Beyond Hades

by Luke Romyn

  Thomas was dead.

  That recollection emerged first from the mists of his memory, and along with it came everything else, an avalanche of details, incredible and terrifying, crushing Talbot beneath them.

  He was meant to stop this mess.

  And how the hell was he supposed to do that?

  The enormity of the situation was thrust aside as the sub shook horrendously once more, the groaning of the hull terrifying, as though every single rivet were straining to the point of bursting - along with Talbot's sanity. The entire sub tilted wildly to port, and a horrendous screeching echoed through the hallways, increasing Talbot's panic immeasurably. Struggling to his feet with difficulty, he stumbled down a narrow corridor to the ship's bridge.

  The sub's commander barked an order to the crew, and Talbot noticed a distinct lack of strain in his voice, a fact he found odd under the circumstances. A huge plasma screen - obviously not part of the original ship's design - descended from the ceiling and an eerie picture sprung to life on it. Spotlights lit an external camera which, judging from the angle, must have been located on the tail fin of the sub. At first there was no sign of what attacked them. The camera panned....

  And then he saw it.

  "What the hell is that?" asked Talbot incredulously.

  Several serpentine heads flickered on elongated necks in front of the camera. The massive snake-like body of the creature wrapped around the hull, squeezing it in the way a python would constrict a mouse.

  "That, Doctor, is the Lernaean Hydra," answered the commander calmly in perfect English. "Your brother described it flawlessly, but we underestimated its size."

  "Underestimated its size? That thing is enormous!"

  The Commander peered over at him, unperturbed by the outburst. "We are prepared for this, Doctor Harrison. You needn't worry."

  Talbot began to answer, but the commander turned away, effectively cutting him off. How in the world could they be prepared for something like this? A colossal, multi-headed beast of Greek mythology shaking the world's largest submarine around like a maraca wasn't commonplace stuff.

  The Commander barked something in Russian, and the deck officer relayed it in English. "Prepare to fire torpedoes!"

  Activity electrified a corner of the bridge. "Fire," ordered the commander.

  On the screen, Talbot saw four guided torpedoes shoot away from the sub, looping back through the water toward the thick body of the hydra. At the last moment four of the beast's nine heads shot forward with amazing alacrity, each mouth snatching a single torpedo.

  "Quick! Disarm them. Now!" shouted Captain Benedict, causing Talbot to jump slightly.

  The weapons operators hesitated and looked to their commander for confirmation, but it was too late. Each of the four heads exploded silently on the screen, the concussive blast simultaneously rocking the Typhoon's hull with its force.

  "Damn!"

  At first, Talbot couldn't understand why Captain Benedict was so upset, but as he watched the screen, understanding blossomed.

  Where each of the four heads of the hydra had been severed, two new heads sprouted, rapidly growing to full size. Where there had been nine heads before, now they were facing thirteen.

  Viewing the eerily silent scene outside the ship, Talbot remembered an ancient story. The hydra had been chosen as one of Hercules's labors. He had set out to destroy the beast, only to discover what they had just unveiled. For every head severed, two would grow to replace it. Hercules had succeeded by cauterizing each wound with a flaming torch before the new heads could emerge.

  If only Talbot could somehow replicate such a feat.

  He called out to the Russian commander, "What is the hottest burning weapon you have?"

  The Commander pondered the question. "We have some prototype phosphorous mines on board."

  "Fire them," said Talbot urgently, hearing the hull creaking once more. The tremendous pressure of the hydra's constricting body seemed to be increasing. "Or release them. Whatever it is you do with mines."

  The ship's commander glanced at Captain Benedict who nodded slightly. He then relayed the order to the weapons crew.

  Six innocuous-looking spheres emerged from the torpedo tubes and began floating slowly toward the surface. Six of the hydra's thirteen heads swept through the murky water, once more snatching the weapons before they had a chance to harm its body -

  Just as Talbot had hoped.

  The phosphorous mines exploded, flaring so brightly it seemed they had blown out the external camera. Slowly the static cleared and the screen returned to normal, every crewmember straining to see the result.

