“What are these tunnels?” Kyle asked, pointing to the smaller tributaries.
“Offshoots,” his father said. “There’s a maze of tunnels running beneath Macâya Forest. We need to stay as close to the mine as possible or we’ll get lost down there.”
* * *
Kyle switched on the light of his caving helmet as they entered the mine shaft single file. His father took the lead, carrying the flamethrower. Scarpetti went next, then Kyle. Madu followed last. The machete handle jutted out from behind his back. He met eyes with Kyle and nodded. The Zulu warrior’s face looked fearless.
No one spoke as they walked.
Kyle’s helmet beam spotlighted mossy green walls. Hordes of purple mushrooms glistened in the dank tunnel. Every twenty feet, Elkheart stuck a glow stick in the wall so they could find their way back out. The tunnel curved and continued to descend. Gravity pulled at Kyle’s legs, causing him to walk a little too fast. He felt as if the black hole was sucking him downward. He thought of Jessica, lost somewhere in this subterranean labyrinth, and his drive to find her gave him courage.
They reached the juncture where the shaft split into two tunnels. Elkheart, who had memorized the map, chose left. He occasionally shot out a dragon’s breath of flames to see what lay ahead. They passed a few intersecting tunnels. Kyle felt on edge as his light shined into them. He whipped his submachine gun left and right, half-expecting demons to lash out. Where were they all?
Kyle heard moaning ahead. The sound echoed in the tunnel. He fingered the trigger of his MP5.
Somewhere in the darkness water splashed. Female voices giggled and screeched.
Elkheart paused and gave Kyle the look he used when they hunted together. His serious stare said, Are you ready for this?
Kyle nodded.
As they curved around the mine shaft tunnel, the right wall opened up. Their helmet beams disappeared into infinite darkness. The splashing sounds grew louder, echoing like an indoor swimming pool.
Feeling a sudden childish fear of the dark, Kyle kept his back against the walls as they followed a ledge. It sloped down ten feet into a pit of slimy water. The female demons undulated in the soup, like spawning fish. They had the female body parts, but their bones were long, and their skin, charcoal gray. They seemed too preoccupied to notice the four men standing above them. The demons’ eyes were rolled back to whites. They moaned as if in ecstasy.
Cast off to the side among the debris of floating sticks was a gray husk with Eric’s face. All the blood had been drained from his shriveled body, the eyes, lips, and genitals eaten away. His brother had died screaming.
Kyle fell back against the wall. The sight weakened his legs and his chest felt like it was caving in. Despite their differences, to see that Eric had died suffering was too much to bear.
He’s gone.
Madu grabbed Kyle’s wrist and gave him a hard look. This was no time to break down.
A man groaned from the darkness.
Panning their lights, their beams found Ray Roamingbear in the middle of the orgy. He drifted in the viscera. Females swam over and under him like hellish mermaids. He was alive, his face blissed out, grinning with pleasure. His eyes opened, staring up at the four gunmen. Ray floated helplessly as Kyle aimed his gun. Rage replaced his sadness. He wanted this kill. Wanted to see the bastard suffer. Kyle thought of Nina and all the girls Ray had raped and murdered. His betrayal to the tribe, to his family. Gripping his submachine gun with tense hands, Kyle looked at his father, who gave a nod. Kyle blew a hole in Ray’s bulging stomach. He cried out in pain.
The females around him shrieked and dove under the oily surface of the pool.
Ray screamed in agony and clung to a rock island in the center.
“Finish him off,” Elkheart said.
Kyle felt sick to his stomach. He’d never shot another human being. “I can’t.”
Elkheart raised his rifle and fired. The side of Ray’s head burst and his limp body sank down into the pool. Then Elkheart glared at Kyle. “Down here it’s kill or be killed. Got it?”
Kyle nodded. When he looked down, he spotted a female with a bat face climbing up the muddy bank toward his feet. He fired his gun on impulse, hitting the creature in the face.
All at once the female demons popped their heads up out of the slime. They shrieked together.
“Now, men!” Elkheart shot a twenty-foot flame across the pit, torching the demons closest to the edge. Scarpetti yelled like a madman as he strafed them with bullets. Kyle and Madu lit Molotov cocktails and hurled them farther outward. Orange-blue flames spread across the muck. The she-demons screamed as the fire engulfed them. Dozens swam for the shore, climbing up the slope.
The four men shot down at them. The demons tumbled and splashed, but more kept swimming toward the muddy shore below. Kyle held down the trigger. Rapid-fire bullets shredded torsos and heads. A slimy hand gripped his ankle. A female creature’s face surfaced. He jammed the barrel into its eye socket and blew a hole through the back of its skull.
Flames continued to spread across the oily water. The females fled to the far wall, disappearing into holes.
“Let’s hurry!” Elkheart continued around the pool. Dead she-demons floated in the mass grave, as the flames melted their flesh. The cavern reeked of death.
Kyle followed the men into another tunnel, this one narrower than the opening to the mine shaft. In the tighter places, the damp walls rubbed against his shoulders and he had to step sideways. The railcar tunnel came to a T-section, and the metal tracks ended. The floor of the intersecting passage was all rock and mud.
