The Lost Army

by Christopher Golden

  In fact, they had an obligation to return his body to his family, if it could be retrieved.

  Hellboy held the long object in both fists. He gave it a powerful twist, and it erupted in sparking flame.

  “A flare?” Arun cried in disbelief. “You had a flare all this time? Why didn’t you use it in the cavern before?”

  Hellboy shook his head. He was beginning to tire of the little professor.

  “If I’d used it before,” he replied, “we wouldn’t have had it now, would we? It isn’t as if I brought a case of them, pal. Even I don’t know what other crap I’ve stored up in the pockets of this belt. But I knew I had at least one of these.”

  He tossed the flare down the tunnel ahead of him, and it dropped lower than the floor they were standing on. Finally, it hit stone and then skittered down a slick decline as smooth as a child’s slide. Where it came to rest, Agent Burke stared up at them with bulging, dead eyes.

  And things moved. Slithered over one another. Asps, anacondas, cobras, dozens of other breeds, thousands of them down there, dragging the man’s body down among them, burying him in their leathery hides.

  “Snakes,” Hellboy said with great disgust. “I hate snakes.”

  “Jesus! Burke,” Meaney cursed. “He walked right into it.”

  “You’re all going back,” Hellboy declared. “Right now. Back to the cave and then out of here. I should have come alone to begin with. I don’t know what I was thinking. I never work well in a group situation. Let’s go.”

  “Just a moment,” Anastasia said, annoyed. “I’m in charge here, and I say nobody’s going anywhere.”

  Hellboy pushed past Arun to take both of Anastasia’s hands in his own. In the dim glow of their flashlights, he looked into her eyes and saw fear and determination at war.

  “’Stasia,” he said softly. “I know you have a lot of courage. You’re a tough woman, and you’ve been through a lot. But being down here is just asking for trouble. I know you think this has all been just like old times. I feel that way, too. But it isn’t really. It’s a lot more risky.”

  “Well, why should we go back and you stay?” she asked.

  “I’m a lot harder to kill than you are,” Hellboy answered.

  Anastasia chuckled. “Lucky for you, or I’d have killed you long ago.”

  Hellboy smiled, but behind him, Professor Lahiri grunted some noise of disapproval. That was enough for him. Obviously, Arun had feelings for Anastasia, but that was no reason to . . .

  “Have you got something you want to say?” Hellboy snapped angrily.

  Arun seemed fearful, but when he said, “No,” Hellboy knew he was lying. Professor Lahiri was a terrible liar.

  “Let’s go,” Anastasia ordered, then turned to Carruthers and Meaney. “You know we can’t go down and get him. Is there anything you want to say about him now, or a prayer he might have liked?”

  “Indeed,” Carruthers said softly. “An old Welsh blessing that Chris Burke particularly liked. ‘May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you’re dead, old friend.’”

  “Now, madame, if it’s all the same to you, I’d like to stay with Hellboy,” Carruthers noted. “I’ve got a score to settle with whomever is responsible for this.”

  Hellboy was about to argue, to insist that Carruthers go topside with the others, when he felt a sudden warmth and wetness at his hip. There was a muffled noise, as if someone were speaking through a gag. And in the canvas bag tied to his belt, something moved.

  “Oh, I think I’m going to be . . . ,” Arun said. And then he was. Hellboy found the stench rather nauseating.

  He opened the bag and before he could even pull out Lady Catherine’s head, she shrieked, “The door is disappearing!” and then the head was still. She was dead again.

  “The door is . . . ,” Hellboy repeated.

  Then he ran, hooves chipping stone, sending shattering echoes through the tunnel. Fifteen paces. Twenty paces. Thirty paces and he could see the green glow up ahead again.

  “Wonderful,” Agent Meaney said behind him. “The entrance is gone, sealed up somehow. It’s like somebody slid that huge stone into the doorway, closing it up. But that’s ridiculous. Nobody’s that strong.”

  “I guess somebody doesn’t want us to leave until after coffee and dessert,” Hellboy joked, scanning the tunnel ahead and behind for either threat or clue.

