Instinct (2010)

by Kay, Ben

  The sweat also came from overworked nerves that fizzed and pumped, particularly those of Bishop and Webster. If the others were scared, it was nothing to what those two were going through. The last time they had moved across this floor, they had been literally running for their lives, hearing ravenous mouths and steely claws tearing through skin, bone and innards.

  The last sounds they had heard were the wrench and churn of meat, the full-throated screams of helpless death, and the spatter of blood, gushing and landing, thickened by gore, all around them.

  And then there was the guilt of their impotence. That was what had kept it all nagging away for the months and years since. They had had to watch friends die and decide that intervention was too risky, that their own lives were too important to be jeopardized.

  Walking these steps again, it felt like something that had spent ten years fading to a tiny echo had just roared back to life. Bishop was overwhelmed by the return of the horror, the visceral visions of rampant slaughter that had invaded so many of his waking and sleeping hours. He could not see what remained of the corpses, but that was worse, giving free rein to his bubbling imagination.

  Webster had been affected in a different way: unlike Bishop, he had seen plenty of death before he arrived at MEROS, so it was the action of leaving so many to die, rather than the violence itself, that had torn at his insides. No matter how many times he told himself there had been no choice, that it was escape or death, he had never shaken off the remorse.

  Of course, none of them wanted to hear anything: sound meant movement, and movement meant that the nightmares were a step closer. But the silence added to the fear in its own way. It meant that there was nothing to conceal the random scuffles and knocks of so many people shifting around in the dingy chaos. Each accidental kick of a chair or scrape of a wall was filtered through unchecked imagination to become the unfolding of a pair of wings or the opening of a set of hungry jaws.

  They kept to the soft blue glows as best they could, but these gave way to larger sweeps of darkness where the way ahead was lit only by the blurred greys of Garrett’s torch.

  Webster could not have given a more accurate description of the terrain, but it still left vast spaces of black that were capable of concealing anything. Small, careful steps were the only way to make progress, but with the only constant light pointing ahead rather than illuminating the ground, they shuffled through the murky detritus as best they could.

  And no matter how quiet the room remained, it was impossible to escape the feeling that they were being watched, that something nearby was aware of them and waiting for the right moment to attack. Was that an insect scuttling in the corner, or just a reflection of Garrett’s torch beam? Did that sound come from behind them, or off to the left? Were the acoustics distorting sound, or were pounding temples creating noises that weren’t there?

  From nowhere, a booming BARUMM of smashing, rolling and crashing arrived like thunder to the right.

  Garrett quickly whipped her torch round to see a mess of sweeping, flittering shadows.

  Lisa screamed and took a step backwards. As she tried to regain her balance, her knee clattered into a chair, knocking it over.

  It sounded like they were being hunted from both sides and the darkness was concealing hordes of giant insects, recently woken and hungry for prey.

  Susan started sobbing and held on to George, but he was just as scared as she was and didn’t want someone clinging to him when he might need to run.

  ‘Wait, wait, calm it down.’ Garrett’s voice was clear, but too quiet to rise above the scrabbling feet and panicked gasps.

  ‘I said stop!’ she yelled. The others were shocked into standing still. If Garrett was talking instead of shooting, maybe they weren’t under attack.

  They followed the torch beam to see an upturned table on the floor.

  ‘I think that’s our superbug,’ she said.

  Down the line, they were still a nervy mass of thumping hearts and dry throats, but it looked like Garrett was right.

  Mike peered over at the table.

  ‘What’s that?’ he asked.

  Garrett moved her torch a little further to the right to reveal a white stick. Further still, and the stick became recognizable as a fibia.

  With a tilt of her wrist, Garrett cast the rest of the skeleton in the smoky beam of torchlight. It was scattered around the floor and, as more was revealed, it became obvious that this was not just one person’s remains. Another yard to the right showed a second, then a third, skull. All were covered in years of dust and missing their jaws.

