“Hello?” he whispered, though he wasn’t sure why he did. “Tulku? Are you in here? It’s Harrison. Dr. Valco…”
Something rustled within, shifting in the shadows. Valco’s heartbeat pounded in his ears as he waited for a response. He was too late, he was certain. The Green Lama, just like Gary Brown before him, had fallen victim to the Collective and Valco had done nothing to—
“Valco…?” the shadows hissed. “Dr. Harrison Valco…?”
Elation erupted behind Valco’s eyes. Without hesitating, he brought the axe down on the cell’s lock, metal squealing in protest, the screech echoing through the cavernous space. All around him he could hear shuffling and grunting from within the surrounding cells. They were locked away, he reminded himself. He was safe, for the moment, at least. He gritted his teeth and swung once more, his arms jangling at the impact. He was about to swing again when the door drifted open on its own. Peeking his head in, Valco could just see the Green Lama’s wounded form hunched over, facing the corner of the cell. Thick veins ran across the Green Lama’s body, pulsating a sickly—and impossibly luminescent—greenish-black.
“DR. HARRISON VALCO…” the Green Lama wheezed without looking back. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?”
“My God… Tulku… What have they done to you? Oh, Tulku, I’m so sorry,” Valco said with a shuddered, chattering breath. “I had no idea. I didn’t know they had brought you—brought Gary—here. I never would have come here—never would have worked with them”
The Green Lama cocked his head to the side, but still wouldn’t turn around. “DR. HARRISON VALCO…. COME CLOSER.”
Valco took a tentative step forward. He found his grip on the axe handle had tightened. His knuckles were bone white. He could just see the outline of the Green Lama’s face. No longer hidden beneath greasepaint and a hood, Valco recognized the man instantly. “You’re—You’re Jethro Dumont.”
In an impossible motion, the Green Lama jumped up, wrapped his hand around Valco’s neck and lifted the doctor off the ground. His skin was an unearthly grey and white. The drill wound sat in the center of his forehead, crimson and black. Thick obsidian tears poured from his black eyes, down his cheeks, pooling in the crook of his neck before spilling down over his body. And his mouth… His mouth was so red.
“Tul—Tulk…” Valco choked as he struggled to pry himself free. His axe clanged to the ground. His lungs ached and his vertebrae—it felt like the Green Lama’s fingers were crushing his windpipe. “What are you—?”
“DR. HARRISON VALCO,” the Green Lama hissed with the voice of a snake. “HOW TERRIFYING THIS MUST BE FOR YOU.”
“Tulku! Please! No!” Valco screamed, clawing at the Green Lama’s hand. “Please! It’s me! Don’t—You—Can’t!”
The Green Lama’s grip began to tighten when he let out two violent coughs, black liquid flecking his lips. His eyes faded from obsidian back to a familiar, deep blue-grey subtly glowing green. Air rushed back into Valco’s lungs as the Green Lama’s grip loosened and dropped him to the ground. Valco scrambled to his feet and back toward the door.
“Valco!” the Green Lama cried in the voice of Jethro Dumont. He fell back a step in shock. “Om! Ma-ni Pad-me Hum! Harrison, it’s inside me. The Substance. I don’t—know—how long I can control—”
“Let me—!”
The Green Lama held up his hand and shook his head. He fell back against the wall. “The Epsilon Mist, Doctor. You have to find—Use it. The Epsilon—Need it to— The only thing that can—” He gritted his teeth and let out a scream. He looked back to Valco, liquid black spots forming over his eyes. “You have to—run, Harrison! You have to run!”
Valco took a tentative step forward. “Je—Jethro?”
The Green Lama’s eyes clouded over and he gave Valco a black Cheshire grin. “RUN BEFORE I KILL YOU!”
