by JE Gurley
Verkhoen grabbed Alan’s sleeve. “You must contact your man or figure out how to move the Cerberus. We are trapped here.” Verkhoen realized he was nearing panic and tried to control the fear sweeping through him, but images of the dead men he had passed in the mine kept popping into his head. He didn’t want to suffer a similar fate. Now, Alan informed him there could be something worse in the lava tube.
Alan pried Verkhoen’s fingers from his sleeve and looked into the camera. “Trace, if you can hear me, move the Cerberus.”
Verkhoen waited impatiently, but again nothing happened. “I tried that. He can’t hear you, or he’s dead.”
Alan glared at him, and then removed his laptop from his bag. Verkhoen watched with renewed hope, as Alan connected his laptop to the Cerberus. Hope faded after a few minutes when Alan’s face clouded.
“What’s wrong?” Verkhoen demanded.
“It’s in diagnostics mode from the other end. Trace must be trying to repair the damage Duchamp caused. I can’t get in.” Alan glared at him as he mentioned Duchamps, but Verkhoen dismissed it as a veiled accusation.
“What do you suggest we do?”
Alan disconnected his computer. “If we’re caught out in the open, we’ll die. I suggest we move down the tube past the diamonds. There’s a place that might offer some protection.”
Verkhoen seized on the idea of a safe place and nodded. “Yes! Yes! A place we can defend against these monsters and wait for rescue.”
Alan glared at him and pointed past the Cerberus toward the mine. “Rescue? There are hundreds of miners out there in that stony labyrinth dying. What makes you think they’ll come looking for us? Did you inform anyone where you were going? Eve didn’t. I didn’t. We’re trapped here until we can figure a way to get out.”
“Your man will fix the machine. In the meantime, we need cover.”
Verkhoen rallied his men and explained the situation to the ones who didn’t understand English. Watching him break had diminished their faith in him. They began grumbling in protest at his suggestion. They wanted out of the lava tube and knew the machine blocked the only access. He couldn’t allow them to stand around and argue, and he couldn’t leave them. He needed their firepower.
Exasperated, he turned and began walking back down the lava tube. He said, “Come with me, and I will give each of you an additional fifty thousand rand.” Their grumbling abruptly ceased and they followed.
Greed has its uses, he thought.
* * * *
They rested in the grotto Duchamps had found the day before. Verkhoen selected two men to stand guard outside the opening. They hesitated at first, but quickly wilted in Verkhoen’s intimidating presence. To save batteries, only one flashlight illuminated the entrance to the cleft. The colorful bioluminescent lichen covering the walls and roof reminded him of the black light day-glow posters on his bedroom walls as a child: a dark, silent elf woods washed by silver moonlight; a vast, pulsating nebula against the ebony backdrop of space; and a half-naked warrior princess Dejah atop an eight-legged Martian thoat. Under ordinary circumstances, it would have been relaxing, but circumstances were far from normal, and Alan was wound too tight to relax.
He leaned against a smooth boulder trying to decide what to do. His pain made thinking difficult. His hand now throbbed constantly and was tender to the touch. The redness and swelling was moving up his arm. He feared whatever prehistoric microbe or poison affecting him was fatal. Trapped in the bowels of the earth was not the way he had pictured himself dying.
Eve noticed his discomfort and came to sit beside him. Her presence made him want to redouble his efforts to save them, to save her. Somehow, over the last two days, she had wormed her way under his skin, and he found he enjoyed the forgotten sensation. He had thought discovering the remains of her husband would change her, but she had long ago made her peace with his death. She had found closure, but only in his death. Now, she wanted closure with Verkhoen. So did he.
“What’s wrong, Alan?”
She spoke quietly to not disturb the others. The pallid light from the lichen softened her features, giving her a ghostly appearance. Her eyes, once so bright, were now just dark depressions above her pale cheeks.
He showed her his hand. “I think it is infected.”
