She moved twenty feet into the darkness before holding her hand up in a stop gesture. She removed her glove as the team assembled behind her and felt the wall. It was sticky, not to the point it made her fingers stick together, but it felt moist and tacky. The tunnel had a musky odor, like a lot of caves that host large bat populations, and some ammonia smell, but the humidity was the worst aspect thus far. Sarah replaced her glove and started forward.
Her team had only gone two hundred yards into the increasingly deepening tunnel when a Ranger, a young sergeant, started talking loudly and shaking his head. He slid down one of the shining walls, losing his weapon and placing his hands over his face, knocking his night-vision goggles from it.
Sarah turned and made her way back. The man was now screaming.
“What in the hell is going on?” she asked as she knelt before the young soldier.
“I gottta get outta here, the walls are closing in on me, I can’t stand it!” he screamed.
Sarah reached out and grabbed his right arm and shook it. “Calm down, calm down,” she said as she reached out and took his oxygen tank and unclipped the plastic mask and quickly placed it over his mouth. “Breathe, troop, breathe, easy, easy.”
The sergeant started taking deep breaths, his eyes closing as he finally started calming.
“Anyone else?” she said loudly. “Come on, you’re no good to us if you’re going to freak out, so is anyone else claustrophobic?” she said, looking around.
The sergeant removed the oxygen mask and looked at Sarah with pleading eyes. “Sorry, sorry, I need someone to take me back,” he said as he slammed the mask back over his mouth.
“I’m the one who’s sorry, Sergeant, but I’m not going to spare a man walking you out of here. You get back the best way you can. The rest of you, let’s go.”
With that, the sergeant’s eyes widened as Sarah abruptly turned and went back to the head of her team. The other Rangers and two Delta men didn’t look back, but joined their team leader. The young sergeant scrambled to his feet and started back to the tunnel opening.
Sarah shook her head as she once again started forward into the dark and humidity of the tunnel. If the truth be known, she wanted nothing more than to follow the kid out of there.
As Collins hit the bottom of the hole, he was hit immediately by the heat. Everett landed easily on the opposite side. This tunnel was far smaller than the one Sarah was currently struggling in. It must be one of the offspring holes. They had to bend slightly to keep from scraping their heads on the rounded ceiling. Jack turned his night vision on and saw the small, sparkling elements of sand and dirt that made up the compressed walls. They were smooth and warm to the touch. Everett looked his way and shook his head.
“Goddamn, Jack, but it’s blacker than a well digger’s ass down there,” he said as he brought his XM8 up, thinking it was too light to do any good, armor-piercing rounds or not.
Collins watched as the tunnel sloped down into nothingness. He looked at the ground and saw large marks gouged into the earth. He reached down and saw they were scrapes made by the passing of the animal. He was looking at what were claw marks. He shook his head and moved forward so Mendenhall, Ryan, and the rest of his team could crowd in. Then Everett stepped aside and allowed a master sergeant from Delta to take the lead. The Delta sergeant went forward, held his hand up, then slowly lowered it, indicating that they should follow.
Before long the team halted and Jack was asked to come forward. As he did, he nodded for Everett to follow. The Delta point man was kneeling and examining something on the floor of the tunnel. Jack looked down and immediately knew he was looking at an arm. It was severed at midfore-arm and had a watch that was still ticking off the seconds. As he looked up the tunnel, he could see a darker hue from his glasses as they were now able to follow the blood trail left by the animal and whatever victim the arm belonged to.
Jack nodded for the team to move on. The coppery odor of blood was becoming more apparent the deeper into the tunnel they progressed, but in their minds it had become even stronger with the finding of the arm. Jack stayed behind with Mendenhall for a moment and indicated he should go ahead and take a reading on his VDF. The sergeant shouldered his weapon, raised his goggles, and removed the steel probe from its clip on the box and slowly pushed the spearlike instrument into the compacted earth. He removed his hand and looked at the lit gauge. One of the needles pointed west, toward the center of town, while the other needle picked up minute vibrations coming from underground, which they could only assume were the animals as they dug.