Chapter 19: Beneath The Mountain
GAMMA WINCED as he pressed his handkerchief to his ear and wiped away the blood pooling inside the auricle. His head stung, feeling as though a bee had crawled its way inside his skull and failed to make its way out again. He leaned back in his desk chair and massaged his temples. He tried to process the last few hours, piece together the events that had led them here and found his equation lacking a solution. He had failed to take into account Pelham’s mania. Emotions were not a variable Gamma knew how to measure, and even if he could, Pelham’s were not stable enough to find any constant with which to quantify. It was an oversight he would be sure to rectify.
“Have you spoken to them?”
“No, I have not,” Gamma curtly replied. He folded up his bloodstained kerchief and did his best to ignore Omega’s self-satisfied grin.
As with most things in his life, Gamma’s office, besides two chairs and a desk, was Spartan, bereft of any comforts, or mementos. A large chalkboard wrapped around the room, filled with coded facts and figures stretching back to the mid-1800s.
“There’s no point in trying to keep it secret.” Omega kicked his feet up onto Gamma’s desk. He took out his dented silver case and lit himself a cigarette. “They will know.”
“Of course they will know. They already know. That is how they—How we work.”
“Oh, so you anticipated this, did you?”
“Don’t be glib, Omega,” Gamma bristled. “It doesn’t suit you.”
The operative chuckled. “Missing the days of Chi?”
“Chi was a fool.”
“Is a fool,” Omega corrected as he slipped the case away. “You and I both know he’s still out there, continuing his own private mission.”
Gamma opened his mouth to respond when the small red light atop his desk silently flashed three times. His back stiffened while he waited for the light to flash again, hoping it wouldn’t.
“What is it?” Omega asked.
Several seconds passed in silence while Gamma watched the light. His hand clenched down on his handkerchief when the red light finally flashed twice more. When Gamma finally spoke it was little more than a whisper. “Someone’s broken open the storage.”
“What do you mean?”
The light flashed twice again. And again. And again.
“The test subjects.” Gamma tried to stand out of his chair but his body refused to move. He felt the ground rumble beneath his feet. His face fell into a sickly rigor, the flashing light painting his face in coral. Through the rock walls he could hear explosions and screams. He looked to Omega, who had extinguished his cigarette and was drawing his pistol. The rumbling grew worse along with the screams. A crack appeared in the left chalkboard, running up the wall into the rock ceiling. Beneath the doorway Gamma could see a faint green hue spill across the floor, moving back and forth as if someone were swinging a lantern. There were pops of electricity, the snap of bone, and the tearing of flesh. And whispering, a constant foreign chanting that sounded just like—But no, it couldn’t be… Omega gestured for Gamma to hide. Gamma silently moved to his knees and began to duck under his desk as Omega slowly approached the door, gun raised.
Gamma realized he had been holding his breath and forced himself to take a slow, stuttering breath. He heard Omega ease open the door and he forced his eyes closed.
This had not been anticipated.
• • •
“THIS IS the entrance?” Ken asked incredulously as they walked into the cabin. He skeptically knocked his knuckles against the false wood. “Looks like where yokels come to smoke Mary Warner.”
Caraway rolled his eyes but found he was smiling, despite himself. There was a part of him that had missed this, even though he knew that was insane. Maybe he had just missed these people. Together they made a difference—or at the very least tried to.
Evangl stood over by the door. Caraway walked up next to her and looked toward the small town below, the car they had driven up parked a few feet away. “That Black Rock?” he asked.
Evangl nodded. “Over there’s Cody Square. Named after a solider is some war. You can just see his statue
from here.” She pointed to the faint copper blob in the distance. “It’s a nice town. We’d go there for walks every so often.”
Caraway placed a hesitant hand on Evangl’s shoulder. He wasn’t good at this sort of thing. He knew all about the running and the shooting, how to face off against criminals and monsters, but raw human emotion, that was something entirely different. He looked to Jean, who was counting out the panels on the cabin walls, tapping her fingers against the faux-wood as she paced the room.
“…Twenty-one. Twenty-two. Twenty-three. Twenty—” Jean stopped short. “Four. You kids ready for this?” No one answered. Jean glanced back at them and frowned. “Yeah, me neither.”
