Black Mountain ah-4

by Greig Beck

  It was dark in the large room, so Graham left the door ajar a crack. The big viewing screen on the wall was fizzing with white noise. He saw a figure sitting near the desk, its back turned, its head resting on one hand.

  ‘Hammerson, you must think we’re all stupid,’ Graham burst out. ‘I know the Arcadian is alive and on US soil. Your submission to the Joint Chiefs was a total fabrication.’

  He paused; the large figure just sat there, unresponsive.

  ‘It doesn’t really matter,’ Graham went on, determined to get a reaction. ‘We don’t need him in the field anymore. We’ve reproduced the treatment — Hunter can be retired immediately.’ He took a step closer. ‘But that doesn’t mean I don’t need him at all. We can work together — you scratch my back, et cetera. General Wozyniak is delighted with my results, but I know the compound’s still a little unstable. I can’t seem to balance the subjects’ metabolisms. Wozyniak might not be so happy if I told him the men could burn themselves out, literally, in a month — not a great return for a hundred million taxpayers’ bucks. Now, if I could take a quick look at Hunter’s hypothalamus…’

  Graham reached the seated figure and realised it was too big to be Hammerson. ‘Jack?’

  ‘He can be retired? You mean fucking terminated.’

  An enormous hand shot out and caught Graham’s wrist, then pulled and twisted, bringing Graham to his knees beside what he now saw was a wheelchair. In it sat Lieutenant Sam Reid.

  Graham screamed.

  Annie Fletcher came to the door, smiled sweetly, and pulled it fully closed.

  Sam tugged on Graham’s arm again. ‘You want to kill him, you little weasel? You fucking killed him years ago when you pumped that shit into him! He doesn’t even know if he’s human anymore.’

  Graham wailed and banged at Sam’s hand with his fist, but the HAWC just tightened his grip.

  ‘I’ll see you in chains, Reid,’ Graham yelled.

  Sam laughed softly and applied more pressure to the scientist’s thin arm. ‘Haven’t you noticed — I’m already in chains, you asshole. Guess I must be suffering from battlefield trauma — happens to us HAWCs, you know. We can go psycho sometimes, real loony — been known to actually kill people.’ He laughed again. ‘By the way, that reminds me, I’m due for another coffee with my old friend General Wozyniak. Got something real interesting to tell him now. In fact, why don’t I —’

  ‘I could make you walk again.’

  It was like all the air had been sucked out of the room.

  Sam let go of Graham’s arm. ‘Fuck off.’

  Graham stumbled backwards, then stood up. He rubbed his wrist. Both an idea and an opportunity sprang to his mind. He looked at the huge frame packed into the wheelchair.

  ‘Not much of a life for a man of action, is it?’

  Sam sat motionless again, staring at the fizzing screen.

  Graham took a cautious step forward. ‘The Arcadian treatment works, Lieutenant Reid — you know that. But did you know that it can be used to regenerate tissue, bone matter, internal organs… even the nervous tubular bundle of the spinal cord? That part’s easy. Imagine being able to get out of that chair. Imagine being able to run, fight, defend your country again. I could give you all that. I just need —’

  Sam jerked his body forward at the scientist. ‘I said fuck off!’

  ‘Okay, okay.’ Graham backed away, holding his hands in front of him. ‘We’re both a little stressed at the moment. By the way, I saved Hunter’s life when everyone else had given up. I’m not the bad guy, Sam. Remember that.’

  The HAWC turned his head away, but Graham knew he’d got to him.

  He reached behind his back to touch the door handle. ‘Think about it,’ he said. ‘I helped Alex, and I can help you. You know where to find me.’

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Matt stayed hunkered down above the ravine, paralysed by the brutal action below. Sarah sat with her back jammed up against his, keeping watch on the upper slope, but he knew that she was blind in the darkness. She wouldn’t see anything coming until it was right on top of them.

  He looked around for something he could use as a weapon… anything. There were a few loose branches nearby — not much use against the beast they’d seen in the cave, or against the guns in the fight below. Then he remembered… and moved his hands frantically around under the snow’s surface. His fingers touched Chief Logan’s handgun.