“Shit, which way now?” Scarpetti asked.
“Let’s try left.” Elkheart sounded uncertain as he placed another glow stick in a crevice.
Going left felt wrong. “Wait, Dad.” Kyle looked down both tunnels. He felt a strong pull to go right. He touched the walls and heard ghostly echoes coming from that direction. When he released his hand, the screaming stopped. “We should go this way.”
“You sure?”
“The spirits are telling me to take this tunnel instead.”
Elkheart touched his palm against the rock wall and nodded.
Scarpetti rolled his eyes. “Seriously? That’s what we’re going by?”
They headed down the tunnel that Kyle had suggested. Their boots squished through mud. Tiny waterfalls dribbled down lime-green walls. Kyle’s helmet occasionally bumped the low-hanging ceiling. Water dripped down the back of his neck. He glanced back to make sure Madu was still following. The black mercenary gave a reassuring gap-toothed smile.
Up ahead, an unlit torch jutted from the wall. Elkheart pulled it off the wall and lit it. “Let’s save our batteries.”
They switched off their helmet lamps, and the darkness seemed to wrap itself around Kyle. The only light now came from the torch his father carried. They passed a few empty chambers. Twenty feet down the passageway, Elkheart lit a second torch and handed it to Kyle. His flame illuminated a hole in the ceiling. A female face with milky white eyes peered down at them.
“Shit!” Kyle jabbed his torch up the crevice, and she hissed, her wide mouth full of sharp piranha teeth. An arm lunged from the hole, claws scraping his helmet.
“Stand back.” His father aimed his flamethrower and blasted up the hole. The female demon screeched and fell between them in a fiery heap. She writhed and wailed on the tunnel floor, the talons on her hands and feet slashing the air. Madu ended her cries with a whack of his machete.
Kyle leaned back against the wall and exhaled. “Shit.”
“Be wary of every hole and crevice,” his father said. “That’s where they sleep.”
Kyle’s sister’s voice called from the darkness ahead. “Hello? Is someone out there?”
“Shawna?”
“We’re down here! Help us!”
Kyle started down the tunnel, but his father grabbed his arm. “Hold up. These things are tricksters. They can mimic voices.”
&nbs
p; As they crept toward Shawna’s pleading voice, Kyle’s heart filled with hope. Please let Jessica be with her.
Their torches lit up a rocky chamber. On the floor, a thatch-work of sticks covered a pit. Beneath the slats, muddy girls shielded their eyes. One of them had tattooed arms.
“Shawna!”
“Kyle!” She reached up and grabbed his hands. “Thank God!”
Madu chopped at the wood covering. Seconds later, they pulled Shawna out. She was naked and covered in mud. She cried uncontrollably on Kyle’s shoulder.
“Here.” He took off his jacket and put around his sister.
Elkheart leaped down into the pit and embraced Amy Hanson. “You’re still alive,” he said, his voice full of emotion. His father had been looking for her down here for the past six weeks. He covered her with a windbreaker. When he brought her out of the pit, Kyle reeled. Amy’s swollen belly looked as if she were pregnant.
Shawna guzzled a bottle of water, then poured some on her face and wiped away the mud mask. She only had a few scratches and bruises, but her eyes looked haunted. Kyle couldn’t fathom what she’d been through down here.
Kyle searched the chamber for a second pit, but only found a rock wall. “Where’s Jessica?”
“Some men took her somewhere,” Shawna said. “They took Amy’s sister too.”
* * *
Following the path of glow sticks, the six of them journeyed back without seeing another demon. The females seemed to have retreated deeper within the cave. Stepping out of the mine shaft, Kyle was grateful to see sunlight again. He drew fresh pine air into his lungs.
It took Shawna and Amy a moment to adjust their eyes. They all hiked back through the jungle-thick forest and crossed the swamp in the canoe. Back at the red Bronco, the men pulled off their packs and gave the women sandwiches that they’d brought from the cabin. Kyle, Elkheart, Madu and Scarpetti ate quickly, knowing they had to go back down.
Kyle checked his watch. Late afternoon. Another few hours and it would be dark. He felt his hope of finding Jessica waning. “We need to get going.”
Elkheart nodded, looking both physically and emotionally worn out. He hugged Amy and then the daughter he hadn’t seen in twenty years. He gave Shawna a shotgun and the keys to Big Red. “Stay in the Bronco. If we’re not back by sundown, you two drive the hell out of here.” He gave the girls quick directions, and they nodded.
“What about road blocks?” Kyle asked.
“Today, everyone in town will be down in the cave for the ceremony.”
Shawna punched Kyle’s shoulder. “You better come back.”
“We will.” Kyle hated leaving the girls, but two more needed to be rescued.
Amy said, “Please find Lindsey.”
“We’ll find her and Jessica.” Kyle hugged his sister. “You’ll be okay?”
Shawna gripped the sawed-off shotgun. “I can take care of myself. Go on. I’ll look after Amy.” His kid sister was tougher than he’d thought. Kyle kissed her forehead and then followed the mercenaries back to the canoe.
