by Nick Thacker
“It was a voice, I swear,” Dr. Pavan said. “From that direction.”
They listened another minute, but no one heard another sound. As Carter stepped forward, Dr. Pavan reached out and grabbed his arm. “Wait. Give me a second.”
“What is it?” Carter asked.
Dr. Pavan sniffed the air. “Do you smell that? I thought I caught a scent of something in the air.”
Jen immediately noticed it as well when Dr. Pavan mentioned it. “I do,” she said. “It’s—it’s familiar, almost like…”
“Almost like a big pile of sh—”
“Enough, Nelson,” Carter said. “I do smell it. It’s feces. Seems far off, though, but we’re getting closer to it. Come on.”
He started forward and raised his gun, involuntarily checking his ammunition as he walked. They picked up the pace, walking briskly toward the smell. It grew stronger with each passing step, until Jen found herself trying to breathe as little as possible.
“Carter, what are we doing? That smell is awful, and it’s just getting worse. We’re walking right into it.”
“We need to see what it is,” he said. “Plus, it’s the only way forward. I’ll get up around this next bend, and I want Nelson to cover me.”
Nelson clicked something on his weapon and jogged to catch up to Carter. Jen and Dr. Pavan stayed a few steps behind, but their curiosity wouldn’t let either of them stop.
Carter and Nelson reached the corner, and Carter stepped around. He pointed his flashlight down and slightly in front of his feet—an angle that would bounce the light upward enough to see, but hopefully not enough to cause any undue excitement on whatever lay ahead.
Nelson followed his lead and did the same. “Bollocks,” he whispered under his breath as he took in the cavern in front of them.
Jen and Dr. Pavan reached the open space a second later, and both of the scientists’ eyes went wide. “Oh my God,” Jen said.
“You got that right.”
In front of them was another large, open cavern, like the one they found Lindsay’s body in earlier. This cavern was smaller, but it was filled almost six feet high along one wall with what looked to be a brown wall of mud. Jen knew intuitively that the “mud” was the cause of the smell, and she only had to look a few feet to the right to find the reason for it.
In the center of the cavern was an undulating mass of bodies—the white-coated scientists who’d followed them on the main level—clustered together and rocking gently back and forth. They didn’t appear to be doing anything but standing in a tight circle, pressing in on each other. It was as if they were a small colony of ants that had found a crumb. Their bodes pushed forward, vying for better positioning toward the center of the group.
“This is disgusting,” Nelson said. Jen realized he was still focused on the six-foot-high wall of human excrement, and he hadn’t yet seen the other inhabitants of the room. When he did, he was speechless.
“I don’t believe it,” Jen said. “It’s like they have a hive mentality. Look how they all move together, almost in unison.” She forced herself to keep her voice down, fearing a retaliation from the group. The last thing they needed was to run up through the cave system to the surface, chased by these weird scientists.
“You’re right,” Dr. Pavan added. “They aren’t responding to the light—which, since they were in complete darkness before, is quite substantial—or to our voices.”
“But we don’t want to wake any up, either,” Nelson said. “So I’ll go ahead and keep whispering.”
Carter just stared.
“Their brain function isn’t totally there, although they can clothe themselves and speak,” Dr. Pavan said. “I wonder if we’re observing the effects of relative isolation over an extended period of time.”
“Not possible,” Jen said. “There are too many of them—enough for the environment’s constraints to disqualify isolation. Plus, they were of a mature age when the period began. Effects like this are seen in cases when the onset of isolation is at a very young age.”
“We need to draw one away,” Nelson said.
Carter appeared stunned. “Why? They’re hostile, remember?”
“I know. But we found something on one of those Russian soldiers earlier. A beacon or something.”
“A beacon? Where?”
“Well, uh, it was in his head.”
Carter looked at Jen. She nodded, and Nelson continued. “It was just under the skin, right on his right temple. I saw something there, and then felt something hard and round. I cut this out.” He handed Carter the miniature hockey puck he’d taken from the Russian soldier.
