Crota

by Goingback, Owl

  The deputy withdrew a dog-eared paperback novel from his hip pocket. “Got you covered, boss. But what if I have to make a nature call?”

  Lloyd frowned. “Turn the volume up and use the bushes.”

  “Right,” Hays nodded. He glanced at the radio. “You sure you've got enough cable for this thing?”

  “We’ve got enough.” Lloyd turned and started walking away.

  “Bring me back a bearskin,” Hays called after him.

  Lloyd snorted.

  At the mouth of the cave Lloyd considered who he needed to keep an eye on in case something did happen on the inside. Sergeant Mitchell and Corporal Murphy had been with the department long enough to know how to take care of themselves. And if push came to shove he knew that Deputy Brown could hold his own. He wasn’t so sure about Deputy Ferguson, who had been with the force for less than a year and hadn’t had the opportunity to prove himself under pressure. Maybe he’d get that opportunity today.

  The wooden ladder leading to the lower level of the cave was still in place. Lloyd shone his light down into the chamber below. Everything appeared exactly as it had the last time he’d been in the cave. Even some of the chalked graffiti could still be read: CINDY LOVES DARRELL...SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK & ROLL...GREG SUCKS--the usual stuff aspiring authors write in their teenage years.

  Steven squatted next to him. “It’d be safer if we use the ropes to climb down. Cave organisms often attack wood, rotting it from the inside out.”

  He considered it, then shook his head. “Naw, the ladder’s sturdy enough. You just gotta be careful of the rungs: the dampness makes them slick.” He remembered the eleven-year-old boy who’d slipped and died. “If we go one at a time and don’t rush, we shouldn’t have any problems. I’ll go first; it’ll give me a chance to test the radio once I’m down.”

  Steven nodded. “I’ll go last; that way I can lower most of the gear down by rope rather than have the men fumble with it on the ladder.”

  The descent into the second chamber took only a few minutes. While Steven lowered the gear down with a climbing rope, Lloyd clipped a field communication telephone onto the end of the first spool of wire. He was happy to learn that his voice could still be heard loud and clear on the outside.

  In addition to the field phone, each of the officers carried walkie-talkies. None of them wanted to take the chance of becoming separated from the group.

  Once on the floor of the second chamber, the men reslung their gear and weapons. The carbide helmet lamps were also switched on, casting eerie shadows across the walls. Fanning out, they moved toward the back wall, searching for a previously unknown opening or passageway, if such a thing existed. Lloyd was surprised that none of the men thought to question how a bear could possibly climb a ladder to get into or out of the cave.

  “Hey, over here!” Sergeant Mitchell yelled, waving his flashlight to attract attention. He stood on a large pile of rocks, in front of what appeared to be an opening to a narrow passageway.

  “Damn,” Lloyd said, reaching Mitchell’s side. “I’ve been in this cave dozens of times; this opening wasn’t here before.”

  Steven stepped past the two men. “You’re right; this breakdown appears recent.”

  “Maybe it collapsed during the earthquake,” suggested Corporal Murphy.

  Lloyd looked up at the ceiling. “Any chance of another cave-in happening while we’re down here?”

  “There’s always that possibility,” Steven answered. “It’s one of the dangers of exploring subterranean worlds. But no, I don’t think we have to worry, not unless we have another earthquake.”

  “Let’s just hope we don’t,” Lloyd said.

  The professor kneeled to examine the pile of stones. “That’s odd. These stones are not consistent with the geological makeup of this cave.”

  Lloyd frowned. “If you don’t mind, I’d prefer if you’d talk in English.”

  Steven grinned. “It means these stones were carried in from the outside.” He broke a piece of hardened mud away from one of the rocks. “Look at this. These rocks were mortared together, but it was done in such a way that when the wall was standing it looked like a natural part of the chamber. Fascinating.”

  “Holy shit,” Deputy Brown exclaimed. “Take a look at this!”

  Brown was standing in the opening, shining his light through at the floor beyond. The others scampered up the rocks to see what had gotten the young deputy’s attention. Their surprise was as great as his.

