Asura

by R P L Johnson

  Her curiosity was matched only by her deep, unbelieving frustration. Her orders had been to deliver a package. If discovered, she was authorised, in fact encouraged, to kill in order to preserve the secrecy of the mission. That did not bother Millicent Carver. She couldn’t remember any mission in the past ten years that hadn’t involved a little blood-letting. But this assignment had gone from the unfortunate to the difficult to the downright preposterous! Normally a plane crash in one of the most remote places in the world and surviving an SAS cleanup squad would have been right at the top of her list of worst case scenarios. But now they had been attacked by an army of fucking Morlocks, or whatever the hell those things were.

  Taking out her knife, she cut into the carcass in a rough, butcher’s-slab autopsy. Its hide was tough: thicker than leather and it was certainly harder work than cutting through human skin. It took her a couple of minutes to split the torso from shoulder to shoulder and from throat to pelvis in a deep, Y-shaped incision. It took even longer to peel back the cavity wall to expose the organs beneath. It had no ribcage: only bands of thick cartilage under the skin. Between the bands, more resilient tissue covered the inner surface of the chest in overlapping plates covered by a thin but elastic membrane. It was almost as if the creature had its own internal bullet proof vest. No wonder they’re so damn hard to kill, Carver thought.

  Apart from the spine and muscles, Carver could only guess at the purpose of the other organs. There was a throat, but it ended at a small sack that may have been a stomach. The alimentary canal proceeded no further. There were other things glistening wetly in the cavity: bulbous shapes that may have been lungs or a liver. But they looked like nothing Carver had ever seen before. She had seen many different creatures laid out like this: deer on her occasional hunting trips, the family dog which she had eviscerated the day after her thirteenth birthday, even humans. But the creature before her looked like nothing she had ever seen. She savoured the moment. She knew that the wider world would never be told about these things. Doing so would compromise the secrecy of her operation. This information was for her and her alone.

  Farther down the trail, two of Major Naik’s men were preparing another carcass. They trussed its many legs like a steer and—hoisting it between them—carried it back up the slope to the Major.

  ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing with that!’ Carver demanded.

  The major ignored her and spoke to his men in Urdu. Carver advanced on him, her blade still free from its sheath and dripping with black blood.

  ‘Tell them to put that thing down!’

  ‘It will be necessary to corroborate my report,’ the Major replied, seemingly indifferent to the steel in Carver’s voice equally as hard as that clenched in her fist.

  ‘We are not finished here, Major. Our mission is not yet complete.’

  The Major fixed her with a glowering stare. ‘My orders do not include waging an underground war. I am aborting the mission. This new information must be relayed to my superiors. They will determine the proper course of action under the new circumstances.’

  ‘Coward!’ Carver spat. For the first time she saw something in the Major’s black eyes. Just for a second there was an emotion that could not be contained behind his professional façade. Seeing the crack, she pushed harder. ‘You don’t care about “new circumstances”. This is an excuse to save your skin.’

  The Major’s eyes burned with hatred. ‘You are lucky my men do not speak English. If they knew what you just said, they would tear you apart where you stand.’

  ‘They tried before, remember? Tried and failed. Your precious troops couldn’t even defeat a bunch of half-starved civilians.’ She paused to let the truth sink in.

  ‘I thought you were professionals, but your men are nothing more than a third-world mockery of a special forces unit: a cheap knock-off, no better than the fake watches they peddle on the streets of Bangalore. Now you may be here to further your vain fantasies, Major. But I am here to finish the job I started.’

  Major Naik looked apoplectic. He towered over Carver, fists clenched, his whole body practically shaking with rage. Carver readied the knife in her hand in case she had miscalculated—pushed the man too far. She wanted to browbeat him into submission: force capitulation not conflict. But the fires died in the Major’s eyes. His full lips even turned up in a smile, half-hidden by the black mane of his full moustaches.