  Matt had seen how fast those white-clothed men moved, how just one of them had beaten down Hammerson. Even armed with the handgun, he reckoned he’d probably last about thirty seconds… and that included twenty seconds to raise and fire it.

  Jack Hammerson’s last order had been to wait five minutes, then head back down the mountain. Matt knew he needed to honour it. Also, he didn’t want to watch a brave man get beaten to death.

  He was just about to grab Sarah when Hammerson’s voice boomed out: ‘Arcadian!’

  Matt’s head snapped back to the ravine; he hadn’t heard that word in years. He scanned the rock face leading into the valley, then the snowy slope behind him. When he turned back to the cliff edge, he saw a figure silhouetted against the moonlight, arms outstretched, strength radiating from him. The sight reminded Matt of the last carving he and Thomas had seen in the cave: Tooantuh, Thomas’s people’s mighty warrior.

  The old Indian had been sure his ancestor would return when needed.

  ‘Tooantuh will come and you must be ready for him,’ he had told Matt. ‘Help him to push the beast back into the mountain.’

  The beast. Matt looked over his shoulder again at the dark slope.

  * * *

  Alex jumped the last thirty feet to the valley floor, going down on one knee and fist with the landing impact. He stood and walked towards the masked soldiers, stopping a few dozen feet away.

  ‘Who are you?’ he asked. ‘Where are you from?’

  The men moved towards him, fanning out one to each side.

  ‘You are Captain Alex Hunter, formerly of the HAWCs,’ said the man without the blood-spattered mask. ‘The one they call the Arcadian. You are to come with us.’

  Alex didn’t move. ‘Who are you?’ he repeated. ‘How did you get to be… like you are?’

  Neither man answered the questions, nor even looked like they understood them.

  ‘You will come with us, Hunter,’ the leader said again. ‘That is our order, and all you need to know.’

  The man’s head tilted slightly, studying Alex, then the emotionless voice came again. ‘You will come with us. If not, we are authorised to use extreme force.’

  Caution flared within Alex and the skin on his neck crawled. These men were like him, he could sense it, but they appeared non-human, disconnected — almost robotic.

  When Alex still made no move, both men slowly lowered their hands to their guns. Alex held his hands up, trying to slow them down.

  ‘Wait, I need to talk to you. If I come with you, will you —’

  ‘You will come with us,’ the man said again. ‘Alive would be better, but our mission will still be complete if we retrieve just your head. Your choice.’

  Alex couldn’t think straight. He could tell the men wanted to attack him. Perhaps their orders were to bring him in dead or alive, but he knew they wanted to test their own skills against him first. Frustration writhed and coiled inside him. He wanted to talk to the men, but his heartbeat was rising and a fire was igniting deep within him.

  The other man got shakily to his feet. ‘Alex,’ he called out, ‘if they get you back to the lab, you’ll end up as nothing more than tissue in formaldehyde. Graham wants to cut you up. I have the answers you need. I can tell you who you are, and where you began. I’m Colonel Jack Hammerson, your former commander. I know about your mother… Kathleen.’ He took a pace forward. ‘I know everything — your father, Jim, was my friend… He was more like you than you know.’

  Hammerson… the name felt familiar. But before Alex could speak, the white-clad man closest
to the grey-haired soldier had raised his strange bulbous gun at his face.

  ‘No!’ Alex yelled, and charged.

  Hammerson dived and rolled, but the shooter was already spinning away from him and bringing his gun up to Alex. The other man turned side-on and did the same.

  For Alex, the world slowed. He drew his own weapon and started firing as he crossed in seconds the twenty feet that separated him from the white-clad soldiers. The men twisted and dodged the projectiles, without receiving even a graze.

  Their own gas-powered bullets were two streams, kicking up snow as they raced towards Alex.

  He dived, spear-like, at the closest man, rolling and coming up in front of him, grabbing his gun and forcing it straight up in the air. The man responded with the same manoeuvre, so each was now gripping the other’s weapon, twisting and pushing, their strength matched. As Alex fought, he knew he was vulnerable to the other man, who was circling the struggling pair, looking for the smallest opportunity to put a bullet in him.