She looked alarmed as she took his hand and gently examined it. “We have nothing to fight the infection, but I do have a bottle of pain relievers in my pocket, acteominephin. It might slow the fever.” She took out the bottle and offered Alan two capsules. “I often have headaches,” she admitted reluctantly. He swallowed them dry. They were very low on water. Verkhoen’s men had brought none, and he and the others had shared theirs with the security men.
“Thanks,” he said.
“What did you see back there?” she asked. “Whatever it was, it frightened you.”
He hesitated, not wishing to alarm her. “I saw nothing except evidence something higher up the food chain eats the mandibulates and everything else in the lava tube system. However, I felt … something. It was as if something was trying to read my mind. It felt … alien.”
She chuckled. “Alien, like from outer space?”
He smiled, glad she could still joke. “No, just like nothing I could ever imagine.” He didn’t mention that his first thought had been the telepathic Mahar, rulers of Pellucidar, elicited by Vince’s references to the Burroughs’ novel.
“I couldn’t imagine these giant insects even though I knew they had existed, eons ago, in another world. Even if we get out of here, the creatures are out there, in the mine. We have to go through them.”
“We have Verkhoen’s armed security men.”
She turned away from him and pursed her lips. When she turned back, her face was cold, devoid of expression. “We cannot trust him. He killed Frederick.”
“I think so, too. I’ll keep an eye on him. Now, you must rest. It has been a long day.”
She didn’t protest. She leaned into him and rested her head against his shoulder. He breathed in the smell of her hair, her perfume, and smiled to himself. He wrapped an arm around her, and she draped her arm over his leg. A few minutes later, he heard her gentle breathing as she slept.
He was concerned about Verkhoen as well. He had no doubts the CEO had ordered Frederick Means’ death four years ago and would have no qualms with killing his widow to shut her up. He had known about or suspected the existence of the diamonds long before contacting Hoffman Industries. The Cerberus AT10 had provided the means to reach them safely. His hoard of diamonds would lose much of their value if word got out about their discovery. Only by quietly placing them on the market a few at a time could he hope to reap the rewards he sought.
Alan was concerned about what he had felt in the cavern. The mandibulates showed a greater than normal intelligence and organizational skill. One way to develop this trait over the eons was the constant need to outwit an even smarter enemy. What he had felt had been alien, but intelligent, and thoroughly evil. He had never believed in evil except as bad to the nth degree, but he knew this creature was the epitome of evil – heartless, cruel, deadly, and coldly calculating.
He yawned. He was tired and his fevered mind was playing tricks on him due to the stress. Maybe all he had felt in the cavern was his own doubts of his ability and frustration at what fate had dealt him. He glanced over at Verkhoen. The normally dapper CEO was sitting apart from his men; head hunched over his knees, arms folded clasping his chest, as if trying to absorb the light cast by the single flashlight, sobbing quietly. His hair was mussed and dirty. His three-thousand-dollar suit was dirty and wrinkled. His men stole worried glances at him. They were losing confidence in their boss.
Sandersohn halfheartedly studied the bioluminescent lichen, while Doctor Tells lay on his back asleep, snoring loudly. The elderly scientist had pushed himself past his limits already, but Alan feared the worst was yet to come. They had to make their way through the mine to the surface.
Eve moaned and jumped
. She looked up at him frightened but seeing his face, she closed her eyes and quickly fell back to sleep. He pulled her closer. It had been a while since he had bothered feeling anything for a woman; he hadn’t the time. The Cerberus had taken every waking minute. The few dates he had managed had been purely recreational, no emotional involvement allowed in the sex afterwards. Eve was different. She was determined and not easily frightened. Few women could have coped with seeing their husband’s bones as she had or faced giant prehistoric monsters. Throughout the ordeal, she had shown remarkable courage. He couldn’t allow anything to happen to her.
A chill swept over him though there was no wind. He felt that seeking mind again reaching out, probing, so utterly alien he had no way to connect to it, no method of interpreting the dizzying images flittering through his mind. Simultaneously, the cave lichen went berserk, emitting sporadic bursts of frenzied light. Sandersohn dropped the lichen he held in his hand as if burned, staring at it uncomprehending. The guards began muttering. Even Verkhoen roused from his stupor and looked around.