“Looks like we’re headed in the right direction, Major,” Mendenhall said.
“Keep that thing on and check it every sixty feet or so, it’ll make me feel better,” Jack said as he patted Mendenhall on the shoulder.
Mendenhall quickly pulled the probe from the wall and decided to just let it dangle by its cord for quicker reach. Then he turned and hurried after the major, deciding the one with the VDF box should be in the middle of the team.
Group geologist Steve Hanson, Sarah’s friend, led his team of fifteen soldiers through one of the small holes. They had found nothing significant since coming into this underground hell. He had called a stop at a junction where their smaller tunnel joined one that was far larger. Unlike any of the intersecting tunnels before, Steve investigated and found that the musky odor they had noticed in all the other small excavations had changed significantly. This stench was far sharper and made him wince. He placed his mask over his mouth and took three deep breaths and headed back to his men. Jackie Sanchez, an Event Group army sergeant, raised her night-vision goggles and asked if he was alright.
“Something’s different here, you getting that smell?”
“Just what I’m getting off of you, that’s bad,” she said.
“That tunnel is far different than what we’ve seen. Any luck with the radio?”
“Nothing but intermittent chatter. “Other teams, I think, trying to get Site One.”
“Doc, I’m picking up something here,” a Ranger spec five said. He had his VDF probe stuck in the wall to his left. “Not strong, but it’s steady, seems close, but can’t say for sure.”
The rest of Hanson’s team started looking around. There were three holes besides the large one that Hanson had just investigated, plus the one they occupied, and one more that seemed too small for one of the animals. The Ranger removed the probe and stepped to the smaller hole that was right in the middle of the team. He placed it into the loose earth that had been pushed out into the larger tunnel. The gauge moved minutely and held steady. The red indicator light came on for the first time and stayed on.
“We definitely have something,” he said, replacing the probe.
“Go to the end of the line and make sure we don’t have something coming in behind us,” Hanson said, as he brought his XM8 around and kept it pointed at the larger hole ahead.
The Ranger squeezed his way past the other Rangers until he came to the end of the team. A lone Delta commando covered their rear.
“Excuse me, Sarge,” he said as he placed the probe into the wall. As he started to take his reading, he noticed the red light on his VDF had become brighter. He lightly hit the box and was starting to question the sensitivity of the machine when he felt movement to his left. He looked back along the length of tunnel; there was nothing but blackness in the area they had already covered. He turned and looked at the Delta sergeant, who was taking a drink from his canteen. He could have been picking up his movement. He lowered his ambient-light goggles and turned back to his rear. He didn’t catch it at first because it was so close it was unrecognizable. The creature was there, staring right at him. The eyes were actually glowing bright yellowish green as it tilted its large head and studied him for a moment. He quickly brought up his weapon and pulled the trigger; nothing happened. He had forgotten to remove the safety he had put on as he maneuvered around the team.
Suddenly he was blinded as the Delta sergeant
opened fire. The armor-piercing rounds flew by his head and struck the animal dead center in its broad chest. Then three more Rangers added their fire to that of the Delta soldier. Rounds were ricocheting off the creature as it roared. The Ranger was still blinded as he was grabbed by the lethal claws of the enraged animal. He felt the air being crushed from his lungs, and though he wasn’t aware of it, three armor-piercing rounds went through his own armor where it met his hips, and then through his body, and struck the animal. He saw one round hit an area uncovered by the beast’s exoskeleton, the pain causing it to squeeze him even harder. But still the animal had shown no ill effect from the bullet penetrating its body.
