Burial Ground

by Michael McBride

  Sorenson unleashed a short spat of bullets, discarded the spent clip, and snapped another home.

  The glow down the tunnel ahead of Sam wavered and started to fade.

  She tripped on something and fell forward. Her hand slipped out of his.

  In the dying light, he saw a jumble of broken bones on the ground. Sam pinwheeled her arms for balance. Movement drew his eye to the recessed alcove in the wall to his right.

  A pair of rheumy eyes set into a scaled forehead turned in his direction. A large, feathered body was crammed into the small space where the remains had once been. It unfurled its coiled body in serpentine fashion.

  The incendiary grenade fizzled and died.

  Blackness flooded the corridor with a skree that was so close Merritt could smell the rotting meat on the creature's breath.

  VII

  10:28 p.m.

  Consciousness hit Tasker like a runaway train, bringing with it pain beyond anything he had ever experienced. His entire back side felt as though it had been fried on a griddle. He drew a sharp intake of breath and inhaled dirty water through his mouth and nose, which induced a coughing spasm that only filled his throat with blood and intensified the agony. Smoke and dust swirled around him. The rain slapped his left cheek. He tried to open his eyes, but only the left responded. The right was pressed into the ground and packed with mud. The clearing shifted in and out of focus through the small gap beneath his swollen eyelid.

  He heard what sounded like an eagle's cry as it circled above him, only the sound had come from much lower to the ground, not far to his right. With the revelation of what had made the sound, the memories assaulted him.

  If he didn't get the hell out of there right now, he was a dead man.

  He tried to push himself up, but his arms and legs were unresponsive. Were it not for the pain, he might have suspected he'd been separated from them in the blast. He could see the back of his left hand and forearm. Both were soaked with blood. His jacket sleeve was in tatters, and wooden and metallic slivers alike stood from the exposed skin. Shrapnel. He'd been fortunate to have been wearing his backpack or his thorax would have become a pincushion. As it was, he must have broken at least one rib and punctured a lung for there to be so much blood in his mouth.

  The shriek of another bird seared the night. But they weren't birds, were they? He had glimpsed them when they exploded from the bushes and attacked McMasters. Blurs of feathers and claws, the living embodiment of the desiccated remains in the bundle he had ripped open in the cliff-side tomb. They had attacked with the kind of pure savagery that he'd only witnessed in sharks during a feeding frenzy.

  There would be no surviving another encounter. He needed to drag his broken body out of there right this very second.

  How long had he been unconscious? Where were Gearhardt and his party? For all he knew, they could have led the creatures away from him. He drew comfort from that thought, but only for a moment.

  He heard a soft splash and a slurp of mud. A shadow fell across him from out of his direct line of sight.

  Tasker held his breath and listened.

  Another squishing sound from behind him and to the left.

  He released a stale exhalation and breathed shallowly, silently.

  Something nudged his backpack, then the left side of his ribcage. And still he could only see the shadow.

  More sloppy footsteps. One. Then another.

  Every fiber of his being screamed for him to shove to his feet and sprint for his life, but he knew in his current weakened state that he didn't have a prayer of outrunning it.

  Something nuzzled his shoulder, lifting him slightly from the muck, then dropping him back down.

  He felt warm breath on his ear a split-second before a shrill cry nearly pierced his eardrum. A scream threatened to burst from his chest. He managed to contain it and remained as still as he could.

  Why hadn't it attacked yet?

  Pressure behind his left ear, forcing his face deeper into the mud. He could barely breathe through his left nostril and the corner of his mouth.

  Two more stealthy footsteps. Closer.

  A face lowered into view. Too close. Broad nostrils on an elongated snout. Scaled lips lined with interlocking rows of sharp teeth. It bumped him in the forehead with its chin.

  Its breath reeked of death and decay, its scaled skin of rot and fecal matter.

  It froze when another skree sounded from the jungle behind him.

  In one swift motion, it was running. Scaled gray legs flashed past, then a long, feathered tail.

