting. It had taken virtual decapitation to kill it. She knelt next to the body, trying to remember any creature in the animal kingdom bigger than a bug that shared its six-legged structure. She was at a loss. She was pretty sure that no-one, certainly no-one still living, had seen one of these things before.
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