by Rick Jones
They were intelligent and social creatures, communicating through snorts and bellows through the hollows of their nasal passages. Two of the raptors would drive the prey forward, to an awaiting pack, with their tails whipping gracefully about like the line of a fly fisherman, each driving the quarry into another raptor’s strike zone. The tail would then snap outward and strike the target across the throat or abdomen, the sharp ridges slicing and eviscerating the victim with surgical precision before it even hit the ground. It was usually a merciful kill.
But there were only two, a male and its mate, a female that was by genetics slightly larger than its counterpart.
They had been in a field of tall grass where they were driving a planetary bull—a creature as large as a rhinoceros and a hide just as thick—that was determined to seek refuge, knowing that the much smaller raptor was far quicker and deadlier.
It rushed its way through the field creating a swath, the trailing raptors blowing signals through their nasal passages alerting the pack ahead.
And then a brilliant flash of light, the field disappearing, the world suddenly cast in astonishing whiteness.
And then came the moment where they found themselves within the confines of an unguarded chamber. In their minds, the concept of measure between then and now was less than a microcosm of time, a moment much quicker than a blink of an eye. They were confused, their olfactory senses trying to make sense of surroundings that was suddenly alien. And then they snorted through their sinus channels trying to reach out to others of their kind, only to be met with silence.
They cried out again, this time louder, their sinus cavities trumpeting a signal synonymous to a cry of help.
They moved in circles with heads craning, their sinus canals trumpeting. No matter the angle taken, there were no return volleys, no calls of salvation. They were alone.
With the ability to scent prey that was a thousand times greater than a shark, which could detect a single drop of blood from a half mile away, they could smell noxious fumes and toxic ammonia, areas to stay clear from. But above it all and somewhere close, something was bleeding.
Together, the raptors headed toward the source of its bounty.
#
Like the raptors, the creature within the tallest bin was from the same world where the gaseous components resembled Earth’s but not quite spot on. The measures of oxygen to nitrogen were slightly different; they were higher, with the degree of carbon dioxide marginally lower.
But on this ship it would thrive.
And as it did on its planet with the raptors, it would share supremacy.
It resembled the Tyrannosaurus Rex. But it was larger and more muscular, about sixty feet in length, with a jaw that extended further toward the rear of its skull for greater extension of a mouth that sported pick-like teeth that were wicked and keen. Unlike Earth’s version, this Rex-like creature sported extended arms with musculature. And its tail, like its raptor cousin, bore rows of sharp edges geared for slicing and cutting.
Its last memory before the coming of the light was that it was attacking a crablike creature with its tail smashing the shell until meat finally bled through the cracks of its armor. The lizard then clamped its powerful jaws around its armor-plated collar, wrestled it to the ground, pinned it by a massive leg, and then wrenched the creature’s neck with an audible crack, killing it.
As it pulled out the final strand of innards, the nebulous white light consumed everything.
And then it was here, its mind processing confusion. One moment it was feasting. The next it found itself on a world not of its own. It was enclosed in a massive pen. And then its senses picked up marginal differences in atmosphere, confirming this to be a place of unfamiliarity.
With heightened senses of sight, sound and smell, the Rex stepped off the rise of the enclosure and to the floor, the ground shaking beneath its massive weight.
Its head was on a swivel, noting the rib-like structures of the walls glowing. Driven by instinct it went to the ribs, its mind recognizing the structure as the design of food, the remnants of a carcass.
The earth shook beneath its footfalls as it closed in and sniffed at the ship’s ribbing, sensing nothing. And then it wandered onto center stage where it was surrounded by enclosures that bore carcasses of alien dead.
Rearing its head back, the creature let out a bellow that shook the foundations of the ship.
It was letting everything onboard know that it was the ruler of its domain.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“What the hell was that?” asked Whitaker. He immediately went on the lip mike to K-Clown. “Yo, Clown.”
There was a brief moment of static. “Go.”
“What the hell was that noise?”
“You got me,” he said. “But whatever it is, it’s close. All I know is that it came from the Menagerie’s north end.”
“What’s your twenty?”
“I’m with Quasimodo at the south end of the Menagerie,” he answered. “You want me to check out the noise?”
“Where’s the rest of the team?”
“I’m not getting an answer from Madman,” he returned. “Crazy Drake was at the Menagerie’s north end, at the source of the sound.”
“Copy that.”
“Hey, Cap?”
“Go.”
“These bins are wide open. There’re no more containment fields holding back the creatures. There’re bodies everywhere.”
“Come again.”
“The containment fields to the enclosures are down. The energy is gone.”
“What about the engineers?”
“Who knows?”
“Copy that.” Whitaker turned to Goliath and Maestro, then to O’Connell and Savage, and finally to Alyssa, all of them struggling to control what they were thinking at the moment. The fields were down. The enclosures left wide open.
And a single thought came to Whitaker: these beings are on an evolutionary scale to us as we are to the amoeba. Who knows what their technology can do?