  “We’re trapped here now,” Arun whined. “We’re going to die here.”

  Then his voice changed a little, became almost perverse in its glee. Hellboy didn’t have to look at the little man to see the lascivious grin on his face.

  “Together,” Arun said, glaring at Anastasia.

  Hellboy clapped a hand on Arun’s back, and the professor went down painfully on one knee. Sometimes Hellboy forgot his own strength.

  “You need to calm down, Professor,” he said. “I have a feeling there are at least a couple of other ways out of here. Dangerous, maybe, but we knew that before we came down here. Whatever kidnapped and slaughtered Lady Catherine and her friends wasn’t selling Girl Scout cookies.”

  He had their attention. Good.

  “I’ll take point. Meaney, you and Carruthers bring up the rear. Professor, there’s a ledge up ahead and we’re going to have to be very careful. Stay calm, and everything will be fine. Now, just follow me.”

  Hellboy moved along to where the tunnel opened up into the main cavern. To their left, a sheer rock wall climbed high above the ledge upon which they stood. To their right stretched a chasm some fifty feet across.

  “What in the world is that green glow?” Agent Carruthers asked. “It seems almost . . . diseased.”

  Hellboy had to agree. The green light emanating from what he assumed was the bottom of the chasm seemed somehow rotten, vile. Even evil, and Hellboy had enough experience with evil to know that not only did it exist, but it spread like a virus.

  “Stay close to the wall,” Anastasia said. “Steady yourselves with your hands, if necessary. Just be careful. This must be the way Lady Catherine’s people were brought, for they most certainly did not go through those snakes.”

  Hellboy stepped carefully. Every time he put his foot down on the ledge, he feared it might crumble beneath him. He did not know the thickness of the rock outcropping on which they walked, or how much weight it would support.

  Anastasia grabbed hold of his tail, and Hellboy was momentarily startled. “What are you . . .”

  “I want to make sure we don’t get separated,” she explained. “If it makes you uncomfortable, I . . .”

  “No, no,” he lied. “That’s okay. I don’t want to lose track of you, either.”

  The ledge seemed to narrow slightly, and the cave to turn to the left, so that Hellboy could not see around the curve. “Slow down a minute,” he instructed.

  Hellboy played his flashlight over the ledge and the wall, but everything seemed sturdy enough. He stepped forward and peered around the corner.

  “Looks okay,” he said. “More of the same.”

  Back to the wall, he moved around the curve carefully, then began to walk straight ahead once again. The others followed suit.

  “What is that singing?” Arun asked.

  Hellboy had almost forgotten about the noise, or music, or whatever it was. It was low and insinuating and after a while it just seemed to sink into his head and disappear there. But the others still heard it and, when brought to his attention, Hellboy could hear it too.

  It was deeply disturbing. Perhaps meant to turn people away. But they could not be turned away for they had nowhere else to go.

  Something skittered across stone in the darkness ahead. Hellboy signaled for the others to halt as he played his flashlight further along the ledge. It was a spider. A rather large spider, at least as broad as Hellboy’s left hand. It froze in the light, then began to skitter toward them once more. Hellboy hated snakes, and he hated spiders as well. But there was one sure, fast way to deal with spiders.

&
nbsp; He lifted his right leg and brought his hoof down hard on top of the huge arachnid. Its bodily fluids spurted out from beneath Hellboy’s hoof, and its legs twitched several times.

  Hellboy was about to comment on his dislike of spiders, to warn the others to look out for more, when something huge shifted high up in the cavern above and ahead of them.

  “What the hell is . . . ,” Carruthers began, but his voice trailed off.

  “Good God!” Meaney cried.

  Three flashlights converged on a huge network of silver, gleaming strands which hung across the chasm like a net. Clinging to the bottom of that web was the spider that had constructed it. It was red and black, a mammoth creature, at least six feet across its abdomen alone. Its eight spindly legs were at least a dozen feet long. And the two sets of mandibles at its gaping, pink maw were sharp indeed, more like tusks than anything else.

  “Hellboy . . . ,” Anastasia gasped, waiting for some kind of action.