  Suddenly, the scene revisited Bishop with alarming force. Even though he could see little, his memory filled out what was missing: visions of long-ago death, of moments when he had witnessed slaughter delivered without mercy. And those monsters: grotesque, ravenous, thoughtless. No matter how hard he tried to block them out, images of their malevolent faces appeared clear and true almost before his eyes.

  Over to the left, he could make out a desk that had been smashed in two. A decade collapsed to nothing as he remembered how it came to be that way: it had taken the full force when a millipede the length of two men unleashed itself from its protective ball. Its football-sized head had reared up almost to the height of Dr William Schreiber, who had been able to do nothing but scream as it pinned him down and fed greedily on his face.

  The screaming stopped when his throat was torn out, leaving his head to flop backwards on the strip of skin that was all that remained of his neck.

  Bishop had watched as the millipede had clambered over the doctor’s stomach and chest, chewing as it went.

  The froth of tissue, blood and bone spattered across the creature’s hard, green skin was the sight that had taken longest to leave Bishop’s dreams. There was something so remorseless, so driven about it, that he had found the scene forcing itself into his thoughts for many years afterwards.

  He felt the bile churning in his guts once more but managed with some effort to keep it under control.

  ‘We best get moving on,’ said Garrett.

  Laura put her arm round her son, gently but firmly manoeuvring him in front of her so she could keep a good grip on his shoulders.

  The bones had scared them, but at least they looked old and neglected. And the burst of noise and activity didn’t seem to have brought any insects out of hiding. In any case, they had no choice, so they all shuffled ahead, inevitably thinking about the ways in which the skeletons had come to be like that.

  At the second blue light, they came across something that embodied Webster and Bishop’s nightmarish description. Garrett stepped on it without realizing, but when she looked down, her exclamation of Holy shit! was a loud noise too far. It set off a ripple of fear along the line.

  In the dark, Garrett wasn’t aware that she had been responsible for the reaction. When she became so, she issued a series of loud Ssshhhh sounds until there was silence again, except for the insistent throb of blood pumping through their chests.

  ‘What is it?’ asked Webster.

  Garrett peered down again and looked at what lay in the torchlight. ‘Spider. Dead spider. All dry like it’s been dead a long time, but it is fuckin’ humongous. Like the back tyre off my daddy’s tractor.’

  George couldn’t help looking over her shoulder.

  ‘Jesus fuck me Christ,’ he muttered, crossing himself. ‘That is a big sonofabitch.’

  ‘OK. I’m headin’ on,’ Garrett whispered. As each member of the group filed past, they felt grateful that the direct beam of Garrett’s torch had gone on ahead. It left the arachnid near invisible in black-grey gloom. However, from the illumination of the nearest blue light they could tell that its legs were as wide as their arms, and that sent hard shivers of revulsion rippling through them.

  Still the group continued to make its steady progress through the Abdomen, and still there was no sign of life. There were plenty o
f signs of death, but by now Garrett had come across so many dessicated insect corpses she had stopped mentioning them. The disruption to the group was taking its toll, so she tried to give each one a wide berth instead.

  If she had had the time or the light to examine what they were walking over, she’d have seen how small piles of human bones had collected beneath the various dead insects. As their bodies had decomposed, the undigested ribs, skulls and limbs had slipped through the stomach lining and out on to the floor.

  Those bones were the most troublesome obstacles they came across. Hidden in the dark, they were easily stepped on, causing some of the group to lose their footing and sometimes their balance, sending them flailing into clumsy, ignorant panic.

  About halfway across the main hall, George trod on a femur and rolled backwards. The fright came over him like a white sheet, and he cried out, sending whips of fear slicing into the others.

  Losing his balance, he reached out and grabbed hold of Wainhouse, bringing them down together. Wainhouse was unable to stop himself lurching backwards and tensing his trigger finger to fire off a volley of netspreaders towards the ceiling.

  The explosions added to the terrified confusion. Garrett tried to illuminate the scene with her torch, but the moving shadows only suggested more possible horrors.