  Six tattered and burned necks flailed through the ocean, their exposed skin sealed completely by the intense heat of the scorching phosphorous. The remaining seven heads thrashed wildly, and the serpentine body appeared to loosen its grip.

  Shrugging itself free of the Typhoon, the hydra whipped its body in a shuddering wave of distress. As it fled, it emitted torrents of an inky substance from its remaining mouths. The viscous liquid swiftly enveloped the starboard side of the hull. Talbot watched in mute horror as the thick, dark solution begin to corrode the exterior armor of the Typhoon.

  "T-that's not possible!" stammered the commander, his composure cracking for the first time.

  "Get us out of here!" yelled Captain Benedict.

  This time, the crew didn't hesitate. The vessel powered up and began to thrust away from the Hydra, but not fast enough. The hydra shot back through the water faster than Talbot could have imagined, opening its numerous jaws wide. Yet nothing seemed to emerge from the beast's seven mouths.

  And then it hit them.

  A concussive shock tossed the entire Typhoon end over end through the water. The interior flipped and turned as crewmembers were thrown from their positions against the ceiling, and then the floor, over and over.

  Talbot cracked his head against a console, and everything vanished.

  ***

  Chuck Benedict peeled himself from the floor of the command bridge and glanced around. Considering what had just happened, there was very little damage to be seen. A few consoles had been impacted by flailing bodies, and blood splattered across the floor in several places, but otherwise the bridge appeared fully functional.

  Apart from tilting at a forty-five-degree angle, that is.

  He crawled over to where Talbot lay unconscious and checked him for injuries. The doctor bore a deep bruise on his temple, but otherwise seemed okay. He gently roused him.

  "What happened?" groaned Talbot.

  "I'm not sure," answered Chuck. "I think the Hydra might have attacked us with some sort of sonic resonation."

  "That wasn't in the stories," muttered Talbot. "Where are we and why is the ship tilted?"

  "Let's find out," said Chuck, moving to the external camera's control console as several other members of the crew began to regain consciousness.

  He brought up the picture on the plasma screen. Talbot gasped in shock. A beautiful beach stretched before them, angled at an obscure point of view.

  They'd been thrown out of the ocean. The world's largest submersible vessel had been flung away like a child's toy.

  "Oh crap," muttered Chuck.

  The Commander of the sub was sitting up, staring at the impossible scene on the screen. He swiftly regained his composure and ordered the crew to bring up a satellite position for the Typhoon. Several crew limped to comply, and Chuck translated the order for the bewildered doctor.

  "I didn't know you could speak Russian," said Talbot.

  Chuck offered a rare smile. "Considering you've only known me for about a day, Doctor, I'm sure there's a lot you don't know about me."

  Talbot grinned sheepishly and turned toward the plasma screen once more. Chuck followed his gaze and saw the external camera had been replaced with a GPS map of the world. A tiny blipping dot flashed just off the west coast of Senegal. The Commander ordered it to be zoomed in.

  The scene enlarged, a
nd Chuck was soon staring at an island not far from where they were hoping to go. Not far at all.

  "Communications," called Chuck in Russian. Two operators glanced around at him. "Send out a distress signal on channel 724 to Colonel Bremond. Give him our location."

  The crew moved to comply, but not before Chuck registered a flicker of irritation in the Russian commander's features. Apparently he didn't appreciate someone else giving orders on his ship. As far as Chuck was concerned, he could go to Hell....

  He grinned humorlessly at the irony of the thought.

  ***

  Chuck, Talbot and the crew of the Arkhangelsk disembarked the stricken vessel and gathered loosely on the beach. Four crewmembers had sustained serious cuts and broken bones in the attack, but otherwise the injuries were relatively minor.

  Chuck shadowed Doctor Harrison, his M-16A4 at the ready, while they awaited rescue. The island they were on was part of the group Atlantis had supposedly been attached to before its destruction, and as such was very close to the underwater dimensional rift. Anything could be here.

  The first hour passed without event, but early into the second, a deep rumbling could be felt emanating from beneath the sand of the beach.

