Horror Sci-Fi Box Set: Three Novels

by Bryan Dunn

  Twenty yards in front of the plane, at the edge of a shallow fissure, Harry helped Amy and Lockwood assemble gear for the journey into the cave.

  Besides the danger of breaking through the ice – or worse, having the cave collapse – hypothermia was a very real concern. Amy and Lockwood were taking no chances having added layer upon layer of clothing beneath their North Face parkas, Gortex pants and ice boots. Entering and trekking through an ice cave was like wandering around inside a meat locker for four or five hours – the place was one giant heat sink. Many people had been caught unawares by the cold and lacked the strength to return to the surface.

  Amy and Lockwood were adjusting climbing harnesses, snapping equipment onto D-rings, and checking the halogen lights on their helmets.

  Harry was crouched near the fissure’s edge assembling an aluminum ice ladder that would give them easy access to the entrance of the ice cave.

  Amy picked up two anchor bolts and a hand sledge and crunched through the ice joining Harry. “Got that figured out okay?” she asked.

  Harry looked up, smiled. “Sure, nothing to it.” He locked the last segment into place, then stood. “What’s next?”

  She handed him a bolt and the sledge. “We drive these into the ice and secure the top of the ladder to them.”

  Harry took the bolt, looking into her face – and was struck by how beautiful she looked with her hair pulled back, cheeks glowing with excitement, and eyes sparkling with anticipation.

  He glanced over, saw Lockwood fussing with his gear, then turned back to Amy. “It just struck me that this might be an excellent opportunity to throw Lockwood off your scent.” Harry took a step closer. “When should I take you in my arms and start kissing you madly on the lips?”

  Amy laughed, giving him a playful shove. “Oh, I forgot to tell you – that whole business got straightened out yesterday. You’re off the hook. You can turn your attention back to the indigenous fauna – whatever her name is.”

  “What?” Harry asked, genuinely caught off guard.

  “Lockwood and I had it out yesterday. He made a pass and I let him know that the only kind of relationship we’re ever going to have is a working relationship. Period.”

  “Hang on, let me get this straight… Lockwood, who’s been sniffing around you for the last year and a half – desperate, I might add, to get in your pants – was put in his place by you telling him with a wave of your finger that this is just a working relationship?”

  “Well, yes,” Amy said defensively. “He was pretty upset when he left the lab. Believe me, he got the message.”

  Harry laughed. “He got nothing. That’s not going to stop him. You’re kidding yourself.” He studied her face, then looked into her eyes. “Well, I gotta tell you, either way that’s disappointing news. I was really looking forward to my assignment.”

  A little color bloomed on her face. Amy blushed and laughed.

  Thirty feet away, Lockwood had finished adjusting his gear and was now staring at Harry and Amy – watching them talk, studying their body language. The look on his face was that of a scorned lover.

  “Well, I just want to thank you again for being my knight in waiting. It was very noble of you,” Amy said warmly.

  “I think you’re making a big mistake here,” Harry countered. “I think I should give you one quick little kiss to really throw him off his game.”

  “Harry, snap out of it!” She began positioning the ladder, then added: “It’s over.”

  “Hey, what happened to the noble knight in waiting?” he challenged.

  “Shut up, Harry.”

  He held up his hands, surrendering. “You know what this feels like? Being stood up on a first date.”

  “Harry…” Amy growled. “Stop.”

  Harry turned, looked at Lockwood and saw that he’d been watching and was now staring right at him. If looks could kill.

  “Here, let me help,” Harry said, taking one end of the ladder.

  They worked silently as they lowered the ladder into the fissure, then secured it to the anchor bolts.

  “I see you two are becoming fast friends,” Lockwood said as he joined them at the lip of the fissure.

  Harry looked up at Lockwood. “Yes, we’ve developed a close working relationship,” he said and felt Amy give him a kick.

  “Is that a fact?” Lockwood said.

  “Dr. Lockwood, the ladder’s ready. Looks like we’re just short of the bottom so we’ll have to pick our way down the last six feet or so,” Amy said, shifting the subject back to work. She held up a safety line that was attached to her harness indicating she was belayed and ready to go. “I’d like to lead, if it’s okay?”