She pressed down on the panel and the floor vibrated to life. A loud whine of machinery echoed up beneath them. The four of them stepped toward the center of the floor, guns ready, as a seam of white light appeared around the base of the cabin and grew outward.
“Well,” Jean sighed, drawing her pistols. “Here goes nothing.”
• • •
GUNFIRE AND SCREAMS resounded through the Facility, accompanied by the occasional wordless moan of the test subjects shuffling through the halls. Gamma watched small pops of light and the occasional explosion of blood through the cracked doorway. The blackboard lining the room was littered with burned out craters, bullet holes, and body shaped cracks. And there was blood, so much blood. He needed to make some calculations, incorporate all the recent variables into the equation. He absently collected his innards into his arms. He didn’t want them getting dirty.
Gamma walked over to the desk, pulled over his chair and set to work when he realized he didn’t have a pen. Which was strange, he always had a pen. He looked over his desk and found the corner of it was singed, sections of which were still on fire. He went to pat it out when he felt something dribble down his chin. He wiped it away with the handkerchief and tucked the cherry stained fabric back in his pocket.
Where was he again? He needed to recalculate something, but he couldn’t remember what it was. He had been speaking to Omega, but he couldn’t remember about what or when. Where was Omega? He had just been there, but the more Gamma tried to think the more he decided it didn’t matter.
He rested his head against the back of the chair. Maybe he just needed to close his eyes for a minute.
Just a few minutes rest.
It was so warm here and he was so tired.
His arms slowly slumped to his sides and his intestines tumbled out onto his lap before slipping onto the floor.
• • •
“JESUS, what the hell happened here?” Ken coughed, futilely waving away the black smoke filling the subterranean lair. Bodies littered the ground, their limbs torn off; their heads twisted the wrong way round.
Caraway coughed into the crook of his arm. “Looks like we’re a little late for the party.”
“Ain’t that how it always goes?” Ken sighed. “You don’t get the invitation until a couple hours before and when you show up, everyone’s already drunk and paired off.”
“Will you keep it down?” Jean hissed. She kept her gun raised, fingers teasing the trigger. “It’s a miracle we haven’t been attacked yet.”
They had found the Facility in disarray, filled with smoke and rubble. The elevator—or cabin, Jean couldn’t decide what she wanted to call it—had stalled out three-quarters of the way down, forcing them to crawl down the sloping shaft. Cut up and bruised from the descent, they had made their way into Facility’s main floor. They hid between two of the several single story buildings lining the cavern while Jean read over the instructions. More than the smoke and the rubble, it was the silence that was most unsettling.
Evangl looked to Jean. “You don’t think Jethro—”
“Even for Jethro this is a little bit excessive,” Jean said, shaking her head, unable to ignore the ever-present weight of the glowing bullet in her pocket. She snuck a glance at the bloody scrape on her palm and watched it heal with a barely audible crinkle.
“’Less he’s fightin’ a golem,” Caraway added under his breath.
Jean frowned. “Yeah, well, let’s hope that doesn’t happen again.”
“Well, then, where the hell is the greeting party of men with big guns shooting at us?” Ken asked.
“Maybe they’re busy,” Caraway groused.
“Too busy for us? Scandal. I hate these in-between moments. Give me a golem any day.”
Evangl shuffled over. “What the hell are you three talking about?”
“Blah blah blah, ancient evil stuff,” Ken said dismissively. “Well, not evil, but we thought it was. Trust me, be glad you missed it. Let’s focus on the scary here and now and the gut wrenching silence.”
“Except for the creepy moaning,” Jean added offhandedly.
Ken furrowed his brow. “Creepy moaning? I don’t hear any—Oh, there it is.”
Evangl’s ear pricked up as she listened. “What the hell is that?”
“Why do I get the feeling things are about to get a whole lot more terrifying?” Ken sighed.