  He released his gun into his attacker’s grip, freeing his own hand and bringing its fist around hard into the man’s jaw. The man pulled away and Alex’s blow glanced off his chin. Alex knew he should have planned better; they shared the same speed and anticipation skills, so trying to be simply quicker or stronger wasn’t going to cut it.

  The man must have seen the logic in Alex’s move for he released his own gun. Alex took it and threw it to Hammerson. He didn’t understand why he felt he could trust the HAWC, but he did. Perhaps it was simply down to the oldest military truism: my enemy’s enemy is my friend. If he was wrong, he was as good as dead.

  In the millisecond it took Alex to hurl the weapon, his opponent took advantage of his exposure and landed a stunning blow to the side of his head. Alex heard the man’s fist break on the bone of his brow. His vision blurred for an instant and he felt like he’d been hit by a speeding car. Nevertheless, he grabbed the man’s wrist, extended from the blow, and hung on… and saw the smashed metacarpals slide back into place below the skin.

  ‘Who are you?’ he yelled into the blank, featureless face.

  The black eyes stared back at him through the slits of the ski mask, indicating no understanding or emotion.

  In Special Forces training, every hard point on your body is a potential weapon. The knowledge came to Alex from somewhere deep inside, and his body took over. He pulled the man towards him and lowered his elbows to smash them into his cheeks. The blow disorientated Alex’s opponent, giving him time to bring a knee up into the man’s ribs. The grip on his gun arm loosened enough to allow him to pull it free and grab the ski mask. Alex needed to find out who this man was; to see some flicker of humanity beneath the robotic responses.

  He pulled the mask free, and recoiled. Pustules crusted the man’s tormented flesh; black-rimmed ulcers exposed the bone of his skull. Alex smelled antiseptic and realised that the ski mask wasn’t just to keep the cold out or hide the man’s identity; it was a medicinal bandage.

  The man screamed and went berserk in Alex’s grasp. His fury escalated his strength and he picked Alex up and threw him ten feet across the valley floor. As soon as Alex landed, another zipper of bullets raced towards him, fired by the soldier still wearing his mask.

  Immediately, the barrage was answered by return fire, causing the white figure to leap back into cover. Hammerson was making good use of the weapon Alex had thrown him.

  The unmasked soldier came at Alex like a charging bull, head down, arms spread wide. The collision threw them both down into the snow. Alex tried to hang onto the berserker and hold him down. He could see that his eyes were red-rimmed and furious.

  ‘Stop and listen to me!’ he yelled.

  The man was literally frothing at the mouth, and some of the deep cankers on his face had erupted, dripping black, infected blood onto the snow. Alex could feel the heat coming off his body — it was way beyond normal, even way beyond Alex’s own overheated metabolism. The soldier punched, clawed and raked at him, his mouth spitting words and sounds that didn’t make sense. Alex struggled to hold him down.

  They rolled together across the ground, crashing into the cliff face and dislodging rocks that bounced down and buried themselves in the snow around them. A piece of granite the size of a loaf of bread landed near Alex’s head, and he quickly reached into the snow to seize it. He smashed it into the man’s skull and a crackling crunch told him he had caved in the bone.

  The man immediately fell still. Alex released him and pressed his fingers to his neck, feeling for a pulse, but his flesh was too hot to touch for long. The snow around him started to melt, then the white suit he wore began to steam and smoke. Alex backed away, shaking his head. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

  He reached out to touch the blistered face; a gesture of comfort for whatever hell the man had been subjected to in the name of science. He wished he could have talked to him, discussed their similarities, shared the mutual pain of their situation. It was clear to Alex that the man had suffered the rages that sometimes consumed him. He had been learning to control his fury, but this man’s demons had broken free — and eventually killed him.

  Is this how I’ll end up, he thought, consumed and destroyed by rage?

  Was this his own future playing out before him like some ghastly movie?