Carter turned the device over in his hands, but didn’t speak.
“We can’t just start shooting—the noise would be too much, for us and them. Plus, we don’t need to hurt them yet, either, before we figure out what’s going on.”
Jen was surprised at Nelson’s intuition. She agreed, then offered a suggestion to Carter. “Maybe we can run across the side; try to get their attention. I’ll get to the other side and keep going through the caves. If they follow me, you can stay back and then grab one of the people lingering behind.”
“And then how will you get them to stop following us?” Dr. Pavan asked.
It was a legitimate question, but Jen was prepared for it. “We’ve got to be close to the split, right? We’ll take the one that descends down to the lower level. If they follow us through that as well, we’ll just get to the level and figure something out there.”
It wasn’t perfect, but it was a plan. Carter seemed to agree. He nodded at Jen. “You heard her, Nelson. You three get along that wall—cover your mouths and noses; no need to breathe that, uh, crap—and then get out of the cavern quickly. If they’re not following you when you find the other side, give them some space and then make some noise. I’ll see if I can grab one of them, feel for that device on their temple, and then I’ll follow you down. Ready?”
As soon as he asked the question, a low growl began to emanate from the cluster of scientists and station workers. The undulating stopped, and the entire group grew still.
“I think they woke up,” Nelson said.
Two of the members of the group peeled away and turned toward them. Both were wearing t-shirts stained from years of wear and dark blue chinos. Their shoes—work boots—spoke volumes. These men were, at least in another life, part of the maintenance crew of the research station, probably on an original assignment that was only supposed to last a year or two.
One of the two workers looked straight at Jen, and spoke. “Why you? Where… where from?”
He staggered forward, followed closely by the other worker. By now the others in the group had turned and were watching the exchange. Except for the two workmen, neither Carter’s group nor the group in the center of the cavern had moved.
Jen thought for a moment. Should she respond? She found herself struggling internally between the instinct to flee, to protect herself, and the desire to engage these fellow humans. However distraught they were, they were still people.
The curiosity in her won out. She stepped up next to Carter. “Wait,” she said. The two men stopped. Were they listening, or were they simply surprised to hear her voice? “Don’t walk forward. Can you tell me who you are?” She specifically addressed the man closest to her. She could also see him more clearly now—tall, dark, and handsome, except for the hollow eyes and lifeless, hanging face. His t-shirt said Led Zeppelin, either a favorite classic rock band of his or a favorite modern rock band, depending on when the man had been resigned to his fate here at the bottom of the sea.
She asked again. “Who are you? Do you work here?”
“Yes. Work. Yes work. Live.”
It was an odd response, but it was familiar to them. Bingham, she thought. This is how Bingham talks.
She knew at once that Bingham wasn’t telling the truth earlier. He may have been trying, but the scientists he mentioned hadn’t, in fact, left with the last submarine years ago. Those
scientists, Bingham included, hadn’t gone anywhere.
She was staring at them.
The man looked around at the others, as if noticing Dr. Pavan, Nelson, and Carter for the first time. Jen also noticed that Carter was holding his gun up, pointed directly at the man. The man’s eyes stopped on the gun, and he frowned, his head cocked to the side.
“You… hunter. You hunter. Hunter.”
He mumbled the words, a small drop of saliva forming on the side of his mouth as he repeated the two words over and over again.
Jen felt a pang of guilt. What happened here? Who did this to them? This reaction wasn’t natural. This behavior wasn’t caused by environmental factors.
“No, no I’m not,” Carter said, his voice calm and steady. His gun didn’t waver, but he continued to explain to the man. “My name is Daniel Carter, and I’m a British Royal Marine. This is my team—Jen Adams, Dr. Sanjay Pavan, and Stuart Nelson. We are inside Geo-Lab—”
Carter’s last sentence was cut off by a loud scream. The cavern’s rock walls reverberated the noise endlessly through the chamber, causing Jen to hold her ears. The scream was echoed by the rest of the group, who had now all started walking slowly toward them. They screamed—a guttural, rabid noise—at Jen and the rest, not just in response to something Carter said. Except for the first scream, it was a simultaneous reaction; a deafening sound that physically vibrated the cave walls around them.
