Hellhole

by Jonathan Maberry

  Pierce felt the vibration through her boots and saw the fine lunar dust quivering a moment before the ground collapsed under her feet.

  Her vision went dark in the cloud of dust. The sensation of falling was familiar, though the reduced gravity made it feel weird. Completely blinded, Pierce crashed against the wall of the worm’s shaft. The impact sent her tumbling against another wall and then finally, shaken, disorientated, and tasting blood, she hit the ground.

  Lying face down, Pierce groaned and took stock, checking her suit sensors. Nothing broken or torn.

  “Sarge?” Pierce said into the open comms channel.

  Block groaned and crawled out of a drift of lunar dirt. “Goddamn amateur hour. Wong, you receiving?”

  Silence hissed in Pierce’s earpiece. Climbing to her feet, she looked up to the faint ring of sunlight visible at the top of the shaft. The worm that had made the hole had vanished.

  “Pierce? You alive?” Block asked.

  “Hell yeah, Sarge.”

  “Fuckin’ A. Now let’s get our asses out of this hole.”

  “We’d need a line or something, Sarge.”

  Block stood up and tilted back to stare at the hole high above them. “Well fuck,” he announced.

  Pierce wondered how the giant worms could have existed in the lunar environment undetected for all this time. The creatures had no eyes and only the probing snake-like tongues. Did they sense vibration, or body heat? There was no sound in a vacuum, and they seemed to cope just fine in the extreme temperature fluctuations of the lunar surface. What did they feed on? Where did they get water?

  “Wong! You plastic mother-fucker!” Block was waving his arms and yelling at the distant sky. The off-white suit and helmet of Wong eclipsed the ring of sunlight.

  “Sergeant Block, are you injured?”

  “No, Wong. Pierce is down here, too. Get a line down to us, we need to get out of here before one of these mother-fuckers come back.”

  “Please remain calm. I will get you out as soon as possible.” Wong vanished from view.

  “Where did the worm go?” Pierce asked.

  “Who cares?” Block was still watching the sky, waiting for Wong to reappear.

  “Korbin probably cares,” Pierce replied.

  Block turned and she could feel but not see his glare in the shadow of his helmet. “The fuck did you say?”

  “Korbin is down here somewhere, sergeant. We need to find him and get him into medical, or recover his body. Without confirmation of death on mission, his family only get half benefits.”

  “Our mission is to determine what happened to the prospectors on site. They are a company asset. We get paid when we have enough evidence to file a comprehensive report.”

  “Korbin’s family deserve the same evidence.” Pierce stood firm.

  “We’re not going to fuck around down here looking for a dead body. We still haven’t got a lock on Gordinski or Howard.”

  “Wong should be able to find their beacons. If they were in the complex or on the surface. He could have gone straight to them.”

  Block stared at the dirt floor for a long moment. “Which means they’re probably down here. Or in a hole just like it.”

  “How long do you think Wong will be?” Pierce asked.

  “As long as it takes. In the meantime, we hold here.”

  “These tunnels—” Pierce gestured at the curved walls around them. “Those worms, those minhocão things, they burrow through the rock. They excrete some kind of fluid which doesn’t freeze. They must eat the rock; there’s no rubble left behind, and they move really fucking fast.”

  “They also don’t react well to being shot,” Block replied.

  “There’s no evidence of these things. Not in a hundred years of lunar exploration. You’d think we would have found something before now. A fossil, a track, a few bones...”

  “Maybe they’re aliens.” Block maintained his surveillance of the tunnel and the shaft above them.

  “I don’t think so.” Pierce had spoken before realizing that Sergeant Block was being sarcastic. “I mean, they’re clearly adapted for life in the lunar soil. I think they live deep, maybe in caves where it’s warm and there’s liquid water. Maybe miles deep in the crust. The water prospectors, the drilling. That might have drawn them up to the surface. If they live in the dark, then they have no use for visual senses. They could respond to vibration or hunt by smell.”

  “Goddamn, Pierce. You should write that shit down. You’re smart as a Wong.”

  “I’m serious. We don’t know shit about these things.”

