by Alan Baxter
And that was his intention. The mission was obviously Fubar-ed. It was time to call in the transport ship and get the hell out of Dodge. An alarm klaxon began to sound just then and Brent stood, bringing his rifle into targeting position. The door in the facility slammed open and a man staggered out. There was blood on his face and on his shirt.
Brent was about to call to the man when a huge, misshapen figure lunged out of the door. There was plenty of light now and Brent figured he was looking at the thing that had killed Gentry or one of its brothers. As a kid, one of Brent's favorite movies had been The Creature From the Black Lagoon. This thing looked like the titular creature's bigger, meaner sibling.
What had Captain Younger said they were looking for? Genetic mutations? Yeah, this thing was mutated all to hell, whatever it was. Brent raised the A1, but not before the fish-man grabbed the running man and broke his neck with a quick twist.
“Son of a bitch!” Brent shouted as he triggered a controlled, three-round burst from the rifle. The bullets tore into the hide of the fish-man, but it didn’t fall. The thing turned bulbous eyes toward the source of its pain. With a snarl of rage, the creature moved with surprising speed toward Brent.
Brent fired again, and continued firing until he had emptied the magazine. The fish-man lurched, stumbled, and finally fell. It had taken close to thirty rounds to put the thing down. Brent ejected the empty magazine and pushed another one into place, noticing that his hands were shaking as he did so.
He was trying not to think about what he had just seen. He reminded himself the fish-man was some sort of genetic experiment. It wasn’t some supernatural monster. It was an animal, created by scientists.
Okay. What to do? Brent had hoped to find other team members here, but if there were more of the fish-men in and around the facility then he needed to get the hell away from there. He decided to head for the beach, send up a flare, and take his chances.
Brent turned toward the shore just in time to see three more of the fish-men heading his way. They must have been attracted by the gunfire. How many of these damn things were there?
* * *
Kharrn was crouched in the darkness, just a few yards from the main entrance to the research facility when he heard an alarm klaxon followed by the sound of an automatic weapon. The gunfire sounded like it was coming from the other side of the facility.
Kharrn had been wondering how he was going to get through the steel security door without smashing it down and revealing his presence, but now the door banged open and a man in a white lab coat ran out, leaving the door swinging in the wind.
Kharrn stepped into the light and grabbed the man by the front of his coat. Kharrn said, “What’s happening in there?”
The man’s eyes were wide with terror. His hands fluttered uselessly at Kharrn’s thick wrist. “Let me go. Jesus Christ, man. Let me go. They’ll kill us all.”
Kharrn shook the man like a dog shaking a rat. “Tell me what’s happened.”
“We lost the containment grid. They’re free. All of them are free. He was smarter than we thought. He helped them escape.”
“How many?”
“Please let me go.”
Kharrn hefted the axe in his other hand. “Answer me or I’ll cripple you and leave you for them.”
“Oh God. Oh please. I don’t know exactly. A couple of dozen maybe. Now please let me go.”
Kharrn caught the sharp odor of urine and he tossed the man aside. He stalked over to the open door and stepped inside. The bloody remains of another man lay on the tile about ten feet down the corridor. Bloody tracks smeared the floor. Huge, bare feet with webbing between the toes.
Kharrn paused as he felt a tickle in the back of his head. Something was reaching out and probing. But Kharrn had spent centuries learning to defend himself against that sort of incursion and he pushed the searching tentacles out of his head.
Still, it meant that the true Deep Ones had arrived. Crowley had told him they would come. The fleeing man had said the mutations had escaped. He had also said something about a mysterious ‘he’ who had helped them to escape.
If the Deep Ones were here then time was running out. They would think nothing of slaughtering everyone on Russell Island, including the civilians on the far side.
But what did they want? If they had come to free the mutations, then that was already accomplished. They had merely to wait for them in the surf. Were they after revenge? Or was there something more? Kharrn decided the answers waited in the main lab. He started along the corridor, alert for any attack from man, beast, or something that was both.
* * *
Marcos hit the computer room like a force of nature. He did not back up the files. That was begging for grief. Instead he went to each of the mainframes and gave them the command to reformat. It wasn't quite that easy, there were plenty of protocols to prevent what he was doing, but he managed it just the same. The only catch was that doing it took time he could ill afford.
There were ten mainframes in the facility. They were necessary evils. They cost more money than he would make in a lifetime and he crippled them without hesitation as that was the only guarantee he had that he would, in fact, have a lifetime.
Before he was even finished the first of the Chimera came into the area, sniffing the air and loping around on all fours, letting him see exactly how odd the legs were, how close the thing was to a toad or frog. The eyes were vast and the pupils were blown. One was easily three times the size of the other. Judging by the scars, this was one of the creatures Sterling had vivisectionalized.
It was mostly healed from the damage, another point in their favor, but the damage to the brain seemed permanent.
Marcos thought he would certainly die there, but the creature looked past him and finally left the room.