  Meanwhile, the nets floated down from the ceiling, landing softly on top of Laura, Bishop and Wainhouse, who immediately assumed they were under attack from colossal web-shooting spiders.

  Laura screamed, leaving Andrew terrified. The more she tried to disentangle herself, the more caught up she became. Her struggle made the thin adhesive cling even tighter, wrapping her hair and fingers together until she screamed again.

  Webster and Wainhouse were deep in their own panicked confusion, but they soon recognized the distinctive odour of the netspreaders’ adhesive and realized what had happened.

  ‘Hey! Hey! Laura, Laura, Laura. Calm down, it’s not insects. It’s the nets from Wainhouse’s gun. They fired accidentally.’ Webster tried to find her and hold her by the shoulders, but he was also trapped in the nets, so he could only knock into her, poking out another shriek.

  Andrew had heard Webster, though, and he did his best to get his mum’s attention. ‘It’s all right, Mum,’ he said, squeezing her hand. ‘Major Webster says it’s all right. Shhhh.’ She was breathing hard, but understood what her son was telling her.

  Garrett’s torch confirmed that they were nets from Wainhouse’s gun, but by then the fear and disorientation had left the group at a high pitch of terror.

  ‘OK, everyone,’ said Carter, loud and hard, ‘I’m going to use the adhesive solution on these nets, so I need calm for the next five minutes.’ His words brought everyone into line instantly, putting a stop to the random movements and desperate gasps that were fuelling each other.

  Carter removed an aerosol from his backpack and got to work on Laura. Garrett held her torch up to help, and the others stood in silence. The task provided a welcome distraction, giving them a focus and a feeling that, if they had time to sort out something as small as this, the danger could not be so great as they feared.

  Laura, Webster and Wainhouse were soon free of the nets, and a calm descended upon the group.

  As they stood gathered around Garrett’s torchlight, Webster spoke quietly but clearly:

  ‘OK, everybody, it doesn’t look like we’ve disturbed anything, or maybe there’s nothing to disturb. Judging by how long we’ve been walking, we must be nearly at the other side, so let’s get moving again and see if we can find the stairs.’

  A darkness loomed over them as they moved towards the far wall. There were no lights on that side of the Abdomen, so they could not know for sure they were in the right place.

  Webster took Garrett’s position at the front and stepped forward to the wall, casting the concentric circles of torchlight across it.

  ‘Hmmm …’ he grunted. By now it was clear to Laura that he was not a man of excessive reaction. Hmmm could mean a serious disaster if said in the wrong way, and Webster’s tone did not fill anyone with confidence.

  ‘Bishop, you might want to take a look at this.’

  Bishop made his way through the group, who stood in single file, forced into that formation by the partition wall of a lab and a dense collection of broken furniture.

  Now they were all looking in the same direction as Webster, trying to work out what concerned him.

  He pointed the torch upwards. To the group’s disappointment, it definitely wasn’t showing a smooth wall with a conveniently placed door through which they could all exit to freedom. Instead it illuminated a layer of something coarse and coffee-brown, riddled with holes large enough to fit a Labrador.

  Webster was rubbing the rough surface. It felt like pumice stone.

  ‘Wasps?’ asked Bishop.

  Webster shook his head. ‘Did we ever have termites down here?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘I think so,’ said Bishop, peering a short distance into the nearest hole. ‘Masters of destroying whatever comes their way, as long as they can build their nest,’ he said.

  ‘That’s a termite nest?’ asked George, who had been eavesdropping on Webster and Bishop’s conversation.

  He moved forward to see for himself. ‘But termite nests in their natural habitat can be hundreds of times the size of the insect itself. This could be a mile high.’

  ‘If it’s a mile high, then it’s through the surface, and I think we’d have heard something about that,’ replied Bishop.

  ‘Think so?’ asked Mike. ‘The jungle we’re in has no people for miles around and plenty of places for whatever built this nest to hide.’

