by Greg Boose
The leader with the dark tips and yellow face takes a step toward them.
“Shoot already!” Vespa yells from the cave.
The animals turn their heads to look at her, and that’s when the man with the ponytail takes his first shot, blasting the leader right in the chest. The animal flies several feet backward in a cloud of feathers and smoke. The sound of its skull hitting the rocky ground echoes all around them.
The roars that come from the other animals are deafening. The two larger mimics that entered the fray with the leader immediately leap to its side and flip it over. They shake its shoulders, and when they realize it’s dead, the two grab handfuls of the leader’s blue-tipped feathers from its chest and stomach and rip them out and rub them against their faces. In a matter of seconds, the others surround the leader’s body and tear at its feathers, rubbing them on their own triangular faces while howling.
As the two men stand and watch in shock, Jonah begins to shuffle toward the caves, never taking his eyes off the thirty animals that strip the leader naked of its feathers, revealing a lifeless white body oozing yellow liquid from where its feathers once grew.
The mimics separate and begin to hum all over again. They solemnly watch each other until one of the fatter animals on the right begins to grunt and shake. Within seconds, the tips of his red feathers turn dark blue right before their eyes. The others squat in unison around their new leader who drops a leg over the old leader’s body and sits on its stomach, pushing a large blob of yellow liquid out of the hole in its chest.
Jonah continues to shuffle toward the caves with the stone in his hand. The new mimic leader lifts its head toward the two men standing near the cliff’s edge and juts out its lower jaw a few inches. Immediately, the other animals turn in perfect unison and rush the men.
Blue lasers blow through the animals’ arms and legs, spinning them in different directions. The man with the ponytail screams as he fires, his head nodding so quickly that it’s a blur on his neck. Three of the animals peel off from the attack when they spot Jonah near the caves, and together they sprint and jump with their feathery arms out in front of them.
Jonah throws his stone as hard as he can, hitting the middle animal in the face, knocking it to the ground where it curls into a red ball. He ducks and rolls out of the way of the other two, immediately getting to his feet and running in the opposite direction of the caves. The mimics spring off the stone wall without missing a beat, landing on either side of Jonah. One of them grabs him by the leg, yanking him to the ground. Jonah swings his fists, striking the animal twice in the face, but it doesn’t even flinch. The beast raises its long feathery arm and slams it down on Jonah’s right shoulder. The pain is blinding; his lungs empty of air, leaving him wheezing and immobile. He knows in another second, the other arm will fall on him and end this short battle, but he hears the sizzle of a laser cutting through the air, and he opens his eyes just in time to see the mimic tip over with a smoking wound in its chest. Red feathers float above Jonah as he rolls over to see the woman standing in the mouth of the cave with her blue handgun wavering in her hands. Jonah gets to his feet and staggers toward her, his shoulder throbbing.
The men continue to fire near the cliff’s edge, blasting the mimics every which way. Some of the beasts go flying over the edge while others fall flat on their backs in a growing pile. Feathers gather and swirl like snowflakes in a storm, covering the ground with a thin layer of red.
“Come on!” Vespa shouts. “Get inside!”
The bald man screams and runs forward with his rifle blazing, blasting several mimics out of his path before diving into the cave. He lands hard on his side, and his rifle bounces at Vespa’s feet. The cadet snatches it up and puts the butt of the gun against her shoulder and fires. The remaining dozen animals are picked off one by one while the man with the ponytail wrestles a small one on the ground.
Jonah is only fifty feet from the cave when a new herd of the mimics appear at the top of the ridge and immediately start to descend the wall. They’re all bright orange and drop in front of him by the dozens, and to avoid charging into their feathery arms, Jonah has to change directions. He picks up another stone and sprints into a smaller cave on the right. It’s from there he watches the orange herd overcome the man with the ponytail, jumping on his chest in unison before reaching down to tear at his limbs and head. They rip out his long hair and rub it all over their faces. Vespa concentrates her fire on the wall of mimics marching toward her, picking them off with ease.