  “By all means,” Lockwood nodded. “I insist.”

  “The coring equipment and safety bucket are already in place at the foot of the ladder.”

  “Excellent,” Lockwood said, turning to Harry. “Mr. McNills, if you will be so kind as to monitor from above and make sure our tethers don’t get crossed. We should be able to get all the samples we need in two or three hours.”

  Harry nodded, then suddenly wished he was going along too. But it was too risky – if something happened to him, there’d be no one to pilot Amy and Lockwood back to St. John’s. Boots could probably pull it off, Harry thought – but he couldn’t take the chance. If something were to happen to one of his clients with an unlicensed pilot at the helm, he’d be through in the charter business.

  Amy swung onto the ladder and began her descent, making sure her spiked crampons rested securely on each rung as she moved toward the base of the fissure.

  Standing on the bottom of the ladder, Amy glanced down and saw that she still had about a five-foot drop before she reached the floor below. She gripped the rails of the ladder, then lifted her right foot and toed her crampons into the ice with a kicking motion. After making sure her boot was secure, she lowered herself, then quickly thrust her other boot forward, toeing that into the wall as well. In this fashion, she moved down the remaining stretch of ice before dropping onto the bottom.

  “All clear,” she yelled, then stepped away from the ladder and signaled for Lockwood to start down.

  Lockwood swung onto the ladder, worked his way along the rungs, and just as Amy had done, used his crampons to negotiate the last five feet of wall.

  As Lockwood dropped onto the ice, Harry called down, “Everyone okay?”

  Lockwood and Amy smiled up at Harry. Lockwood held up a thumb, then looked at his watch. “It’s 10 a.m. Look for us back here in two hours.”

  “Two hours,” Harry confirmed. Then, “Lunch will be served and waiting for you.”

  Amy waved at Harry, then both she and Lockwood turned and looked along the length of the fissure to the cave opening.

  It was an amazing sight. Thousands of years ago an icy river ran through the heart of the glacier. Over the years, as the ice receded, a perfect tube was left running right through the sheet ice.

  Amy and Lockwood broke into broad grins as they stared up at the twenty foot- tall, O-shaped, screaming mouth of the cave’s entrance.

  “Amazing,” Amy said, still staring at the gaping black maw. “It’s so perfect. It almost looks man-made.”

  “Yes, remarkable,” replied Lockwood. “The only other time I can remember seeing such a symmetrical cave entrance was on the Hawaiian island of Molakai where the hot magma bored perfectly round lava tubes through the surrounding basalt.”

  * * * *

  Ten minutes later, Amy and Lockwood entered the cave, both of them reflexively reaching up and switching on their helmet lamps.

  Two swords of light sliced through the blackness. They found themselves in an enchanted world. Moving across the antechamber, their lights raked the frozen, glistening walls, causing them to glow with a hidden luminescence – the blue ambience shifting to turquoise, then back to blue and, deeper inside the cave, purple. It was magical.

  “It’s unbelievable,” Amy said, overwhelmed by the surrounding beaut
y. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  “Yes,” Lockwood nodded, equally awed. “Magnificent.”

  “It’s surreal,” Amy said, lifting her camera and firing off a couple of shots. Her strobe light streaked through the cave like a jagged bolt of lightning. “It’s like a giant Hollywood set. No… this it better. It’s real.”

  Lockwood looked up at the cave’s roof, letting his helmet lamp settle on a formation of ice crystals hanging from the ceiling that were every bit as delicate and beautiful as a crystal chandelier.

  “My hat’s off to Mr. McNills,” Lockwood said, still mesmerized by the chandelier. “He’s outdone himself. Really put us onto something special.”

  They continued forward, moving deeper and deeper into the ice – and then suddenly found themselves ducking and weaving around a snaggletooth section of icicles that looked to Amy like fangs gaping out of a prehistoric predator’s mouth.

  Safely past the icicles, Amy led them on, their helmet lamps raking sculpted ice walls, while the ice crunching beneath their boots echoed throughout the icy tomb.