  Tasker lay still, waiting for it to return.

  More cries echoed through the forest, only farther away now.

  He finally allowed himself to blink.

  There was no sound.

  No movement.

  Why was he still alive?

  VIII

  10:32 p.m.

  Sam reached back for Merritt's hand as her feet tangled in the partially-articulated mess of bones. Over her shoulder, she saw him grab for her hand too late. Beside him, movement from the wall. Something large that until that moment had held perfectly still. It turned toward Merritt with the blunted snout of a caiman and a crown of feathers that rose to erection like the spines on an iguana's back.

  The light died. Darkness swallowed her as she fell to the ground and landed squarely on her shoulder.

  A loud avian cry filled the tunnel.

  She rolled onto her back in time to see the repeated flash of muzzle flare. In the strobing light, she witnessed snippets of chaos. A long neck, bristled with feathers, stretching out of the enclave. Mouth like a crocodile's, opening wide. Dull eyes that glinted with golden rings. Slender, curled fingers with sharp claws. It jerked in twitching motions as the bullets pounded its scaled breast.

  Even over the deafening reports, she heard it scream.

  The rifle's carbine whirred long after the clip ran dry.

  Hissing.

  Claws scrabbling against stone.

  Finally, silence.

  Merritt slapped another clip into the SCAR.

  Sam extricated her feet from the tangle of body parts and started to cry.

  "Are you all right?" Merritt asked. His voice positively trembled.

  She couldn't find her voice, and nodded even though he couldn't see her. His hand found hers in the pitch black.

  "Keep moving!" Sorenson shouted from the darkness. There was a thumping sound as he stumbled into the crumpled carcass on the ground. "They're right behind us!"

  Another shriek echoed from the direction of the outside world.

  Sorenson turned toward the sound and fired.

  Merritt tugged on her hand, urging her deeper into the mountain.

  Light blossomed ahead, blinding after the absolute darkness.

  The tunnel framed silhouettes much farther ahead than she had expected. The floor sloped downward and became uneven. She couldn't bring herself to look to either side as they descended. The skulls of the ancient dead leered at her from the walls, but worse still would be meeting the reptilian stare of another one of those creatures.

  How long had the one Merritt killed been hiding in that recess? Had it watched the others pass while waiting for the stragglers, or had it somehow slipped past them in the shadows?

  The corridor ended and they stepped out into the cavern where the others had already gathered. Blazing light flumed from another incendiary grenade where it rested against the far wall. Colton and Leo wore hard hats with the spotlights turned on, while Galen paced nervously in the middle of the room.

  Colton took up post at the mouth of the tunnel at the back of the cavern. The light barely penetrated the dark channel.

  A distant skree.

  The acoustics of the cavern made it impossible to pinpoint the direction from which it originated.

  "I can't hold them off forever!" Sorenson yelled. He backed into the room, firing in indiscriminate bursts.

  Sam looked past him into the tunnel. What
little light reached into the orifice swirled with cordite smoke. The darkness beyond churned as though a living entity.

  They were out there, at the limit of the fading flare's reach.

  Waiting.

  Nails clacked on bare stone.

  The shuffling sound of bodies jostling each other in the close confines.

  Muffled grunts.

  The incendiary grenade fizzled and hissed. The corona of light beat a hasty retreat.

  Sorenson shot again into the tunnel and something shrieked.

  Merritt removed his hand from hers to steady his rifle, and pointed it past Sorenson toward where flashes of iridescent green tested the limit of the glare.

  The glow dimmed, and, with a sizzle, the light extinguished.

  A predatory skree raised the hackles on her arms.

  The shadows advanced with the clamor of talons.

  Chapter Twelve

  I

  Andes Mountains, Peru

  October 30th

  10:36 p.m. PET

  Merritt unsnapped the canister from where he had clipped it to his belt, pulled the pin, and tossed it to his left. Gunfire echoed from directly to his right, where Sorenson shot blindly into the tunnel. Shrieks and high-pitched cries erupted from the darkness.