In horror, Jonah watches the man get torn to shreds. But he can’t just hide and wait for this man to die; he steps out of the cave and throws the stone as hard as he can, winding up like a baseball pitcher in the first inning of a game. The rock hits an orange mimic in the middle of its back. The beast straightens up and rotates its head all the way around until spotting Jonah standing in the entrance of the small cave. With a stomp, it orders several from its herd in Jonah’s direction.
Jonah can’t get to Vespa. He can’t help the man with the ponytail. All he can do is backpedal farther inside the cave and search for a weapon. The ground beneath his feet seems to shift and lower, crumbling with every step. His hands find a large rock sticking out of the wall, and his fingers wrap around it just as three of the mimics enter the cave. He yanks at the rock and finally loosens it, but still it won’t come free. The humming from the animals fills the cave. One of the mimics charges ahead and launches itself at Jonah. The rock finally breaks off the wall, and Jonah swings it upward just as the animal lands on him; the jagged edge digs into the beast’s belly, and together they fall to the ground. There’s a resounding crack below him, and before Jonah can roll out of the way, the ground opens up, and Jonah and the beast fall into darkness.
• • •
Jonah and the mimic cling to each other as they fall, twisting and twirling, flipping over each other for what feels like days. Jonah tries to scream, but the animal’s feathers cover his face and throat. The mimic plants its feet against Jonah’s chest and kicks wildly, shredding his suit and skin with its claws until the beast straightens its legs and launches itself away from him. Jonah finds its ankle, though, and grabs on. Instead of separating itself from the cadet, the mimic flips over backward and begins to descend belly-first. As soon as Jonah finds himself sitting atop the animal like a cowboy on a horse, they hit an invisible surface of a pool, sending a series of fluorescent blue lights rippling in every direction.
The cadet bounces hard off the animal’s back and tips face-first into the pool; the water is hot and thick and smells like sulfur, and when he opens his eyes underwater, he’s overcome by fluorescent blue lights that follow his every movement. He screams, shooting fat bubbles out of his mouth that explode inches from his nose like blue fireworks. He whips his long arms over his shoulders and kicks his feet with everything he has left, but the water is as thick as gelatin, and he rises only a few inches at a time. His lungs burn, burn, burn, and his arms lose feeling as they struggle to bring him to the surface. He reaches for the mimic’s body that still somehow floats above the water, grabs its wrist, and pulls his face out of the pool with a loud, heaving breath. The dark space echoes with his gasps and the sloshing of the water around him. He can’t see anything, save for the blue bacteria glowing around him.
With the mimic in the crook of his arm, Jonah paddles, first to his left until he runs into a rock wall, and then to his right until his feet start to find the bottom of the pool. Once he gets his footing, he releases the animal and trudges up an incline with a ring of blue surrounding his torso like a hula-hoop. Jonah collapses onto his hands and knees, his bloody chest heaving for air.
“Vespa!” he shouts. “Paul! Someone! Help!”
His voice echoes for five, ten, twenty seconds, bouncing back and forth in the huge sinkhole or cave or wherever he is. He shouts a few more times. No one answers but his own frantic voice.
He stumbles to his feet, and with his hands o
ut in front of his face, he walks in circles, aware of the cruel irony of being blind once again. He bumps into a wall, and his hand leaves a bright blue print that illuminates everything in a three-foot radius. He spins on his heels and then whips his hands at the air in front of him, trying to dry them off, lighting up the air around him so that he’s practically standing in a lantern’s glow. All he can see are more and more rocks and the water’s edge where the mimic lies facedown, but it gives him an idea. He jogs over to the dead animal and rips out several handfuls of its feathers, doing everything he can not to vomit from the stench and sickening sounds. Jonah dunks the feathers into the thick water, shoves them into his pockets, and then turns to walk farther into the darkness.
