by David Wood
Somewhere in the distance, a huge splash and fleshy slaps on cold rock echoed and the main lair flared into brightness from the sensor-camera’s lights.
Aston’s stomach turned to ice and he stood as still as the rock around them. The sounds grew louder, the slap and drag of something massive and wet. Slater’s panicked breathing hissed in his ear.
“She’s here.” Slater’s voice was scarcely audible over the pounding of his heart.
“I’m not ready yet,” Aston said in a frantic whisper.
“How long do you need?”
Aston broke free from the paralysis of fear. “Just a few moments. I have to get this attached to the detonator.” He pointed to the big plunger.
“Do it,” she said. “And you’d better be ready.”
Without waiting for an answer, she snatched the Luger from his belt and dashed away across the cave.
“Slater, get back here. Jo!”
No reply.
Aston gritted his teeth. Damn, but she was a brave woman. As he crouched to connect the detonator, she screamed. No bullets, though. Did she not know to release the safety? Hell, she was American. She probably had a pistol in her bassinet.
Wincing, refusing to believe she was caught yet, he focused on the job in hand.
“This way, you bitch!” Slater yelled, her voice echoing starkly off the rock.
A huge silhouette moved in the darkness beyond the reach of the camera light. Slater’s headlamp flicked back and forth at the far end of the tunnel, then it strafed across the mighty, pale gray hide of the monster, shined off a row of glistening teeth. The confines of the cavern only served to emphasize the beast’s enormity. Aston winced. It was already so close to her! Desperately struggling against his shaking hands, he fumbled the wire into the detonator.
“Come and get me!” Slater yelled and her light danced hectically as she ran for the far opening. She fired off a single round from the Luger, the sharp report echoing. The beast emitted a low rumble but didn’t move. Slater fired again.
That got its attention. The creature slapped and bashed as it dragged its bulk across the cavern floor. It plowed through the piles of bones, crunching them like matchsticks.
“I hope you’re ready, Sam!” Slater yelled. He heard her bare feet slapping the rock as she ran.
The monster dove into the tunnel right behind her and she cried out again. It moved quicker than he would have ever dreamed possible, virtually running on its powerfully muscled fins, the snap of its mighty teeth echoing like gunshots. Its long tail whipped and swished as it vanished from sight.
Aston tried to attach the second charge wire, but his fingers shook so violently that he couldn’t even get it close. His head still pounded with concussion, his vision crossed and blurred. “Come on, you useless prick!” he hissed to himself. “No time for this!”
“Aston!” Slater howled and her light appeared in the darkness ahead. “It’s right behind me!” Two more gunshots rang out.
He took a deep breath and closed his eyes, gripped his hands into fists. “You can do this,” he whispered.
Opening his eyes, he took the wire and wound it in as Slater burst from the tunnel and slid around the wall beside him.
“Aston, blow it!” she cried.
He drew the plunger up and slammed it down.
Nothing happened.
The monster’s progress echoed down the passage, fat, wet slaps, sounding like it was right on top of them.
“What the fuck?” Aston said. He’d done everything right, he was sure of it.
He drew the detonator up and slammed it down once more, and the tunnel burst into noise and light and dust and crashing rock. Substrate blasted out of the entrance beside them as it collapsed and smashed into the side wall of the cavern, cracks and echoing booms following the ear-ringing explosion of the dynamite itself. Rock rained from the cave ceiling and battered them. Aston grabbed Slater and tried to crouch over her, shield her with his body as the repercussions of the massive explosion rippled again and again. It would be so unfair if their plan had worked only to bring the entire cave system crashing down to crush them. Maybe he’d used too much dynamite. Rocks battered his back and shoulders and he covered his head with his arms, crying out against the hurt and the fear of being buried alive.
The booms echoed away leaving only the rattle and hiss of smaller rocks tumbling and sliding over each other, then silence.
Aston raised his head, shined his torch around. The back of the lair was an entirely new shape, but the front of the cave and the water beyond looked the same as it ever had. The sensor light on the camera all the way across the cavern blinked off.
The wall they sheltered against had fallen in and cracked into great slabs of dark stone. Aston allowed himself a small laugh. Everything was still. Slater rose from her crouch and added her flashlight to his, her face dawning in a smile as her terror began to lift.
“Did it work?” she asked, barely above a whisper.
“I think so,” Aston said, his own voice quiet lest they disturb some fragile rock pile.
Slater hugged him and he planted a kiss on her lips. “My hero.”
The rock beside them shifted.
They jumped back, eyes wide. It shifted again. Not sliding down or collapsing, but rising, as if something massive were trying to shrug beneath it.
“No way,” Aston breathed.
“We have to go!” Slater said.
They snatched up their dive gear and readied themselves to flee. As the rocks shifted again and again behind them, crunching and cracking as they fell and reshaped, Aston and Slater pulled on tanks and masks. Without a word, they ran for the water. The LED sensor light on the camera burst into brightness again as they jumped into the icy water and hauled on their fins. The last thing Aston saw before he submerged was the great, gray spiny back of the beast pushing up out of the rock fall.
