by Scott Reeves
Another creature climbed forth, and then another. All along the rift, the immense creatures climbed from the ground to tower in the sky atop a quivering mass of tentacles. Their underbellies were limned in the orange glow of the hellfire emanating from the river of lava which Jason knew ran at the bottom of the rift, deep beneath the ground.
Jason turned and looked backward, saw more of the squidish heads rising above the treetops. North, south, every direction he looked, the beasts were rising, climbing from the half-dozen other rifts that fractured the entire area.
These were hellishly grand beasts indeed, fearsome to behold. But they were not the Beast, with whom Jason had so recently melded. These were the children of the Beast, the things Jason had, through the eyes of the Beast, glimpsed swimming in the churning lava far beneath the ground, in the molten mantle of the Earth.
The frozen tableau held for uncountable moments as the soldiers gaped upward at these imposing new enemies, who remained motionless, mountains of quivering, blubbery flesh. They remained still as if to let the soldiers drink in their glory.
Then the horrific moment was broken as winged creatures once again poured from the rift like fighter ships emerging to defend their battle cruisers. At the same time, the children of the Beast lurched into motion. They strode across the land, carried forward by their undulating tentacles. Those tentacles not in use as legs whipped forth, seizing stupefied soldiers, adroitly divesting them of their weapons, and then shoving the soldiers into the net-like sacks dangling from their underbellies.
Gunfire broke out as the soldiers came out of their stupor and once again engaged the battle.
“Nuke the place,” Jason whispered suddenly.
“What?” Stewart croaked, unable to take his horrified eyes off the chaotic battleground below.
“Call your General Moore,” Jason said. “Tell him they’re going to have to drop a nuke into one of the rifts.”
Stewart gaped at Jason. “Are you mad? There are people down there.”
Jason looked eastward, behind him. Two of the beasts were striding east in the direction of London.
Jason stabbed a finger down at the battlefield below. “Look at that and ask me again if I’m fucking mad! I’m telling you, you’ve got to nuke this whole area. There are more of those things coming up, millions of them, and they’re going to try to take everyone down to their own version of Hell. You need to exterminate them, and you need to exterminate them now, before it’s too late!”
“What about the people down below?” Stewart protested.
Jason already had an idea about that. “We’ll go back down and free as many of them as we can,” he said. Actually, he didn’t really care about saving anyone but Stacy and his friends. But he didn’t tell Stewart that. “Just advise your General Moore to call in a nuke strike, or whatever the hell soldiers do. Have them give us three hours to get down and back out with some people, then drop the nuke.”
Stewart reached for the microphone dangling over his shoulder. Before activating it, he asked Jason, “But how will we get down there? How will we get out?”
“Getting down is easy,” Jason said. “So is getting back out. Trust me.”
Stewart hesitated, obviously mulling it over. Jason didn’t push him anymore, merely waited for the man’s inevitable assent.
As they stood there watching, several of the tentacled beasts that had gone out into the countryside returned. Their net sacks were already filled, bristling with a screaming, struggling mixture of local folk and soldiers. The beasts, kept safe by the winged beasts that harried the soldiers, descended back into the rift with their booty.
Then a formation of four jets streaked by overhead and launched a volley of rockets at two beasts headed for London. One of the beasts exploded in a shower of blubber and blood, its tentacles toppling like fallen trees from where its head had once been.
Before the jets could swing around for another run, a thick cloud of the winged beasts swarmed them, and two of the jets were taken down.
That decided Stewart. He took a deep breath, and then radioed for General Moore. This time, the General answered. Stewart and the General spoke in clipped tones. Stewart briefly explained what Jason had told him, and then relayed Jason’s recommendation of a nuclear strike.
