by Bryan Dunn
Then Nick was yelling again, “It’s coming…the creature is coming!”
Ray ripped the radio off his belt, keyed the mike, and said, “Roger that. Roger that.”
Emmett bolted into the chamber with Slade in tow and shouted, “Everyone—back to the crank box!”
Slade broke away from Emmett and was the first to arrive behind the safety of the rock wall, letting his eyes fall on the crank box. Slade wanted to capture this thing, not destroy it.
A moment later, he was joined by Kylie, Ray, Major Atwood, and Emmett. Emmett was the last to arrive and stopped short of the rock wall, remaining just outside the blind.
“I’m staying out here.” He pointed to a bolder. “I’ll be behind that rock. That will give me a visual on the trap. Ray—when I yell, you crank the handle on the detonation box, just like I showed you.”
Ray dropped to the crank box, flashed a thumbs-up, and said, “I’m on it.”
“Okay, here we go.” Emmett moved to the boulder and lowered himself behind it, leaving his head exposed so he had a clear view of the trap which was lit by flashlights pointing at the exit.
The chamber fell silent. There was a long, anxious moment. Then, there was a sound of pounding footsteps, and Nick and Lucas shot into the Ballroom, oxygen masks yanked around their necks. With fierce expressions cemented on their faces, they sprinted across the trap like it was a bed of hot coals.
Right behind them, hot on their heels, the creature rushed into the chamber. It entered the edge of the trap and stopped. It lowered its head in a defensive position and then scanned the room, letting its eyes adjust to the light.
The first thing that went through Emmett’s mind as he stared at the creature standing in the cave’s opening was, The thing is fucking huge. And then he thought, And fucking scary!
The creature started to advance. Emmett snapped out of it and yelled, “Now!” just as Nick and Lucas dove to the ground.
The creature continued forward, and as it crossed the center of the trap, Ray turned the handle on the detonation box, cranking it around with such force that his wrist made a loud popping sound.
A split second later, the dynamite exploded. The chamber was filled with a concussive boom. A fountain of debris shot up from the cave floor. Rocks and chunks of salt crisscrossed through the air and hammered the chamber walls like mortar rounds.
Nick and Lucas rolled to a sitting position and saw through the smoke and dust that the creature was still there.
The trap hadn’t worked.
The floor beneath the alien’s feet hadn’t collapsed; it had only fractured into web of narrow cracks.
Momentarily staggered, the creature rose from the floor shedding rocks and debris. It regained its footing and immediately scanned the chamber, its crimson eyes locating and calculating the distance to its prey.
Emmett swore to himself and emerged from behind the boulder, all the while keeping his eyes locked on the creature. Just as he was about to yell to Nick and Lucas to get back with the others, a ghostly figure appeared out of the swirling dust.
Slade.
He stood in the middle of the chamber, staring at the creature, mesmerized by the sight of it, the remote detonator held in his hand.
He flipped open the cover exposing the trigger, raised the remote, and his thumb settled on the button.
Emmett shouted, “No!” at the top of his lungs.
But Slade’s finger was already pressing down, and a second later, the C-4 went up.
Twenty feet outside the Ballroom chamber, there was a massive explosion in the passage leading to the surface. The entire cavern shook. Three hundred feet of tunnel collapsed. A shockwave rolled through the entrance and swept through the Ballroom chamber. It was like a bomb had been dropped on them.
Kylie, Ray, and Major Atwood were thrown to the floor, their ears ringing like church bells. They all scuttled backward as the wall they had taken cover behind began to crumble.
Emmett had been knocked off his feet and tossed ten feet through the air, and was now lying facedown beneath a slide of rocks.
A short distance from Emmett, Slade rose to his knees and blinked, washing the dust from his eyes.
Farther in the chamber, Nick and Lucas coughed, trying to clear the dust from their lungs and were exchanging confused looks.
Then something caught their attention. The creature. It began to move. It took a step toward them. It was about to come for them.
Shit.