Chapter 44
They hit the water and kicked hard. As they passed the camera they had set earlier, light exploded around them casting everything in bright white and stark shadows. Aston caught Slater’s eye and pointed down, then at his chest. He mimed pulling and throwing a grenade. He hoped she understood – get to the bottom then blow the shaft, trapping the monster above.
Slater gave him a double thumbs-up and they kicked away again. Aston had never swum so hard in his life. All the fatigue from the day’s exertion dissolved in this desperate flight to safety.
He glanced back up into the pool of light high above them and his heart sank. The water burst into bubbles and swirls as the mighty beast hit the surface and dove. They were barely halfway down the vertical shaft and it was already coming, its maw split open to reveal a forest of shining teeth.
It was so unfair! They had done everything they could, their plan was a good one, they had the human technology of dynamite and advanced brains on their side, and still this mindless prehistoric monster had got the better of them. It would be on them in seconds. The terror of being something’s prey swept tendrils of ice through Aston’s bones. It was all so unjust. Hopelessly, he reached into his wetsuit for a grenade.
Just as he expected the enormous mouth to close over him, something grabbed at his shoulder and hauled him sideways. Slater’s eyes were wide in her mask as she braced against a dark patch of rock with one hand and dragged at him with the other. No, not a dark patch of rock. A hole. Shadows yawned in the gap, like a vertical eye disappearing into who knew where.
Aston twisted and kicked hard, almost cracking his spine with the violent change of direction as he squirmed sideways into the opening. The crash of the beast’s teeth slamming closed echoed along the passage as it swept past. Aston tumbled and felt something yank hard at him, pulling him back toward the passageway, and then Slater was holding him in the dark as the seemingly endless gray flank of the monster slid past them, flickering in
their torchlight. Then it suddenly ended. Silt stirred and swirled as everything else became eerily still.
Aston checked to make sure he was all still there. It had been that close to taking his leg. Taking all of him.
He looked back up and scanned around. Slater joined her light to his and slowly they traced the outline of a wide cavern that expanded beyond the small opening in the rock wall. It plunged down into utter blackness. He caught her eye, made a ball between two hands to indicate the world, and then pointed one finger inside it. Hollow Earth?
Slater shook her head, shrugged, then nodded. It was as good an explanation as any. They swam side by side, slowly, deeper into the cave. It opened more and more until the sides and top were lost in dark shadows. Aston kicked for the cave floor and followed it back. It began to slope downward again. The entrance had been only three feet wide, maybe a little more, and not much taller than a man. How could anyone as far back as World War Two or before know about that? How could they have discovered it at all, let alone followed it in to discover this cavern? Surely it was all just a mad coincidence. Though Aston wasn’t sure if he believed in that kind of fortuitous happenstance any more.
Slater tapped his arm, pointed ahead. The cavern narrowed again, the floor still sloping shallowly downwards. His breath caught as he saw what she indicated. In the far wall of the huge space, a good hundred and fifty feet across from the entrance, was a doorway. Not a natural gap, but a perfect rectangle, made from carved blocks of stone set into the rock. It was around ten feet high, maybe seven wide. And it was a door. An actual, man-made piece of engineering, leading away into pitch blackness. Man-made? Or something-made, something with the intelligence and skills and tools to construct.
Slater’s grip on his hand was crushing yet her trembling clearly evident through it. He looked at her, shook his head, and stared back at the doorway. His brain spun like a flywheel as he tried to make some sense of it. Where did it go?
Maybe the Nazis had gotten this far after all, discovered the cave as they just had. Maybe the far side was unstable and they had built that doorway to shore up the passage for further exploration. Maybe they had blown through there and fixed the door in place themselves afterwards. But one diver in an old fashioned suit and helmet could in no way have gotten this far down, much less move blocks into place on that kind of scale. So many maybes and no satisfying answers of any kind. Only more and more questions.
With a moment of panic, Aston tore his attention away and checked his remaining air. Time was not on their side. He checked Slater’s and it was about the same as his. They had maybe ten minutes of breathing left before they were in real trouble. There was air to breathe in the lair above, but no way out, so that way was certain death. The Nazis had found that out. The only option was to go back through the channel to the lake. He pointed toward the shaft and Slater nodded.
As they headed across the wide cavern, Aston’s trepidation grew. If they met the beast in the main passage heading to the lake… But the choice was not theirs to make. They either risked it or drowned.
The vertical slit of the cave entrance yawned before them and both jumped, kicking back as the vast bulk of the monster shot past, the light of their head lamps dancing off its hide and spines as it powered back up toward it lair. Slater pointed to it, then her eyes, then herself. Is it looking for us?
Aston nodded, it had to be. Regardless, it was going up and that was the best chance they were going to get. He frantically pointed out and down and they kicked hard once more. Light flared above as the beast set off the camera at the top and they swam as fast as they could for the channel leading to the lake.
The worst kind of déjà vu swept through Aston as he remembered the last time they had made this swim, fighting against the currents with the thing on their trail. Last time they hadn’t been certain what it was. This time, there was no doubt.
They plunged down the passageway kicking for all they were worth. It was like a dream, the kind where you’re running through quicksand and can’t make any forward progress. Time and the dark tunnel seemed to stretch out before them into eternity.