Eve sat up with a look of puzzlement, holding her head in her hands. “I feel something, like a tickle in my mind.”
“Try to ignore it,” he suggested, though he was having difficulty following his own advice. His mind itched as badly as his wounded hand as strange thoughts brushed his thoughts, tasting them like a lion tasting the fresh blood of its kill before devouring it. My God, Vince was right, he thought in dismay. We’re in the African equivalent of Pellucidar.
One of the guards in the lava tube ran in, yelling to Verkhoen, “Something is coming.”
The second guard still outside the grotto opened fire with his weapon just outside the mouth of the cleft, the reports thunderous in the small space. A few seconds later, the firing stopped, following quickly by a man’s terrifying shriek. Alan jumped to his feet and stared toward the lava tube. He saw it now, a movement in the shadows. No, he corrected himself, it was the shadows moving. All flashlights snapped on, the beams searching for the intruder. The scene reminded him of a movie with prison searchlights looking for an escaped prisoner. They converged on the entrance, their beams disappearing when they struck the dark creatures flowing toward them.
They spilled across the rocks, a deadly mass of giant, jet black millipedes. The cave lichen exploded in one last burst of light, and then went dark. Alan wasn’t sure, if they had doused their internal light to hide from the creatures, or if the creatures had sucked the life from them. The guards began firing at the creatures, but the bullets passed through their spongy flesh causing no apparent damage.
One man, braver or more foolhardy than the others, stepped too close to the creature, firing straight down at the black mass of millipedes his feet. One reared to its full four-meter height, towering over him. It lunged forward and enveloped him in folds of chitinous flesh. He dropped his weapon and began screaming, beating at the creature with his fists. His screams became more frantic as the creature’s pointed feet began piercing his flesh. The creature’s mandibles injected powerful digestive enzymes into the guard’s body, dissolving his organs so quickly the guard seemed to melt. He jerked once, hard enough to snap his spine. The sound echoed over the sound of his screams, a tree limb snapping from the trunk in a strong gale.
He didn’t fall immediately. The ebony monster wound around him supported him. Black fluid began to exude from his open mouth and eyes. Slowly, like a sand castle tower devoured by the rising tide, he fell forward to the floor. A seconds creature joined the first, absorbing the guard’s fluids, his blood, into their bodies. When they retreated, only a viscous fluid remained.
Alan was horrified. These creatures were what had devoured the mollusks, snails, and giant insects in the swamp, leaving only shells and bits and pieces of hard carapace; the reason the insects had fled into the mine, seeking not food, but escape. What manner of creature they were, he didn’t know. They resembled millipedes, but their segments were so narrow, fit together so tightly together, they moved like reptiles. Their brains, which could not have been large because of their thin bodies, had evolved over the eons, changed by the tremendous pressure of evolution. Their intelligence was not much greater than their mindless prey, but their real advantage lay in their ability to mesmerize their prey using their ability to project their thoughts, to freeze their prey into helplessness.
As a biologist, Eve might have told him more about the creatures, but now she stood behind him, screaming. He could barely hear her over the staccato burst of machine guns and the yelling of the guards. The creatures slowly edged into the grotto, unsure of its adversaries, but having found the taste of humans to their liking, sought ways around the stinging bullets. Several of the creatures climbed up the wall and spread across the roof. Attaching themselves to the roof by their rear feet, they dropped like flypaper, snaring men in their folds and snatching them from the ground. The guards dangled like human yo-yos, bobbing up and down and screaming as the creature slowly consumed their flesh. One man so ensnared continued firing his machine gun, spraying both the creatures and a second guard with stray bullets.
Alan stood staring, mesmerized by the creatures’ movement, watching one slither toward him in slow motion. A shiver raced up his spine from the sudden cold enveloping him. He knew he was in danger, but his mind balked at obeying his command to run. He was a human and the monster was just an insect. To think that it was more powerful than he irritated him, but he could not break free of its hypnotic pull.
