Hellhole

by Jonathan Maberry

“I wouldn’t rule anything out. Stay on your toes. Once your eyes adjust, you’ll see better without the NVGs.” Mad Dog turned to face Hood, seemingly looking him straight in the eye as if to prove his point.

  Hood resisted the urge to grind his teeth in frustration, and returned his best poker face, easily done with the night vision device still covering his eyes. Mad Dog, in assuming the role of expert on the as-yet unproven metamorph-monster theory, had effectively usurped Hood’s place as leader. And yet, Hood couldn’t offer any evidence to the contrary.

  “Good call,” he said, trying to sound confident despite feeling anything but. He switched his NVGs off and swiveled them up, away from his eyes.

  An image of the passage, of his teammates and the four dead bodies, hung in the air before him, the shades of green inverting like a photographic negative before fading into nothingness. Darkness enfolded him, swirling around him like a vapor that he could almost feel insinuating into his clothing. Faint bursts of color, like dim fireflies, hovered in front of him, winking out whenever he tried to look directly at them. The lights were just phosphenes, bursts of electrical energy in his optic nerves, which were probably a little overheated from hours of staring into the NVGs’ display. He took comfort from the fact that Mad Dog and Bender had been able to quickly adjust to the low-light conditions.

  He found the buckle for his helmet, removed it and tucked it under one arm so he could take the mask off. The smell of death and decay hit him hard. He flinched, fighting a gag reflex, and wiped his face with his sleeve. He blinked, straining to catch a glimpse of the phosphorescent lichen. “How long—”

  “Shit!” Mad Dog yelled. “Contact left!”

  Like all Delta shooters, Hood’s relentless training under stressful conditions had imbued him with near super-human reflexes. In less time than it took to blink, he was moving, shouldering his weapon, swiveling to face the passage to the left, searching for whatever threat Mad Dog had identified. But enfolded as he was in near-absolute darkness, there was little else he could do.

  Then that darkness was shattered with fire and thunder.

  The noise of multiple reports in the close confines of the passage was truly deafening; an aural assault that nearly drove Hood to his knees. Muzzle flashes scorched the air, leaving streaks across Hood’s retinas, but the strobing flashes also revealed something else.

  There was someone... Something... With them in the darkness.

  Something monstrous.

  It was a vaguely human shape but dark, like a living shadow. Hood couldn’t make out any distinctive features, only its hulking size. He shifted his aimpoint, flipped the fire selector to full auto, and added his voice to the chorus of violence.

  The creature writhed under the assault, flinching with each impact, but then it sprang forward, leaping several meters in a single bound. Hood tracked it, shifting the muzzle of his weapon away as the thing disappeared behind one of his men.

  “No!” Hood shouted, screaming to be heard over the din. “Ceasefire! Ceasefire! Ceasefire!”

  His warning was unnecessary. The others had seen what he had seen, probably even better than he, and had already stopped firing to avoid hitting their teammate. Even as Hood shouted, the guns fell silent and the darkness returned.

  Through the ringing in his ears, Hood heard a wet popping sound and a truncated scream.

  “No!” he rasped, fumbling to find his NVGs, only then realizing that, in the chaos, he had dropped his helmet. Before he could locate it, the firing resumed, and in the first yellow flash, Hood saw the creature again, a dark hulking mass, hunched over an unmoving body, but as the first of several bullets struck it, it reared back, howling, and then bolted back down the passage, dragging its kill along.

  Shaking off the horror of what he had just witnessed, Hood brought his weapon up again. When the magazine was empty, he let the rifle fall on its sling and drew one of his pistols—a Caspian Arms M1911 .45—from his chest holster. But even as he was aiming it into the tunnel, the creature disappeared from view. The firing stopped again and he was plunged once more into darkness.

  In the momentary silence that followed, Hood re-holstered the .45 and quickly exchanged the empty magazine in his rifle for a full one. The well-rehearsed procedure was almost automatic, and he had no difficulty executing it in total darkness. If anything, it gave him something to focus on aside from the horror of what had just happened.

  He also knew that, despite its wounds, the creature wasn’t dead.