  They were so far from sunlight now that they could’ve been divers swimming through the inky depths of some deep ocean trench.

  Amy had moved twenty feet ahead of Lockwood, and just as she was about to take another step, found herself unexpectedly jerking to a halt when she realized the cave’s floor suddenly plunged downward, then leveled again, finally ending in a sharp bend.

  She tilted her head, letting her helmet lamp illuminate the sharp drop-off, and thought to herself how lucky she was not to have stepped off the edge. They were going to have to rope down this section of ice.

  Just as she was about to alert Lockwood, the ice beneath her feet fractured, then let go, breaking cleanly away from the floor.

  Amy screamed.

  Then she fell, twisting and tumbling down the slope. And just before she hit the bottom, right where the floor leveled again, her body pitched sideways and she went skidding head first through the cave.

  Amy screamed again as she was swept up one side of the tunnel wall – and like she was on an amusement park water slide, warped around a sharp bend and shot deeper into the cave.

  “Amy!” Lockwood yelled, rushing forward as his voice echoed through the icy silence.

  He scrambled up to the section of collapsed floor, careful not to get too close to the edge. He swept his light back and forth through the darkness below – desperate for some sign of Amy. Nothing.

  Shit.

  Lockwood cupped his hands around his mouth and called out to her again. “Amy!”

  He waited, and just as the last “Amy” faded into the icy walls… he heard her voice.

  “Hayden… I’m okay. I’m alright.”

  “Amy,” Lockwood called right back, silently thanking God that she was alive. “Where are you? I can’t see you.” Just as he began searching with his light again…

  Amy stepped into view and waved up to him, indicating that she was okay.

  “Wow! What a ride!” she said, then began to dust chunks of ice off her parka. “Incredible.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No. I’m okay – thanks to all this padding.” Amy adjusted her utility belt, then waved for Lockwood to join her. “You’ve got to come down here, Hayden. You’ve got to see what I’ve found.”

  Lockwood looped the coil of climbing rope off his shoulder, secured one end to an anchor bolt he’d driven into a section of ice wall, and moved down the rope hand over hand, joining Amy on the ice below.

  She gave Lockwood a thumbs up, then surprised him by reaching up and turning off her helmet lamp. Then she told him to turn his off as well.

  “What?” Lockwood said, confused by her request.

  “Just do it. Trust me. Turn it off.”

  Lockwood, still confused, shook his head, then complying with Amy’s request, reached up and turned off his lamp.

  As soon as he did, and after their eyes had adjusted to the dark, the entire cave began to glow with the same blue ambience they’d encountered at the entrance.

  Lockwood looked astonished that he could now see without his helmet lamp and was about to say so – when Amy took his arm, and began to lead him farther into the cave, to the section she’d just returned from.

  “Come on. You’ve got to see this.”

  With Amy leading Lockwood by the arm, they rounded the bend in the tunnel and were suddenly standing in a huge open chamber of ice that seemed to be lit from above.

  Amy pointed to a vaulted ceiling that looked like it rose over five hundred feet. It ended in a much thinner layer of pure glacial ice that collected sunlight and then transferred it deep into the cave like a sort of giant, opaque skylight.

  Lining each side of the ceiling, massive ice columns, more beautiful than anything sculpted by Greek artisans, thrust up to the ice above – giving the entire chamber the feel and majesty of one of the world’s great cathedrals.

  “It’s like a giant skylight,” Lockwood said, still looking up at the ceiling.

  “It makes me think of Michelangelo.” Amy removed her camera and began to photograph the chamber.

  Lockwood made his way over to a section of cave wall and ran his hand over the dense ice. He unclipped his ice axe from his utility belt, swung it against the wall, knocked loose an ice chip, and, catching it, examined it by holding it up to the light.

  “The ice here looks perfect, Amy,” Lockwood said, turning towards her and holding up the shard of ice.

  Amy lowered her camera, clipped it onto her harness, and joined Lockwood at the cave wall.

  “Let’s take samples right along this wall in five-foot increments.”