The Delta sergeant lowered his weapon and was joined by two other Rangers as they tried in vain to pull the first man free of the clawed monstrosity before them. Hanson was there, adding his firepower to those trying to find a weak spot on the creature. Suddenly the wall exploded outward onto Hanson and the would-be rescuers. The creature that struck them in force was larger than the tunnel and brought down the rounded ceiling on them as they turned in terror. Hanson felt a powerful arm as it raked by his face and grabbed someone to his right. All he could hear was a scream of pain as the man was pulled over him through the loose collapse of dirt. He couldn’t breathe as the sticky dirt fell into his mouth. He tried to pull back on someone he had grabbed on to when the roof fell in, but as he pulled, he realized it was someone’s weapon and not an actual person. Then he was suddenly free of the cave-in as he was turned upside down. He spit out dirt as he felt blood rush to his head. He heard firing in all directions and just knew he was going to catch a wild round in the back. The screams were now reaching his ears as he finally focused his night vision on what had him. The beast roared and quickly bashed him against one of the hardened walls. His senses flew out of his body and he became mercifully numb as he heard his back and legs snap into several pieces. The beast screamed again, then threw him to the ground where he lay in a slumped position against the wall. Still alive, he saw around him at least five of the smaller animals as they attacked what remained of his team.
The last thing Hanson saw was the larger of the animals as it lowered its large head toward him and the eyes blinked, as if it was smelling him, studying something it hadn’t seen before. He didn’t feel the roughness of the black tongue as it slowly curled free of the mandibles and delicately licked his face. The odor was the same as what he had smelled in the tunnel. Hanson’s senses were gone forever as the beast started feeding.
The first tunnel team to meet the enemy had been wiped out within two minutes of first contact.
Ryan pushed the earpiece as deep into his ear as he possibly could and still the static was too much. He removed his Kevlar helmet and shone his light at Collins’s chest, making sure not to hit his goggled eyes. He wiped sweat from his brow and shook his head.
“Still can’t make it out, Major. It may be Site One, or one of the other tunnel teams, I just can’t be sure.” He reached for his oxygen to get a breath of clean air.
They had been deep underground for almost an hour and forty minutes and hadn’t made contact with as much as a ground squirrel. Collins shone his light ahead of the others in his team and noticed a branch in the tunnel up ahead. The men were squatting and taking some of their own oxygen. The humidity was off the scale and the heat was close to unbearable. They would have given anything to leave the 0 2 masks on because of the stench clinging to the tunnel walls, but they knew they might have at least a few more hours of this, so they conserved as much as they could.
“Being underground is hell on the COMM links. Where do you estimate we are, Sergeant?”
“I believe the center of town is just that way,” Mendenhall answered, pointing to the right. “Maybe a thousand yards or so. The depth of this tunnel is making the GPS signal we’re receiving from base sporadic at best and nonexistent most of the time, but my last fix was pretty dead-on, so I’d say not far ahead.”
Collins had chosen this particular hole because it seemed to be the freshest and hottest of the many trails. It seemed to have been created by two animals traveling side by side because it was wide enough for the men to get around without too much difficulty. He looked at the other members of his team. They were hot in the new abalone-shell armor and were using too much of their water.
He placed his hand on the wall and felt the eerie smoothness through his glove. It was almost crystalline in feel and shimmer. He glanced again at the other fifteen members of his tunnel team. The Delta men were in the lead, then him, Ryan, Mendenhall, and Everett, and the last five were Rangers bringing up the rear.
“Well, if the town is that way, I’m thinking the branch to the left, away from the town. Thoughts?” Collins asked them all, not just the officers.
They all concurred with silent nods.
Suddenly, the VDF Mendenhall held started blinking. Something was moving toward them and it was coming fast. The lights started blinking on and off at a faster rate, and the needle on the motion sensor went into the yellow. Mendenhall raised the small stainless-steel probe that was attached to the side of the handheld VDF device and shoved it into the wall of the tunnel. The lights became brighter and started blinking even faster. The gauges were starting to really move into the higher ranges, indicating extreme movement. He then removed the probe and jammed it into the wall to his right; the blinking lights slowed and dimmed at the same time. He returned the probe to the other wall but farther to the left, then he pulled it free and placed it in the wall farther to the right. The lights again sped up their blinking and glowed bright red. The directional indicator showed the vibration coming straight at them, and the motion sensor was now pegged in the red.
“Uh, we have company headed this way, Major.”
“Which direction?” Collins asked, bringing his XM8 rifle up into firing position.