  ‘Very good, Ms Carver. I must admit I have a weakness when it comes to my men. Pride can be a powerful motivator, but it can also be used against you. But not this time. You continue with your quest, if you wish, but alone. And I promise you, neither me nor my men will mourn your loss.’

  He took a step back, nodded his head in a mock bow and returned to the task at hand. He really was going to pull out!

  Carver sheathed her knife. This would make things difficult. She had hoped to keep the Major onside, but he had forced her hand.

  She took a small device from her pocket. It was about the size of an MP3 player with a small liquid crystal display and a lanyard so that it could be worn as a pendant. A series of small, silver buttons were arranged along the thinner edge of its rectangular body. Carver pressed each of them in sequence, holding the last one down for several seconds until it emitted a mechanical chime. The LCD screen lit up with scrolling black characters on a bright blue background. The message repeated itself over and over.

  ****STAGE 1 ACTIVATED****DEVICE ARMED****STAGE 1 ACTIVATED****

  The noise of the chime stopped the Major dead in his tracks.

  ‘One step,’ Carver said. ‘One more step and I will activate the device. Then you, me, your precious men and most of this mountain will be nothing more than monatomic dust circling the planet in the jet stream. Think about it, Major. What will the neighbours think about testing new weapons right on their doorstep. Are you ready to start World War Three?’

  The Major hesitated for a second. Would the crazy bastard really make her do it? Then he barked an order to his men. They dropped the creature and looked at each other in puzzlement. One of them turned in Carver’s direction and spat voluminously on the cave floor.

  Carver smiled.

  She slipped the lanyard over her head and tucked the device into her parka. ‘In case you were wondering, Major, the detonator is sensitive to a number of things including the electric charge generated by my body. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination. Let’s just say that it’s in both of our interests to keep me alive.’

  Major Naik glared at Carver’s back as she zipped up her parka and stomped up the trail towards the crevasse. She pushed roughly past his men, what remained of them anyway. Out of the twenty eight men in his original platoon only twelve remained. They were good men, but what Carver was proposing was suicide. He noticed one of the survivors, Nihal Koshie the signalman. In modern warfare the signalman was much more than the platoon’s link to the outside world. He was a one man electronic army capable of wreaking havoc with the enemy’s communications and computer systems. The Major beckoned him over.

  ‘Signalman,’ he whispered. ‘That woman is carrying a transmitter. Find the signal and jam it.’

  CHAPTER 27

  The explosion echoed across the lake cavern. Jagged chunks of rock and the strange, blue barrier material arced through the air and peppered the edge of the steaming lake with splashes like mortar rounds. The shockwave from the explosion rippled through the ever-present fog, pushing it into concentric banks like clouds before an advancing storm. Fingers of fog reached up towards the opening in the cavern’s roof, mimicking in miniature the huge mountain-within-a-mountain that dominated the centre of the lake. Sunlight streamed through the hole, glinting off the ice-armoured shoulders of the spire and making the fog swirl like dry-ice in a Broadway musical.

  High on the southern wall of the cavern, a series of cave mouths dotted the rock like roosts in a dove cote. All but one were sealed. Campbell led the way through the opening and stood, blinking in the sunligh
t on a narrow ledge.

  Rebecca McCarthy followed him out. ‘Oh my God!’ she exclaimed. ‘You guys weren’t kidding after all.’

  Below her the rock face dropped away in a steep curve that merged into the floor of the cavern almost half a mile away. The fog still shrouded the lake, but the forest of knives was clearly visible where its highest points glittered through the veil of vapour: spiky and organic like a giant sea urchin washed up on the lakeshore.

  McCarthy shielded her eyes against the sunlight. After hours in the caves she felt like a mole that had come to the surface for the first time. She blinked and sneezed and almost wanted to close her eyes and retreat back into the darkness of the cave system, but she couldn’t. The amazing view drew her gaze onwards across the lake and around the flank of its huge, central spire to the far bank.

  ‘That’s it!’ she cried. ‘That’s the way out.’