There was a scandalized snort from the radio, or perhaps it was only a burst of static. Then the General said, “Are you completely daft? Jason, was it? You think we Brits just start dropping bombs on the say-so of any random American who wanders into the country? If there are people down there as you say, which I doubt, most of them certainly aren’t British citizens and so get little consideration from me. But the decision has already been made. We’re shutting this place down before any more British citizens are harmed. We’re dropping bunker busters in one hour. You have that long to do whatever you want.”
Jason started to protest, but of course, given the nature of radio communication, the General didn’t hear. Instead, he merely continued. “One hour. No more, no less. If you’re not out by then, it’s goodbye and thanks for all the fish for you. Out or not, the bombs fall in one hour.”
The radio was silent then, and Jason blinked. He was surprised that the decision to drop any bombs, nuclear or otherwise, had been made so quickly. But then, in battle, decisions had to be made quickly as the situation evolved at lightning speed. Or at least that’s what Jason had gathered from all the war movies he’d watched. In war, you shot first and then asked questions later.
Jason had one other request, which Stewart relayed to General Moore, who grudgingly acknowledged the request.
Then Stewart clipped the microphone back to his shoulder. “Now what?” he asked.
Jason smiled and took hold of Stewart’s hand as if they were two lovers out for a stroll. Stewart said nervously, “This is no time to get frisky!”
“Just follow me and hang on tight. Pretend I’m the girl you took to the senior prom and snuggle in close, so we won’t get separated when they take us.”
“When who takes us where?” Stewart asked, still not realizing Jason’s intent.
But despite Stewart’s cluelessness, he did as commanded. When Jason stood and strode out into the open pasture, Stewart hugged close against him. To keep things from feeling too gay, Jason joked, “Easy, officer. You don’t have to hump my leg like a dog.”
Stewart smiled.
Jason waved to catch the attention of a group of winged creatures soaring by overhead. “Hey! Hey, you fuckers! Take me down to Diabolus!”
This time the creatures didn’t ignore Jason as they had earlier. This time, they swooped down. Two of them grabbed up Jason and yanked him high into the air, dragging Stewart, who still clung precariously to Jason, along for the ride.
The battlefield reeled around them as they swayed wildly between the two creatures. Other winged beasts zipped past, raining fire onto the soldiers who zipped past below just as quickly. The rat-tat-tat of gunfire came from every direction, and explosions bloomed in the air around them as mortars detonated.
Then they left the battlefield behind as they soared down into the rift and raced headlong toward the central lake of fire.
STACY BURNED. HER NERVES burned, her mind burned. Every fiber of her being burned. Her body arched in agony.
“Please!” she shrieked in a rare moment of coherent thought. “Please take me out of here! I’ll do anything! Please! Have mercy!”
But thought burned away again.
And then, mercifully, she felt herself plucked from the lava. She was born up toward the tall red-skinned man with his massive, dangling penis.
She knew what she had to do to survive. She would not allow herself to be tossed back into the lava.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN – Slaying the Beast
AS THEY SHOT ALONG through the rift, Jason felt like Luke Skywalker making his final run in the trench of the Death Star. Like the same ride he had taken earlier, the river of lava bubbled mere feet beneath his dangling legs. But unlik
e before, rather than a cavern roof far above, there was merely black sky. The whole place was now open to the sky, free for anyone below to come out.
As they swung madly between the two creatures, Jason warned Stewart, “We’re going into the lava. You’re going to feel like you’re burning alive, but try to keep your head about you. Tell yourself you’ll be all right. You’ve been stung by the creatures, so you’re not being physically damaged.” He almost laughed at his own words. They were easier said than done. In fact, he wasn’t sure if he himself would be able to keep his wits and carry out his plan. But he had to try. He had to save Stacy.
“There will be a ledge around the cavern,” he continued. “When we drop, swim for it.”
Stewart’s eyes were wide with trepidation as he looked back at Jason. “Why?” the officer asked. “What are you going to do?”
Jason didn’t answer, lest their winged captors overhear the crucial part of Jason’s plan and try to thwart it. He merely rode along in silence for about a minute more. Then, by his admittedly rough and hasty and possibly unreliable calculations, he figured they were very near the central lake of fire.
