Coolness became cold. She didn't notice the gentle kiss of weak daylight until it vanished entirely. The thing carrying her must have needed all its other limbs to descend, and her eyes were uncovered again. She could look up and see the circle of pale grey sky vanishing above. Around her, a strange luminescence seemed to accompany their descent. To begin with she thought it came from the walls, and that perhaps there was strange algae growing there, issuing a pale light through some chemical process. But then she saw a tumbler's limbs working before her as they rapidly descended into the hole, and they glowed.
A procession of terrors crossed her mind. Poisonous! Acidic! Radioactive! But she suspected she would be long-dead before any of those potential hazards caused her harm.
She caught a glimpse of Yelagin being carried by other things further along the sheer rocky wall, and then she heard Vasnev screaming. Three of them were still alive, but Budanov and Zhukov were dead. Perhaps soon she would have reason to envy them.
Amanda Hart was screaming.
Quiet, Glazkov wanted to say. Stupid American, keep silent. Can’t you hear? He liked Hart, and had no real issue with Americans in general, but they had a tendency toward hysterics. Now was not the time for hysterics. In the dim glow of the creatures’ luminescence he could see Hart hanging from the ceiling like a forgotten marionette, but of course that was an illusion. Her limbs were not dangling, they were restricted. She screamed his name—Vasily, Vasily, Vasily—until he wished his mother had chosen another for him at birth.
Yes, Hans Brune might be dead. Given the way his ears had leaked after his skull had struck the wall, he pretty much had to be dead.
But we’re alive, Glazkov wanted to say. We’re alive.
His eyes blurred. It might have been tears obscuring his vision, or it might’ve been the blows he himself had taken to the head. He blinked and tried to focus. Glazkov hung upside down, so it might have been the head-rush contributing to his blurry vision.
No, he thought, looking at Hart. That’s not it.
She cried out his name again.
His vision wasn’t blurry after all. There were things moving on her face and body—things much like those that had carried them down into the hole, but so much smaller. Tiny things, like spiny creatures he might’ve found at the ocean bottom, but they were not underwater now. There must have been hundreds of them on her, perhaps thousands of the little things, moving around her with the industry of an anthill or a beehive, all of them producing that sickly glow. They moved with purpose, as Hart screamed.
As loudly as he could manage, Glazkov shushed her. Screaming wouldn’t help anyone.
It occurred to him that it was strange how calm he was. So strange.
But then he felt a little tug on his right forearm and tried to crane his neck ever so slightly to get a glimpse of it, to see what might have caused that tug, and he saw that they were all over him as well. The tiny ones. Babies, he thought. But something told him that despite the size differential, the tiny ones were not the babies of the larger ones. Not at all. No assumptions ought to be made. Particularly not when the tiny ones were so busy, so full of intent.
He felt that tug again and cocked his head, managed a glimpse. They were there, skittering all over him, but now he understood something else.
He understood why Hart kept screaming.
They weren’t just all over him, those little ones. They were inside him, too. Under the skin. Moving, and busy. So very busy.
Glazkov blinked, and for the first time he understood one other thing. Perhaps the most important thing. They weren’t just moving inside him.
They were also speaking to him.
Budanov’s whole world was pain and cold. He could hardly see. His head throbbed, his neck hurt, and his skull felt like something was tied around it so tightly that the slightest movement would cause it to burst. He'd spill his brains across the frozen ground. At least the pain would be gone.
No, Budanov thought. No, I won't let that happen. He never had given up in anything, and he wasn't about to start now.
He tried moving his limbs. They seemed to shift without any significant pain. Nothing broken. He rolled onto his right side and felt a heavy weight slip from his back, wet and still warm. He ran his hand up his front to his neck, checking for wounds. Nothing split open. He spat blood, and a tooth came out, too. His lip was split, and he'd bitten his tongue.
"Fuck," he whispered. Good. I can still talk.
Everything was silent.