  Just beyond the opening, neatly aligned along the right wall of a passageway, were ten human skeletons. The skeletons had been carefully positioned side by side, with arms extended and hands touching, forming a continuous chain of bones.

  Lloyd pushed past and stepped into the passageway.

  “I wouldn’t get too close,” Steven cautioned. “No telling what they died of or what kind of diseases you might pick up.”

  The undersheriff stopped where he was. Shining his light down at the feet of the skeleton closest to him, he spotted a small pile of flint arrowheads and a few polished stones. Each of the other skeletons had a similar pile of trinkets.

  “What do you make of this, Professor?”

  Steven stroked his chin in thought. “I’m not an archaeologist, but I’d say this was once an Indian burial chamber. Maybe Osage. When the Indians buried their dead, they often buried their possessions with them. The arrowheads and stones were probably stored in baskets, which have long since rotted. One thing’s for sure, this ought to make the local historians happy.”

  Lloyd nodded, though he really wasn’t paying much attention to what the professor said. Instead he thought about the story Jay Little Hawk had told him. The game warden had been right about the previously unknown section of the cave. Judging by the evidence at hand, he’d also been correct about the Indians erecting a wall. Whether or not the wall had been built to seal in a monster, however, still remained to be seen.

  Thirty feet farther in, Professor Fuller paused to examine the wall on his right.

  “Amazing,” he said, running his hand over the stone. “It appears this tunnel is man-made. At the very least, an existing passageway was enlarged by someone.” He pointed at a spot on the wall. “See these scratches here? They’re tool marks. Could be this tunnel was part of an early mining operation--possibly Spanish. New Madrid was supposed to be the seat of the new Spanish empire.”

  Professor Fuller turned to the others. “I don’t wish to excite you, but it appears we’ve stumbled onto a pretty important find, historically.”

  They pressed on, going deeper into the earth. Excited over their discovery, Steven Fuller talked almost constantly, pausing only to jot down a quick note or take a photo with his instamatic camera. Thirty minutes later the expedition came to its first real obstacle when the tunnel forked into two separate passageways.

  “Looks like we’ll have to split up,” Lloyd said, shining his flashlight into one passageway and then the other.

  Steven shook his head. “That may not be such a good idea. You never know what you might run into down here--pits, slides, rivers, any number of things.”

  “I appreciate your concern,” Lloyd said, “but we’ve got a job to do. If there is a bear down here somewhere, we’ve got to find it and exterminate it before it kills again. I don’t like the idea of splitting up any more than you do, but we don’t have a choice. It’ll take too much time to explore each passageway separately. My men aren’t used to this much walking. They’re patrol officers, not foot soldiers.”

  “I see your point,” Professor Fuller nodded, “but that’s exactly why we should stick together: your men aren’t foot soldiers. Nor are they cavers. You’re in a whole new ballpark down here. Not only do you have to worry about cave-ins, chokes, bottomless pits and breaking a leg on loose rock; there’s also exhaustion, exposure, flash floods... You hired me to be a guide, now let me do my job.”

  Lloyd gave in. “Okay, Professor, you win. We’ll stick together--for now,
anyway. Before we continue any farther, though, I think it’d be a good idea to go ahead and divide up the lightsticks. Never know when we’re going to need them.”

  While the lightsticks were being divided up each officer went through an additional inspection of his personal items, paying particular attention to the weapons. If there was a bear waiting for them farther down the line, then they had better be prepared. They’d already seen what their opponent was capable of doing.

  Chapter 14

  During the winter of 1934, a giant kangaroo terrorized farmers near South Pittsburg, Tennessee. Leaving a trail of killed and partially devoured geese, ducks and police dogs in its wake, the kangaroo was tracked to a mountainside cave, where it disappeared.

  Skip closed the book, tossing it with the others at the foot of his bed. His head throbbed with pain, his eyes ached from reading and he still hadn’t come across anything even vaguely resembling what he had seen. The only thing reading the books had accomplished was to fill his head with enough useless trivia to last a lifetime.