“Shit, sir, now in every direction.” Mendenhall took his eyes off the VDF and raised his own weapon. He glanced down at the signal once he was prepared to defend himself. “Shit, the needle first points to the south, then jumps to the east, then west.” Mendenhall kept his eyes on the device. “The only place they’re not coming is from behind us.”
“You men, bunch up, four-man teams. I want weapons coverage in all directions. Keep fire discipline, you are now weapons-free.”
He watched as the team broke up into the four-man groups they had rehearsed before coming down. It was a tactic Jack and Sarah had devised to protect against sudden attacks.
The machine was no longer emitting a chirp or a beep, but a solid buzz. The blinking lights were now a steady red glow, casting those around it in an eerie shade.
“Shut that off, everyone use your regular lighting, no ambient devices, they’ll blind you if there’s shooting.”
Suddenly the wall exploded right behind Mendenhall. The shattered wall threw him to the ground. Lights immediately illuminated the animal as it shook itself free of the clinging dirt and sand, slinging outward its armor neck plates. The plates dug into both walls of the tunnel creating deep gouges in the rock and dirt. The beast roared, then leapt for the fallen Mendenhall, who screamed and rolled just as the creature swiped with its claws. Collins and Everett opened fire at the same time the group to Mendenhall’s rear did. Over one hundred armor-piercing rounds hit the animal simultaneously. All but a few glanced off its purplish armor and embedded in the walls. As the tracer rounds struck, it stumbled forward and leapt onto the sergeant. At that moment, another animal burrowed into the tunnel somewhere in front of Collins. He heard the loud pops of automatic fire as well as screams of terror and pain. Jack saw the bright flashes as the Delta and Ranger teams opened up.
Everett used the muzzle of his short-barreled XM8 and lifted one of the plates of armor just below the Talkhan’s skull and fired a twenty-round burst of 5.56 mm rounds into the back of the animal’s head. It roared and shook its massive head, then collapsed heavily onto the sergeant and firmly pinned him to the tunnel floor. They
could barely hear Mendenhall screaming below the heavy carcass of the dead creature over the screams and bursts of gunfire in the enclosed tunnel. Collins and Everett both reached down and quickly pulled him out from under the animal.
“Goddammit, sirs,” the sergeant said loudly and breathlessly, “just a little fucking faster next time.” Mendenhall started checking himself, making sure he was all right. The new armored vest had paid major dividends for the sergeant because when he turned, the officers saw three large gashes almost through the back of the abalone-shell protection. One of the animal’s teeth was still lodged in the collar of the new armor vest.
They didn’t have time to answer Mendenhall or comment on the armor as more shots rang out down the entire length of the tunnel, each weapon sparking a myriad of bright colors on the crystalline walls. Screams and yells could be heard, along with cries of horror and injury. Suddenly, the firing stopped. Then started again as another animal broke through the wall. They heard Ryan’s shouts as he directed fire down the tunnel. Collins reached for a flare, popped it, and threw it into the darkness. It settled and revealed a nightmarish scene as the Delta front guard was battling for their lives against three of the animals. One of the lead animals struck out with its tail and caught a Delta sergeant in the throat, impaling him and yanking him away from the others and into the midst of the flailing claws of the attackers.
Suddenly a clawed hand burst through the wall and creased the air in front of one of the men just before the entire bulk of the animal crashed into the tunnel. The claws had slashed a specialist from Delta almost in two, catching him between the neck and shoulder. The beast had blindly ripped down, severing flesh, bone, and cartilage as easy as a knife slices through paper. A corporal was too close to use his XM8, so he pulled his combat knife from its scabbard and leaped onto die creature’s back when it became fully exposed. He thrust the knife between and under its flapping neck armor and into its neck three times in rapid succession before the beast reached behind and grabbed the soldier with its long claws. The stinger swiped and nicked the corporal, but the claws were already doing the necessary damage. The sharpened points pierced the soldier and he screamed in agony as the beast brought the struggling Ranger toward its face and roared in anger and pain.
Event: A Novel Page 38