Still lying on his side, he scanned his immediate surroundings until he saw his gun. It was down by his feet. He leaned down, head swimming, pulsing, and snagged the weapon with one finger. Straightening, hugging the rifle to his chest and checking that it was undamaged, he felt more in control.
He feared that everyone else was dead. His last memory was of one of those things coming at him, tendrils spread wide like a squid about to attack. He'd felt the impact of its warm, wet body upon him, then the sickly sensation of the limbs tightening around his neck and head ... and then nothing.
He glanced behind him and saw the torn ruin of the creature, limbs split, body holed by bullets. A stinking fluid had leaked and melted into the snow.
Budanov sat up slowly and looked around.
Zhukov was to his right, dead. There was so much blood. Budanov's heart stuttered, then he calmed himself and brought his weapon to bear. His head swam. He'd known Zhukov for almost ten years, and they'd fought well together.
"Sorry, brother," he whispered. The words seemed too loud, as if a whisper could echo across the landscape.
He realized how silent everything was. How still. Groaning, biting his lip to prevent dizziness spilling him to the ground, Budanov stood and looked around. He staggered a few paces from the mess of Zhukov's body and leaned against a tree.
Nothing moved or spoke, growled or sang. The whole valley was deathly silent, and he wondered whether he was actually dead and this was what came after––desolation and loneliness.
Then he heard something in the distance. A buzzing, far away, so faint that he thought it might be inside his head. He tilted his head left and right, trying to triangulate the sound, but it came from everywhere.
There were many of those alien creatures lying dead all around, and trees and rocks bore scarred testament to the strength of the firefight he'd missed. But other than Zhukov's corpse, there was no sign of his comrades.
Except...
Drag marks in the snow.
"Oh, no," Budanov breathed. They'd seen the animals being gathered by the tumblers and hauled towards the hole, before those things had switched their attention to the Spetsnaz unit.
He checked his weapon, switched magazines for a full one, wiped blood from his face, and started toward the hole. He would not leave his people, not while there was even the smallest chance they were still alive.
The buzzing grew louder. Close to the edge of the abyss he frowned and hunkered, still stunned by its size but now terrified by what might be down there. He turned left and right, trying to pinpoint the sound, but did not identify it until moments before the first helicopter swept into view.
The big Mi24 attack aircraft and troop carrier appeared above the ridge line across the valley, closely followed by two KA-52s in escort formation. Help had arrived, and he hadn't even had a chance to call it in.
Their helicopter pilots must have reported the forced change of destination the moment his unit left the aircraft back at the scientific station. Budanov didn't know how long had passed––he guessed little more than an hour––but that was plenty of time for this new unit to be scrambled and sent their way.
He knew how much trouble they were all in for disobeying orders and scrapping an important mission, but right then he didn't care. Something amazing and terrible had happened here. But for now his main concern, his only concern, was for the surviving members of his unit.
Budanov popped a flare and waved it back and forth se
veral times, then tossed it onto a pile of rocks close by. He was ten meters from the hole's edge.
As the three aircraft circled the valley and hovered for a while above the massive hole in its floor, Budanov edged closer. He kept his weapon ready, convinced that at any moment one of those tentacled things would surge up from the depths and come at him.
If it does, I'll blow it apart.
But nothing came. He reached the edge, leaned over and looked down, and saw only darkness in that intimidating pit. The walls seemed sheer, and there was no sign of life. He thought of lighting another flare and dropping it over the edge ... but he was afraid of what he'd see.
"Hold tight," he said, but there was no one to hear his words.
As the helicopters swung around and came in to land in a clearing three hundred meters away, Budanov jogged toward them, ignoring his aches and wounds. He wondered how long it would take to make them believe.
Their descent into the pit seemed to take forever.
