Hellhole

by Jonathan Maberry

  “First, I would like to show you the casualties. I hope you are not easily nauseated,” Wong said and stepped clear of the door.

  The room looked worse close up than it had via helmet-cam. The men—no women were deployed on lunar prospecting missions—lay in a neat pile. Along one wall, Wong had placed a line of heads.

  “Those are the ones I believe can be matched to a body,” he explained.

  “Jesus. H. Christ,” Block muttered. “Cause of death?”

  “Initial examination suggests multiple contusions, lacerations, blunt-force trauma and some decompression injuries.”

  “They were stabbed?”

  “Stabbed, bitten, slashed, crushed and then exposed to null-atmosphere. Most of them were already dead when they were exposed, though.”

  “Isolation psychosis?” Pierce suggested.

  “Isolation psychosis would be a reasonable assumption,” Wong replied.

  “It’s not our job to make that call,” Block said. “Where is the survivor?”

  “He has sealed himself in a pressurized room. Breaching the seal would kill him.”

  “He doesn’t have a pressure suit?” Pierce frowned. The idea of being anywhere on the moon without a suit made her shiver.

  “It does appear that he locked himself in without following normal procedure.”

  “Can we communicate?” Block asked.

  “Yes, Sergeant. There are working communications outside the room.”

  “Show me.”

  Wong led them down the corridor. It ended at a sealed door and a shattered door control panel.

  “Manual override,” Block said without a trace of sarcasm.

  Wong went to the shattered panel and pressed its only remaining button. “Mister Salvatore,” he said.

  “Still here, Sehnor.” The voice that crackled through their comms sounded tinny, a side effect of the limited transmission range of the intercom.

  “Mister Salvatore. We’d like to find out what happened here and then get you to safety.”

  Pierce felt the vibration under her boots in the airless corridor. Within a moment the entire section shuddered as if struck by an earthquake. She fell against the wall and steadied herself until the rocking subsided.

  “Minhocão!” the voice from behind the door screamed.

  “Howard, report!” Block barked into the comms.

  “Shit, Sarge! What the hell was that?” Korbin’s voice crackled.

  “Not sure. Howard, what’s your situation?”

  “He went to get eyes on Gordy. Couldn’t tap into her helmet cam,” Korbin replied. “Want me to go and find them?”

  “Hold your damned position, Korbin.”

  “What’s Saliva saying?” Block snapped at Wong.

  “Salvatore, Sergeant. I’m not sure what it means. He screams that word occasionally.”

  “Pierce?” Block asked.

  “No habla Espanol,” Pierce said.

  “From what I have heard, I think he is speaking Portuguese,” Wong suggested.

  “And do you speak Portuguese, Wong?” Block asked.

  “Not currently, Sergeant.”

  “Goddamn amateur hour,” Block muttered again. “Hey! You in there! We’re going to get you out of there safe and sound, comprende?”

  “Please...” Salvatore’s voice came through the intercom. “Por favor senhor, me tira de aqui embora.”

  “Wong, come with me. We’ll get a pressure tent and seal off this tunnel. Get some atmosphere in here. Then we can open this door and get him in a suit and ready for evac.”

  “What do you want me to do, Sarge?” Pierce asked.

  “Talk to him. A female voice might calm him down.”

  Pierce stared in blank surprise at Block until he walked away down the corridor, Wong trailing him.

  “Ahh... Hola?” Pierce said to the intercom.

  “Sim,” came the hesitant reply. “Who are you?”

  “Pierce, Corporal Pierce. I’m part of a Black Light Private Security team.”

  “Black Light Security? Why did the company send you? Why not proper military?”

  Are you kidding me? Pierce thought. Lunar territory was a complex jigsaw of corporate land claims. No Earth government or country had a claim to any part of the moon. Landing federal troops on the moon would start a war, or worse—a court action.

  “Mister Salvatore? We are proper military. Bought and paid for by the same board of directors who sent you and your colleagues up here.”

  “Have you killed them all?”

  “Killed who, Mister Salvatore?”

  “Minhocão,” came the hissed reply.

  “I don’t know what that means, sir.”

