Ancient Enemy

by Michael McBride

  There were four openings near the ground, the largest of which had smooth walls channeled by the erosion of water, while the others had been either carved by the same implements as the tunnel through which they’d escaped or widened from existing natural fissures. I had no idea how I was supposed to choose the right one.

  There was obviously something I was missing, some clue that would lead me straight to them. Like walking into a house in the dark and following the hallways and stairs to the master bedroom.

  I focused on my other senses.

  The smell of feces originated from one of them, which undoubtedly meant that it led to a place where they neither ate nor slept. A faint sound emanated from the main corridor. It sounded like the flow of air, although I felt nothing against my bare face. I didn’t even know if I would have been able to with the crust of blood that was beginning to flake off and the lack of sensation as a result of the cold. Not to mention the fact that I could barely hear it over the thudding of my pulse in my ears.

  Whoomph. Whoomph. Whoomph.

  I tried to swallow. Couldn’t. The indecision. It was paralyzing. A wrong turn and I could find myself hopelessly lost. The right choice and I could stumble into a cavern filled with horned creatures roused from a deep sleep by the sound of my footsteps.

  The rattle.

  Surely it would at least be able to show me the most frequently used passage, assuming any of the blood on which I now walked was theirs and not simply that of their recent kills. The idea of shaking it and making any kind of noise was horrifying, but I could think of no better solution. And at least if they heard it, I’d find out pretty quickly where they were.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  I could scarcely believe I was taking the risk when I drew the rattle and killed my flashlight. I shook it softly. Too softly at first. Then just hard enough to produce a weak blue glow and a sound not much louder than my own scuffing footsteps.

  The growth on the walls immediately phosphoresced. It glowed even brighter than the pale marks leading across the ground through the main tunnel, where a partial handprint that looked fairly fresh appeared on the wall. The other orifices phosphoresced faintly, too, but the residue was powdery and dissociated. Old. Like the handprints in the kiva where the men had been attacked through the ventilation duct.

  I traded the rattle for my light again, switched it on, and entered the tunnel. The roof lowered to the point that I was forced to crouch before it opened into a cavern even larger than the last. Great columns of minerals connected the almost-polished ground to a high ceiling riddled with stalactites nearly as long as I was tall. My beam barely penetrated the shadows clinging to the roof far enough to reveal more hair-traps, only a few of which had actually caught prey. The minimal amounts of guano on the flowstone walls and the ground pretty much confirmed that the bats were smart enough to make their actual homes somewhere else.

  The sound of moving air was louder here. It reminded me almost of the waves of a choppy lake shushing against the shore. It stood to reason that since water had formed these caverns, it could still be down here someplace, an underwater reservoir eroding its way to the mantle and its ultimate vaporization.

  There were no petroglyphs or other adornments on the walls. At least that I recognized at first glance. I could tell they’d been almost buffed or smoothed into various designs that could have been a trick of the shadows and my imagination or faces and shapes worked into the soft stone by the persistent rubbing of hands forming them in the darkness.

  Emboldened by the fact that I had shaken the rattle and still drew breath, I killed my light and again shook the rattle. There were fewer patches of moss here, mostly near the ceiling, where the traps phosphoresced ever so slightly. The phosphors were more than a component of their blood. If it was in their hair, then they undoubtedly secreted them through their sweat and their tears and every other form of fluid or waste. Even their skin cells.

  The tracks on the ground were nearly indistinguishable and faded to nothing as they continued onward in the same direction I was headed.

  I exchanged the rattle for the flashlight so quickly that I dropped it in my rush. It made a clattering sound when it struck the ground that echoed throughout the cavern. I raised the rifle to my shoulder, but could barely seat it with as badly as I was shaking. The wave-like sound vanished beneath the rushing of my blood in my ears.

  Whoomph. Whoomph. Whoomph.

  I turned in a complete circle, expecting to see a silhouette materialize from the darkness and streak through my beam.

  Time was now my enemy. Each beat of my heart marked the passage of a moment I could never get back, a moment that might merely be one in the ever diminishing amount by which my life was now measured.

  I crossed the cavern. Faster. The far wall came into view like the surface of the moon. It was almost craterous with the sheer amount of openings. I nearly cried aloud in desperation. If I didn’t find them soon, they were going to find me and whatever slim advantage I held would be lost.

  I shined my light across all of them. Some were bigger than others, some rounder, some obviously shallow, while still others appeared fathomless. The sound of gently flowing air was louder here. It took on a depth and variety of tones that reminded me of the staticky snow on the TV when the satellite went out. It was coming from somewhere to my right. I turned my beam in that direction and saw what looked like a natural fissure in the rock, and, higher up, an orifice through which I could see stalagmites taller than the opening itself. As I neared them, the sound resolved and I recognized it for what it truly was.

  I froze in my tracks. Bit my lip to keep from making a sound. Fought the urge to run while I still could.

  Whoomph. Whoomph. Whoomph.

  Dear Lord, I wasn’t going to be able to do this.

  It was coming from the higher of the two tunnels. I didn’t need the rattle to tell me that.