Whitaker immediately keyed into another frequency. “TW One to TW Six. Come in TW Six.” TW Six was Crazy Drake. When there was no response he attempted a second try. “TW One to TW Six. Come in TW Six.”
#
“TW One to TW Six. Come in TW Six.” Crazy Drake recognized Whitaker’s voice through his earpiece. But Crazy Drake remained quiet, the soldier hunkering down behind the pedestal rise of an enclosure. Heaped on the floor was an arachnid-like creature with compound eyes, dead and stinking of musk.
“TW One to TW Six. Come in TW Six.”
Crazy Drake had been frightened before. But this was different.
He remained quiet and unmoving. His hands shaking uncontrollably as his weapon seemed to vibrate within his grasp.
When the energy shut down so did the containment fields, causing corpses to spill out at his feet.
But not all the creatures died.
The Rex maneuvered about, searching, its nostrils visibly flaring as they caught different scents to process, the world beneath its footfalls shaking. What Crazy Drake didn’t know was that the evolution of this particular creature was far superior to man, its senses highly evolved and sensitive. From a distance of a mile, and in some cases much farther, the Rex, through small openings on each side of its head that leads into the inner ears through thin channels, there are vibration- and sound-detecting organs grouped together as an acoustico-lateralis system which can sense the rapid heartbeat of something alive amongst the myriad of dead. And coupled with electroreception, the capability to detect electric fields that prey produces, it could hone into its impulses like radar.
Crazy Drake closed his eyes and gripped his weapon hard, willing the creature away.
He could hear it sniffing the air, could feel the tremor of the floor beneath him as the creature took calculating steps that seemed to draw nearer.
“TW One to TW Six. Come in TW Six.”
Crazy Drake whispered into his lip mike, but it
was barely audible. “TW Six. Go.”
“What’s your twenty, Six?”
The Rex’s footfalls were becoming noticeable, the tremors more conspicuous. It was coming closer.
“TW One. I say Red Zone,” he whispered. “I repeat: I say Red Zone.”
“Come again, Six?”
Crazy Drake dared not speak any louder. “Whit, some of these things are alive,” he finally said, the radio code and discipline summarily dismissed. “You hear me, Whit? Some of these things are—”
The head of the Rex was block-like and massive, its walnut-sized eyes looking down at Crazy Drake with its jaws widening to showcase its razor-sharp teeth. Thin strands of saliva strung as viscous webbing from upper to lower jaw. And its head leaned forward and downward, looming larger in the eyes of Crazy Drake.
The commando raised his weapon and cried out as bullets strafed the creature, confusing it, the ammo punching its hide but causing minimal damage.
And then there was silence.
No screams.
No firefight.
Nothing.
#
Whitaker, as well as Goliath and Maestro, could hear the cries of Crazy Drake and the subsequent gunfire over their earpieces, which was soon followed by an eerie silence.
“He’s gone,” Maestro stated flatly.
Whitaker cupped his hand around his lip mike. “Crazy! CRAZY!”
“He’s gone, Cap.”
Whitaker stared straight ahead with detachment.
“He said that they were alive,” added Maestro
“I know what he said.” Whitaker took a few steps forward, his eyes staring at nothing in particular.
“Cap.”
Whitaker held his hand up as a gesture for everyone to remain silent. After a brief moment of silence, he spoke into his mike. “K-Clown?”
“Yeah, boss.”
“Can you get a visual on Crazy Drake?”
“That’s negative,” he said. “Too far away.”
“What about Pit Bull?”
“He’s not answering any of the channels. So I gotta consider him lost, boss. Like the other two.”
Whitaker closed his eyes, another quiet moment. Three down, he thought. Almost half my team. And then: “I want you and Quasimodo to head toward my position to group up,” he ordered over his mike. “We’ll head in your direction. You copy?”
“Copy.”
Communications went dead.
Whitaker addressed Savage and Alyssa. “Grab him,” he said, pointing to O’Connell. “We’re moving forward.”
O’Connell attempted to get to his feet, stumbled, but was aided to a standing position by Savage. O’Connell’s head wobbled unsteadily. Even in the green light Savage could see the raccoon rings forming around the wounded man’s eyes. O’Connell was growing weaker.
“You still bleeding out?” Savage asked him quietly.
O’Connell nodded. “It stopped some time ago . . . But I bled out quite a bit.”
“Alyssa and I will get you out of here.”
“Get real,” he returned. “Whitaker isn’t going to allow anyone of us to get out of here alive. You know that.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a solution for everything.”
Savage and Alyssa got on each side of him, and draped the wounded man’s arms over their shoulders.
Whitaker hunkered down by the recording unit and removed the two flash drives. He then removed the heel of his boot, placed the drives within the dugout recesses, then snapped the heel back into place. He then got to his feet and pointed his weapon in the direction to be taken. “Ms. Moore, thank you so much for your assistance,” he said. “You and Mr. Savage now have the honor to take point.”
“I told you,” said O’Connell, wincing as he spoke. “He’s using us as bait.”