  “They burrow through the ground. The drilling, it brought them to the surface.”

  “What are you talking about, Mister Salvatore?”

  “They will kill you! Just like they killed everyone else!” Salvatore’s voice broke into high-pitched giggles. Pierce clicked off the intercom connection and shivered.

  Backing down the corridor, she turned to follow Block and Wong. Her gaze swept over the room where the bodies had been dumped. Wong had tidied up, sorting the remains from the tangled pile they were in and laying them out in orderly rows.

  Pierce stopped and stared at the floor. The thick rivers of blood that flowed from the corpses had frozen in the absolute zero of open space.

  The bodies should have frozen too; the liquid leaking out of the gaping wounds welding the corpses together like slabs of hamburger in a blast freezer.

  Pierce walked into the room, breathing in slow, shallow breaths. Even though she was carrying her own atmosphere, she could imagine the smell and that made her nauseous.

  Sinking into a crouch, Pierce picked up a soft and floppy piece of meat. A clear gel-like resin dripped from it. Anti-freeze?

  The ground shuddered again. Pierce thrust her hands out to keep herself from plunging face-first into the nearest body.

  “Pierce, you okay?” Block came through her comms unit.

  “Five by five, Sarge.” She straightened up and checked her rifle was clean.

  “That one was definitely closer,” Block said. “How is our civilian?”

  “He’s fine. Scared and, well talking crazy. But he seems okay where he is for now.”

  “Hold your position, we’re on—” Block’s transmission collapsed into static as the ground shuddered again with renewed violence.

  “Sarge?” Pierce reached up and touched the side of her helmet to improve the audio connection. It was an instinctive gesture but a futile one. “Sarge?” The comms link remained quiet.

  Pierce left the room, her rifle leading the way as she moved down the corridor. The ceiling had collapsed, filling the passage with drifts of lunar dirt and rock. Pierce pushed the dirt away until she had excavated a narrow crawl space. Her helmet and air tanks scraped against rock as she wriggled through. Her progress ground to a halt when she was barely half way. Pierce scratched at the dirt with her hands and then froze as the ground vibrated around her. The dirt cascaded down, allowing Pierce to crawl out of the narrow gap and sending her rolling down the slope on the other side.

  A dark shape with glistening black skin like a whale slid past a ragged hole in the wall. The clear gel scraped off the smooth hide, the drops leaving wet tracks in the fresh dust.

  “Sarge!” Pierce yelled into her comms unit. She crawled backwards, away from the thing that continued to pass uninterrupted.

  “Pierce? What is your situation?” Block barked in her ear.

  “There’s something alive over here,” Pierce replied.

  “Another survivor?”

  “Sarge, I think it’s some kind of animal. It’s alive,” she added, feeling the need to clarify the point.

  “Hold position. We’re en route to you.”

  Pierce could hear Block running and yelling for Korbin to move with him. She stood, straining to feel any vibration, trying to hear, even though there was no atmo
sphere to carry a sound. Pierce touched the dripping gel with a heavy gloved finger. It hadn’t frozen in the vacuum of space. Just like the goo on the mutilated bodies.

  The ruptured wall panel revealed a circular tunnel that sloped sharply downward. Something was in there. Pierce did not imagine things. She observed and analyzed.

  No indicators of life had ever been found on the moon. Nothing in the water, nothing in the thick layer of dust and rock on the moon’s surface. In the hard vacuum, nothing eroded under the influence of wind or water. Footprints from the first men to set foot on this tiny globe were still out there, unchanged in nearly one hundred years.

  Pierce moved her gaze slowly, assessing and cataloguing the signs. The clear gel glistened on the tunnel walls. The shape that passed her had ground through the dry stone at a phenomenal speed and left no waste in its wake.

  When the squad had landed, they passed over a field of wreckage. The scattered debris showed the violence of an explosion that had ripped open the utility domes on the surface of the mostly underground facility. Now, this far underground, something had impacted the wall, tearing a hole too large for the emergency response systems to patch. Explosive decompression had done the rest. Sudden exposure to vacuum would not have inflicted the kinds of wounds they saw on the bodies. It also would not have piled the dead up in a single room. The loss of atmosphere meant that the tunnels either reached the surface or had enough volume to suck the air right out of the sealed environment.