  “Well,” he said, “at least now we know what Lady Catherine meant when she told us to watch out for spiders.”

  “Meaney! Carruthers! Kill that thing!” Anastasia barked.

  The MI5 men opened fire with the SA-80’s slung across their chests. The spider blossomed in a bouquet of exploding flesh and a spray of blood.

  “Let’s hope there aren’t any more of those,” Hellboy said, as the gunfire echoed off the cavern walls.

  “The music stopped,” Arun pointed out.

  Hellboy listened intently. The professor was right.

  “Well, if they didn’t know we were coming before, they certainly do now,” Carruthers observed.

  “Good,” Hellboy said. “Maybe they’ll bake a cake.”

  “Damn!” Meaney cried and as they all turned to look, he batted something from his leg. It was another of what now appeared to be the baby spiders.

  “It bit me,” he snarled. “Jesus, that hurt!”

  In the glare of their flashlights, the spider stared up at them defiantly. When it started to crawl toward Anastasia, Hellboy slid carefully past her on the narrow ledge and stomped a hoof down on the thing.

  His hoof went right through the ledge, shattering it. Hellboy nearly lost his balance, but Anastasia grabbed hold of his arm.

  “Thanks, but you shouldn’t have done that,” he told her. “I might have dragged you down after me.”

  “I go where you go,” she said calmly. “Now let’s move on.”

  They turned their attention back to the path in front of them. As Arun stepped over the hole Hellboy had punched through the ledge, a loud rumbling, cracking noise echoed through the cavern.

  “Oh, jeez,” Hellboy said.

  Then the ledge gave way beneath their feet, and all five of them tumbled into the chasm.

  CHAPTER TEN

  —

  Falling, Hellboy bellowed in alarm and frustration. End over end he tumbled, and his companions fell with him. On the way down, his only thoughts were for Anastasia. Experience told him he would likely survive, no matter how long a drop might await them. But already they had fallen too far.

  The others were going to die. Anastasia was going to die, and there was nothing he could do to help her.

  Cold air whipped past his face. Green light flashed in his eyes as he tumbled. Hellboy struggled to right himself, to get some perspective on the fall. If he could grab on to something . . . if there was something to grab on to . . . maybe he could reach Anastasia with his tail?

  They had been falling for several seconds, a long way down, before Anastasia began to scream. Her wailing pierced his ears and his heart, for it was obvious she had held the fear at bay as long as she could. Until long after she must have realized it was too late.

  Still they fell.

  Arun Lahiri shrieked like a frightened monkey, chittering with terror. Hellboy tuned him out. All he cared about was Anastasia. Only seconds had passed, but a part of him was already mourning her.

  Spinning, he saw something out of the corner of his eye, a silver skein across the chasm that still yawned wide and glowed green beneath them. Agents Meaney and Carruthers struck it first, grunting with the impact. The enormous, complex spider web stretched under their weight, but held.

  “Oh, God!” Anastasia grunted as she hit the web.

  A moment later, Arun landed on top of her, and she cried out in shock and pain. The web strained under the final insult of Hellboy’s weight, then snapped taut once more.

  Silently, Hellboy thanked whatever deity might be listening. With a bit of difficulty, he pulled free of the gummy web and pushed himself onto his knees. He didn’t dare try to stand. His hooves would shoot through the wide holes in the network of webbing and he would have to struggle free once more. Instinctively, he checked to be certain the canvas bag in which he carried Lady Catherine’s head was still tied to his belt. It was there, but she was silent as usual.

  “Is everybody . . . ?”

  “Get the hell off of me!” Anastasia cried, and tried to shove Arun away from her.

  He wouldn’t move. At least, that was how it initially appeared. Even as he cried, “I’m trying!” Hellboy realized that the professor couldn’t move. None of them could.

  “What the bloody hell is this, then?” Carruthers shouted, thrashing angrily and only succeeding in getting himself bound up even worse.

  “Hellboy!” Anastasia called. “Come on, get him off of me!”

  “I’ll be right there,” Hellboy promised.