Nick spotted a stick of dynamite that had rolled free of Lucas’s pack. He scrambled over, grabbed it, turned to Lucas, and said, “You distract it with the shotgun.” He held up the dynamite. “And I’ll hit it with this.”
Lucas gave a nod and pumped four shells into the chamber of the shotgun. He reached into a pocket, held up a butane lighter, motioned to Nick, and lit the fuse.
They rushed the creature, running at it side by side and yelling at the top of their lungs. Lucas leveled the Remington pump at his waist and began firing until the shotgun was empty. Nick ran ahead a few feet, planted a foot, and hurled the dynamite.
They watched as it cartwheeled through the air, its fuse spraying sparks like a Roman candle. The dynamite bounced into the trap, stopping just short of the creature, and a moment after that, it exploded with a loud boom.
The ground beneath the creature began to shift and tilt. A frozen moment, and then a huge section of the chamber floor broke free from the surrounding walls and disappeared.
Through the smoke and chaos, they watched as the creature seemed to hover above the opening, and then, as if it had been standing on an invisible trapdoor, it disappeared. With limbs flailing, it fell, twisting and turning into the inky blackness of the void.
Chapter 35
Amid the swirling smoke, Nick spit out a mouthful of grit, glancing at Lucas, who had his hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. Nick said, “Well, that did it.”
Lucas straightened, shook his head, and then laughed. “Guess the trap was light just one stick of dynamite.”
Both of them stared at the hole in the middle of the chamber, amazed by the size of it. A full one third of the floor had disappeared. There was a sudden breeze, and they felt it on their faces. It swirled up, mixing dust with smoke as the pressure differential between the Ballroom chamber and the newly exposed void equalized.
“Come on,” Nick said with a wave of his arm. “Let’s check on the others.”
Nick and Lucas picked their way across the chamber arriving back at the group just in time to see Emmett rise like a phoenix from beneath a pile of rocks, dust himself off, and straighten his helmet. He then marched over to Slade and, without warning, shoved him, sending Slade sailing backwards onto his ass.
“You son of a bitch. You stupid son of a bitch.” Emmett said, staring down at Slade, who was looking up at Emmett in wide-eyed shock. “You could’ve killed us! You could’ve killed us all.”
“The trap,” Slade said, holding up his hands and cowering behind them, expecting Emmett to take a swing at him any minute. “It didn’t work. I didn’t think it was going to work, so—”
“Right,” Emmett said, cutting him off. “Now the only thing that’s trapped is us!”
“What the fuck, Slade?” Nick said, staring down at him. “What the hell?”
“Major Atwood,” Slade stammered. “Major Atwood was in complete concurrence.”
The major stepped forward. “That’s a lie,” he said, looking at Slade. “I was against it. I advised Director Slade not to set the additional charges. I told him to wait for Colonel Kemp and his team to arrive, and I told him that we should get everyone out of the cavern as soon as possible. But the director ignored me. Claimed he was in charge, that this was NASA business, and something about this being ‘the opportunity of a lifetime.’” Atwood turned from Slade to the group. “Director Slade was on a trophy hunt. He deliberately ignored everyone’s safety in an attempt to capture the creature.”
“That’
s not true,” Slade pleaded. “When I saw that the trap hadn’t worked, I didn’t want to take a chance on the thing escaping, so I set off the C-4 charges and sealed the passage.”
“What? Wait a minute,” Ray said, a sick feeling rising in his stomach. “We’re trapped? Down here?”
* * * *
After tempers had cooled, they regrouped, huddling around their gear, taking inventory of what they had. All of them were rattled, and all of them were thinking about being trapped five hundred feet underground with that creature.
The chamber was mostly clear now, the dust having been vacuumed through the missing section of floor, but the acrid smell of high explosives hung heavily in the air and clung to bits of shattered rock.
Kylie mopped the back of her neck with a handkerchief, took a sip of water, and moved to the center of the group.
“What if we dig?” she said, motioning to the collapsed tunnel. “Maybe we could open a narrow passage through the tunnel.”