  “Sure we do. We know they fucked up an entire corporate water prospecting facility. More importantly, we know that a short burst of EM14 ammunition will fuck them. Is there anything else a corporate marine needs to know?”

  “No, Sarge.”

  “Where the fuck is Wong?”

  Pierce put a gloved hand on the wall; a vibration like a deep bass tone was humming through the rock. “Sarge, we have incoming.” Pierce readied her rifle and waited for the worm to break through.

  Block took a position nearby, looking both ways along the tunnel for a target. “Hold your position,” he warned.

  “You feel it?”

  “Goddamn amateur hour,” Block muttered. “Yeah, I feel it.”

  The vibration increased until dust and small stones fell from the walls and ceiling. Pierce felt like she was in a subway tunnel and a train was coming. She hoped it would pass them by.

  The rumbling increased. Pierce’s internal organs quivered. Then the intensity dropped away, the rocks stopped tumbling, and the dust settled.

  “I guess they aren’t going to be sneaking up on us,” Block said.

  “Can we get the fuck out of here?” Pierce replied.

  “Wong?” Block broadcast on all available frequencies. “Wong. Come in, Wong.”

  “Sarge, I have an idea.” Pierce marched off down the tunnel.

  “Pierce? Pierce for fuck’s sake, where are you going?”

  Block followed the corporal down the tunnel, stooping slightly to avoid scraping his helmet on the stone roof.

  “I know how we can get out, if we’re really, really lucky.”

  “Would you care to share this knowledge with your squad leader?”

  “Sorry Sarge, it’s just that Lucy sent a wire beacon down one of the shafts. We thought it was a prospector drill site. What if it was made by one of these worms?”

  “Well, that’s a sweet ass-umption, Pierce. What if the tunnels don’t join up?”

  Pierce kept moving, Block almost treading on her heels as they followed the curves and dips of the tunnel. “Conservation of energy. It makes sense that they would link up. Why expend precious energy grinding a new tunnel when you can use an existing one?”

  Block mentally shrugged. Corporal Pierce was smarter than your average block-head trooper by several orders of magnitude. Her analytical mind and clear eye for detail had saved their asses more than once. “You get us out of this shithole and I will buy you a beer.”

  “You sure know how to turn a girl’s head, Sarge.” Pierce wished she felt as confident as she sounded. They followed the tunnel’s curve to the left, Pierce estimated almost fifty degrees to the left. The tunnel dipped again and they skidded down the slope, dragging their gloves in the dust and trying to avoid falling on their asses.

  “Ohh shit!” Pierce yelled as she saw the lip of a vertical shaft coming up fast. A worm erupted out of the hole and Pierce scrambled to dig her boots in before she face-planted into the undulating sides of the thing.

  The bullet head of the worm split open, the rows of translucent teeth glistening with drool. A cloud of rock dust puffed into the vacuum and Pierce slammed into the creature. It felt like hitting a rock wall under a thin layer of rubber sheet. Squirming backwards, she readied her rifle. Block opened fire from further up the slope, the donut-shaped rounds punching into the head of the worm and sending it into a silent, thrashing frenzy. />
  Under the concentrated assault, the worm retreated into the shaft. Pierce got to her feet and jumped over the void to the rising tunnel on the other side. With her boots planted on the loose lunar soil, she turned and fired into the hole. The worm vanished, reversing as quickly as it had appeared.

  “You okay?!” Block yelled in the comm.

  “Roger that,” Pierce confirmed. “Five by fucking-five.”

  “I’m coming over,” Block said.

  Pierce moved backwards, stomping her boots into the dirt and climbing away from the dark circle. Block leapt across the six-foot gap, only to crack his helmet on the low roof and somersault backwards into the pit.

  “Sarge!” Pierce screamed. Charging forward, she dropped to her knees at the edge of the pit.

  Block hung a meter below the edge. His arms and legs were splayed out and wedged against the spiral grooves of the wall.

  “Sarge?”

  “Goddamn amateur hour,” Block replied. “Pierce, you will not tell anyone that I fell in a fucking hole. That is an order.”

  Pierce almost laughed with relief. “Roger that, Sarge. Can you reach my hand?” She lay down, wriggling her legs back and keeping her center of gravity behind the lip of the shaft.

