Hell's Gate

by Bill Schutt

  The respite and the fresh air also gave him a chance to think. MacCready initially believed that, like their well-known counterparts, the draculae’s salivary glands produced an array of anticoagulant chemicals that would be applied to a wound immediately after the prey was bitten, thus preventing the victim’s blood from clotting. The fact that the draculae bite caused a far more spectacular flow of blood had forced him to consider an alternate hypothesis. Maybe these creatures had a different bite physiology—based not on chemical anticoagulants but on something else. But what?

  He knew that certain monitor lizards transmitted whole consortia of bacteria through their bites, then tracked down their fever-weakened prey at their own leisure.

  What if the draculae had evolved something similar? And what if Wolff’s team was seeking just such a hemorrhagic pathogen, something that could be used as a weapon?

  The choice the German had given him—the choice of ways to die—had telegraphed as much. It should have been easy, from the start, to peg Wolff as a biologist, possibly even a microbiologist. He had threatened death under a cluster of rocket engines, and let out that this had originally been proposed as a means of sterilizing specimens. Of this much, Mac was reasonably certain: One did not go to the trouble and expense of assembling a missile base in the middle of the Brazilian wilderness merely to hurl one- and two-ton payloads of dynamite or poison gas at the enemy. Wolff was a man on a rather larger mission.

  And now he just might have stumbled upon a new payload, something far more deadly than anything they’d brought with them.

  MacCready’s plan hadn’t changed, it had only been interrupted. But now his mission was more urgent than ever. Get back to Cuiabá. Contact Hendry. Let him know of the coordinates of the base and the enemy’s mission. It was worse than he could have imagined initially. This was biological warfare. And if I know Wolff, he’s already snagged a couple of these bats by now.

  After carefully scanning the surrounding cliff for signs of anything that might possibly shoot darts or fire a rifle, MacCready focused on the rock-strewn but serviceable remains of what appeared to be an alternative trail leading off the plateau.

  This is too easy, he thought, while another part of his mind wondered where this “negative-attitude thing” had suddenly come from.

  If Wolff’s alive, he’s looking for me. And if his guides know about this trail, they could be on it already—waiting.

  MacCready surveyed the open expanse of the valley below, took a deep breath of fresh air, and squeezed back into the narrow crevice. I’m not going anywhere in broad daylight, he thought as he shimmied down deeper into the dark.

  He was actually looking forward to meeting Wolff again. When we do meet, it’ll be on my terms.

  Waiting until dusk, MacCready poked his head out of the fissure, took a last look around, and then began his descent. He found himself pausing frequently (too frequently) as he fought off waves of nausea and dizziness, waves that seemed to be coming at shorter and shorter intervals. If I pass out now, I’m dead, he thought, trying to focus on feeling his way down toward the forest without glancing at the darkening abyss that stretched out beyond it. After two hours, he reached the base of the plateau, intact and with no sign of pursuers, human or otherwise.

  He focused on everything he could remember about Major Hendry’s map of the region. Now MacCready wished he’d paid just a bit more attention to it as he dredged up what few useful details the map might have offered.

  What I need is some high, dry ground, he decided. Something I can move across quickly.

  Then it came to him. “Got it.”

  He hoped.

  CHAPTER 23

  The Gift

  From the moment I saw the Mato Grosso Plateau, and the strange world that surrounded it, I knew I had found the setting for my story.

  —SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE (ON THE INSPIRATION FOR HIS NOVEL The Lost World)

  January 30, 1944

  5:15 A.M.

  Shortly before dawn, R. J. MacCready stood before a vast primordial swamp. Dead tree trunks protruded from mist and black water. The air, which had a delicate rotten-egg bouquet, was also thick with mosquitoes. To top things off, he was feeling feverish and unsteady.

  “High and dry,” he mumbled, waving ineffectually at a cloud of flying bloodsuckers that seemed to be celebrating his arrival. Great, I need more insect bites. And the thought reminded him of something. He swore at himself for not remembering it sooner.