Emmett shook his head. “Not going to happen,” he said. “When that C-4 went up, it sounded like the passage collapsed clear up to the surface.”
Slade removed the cigarette he’d been chewing on and said, “We don’t need to dig. There’s a team on the way, remember? All we have to do is stay calm and wait for help to arrive.”
“A team?” Nick scoffed, shaking his head at Slade. “I think that falls into the ‘moot-fucking-point’ category. Unless, of course, it’s a team of giant fucking gophers.”
“Hold up,” Lucas said, trying to bring things down a notch. “Emmett’s right—there’s no way we can dig our way out of here; we’d need heavy equipment to clear that tunnel.” Lucas pointed the beam of his flashlight at the far exit and then lowered it, letting the light dance around the void in the chamber floor. “But one of the things I learned after twenty years of working underground is that if you can’t go up, try going down.” He glanced from the void to the group and added, “The only way out is down, through that hole.”
“Rope,” Ray said. “We’ve got about a mile of rope.”
Lucas nodded. “Right,” he said, turning to Emmett. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but by my calculations, that hole in the floor should lead right to the Clayton Mine.”
“No question about it,” Emmett said with a nod. “And if my memory serves, about halfway down, there should be an—”
“Access shaft,” Lucas said. “In fact, me and Willie used that shaft about a week ago while we were working that section of the mine. It’s the fastest way up and out to the mine entrance. There’s an old lift that runs from the shaft opening down to the floor.”
“We could use this.” Nick had moved to the edge of the hole and was holding a twisted section of inch-thick cable that was anchored to the wall, its braided wire strands partially frayed. A loop had been formed in the end of the cable and was held tight with a bolted clamp. The cable was a relic dating back to when the cavern had first been discovered. It had been installed as a primitive handrail to assist early explorers on their way to the cave’s lower chambers.
“We could anchor a turning block to the end of the cable, join the sections of climbing rope together, and, if we’re lucky, get down to the access shaft, or even the bottom of the mine if we have to.”
Suddenly, the chamber was filled with laughter.
Slade’s laughter.
He was staring at Nick, shaking his head, and laughing with contempt at the suggestion. “Some plan,” he said, all eyes on him. “We’ll hook ourselves to that line like sardines. If that thing’s still alive, we’ll be lowering ourselves right into its waiting mouth.”
Lucas took a step toward Slade and said, “Yeah, and guess who’s first chum bait.”
Kylie put a hand on Lucas’s arm, trying to calm him. But the truth was, she felt the same way. If anyone deserved to be first down the rope, it was Slade.
Chapter 36
A half hour later, a turning block had been rigged at the end of the cable.
They had taken a pulley and fastened it to the looped end of the cable, then draped the cable over a boulder so the pulley hung out over the hole in the floor.
Coiled next to the cable, close to a thousand feet of climbing rope had been joined together and the knots covered with duct tape to allow the rope to pass through the pulley without jamming in the block.
“Come on, take that thing off,” Lucas said, watching Nick as he stepped into a climbing harness.
Nick adjusted the waistband and glanced up at Lucas. “Forget it,” he said. “I’ve got to do this.”
Seeing that he wasn’t going to be put off, Lucas threaded the end of the rope through a locking rappelling device, leaving a tail of thirty feet that would hang below Nick giving him the option of adjusting his position on the line. Once the line was threaded, he clipped the device to an oval-shaped carabineer and handed it to Nick.
“Clip the rappelling device to—”
Nick was way ahead of him, and before Lucas could finish his instructions, he fastened the rappelling device to the nylon belay loop at the center of the harness.
“I did a little climbing when I was in college,” Nick said, flashing a smile and double-checking that the line was securely fastened to the harness.
“Climbing is one thing. Vertical drops underground in pitch black are another.” Lucas gathered a few coils of rope and dropped them at Nick’s feet, giving him enough play in the line to move to the edge of the hole. “Take your time. Slow and easy movements. Use your light.”