  "I can't see a damn thing!" Sorenson shouted.

  Chemical fire spouted from the incendiary grenade. The sudden influx of light stained Merritt's vision red. He raised his rifle and fired into the dark mouth of the channel. When his sight finally cleared, he unconsciously retreated a step. He was completely unprepared for what he saw.

  Blood poured down the stone floor from the tunnel. Feathers filled the air. Hisses and squeals rose over the tumult of gunfire as bodies fought for position amid the carcasses of their brethren. One creature hopped up on the flank of a twitching mass of scales and feathers, lowered its head toward the ground, and released a savage skree from a mouth opened wide enough to swallow a bowling ball. Sharp teeth glinted, and quills stood straight up from its long neck.

  They were going to be massacred inside this mountain.

  "Fall back!" Colton shouted from behind him. Sam tugged at his jacket.

  He stumbled away from the tunnel, firing every step of the way.

  The creature hopped down from the corpse and crouched even closer to the ground. A bullet ricocheted in front of it, and in a blur of motion, feathered shapes exploded from the opening.

  Sorenson bellowed and shot into their ranks, but they were already upon him. The man's battle cry turned to screams of pain. A hand grabbed Merritt by the collar and jerked him in reverse. He whirled to see Sam already running toward the smaller tunnel at the rear of the chamber, where Colton stood beside the entrance, firing back into the room while the others ducked past him into the darkness.

  Merritt sprinted after them and raced into the thin crevice. The lamp affixed to Leo's helmet bounced and jittered ahead, highlighting random sections of the bare rock wall. Merritt glanced back and saw Colton spray a stream of bullets into the chamber, then duck into the corridor behind him.

  Sorenson's screams were drowned out by avian cries.

  "Go!" Colton shouted, shoving him deeper into the mountain. Colton's headlamp cast strange, elongated shadows from behind Merritt that made the shrinking tunnel appear to bend, twist, and turn.

  Leo's weak beam grew larger and larger on the stone wall ahead of them. Merritt's heart nearly stopped at the realization that they were racing into a dead end, but then the light lowered to the floor and faded to a candle's glow.

  At the end of the passage, Sam crawled through a tiny hole rimed by Leo's light. The passage couldn't have been larger than a sewer pipe. Her feet disappeared as she wriggled out of sight.

  He stopped and stared at the diminutive orifice. Colton's lamp made his massive shadow dance on the wall.

  "Get in there, for Christ's sake!" Colton yelled. He spun and shot into the tunnel behind him.

  There were more hawk-like shrieks and the rapid clatter of talons on granite.

  Merritt slid the rifle into the hole and dove in after it. He pushed it in front of him and squirmed as fast as he could through the claustrophobic tube toward the pale yellow aura ahead.

  Behind him, the report of gunfire ceased, and was replaced by the scraping sound of Colton scrabbling into the tunnel.

  There was no longer anyone guarding their rear.

  II

  10:39 p.m.

  Leo fell out of the tunnel onto a crusted heap of feces and struggled to his feet. He turned his head to sweep the lamp from one side of the cavern to the other. It barely penetrated the darkness and died before reaching the far wall. This was as far as they had explored. Lord only knew what lay beyond. There was no going back, however, so their only option was to take their chances with the unknown.

  He turned, grabbed Galen by the upper arm, and hauled him out of the passage. The man fell to all fours and let out a meek sob.

  "Hurry!" Leo called to Sam. The moment she was within reach, he dragged her into the cavern. He removed the helmet from his head and shoved it against her chest. "Put this on and see if you can find a way out of here."

  She donned it, and when she turned away, he watched the beam on the other miner's helmet slowly brighten from deep within the earthen tube as it neared.