They reached the bottom of the vertical shaft, thrashing against the swirling water, and pushed on. The camera set there flashed bright as they passed. Aston could almost feel the presence of the lake, wide open and shimmering beneath the massive night sky, waiting for him. It was strange to think that up above, the world went along on its merry way, all but a few oblivious to the death that lurked beneath. He desperately wanted to feel the muddy shore under his hands, the rain on his face. He wanted to kick off all the scuba gear and run hard on solid land, maybe never look back. Maybe never go near water of any kind again.
His lungs burned and he knew they were using up air at a furious rate as they hammered along. The current seemed weaker than before though he was powering along faster than ever. Perhaps he was simply more scared, more certain of their fate if they slowed at all.
Slater still gripped his hand in vice-like fingers, eyes staring dead ahead, a picture of grim determination. Aston figured they must be at least half way back to the lake, another minute or so and they’d be out in open water. He glanced back into the darkness behind.
About a hundred yards back, at the base of the vertical shaft, the LED lights of the camera burst into life once more.
Chapter 45
Slater twisted in the water as Aston thrust one hand down into her wetsuit. What the hell was he doing? She glanced back and saw the giant mass in the light behind them and new panic swelled through her. Aston pulled free the grenades she’d taken and gestured for her to swim on.
She shook her head, she couldn’t leave him! He gestured with the grenades, pointed to the rock above him and then to her and the exit once more, his eyes wide and desperate. He wanted her to go on while he set the grenades to bring the tunnel down.
She stared into his eyes and he gripped her once, tight, and then pushed her away. She wanted to stay, to help, but had no idea how those crazy German grenades even worked. She turned, bubbles bursting out with her cry of frustration as she kicked along toward the lake again. He had to be okay. He had to be. The last thing she saw was him jamming the grenades into the rock ceiling and unscrewing caps from the end of the sticks. He’d bring down the tunnel and be right behind her in an instant. Of course he would. She kicked and kicked, tears blurring her eyes, refusing to look back again.
A massive concussive boom pressured her ears into deafness and water and rock smashed into her, tumbled her over and over in a maelstrom of whining silence and swirling, rushing bubbles.
Something sharp cracked into her skull and blackness rushed her vision. For a moment she was stunned, tumbling and rolling, then rising and trying desperately to hold on to her regulator, to drag air from the tank into her screaming lungs. The boom and echo of collapsing rock assaulted her ears as hearing returned, then slowly stilled. She realized she was moving up through open water. She had been blasted out into the lake. Trying to shine her light back behind, seeking the channel entrance, all she saw was clouds of silt rolling in the depths like a thunderstorm. She couldn’t be sure where the channel was, if the entrance had collapsed, if Aston or the monster had made it out or were both trapped inside. She tried to kick back down, but her head throbbed, shafts of light lanced through her vision. She must be concussed, nausea swirled in her gut. She drew hard against her respirator and nothing seemed to come through. She had exhausted her supply of air.
She kicked back upward again, heading for the near-paradise of the surface and open air, her lungs on fire. She shrugged off her harness and belt, kicking with legs like jelly. Come on, Sam! she repeated over and over like a mantra as she swam.
She broke the surface into the fresh, dark night and gasped in heavenly lungsful of blessed air, dizzy with near-suffocation. Heavy, cold rain spattered her face and it felt like a benediction as she lay back in the water and sucked
in great gulp after gulp of night air.
She cried out at the site of a great pale hump in the water not thirty feet from her, then realized it was the underside of a boat. The police launch, capsized. Something moved on top.
“Over here. Let me help you.”
Slater recognized Rinne’s voice and swam to him. He helped her up onto the dubious safety of the wrecked boat. She sat heavily beside him and pressed a hand to the throbbing side of her head. It came away bloody.
“You need a doctor,” Rinne said.
“I need a lot of things,” she replied bitterly. She looked around. The Merenneito was nowhere to be seen.
Rinne sniffed and nodded. “Yes, I’m all that’s left. Until you came along, that is.”
Slater shook her head, tears breaching. “Fuck me.”
“That… thing,” Rinne began, “do you know what happened to it?”
Slater couldn’t find the words. Finally, she pointed toward the shore. “We should get out of here. Now’s our best chance. You can take my word on it.” Even if Aston hadn’t managed to seal the creature up in the tunnel, perhaps he had slowed it down.
Rinne looked nervously at the water and then over to the shore. “I don’t think I can make it, at least, not in my present condition.”
Slater nodded. She wasn’t sure she could make the swim either.
“Is anyone else down there?” Rinne asked.
She stared at the dark water, willing Aston to pop up, a wide grin on his stupid face as he regaled them with the story of how he had finally bested the monster. But he didn’t.
She shook her head. “I don’t think anyone else is coming.”
They sat in silence for another five minutes and Slater knew in that time any air Aston had left would have run out. If he’d survived the monster and the blast, he would need to be out of the water by now. Maybe he made it back up to the lair. But without air, what good was that to him? He’d had no way to get out. And the tunnel was likely collapsed. Tears rolled over her cheeks as she accepted that he really wasn’t coming back.