  With his right hand still holding the HK’s pistol grip, ready to fire one-handed if necessary, he knelt and with his left, began groping for his helmet and the precious night vision device mounted to it. That was when a scream broke the surreal quiet. “Fuck!”

  Hood thought it was Mad Dog, but it was hard to tell; the voice sounded muffled and distant. The curse repeated a moment later. “Fuck. Did you fucking see that?”

  “What the fuck was it?” came another voice, softer but still a shout. Rollie, maybe? Which meant....

  “It fucking took Bender,” said the louder first voice—definitely Mad Dog—the statement confirming what Hood already suspected regarding the identity of the creature’s victim. Fucking ripped him in half.”

  “What the fuck was it?” Rollie repeated.

  Both men sounded frantic, almost hysterical. Hood certainly felt that way. They were battle-hardened veterans, and had witnessed their share of gruesome tragedy, but nothing in their training or experience had prepared them for something like this.

  Hood at last found his helmet. He quickly settled it on his head, swung the NVGs into place, and switched them on. It took a moment for the device to initialize, but when it did, Hood saw immediately that Bender was no longer with them. Where he had stood a moment before, there was now only a dark smear, streaking away into the left passage.

  Movement from his right distracted him. He glanced over without turning his head and saw Mad Dog starting forward, weapon at the ready.

  “Dale. Wait.”

  Mad Dog stopped but did not look away from the passage. “We have to go after it. Kill it.”

  “We have to be smart about this. We don’t even know what we’re really dealing with.”

  “I do. I saw it. It’s...” Mad Dog hesitated, groping for the right word. “It looks like a... A demon. Or some kind of lizard-man. It was scaly. Like a crocodile. Doctor Tox must have found a way to stimulate latent reptile genes in human DNA.”

  It seemed to Hood like an oddly specific bit of supposition on Mad Dog’s part. Hood did not recall anything remotely reptilian about the monstrosity. Of course, his eyes had still been adjusting to the darkness, but his impression of the creature had been very different. He glanced back to the remains of the jihadists but saw nothing that suggested they had been anything but human when they had died.

  “It won’t be easy to kill,” said Rollie. “It didn’t look like our rounds were doing anything to it.”

  “We hurt it,” Mad Dog insisted. “But you’re right. With those scales, it’s going to be tough. Aim for the eyes.”

  “No,” Hood said, flatly. “We’re not going to do that. We’re going to head out of here and blow the entrance. Seal this place up. Just like we should have done in the first place.”

  Mad Dog stood stock still for a moment then slowly turned. He recoiled a little when he saw Hood, as if not recognizing him, but then his eyes narrowed to accusing slits. “That thing killed Bender. It has to die.”

  “And it will. But I’m not going to lose any more—”

  “Go on then,” Mad Dog snapped. “I’ll do it myself.” He spun around and started down the passage, following the blood trail.

  “Dale!” Hood shouted. “Get back here.”

  Mad Dog did not answer, did not stop.

  “Dale!” Hood suddenly felt unsteady, nauseated. It might have just been the adrenaline letdown or the realization that one of his mates was dead and they were probably all going to die, but the single though
t that railroaded through the fog in his brain was far more terrifying.

  I’ve lost control.

  He glanced over at Rollie, looking for support, but the other man was already starting down the passage after Mad Dog.

  I’ve lost control. Failed.

  A Delta troop wasn’t rigidly bound to military discipline like other units, but a few things remained sacrosanct, and following orders from a commanding officer was one of them. Mad Dog, as the troop sergeant major, knew that—lived it, embodied it. More than that, he was Hood’s closest friend.

  And now he was... What? A rogue operator? A walking suicide?

  I don’t know what to do, Hood thought. Without a team to follow his lead, he was nothing.

  But some part of him fought back against the despair. No. They’re still my responsibility, even if they won’t follow orders.