  “Grab the end of my rifle.” Pierce wrapped the strap around her wrist and lowered the weapon.

  Block looked up and took a firm grip on the weapon. “Well, pull me up,” he said.

  Pierce heaved against the reduced weight of the man in lunar gravity, while he started working his way up the narrow pipe.

  In less than a minute, Block reached up and Pierce took his hand in hers.

  “Sarge, are you even trying, or am I taking your weight alone?”

  “Hey fuck you, lady.” Block laughed. He jerked against Pierce’s grip and she opened her mouth to tell him to stop fucking around when his eyes met hers.

  “Pierce—” Block jerked downward again. Hard enough to be ripped from Pierce’s grip.

  “Block!” she yelled. The sergeant’s gloves scraped against the wall as he struggled to hold his position.

  “Pierce, the fucking thing’s got my leg.”

  Pierce swung her rifle around and aimed down the shaft. She couldn’t see anything beyond Block’s helmet and shoulders.

  The ground vibrated and he dropped another half-meter. “Goddamn...” Block muttered. “Pierce. Get the fuck out of here. Find Wong. Find Howard and Gordinski. Gnngghh... Go! Fuck!”

  Pierce strained to reach the sergeant’s hand. Like a cork popping from a bottle in reverse, he vanished into the darkness.

  Her breath screeching in her ears, Pierce rolled away from the edge of the hole. The systems in her suit beeped and flashed the first warning that she was getting low on oxygen. Sobbing in terror, she crawled, pushing her rifle ahead as she went up the sloping tunnel.

  “Wong? You copy?” Pierce followed the tunnel through twists and turns, dipping under smooth metallic meteorites buried deep in the regolith and climbing ridges of crystalized basalt lava.

  Her suit oxygen alarm was now a steady beat, as rhythmic as her pulse and synched with her ragged breathing.

  Sweat dripped into her suit, the smell of her terror growing rank in Pierce’s nostrils. She blinked furiously and kept moving.

  The LUSE beacon hung in a vertical bend of the tunnel like the pendulum in a dead clock. Pierce grabbed it with both hands, almost crying with relief. She tugged on the wire cable and felt it hold. Hauling herself up, Pierce went hand over hand, letting her boots scrape against the walls as she worked her way up to the distant surface.

  The rim of light in the blackness grew larger as she climbed. Pierce told herself the cascade of dust and the shaking was all in her head. The worms were not coming up behind her, digging their way through the broken rock and dust, reaching towards her boots with their tentacle tongues and grinding rows of teeth.

  “Pierce? Pierce are you receiving?”

  It took a moment to realize she wasn’t imagining the voice in her ear. “Wong? I’m here! The Lucy beacon. I’m coming up the line!”

  “I am pleased you are safe. I will rendezvous with you in approximately forty-five seconds.”

  “Okay!” Hand over hand, Pierce pulled herself upwards. The grey rocks tumbled down, bouncing off her helmet, striking her shoulders, and catching on her air tank backpack.

  The edge of the pit was in reach, the wire cable sawing into the dust. Pierce reached and tried to pull herself up and out of the hole. The rim crumbled, fine lunar dust and gravel raining down on her.

  “Fuck!” Pierce shook her head, clearing the worst of the regolith away from her view. A tentacle coiled around her leg. Clamping down on the dense suit material and tightening against her skin.

  “Wong!” Pierce screamed. She wound her arm around the cable and tightened her grip as the worm dragged on her.

  The wire dug into her sleeve and she could feel it creaking as the LUSE unit took the strain. After a moment, the tension released as the robotic vehicle slid closer to the edge. Pierce yelped as she dropped a meter deeper.

  “Wong! Hurry up!” The LUSE unit moved again and a second tentacle curled around Pierce’s leg.

  “Pierce! Don’t fucking move!”

  “Howard?!” Pierce looked up. Two shapes crouched at the edge of the hole. One of them raised a rifle and fired. The shot gouged a furrow in the wall next to Pierce’s shoulder. She desperately twisted away, throwing herself against the other wall. Howard fired a second shot. The donut-shaped round hit the worm in its open mouth and blasted out the back of the head.

