“Sarge,” Brown said, finally ready to give voice to a nagging worry that had tickled his hindbrain since they had emerged onto the rocky ledge.
“What?”
“The thing in the tunnel hasn’t followed us out. Maybe you’re right and it’s too bright in here.”
“Yeah. And?”
“Well, if it’s meant to guard this place, but hasn’t followed us out, that must mean something.”
The Sergeant narrowed his eyes. “Like maybe there’s something else in here to do the same job and that thing only worries about its tunnel?”
“Something like that.”
“You have a point. Better keep your weapon ready. Let’s go.”
They moved along the ledge, heading for the giant stairway the insurgents had used. Brown whistled softly as they came abreast of a massive bronze plate pressed into the wall, ten metres high and five wide, inscribed with strange cursive symbols and patterns that made him dizzy to look upon. His eyes kept sliding away as he tried to make sense of them and nausea began to stir his guts.
“Over there,” Spencer said. “And there.”
They followed his pointing finger and saw other plaques on other ledges dotted around the cave. Small tunnel openings here and there accompanied them just like the one they had entered through.
“Any of those tunnels could have a fucking monster like the one that attacked us,” Brown said.
“We have to assume each one does,” Coulthard said. “We have to keep looking for something else. Move on.”
Another twenty metres along their ledge gave them a vantage point past the monumental structure and they all saw it at once. On the far side of the vast cave, at the top of another giant staircase that went even higher than where they currently stood, a huge tunnel mouth yawned.
“That must be fifty metres wide,” Coulthard said. “We have a fighting chance in a space like that.”
“Probably where the insurgents were heading too,” Brown said. “Means going through that structure though.”
“Or around it on ground level.”
A scream ripped through the air. High pitched and horrified, it was the voice of a man staring into hideous death and it cut suddenly short.
“Came from down there.” Spencer pointed down the stairway they had nearly reached, where the insurgents had died under Coulthard’s fire.
“Seems like old Shoulder Wound survived after all,” the sergeant said.
“Until just then.” Brown felt the lock on the box in his chest loosening.
“All right. Silence.” Coulthard raised his weapon and headed for the stairs. “We have no choice but to go through, so let’s fight our way through.”
He moved to the first stair and jumped down. The riser was a few inches above his head, but he walked forward and jumped down the next. Brown and Spencer followed.
Brown’s knees jarred with every drop and he wondered how long they would hold out. How long could any of them last with this kind of exertion? The insurgents were about two thirds of the way down and had looked spent, sliding off each step, staggering around.
And assuming they made it down, they would have to climb up even more stairs to get to the wide tunnel they had seen. And all the while fighting past whatever had triggered that scream. Basic training or advanced combatives, nothing prepared a soldier for this. Ready for anything? No one had ever listed this place under the heading of ‘anything’.
His lock loosened a little more, so Brown stopped thinking and kept moving.
He stopped counting the drops at fifty, but after a few more Coulthard paused and raised one fist. They froze, crouched in readiness. Coulthard tapped his ear. Straining to listen, Brown heard a scratching, scrabbling noise. Distant, but getting quickly nearer. Coulthard crept to the edge of the step they were on to look down and immediately burst into action. He raked his assault rifle left to right, the reports of his short bursts shattering the quiet and bouncing back from the distant walls all around. Brown and Spencer joined him at the edge. Spencer added his ordnance to Coulthard’s straight away, but Brown paused momentarily, stunned.
A flood of creatures flowed up the steps towards them like roiling black water. Only twenty or so steps below and fast getting closer, they scrambled on too many legs, black bodies like scorpions, but where the stinger should be on the end of the waving tails was a leering face, almost human though twisted somehow into something hideously uncanny, eyes too wide, mouths too deep. Those mouths stretched silently open or gaped like fish as the creatures chittered over the stone edges. Each was a metre or more long, two vicious mandibles at the front of the thorax snapping at the air as they came.