  Snugging the stock of his rifle into the pit of his shoulder, he hurried to join the others. “Wait...” His voice caught, coming out as a whimper. He cleared his throat, drew in a deep breath of the foul air, and tried again. “Hold up. We’ll do this—”

  As if startled by his voice, Rollie whirled, his rifle pointing right at Hood’s head. Hood immediately let go of his weapon and raised his hands in a display of non-aggression. To his dismay, Rollie’s eyes remained wide, almost terrified, with no hint of recognition. “It’s one of them!” Rollie shouted.

  Mad Dog was suddenly at Rollie’s side, his rifle likewise trained on Hood.

  Hood reached higher. “Guys, it’s me!”

  The plea seemed to break the spell of confusion. The two men did not immediately lower their weapons, but they did not fire either. After a few tense seconds, Mad Dog said, “Jeff? Jesus, buddy. You looked just like one of them.”

  Hood was momentarily dumbfounded.

  “Like a freaking bug-eyed-monster,” added Rollie.

  “Right?” confirmed Mad Dog. “You should lose the NVGs. You’ll see better without them. And those things... I think they’ve got some kind of natural camouflage. Like chameleons.”

  “Thanks for the tip,” Hood muttered, lowering his hands, but keeping his goggles on. Mad Dog’s assertion, while spoken with authority, had no basis in fact. The man had removed his NVGs long before their encounter with the creature. More importantly though, if the other man was right about the creatures’ vulnerabilities, then they would need every advantage.

  Mad Dog didn’t wait to see if Hood would take his advice but turned and resumed moving forward. Rollie followed, covering the right flank, and Hood took a position behind him and to the left. As they advanced, the first two men had several false starts, whirling to confront something glimpsed at the edge of their vision, only to discover nothing there. Hood wasn’t sure what to make of their reaction—either the men were glimpsing something that he couldn’t see with NVGs, something that could burrow under the invisible lichen faster than they could follow, or they were hallucinating.

  Even as he contemplated the latter, he glimpsed something in his peripheral vision. It was more a premonition than an actual observation, and when he flicked his gaze to the side to check the edge of the panoramic display, he saw nothing.

  Just nerves, he thought. It’s getting to me.

  A few steps ahead, Mad Dog’s hand went up, signaling them all to freeze. Hood did so without question, going statue still, but nevertheless searching the darkness ahead. Just beyond where Mad Dog stood, the passage opened up into a larger chamber. The blood streaks continued forward another few paces and then ended beneath a crumpled, vaguely human form.

  Bender.

  Hood gradually became aware of another shape just beyond the twisted corpse. At first, he wasn’t sure what he was seeing, but as he turned his focus to it, it grew more distinct, as if emerging from a fog. For a fleeting instant, he thought he could see the man it had been, but as he continued to stare, he saw only the monster it had become.

  The creature appeared to be sitting with its back to the passage wall. Its entire body was covered in rough mottled scales that shimmered through color changes like someone flipping channels on a TV set. The scales rose to form horny ridges that ran from shoulder to wrist. The hands, which rested on the cavern floor to either side of the creatures long, gangly legs, ended in talons, tipped with hooked claws. The hairless head looked vaguely human at first glance, but then after even a moment’s scrutiny, it became something else—the slavering, proto-canine visage of a demon. The hellbeast was slumped over, as if sleeping.

  Hood blinked in disbelief, desperate for some other explanation, and yet unable to deny what his eyes were seeing. Ahead of him, Mad Dog was signaling for a concentrated assault on his three-count. Hood nodded in acknowledgement, and readied his weapon.

  Mad Dog raised his fist and extended one finger.

  One.

  Hood slowly, quietly, shifted the fire selector from safe to semi-auto.

  Two.

  The creature’s head came up suddenly, its eyes flashing open to look directly at Hood, and then it was moving.

  Hood didn’t wait for Mad Dog to give the order. He tracked the moving target, while simultaneously activating the PEQ-2 and repeatedly squeezing the HK’s trigger. His first shot cracked against the wall behind the creature. He had no idea whether his second found the target because in the instant between trigger pulls, the air was filled with muzzle flashes and smoke and noise. The creature stumbled, its momentum carrying it forward in a haphazard tumble, even as the intensity of the barrage increased. Hood used the targeting laser to correct his aim, placing the green spot on the beast’s exposed cranium, and kept pulling the trigger until the scaly head came apart in bloody chunks.