  Anastasia cursed and struggled to move Arun from on top of her. The professor seemed stunned, and only stared at her with a horrified expression on his face. Hellboy was tempted to find it amusing, but then he remembered how oddly Arun had been behaving toward Anastasia. His behavior had been verging on obsessive ever since they searched the lake early that morning.

  Jeez, Hellboy thought. Had it only been that morning?

  Hellboy crawled along the web toward Agent Carruthers, who was closest to him. He pulled at the webbing gently, but it seemed inextricably stuck to Carruthers’ clothing and skin. Almost as if it had merged itself with his flesh.

  “Come on, you big daft demon!” Carruthers snarled. “Get me loose!”

  “What?” Hellboy asked, shocked at the insult.

  “You heard me! I’ve lost my gun, now, and who knows what other horrors we’ve got to face down here? Get me loose before some of your nastier cousins come along to eat my bloody brains!” Carruthers roared.

  Hellboy squinted down at Carruthers, trying to suppress his anger. The man is hysterical, he told himself. He doesn’t know what he . . .

  “What in God’s name are you waiting for?” Carruthers shouted. “Or maybe you’re thinking of sampling my choicest bits yourself, eh? Come on, then! Get me out of here!”

  “Fine,” Hellboy said curtly.

  He grasped the skein of webbing that was stuck to and wound about Carruthers’ arms and chest, and gave a single, powerful tug. Carruthers shrieked in agony as the webbing tore away, taking clothes and strips of skin with it.

  “Good God!” Anastasia gasped, staring across the whimpering MI5 agent at Hellboy. “How are we going to get free?”

  Hellboy stared at her, and at Arun lying silently on top of her. He winced slightly as he looked back at Carruthers’ flayed skin. Desperately, he tried to figure out a way to release his companions.

  “I guess, if we have some kind of a blade, I can cut you out,” he said doubtfully. Then he began to search the many pouches on his belt, pushing aside the bag with Lady Catherine’s head in it. He must have some kind of a blade in there, he knew. Even a Swiss Army knife would be helpful.

  Someone coughed behind him. Meaney! Hellboy had almost forgotten the other MI5 agent because he’d said nothing, while Anastasia and Carruthers had been so vocal. But now Meaney began to choke, gagging loudly.

  Hellboy scrambled to turn around, his stone right hand snapped through the web, and he fell on his face on the sticky strands.

  “Damn!” h
e grumbled, and yanked his head free, yelping as the adhesive web tore a clump of hair from his goatee.

  When he turned to look at Meaney, the black man was jittering with some kind of spastic fit. Green, brackish foam boiled from his mouth.

  “Marvelous,” Hellboy sighed. “That’s all we need. The return of Linda Blair.”

  “Carruthers, is Agent Meaney epileptic?” Anastasia asked.

  “How the Christ should I know?” Carruthers snapped, still nursing his wounds though his back and legs remained stuck to the web. “Maybe he’s gone bloody rabid from that spider bite.”

  Hellboy shot an apologetic glance at Anastasia. He supposed that she very badly wanted to be free of the web and of Arun’s sweaty presence. Arun, for his part, still said nothing. But at least he wasn’t foaming at the mouth.

  “It’s okay,” Anastasia said. “See to him first. Then let’s get out of here.”

  Arun had panicked initially. He’d glanced quickly around and seen, in the dim green light, that the web they were on appeared to stretch from one side of the chasm to the other. That there was still no sign of a bottom to the massive crevice in the Earth they had fallen into. But there was one sign of hope.

  At a far corner of the web matrix, he could see a dark patch of shadow that he believed must be another tunnel. Some kind of passage away from the chasm, away from the webs. It was on the opposite side from where they had come in, so he didn’t hold out much hope for returning to the surface. But at least they could escape before more spiders, large or small, descended upon the prey trapped in their webs. Hellboy and the others hadn’t mentioned the prospect, but the professor knew it must be on all of their minds.

  When Hellboy had first gotten free, and Carruthers began to struggle, Arun opened his mouth to point out the tunnel he believed he saw. His eyesight had improved underground, and he wondered if it was just an adjustment to the darkness, or the weird green light.