  I prayed for the strength to do what needed to be done and for my hands to be steady enough to pull it off as I raised the rifle and the flashlight and set them silently into the tunnel. I grabbed the ledge with both hands, braced my feet against the wall, and propelled myself upward.

  The moment my feet were underneath me, I had the stock of the rifle against my shoulder. My heartbeat thundered in my ears, but not so loud that I couldn’t hear the sound I’d been following, the sound I’d at first ascribed to the motion of waves lapping at some unseen shore. It was a noise I should have recognized from the very start, for it was one I heard coming from my mother every single day. It was the sound of wheezing, of something breathing through its mouth as it slept. Only it wasn’t a single voice, but a chorus of them.

  The stalagmites cast long shadows from the beam. I feared shedding too much light on the cavern. I had no idea how functional their eyes were behind their sealed lids. I could see the difference in degrees of brightness with my eyes closed; I couldn’t afford to take the chance that they couldn’t. I crouched against the wall, set the flashlight on the ground, and turned it until it shined directly into a cavern much smaller than I expected. The smell of musk was strong here, almost like our goats during rutting season, only more like body odor than pheromones.

  They were in here. Beyond any shadow of a doubt. I could hear the hollow sound of each exhalation from the backs of their throats and through their open mouths. I could smell them. The problem was I couldn’t see them.

  I couldn’t tell how much of the cavern remained out of sight beyond the threshold to either side, only that some amount did. They could be standing directly beside the hole with their backs against the walls and I wouldn’t know until I stuck my head through and saw the flash of claws before my blood spattered the stone floor.

  The wheezing was so rhythmic, though. Too rhythmic for something anticipating a confrontation. I had to believe they didn’t know I was here yet, but was I confident enough in that assertion to bet my life on it? Whatever the case, if I didn’t make a decision soon, it would be made for me.
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  Whoomp. Whoomph. Whoomph.

  I lunged between the stalagmites. Fast and low. Crouched at the center of the chamber. Swung the rifle around. Aimed to the right of the tunnel. Nothing. To the left. Nothing. Swiveled in a circle. The sounds of breathing were all around me now. Inside my head. The smell? Musk. Heavy. Overbearing. Beneath it, the scent of something dead. More specifically, the inside of something dead. A smell I knew intimately from wallowing in the ram’s viscera.

  Despite everything my senses were telling me, there was nothing in here with me.

  I whirled around again.

  Nothing.

  Behind me.

  Nothing.

  I froze.

  Whoomph. Whoomph. Whoomph.

  The petroglyph.

  The sarcophagus-man was inverted beneath the central monkey figure, as though he were its reflection upon a placid lake.

  I couldn’t breathe. My hands. Shaking so badly I could barely hold the rifle still as I raised it toward the darkness above me.

  The sarcophagus-men hung upside down from beneath the trees like roots.

  And realized that I would never leave this place alive.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  They were up there. Directly above my head. All I saw at first were antlers. Long and sharpened to points. Crusted with dried blood.

  My heartbeat in my ears.

  Whoomph. Whoomph. Whoomph.

  The flashlight lying on the ground barely drove back the shadows from which they hung, upside down, suspended so that all I could see at first were the crowns of their bald heads and the various growths protruding from them. The ridges where the bones of the dead animals had fused to their living craniums were immediately apparent. As were the scars where the skin had been stretched back over the foreign bone and healed with tissue that reminded me of a bad burn. Random, wiry hair grew from their misshapen skulls. They swung ever so gently on a breeze that affected them alone.

  They were so close that if I stood, I would be able to reach their horns without having to stretch. From my knees, the barrel of the rifle was maybe two feet below their heads. Point-blank range. There was no way I could miss at that distance. And no way the shot could be anything other than fatal. The only flaw was that as soon as I pulled the trigger, they would all awaken and weren’t likely to hold still long enough for me to sight down the remainder.

  There were seven of them up there. At least that I could see. All hanging at various heights that made it nearly impossible to tell whether it was because of how tall they were or to what portion of the uneven ceiling they were tethered. There were deer and elk antlers, the horns of domestic and bighorn sheep, and even an antelope. I couldn’t tell their sexes from this vantage point, only that their faces were red and engorged with the blood settling with gravity.

  They were suspended from the stalactite-riddled roof by what almost looked like sleeping bags. No, more like the funnel traps I’d seen in the previous caverns, or maybe like cocoons or chrysalises. They were made of rawhide of some kind, though. The stretched skin of what could have been deer or bison, or even bear for all I knew. The fur was still on the inside, with the occupants, whose arms were folded across their chests. I could see why the Anasazi had depicted them as sarcophagus-men. That was exactly how they looked now, like dead people hanging in funereal bundles.

  I shifted to my right and rose ever so slightly to get a better look at my adversaries. Their mouths hung open wide enough that I could see their long canines on both the upper and lower jaws. Their eyes twitched beneath the straps of skin where their eyelids appeared to be on the verge of growing together. The wheezing noises they made sounded hollow thanks to their sinuses and large nostrils.