So he reached around to Stewart’s holster, pulled out his gun and, firing rapidly and precisely, put three bullets through the head of the winged creature gripping his right shoulder. The thing let go and arced down into the lava, dead.
As soon as the thing released him, Jason quickly swiveled his arm and emptied two more bullets into the head of the creature holding his left shoulder. It all happened so swiftly that the thing had not yet even had time to react to the death of its companion.
Then it too was dead. All three of them, Jason, Stewart and the second dead winged creature, plummeted downward even as momentum carried them forward.
Still clutching the gun in his fist, Jason slammed into the lava and sank, dazed. Pain and fire ignited his nerves and, screaming, he surfaced. As he felt his reason slipping away into a dull wash of agony, he looked around wildly, trying to get his bearings.
Stewart was floundering a few feet away. Up ahead, Jason saw the great lake of fire and the ledge that circled it. They had dropped into the lava just at the point where the rift opened into the immense cavern. But of course, it was a cavern no more, merely a great borehole in the Earth: the ceiling was now open to the sky, having been burned away and caved in after the wards had fallen.
Jason didn’t take the time to congratulate himself on the accuracy of his calculations. He merely began swimming desperately toward the refuge offered by that far shelf at the cavern’s edge.
He was gratified to see that Stewart was likewise swimming for it.
The lake was now filled with so many people that it was like a mosh pit at the most hellish rave that had ever been held.
The place was also literally crawling with the tentacled children of the beast. It was like an infestation of gargantuan spiders. They crawled up and down the walls of the cavern, entering and leaving through the gaping hole where the cavern ceiling had once been. Down the walls they came, their net sacks squirming with people taken from the surface. These they emptied into the boiling lava before clambering back up the walls and out to the surface in search of more humans.
This lone cavern wasn’t big enough to hold everyone the beasts hoped to bring down here. Jason knew, from his meld, that there were more caverns such as this, deeper in the Earth, to which the inevitable overflow of people would be taken. There were also other caverns that were even now being bored from solid rock, in preparation for human sinners. Soon, the ground beneath England would be riddled with lakes of fire such as this, and eventually, the entire world.
Jason battled his way forward through a sea of thrashing limbs and pressing flesh.
He had intended to search the faces he passed, hoping by fortuitous chance to run into Stacy, Paula or Mike. But he no longer had the presence of mind for any such search. The only thought he was able to cling to amidst the searing pain was the simple imperative: get to that shelf or we’re all dead.
A thrashing limb slammed into his eye. Another smacked into his ear, making his head ring. But he pushed valiantly forward, battering his way through the unyielding wall of flesh.
Finally, barely conscious of himself, he realized he had reached his destination. He struggled to clamber up onto the rocky shelf. As he did so, one of the guards stalking the shelf saw him and approached, ready to kick him back into the lava.
Jason felt the searing heat of metal burning into his palm, and remembered. He raised the gun and squeezed off a shot, miraculously managing to strike the approaching creature right between the eyes. The winged creature crumpled to the ground. Jason thanked God that the gun hadn’t melted to slag during its immersion in the lava. Surely, if ever he got out of this infernal place, the gun would become the stuff of commercial legend.
With the last barrier removed, he heaved himself onto the shelf. Not pausing to wait on the pain to abate, he whirled and searched the mass of flesh.
Thankfully, Stewart had done an admirable job of keeping the mission in mind. He wasn’t far behind Jason.
Jason reached out, leaning precariously over the lava, and helped to drag Stewart out.
Finally, both of them knelt on the shore, heaving breathlessly and, oddly enough, shivering as their sanity emerged from the blinding agony, as if it were a freezing cold settling into their skin. They were both now completely naked. Jason’s underwear—Mike’s underwear—had burned away, as had Stewart’s uniform.