  With a shaky hand, he reached into his shirt. Groping around with swollen fingers, he was surprised to find the leather cord still in place—and, even more important, Yanni’s delicate-looking little vial, intact—having survived his encounters with Team Wolff and the troglodytes. Great name for a Greenwich Village bebop group, he thought.

  “If you go into the swamps, rub this on,” he remembered. “It’ll keep ya from gettin’ bitten.” Yanni’s serene, caring face flashed in his mind. MacCready felt suddenly even sicker at the thought of her and Bob Thorne, dead.

  MacCready used his fingernail to pry open the tiny bottle and immediately turned his head away, grimacing. “Creeping Mother of Shit . . . what is this, eau de squid?”

  Still, smell or no smell, MacCready dabbed a blob of the oily stuff onto his palms and spread it over his bug-ravaged neck and arms. The bottle remained nearly full, so he recapped it, took a last look around, and waded into the algae and scum-covered bog.

  By the time he’d slogged twenty yards, the swamp water had nearly reached his chest but the feeling was surprisingly soothing. At least the murky water would help wash away the dried bat guano and crushed bug glaze that covered him from head to foot like a fecal exoskeleton.

  What was more important, though, was that he had not seen a soul since his dry dive back in the cave; hadn’t heard any gunfire, either. Might he just have succeeded in eluding his pursuers? Still, he knew better than to take chances, and continued moving as stealthily as possible from one muddy island to the next.

  He was approximately a hundred yards into the swamp when, as Bob Thorne might have phrased it, “the shit-hammer fell.” It began with the sound of a careless stumble and splash, and was followed by an exclamation in German. He was being tracked.

  The Nazis’ presence now revealed, his pursuers immediately picked up their pace, splashing through the water with no regard for stealth. He could hear the suck and drag of deep mud against their boots.

  “MacCready . . . we hear you,” someone called, and he recognized Corporal Kessler’s voice. “It’s no use. Give yourself up.”

  There was a pause, and he could hear a short exchange in German.

  “We don’t want to kill you.” It was Kessler again. “We are just looking for our guides. Have you seen them?”

  MacCready winced, reining in the part of his brain that already had three snappy answers to the stupid ruse locked and loaded, and which was begging to respond with one of them. Instead he ducked behind a long-dead tree trunk and quickly scanned the swamp ahead of him.

  “Damn it,” he mumbled. The tree line that marked the beginning of the forest was more than a thousand yards away.

  Nowhere to hide, he thought, hunkering down with his back against an all-too skinny section of dead tree. Now he could hear the labored movements of the Germans as they waded into deeper water.

  They’re close now. Real close.

  MacCready’s mind raced, desperately searching for a way out.

  He thought about submerging himself and swimming as far as he could underwater, but just as he prepared to fill his lungs for the underwater dash, a bullet clipped the tree trunk and he was spattered by blood.

  Before he could even wonder where he had been hit, he heard a loud splash.

  I don’t think I’m shot, he told himself, so what’s with all the blood?

  Patting himself down as he searched for a bullet wound, MacCready turned reflexively toward the splashing noises and caught a flash of cyclopean movement.

&n
bsp; The two Germans had been wading less than ninety feet away, between a pair of ancient and rotting tree trunks—but the dead wood had somehow come to life.

  The tree trunks are moving, MacCready’s brain registered. And they’ve got eyes!

  Corporal Kessler, who had apparently been using one of the “trees” to pull himself along, was now giving MacCready a puzzled, pleading expression; even in his fevered condition, the American knew that the expression had something to do with the fact that the corporal’s right arm had been removed at the shoulder. Arterial blood pumped in a pulsating flow that mimicked Kessler’s racing heart.

  MacCready required several more seconds to wrap his mind around the fact that these tree trunks weren’t tree trunks at all. They were the superbly camouflaged heads and necks of a pair of turtles—enormous turtles. And although their shells remained hidden below the water, he calculated that they must be ten feet across.

  An instant later, Kessler’s body jerked downward and disappeared under the black-green surface of the swamp. Except for a swirl of red foam, it was as if he had never existed.