  Amy nodded okay. She couldn’t help noticing that Lockwood seemed to have shed twenty years and seemed to be really enjoying himself.

  She flashed a thumbs-up, shrugged off her pack, retrieved the coring bit, and, working in tandem with Amy guiding the coring rod, and Lockwood turning the handle, it wasn’t long before they had a bucket full of neat little pellet-shaped sections of the ten thousand year-old ice.

  An hour later, they popped out of the fissure and stepped onto the surface.

  “You two look like you just won the lottery,” Harry said, noting their grinning faces and helping them with their gear.

  “Oh, Harry, it was fantastic!” Amy said, breaking into a huge smile.

  Lockwood thrust a hand out to Harry. “I want to thank you for guiding us to this spot, Mr. McNills. It was really something special.”

  “Hey, I’m glad it worked out,” Harry said shaking Lockwood’s hand, surprised by the compliment. “Not too many people have been here.”

  * * * *

  A half-hour later the group had gathered around the table for lunch.

  Boots added a packet of hot chocolate to boiling water and stirred the contents with the end of a Twinkie. The rest of the group, studiously ignoring Boots, laid out a spread of French bread, cheese, smoked salmon, olives, and various salads.

  The morning had been a great success, and everyone was smiling and ebullient. Lockwood uncorked a fancy-looking bottle of wine, tipped a small amount into a glass, took a sip and rolled it around in his mouth. He swallowed, then sniffed the bouquet – clearly amused by the little upstart Santa Barbara County chardonnay. He pursed his lips, took another sip, then lifted the bottle, scrutinizing the year and the appellation.

  Lockwood filled everyone’s glass except Boots’ who put a hand over his – content with the hot chocolate and Twinkie.

  “Do have some chardonnay,” Lockwood said, motioning to Amy and Harry. “It’s quite remarkable.” He swirled his wine, giving it another sniff. “Hints of oak and freshly cut grass…” He took another sip. “And it’s pure butter on the palate.”

  Harry lifted his glass. “I don’t know whether to swallow or chew my cud.”

  There was a moment of silence as Harry and Amy stared at Lockwood. And then Lockwood burst into laughter, enjoying the jab at his snobb
ery. “Chew your cud… That’s a good one, Mr. McNills. Very funny.” And they all began to laugh.

  Harry took a sip of wine. “Anything that doesn’t taste like paint remover is good stuff. Unfortunately, I’m on duty – one sip is all I’m allowed.”

  They clinked their glasses together, sipped their wine, and tucked into the smoked salmon.

  Boots shuffled over to the ice chest, lifted one of the core samples, held it up to the light, squinted, then scratched his rump. “Hey, I don’t see any of them ‘nemertoads’.”

  Everyone stopped eating and looked at Boots. His pants were sagging around his ankles. An orange hunting cap with earflaps was pulled down low on his head, but somehow tufts of hair still managed to poke out from all sides.

  Harry just shook his head, then laughed. Lockwood was speechless.

  “That’s because they’re microscopic, Boots,” Amy said, coming to the rescue. “Nematodes are microbe feeders,” she patiently explained, “eight thousand of them could fit in a hyphen.”

  Boots quickly replaced the sample, looked at his hands, then wiped them on his parka just to be sure.

  “I think you should start with the Beanie Baby analogy and work your way down from there, Dr. Tyler,” Harry said playfully.

  Chapter 10

  Harry was sitting at his desk, an old door placed across two filing cabinets that had been squeezed into one corner of the hanger. He was on the phone arguing about a fuel bill when Inspector Roland Hyde strolled in, pipe in mouth, blue smoke in his wake.

  Harry saw the inspector, gave him a wave, and after a couple of grunts into the phone, hung up.

  “I hope I’m not disturbing you, Mr. McNills?” Hyde said.

  “Not at all,” Harry answered.

  “I was just hoping you may have heard something that might shed some more light on the disappearance of Captain Rains and crew?”

  “No. Nothing, inspector. Well, that’s not completely true. There’s an old wives’ tale circulating about a giant sea monster rising up and swallowing the ship, crew and all. But that’s nothing new around these parts,” Harry said with a laugh.