When they reached the split-off point inside the mine shaft, this time Elkheart and his men veered right. Kyle took the rear, counting the glow sticks his father stuck in the walls. The rail-car track curved downward into a black abyss. This tunnel seemed to go deeper than the previous one. Kyle felt the temperature dropping the farther they descended. A chill began to seep into his bones. Every so often they passed thick wooden planks that kept the shaft from caving in. At one point the ground leveled off, and the mine opened up wide enough for the four men to walk in pairs. A few railcars were parked along the sides of the tracks. Kyle imagined that over a century ago miners had used these for transporting copper out of the shaft. They must have been surprised to discover that they weren’t alone down here.
The cavern narrowed into a tunnel shaped like a tube. Elkheart aimed his flamethrower and shot a flame into the passageway. Nothing lurked in there except clusters of purple mushrooms. The smell of burnt fungus was heavy in the air. Kyle wondered if just breathing the spores would cause him to hallucinate.
His father entered the tunnel first, followed by Scarpetti and Madu. Again, they had to walk single file, this time hunched over. Kyle hated tight places. His breathing became more labored. His headlamp lit up walls covered in green lichen. Water continuously plinked on his helmet and dripped down his face. His waterproof jacket kept his upper body dry, but his jeans were soaked from all the moisture.
The tunnel opened up into a chamber that had more head room. The metal track came to a dead end at a flat wall. Unlike the natural cave walls, this one was made of large gray bricks, as if constructed by masons. Etched into the stone were strange symbols, similar to hieroglyphics. The wall continued high into the darkness.
His father whispered, “These are the ruins my team found. It’s similar to the ones we discovered in Cambodia and the Congo.” He reached up and wiped moss off the wall. “This is the demigod the shifters worship. Their Lord Father, the Macâya.”
Their headlamps illuminated a relief of a creature sitting cross-legged like Buddha. Six arms fanned out from its torso, spreading fingers tipped with daggers. Its head had a demonic face.
At the bottom of the brick wall a small archway led into a black tunnel. The arch stood only three-feet high. Kyle squatted and pointed his flashlight’s beam into the small opening. Great, another tight passage. This one looked like the interior of a damp sewer pipe overgrown with algae. A few feet in, the stone floor sloped into water.
“What’s this lead to?” Kyle asked.
“We don’t know. This is as far as we’ve ever gone.”
Kyle took in another deep breath and exhaled. “After you.”
* * *
Shawna sat behind the wheel of her dad’s beat-up Ford Bronco. She was jonesing for a cigarette. She searched the glove compartment, but her father only smoked cigars and chewed tobacco. She hit the steering wheel in frustration.
As dusk approached, the sun kept moving toward the western mountains. The forest grew a shade darker. In less than two hours it would be night. Shawna wished the men would return. She wanted to get the hell of out of these woods, but she didn’t want to leave the others behind. She feared for Jessica and Lindsey. Most of all, Shawna feared losing her big brother and her father. Now that Eric was gone, they were the only family she had left.
Sitting in the passenger seat, Amy kept crying. That was all she had done down in the pit, especially after the men took her sister. Poor Amy had spent six weeks inside that cave. Shawna glanced at Amy’s swollen belly.
“It’s growing inside me,” she said, looking at Shawna with red eyes. “I can feel it.”
Shawna looked away.
“They grow faster than normal babies,” Amy said. “It doesn’t take nine months.”
Shawna felt a knot in her own stomach. She had been raped. Had felt the beast shooting its seed inside her. She could be pregnant too.
* * *
At the brick wall with the arched tunnel, the four searchers removed their packs and began crawling in six inches of water. It was slow going. Kyle had to push his MP5 and a Molotov cocktail bottle ahead of him, crawl a few inches, and then repeat the task. The others moved along far ahead of him, and soon all Kyle saw was a long, black tube ahead. His heavy breathing echoed off the stone. His helmet kept scraping the ceiling. The tunnel seemed like it was closing in around him. At one choked section, the rock walls rubbed against his shoulders. He wedged his way through, only to hit another tight spot. Claustrophobia kicked in. His throat constricted. “Dad!” Kyle lay flat on his stomach, hyperventilating. His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He needed to get out of here. A voice screamed in his head to retreat.
“Kyle?” His father’s voice sounded in the radio headset. “Son, you can do this. The tunnel only goes another fifty feet or so. We’ve already made it out. Just keep coming.”
“Okay.” Kyle kept his eyes closed for a moment and just breathed. He thou
ght of Jessica, lost somewhere down here. He concentrated on her face, her voice, the way she had felt in his arms. He’d rather die than know he’d left her down here. He squeezed his fist. He opened his eyes with renewed determination and continued crawling.
He made it to the end of the tunnel and the others pulled him to his feet. Kyle stood beside his father, Scarpetti and Madu in a cavern of impenetrable blackness. The Zulu soldier put a finger to his lips. The four men remained silent for several seconds, probing the surrounding gloom with their flashlights.
Chittering sounded from above.
Something wet and slimy hit Kyle’s shoulder.
The Devil's Woods Page 34