Cellular Activity- The Djinn

by Francesco Mazzotta

  «No way!», the firm response of the woman. There is something that doesn't convince her at all in what just happened. A detail that she seems to miss, but she knows it's important. «If we split we make things easier for the creature. Alone we are an easy prey. I'm coming with you.»

  There is no time to discuss, Macready throws a quick glance to the woman and to the silent Russian behind her. «Okay, but stay sharp and keep your eyes wide open». Then he turns to face the corridor.

  Their footsteps echo in the deathly silence that reigns in the base. However, they know they are not alone. There is something in the air, like an indistinct feeling. Almost a kind of pressure on their minds. A sense of threat, of danger, as a degenerate situation beyond the point of no return. It's as if a force field is permeating the environment, instilling a sense of repulsion, and everything seems to want to transmit to the three the same message.

  Danger...

  Death...

  Escape now...

  Get away...

  The long corridor stops after a few dozen meters, blocked by debris. A section of the ceiling has collapsed, giving way to a deep breach. From the darkness inside comes a light mist that smells of rotten something.

  «The way to the generator is cut out», Macready exclaims while he slides his badge in the reader to one of the side doors. The red light turns green but the door moves just a few millimeters, then it latches with a strangled noise. The Major makes a gesture of annoyance when trying unsuccessfully to put his hands to apply force.

  «What's in that room?», Moore whispers.

  Macready heads for a nearby door, across the hall. «These are the armory rooms. There...», pointing with a nod at the locked door, «we have the heavy weapons. They could be useful right now.»

  «Weapons such as guns, even large caliber, would have no effect on it», says Moore. «The only valid way is to destroy the creature at the cellular level.»

  Macready slides his badge in the reader of another door. «Well, then here we'll find what we need. Stand back.»

  The door slides sideways with a hissing. For a moment the soldier is hit by a gust of stinking air, hot and humid, which seems to insinuate insistently in their nose. «Mmmph», the man puts instinctively a hand to his mouth, rejecting a retching.

  Straining to hold his breath, the soldier looks over the doorway, checking the inside. The room is dimly lit by a red light. Macready directs the spotlight of his assault rifle, revealing some details. The walls of the room, and what lies inside, are covered by a tangle of reddish pulsating growths. A thin membrane crisscrossed by dark veins covers the fluorescent tubes, causing the flickering colored light.

  The Major looks out warily, expecting an attack at any moment. He walks slowly, stepping on the tiny still free part of the floor, heading for a side wall of still free shelving.

  Weird sounds come from that kind of blood mucilage. Gurgles, liquid and crawling noises. In a corner at the bottom there are still recognizable silhouettes of human bodies piled up, also covered by the same pulp. A feeling of anger and sorrow comes to life in the soldier, when he barely recognizes the face of one of the boys who served in the refectory.

  Perhaps the creature has killed and piled them here, waiting to assimilate them...

  Macready feels like being inside the stomach of a huge living organism. The heat is suffocating.

  Shit! Its food reserves...

  After a time that seems infinite he reaches a wall. With the delicacy of a cat he is able to extract a first box, putting it on the floor. Inside are stocked some hand phosphor-incendiary grenades. The man takes as many as he can, filling a small backpack.

  Without bothering to put the box back in its place, Macready stands up and raises his arms to get another one from a higher shelf. This is considerably heavier and offers some resistance. With an effort the Major manages to pull it out. At the same time the organic mass that covers the walls is shaken by a tremor.

  While laying the box on the other one, Macready realizes that some reddish filaments adhere to its back and connect it to the rest of the mucilage.

  The tremor that goes through the walls increases. The creature, which was dormant, seems to awake, perhaps disturbed by the man that tore part of its tissue.

  Knowing that there is no time, Macready acts quickly and opens the box, whose lid tilts heavily hitting a shelf.