  The other man shared none of Kessler’s luck. His “tree trunk” had struck him in the abdomen, and he screamed and flailed against the knotty armor with his fists.

  The astonishingly bizarre turtle seemed to draw back from the blows and as it did, something pink and wet trailed away from the screaming man. The German tried desperately to reclaim his intestines—to put them back inside.

  A third tree trunk mimic, this one an arm’s length away from where MacCready stood, opened its golden eyes and began to move. Its watermelon-size head turned toward him and a pair of nostrils, as wide as silver dollars, flared and sniffed. Then, inexplicably, the bullet-wounded turtle turned and glided away, leaving little noticeable wake but a trail of its own blood as it steered directly toward the stricken German. Veering away from the food at the last moment, the newcomer rammed its body against the man’s attacker.

  The turtles sideswiped each other with their necks. Like sparring male giraffes, Mac thought. And as the creatures vied for possession of the soldier, they hissed and snapped at each other. MacCready suddenly recalled the strange battle cries of the Tyrannosaurus rex in King Kong.

  As Mac watched the distracted giants, the dying man took the opportunity to reel in another length of his intestines. For a moment, just for a moment, it appeared as if he might win the struggle to reviscerate himself. But as the soldier staggered away from the behemoths, the sparring session ended abruptly and the creatures turned their full attention toward him.

  In the end, the turtles divided and shared their meal. And when they had finished, they drifted slowly apart—then froze. In little more than an instant, they transformed themselves back into tree trunks again.

  MacCready, who hadn’t moved since the attack began, stared at the swamp ahead. He could see scores of dead trunks, maybe hundreds. Without thinking, he reached into his shirt and withdrew Yanni’s bottle. This time with no grimacing, and with little wasted motion, he spread the oil over his arms, head, and torso—much more liberally, now.

  “‘It’ll keep ya from getting bitten,’ she says. Fuckin’ A!”

  MacCready sniffed at the empty bottle and tossed it into the brush.

  Too bad this shit doesn’t repel insects like it does giant turtles.

  As his first hours out of the swamp became a day and then two days, the constant assault by flies and biting midges of unlimited variety rendered him more and more feverish.

  By the third day, his body was losing water faster than he could replenish it by chewing on moisture-filled stems and roots. As for the bites, medicinal tree bark helped to stabilize his fever but failed to bring it down.

  On the fourth day, paranoia had begun to set in. Someone was following him.

  But even paranoids are sometimes right, he told himself. Through fever and self-doubt, he knew this was one of those times.

  Years of field experience had taught him to pay attention to subconscious warning signals—a few molecules of smoke or a minute change in the pattern of birdcalls, never sensed consciously. There was no ignoring the warning bell from within, so he zigged and zagged his route, traveling by night and navigating by stars whenever breaks in the clouds allowed it.

  By the fifth day, he needed protein, and he needed it badly.

  A termite nest would have been helpful. A single queen would keep me going.

  Ultimately, though, he settled for a snake—species unknown—too slow either to strike or avoid getting clobbered. MacCready knew that beneath the skin and scales, the long ribbon of muscle was a cold and bloody petri dish if eaten uncooked, sure to make him even sicker in a day or two. But he dared not start even the smallest campfire. His subconscious seemed to be crying out that he did not have a day or two. The zigzag wasn’t working. Someone out there—the Nazi Wolff pack, no doubt—was gaining on him and so he carried the remains of the snake with him, trying his best to leave no trail. Salmonella never tasted so good, he thought, chewing on the last of the meat.

  On the sixth day, Mac knew that his pursuers were closing the gap. He had to appreciate the fact that these guys never yelped from a sting or bite, or any of the other occupational hazards of a tropical wilderness pursuit. Damn, these bastards are good, he told himself, with a reluctant sense of admiration.

  Seven days after his encounter with the turtles, the snake meat began to bite back. With his energy all but completely sapped, he hunkered down behind a tree fall, clutching a bundle of sharpened sticks and a makeshift atlatl to propel them. My sorry-assed arsenal.