  He’d gone through chapter after chapter on the Sasquatch and other hairy denizens of the deep woods, the reports varying in description as much as they varied in location. The creature was sometimes tall, sometimes short, sometimes black in color, sometimes white, sometimes violent, other times friendly. In the end, he’d been led to believe that most if not all of the stories were concocted by people wanting to get their names in the paper.

  Compared to some of the other stories, the Sasquatch reports were pretty tame. Within the last couple of hours he’d read about sea monsters, glowing green men, giant birds and UFO abductions. Closer to home came a story about several different “wildmen” inhabiting the Ozark hills.

  The most interesting article he’d read so far was about a rocky hill--aptly named Mystery Hill--just north of Holstein, Missouri, in neighboring Warren County. Every year during the month of May, or so the story went, strange rumblings could be heard coming from the interior of the hill. No one knew what caused the rumblings, but the countryside around Mystery Hill was honeycombed with caves, one of which was reputed to have a bottomless pit.

  Skip rubbed the back of his head, thought about taking a nap, but decided against it. Every time he dozed off he dreamed of his grandmother. Each time she tried to tell him something, but he couldn’t understand the words. What was the bundle she offered him? Was the dream some kind of premonition, or just a sure sign that his stay in the hospital was getting to him? He suspected the latter. It wasn’t like him to sit around and do nothing, especially with a monster on the prowl.

  But was it a monster? Was Lloyd right? Had his eyes played tricks on him? Had it been a bear after all?

  No, dammit. I know what I saw.

  He closed his eyes and thought back to the night of his attack. Instantly, every detail came rushing back to him: the sound of dry grass crunching beneath his boots; the smell of fresh air, trees and dead cattle; the feel of the evening chill upon his face, and of being watched. And then the sight of a nightmare springing from the darkness of a creek bed.

  Skip froze the action playing inside his mind, locking on the monster, enlarging the picture.

  It was there, up close and personal, trapped forever on the movie screen of his memory: the muscular body rippling under a light layer of red hair. A mane of the same color framing a broad head accented by glowing eyes, a piggish snout and a mouth crowded with deadly teeth.

  Skip remembered the creature’s speed, its strength, the sound of its roar and the smell of its foul breath.

  He opened his eyes; sweat had broken out on his forehead and under his arms. There was no reason to recall any more, no reason to relive the fear and pain of that night. He had seen enough to convince him that it wasn’t a case of imagination.

  Fuck you, Lloyd.

  He made a grab for the telephone, dialing the number to the station. Forget what Lloyd said. He couldn’t afford to worry about his reputation when there was such a creature on the loose. So what if some laughed? Enough would listen to do some good. And if the monster had left the area, it would only strike someplace else, kill another.

  The telephone was answered on the third ring.

  “Vicky, it’s me,” he said, pouring a glass of water from the blue plastic pitcher on his side table. “Is Lloyd there? No? Then how about Murphy?”

  Skip’s fingers fumbled for his cigarette pack as he listened to the dispatcher explaining why neither Lloyd nor Murphy could be reached. As she continued he could feel his face becoming flushed and the big vein in his neck starting to pump harder. By the time he hung up he was mad, boiling mad.

  “Damn him!” Skip cursed.

  Lloyd had no business authorizing such an expedition without clearing it through him first. At the very least he should have told him what he was planning on doing. Obviously Lloyd had gone behind his back to keep him from finding out what was going on.

  “That pigheaded son of a bitch!”

  Lloyd, in his own feeble line of reasoning, was willing to risk his ass to prove that Skip’s monster wasn’t really a monster. But he hadn’t stopped to consider that he might also be risking the lives of the other men as well.

  Skip glanced at his watch. It was 5:35 P.M. He crossed the room to the closet. Flinging open the door, he reached in and snatched a clean uniform off a hanger.

  Why had Lloyd picked the Devil’s Boot as a starting point? Had he gotten a tip from someone? Perhaps. It didn’t matter. Skip had to do something.