Brown brought his weapon up and added his fire to the fray. Their bullets tore into the things, shattering hard shells and causing gouts of glowing blue blood. As one fell, its fellows swarmed over it. Some staggered from shots striking their many limbs and fell from the sides of the staircase. Brown realised the things were screaming, in fear or pain or triumph he didn’t know, but they had no voice and just hissed thick streams of air from those stretched and awful faces that wavered atop their segmented tails as they ran.
There was no way Brown and his colleagues would be able to scramble up the stairs ahead of these horrors, so here they had to make their stand. Coulthard plucked a grenade from his belt and lobbed it past the first wave. It detonated in a cloud of shining black carapaces and stone chunks. Spencer emptied his clip and expertly switched in a new one. He resumed firing as Brown switched in new ammo. Coulthard threw two more grenades and switched clips to resume firing. Brown threw a grenade of his own and switched in his last clip. Their automatic fire stuttered and roared, controlled bursts as training took over.
The creatures were only five steps away, then four, and ammo was running out. Brown, Spencer and Coulthard yelled incoherent defiance and raked fire across their advance. Spencer lobbed a grenade then the things were too close for any more explosives.
Three steps and their numbers finally began to thin, two steps, almost close enough to touch.
Suddenly the men were stumbling left and right, firing in short bursts as the last of the things breached their step and tried to clamber onto them, heavy, sharp mandibles snapping rapidly for limbs. Spencer screamed as one drew close, his weapon clicking absurdly loudly, empty. Brown fired three short bursts and then there were no more creatures coming. Coulthard blew two away right at his feet, turned and killed the last one right before it leapt onto Spencer.
Everything was suddenly still; their ears rang.
Dave Spencer looked up at his sergeant with a smile of relief just as Brown raised one hand and shouted, “Stop!”
But Spencer finished taking a step away from the corpse at his feet and his foot vanished over the edge of the stairway. As his face opened into an O of utter surprise, he dropped from sight.
Brown and Coulthard rushed to the edge, but Spencer was lost in shadow. He found his voice a second later, his howl drifting up before cutting off with a wet thud. Silence descended heavily throughout the enormous cavern.
Brown, on his hands and knees, began to tremble uncontrollably. “So much for his psychic fucking wife,” he muttered.
Coulthard was beside him, breathing heavily from exertion, as Brown was, but there was anger in the sergeant’s demeanour too. “Took the fucking radio with him,” Coulthard said eventually.
He stood and yelled and screamed, kicked at the corpses of the horrible scorpion monsters all around. Brown turned to sit and watch, glad in a way that the man was finally letting some emotion out. Like a pressure cooker, he had surely been close to blowing for a long time.
Eventually the sergeant slumped back against the step above and slid down to sit. “So all we have is what we’re carrying and no comms.”
Brown nodded. “I’ve got what’s left in here,” he hefted his weapon, “and that’s it. You?”
“Same.”
“I still have two grenades.”
“
I got none. But we each have pistols,” Coulthard said.
“Might save that for myself,” Brown said quietly, and he meant it. At some point, sticking the barrel of the .45 against his temple and pulling the trigger seemed like a good option. He looked at the chitinous corpses all around. “Think we got them all?”
“Hope so. These ancient fuckers were no match for the tools of modern warfare.”
“Tools which will be empty very soon if we need to use them again.”
Coulthard just nodded, staring at the ground between his feet. Eventually he sniffed decisively, stood. “Right, let’s go.”
Brown looked up at him, stark against the backdrop of shadowy mist and the wan blue glow of the lichen. “Yeah. Okay.”
They began to drop down the steps again, picking their way through the broken bodies, blue blood and shattered rock of their battle. In places, their grenades had sheered the steps into gravel slides they carefully surfed on their butts. Here and there some of the creatures still twitched, but they avoided them and preserved their ammo. After a dozen or so stairs the corpses ended. Another couple and they came across red smears on the stones and a few lumps of flesh and ragged clothing.
“A lot of blood,” Brown noted. “Those things clearly enjoyed the dead as well as the one who survived. I sure hope that was all of them we killed.”
Coulthard nodded and continued down in silence. Eventually, gasping, with legs like jelly and bruised feet, they reached the bottom to stand in swirls of mist.