  “Remember the Alamo,” he muttered, knowing that the only thing to be decided was which of his two enemies, his pursuers or the forest, would take him down first.

  When the trackers found Mac several hours later, he was mumbling to himself about giant turtles firing off Nazi missiles.

  Now I’m definitely seeing things, he thought, watching as a man and a woman dropped their backpacks and rushed toward him. These guys look like Bob and Yanni.

  “Mac?”

  Jeez, it even sounds like Bob, he thought, and that convinced him to play along. “Sorry, Bob, no rolling papers.”

  “Don’t worry, Mac. I got it covered.”

  MacCready turned to the other apparition. “Hey, Yanni.”

  “What’s buzzin’, cousin?” came the reply.

  “Nuttin’,” MacCready said, then he dismissed the apparition with a wave of his hand, “’specially since you’re both dead.”

  “How do you figure, Mac?”

  “Fuckin’ Nazi showed me that Russian grease gun.”

  The hallucinations exchanged brief confused looks before apparently deciphering their friend’s last comment.

  The Bob mirage smiled sheepishly. “Yes, well . . . about the so-called grease gun . . .”

  “Spill it,” the female ghost added, sounding disappointed.

  “Hey, who has time to pack the gat when some Nazi asshole and his button men are bustin’ down the door?” the Bob mirage chimed in, defensively.

  Mac stood up on wobbly legs, now acutely aware—mission-aware. These were not mirages. Bob and Yanni were alive. There was no time to waste, sick as he was. “Did you get to Queequegbah? Get a message out to Hendry?”

  Yanni threw her husband a puzzled expression.

  “He means Cuiabá,” Thorne explained, then turned to his friend. “No dice, Mac—as we found ourselves immediately on the lam from the Krauts. But since we also thought they’d iced you, it is no little relief that Yanni picked up your trail three days ago.”

  Yanni held the empty bottle of turtle repellant up to Mac’s face.

  MacCready struggled to keep his eyes focused. It was still their voices but now they were fading echoes. “Yeah, works fine on turtles,” he said. “You got something for vampire bats and Nazis?”

  And with that he collapsed into Bob’s arms.

  Yanni moved in quickly and together the couple gently lowered
Mac’s body to the ground.

  “Ingrate,” Yanni muttered.

  CHAPTER 24

  Marching to Valhalla

  I hope these new mechanical meteors will prove only playthings for the learned and the idle, and will not be converted into new engines of destruction to the human race, as is so often the case of refinements or discoveries in science. The wicked wit of man always studies to apply the result of talents to enslaving, destroying, or cheating his fellow creatures.

  —HORACE WALPOLE, 1785

  Nostromo Base

  February 8, 1944

  By late morning, the two spacecraft lay gleaming in their wooden cradles, ready to be sled-mounted, ready for their tanks to be pumped with fuel and oxidizer, ready to roll out onto the tracks, one after another, toward their shared, central launch rail.

  Colonel Wolff was looking for any excuse to get away from the rocket scientist, Sänger, who had once again fallen under the spell of his own voice while briefing the science teams and Silverbird pilots. Trimmed of excess verbiage, Sänger’s message was that “everything was proceeding as planned,” but the man had dragged out every possible speck of rocket-related minutiae until even Voorhees looked bored.

  “. . . so the same vectored explosives I designed to dig diamond mines in Africa are now redesigned to propel my Silverbirds.”

  It was about the point at which Voorhees looked like he was actually about to nap, that Colonel Wolff was approached by one of Dr. Kimura’s assistants, who gestured toward the door, emphatically. Wolff exited the meeting swiftly, without a word, and without acknowledging Sänger.

  As the colonel walked the muddy path between buildings, his thoughts drifted back to the recent expedition to the cave. Ultimately, the mission had been a success—if only because he had managed to return with a live specimen. More important, his people were managing to keep the creature alive, although he had been infuriated to learn that that Kimura was using local “volunteers” to study how the bat attacked and fed, something the doctor had done without asking Wolff’s permission.