Every few feet, Jonah whips a single feather out in front of him, lighting up the air with a dense blue fog. He moves slowly through the space that narrows into a tunnel, eventually coming to a wall of boulders that blocks his way. He has no choice but to climb, hoping to find a hole in the ceiling that leads back to the surface and his group. Or, maybe on the other side of the boulders, there will be light at the end of the tunnel, and he’ll stumble out right next to where they parked the rover. He’ll grab whatever weapons he can find inside the vehicle and rush back to help Vespa and the others.
The wall of boulders only goes twenty feet high, nowhere near the ceiling, and to Jonah’s dismay, there’s nothing on the other side but more darkness. Jonah drops to the ground and shuffles forward, holding his breath. He flicks a couple feathers, and as soon as the air lights up, he screams and immediately turns to run. He hits the wall of boulders and bounces backward, knocking the wind out of him. Still, he tries to climb back over the wall, but his fingers shake too much to get a grip. Jonah twists around and shouts, “Vespa! Paul! Someone help!”
More than a minute passes before Jonah reaches back into his pocket for a feather. He takes a few steps forward, and with held breath, he flicks the air.
A skull over three feet tall lies on its side, speckled with black mud and fading blue water spray. It looks like a dinosaur fossil, but that’s if dinosaurs were missing eye sockets or ear holes, and if the bones weren’t wire thin and woven together like mesh. The skull’s mouth is giant and juts out like a bird’s beak. Before the blue fog disappears, Jonah sees that the ground below the beak is scarred and chipped away as if the animal had dug or pecked at it during its final moments.
Another whipped feather reveals a ten-foot long length of mesh bones descending from the back of the giant skull, but instead of finding the rest of the animal’s body, Jonah discovers another skull at the other end. It’s the same size and shape, also half-covered in dried mud. His head suddenly starts to hurt, as if someone pulled a pin in his brain that was holding everything in place, and he has to sit down. The pain intensifies, and he presses his palms into his temples, squeezing, sitting in complete darkness between the two skulls.
He feels them coming. The voices from Achilles, the ones that will tell him to eat the seeds. The ones that say he’s been chosen. Symbols begin to form in his mind, racing back and forth, and just as they begin to form into letters, he hears…
“Jonah!”
His name echoes all around him. Is it in his head? Are the voices coming out of his own mouth? Are they coming from the giant skulls? The pain strengthens in between his ears, and he has to set his forehead against the cold rock floor where he rubs it back and forth, leaving a bright blue mark that hurt his eyes.
“Jonah! Where are you?”
It’s Vespa’s voice. He tries to scream back, but all he can do is clench his jaw and whisper. His head feels like it’s going to explode into a thousand pieces. He slaps his palms on the ground, and when his right hand finds a rock, he squeezes it, trying to alleviate the pain. He hits it against the ground, sending an echoing thud all around him. He hits it again, over and over, sending a thundering wave of echoes throughout the cave.
“Jonah?” Vespa yells. “Is that you?”
He fights through the agony and hits the rock against the ground three times in response.
“Make that noise again if that’s you, Jonah!”
Three more strikes against the ground.
“Okay! Hold tight. We’re coming down. We have a rope, and we’re coming down!”
With the last of his strength, Jonah hits the rock three more times against the ground, and then brings his hands back up to cradle his head. His brain buzzes with electricity, popping and crinkling, somehow both shrinking and expanding at the same time. The symbols begin to flash behind his eyes in neon green, zipping from left to right, right to left, flipping upside down before crashing into each other, finally melting together and mutating into words that boom in his ears.
“WE CHOOSE YOU!”
Jonah squeezes his temples in agony and begs, “Stop. Just please stop.”
“You will stop them. You will save us. Or you will die.”
“Who…who are you?”
An image flashes in Jonah’s mind for less than a second: he sees an ocean of tall, yellow creatures with two heads marching down a giant hill full of rupturing geysers, much like those he’s seen here on Thetis. A rolling cloud of black smoke comes over the other side of the hill and washes over them, turning the creatures to ash, blowing them away.
Another voice enters his head, slightly different from the one he just heard: “Enter the exit. Exit the entrance.”
“Please!” he shouts. “I’m just a kid! Choose someone else!”