Eve stopped screaming and jerked at his arm. He turned to look at her.
“Run,” she yelled.
Her words had no meaning. Run where? From what? He peered into her eyes, saw the sheer terror in them, and wondered why he felt no such fear. Then, with a shudder of revulsion, he realized the creature was touching his mind, holding him immobile while it attended to other prey. It knew of men, of their numbers outside its small world, and felt an eagerness to leave the cavern. With a start, Alan realized the creatures had sustained themselves through the eons by carefully controlling their appetites, allowing the mandibulates and other creatures to reproduce, consuming only the weak and dying, culling the herd. They had fed, sparingly, but over the eons had never quenched their insatiable appetite. They were starving. They were eager for a feeding frenzy.
He turned to Eve. “We have to go,” he said.
She nodded. He gathered Sandersohn and Tells and urged them to follow.
“Where to?” Sandersohn asked.
“Back to the Cerberus and pray Trace has fixed the problem.”
They edged around the creatures, as they moved deeper into the grotto. He saw only two men standing, one of which was Verkhoen, who amid the turmoil and carnage, still had not abandoned the light of his flashlight. He noticed them leaving and chased after them with panic in his eyes. “Don’t leave me,” he yelled. Amazingly, he stopped to pick up the case of diamonds. A single surviving guard followed him from the cleft.
It was a frantic run to the Cerberus, a mad dash Alan wasn’t sure they would win. Sandersohn helped Doctor Tells, but the overweight, aged scientist faltered often, stumbling badly every few steps. Alan had no time to herd the survivors together. They had foolishly entered the mine to observe the insects and had instead become part of the food chain. He couldn’t be responsible for everyone’s foolhardy decision. His only concern was Eve. Her desire to learn what had happened to her husband drove her. He could overlook that kind of foolishness, could understand it. His decision to accept Verkhoen’s offer placed him in the same category. He clung to her hand, half-dragging her as he raced ahead. The others would have to fend for themselves.
The Cerberus lights were on, blinding them all. Trace had managed to fix that problem, at least. Covering his eyes with his wounded hand and clinging to Eve with his other, he ran to the camera and yelled into the microphone.
“Trace! Move the Cerberus. Let us out.”
Nothing happened.
“Trace,” he screamed in a pa
nic. The camera light was on, but he had no way of knowing if Trace was even in the Shack, or if he had been able to repair all the controls. If any of the creatures had escaped the mine, the authorities would have evacuated the entire mining complex. The alternative, that Trace was dead as Verkhoen suggested, he could not accept. He fumbled with his laptop. Maybe Trace had witnessed his efforts earlier and had engaged the remote access.
He rued the day he had written the diagnostics program. At the time, he hadn’t worried about the troubleshooter’s slow pace. Being thorough was more important than speed. He had never imagined the need for an override. He had never anticipated an attack by goddamned creatures from hell.
“Hurry,” Eve urged, looking intently back down the tube. “They’re coming.”
He already knew. The creatures’ presence once again brushed his mind. There was no individuality. They were a hive mind, a collective stronger together than as individuals. This, too, was part of their evolutionary advantage, what had made of them apex predators. He glanced at the others. Sandersohn and Tells had stopped running and stared behind them, gazing into the shadows. He wondered if the creatures had touched their minds as well, paralyzing them as it had him earlier. Verkhoen brushed past the pair without a backward glance, clutching the diamond case to his chest.
“Sandersohn! Tells! Get a move on,” Alan yelled, breaking the spell over them. He cursed aloud. The computer still refused him access. He couldn’t control the Cerberus’ movement or the laser array. They couldn’t escape or defend themselves. They were sitting ducks. He had no illusions about their chances if they couldn’t escape the lava tube. He was ready to give up hope; then, Eve squeezed his hand. Her determination, her strength flooded into him. He made a bold decision. He disconnected his laptop.