  I had no idea how quickly they could drop out of their…whatever those cocoon things were, or even how they were held inside. I had to believe that the moment I fired the first shot, they would rain down upon me. At best, I could maybe hit another one before they were on the ground, and maybe a third before the element of surprise was gone. There was no way I could hold my own against four of them in such close quarters. The rifle was a long-range weapon and a liability in close-quarters combat, where it was useless as anything other than a club. I know a little about fighting. I mean, you can’t walk off of a reservation and into a town like Cortez without running the risk of crossing locals with generations’ worth of prejudices all bottled up and ready to explode, but I wouldn’t have a chance in hell against those kinds of odds.

  My only real option was to take as many of them as I could before they got their wits about them again and get out of this cavern as quickly as possible. I could use the rifle to pin them down in here while I retreated through the tunnel. If I could fall back as far as the ledges I’d descended from the surface, then I could use that same narrowing where I’d initially anticipated an ambush against them. If I didn’t make it that far, though, I was going to die down here.

  I probably would anyway.

  As long as I took at least four of them with me, I figured I had even odds of the traps I’d rigged at the trailer taking care of the rest. At least I hoped that would be the case.

  I needed to eliminate the most dangerous of them first, while they were still unaware of my presence. Shooting them while they slept seemed cowardly, but this wasn’t a fair fight. This was about survival. Period. Maybe killing their leader or alpha male or whatever would buy me a few more seconds in the resulting confusion.

  Two of them were larger than the others. They appeared broader and heavier inside their rawhide cocoons, anyway. One had a five-point rack from a bull elk that had to weigh a good fifty pounds by itself. Even with a neck as thick as a tree trunk, sleeping like this was undoubtedly the only time when his spine was allowed to decompress. The other had the horns of a bighorn sheep. They were curled and so massive they rested against his shoulders, even hanging upside down.

  If I had to guess, my money was on the one with the elk antlers being the alpha male. If I was right about getting two quick and clean shots, then I had to take them both. The others looked every bit as ferocious, though. I feared I was merely choosing the manner of my death.

  I stepped back and raised the rifle. Aligned it with the temple of the man with the elk antlers. Slid my finger onto the trigger. Gently. Glanced over at the one with the ram’s horns.

  Whoomph-whoomph-whoomph.

  The moment I pulled the trigger, I would swing the gun to my left and have a clean shot right at the center of its face. If it dropped at all, I would still hit it squarely in the neck or the chest. Either way, it wouldn’t be getting up anytime soon.

  My palms were slick with sweat and my hands trembled so badly I had to take several slow, deep breaths.

  Whoomph-whoomph-whoomph.

  I tightened my finger, pulling the trigger into the sweet spot—

  Crap.

  I wouldn’t get far without my flashlight. Not when they knew this place far better than I did and could move without their sense of sight. I’d be an idiot to believe I’d have the time or the presence of mind to grab it from the ground in my panic to get out of this cavern.

  I lowered the rifle. Hurried to where I’d left the light. Tucked it into the front pouch of my hoodie. It shined out and to my right, making the cavern appear to lean in that direction. Again, I picked the perfect location and aligned the barrel with the temple of the one I believed to be the alpha male. Mentally rehearsed quickly pivoting to my left and taking the shot to the face of the second male. Marked the opening to the tunnel and prepared for the mad dash between the stalagmites. If I slid into the tunnel and flopped over onto my stomach, I could easily hit one more and continue firing behind me as I scooted backward into the larger cavern.

  I wouldn’t get a second chance at this.

  Whoomph-whoomph-whoomph.

  I tightened my grip with my left hand. Steadied my aim. Squeezed the trigger until it would take only the slightest application of pressure to do the job.

  Whoomph
whoomphwhoomph.

  Its eyes flicked from one side to the other beneath its lids. Back and forth. Its upper lip twitched. Nostrils flared. Its shoulders rose as it drew a deep inhalation and I saw what I had mistaken for fur on the inside of the hide was actually hair and the rawhide I’d believed to have come from a forest animal was stitched from human—

  It sniffed.

  Its mouth closed with a snap.

  Its eyes ceased their restless movement.

  Whoomphwhoomphwhoomph.

  It turned to face me and struck at the air in front of me with its sharp teeth.

  The darkness came to life behind it with the sound of tearing flesh.

  TWENTY-SIX

  I pulled the trigger and shot it through the right eye. The report was deafening. My ears rang with a high-pitched whine. Warmth spattered my face as I spun to the left. Tasted blood in my mouth.

  The dark shape of the first one writhed as it streaked across my peripheral vision toward the ground. The spent casing launched from the breech.

  I fired again the moment I saw the face between the ram’s horns. Its head snapped backward and blood exploded from its forehead. I caught just a glimpse of its bare chest as it flopped from a cocoon adorned with a tribal tattoo.

  And then I was running.

  Whoomphwhoomphwhoomph.

  I lunged for the opening and struck one of the stalagmites with my leg. Went down hard on my side.

  Bodies plummeted from the ceiling. Shrill cries I could hear even over the ringing. Silhouetted forms rose to a crouch, low to the ground.

  Whoomphwhoomphwhoomph.

  I rolled onto my belly and smothered the light beneath me. Scooted in reverse. I could barely see the outlines of the creatures running toward me.