The hair on Jen’s neck stood up. A terrifying helplessness overcame her, and she felt her lip quiver. Was this how it had ended for Lindsay?
The two workmen froze in place, and their heads both turned to the side slowly. Their eyes didn’t leave Carter’s, and when their necks were bent almost at a right angle, they charged.
Carter was prepared, and he fired off two rounds. The first hit the closest man in the shoulder, but the next one dropped him. The second man kept coming, picking up speed as he ran. Nelson fired over Carter’s shoulder, but the man lurched forward, and the bullet soared by his head.
Jen and Dr. Pavan realized immediately that Nelson was right; the gunshots were loud. She had never felt the pain she now felt in her head—it was as if someone was standing on her skull, crushing it down into her body. Dr. Pavan recoiled and squatted down. Jen fared worse, dropping completely to the cave floor as the shots were fired.
Unfortunately, the scientists were fast. As Nelson’s gun fired, Jen saw the group moving as one, approach them. She blinked in response to the deafening shot, and when she opened her eyes again, they were there.
Right in front of her.
They were quicker than their smell, which assaulted her nostrils a split-second later. She thought she’d become accustomed to the smell of the waste, but this was worse. It was the rotten, decaying smell of flesh, of hygiene gone unnoticed not for a few days, but years.
She choked, crab-walking backwards into the recesses of the cave pathway. She didn’t get far. She bumped into Dr. Pavan’s body, both of them collapsing into a heap as Nelson and Carter fought.
It wasn’t much of a fight, though. Jen watched as the action played out, time standing still. In the span of a second, the people—creatures—pounced on the two soldiers. Their fingers scratched at faces, fingernails an inch long digging into skin. They continued to scream, each competing with another, the sounds supplemented by primal grunts and glottal stops.
Jen thought she heard herself scream, but it was hard to tell. She watched in horror as Nelson and Carter were pushed back, finally falling onto the floor. Nelson’s face was contorted in rage as he tried to fight off the attack. Carter’s was locked in a deadly focus; a will to live that belied the situation he found himself in. They punched, kicked, and pushed, Carter trying to reach for his sidearm. Nelson still held his assault rifle, but he had the wherewithal to not fire it, knowing that an ill-placed shot could be devastating to his own team.
Dr. Pavan found his feet, and he rushed forward and lunged at the nearest attacker, a woman of about thirty years who was at the outskirts of the cluster. He tackled her with a forceful head-butt to her waist, and the pair rolled onto the ground and continued the skirmish. A few seconds of desperate scratching and screaming from the woman went by, and Dr. Pavan finally gained the upper hand. He held her head in both of his hands, lifting it six inches off the cave floor. He slammed it down again and again until the woman no longer moved.
He started to stand but was quickly overtaken by the scientists. Two men in long-sleeve buttoned shirts rushed toward him and smothered him with their bodies, falling on top of him and the body he was sitting on. Another second went by, and Dr. Pavan’s body disappeared in the thriving mass.
Jen willed herself to move, but couldn’t. She was riveted to the floor, watching the scene unfold in horror, when she heard a gunshot. It wasn’t from Nelson or Carter but from farther away. There was no immediate reaction, but a second and third shot soon followed.
At once, the scientists and workers began to scatter. They shrieked and screamed but eventually started running the same direction—up the same path from which Jen and the team had entered. Jen pushed her body up against a slight indentation in the tunnel wall, but the running bodies kicked and pushed her anyway. She raised her arms above her head to protect her face, but through them she saw Carter rolling on the ground, also trying to avoid the stampede.
She looked a few feet farther, and finally saw Dr. Pavan’s body.
It wasn’t moving.