  Pierce noted the swirling grooves cut into the rock. It looked like rifling on the interior of an antique rifle barrel.

  She shivered and turned carefully in the hardsuit. Looking both ways into the bored tunnel.

  “Pierce, you gotta copy?” Block’s voice crackled through heavy static.

  “Go Sarge.”

  “Korbin and I are closing on your position. Any change in the survivor’s condition?”

  The ground shuddered again. Pierce fell face forward and scrambled to lift her head as a wall of dust exploded silently out of the tunnel next to the corridor.

  “He’s secure.” Pierce hoped it was true. Pierce rolled onto her back, arms and legs waving like a pale four-limbed beetle.

  The floor bulged, and the panels burst out of their frames. A gigantic black worm emerged from the dust. From the ground to the top of the head that rippled with a peristaltic convulsion, the bullet-shaped creature stood over six feet.

  Pierce wiped the dust away from her helmet with one gloved hand and stared, fascinated. This thing, exploring the cold vacuum around them, was clearly alive. How it could survive in open space was beyond her understanding.

  The featureless head split open in four triangular segments, revealing row upon row of inward pointing teeth. A snake-like tentacle flicked from its mouth like a whip. Four other tentacles lashed from the worm’s gullet, striking the ground, the twisted floor panels, and one slapping against Pierce’s faceplate. She squirmed backwards, trying to see through the goo-smeared visor. Any sound the worm might make would not travel in vacuum. The only noise Pierce could hear was the panicked rasp of her own breathing.

  Raising her rifle, she slammed the safety into the OFF position and fired. The firing mechanism ratcheted a donut-shaped round up from the magazine. The projectile accelerated down the barrel, reaching the speed of sound in a pico-second. One-thousandth of a moment later it left the muzzle of the rifle at Mach-2. The impact on the slug-like body was silent but explosive. The ring shot tore through the alien’s flesh, exploded through the back of it, and punched into the ceiling.

  The worm thrashed its bulk. Mouth parts slammed shut and then flicked open. Its tentacle tongues flailed wildly. Pierce fired again and again, moving her aiming point to different parts of the worm’s head and tearing the thing into large black chunks of steaming meat. After four rounds, the worm collapsed. The moisture rising from its body froze immediately. Only the anti-freeze gel still dripped from the jagged wounds and mouth parts.

  Pierce got to her feet, alarms in her suit systems warning that she was hyperventilating. The beams of her personal lights played on the destroyed corridor. Pierce focused on controlling her breathing and waited while Block and Korbin emerged from the darkness.

  “What the hell happened, Pierce?” Block asked.

  “I ran into something. Something big. Like a worm. But with teeth.”

  As Block came closer, Pierce could see the frown on his face. “You losing your shit, Pierce?” he asked.

  “No, Sergeant.” She pointed to the lumps of black flesh glistening under their headlamps.

  “What the hell?” Korbin asked.

  “Wong,” Block said. “You get that net relay set up?”

  “Affirmative, Sergeant,” came Wong’s reply.

  “Did you find a reference to that minnow thing?”

  “Minhocão,” Wong replied. “Yes, Sergeant. It is a reference to a creature of South American legend.”

  “Some kind of oversized worm?” Block asked.

  “Minhocão means Big Earthworm, in Portuguese. Their existence has never been proven. Though there are numerous reports of damage being attributed to their tunneling activities.”

  “Pierce may have found one.”

  “That is interesting, Sergeant. I have taken the liberty of bringing your helmet cam feed on screen. If a sample could be taken, it would provoke interest in the scientific community—”

  “Yeah, whatever. Wong, it looks like one or more of these worm things might have done for the prospector crew.”

  “May I have permission to come to your position and assess the specimen?”

  “Knock yourself out, Wong. Any word from Howard or Gordy?

  “Negative. However, the activation of the satellite uplink would suggest that Gordinski has completed her assigned task.”

  “Goddamn, Barbie dolls,” Korbin muttered.