  A gurgling sound, louder than the others, catches the attention of the marine, intent on retrieving a timed bomb. A little to his right, one of the growths begins to have a pulsating motion, as if something is pumping rhythmically material inside. The tip of the protrusion takes quickly a spheroidal shape.

  By rapidly alternating glances to the mutating creature to his right and the device in his hands, Macready sets the timer of the bomb.

  The rounded shape trembles visibly, getting larger and larger, reaching the size of a basketball. A vertical diametrical line draws on its surface, opening a bloody wound that reveals a shiny, dark surface, with metallic reflections. A huge compound eye, similar to that of an insect, stares at him for a few seconds.

  The vibration that affects the entire organic tissue that covers a good part of the room increases in intensity, while somewhere in the depths of the base sounds a chilling roar. Other fleshy growths come alive along the walls starting to form limbs and tentacles snaking in the air in search of their prey. New structures come to life on the creature's surface. Eyes that look human, and others that have absolutely nothing of human. Maybe they aren't even eyes but other sensory organs, belonging to animal species assimilated during the millions of years of existence of that timeless and nameless being.

  A new roar, louder than before, shakes the walls, followed by a heavy thud, which shakes the very foundations of the base.

  «For God's sake, hurry!», Moore shouts somewhere in the corridor outside.

  Macready finishes to set the bomb's timer and while he gets up he shows the middle finger to the eye that still stares at him. «Fuck you, asshole!»

  The man runs crouched, dodging the tentacles that floats in midair and deals a blow with the butt of his rifle to an indefinable shape that tries to grab him in the face. He flees the room into the corridor, just in time before a mucus spray almost hits him in the back. Moore is already fleeting, about ten meters ahead. Ivanov has moved away towards the gate.

  A kind of roar reaches them.

  Somewhere a wall collapsed...

  Another heavy thud accompanied by a chorus of bestial growls and voices echoes in the hallway.

  Getting stronger.

  Getting closer.

  They run to the gate at the end of the corridor, Ivanov has already reached it, he's pale and waits for them on the threshold, ready to push the close button.

  Suddenly the door of the room with heavy weapons, the one that was stuck and didn't open up, explodes. The door is smashed and bulkhead fragments are thrown towards the opposite wall.

  Moore reaches the gate before Macready and turns to look, immediately regretting having done so. An indescribable something has broken through one of the doors and the wall. A creature vomited from hell whose mass is a swarm of strange life forms, ungainly and misshapen. A crawling chaos of monstrous and ferocious tentacular appendices.

  The entire section of the corridor is quickly filled.

  «Seal the gate!», Macready shouts.

  Moore is frozen with horror, the Russian watches the scene with an impassive face.

  «Close it now, damn it!»

  Ivanov seems frozen too.

  Moore come forward, pushing the Russian aside then firmly pushing the close button.

  The time seems to freeze.

  The door starts to close.

  The monster is quickly approaching.

  Macready runs, aiming with the assault rifle at the retinal scanner.

  The gate is half closed.

  A long tentacle darts toward the Major, barely missing his ankle.

  The man open fire, a
first set of three shots miss the target.

  Shit...

  A second burst, whose noise is almost covered by the cacophony of sounds of the abomination behind him, hits the retinal reader, smashing it to pieces.

  The tailgate is three quarters closed when Macready plunges, landing hard on the ground over the threshold.

  Ivanov seems to awaken and he supports Moore, trying to push the movement of the gate to accelerate its closure. However, the mechanism proceeds with its usual slow pace, unmindful of their efforts.

  The bulk of the creature is huge and now incumbent upon them, with only a couple of centimeters missing to the complete closure of the door.

  The sickening stench becomes more intense and hits them with a heavy wind, since the body completely fills the hallway and acts as a piston. A tentacle darts for a moment over the threshold before withdrawing, the creature is now very close. Hell itself is ready to fall on the three survivors when the passage finally closes with a metallic thud. Less than a second later the creature hits the other side, making a loud crash followed by a furious and brutal growl.