Vasnev's screaming faded to a whimper, and Yelagin might well have been dead. Demidov tried to keep tabs on them both, alerted to where they were by the strange, shimmering luminescence emanating from the tumblers bearing them. Their bodies glowed, reminding Demidov of deep sea creatures––just as compelling, equally mysterious and alien. She couldn't help seeing beauty in their flowing movements, even though the tumbler held her with painfully tight tentacles clasped around her stomach, left arm and both legs. It was pointless struggling or attempting to escape, but as they descended deeper and deeper, she had time to plan.
She could not simply submit to whatever was to come. Vasily and his companions were likely dead, but while there was even the slightest chance that they were still alive, Demidov and the remainder of her unit had to fight.
She had a knife in her boot and a grenade still hanging from her belt.
"Oh, my God," Yelagin said from over to her left. "Look down."
Demidov was glad to hear her friend's voice, but when she twisted and followed her advice, cold fear slithered through her veins. Down beneath them, far down, a faint glow was growing in size as they continued their descent. To begin with it might have been just one more tumbler, but as they drew closer she could see many separate points of illumination. It wasn't one. It was hundreds.
"Yelagin," Demidov said. "Vasnev. We need to get away."
"Captain, there are tunnels in the walls," Yelagin said.
"You're sure?"
"I just passed one. The glow of this thing lit it, just for a second. I don't know how far it went but..."
"But that's enough," Demidov said. "Vasnev? You alive?"
"I can't..." Vasnev said. "I can't believe..."
"You don't have to believe," Demidov said. "Do you still have your knife?"
A grunt that might have been an affirmative.
"We can't let them get us down there," Demidov said, wondering all the time what these things heard of their voices, what they thought, and whether there was any way they might comprehend. She guessed not. Hoped not. They were something that no one had ever seen or heard of before, how in the hell could they know Russian? "If they get us all the way down, we're finished. Look down, scan the rock face, and when you see––"
"There!" Yelagin said. "Just below us. A ledge."
"Right." She'd seen it. A narrow ledge like a slash across the wall, similar to many they might already have been carried past. But this one was where they would make their stand.
As the creature carrying her flowed down the wall, limbs reaching and grasping, sticking and moving, Demidov slid her hand down her hip and thigh, bending slightly, to reach the knife in her boot.
This is when it stops me, she thought. It'll know what I'm doing, sense the violence, and one wrench of those limbs will tear me in half.
But the creature seemed unaware of the weapon now grasped in Demidov's hand. The ledge was close, and they were running out of time. Without trying to make out whether Yelagin and Vasnev were ready, she slashed at the tentacles pulled tight across her throat.
The creature squealed. It sounded like a baby in pain, but Demidov was committed now. She cut again, then grasped the thing's body with her left hand––soft, fleshy, wet––and stabbed with her right. She felt the blade penetrate deep into the thing's hide and the squeal turned into an agonized scream. Working the blade hard to the left and right, she gutted the beast.
From a little further away she heard other screams. She hoped they weren't human.
Demidov fought, slashed, thrashed, cutting limbs and seeing them drop away into the darkness like exclamations of pain. A gush of warm fluid pulsed across her throat and face. She tried to close her mouth but wasn't fast enough. She tasted the dying thing, its rank spice, its hot sour blood, and as it dropped her and she fell, she puked into the darkness.
She slammed onto the ledge and the breath was knocked from her. Spitting, wiping a mess of gore and puke from her face, she rolled back against the wall and looked up.
Glowing like a ghost from the gore covering her, Yelagin was climbing down the rock face just a couple of meters above. She dropped and crouched beside Demidov.
"Captain!"
"I'm fine. Vasnev?"
"Vasnev fell. I saw him go, still fighting the thing that had him."
Demidov rolled again until she could look down ... and wished she hadn't. She guessed they were fifty meters above the hole's base, and it was pulsing with the glowing things, all of them shoving forward to congregate around one place at the foot of the sheer side. Vasnev was plain to see, splayed across rock, broken, splashed with luminous gore. If the fall hadn't killed him, they soon would.