  He slipped his finger off the trigger, but Mad Dog and Bender continued firing without letup, savaging the corpse, which continued to writhe, either in death throes or from the relentless hammering of incoming rounds. The blood spray and smoke coalesced around the body like mist, rendered green in the NVG display. Hood was about to shout for a ceasefire, but then he saw something moving in that surreal fog, and instead emptied his magazine into it.

  He reloaded immediately, but before he could resume firing, Mad Dog raised a hand to signal the end of the assault. The mist gradually settled revealing the aftermath. Hood immediately noticed that the corpse appeared to be mostly intact, albeit somewhat misshapen, save for the head which had completely disintegrated. The rest of the body had gone pale as if all the chameleon pigments had oozed out of the scales, but numerous dark spots, like bruises, showed where bullets had punched through the tough hide.

  Curious despite himself, and keeping his HK trained on the shape, he advanced toward it, moving into the cavernous chamber. Mad Dog shook his raised hand, hissing a warning that was barely audible to Hood’s tortured ears, but Hood ignored him and continued toward the body.

  Two steps into the chamber, he spied movement from the corner of his eye, and immediately swung around to meet it. As before, there was nothing there... Or if there was, it had moved faster than his eye could follow, but his attention was immediately drawn to something that had been hidden from view at the mouth of the passage. Lying on the cavern floor was a pair of sunglasses.

  He knelt to retrieve them, and stared at them for a moment, trying to recall where he had seen them before. It came to him in a rush of understanding. He pivoted back toward the corpse of the hellbeast, seeing it anew. There was hardly anything recognizable about it, and yet he immediately grasped the truth. The beast had not been one of the insurgent fighters in Doctor Tox’s retinue.

  “It was one of them,” he said. “Monster Squad.”

  Mad Dog’s right eye twitched, but then he strode forward and knelt beside the fresh kill. “I’ll be damned. You’re right. I think it was the big one... Imhotep.”

  Rollie spat a curse. “So we just fragged one of our own guys?”

  “It wasn’t human anymore,” declared Mad Dog. “We did him a favor. Whatever shit Doctor Tox cooked up, it looks like
it works fast. We have to find her and end this.”

  Hood was only half-listening. He was still trying to come to terms with the fact that they had just killed a fellow operator, and Mad Dog’s rationale provided little comfort. What if it had happened to one of them? If Rollie or Mad Dog began to turn would he be able to pull the trigger on his brothers?

  How did this happen?

  On an impulse, he swung the NVGs up and then, working by feel alone, slipped the sunglasses over his eyes. For a few seconds, nothing happened, but then, like the recipient of some Biblical miracle, he could see again.

  The view before his eyes was not the green-tinted reconstituted video image provided by NVGs, but a crystal clear, full color vision of the cavern, lit up as if by sunlight. He could distinguish the gray-brown rock, and the startlingly bright scarlet of freshly spilled blood. He could even see the luminescent lichen, glowing a faint but distinctive hue of lime green. It covered most of the floor, except where it had been disturbed by foot traffic, and crept partway up the walls.

  “What the hell?” he muttered.

  “Who is this? Identify yourself,” said a familiar albeit artificial voice.

  “Phantom?”

  Mad Dog turned toward him, a look of alarm on his face. “Who are you talking to?”

  Hood held up a hand to forestall his friend and listened to the computer-generated voice that was not merely in his ears but reverberating through his skull. “Major Hood. What are you doing? Why did you disregard my orders?”

  Hood considered how best to reply and decided that there were more important things to do than justify his decision to enter the cave. “What the hell happened here? Enough lies. What’s really going on?”

  “Major, listen to me very carefully. You and your men are in extreme danger. You need to get out of there right now. Before it’s too late.”

  “Tell me what’s going on. What happened to your team? You said they were all dead, but that’s not true, is it?” He glanced over at the motionless form of the lizard-creature that had once been Imhotep. “They changed into... I don’t know what. But you knew, didn’t you?”