  Merritt's rifle clattered across the stone and tumbled out onto the ground. The pilot followed. Leo helped him to his feet, then returned to the hole. Now that Merritt wasn't blocking the light, he could clearly see Colton crawling toward him. Hand over hand. The lamp on his forehead swayed with the exertion, his face a wash of shadow behind the glare. He shoved his rifle ahead of him as Merritt had done.

  "Get the others moving!" Colton shouted. "I can hear them right behind---"

  The light grew smaller as Colton slid quickly backward.

  Leo lunged inside and grabbed for Colton's hand. The two men locked wrists. He tried to gain leverage with his knees, but he wasn't fast enough.

  Colton cried out as he was again jerked from behind, dragging Leo deeper into the tunnel with him. Leo felt pressure on his ankles. Someone was trying to drag him back out.

  The rifle lay on the ground between his face and Colton's. He could see his old friend's mouth, bared teeth shimmering with blood.

  There was another sharp tug and Colton roared in agony. Leo's arm was strained to the point that any more pressure would dislocate his shoulder. Behind him, Merritt shouted for him to hold on and pulled on his legs.

  He heard the cracking sound of breaking bone, and Colton released his wrist.

  "Let me go," Colton said.

  Another jerk pulled Colton away, but Leo grabbed his wrist again.

  "You go," Leo said, "I go."

  There was a sharp skree from beyond Colton's prone form.

  "Listen to me, damn it!" Colton snapped. Bloody spittle dotted Leo's face. Another snap of bone and Colton winced. "Let. Me. Go."

  Leo groaned as he was stretched to his physical limit. It felt as though his ribs were pulling apart and his arm was about to be yanked right off. He strained to maintain his grasp.

  The force working against Colton increased.

  One by one, Leo's fingers started to slip.

  "I'm sorry," he whispered. His eyes met Colton's through the shadows and an understanding passed between them. Blood drained from the corners of Colton's mouth. The pain contorted his features.

  A loud crack of breaking bone sounded like a gunshot.

  Sloppy tearing sounds.

  "You have ten seconds," Colton rasped with what little voice remained.

  His hand was wrenched away. Leo was helpless but to watch as Colton was dragged in the opposite direction. The light on his helmet grew smaller and smaller. A scream trailed him into the darkness.

  Leo didn't stick around to watch. He grabbed Colton's rifle and frantically wiggled back out of the hole.

  There was no time to waste.

  The clock was ticking.
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  III

  10:42 p.m.

  The pain was beyond anything he had ever imagined. Once those jaws had clamped down on his lower leg, no amount of thrashing or jerking could free it. Teeth like hacksaws had slashed right through his skin and muscle to find purchase on bone, and ground down with almost hydraulic force. His tibia and fibula had both snapped mid-shaft. He had no idea if his foot and ankle were even still attached. A flood of blood left his body as the creature twisted and tugged, drawing him back toward the cavern where the rest of the screeching flock waited.

  Even if he managed to extricate his shattered leg from its grip, he would bleed to death long before reaching help. He was a goner and he knew it. All that remained was to die. The only thing now within his control was how painful that death would be. The hell if he was going to allow himself to be dismembered like all of the others. He was going out on his terms, not theirs.

  And he was going out with a bang.

  The distant egress of the tunnel faded to a pinprick of dim light beyond his outstretched arms. His fingers clawed for traction on the smooth rock, yet they were unable to slow him. The skin tore from his fingertips and his nails bent backward and peeled away. The ground was slick with his blood.

  It was now or never.

  In one swift motion, he flopped over onto his back. The pressure on his lower leg abated as the bottom half tore away in the mouth of the predator. He screamed in agony and pawed at his jacket pocket until his hand wrapped around the smooth, round object.

  Blood gushed unimpeded from his ragged stump.

  The respite was brief. Jaws clamped around his opposite calf and pulled him again in reverse.

  He felt the metallic ball of the grenade in his left hand and drew a measure of comfort from its awesome power. With his right hand, he pulled the pin, and cradled death to his bosom.

  Consciousness fled with his lifeblood. His head felt light, detached.