“Well, this is convenient.” The voice was low and calm and grated his nerves. “Just when I was looking for someone to ask questions to, here you are, ready to answer them.”
The man facing him was average. Maybe a little tall, but no giant. He was lean, brown hair, brown eyes, wearing a dark sweater, a black shirt and black jeans. He wasn’t wearing shoes, which while peculiar was hardly unusual if one walked along the beach enough.
He was wearing glasses, rimless and with wire arms. He took them off as he came closer, and still he was unremarkable.
And then the stranger smiled, and nothing about him was average. That smile made him want to piss himself. “What's your name?”
“Javier Marcos.” He hadn't planned on answering but the words were out before he could stop himself.
“Javier, I need you to tell me what's going on here.”
He almost did it a second time but clamped his lips shut.
The stranger's smile grew larger, just at the edge of too large for his face. His teeth were broad and white and looked for all the world like they were made for biting faces apart.
“Javier, we're being civil so far. Don't make me start breaking things.”
“Things?”
“Fingers. Toes. Teeth. Whatever. Tell me what I need to know. Tell me right now, before things get ugly.” He walked closer as he spoke and Javier tried backing up, but soon found himself pinned against a mainframe computer that was currently cleaning itself of all possible evidence.
“I can't help you.” Javier shook his head and stared hard into those brown eyes. They stared back, and they smiled and that smile was just as bad as the grin below it.
“I don't want your help. I want answers. How many of them are there? What's the source of the materials you've been using? How long has this been going on?”
Try as he might, Javier could not look away from those eyes. The man was no taller than he was, but he seemed gigantic.
“There are twenty-five viable candidates and I don't know how many rejects. We've got a specimen in sub-level two. Been
keeping it there and heavily sedated, as in comatose, last I heard. We've been at this for almost five years, but we've been moving carefully. No risk of exposure. I don't know what went wrong.”
Javier shook his head. “What have you been doing to my mind?”
“Nothing. I've just been asking questions. Show me to your specimen.”
“No.”
The man's smile got even worse and he moved his hand along Javier's face before grabbing his ear and crushing it in his grip.
“Owww! Leggomee!”
“Keep screaming and one of those things will come along. I can handle them. Can you?”
Javier tried to pull away, but stopped when the agony in his ear exploded.
“Take me to the specimen, or I'll start with your ear and move on from there. Seriously. I don’t mind taking pieces off of you, sweet pea. You're the one who tried playing God.”
Javier nodded and held up his hands. He would make his move as soon as the man let go of his ear. A quick jab at the man's solar plexus and while he was winded he'd knee the bastard in the face.
The man let go and continued to stare Javier in the eyes.
Javier nodded. “This way. It's this way.”
“Good boy. For a minute there, I thought you were going to swing at me and I'd have to rip your ear off.”
For the life of him, Javier did not know if the man was joking.
* * *
Javier was a nervous twitch away from pissing himself. Crowley was fine with that. Nervous Nellies made his life easier. The thought that he had used mind control to get his way was also amusing. While he could probably arrange something, it would take more effort that he wanted to invest, and as he had expected the man was quick enough to go along with the promise of pain.
The elevators were locked. That was what happened when security protocols set in. Why let the monsters they'd created get out the easy way? Still, there stairs here and there and Crowley watched while Javier fidgeted with his keys and finally managed to open a door.
“Careful sunshine. Might be more of those things.”
His point was made when they heard the thing roaring from below. The sound echoed up the stairwell and bounced through the concrete hallway. Javier turned to run and Crowley grabbed him by his arm.
“Oh, no.”
“Lemme go! Lemme goooooo.” The man was on the verge of tears.
“You played God with something that has its own gods.” Crowley's smile nearly split at the edges. “You decided you had to make a better soldier maybe? Or a better human being? Or just to see what you could do. That never goes well. The difference this time is I'm here to make sure you see firsthand what happens when it goes wrong. You don't get to get away.”
Damned if he didn't try. Javier thrashed and whimpered and pulled at his arm as if it were locked in a bear trap. Crowley shook him hard enough to rattle his body and gripped his arm even harder.
“We figure a way out of this, great. Until then you're my personal property. Come along now. I need to know where you're holding your 'specimen’.”
“I don't want to see it again! I don't!”
“You don't get a choice, sweet pea! You screwed up. Your specimen must be awake now and if it is, it's called to its brethren. The only chance you have is if we set that damned thing free!”
“Others?”
“Oh, Javier, you have no idea. They're older than mankind. Older than you can imagine and there are so many of them. For a while I thought they were truly gone, but no, they've just been in hiding.”
“I thought. They said there was just one!”
Crowley grinned harder and stared at him and Javier flinched as if slapped. “Only one? They're like cockroaches, Javier! See one and it's already too late. So you better fucking hope—”
Something lurched from the shadows, and then Javier's head vanished into the mouth of the beast. It bit down and sprayed blood over the walls as it pulled away from the stump of Javier's neck.