“Because they always do,” Jean said as she folded up the pages and stuffed them in her pocket. There was something shuffling, sideways and forward and a half-step back, breathing shallow, bubbling breaths. A feeling in her gut told her what they were, a sense that tickled the back of her mind. She peered into the darkness, her radioactive salt enhanced eyes showing her a depth of blacks and greys that existed where the light didn’t. “They’re coming.”
Evangl stood up and armed herself. “Do I want to ask who?”
“No, you don’t. Quick, before they get closer.”
Ken squinted at the shifting shapes. “It’s probably the Cannibal Killers,” he said with a sardonic laugh.
“You read too many newspapers, Clayton,” Caraway grumbled.
“Naw, just one too many pulps,” he said, though his voice was hollow.
“Enough with the banter and run!” Jean shouted as the shuffling mass of grey forms approached.
The distant echo of screams and gunfire suddenly resounded through the cavern, accompanied by jagged yellow-white bursts of light. A man limped out of the shadows, his face bloody, right hand hanging limp at his side, the rifle barrel in his left dragging against the concrete. Evangl’s spine tingled as she saw one of the creatures leap at the injured man. It dug its fingers into the man’s eyes and blood spurted out in fountains. The man screamed as the creature drove its fingers in deeper and began to pull.
Evangl covered her mouth, and fell back half a step. “Oh, Jesus,” she breathed.
“We’ve got to run,” Ken whispered, his eyes wide. “We definitely have to run.”
“Go go go!” Caraway shouted.
As the others ran away, Evangl held back for one second, watching as several of the diseased creatures tore the injured man apart, splitting him in half like an oyster shell, and began to feast. The remaining creatures continued to shuffle toward her, the blood red wounds on their foreheads leaking black over their glaucomic eyes. She raised her gun and aimed for the center of what had been a young’s man head before she thought better of it. Her grip on her gun tightened before she followed after the others.
“Do we know where we’re going?” Ken shouted to Jean as they weaved their way through the seemingly unending number of squat, white buildings.
“We’re going over…” Jean stopped short and quickly read over the directions. Off in the distance they could hear the creatures slowly approaching, moaning a melodic song in unison. She pointed to the squat structure to their left. “There!”
She ran up to the doorway and pulled out the notebook she had stolen from the two men that had assaulted her at Omega’s hideaway. That, along with Murdoch’s instructions gave her, she realized, were pass codes to every door in the Facility. She began punching in the pass code into the keypad, while the others instinctually formed a perimeter around her.
“What the hell are you doing?” Ken asked.
“C
oded keypads at every door,” she said in response. There was something on the edge of her enhanced hearing, a cracking sound like breaking bones, but somehow deeper, like electricity and whispering. “Weren’t you paying attention on the drive up?”
“I was a little stuck on the whole we were ‘breaking into a super secret subterranean lair’ thing, and I kinda lost focus after that.”
A subtle smile teased the corner of Jean’s mouth. Lord, how she has missed her Blonde bombshell. “All right… Here it goes. F… Ampersand… Q… Hyphen… Squiggly line that kinda looks like a ‘P.’” The keypad briefly lit up and made a short buzzing sound. “Come on! Work, dammit! Jesus, they built a giant underground lair, you think they could afford real letters.”
“They’re coming!” Caraway barked as he fired off a shot. “They caught our scent and started picking up the pace.”
“They’re not going to win any race, but there are a lot more of them than us,” Evangl added. “We won’t stand a chance.”
“No pressure,” Jean commented under her breath as she began dialing in the code again. Beneath Caraway’s gunshots, she could hear the cracking sound high above them, growing louder and larger.
“Hey, Ken, how badly do you want to relive R’lyeh?” Caraway asked.
“Never,” Ken replied dryly.
“Wonderful. We’ll pretend we’re fighting Deep Ones. Jean, we’ll buy you and Evangl some time.”
Jean began to protest. “John—”
But Caraway wouldn’t let her. “Just don’t go and do anything stupid like die. Okay?”
“I’ll try not to disappoint,” she said with a nod.
The Green Lama: Crimson Circle Page 32