  "Defensive positions!" called Captain Benedict. Perhaps a hundred Russian crewmembers, armed with AK-47s and Czech CZ.75 pistols, created a perimeter around the rest of the group. Chuck hoped they knew how to use them.

  The rumbling intensified, and Chuck swiftly glanced back at the doctor. The man had looked perpetually terrified since they had first met, but now he seemed strangely calm. Perhaps he'd grown accustomed to the continual assaults by creatures from myth.

  Suddenly, the ground erupted to their left. Chuck caught the briefest glimpse of what appeared to be a rust-colored crab's claw emerging from beneath the sand, before it disappeared once more. The Russian closest to it tipped sideways, almost in slow motion, and as his body hit the ground it split into two sections, neatly severed through his mid-torso, blood spraying everywhere.

  Chuck hurriedly glanced at the sand beneath his own feet. "Move to solid ground over there!" he shouted, motioning toward the much rockier terrain near the base of a sheer cliff.

  The position couldn't have been worse from a defensive point of view. With the cliff behind them, they had no route for escape, but Chuck had no choice. If they stayed on the sand, they would be easily picked off one at a time by whatever lurked beneath the sand.

  The sand erupted continually as they rushed across the beach toward the perceived safety of rocky ground. Whatever was hunting them seemed to sense their goal and was determined to stop them.

  Chuck gripped Talbot by his upper arm and zipped between the emerging claws, finally dragging a shaken Doctor Harrison onto the section of rock beside him. He spun back, assault rifle raised to his shoulder, only to see their attackers had disappeared once more.

  In the space of a hundred yards, perhaps half the crewmembers had been cut to shreds by the unseen assailants. Several weapons were lost in the attack, and as Chuck swiftly scanned the survivors he noticed fewer than sixty still carried guns. He prayed that would be enough.

  The sand sat unperturbed.

  Not a single grain moved.

  The entire group seemed scared to breathe, and not a sound rose as they waited for the attack they knew was coming -

  The entire beach suddenly exploded upward, and Chuck had to turn his head to avoid being blinded by the flying sand. Reflexively, he opened fire with his M-16A4 at an enemy he could not yet see.

  And then they emerged, and he wished they hadn't.

  Thickly armored, the rust-colored creatures clambered from the sand in a ceaseless wave. Hundreds upon hundreds of them.

  The creatures ran forward on two thick legs ending in spikes instead of feet, their upper bodies covered in shells so thick bullets seemed to simply bounce off. Four arms sprouted from each torso; the lower two stunted and feeble, the upper ones grotesquely muscled, ending in razor-sharp claws.

  Their heads were roughly humanoid, but warped and twisted into horrific parodies of men. Black eyes protruded from stalks above their beak-like mouths, clicking together while they ran, hungering for flesh.

  Chuck grabbed an M67 fragmentation grenade from his belt and pulled the pin, throwing it in the direction of the strange horde. It exploded in the midst of the crab men, and several were flung high, only to rise unperturbed and charge forward again.

  "Oh shit," muttered Chuck, seeing their deaths approaching in those mindless black orbs, clicking beaks slavering in anticipation.

  Suddenly, like an angel answering their prayers, a Harrier Jump-Jet shot overhead, from the cliff behind them. As it passed, something cylindrical dropped from its underside.

  "Hit the deck!" yelled Chuck, grabbing Doctor Harrison and hurling him against the rocky ground, protecting the doctor with his body. He had no time to wonder if the Russians had understood his warning.

  The Mark 77 bomb, successor to napalm, erupted.

  The scent of roasted crab wafted across the beach.

  And Captain Benedict was engulfed in flames.

  CHAPTER 5

  Talbot gazed down at the charred features of Captain Benedict before covering his body once more and securing the black body bag. He shook his head sadly.

  He'd only known the captain for a little over twenty four hours, but the man had died to protect him. Who did something like that? How could a man he hardly knew sacrifice everything just to ensure he lived?