  Wong seized the cable and pulled. Pierce flew upwards as the pressure was released from her legs. Wong grabbed her hand, swinging her out of the ground and landing her gently on her feet.

  “It is good to see you again, Corporal Pierce.”

  “You too, Wong.”

  Howard was firing into the hole, a steady burst of high energy rounds. “We need to move,” Howard announced.

  “I am detecting increased seismic activity,” Wong replied. “It appears further specimens are closing on our position.”

  “Oh good,” Pierce muttered. “We pull out, back to the lander, now!”

  “Roger that,” Howard replied.

  Waves of dirt rolled across the lunar surface. Plumes of dust and dirt erupted in grey geysers, signaling multiple worms burrowing through the rock and dirt.

  “Move!” Pierce yelled. She started running towards the landing pad, four hundred meters away.

  A worm breached less than twenty meters from her; Pierce opened fire as she ran, her rifle counting down the shots until it buzzed the out-of-ammo alarm.

  “Pierce, your oxygen alarm is sounding.” Wong ran beside her, his face set in an expression of concern.

  “I can fix that at the lander. Right now, we have to keep moving!”

  A silent explosion behind them rained rock and glass. Pierce kept running, Wong simply turned his head to make a visual assessment.

  “Meteor shower,” he announced.

  “Where’s Howard?” Pierce asked

  “Close and moving on our trajectory. Satellite data indicates a severe impact event is likely to occur over the next twenty minutes.”

  “How severe?” Pierce ranged the distance between herself and the lander.

  “There is a reason corporate facilities are constructed under the lunar surface, Corporal,” Wong replied.

  “That bad?”

  “Only if you are out in the open.”

  Pierce switched to a squad comms channel. “Howard! Get to the lander! We have incoming meteors!”

  “Great, things were getting dull around here. Gordy, got a copy?”

  The comms link crackled. A voice spoke and then dissolved into static.

  “Wong, Gordinski’s alive?” Pierce felt a surge of relief. Howard and Gordy surviving was one for the good guys.

  “Howard, you receiving?” Gordinski’s voice came through strong and clear.

&
nbsp; “Gordy!? Hey! We’re receiving you,” Pierce chimed in.

  “We have multiple inbound objects. The alarms are going off in here. You might want to stroll faster.”

  “We are moving at maximum speed for the humans, given the conditions and mass they are carrying,” Wong replied.

  “The lander is prepped for dust-off. Get your asses on board,” Gordinski said.

  Like every LX-7 model orbit-to-lunar-landing vehicle, the lander was a squat box with only minimal design nods towards its ancestor aircraft. The wings were only there to provide a platform for attitude adjuster rockets. The back of the vehicle opened like a garage door, with a ramp for the on- and offloading of vehicles and personnel.

  A worm breached the surface between Pierce and the lander. It dived immediately, the body spinning like a drill as it bored into the dirt. Meteors travelled so fast that they couldn’t be seen until they exploded on impact. Craters ranging from a dinner plate to a baseball diamond exploded into being. A rock hit the worm in the back. Chunks of black flesh sprayed in all directions.

  “If one of those hits us...” Howard trailed off. He didn’t need to say it. Pierce knew that even a small rock would punch through an environment suit or helmet. She would be dead before the exposure to vacuum killed her.

  “Where’s Block?” Gordinski asked.

  “He didn’t make it,” Pierce replied. Details could wait. There were no guarantees that any of them were going to make it yet.

  Wong reached the ramp and headed into the lander. Pierce stopped at the bottom, dropping to one knee as she turned to cover Howard who was still ten meters out.

  “Gordinski, I will be closing the ramp in eleven seconds,” Wong advised.

  “Roger,” Gordinski replied.

  Pierce reloaded her rifle, firing at anything that moved. She aimed for the rising bubbles of dust, the eruptions where a worm might be about to surface.

  Howard sprinted, leaping a fresh crater, and kicking up dust.

  “We’re on!” Pierce yelled. She dragged Howard by the arm and they ran up the ramp. Wong worked the controls, the ramp sliding up behind them. Once it locked in, the door slid shut and sealed.