A low moan rose, vibrating the air all around them. The stone floor thrummed. Then it faded away. As Brown and Coulthard turned to look at each other, it rose again, louder, stronger. Then again. And again. Each time, it vibrated more deeply, sounding more strained and desperate, accompanied by a heavy metallic clattering. Then silence fell and pressed in on them for a long time.
Eventually Brown said, “What the fuck was that?”
Coulthard looked towards the tall structure in the centre of the cave. From ground level it punched up high above them, wreathed in tendrils of blue-tinged mist. Brown began to dizzy as he stared up at it. The smaller towers surrounding the base, connected with curving buttresses, were each some thirty-metres high. In the base of each smaller tower was a hollowed-out circular space and in that space sat a statue. From the few he could see, Brown realised that each statue was turned to face the centre tower. They were almost human-like in form, seated cross-legged, but each had four arms with eight-fingered hands, held out to either side as though awaiting an embrace. Their bellies were distended and rolled with fat, their faces wide with four eyes – two above two. Brown moved to better examine the nearest one and the level of detail was phenomenal, disturbing. Not so much carved, as real living things turned instantly to stone. He wondered if in fact that’s exactly what they were. Each was at least three metres tall and corpulent.
Coulthard’s gaze was still fixed on the main tower. Brown moved to stand beside him and realised he was looking at a doorway, a dark opening in the rock wall several metres high and a couple wide. “The moaning came from inside, don’t you think?” the sergeant asked.
“Who cares?” Brown said, stunned.
“I have to know.” Coulthard walked towards the door.
“Sarge? Seriously, let’s just go. What if more of those…” Brown’s voice trailed off as Coulthard approached the opening.
Soft blue light pulsed from inside as the sergeant drew near. The moan rose again, shaking everything. Brown put a hand to his chest as the deep moan sounded a second time and made his heart stutter. His feet were frozen to the spot as he watched Coulthard step through the high entrance.
The sergeant stopped just inside and his gaze rose slowly upwards. He was framed in the blue light that pulsed more and more rapidly. The groaning became a wail and Coulthard’s weapon dropped from lax fingers to hang by its shoulder strap. “Chains,” Coulthard stammered. He looked left and right, up and down, his sight exploring a vast area. “Giant chains right through its flesh. Through all those eyes!” He dropped to his knees, head tilted back as he looked far above himself. “This is a prison. An eternal prison!” He began to laugh, a high, broken sound that came from the root of no sound mind.
The moan stirred into a deep, encompassing voice that reverberated through the cavern. “Release me!”
Chains rang as they were snapped taut and relaxed again. Whatever slumbering monstrosity that filled the tower and split the edges of Coulthard’s mind thrashed and its voice boomed again. “RELEASE ME!”
“Sarge!” Brown yelled, his stomach curdled with terror. “We have to go!”
He wanted to drag his sergeant away, but had no desire to risk seeing what the man saw. “Sarge!” he screamed.
Coulthard’s face tipped slightly towards him and Brown took in the sagging cheeks, drooling mouth, wild, glassy eyes, and knew that Coulthard was lost. No humanity remained in that shell of a body. With a sob, Brown ran.
He raced around the tower and leaped for the first step of the stairway on the far side. He hauled himself up as the voice burst out, over and over, “Release me! Release me! Release me!”
Brown scrambled up stair after stair, rubbing his hands raw on the rough surface. He sobbed and gasped, his shoulder and back muscles burned, but he hauled on and on. He couldn’t shake the image of all those swarming scorpion things from his mind and imagined them racing up behind him, but didn’t dare to look. The voice of whatever was imprisoned below cried out again and again.
At some point, more than fifty steps up, Brown collapsed, exhausted, and blackness took over. He assumed he was dying and let himself go.
He had no idea how much time had passed when he woke again, unmolested. The massive cavern was still.
Brown dragged himself to his feet and began the shattering climb once more, step after step after step. Time blurred, his mind was an empty darkness, until he pulled himself over the top of one more step and saw a flat expanse of rock stretching out before him. On the far side, some hundred metres away, the huge yawning tunnel stood, threatening to suck him in.