  Campbell nodded and his bushy beard split into a wide grin. The true importance of their discovery was just dawning on him. Not only was the lake cavern an escape from the terrors of the cave system; it meant they were back on familiar ground. They had a definite goal, a way out. Finally, they had a chance.

  They started to climb down to the cavern floor.

  ‘If this really was a pilgrimage trail,’ McCarthy said as she climbed. ‘They certainly put their disciples through the ringer.’

  Campbell grunted. ‘Funny sort of pilgrimage,’ he said. ‘Maybe you didn’t notice, but those things were trying to kill us. Why would anyone trek through the mountains, endure the cold, the hunger and this thin, fucking air, only to get torn apart by an army of demons? Human sacrifice is all well and good, but if you slaughter the entire congregation, you won’t be seeing much in the collection plate the next week.’

  ‘But those carvings—you can’t think that they were made by those creatures? They were definitely made by some ancient tribe. Tej said that he recognised some of the ancient stories: they even showed human beings in the carvings themselves. That kind of work takes time. There must have been some period in history when there was a truce between the humans and those things were worshipped and immortalised in their religious artwork.’

  Campbell shook his head. ‘If you could see any worshipping going on in those carvings, you’ve got better eyes than I have. To me it looked like a war.’

  ‘No one has the time to carve artwork in a war zone.’

  ‘True... If you ask me, there used to be people that lived around here: maybe even a whole civilisation. Then those things showed up. Their civilisation lasted just long enough to record their own destruction. You look at those friezes and see religious art. Well maybe you’re right. But I look at them and see a people recording their own Armageddon.’

  ‘But you are forgetting the carvings on the cliff and the cover stone,’ said Khamas. ‘Whoever these people were, they were not wiped out.’

  ‘Great. So instead of staying to get slaughtered, they upped-sticks and fucked off down the mountain, sealing their escape route behind them. With any luck that’s what we’ll be doing.’

  McCarthy turned around and saw Garrett clambering mechanically after her. In the golden sunlight streaming into the lake cavern his face looked ashen. He seemed to have aged ten years during their time underground, or as if he had left something of himself behind. Maybe buried in the rough stone cairn they had erected over Morcellet’s body.

  ‘Do you have any thoughts, Mister Garrett?’ McCarthy asked. ‘What do you think those creatures were?’

  Garrett gazed at her blankly as if he had lost the power of speech. For all his bluster, McCarthy finally saw him for what he was: an old man living on the vestiges of reputation of former strength. A man who’s bluff had finally been called. Maybe the old buzzard was human after all.

  ‘What does it matter?’ he said eventually. ‘We have done quite a good enough job of killing each other already before those things showed up. They are merely the wolves in the woods ready to take down the lame and the unwary.’

  ‘I’m sorry about Morcellet. If it’s any consolation, I don’t think those things will disturb the body. They didn’t seem interested in us after we left their habitat, Maybe they are nothing more than animals after all.’

  Garrett snorted. ‘Morcellet was shot in the back from a hundred yards away by a man he had never met. Are we anything better than animals, Ms McCarthy? We should never have come here.’

  ‘Maybe that’s what those statues were,’ Yvonne said. ‘A warning not to open the cover stone.’

  ‘She’s right, you know,’ said Garrett. ‘“Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate!”’

  McCarthy stared at him blankly.

  ‘Oh come on, Ms. McCarthy. Even you must have heard of Dante’s Inferno? The inscription above the gates of Hell? “Abandon all hope, ye who enter”.’

  ◆◆◆

  Rose felt like giving up. The seductive suggestion threatened to overwhelm him; he could just give up and float away on a sea of blissful numbness.

  Float away like Val Vashevnik falling in slow motion, arms and legs outstretched, curiously childlike. Rope spooling away from his belt: a cut umbilical.

  Cameron Miller staring at him, unbelieving.

  Rose knew that he couldn’t give up. Not again. They wouldn’t let him.