  Macready has already stood up. «Let's go, there's not even a second to waste!»

  The three rush quickly up the concrete stairways. The sound of their steps, amplified in the closed environment, is echoed by heavy blows against the three armored doors.

  «Will they resist?», the woman asks out of breath.

  «I don't know, but it's enough for me if they resist for a few minutes. We set the charges to create a gap between the basements. The latest detonation will trigger the supply of explosives in the armory. The fire will spread everywhere. That son of a bitch will burn in the hell where it came from.»

  Algerian desert

  Military convoy

  «Lieutenant Samuel Bishop, sir, I have a license as a helicopter pilot.»

  «God bless you, soldier. Make sure you keep flying this thing, we all have a score to settle.»

  Once the helicopter has stabilized, Ironside frees himself from the slings and headphones and heads toward the back of the aircraft, poking rapidly among the crammed boxes at the bottom. Some are scattered and have opened.

  An excited voice emerges from the intercom. «Brimley here. I recovered McKinnock. He's heavily wounded. I'm rushing to the base.»

  Ironside, helped by one of the marines on board of the helicopter, reaches the right-side door. The two men scroll it sideways. The impact with the cold night air accelerated by the blades of the main rotor is one shock, but nothing compared to the sight of what is happening about thirty meters below, on the ground under the helicopter.

  The two vehicles are lying sprawled on a side. Brody was thrown out a few meters away. Only the top half of his body is visible. At the waist it fades into a long stump sprawling that snakes deep into the roof of the truck. From the left door of the vehicle they can see a bloody pulp, vaguely reminiscent a sea anemone. Long tentacles explore the environment around in search of organic parts to assimilate.

  Ironside watches helplessly a shapeless mass that crawls out from what remains of the truck driven by McKinnock. In the bloody structure are visible the soldiers who were in the truck. Some of them are still conscious and their desperate shouts, muffled by the noise of the helicopter rotor, reach the ears of John Ironside.

  The creature escaping from the truck crawls on the ground towards the huge anemone which occupies the remains of the other truck. Long tentacles emerge from the two bodies, clutching each other and binding, so that the creatures begin to join into one. One of the soldiers, partially entangled in the tentacles, struggles in vain. His hysterical shouts seem the verses of an animal, as he is pushed into the beating heart of the huge abomination.

  «Bishop, take the helicopter on the perpendicular and keep it in position», Ironside shouts trying to overwhelm the noise of the engine. Meanwhile, the soldiers have dragged a heavy fuel barrel towards the opening.

  The pilot responds promptly, taking the helicopter right above the creature.

  Ironside holds himself with the left hand to a safety bar. The sight is terrifying. The creature seems to have doubled its size in a short time. The main body of what appears as a monstrous anemone now has a diameter of over five meters. A monstrous mouth opens at its core, a dark red hole, covered with white and curved tusks. A gurgling roar, louder than the noise of the helicopter engine, reaches the survivors.

  Ironside pushes the can to the edge, when the aircraft is shaken. He strengthens his grip on the safety bar, knuckles whitened by the effort.

  «Bishop, hold the position!»

  USA base CNT222

  With a final sprint, the three survivors climb the final ladder, finally emerging on the surface inside the hangar.

  Without further ado, Macready seals the last opening, then they rush through the hangar. The Major walks to the gate that gives access to the short tunnel that ends with the elevator.

  Moore and Ivanov follow him closely, shivering, and not only from the impact of the cold desert air.

  The gate is open.

  Macready is the first to reach it and to take a look in the tunnel lit by the cold light of fluorescent tubes.

  Voices.

  «Why the hell no one answers? And where is the sentry? This whole fucking thing starts to get on my nerves...»

  Jeff Michigan and Will Bailey are standing in front of the elevator door. A blink signals the arrival at the floor.

  «Get away from there! Now!», Macready shouts.