Crowley cursed and drove the thing backward, shoving it down the stairs. Javier's body slumped, still spraying crimson stains as it dropped, and Crowley jumped over the corpse with ease, but not before the blood sprayed his legs.
Later, if he thought about it, he might feel guilty about how the man had died, but it wasn't likely. The man worked at a top secret genetics lab. That would never be beneficial to anyone. Another variation of Pandora's Box only this one created bigger, badder fish-men.
The thing came for him and Crowley ran into it as it stood taller and loped up the stairs. The hand that hit him broke ribs. Crowley hissed between his teeth and rammed his hands into both of the bulbous eyes, tearing with his fingers.
The screech it let out was deafening, and he wondered if the monsters had more than one volume setting. Just the same it was too busy working on seeing through ruined eyes to notice Crowley dropping between its legs and slithering down the stairs, wincing at the hot pain of broken bones.
He didn't carry any weapons. Crowley had to jump to reach the thick neck of the thing, but he managed, hauling it backward down the stairs with the unexpected weight. On the humans he went for a choke hold. Here he went for maximum damage and wrenched the head of the creature around until the bones in the neck snapped with a firecracker series of reports.
It crashed to the ground and let out a gurgling hiss as it died.
Down below, further along than he would have expected, Crowley heard the sound of gunfire and though he could not make out the words, he knew the voice as Kharrn called out in rage.
Down the hallway past the door he was obligated to kick open, Crowley saw too many shapes. Not just humans. Not just monsters shaped by men. Deep Ones. True Deep Ones. They were coming in. Some carried weapons, others merely used their claws as they tore into the escaped nightmares Javier and his associates had bred.
One small part of him was horrified.
Another piece was repulsed by the shapes of the things.
Most of him was thrilled. It was so rare that he got to cut loose properly.
* * *
Kharrn followed the corridor until he reached an elevator. Though the building still had power, the elevator didn’t seem to be operating. Kharrn found a stairwell. The door was locked but the axe sheered through the bolt as easily as it had hacked down the gates of Uruk when he had attacked the city with the armies of Sargon. Kharrn didn't know if it was sorcery or time-lost metallurgy, but the blade never lost its edge and the metal had so far proved indestructible. Kharrn stepped into the stairwell and started down. Whatever secrets the place held, they would likely be buried deep.
He had only taken a few steps downward when another of the mutant creatures came roaring up at him. This one wasn’t as big as the one he’d seen previously but it had spines like a sea urchin and its head was just a shapeless mass with eyes and a roaring maw.
Kharrn braced his feet on the stairs, lifted the axe high, and then brought the heavy weapon down on the monster’s skull. The mutant’s hide wasn’t as tough as that of the other and the axe split the creature’s skull, sending blood and brain matter splattering down the steps. Kharrn was careful not to slip in the gore as he stepped over the dead creature.
There was another locked door at the bottom of the stairs and the axe made short work of this one too. This led to a large laboratory. The room smelled of chemicals and pain. Kharrn narrowed his eyes as he saw the tables fitted with straps and restraints. This was where monsters were made. Kharrn had no love for the Deep Ones, but he did respect them. An elder race, older than humanity, and one of the few things that had survived the cataclysm that separated the forgotten age where Kharrn had been born from recorded history.
Kharrn heard a moan and he looked toward the far end of the room where there was a big door with a glass window. A man lay on the floor leaning against the door. Kharrn crossed the ro
om, keeping alert for any threat. When he reached the door he saw the front of the man's shirt was covered with blood that ran from his nose. The blood mixed with drool from the man's gaping mouth. His eyes were fixed straight ahead but he wasn't seeing anything. The man's mind was obviously long gone.
“You still live then, savage?” a voice said from nowhere. “It has been so long.”
Kharrn stepped up so that he could see into the room beyond the door. The room was filled with computers and medical equipment. A table in center of the room held a Deep One in a web of straps and wires. It was looking at Kharrn with dark and ancient eyes. Deep Ones were immortal unless killed. He didn't remember this one, but it knew him.
“You and I fought once on an island far from here,” the voice inside Kharrn's head said.
Kharrn spoke aloud though he knew he didn't need to. “There are many gaps in my memory. I don't remember the fight, but I believe you.”
“You almost killed me.”
“This was before the cataclysm?”
“Yes, in the days when Father Dagon strode the Earth and the Ones Who Walk Behind the Angles held sway.”
“Few can remember those days. How did you end up here?”
“I was caught in a storm and washed up near Golden Cove. The men who found me turned me over to the scientists who have tormented me for the last five years. They had some sort of machine that kept my brothers in the deep from hearing me. But I finally found a way around it.”
“I will free you,” Kharrn said.
“No need. My brothers come. They are here even now. All on this pitiful island will die.”
“The people on the other side of this island have nothing to do with this place.”
“No matter. I will have my revenge.”