  ‘You don’t get it do you, Scout? This is it, This is where you find out who you are…’

  Val Vashevnik clawing at the thin air. Dew condensing on the frozen whites of his eyes like tears. Not good enough…

  Don’t let go! Don’t you fucking dare!

  Rose came to and snatched a breath only to find his mouth half full with water. He choked and spat but more liquid worked its way past his convulsions into his throat. He was drowning.

  He clawed more than swam his way back to the surface and took a deep, heaving breath. The thin mountain air tasted sweeter than any other breath he had ever taken.

  Rose found himself being carried along an underground river. Even fully conscious, it was a struggle to stay afloat. The current was strong and the bed of the channel through which it flowed uneven. He cracked his shins against submerged rocks and was buffeted against the steep bank until his limbs felt like nothing more than masses of bruised and contused sausage meat congealed around his bones.

  His thick, insulated clothing constantly threatened to drag him down under the surface and roll his dead carcass along the bottom. The waterlogged material that was essential for survival on the chilling slopes above was now slowly killing him, sapping his energy with every stroke and kick he needed to keep his chin marginally above the waterline.

  Rose managed to roll onto his back and bring his feet up in front of him. He leaned back into the straps of his pack and managed to snatch a few more breaths. He reached down to the quick release straps on his plastic double boots and snapped them open. The outer casing came away leaving the softer hiking-style boots underneath.

  The reduced weight allowed Rose to snatch breaths more regularly and began to regain control of his senses. With the heavy boots gone he could let his legs float up, giving him a more streamlined profile and avoiding the risk of jamming a foot under a submerged rock. He even managed to control his progress down the river somewhat. Although the pitch darkness and crashing roar of the torrent cut out two of his senses, he was able to guide himself to the edge of the flow where the current was weaker. The bed of the river struck him across the buttocks and only then did he realise that he had made it to an area of shallow water. He dug his heels in and braced himself against the current. Crawling through a self-made bow wave as the water rushed against him, he fought his way up the slope to dry land and collapsed.

  He awoke with no idea of how long he’d been out. He guessed that it must have only been a few seconds at most—any more and would have frozen. But then he gradually realised that, although he was soaked to the bone, he was not cold. Far from it, in fact. The waterlogged wool of his sweater was warm and steaming and the river th
at still occasionally lapped up the bank to splash his boots was warm where it seeped through his gaiters.

  Nanga Parbat, it seemed, was full of surprises.

  Rose remembered hearing the sound of rushing water, but had half expected to freeze to death in a melt water stream, even if by some miracle he survived the fall. At least he was alive and warm for the first time since he had left Skardu.

  He sat on the shore of the subterranean river and the pain from the wound in his side began to cut through the ebbing tide of his adrenaline rush. He touched the wound and gasped as a stab of pain shot through him. The noise, audible even above the rushing water, suddenly made his realise the vulnerability of his situation. He was alone, unarmed and wounded. It was pitch black. And only a few minutes ago, he had sent half a dozen six-legged monsters plummeting into the depths in which he now found himself. If he had survived then maybe...

  He calmed his breathing to a whisper even though every instinct screamed at him to gulp air and prepare to fly or fight. His heart hammered and his blood felt thick in his veins. Slowly he unzipped a pocket—the zip suddenly sounding like a beacon for whatever skulked in the darkness around him. His fingers closed around the slim tube of a mini-flashlight and he flicked it on.

  The beam bust onto a tri-cornered maw bristling with needle-sharp teeth!

  ◆◆◆

  The cavern wall sloped steeply down towards the forest of knives. The spires of black glass were now clearly visible through the swirling fog a couple of hundred yards away. Once again, McCarthy wondered about the civilisation that had once existed here. There was no visible path down from the tunnel above. Nor could she see any trail leading up to the dozens of similar sealed entrances on the wall above them. Maybe Campbell was right; this certainly didn’t seem like a pilgrimage trail.