Slowly, they began to move forward with a great deal of prudence.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
K-Clown and Quasimodo had their monocular NVG’s on. Their vision of sight was lime-colored, which added to the blend of green cast by the ribbed walls. It was an odd color, but a color that turned darkness into light.
They could see everything.
At the fringe of the Menagerie carcasses were everywhere. Most died where they stood in stasis. Others at least crawled a few feet away from their holding cell before they were overcome by an atmosphere not favorable to their own. Creatures and botanical horrors were beginning to mottle and decay with mild stenches rising from meat beginning to putrefy.
They kept close to the edges, skimming the walls with their heads on a swivel, their weapons up and ready.
“Things aren’t looking so good,” said Quasimodo. The commando lived up to his moniker, the epitome of ugliness. In 2009, while serving in Iran, he stood on the outer ring of an IED blast, the explosion killing his entire team while he, who was taking point, suffered third degree burns on his face. The following skin grafts gave a somewhat Frankensteinian patchwork look to him. His nose was naturally flattened against his wide face, and his eyes were set too close together, like a ferret. And when he smiled he did so with irregular rows of teeth. But the burns upon his face he wore like a badge of honor, his appearance meaning little to him. “There’s a lot of space between us and them,” he added. “I’d hate to think what’s in between.”
“If there’s anything between us and them, then we’ll just add to the number of carcasses.”
As they were closing the gap, neither commando had any indication that they were being tracked.
The raptors were keeping equal distance behind them, tracking them not by sight but by smell, their olfactory senses pinpointing their exact location like radar.
Yet they stayed out of NVG range, exhibiting saintly patience that would enable them to corner their prey.
And kill them.
#
Communication with McCord had been discontinued for fear of misappropriation. McCord’s promise to send a sub, however, was kept, the DSRV maneuvering into position beneath the opening to the undersea platform. The pilot carefully placed the sub by its given coordinates, and filled the tubes with air, the sub rising.
Once the sub was secured in the pen, the pilot exited from the cap door and descended the welded-on steps of rebar. He was wearing a Tally-Whacker uniform with the accompanying patches of the grinning skull and crossing tantos. Slung over his shoulder was an assault weapon, an MP5. Strapped to his side was a firearm.
With a friendly wave and smile he called out to the four engineers manning the platform. “How y’all doing?” he said. The soldier had movie-star looks with raven hair, blue eyes and ruler-straight teeth. When he spoke he did so with a Texas twang. “Y’all doing fine?”
They weren’t.
Two Americans and two Mexican nationals closed in. The looks on their faces were appearances that Pretty-Boy had seen many times before, the look of absolute terror.
One of the American engineers stood forward. “You need to get us out of here,” he said.
Pretty-Boy maintained his brazen Hollywood smile and raised his hands, patting the air. “Whoa-whoa, slow down there, cowboy. There’s no need to get your bowels in an uproar now.”
The maintenance worker gesticulated wildly with his hands. “You don’t understand. This platform is on unstable ground. The next tremor or two will send us to the bottom of the crater’s bowl. It’s unsafe.”
“C’mon, cowboy. You need to show some grit.”
“I need to get the hell out of here,” he argued.
Pretty-Boy looked at the other three, smiling. “Y’all feel the same way?” he asked.
The Hispanics shook their heads, so did the American.
“Alrighty, then.” He quickly removed his firearm from his holster and—while maintaining his smile—shot every man in the heart, killing them in neat and rapid succession.
After lining up the bodies side by side along the far wall, Pretty-Boy straddled a chair with his forearms draped across the chair’s back and waited
for his team.
The ‘hidden agenda’ had begun.
CHAPTER TWENTY
The Hominid had been ambushed.
It had made its way through the remnant’s glowing warrens towards the Menagerie when something feline jumped from the shadows and pinned it to the floor. The Hominid struggled beneath the creature’s weight, defending itself with the natural shield of its forearm as the feline—long and sleek with two saber-like teeth on each side of its mouth, the rear saber less predominate and situated right behind the primary one—attempted to gnaw through its exoskeleton. The Hominid continued to shield itself with the extra thick armor of its forearm, knowing that the feline’s keen sabers could not penetrate that part of its armor. With its principal arm, the one bearing the natural weaponry of running spikes, the Hominid brought it across the feline’s throat in fluid motion, its thorny forearm raking through its flesh as easily as a knife cuts through a hot cake of butter.
The feline reared back, confused, the apex predator not used to formidable combat as blood sprayed across the Hominid’s armor in arterial streams, its blood glistening like tar in the feeble lighting.
It did not mew or cry. It simply staggered, tried to regain itself, and fell with its chest heaving and pitching a final breath that sounded more like a death rattle.
Breathless, the Hominid got to a sitting position and leaned against the wall between two rib-like structures that glowed light. For a long moment it sat there musing with its elbows resting on its knees, which were brought up into acute angles, and stared at the dead beast as blood formed a blackened halo beneath the tear of its throat.