  Colonel Sam Wilson approached him, glancing quickly at the body bag and grimacing. The colonel had arrived with the rest of the troops who'd escaped the carnage of Base Alpha, and appeared ready to tear the pilot of the Harrier to pieces on glimpsing the destruction the Mark 77 bomb had wreaked, especially the remains of Captain Benedict.

  "Doctor Harrison," he began, his tone stiff, "I apologize for your treatment thus far. Exposure to the events you have witnessed was never part of our plan."

  Talbot shrugged, his mind blank, his heart uncertain, his gaze once more drawn to the body bag. Such a waste.

  His hands began to shake heavily, nausea rising swiftly from his stomach. Talbot bent over swiftly, retching across the sand. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes drawn back inextricably to the black plastic coffin containing the bravest man he had ever met in his life.

  Talbot wasn't special; not the sort of person heroes sacrificed themselves protecting. He was just a guy - pretty boring by most standards - and nobody should be dying to preserve his life, especially not a man like Chuck Benedict.

  The body bag lay there, in silent accusation.

  "Why?" croaked Talbot, unaware he'd said it out loud. "Why would he do such a thing?"

  "Captain Benedict did his duty," Colonel Wilson stated, his tone cold. "You have nothing to feel guilty for."

  "He was screaming," murmured Talbot. "He suffered in agony right up until he died, but he never stopped shielding me." Talbot raised his eyes, appraising the colonel in a blank, empty kind of way. Colonel Wilson was a large man, bigger even than Captain Benedict. He appeared around forty years old, but still extremely fit and muscular beneath his combat fatigues. Gray hair peeked around the edges of his Kevlar helmet and his returning gaze grew hard.

  "He died to protect you, sir," snarled the colonel, "in order to save our country. He did his duty. He was a marine. Your approval isn't necessary, nor is your understanding. The only thing that really matters is that you don't make his death count for nothing. Look at that bag and know the man now lying in it was a better one than you, but he died to protect you in order to give you a chance to save the rest of this God-forsaken planet."

  Talbot dropped his gaze once more, shame filling him to the point of breaking his spirit, but he forced it away. Such fanatical patriotism terrified him. If they thought for an instant Talbot was an enemy instead of an asset, would they hesitate in destroying him? He doubted it.

  "It's time to go," growle
d the colonel. "The media will soon catch wind of this, and our clean-up crews need to begin getting things in order for the cover story."

  "Cover story?" asked Talbot.

  The colonel glared hard at him, his anger still evident but controlled under the brutal discipline of the military. "Every single incident which might come under scrutiny has to be covered up from the media; if not, the ensuing panic would threaten to tear our society apart. There's an entire team of political bullshit artists assigned to this incident along with every other incident which might come to the notice of the public.

  "For instance," continued Colonel Wilson, "the gryphon which attacked us on the way to Quantico - along with the subsequent deployment of Harrier Jump-Jets which fired missiles over US soil - was explained as a training exercise involving advanced, top-secret weaponry designed to combat terrorism. As such, any footage of the incident - including still-photography taken by civilians - comes under the Patriot Act. Anyone posting US Government secrets faces potential prosecution to the fullest extent in a court of law. Even online video sites will be forced to remove anything their pimple-faced uber-nerds post on the internet. It's a very effective way of controlling information leaks."

  "So the government basically lies to the people."

  "Would you rather the public know the truth?" countered Colonel Wilson. "Think back to the riots in Los Angeles, Doctor, or those in Vancouver and the ones in London. People need very little excuse to fall into chaos. The threat of monsters from another dimension coming here and devouring their family might be enough to tip society over the edge. Why shouldn't they succumb to anarchy if the world's going to end anyway?"

  "I had no idea things like this even happened in our country," mused Talbot softly.

  "They're in place to protect people from themselves, Doctor Harrison. The human race just isn't prepared to deal with a lot of what's actually out there. Remember the old adage, 'Ignorance is bliss'? Well it's never been so appropriate as during the current phase of events. For now, however, we really need to go." His fury seemed to have subsided, and Talbot found he couldn't blame the colonel for it. He felt more sadness than anger as he glanced at the body bag once more, shaking his head sadly one last time.