  The scream takes the two marines off guard. They turn in unison towards him as the elevator doors slide sideways.

  A noise like that of a whole brood of rattlesnakes emerges from the opening.

  Bailey reacts instinctively and jumps aside, narrowly avoiding a dark tentacle whipping the air just above his head. Jeff is not that lucky. Another tentacle wraps on his left leg, tugging him back with such violence that the soldier falls back, violently hitting the ground with his face and getting a deep laceration on his right cheekbone.

  Jeff is rapidly pulled toward the interior of the elevator, from which come chaotic sounds. Distressing laments and unidentifiable noises that express a feeling of savage brutality.

  The man shouts as one of his legs is quickly sucked into the protoplasmic mass. The marine kicks desperately with the other leg but new tentacles sprout from the mucilaginous body that occupies a corner of the cabin, trapping him.

  «Shit! Help me, Will! Help me!», Jeff shouts, with voice made acute by terror and pain.

  Bailey rushes to grab his friend's arms, pulling him back with all his strength. In the general chaos he can't hear the voice of Macready, who tries to call him back, aware that there is nothing they can do to help Michigan. This one keeps screaming as the creature makes its way into his flesh, breaking bones and tearing tissue and muscle fibers, tearing him literally to pieces. His voice takes on tones even more acute and guttural, then tentacles as thick as a finger sprout out of his chest, tearing his suit.

  Under the desperate look of Will Bailey, Jeff Michigan neck inflates like a balloon and his voice fades into a gurgle. A shapeless mass comes out from his mouth and nostrils. Eyes pop out of their sockets, driven by organic matter that immediately takes on consistency and coagulates into new repugnant tentacles.

  Only then Will lets him go, finally realizing that there is nothing to do for his friend. He starts to turn and run desperately towards Macready and out over the gate. The man can take just two steps when some appendages burst out of the creature and dart at him, stabbing him in the back and emerging from his chest. The soldier remains frozen and incredulous, looking as one of the tentacles bends backwards towards his face and opens up lengthwise, revealing a row of dark and shiny thorns. Jaws of another world move quickly on his face while inside his body he perceives the creature growing and expanding as a liquid fire. Other tentacles are wrapped around his chest lifting him from the ground floor. Aware of the imminent end Will turns his head, crossing for a moment
the eyes of Macready. There is a silent plea in his bewildered look.

  «Forgive me, boy», the Major whispers, aiming at him. Will gets hit between the eyes, just a moment before the monstrous jaws pounce on his face.

  Then Moore pushes the close button inside the door, which slowly begins to close.

  Meanwhile Macready throws his backpack containing explosives inside the elevator cab, followed shortly by a triggered incendiary grenade.

  «Run!», Macready shouts to the two scientists.

  The three survivors flee, running away from the door that closes without a noise and cuts away the cacophony of sounds coming from inside.

  «Keep running! The underground structure is surrounded by meters of concrete and solid rock, and it's sealed by steel doors over a meter thick, but we can't rule out that the force of the explosions will reach the surface!»

  The three come out of the hangar, rushing in the cold of the inclement desert's night. They run through a few tens of meters before collapsing to the ground, exhausted and panting.

  3...

  2...

  1...

  A distant rumble is barely perceptible, accompanied by a ground tremor that seems to never end.

  It takes about ten seconds, then the stillness.

  Nobody talks.

  In the silence of the night they can hear only their own breathing, which condense into puffs of vapor in the cold indifferent atmosphere.

  Algerian desert

  Military convoy

  «One of the blows must have damaged the control system, sir, the helicopter doesn't respond well to commands!»

  Ironside calculates the time, trying to predict the right moment. «Now!», he shouts to two soldiers with him. With a last effort they push the can over the edge.

  The heavy container falls rapidly, hitting the monstrous anemone on the edge of the gaping jaws, digging a deep tear in the tissue and falling beside the creature.