  Quickly he stripped out of his hospital pajamas.

  Yeah, I’m going to do something, starting with getting out of this place!

  Chapter 15

  A blind salamander scampered along a narrow ledge, anxious to escape the noisy intruders. Steven watched in silence as the tiny amphibian slipped into a shallow pool of crystal-clear water. The wall just behind the pool was decorated with golden curtains of almost pure calcite, while the surface of the water was dotted with circular mineral formations called cave rafts.

  The pool and the ornate wall framing it were the first natural formations they’d seen in almost forty minutes. The rest of the time it was as though they were walking through a subway tunnel--minus the tracks, ticket booths and muggers. Steven didn’t mind the absence of the usual cave decorations and oddities. He was too busy thinking about what their discovery would mean to the scientific community. Whoever dreamed a series of man-made passageways existed in Missouri? In the Southwest it might have been believed, even expected, but not here.

  It made him dizzy to think of it. Hundreds of cavers from all over the world would be racing to Missouri. There would be newspaper stories, magazine articles, maybe even a television special or two. They’d probably name the tunnels after him. Imagine, the Fuller Tunnels. Better yet, the Fuller Passageways. It had a nice sound to it.

  Steven checked his compass. They were still heading north, the tunnel’s floor sloping ever downward. The incline wasn’t steep, three or four degrees at the most, but it added up after covering so much distance. Pocketing the compass, he licked the end of his pencil and jotted down a couple of notes on a small spiral notebook. Lloyd joined him as he did.

  “Well, Professor, what do you think?”

  Steven closed his notebook. “I’m almost convinced that we’ve stumbled across some kind of Spanish mining operation. More than likely they were looking for gold. Hard telling what we’re liable to find. I’d still like to know how you found out about all this.”

  Lloyd grinned. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  Half an hour later all thoughts of Spaniards and gold were forgotten--as forgotten as the city of stone spreading before them.

  “Oh, my God,” muttered Deputy Brown. He was the first to emerge from the tunnel into the cavern. The light of his carbide helmet danced off the squat stone buildings closest to him.

  “What’s the matter, Wayne? I thought--”

  Steven stopped mid-sentence. Nothing in the worl
d could have prepared him for the shock of seeing the city. Nothing. It was Machu Picchu, Tenochtitlan and a Pueblo village rolled into one. An Anasazi city, shrunk down and relocated deep underground. He pinched his left leg to see if he was dreaming. He wasn’t.

  The buildings were small, squat and square. Forty or fifty of them, crowded together and stacked on top of each other like the cells of a honeycomb. Some appeared to be constructed from mud and stone; others looked as if they were carved from the walls of the cavern. Between the buildings narrow avenues and alleyways crisscrossed each other, sometimes disappearing into the darkened opening of additional tunnels, other times ending at steps leading to higher levels.

  Steven stood speechless before the mysterious city. There was something about it that made him feel uneasy. Maybe it had something to do with stumbling upon something so ancient, so forbidden and forlorn-looking. It was like stepping into a crypt.

  It’s impossible. How could a city like this exist underground? There must have been two, three hundred inhabitants. How did they live? How did they feed themselves?

  He pulled the instamatic camera from his shirt pocket and clicked off several pictures. He tried to take notes, but his hands shook too badly to hold the pencil steady.

  “This blows your Spanish mining theory all to hell,” Lloyd said, stepping next to him.

  As the professor took more pictures, Lloyd connected the mobile phone to the remaining few feet of cable on the last spool. The other spools had already been used. Switching on the phone, he attempted to contact Deputy Hays.

  “Base. This is Unit One. Come in, Base.”

  There was no reply.

  “Base. This is Unit One. Come in, Base.”

  Still no answer.

  “Maybe there’s a break in the connection,” Steven suggested.

  “Unit One, this is Base,” came the fuzzy reply.

  Lloyd smiled. “What took you so long, Hays?”

  “I...eh...was taking care of business. What’s up?”