Nick gave Lucas a nod, and as he fastened the chinstrap on his helmet, Major Atwood approached.
“You don’t have to do this, Mr. Walker,” the major said, stepping up to Nick. “Colonel Kemp’s men are good. They’ll find a way to get to us.”
Nick stared at Atwood and said, “I’m sure you’re right, Major. But even if they are able to figure out where we’re trapped, how long will it be before they can dig us out?”
“I can’t answer that. But the colonel has a lot of pull. And considering what’s at stake, he’ll probably have access to all the resources he needs—equipment as well as personnel.”
“Listen, Major, I appreciate what you’re saying, but we’ve got to do something now. With that creature down there, we can’t wait.” Nick gathered some slack in the rope and then added, “Tell you what—if this doesn’t work, if we can’t find a way out, we’ll wait for the colonel’s team.”
Major Atwood stared at Nick. “Deal,” he said at last. “I’m going to hold you to that.”
“Hold you to what?” Kylie asked as she joined the men.
“I’ve just agreed to the major’s request. If our attempt to find a way out fails, we’ll wait for the colonel’s team to arrive.”
“Oh,” Kylie said and held up the two-way radio she’d gotten from Ray. “Lucas suggested we do a radio check, just to be sure.”
Nick nodded, retrieving the radio that was tethered to his side. While he and Kylie did a radio check, Emmett and Lucas readied the rope, pulling it back from the turning block and threading it through a carabineer brake that would allow them to safely pay out the rope.
Off to one side, remaining aloof from the activity, Slade sat slumped against a rock, watching the others and offering little more than the occasional headshake.
* * * *
Suspended from the rope, Nick dangled in the void’s black maw, his helmet lamp illuminating the opening’s jagged lip as a flow of air sent him twisting in a slow motion circle.
“All clear,” he said, flashing a thumbs-up. “Lower away.”
Stationed at the other end of the rope, Emmett eased his grip on the nylon line, letting the rope run through the carabineer brake, across the pulley, and into the open darkness of the hole.
Lucas hovered close by, ready to lend a hand in case something went wrong and Nick suddenly needed to be pulled up.
Nick felt the line jerk, and as he began to descend into the opening, the term ‘chum bait’ wriggl
ed through his mind.
Kylie moved up to the edge of the opening, holding on to the boulder the cable had been draped across. As she watched the rope run out, she thought about Nick dangling on the line and suddenly felt queasy. Lucas had assured her that the climbing rope was strong enough to hold ten men Nick’s size, but she couldn’t stop herself from worrying. What if one of the knots holding the sections of lines failed? Or what if Nick slipped and fell, or worse, found the creature?
As Kylie watched the first tape-covered knot pass smoothly through the pulley, she grabbed the radio, keyed the mike, and said, “Just passing two hundred feet, over.”
Two hundred feet below, Nick retrieved the radio from his side, raised it to his mouth, and said, “Roger…roger that.”
He released the radio, letting it dangle at his side, and as he passed two hundred and twenty feet, the heels of his boots struck something solid.
The next thing he knew, he was jerked completely around, and a second after that, he was blinded by his helmet lamp as he came face to face with the polished rock wall.
Jesus.
He scooped up the radio and shouted, “Stop! Stop! Hold the line!”
A moment later, the rope lurched to a stop.
He reached out, placed a hand on the wall, and just as he was about to report that the opening had narrowed, he was suddenly engulfed in a cloud of screeching, flapping wings.
Bats.
Hundreds of them. They seemed to be everywhere. Pouring out of a jagged opening in the cliff wall directly in front of his face.
Nick yelled, “Son of a bitch!” and began frantically waving a hand, trying to sweep the swarming bats away.
But they just kept coming and coming. Horrible, beady-eyed faces choking and smothering him.
Then he did the only thing he could think to do: he jerked his knees up, planted his boots on the wall, and mule kicked as hard as he could.
The next thing he knew, he was sweeping through the open blackness, a human pendulum trailing a stream of crazed bats, their flapping wings animated by the beam of his helmet lamp.