Brown laughed, dangerously close to hysterical, and gained his feet, stumbled forward into the gloom. He didn’t care what might be there, he just needed to leave the hideous monument and its prisoner behind.
More of the softly glowing lichen striated the walls and he dropped his night vision goggles into place. The sight before him stopped him dead, confused. A grid, some kind of lattice. He looked up and down as realisation dawned. A giant portcullis-like gate filled the tunnel, thirty metres high, fifty metres across, fixed deeply into the rock. He walked up to it and found it made of cast metal like the huge plaques they had seen, the criss-crossed straps of bronze at least twenty centimetres thick. Each square hole of the lattice was perhaps half a metre or a little more across. If he stripped off his gear, he might be able to squeeze through. Or he might very well get stuck halfway.
But it didn’t matter. Beyond the gate, beyond the weak glow of the cavern behind him, uncountable numbers of clear, globular shapes moved and writhed, tentacles gently questing out and retracting again, waiting, hungry. Hundreds of them.
Brown fell to his butt and sat laughing softly. He checked his rations and canteen, tried to estimate how long he might survive, and gave up when his brain refused to cooperate. He looked back across towards the tunnel from which they had emerged. Compared to the swarm waiting beyond the gate, the one or two in that tunnel seemed like far better odds. Assuming it was only one or two. And assuming he had the strength to get back down and up again. And that there were no more guardians waiting for him in the cavern. And that whatever was imprisoned below didn’t thrash free in its rage.
Lance Corporal Paul Brown, experienced medic and decorated solider, lay down and pulled his knees up to his chest. His brain couldn’t work out what to do, so perhaps he would just have a sleep and, refreshed, maybe then decide which suicidal option for escape might be the best one to try.
* * *<
br />
SPECIAL COMMUNIQUE
ATTN: COLONEL ADAM LEONARD – DIRECTOR, UNEXPLAINED OCCURRENCE DIVISION.
YOUR EYES ONLY
SUBJECT – DISAPPEARANCE OF EPSILON TEAM, NORTH OF KANDAHAR, AFTER TRACKING ENEMY INSURGENTS TO UNDERGROUND HIDEOUT.
SURVIVORS – 1: LANCE CORPORAL PAUL BROWN, MEDIC.
REPORT: After non-response from Epsilon Team for thirty six (36) hours after their last communique, a second squad was sent to investigate. They found Lance Corporal Paul Brown of Epsilon stumbling through foothills some seven (7) kilometres south of Epsilon Team’s last known whereabouts. Brown was wearing nothing but ragged underwear and his helmet, raving and largely incoherent, his left arm below the elbow was just bone, no hand, the flesh stripped away presumably by acid or a similar agent. His body was covered in various other wounds, some similar to his arm (though none as severe) and others clearly made from impacts, falls, scrapes, etc. He carried no gear except a flashlight, which he pointedly refused to relinquish. He made almost no sense except one phrase, repeated over and over: “Never let it out! Never let it out!” Current assessment by psychologists suggests Brown may never recover his faculties, but therapy has been started. His extensive injuries are being treated and are responding satisfactorily.
We’re still trying to establish further facts but are preparing an incursion squad to Epsilon’s last known whereabouts. Due to your standing request to be informed of any unusual occurrences, I am sending this wire. Our squad will be entering the cave at the last known location of Epsilon Team at 0800 tomorrow, the 14th, should you wish to accompany them.
Please advise.
END
They Own the Night
B. Michael Radburn
“It is only the dead who have seen the end of war”
Plato
PART ONE
The jungle has a presence. Sergeant Carl Fisher sensed it on his first tour of Vietnam two years ago. Now, nearing the end of his second tour in-country, he knew the jungle more intimately than anything back home in the States. It was a living thing, dark and secretive, a sprawling mass of ancient deep-rooted life. It can either protect, or kill, without prejudice. And it can hide things… for centuries.
SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest Page 11