"We should go," Yelagin said.
"Go where?"
"A cavern. Just past the end of the ledge, I think we can make it. I saw it as I watched Vasnev fall."
Demidov stood, the two remaining soldiers holding onto each other to protect themselves from the dark, the fall, and the terrible glowing, monstrous things that lived in the depths. They moved carefully along the ledge, and just where it petered out was a crack in the rock wall. Standing before it, a waft of surprisingly warm air breathed out at them, as if this whole place were a living thing.
"What the hell was that?" Yelagin whispered.
"Doesn't matter," Demidov said. She had already heard the sounds from below, and a quick glance confirmed her fears. The things were climbing again. Coming for them, ready to avenge their dead. "We've got no choice."
Yelagin tucked her pistol into her belt and climbed away from the ledge toward the crack. Demidov followed. She had never been great with heights. Inside an aircraft or tall building was fine, but if she was on the outside, then the great drop below always seemed to lure her with the promise of an endless, painful fall. Knowing what was coming for her from below only made matters worse.
"Here," Yelagin said. She was braced in the crack, back against one side and feet against the other, and reaching for Demidov with her left hand. Demidov grabbed her gratefully, scrambled, and soon they were inside.
It opened into more of a tunnel, relatively flat and leading directly away from the great hole. The wet, stinking remnants of the things they had killed still provided a low luminescence on their clothing and hair, and Demidov hoped the effect would last. They both carried flares, but they would burn harsh and quick. She couldn't imagine anything worse than being trapped down here in smothering, total darkness.
She tugged the grenade from her belt.
“Are you fucking crazy?” Yelagin asked.
“What choice do we have? They’re coming!”
Yelagin drew her sidearm again and put it into Demidov’s hand. “With respect, Captain, you blow the mouth of this tunnel, you could kill us quicker than those things out there. You’ll trap us in here, if you don’t bring the ceiling down on us. Hold them off as long as you can. I’ll see if the tunnel leads to something other than a dead end.”
Demidov nodded, switched the
gun to her right hand and the grenade to her left. The bullets wouldn’t last very long.
She heard Yelagin move away behind her, using the luminescence from the tumblers’ blood to see. As the footfalls faded, fine tendrils whipped up over the ledge, and the first tumbler spilled into the mouth of the tunnel. Demidov took aim, dead center, and pulled the trigger.
"We're to place you under arrest and take you back to base," the Lieutenant said. He hadn't given Budanov his name. He hadn't even seemed keen to give the private any medical aid, but his medic had come forward and started tending Budanov's wounds anyway. While she bathed and dressed, another man––a civilian––took careful photographs of the injuries. Two others had disappeared into the snowy woodlands, each of them guarded by a heavily armed soldier.
Budanov had warned them, but they didn't seem to believe a thing he said. All but the civilians, who looked terrified and excited at the same time. More fucking scientists, Budanov thought. That's why we're here in the first place.
"But my captain and the rest of my unit might still be down there," he said. "The things took them down, and perhaps––"
"Your fault," the lieutenant said. He seemed eager to move, shifting from foot to foot and looking around at the snowscape. One of the men had thrown Budanov a thick coat, and he was eager for the medic to finish so that he could cover himself. All he wanted now was somewhere warm.
Demidov and the others aren't warm, he thought. They're down there. Cold, afraid. Maybe dead. But I have to know for sure.
"Can't you at least look?" he asked. "Get one of the KA52s to hover over the hole, shine a light down?"
"We're not staying long enough for that," the lieutenant said. He was a tall, brash man, young for his rank, but Budanov sensed a good military mind behind his iciness. He knew what he was doing.
"You were coming here anyway," Budanov said. "Before you heard from our pilots. Isn't that right?"
"Not for long." The lieutenant stared him in the eye for the first time. "Just long enough for these white-coats to get what they want, then we're getting the fuck out. You're lucky we're taking you with us. Your pilots left an hour ago when they heard."
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