Jason looked around. There weren’t any guards nearby. Apparently most of the winged creatures were away on the surface, gathering people, and so leaving the rocky shelf woefully under guarded.
He checked the chamber of the gun. It was empty. “Any more ammo?” he asked.
Stewart nodded.
Jason handed the gun back to him. “Lock and load, dude.”
Stewart held out his fist, which he opened to reveal a full clip. “I pulled it out of my pocket before we hit the lava,” he explained. He shoved the clip into place in the gun’s butt. “Ready,” he said. “What now?”
Jason looked out over the steaming, roiling lake. “Now you cover me while I look for my friends.” He put his hands to either side of his mouth and shouted, “Stacy! Paula! Mike!” He added in a sarcastic, singsong voice, “Come out, come out, wherever you are!” Then, “Stacy! Guys! Don’t make me come in after you!”
But it seemed that was exactly what he was going to have to do, since no one was answering his shouts. If they could even hear him at all, above the booms of the exploding, overheated air above the lava, and the endless shrieking of the tormented souls.
Just as Jason was about to step into the lava for another swim, Stewart called out, “Heads up, mate! We’ve got company!”
Jason turned around and looked. One of the beasts was clambering down the sheer face of the cavern wall straight toward them, tentacles reaching. As soon as Jason’s eyes fell on it, the thing stopped, hanging twenty feet above them, secured to the cavern wall by tentacles stretched above it like ropes.
It turned a huge, watery eye on Jason and peered intently at him for several long moments. Jason was transfixed, not by fear, but because he had no idea what to do if the creature attacked. Stewart’s tiny bullets would surely be completely ineffective against such a large creature.
As the thing studied him, Jason thought he felt something stirring at the back of his mind, a pale imitation of the Beast’s more powerful mind. But almost as soon as he thought he’d felt it, the sensation vanished.
And the beast lowered itself down onto the rocky shelf and stepped gingerly around Jason and Stewart, completely ignoring them. It moved out into the lava, where it emptied the contents of its belly sack. Then it reached out with its tentacles, seized hold of the rocky cavern wall and climbed back to the surface.
“Strange,” Stewart commented.
Jason nodded. But unlike Stewart, Jason wasn’t baffled by the creature’s behavior. He was dis
turbed by it. Like the winged creatures, the children of the beast were ignoring him. Almost as if they’d been instructed to do so. And apparently, considering that the beast hadn’t taken Stewart, they were ignoring people around him as well.
Then he realized something else. They were following his commands. He’d told the winged creatures above to take him to Diabolus, and they had tried to obey, before he’d shot them.
“Fuck,” he whispered.
“What?” Stewart asked.
Jason shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Hey, guys,” a familiar voice nearby said. “A little help here, please?”
Jason looked to the edge of the rocky shelf. Mike was there, trying to pull himself from the lava. His face was strained with repressed agony; he was actually sobbing with the effort of maintaining his sanity in the face of the searing pain. Paula was directly behind him, clinging to his waist for dear life, wailing and muttering incoherently.
Jason and Stewart leapt to the lava’s edge and dragged them both out. Mike and Paula knelt on the bare rock, dripping lava, coughing and retching, gasping for breath.
Jason slapped at Mike’s face. “Come back to me, buddy, now,” he urged. “No time to waste.”
Mike nodded and waved Jason off. “I’m all right.” He turned to Paula and put an arm around her shoulders. “You okay, sweetie?”
She nodded and gave a thumbs-up.
“Good,” Jason said.
“I saw you escaping. Did you make it all the way out?” Mike asked.
Jason nodded.
“How are things on the surface?”
“Cloudy,” Jason said. “With a 20% chance of rain showers in the morning. How have things been down here?”
Mike frowned. “Come on. You know what I mean.”
Jason shook his head. “It’s pretty bad up there. And yes, that’s an understatement. They’re going to be dropping bunker busters down here in, oh, about half an hour now.”