  As Alex watched, the disfigured face collapsed in on itself, the flesh liquefying and bubbling in the cavity of the skull. He cried out in horror, and scooped snow over the putrefying mass that had been a man only minutes before.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  Adira drew in cold air and then blew it out in huge smoking plumes. She had vomited onto the snow from exhaustion a few minutes ago, but still continued to push herself up the slope. She grabbed another handful of snow and held it to her battered face. She had taken a blade to her eye, slicing the outer corner away from the palpebrae muscle to release the enormous build-up of blood that was forcing the eyelid down over the eyeball. The viscous fluid had run hot and fast, and her eye was now open enough for her to see, but she dreaded another blow.

  The sound of gunfire drew her on with as much urgency as her fatigued muscles would allow, anxiety fuelling her desperation. She had invested so much in Alex Hunter; the idea of bringing him this far, only to lose him to some mad personal vendetta was too much to contemplate. More gunfire came, and she jerked her head up to stare into the darkness. If anyone put a bullet in Alex, she would destroy whoever was responsible or had been involved in the event.

  She cursed and punched both of her thighs as hard as she could, the pain bringing a small jolt of adrenaline into the rubbery muscles. Through pain-gritted teeth, she clambered up the steep slope, at times having to drop to all fours to keep going.

  At the edge of a small slip valley, she crouched against a tree, breathing heavily but doing her best to remain silent. Blows and grunts from below drew her eyes to the bottom of the ravine, where a number of large men were fighting viciously — Alex among them, and also Jack Hammerson. She couldn’t make out their opponents — more Mossad agents?

  She kneeled up to look closer, then immediately hunkered back down as she saw two figures huddled beside a tree trunk a short distance away. She wormed her way forward, staying low, and drew her weapon. In another moment she was behind them, wrapping a hand around the woman’s mouth and aiming the gun into the young man’s startled face as he turned.

  He dropped his gun, and held up his hands. ‘Don’t shoot.’

  Adira released the woman, who immediately huddled closer to the man. She saw shock and terror on their faces, and guessed some of it came from the sight of her own swollen, blood-streaked features.

  ‘Identify yourselves,’ she ordered.

  The couple talked over the top of one another, and she managed to pick out references to the thing Alex had alluded to, as well as some connection with Jack Hammerson and also Alex himself. She could use that. She needed to get them off the mountain; there were too many people around, a
nd in such a situation confusion would be the killer.

  ‘I am also a HAWC,’ she said. ‘Part of Colonel Hammerson’s team. You need to get out of here, now!’ She nodded down to where the fight was still raging. ‘I will look after them from here. Go.’

  ‘But —’ the man began, pointing back up the mountainside, but Adira gave him a push.

  He grabbed the woman by the arm and together they started to run, but the man kept glancing back. Adira wondered whether he intended to obey her instruction. She watched them disappear into the dark, then crouched low and started to move in closer to the fighting.

  She stopped and sniffed through her blood-clogged nose — there was something acrid and animalistic floating on the air.

  * * *

  The creature reached the high edge of the sharp ridge and stared down at the small creatures as they beat and tore at each other. The aggression and blood lust excited it.

  As it tensed its tree-thick limbs, ready to launch itself into the battle, there was movement to its right. Two shapes sprinted away into the darkness, and it was drawn to pursue them. After a few paces, it slid to a stop as the intoxicating odour of fresh blood and raw flesh filled its broad nostrils. Hunger flared and it bared its teeth.

  It would take the meat first.

  It moved closer, readying itself.

  * * *

  The single remaining attacker turned side-on in a shooter’s stance and aimed at Alex Hunter as he threw snow over his decomposing comrade. Hammerson brought his own gun up and fired several rounds at the man, keeping the trigger depressed for full automatic. The bullets blistered out from the long barrel like a swarm of hot angry wasps. In this mode, the small compact weapon delivered more bullets, but the force of the recoil made it extremely difficult for even the most accomplished marksman to control the spread. Only a couple of bullets struck the white-clad figure’s armoured torso before he flung himself out of the way and rolled.