Another image flashes: It’s a close-up of one of the creature’s faces. No eyes. No nose. Just yellow flesh over a long sharp mouth that suddenly opens and shuts.
Jonah drags his head blindly along the rocks, whispering, “I’m just a kid. I’m just a kid, just a kid, just a kid.”
Something touches his shoulder and he screams; he flips over onto his back, breaking the connection from the voices in his head. He opens his eyes to a bright white light hovering over him. Two more float on either side.
“Jonah?”
“I’m just a kid,” he responds in a soft whisper. He sits up with his arms covering his face. He buries his head into his knees, his shoulders bouncing with held-in sobs, and he replays the images of the yellow creatures descending the hill before turning to ash.
“Yeah, and I’m just a man,” says a gruff voice. It takes Jonah a few seconds to recognize it as the bald man with the scar on his face.
“Hey, it’s me,” Vespa says as she sits down next to him. “It’s okay, Jonah. We found you.”
Jonah carefully raises his head to see Vespa’s feet lit in a circle of blue light next to his. A sob of relief escapes his throat, and then his hand slaps the ground around him until he finds Vespa’s. The buzzing in his head disappears the moment he touches her skin.
“Okay, we found him,” the woman with the sheaf says. “Now, how do we get out of here?”
She takes a step away from the wall of boulders and scans the ground with her flashlight, sending Jonah into an immediate panic.
“No, watch out!” he jumps to his feet. “The skulls! Watch out for the skulls! They’re going to…”
Two other flashlight beams quickly scan the ground in front of the woman, right where Jonah just saw the skulls, but to his complete shock, they’re gone. He snatches Vespa’s light out of her hand without asking and sweeps the floor all around him. All he finds are slick, black rocks, and a few tiny specks of fading blue lights. Even the scratches in the floor he saw under the skull’s beak are gone.
“They were just…there were two giant skulls right here. Big as dinosaurs. And they…they talked to me,” he whispers. “I think.”
“Great,” the man says. “Kid’s seeing shit. They’re getting sicker faster than we thought they would.”
Jonah continues to sweep the cave floor with the flashlight, and then he lights up the walls and tries to find the ceiling.
“Let’s just move,” the woman says. She and t
he man march down the tunnel, leaving Jonah standing stupefied next to Vespa.
“There were two skulls right here. And they were…connected. Like conjoined twins or something,” he whispers as he begins to follow the adults. “I’m not crazy.”
Vespa slips her arm under his and grabs his bicep. “Well, they’re not here now. And no one is calling you crazy, Jonah.”
The cadets walk arm-in-arm in silence before Jonah stops abruptly. “Wait. Where’s Paul? Is he still up there? Did those things…”
“We got separated from him, too,” she whispers gravely. “Last I saw of him, he was limping into another cave with one of those monkey things in a headlock. Then there was a rockslide, and everyone ran and I couldn’t see him anymore. We tried to get to him, but there was no way through. I don’t know what to do, Jonah. I’m kind of freaking out.”
Jonah touches his bleeding chest with his free hand. “We’ll find him. Or, I’m sure he’ll find us. But what about the other guy? With the ponytail. Did he make it or—”
“He’s dead. Those things tore him apart.”
“And Dr. Z?”
“No sign of her.”
Vespa’s flashlight beam crawls back and forth in front of them, illuminating jagged rocks and wet walls. And then, as she lights up the ceiling, Jonah sees the first symbol. It’s six tiny squares inside a triangle, carved deeply into the exact middle of the ceiling.
“Look,” he says.
Vespa stops in her tracks and sighs. “Great. That’s exactly what I needed to see right now. We’re not doing this again. We’re not looking for portals or other crazy shit right now. We gotta move.”
Jonah takes the flashlight out of her hand and lights up the surrounding rocks. The symbols begin to show themselves, glistening on the wet walls, their sharp outlines shining in the light. To Jonah, the symbols look like an upside down anchor, a curled-up snake with no head, a sideways letter “K,” stacked triangles, half of a guitar. There are hundreds of them. Maybe thousands.