  ‘No,’ said Laura. ‘If a nest of termites this big got out into that jungle, they’d have laid it to waste in a week. Something must have stopped them.’

  She realized as she said it that she was sliding something unpleasant into all their thoughts: something had taken on these termites and won.

  ‘Well, thanks a bunch for the insect lesson,’ said Wainhouse, in his dull voice. ‘What matters here ain’t whatever killed these critters, ’cos it don’t look to me like there’s much of anything alive down here. What we’ve got to figure out is how to get through this to the stairs and get the hell out of here.’

  ‘Yes, but the problem is whether we can get through this at all. It’s obviously grown over the lights, so it might also be built around the stairs. That may mean our way to the surface is blocked,’ said Takeshi.

  ‘What about going up inside it?’ said Laura. Bishop squatted down and looked into the nest. ‘Come on,’ she continued. ‘If there’s nothing alive down here, what danger is there to getting inside this thing, seeing how far it goes up and whether it connects to the stairs?’

  One by one, they all looked to Garrett. Eventually, she noticed.

  ‘Oh, I get it. Yes, I do all the crazy, scary shit, plus I’m a short-ass. Fine.’ She undid her belt to remove her weapons and body armour. ‘You can stop me anytime if I’m getting the wrong idea here.’

  No one stopped her.

  ‘Right, I’ll take that as a “Get your sorry grunt ass up one of those holes ’cos we’re either too big or too clever to do it ourselves.” No fuckin’ problem, amigos.’

  Within a minute, she was down to a dirty vest, khaki cargo pants and her army-issue boots. Although she wasn’t entirely visible, what light there was seemed to be catching a side of her no one had noticed before. Despite himself, George felt the stirrings of the world’s most pointless erection.

  ‘Which hole you think’s a goer?’ she asked anyone who might have an opinion. No opinion came, so Garrett chose the one closest to her. It didn’t leave a lot of room, but whatever problems the size caused, she was soon out of sight.

  While Garrett explored, Susan, Lisa and Mike examined the nest, knocking and scraping it.

  ‘I don’t want to meet whateve
r made this,’ said Mike.

  ‘If they were as devastating as regular termites at this size, it would have taken napalm to stop them,’ Lisa mused.

  Suddenly, a hollow scraping noise made them all look up in fear.

  Webster drew his semi-automatic Walther P99 from its holster. The acoustics made it hard to tell which hole the noise was coming from.

  ‘Someone get the torch pointed at this thing!’ he snapped.

  As the scratching got louder, Webster aimed the muzzle at one hole then another. It was soon obvious where the noise was coming from. Webster stood poised and cocked his weapon until …

  ‘Fuck me, that must be what a rattlesnake’s shit feels like,’ coughed Garrett, dragging herself out of the nest. Webster lowered his gun and helped her.

  ‘Stinks like month-old manure up there, like it ain’t been aired since forever.’

  ‘That’s probably the case,’ said Bishop, trying not to sound too patronizing.

  ‘Anyway,’ Garrett continued, ignoring him, ‘there’s only so far I can get. The tunnels are an OK size, but when they turn it’s impossible to bend round the corners. You’re going to need someone smaller than me if you want to get any further.’

  No one said anything, but their thoughts immediately turned to Andrew. He wasn’t Garrett, though. A small body wrapped around a dense core of fear, he was not ready to volunteer to climb into a giant termite nest. And even if he were, the chances of his mum letting him do it were less than zero.

  ‘Another option is to blast it,’ Garrett said cheerfully. She enjoyed using explosives.

  ‘What we got, Garrett?’ asked Webster.

  ‘Thanks to Wainhouse, we got everything we need.’ Wainhouse smiled in the darkness.

  ‘Hang on, hang on, is any of this stuff … I mean, is it going to be very disturbing and … loud?’ asked Bishop in a pointed whisper.

  Garrett exhaled a derisory chuckle.

  ‘Yes, Steven, it’s going to be very disturbing and loud. That’s what you get with C4 and Semtex: disturbing and loud. Something wrong with that?’