  Pierce shot him a look, which he ignored. Having an artificial like Wong on the crew took some getting used to. After three months, only his formal mode of speech made him stand out from his human comrades. Pierce didn’t get bothered by having a robot with a human face in the team. Korbin was one of those people who didn’t like working with artificials.

  “Alright, Korbin, Pierce, we’ll find out what’s happened to Gordy and Howard. Wong can cut himself some worm steaks and then we’ll regroup at the primary camp. Got it?”

  “Hooh-rah,” Korbin and Pierce said immediately.

  “Wong, we’re moving out. Going to find Gordy and Howard. Get your samples and return to primary site.”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” Wong replied.

  “Follow me,” Block said and tramped past the splattered carcass.

  “We’re going around the outside?” Korbin asked.

  “Yes, goddamnit,” Block snapped. “Gordy and Howard should be at the satellite relay tower, which is part of the surface infrastructure. That means outside the complex. If they’ve moved, or are injured, they’ll still be out here somewhere.”

  Korbin didn’t look convinced. He held his rifle ready and followed the sergeant. Pierce took a deep breath and exhaled as Block led them into a stairwell and they headed up towards the surface. She tried not to think about the black sky they would walk under.

  Block keyed in the access code to open the interior airlock door. They cycled through the chamber and stepped out onto the soft dust. The satellite relay station was several hundred meters away, a dome with metal fingers pointing to the sky and the familiar dish shapes of signal receivers.

  Pierce noticed Korbin’s footprints shuddering. Tiny avalanches of particles falling into the impressions filled the grooves of his boot marks.

  “Sarge!” she yelled, knowing what the tremors heralded. The ground rippled and the three of them stumbled as a boil of grey sand and rock swelled under Block’s feet. He fell backwards, landing hard on the ground. A gigantic, dust-coated, black slug burst from the ground. Mouth parts spreading wide as its tongue-tentacles flailed through t
he empty space, searching for prey.

  Pierce dropped to one knee on the quivering soil and fired at the massive target. Korbin opened fire, a silent blast of projectiles blossoming along the worm’s side. Block rolled to his feet and fired. The creature convulsed, sweeping around and knocking Korbin off his feet. Pierce leapt and rolled, the lunar dust behind her exploding with the impact of Korbin’s stray shots.

  She came up in a firing position, lunar silt blurring her face plate. Pierce fired at the dark mass until Block gave the order to cease fire.

  “Fuck me...” he said.

  “Korbin?” Pierce wiped the dust off her visor and stood up. “Korbin?” Block moved around the still creature.

  “Shit. Korbin’s down. Wong? Life-signs check on Korbin. Stat.”

  “Private Korbin is registering as alive, with significant crush trauma and suppressed respiration.”

  Block dropped to his knees and scraped at the lunar dust. “Pierce, give me a hand for fuck’s sake.”

  Pierce unclipped a tool from her belt, unfolding it into a wide-mouthed shovel with a handle as long as her arm. Digging their way under the collapsed worm, they uncovered the sleeve of Korbin’s suit. She put the shovel aside and dug his arm out by hand. Finding his glove, she squeezed it reassuringly while trying to get a verbal response over the comms channel.

  Pierce hesitated in her efforts as the ground shuddered. Snatching up her rifle, she scanned the surroundings for movement.

  A geyser of dust erupted from under the dead worm and Korbin’s arm jerked out of sight.

  “Korbin!” Block yelled. “Hang in there, soldier. We’ll get you out. Pierce, help me shift this piece of shit.”

  With lunar gravity less than 85% of earth, the massive creature was light enough for the two soldiers to roll aside though Pierce felt her muscles scream at the strain.

  Where Korbin had fallen a circular shaft had opened up. Pierce recognized it immediately. “Sarge, the prospector shafts, what if they’re made by these things?”

  “Korbin!” Block was on his hands and knees, broadcasting his comms transmission down into the cold darkness without response.

  “Sarge, we should get to the satellite relay. We need to report this.”

  “Right, yes. Fuck!” Block shuffled backwards and stood up, the grey dust clinging to his suit in a random camouflage pattern. “Wong? Get a comms link established to GC. They need to know what we’ve found.”