More seconds ticked by, and the last of the scientists cleared the tunnel section. Jen rolled over, laying out on her back in the middle of the floor, then finally came to a sitting position. She lolled her head back and forth and felt for injuries. Satisfied she was relatively unharmed, she stood and approached Carter.
He groaned, but seemed unhurt as well. Together they rolled Dr. Pavan onto his back. The man’s eyes were closed, but he was breathing. Jen shook him gently, trying not to hurt him or alarm him.
He slowly opened his eyes, looked up at the two of them, and smiled. “Ouch. I’m going to feel that one for a few days.”
“Are you alright?” Jen asked.
“I am. Very sore, but I don’t think anything’s broken.”
Carter and Jen checked him out a bit more, and concluded the same. They sat back and let the man recover.
“I’m fine, too, mates, thanks for asking.” The voice—Nelson’s—came from just beyond the opening to the cavern.
“Hog, that you?” Jen asked.
“Who else would it bloody be, Jen?” He stood up and stretched, his six-foot-plus frame extending to its full height. He cracked his neck, back, and fingers, as if he were a skeleton popping its own bones back into place.
Carter nodded, then stood. He pointed his flashlight into the open cavern. “Hello?”
He lifted his gun in his other hand. It wasn’t an ideal firing position, but now he could point with both the gun and the light. He called again. “Hello? Anyone there?”
Finally a voice echoed back. “Boss? That you?”
“Saunders?”
“Yeah. Just the two of us. We’re coming over; don’t shoot.”
Jen felt relief wash over her body, then she shuddered as she relived the past minute.
Carter’s light eventually found the two bodies approaching from the opposite side. The orange glow illuminated them until they were within twenty feet. Rachel Saunders appeared, followed by a startled and sleep-deprived Erik Statnik. The man’s hair was disheveled, and his eyes were drooping. He waved, but his face remained expressionless.
“Thanks, Saunders,” Carter said. “We were a little overwhelmed back there I guess.”
“A little?” she replied. “We couldn’t even see you in that mess. Good thing Erik told me to fire over their heads, or I’d have put bullets into each of you.”
“Good thing. I think we’re a little past the niceties, though. They’re hostile, and protective of their… something. Safe to say if we come across them again, we’re
neutralizing.”
“Fair enough, boss. Where we headed now?”
Dr. Pavan was standing now, and the four of them entered the cavern together. “Let’s go back that way. We were heading down to the lower levels.”
“Same here, but we weren’t sure which way to take when we got to the fork. It’s about a few hundred yards back, but we decided to follow along this way. We thought we heard something from this direction.”
She turned and walked away, leaving Erik and the rest to follow along. “Wait,” Carter said before she could leave the room.
“You hit one,” he said, pointing his light toward the giant wall of fecal matter. In front of it, sprawled out on the ground, was a petite, brown-haired woman wearing a lab coat and slacks. She was dead, but Carter approached her and squatted down. Saunders followed and knelt next to Carter.
He reached behind the woman’s temple, eventually finding what he was looking for. “Feel this,” he said to Saunders. She did, frowning as she fingered the hard outline of the small device just beneath the skin.
“What is it?” she asked.
“We don’t know, but we found one on a Russian soldier as well. Nelson cut it out of his head.”
“Weird. So the soldiers and the scientists have something in common.”
“Right, though we have no idea what. The Russians didn’t get here until right after us. They were in the sub that attacked ours, most likely. But the scientists and maintenance crew, Bingham included, have been here for decades.”
Erik realized something at that moment and spoke his concern. “For what it’s worth, the Russian mercenaries seem to be completely functional, whereas these people did not. They were effectively brain dead, from what we observed when they attacked you.”
“He’s right,” Jen said. “Whatever this thing does, it’s not the cause of the strange behavior. It might be a simple tracking device, though. Something to keep tabs on the locations of the people inside the base.”
“Who would need that?” Dr. Pavan asked.
“Someone who was in control,” Nelson said without hesitation.