There are tears streaming down her cheeks when she finally musters the courage to switch on the flashlight.
And immediately wishes she hadn’t.
Her screams reverberate seemingly all the way to the center of the Earth.
THE OLD MAN hobbles past the cordon, stands at the edge of the hole, and leans heavily on his cane. All of his life he’s feared this day would eventually come and has spent the intervening years preparing for it. The soldiers under his command have fought in some of the tightest quarters known to man, from the caves of Afghanistan to the apocalyptic cityscapes of Syria. They might not know what was waiting for them at the bottom of the well, but he had no doubt they knew how to kill it.
The blood on the hardpan is congealed into the dirt and there are obvious signs of a struggle near the lip, leaving little doubt as to what happened to the USGS survey team and the HAZMAT crew, whose vehicles still sit in the lot several miles away, a trek the old man had no desire to make at his advanced age. Fortunately, a colonel didn’t have to walk if he didn’t feel like it, so instead he rode in the expanded mobility tactical cargo truck, which had been specially equipped with a motorized winch and more than two miles of steel cable. His team was already unraveling it so they could attach their harnesses in sequence. They’d spent years preparing for this kind of penetration, if not the unknown that awaited them two miles down. Even the old man couldn’t predict what kind of changes might have occurred underground during the last five-plus decades.
He’d been watching the news closely since the first earthquake in the swarm, but it wasn’t until after the USGS failed to raise its chief seismologist on her transceiver that he was alerted through formal channels to the rapidly unraveling situation at the site of his greatest failure. While he’d never actually uttered the truth of what transpired here all those years ago, his commanding officers had recognized that something was amiss and kept him on a short leash throughout his career, which served him well since he couldn’t bring himself to leave the mess he’d made behind. If ever anything unusual was reported in the vicinity of that well, he’d be damned if he wouldn’t be in a position to handle it.
He looks at the pictures of the men and women who’d been dispatched to investigate the cause of the earthquakes one last time before passing the digital tablet along to the rest of his unit. He’d hoped to arrive to find the response teams in perfect health, despite the satellite imagery upon which he could clearly see there wasn’t anyone within two miles of the well. If anything has happened to them, their fates will weigh heavily upon his conscience.
“We’re burning daylight,” he says, and stares down into the darkness.
He thinks about all the things he could have done differently, knowing full well that if he had the opportunity to do it all over again, he wouldn’t change a thing. This was how events had always been destined to play out. It was why he’d persevered through the damage his tenure at the arsenal had done to his career and spent the balance of it working his way through the ranks until he was in position to command a team as loyal to him as they were to their country, a team that would follow his orders without hesitation. He’d survived two bouts with cancer, a triple bypass, and the Army’s best attempts to force him into retirement, all so he could be here at this precise moment in time.
Colonel Jack Randall raises his face to the sky and feels the heat of the sun on his face. He couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day to die.
RANA’S CRIES FADE into the unfathomable darkness beyond the range of the tiny light. It’s all she can do not to scream again as something moves through her peripheral vision. The walls and ceiling are positively covered with fungal growths reminiscent of briar patches, which can’t quite conceal the dark forms scurrying through them. One of the men from the HAZMAT team has been hauled up onto them. The sharp protrusions pass through his protective suit, summoning the rivulets of blood that trickle down the branches and eventually begin to drip to the ground with a soft plat… plat… plat.
She sees Sydney from the corner of her eye and rushes to help her. Kneels and rolls her onto her back. Her protective suit has been torn nearly all the way around and the clothes underneath are ripped. Her skin is bloody and raw and covered with pale white fuzz that almost appears to originate from within the wounds themselves. Worst of all are her eyes, which remain open and stare blankly into space. The vessels in her sclera have ruptured, turning the whites to red.
Rana stifles a sob.
Movement to her right. She whirls and shines her flashlight at a man in a suit matching hers. He tries to rise from the ground, only to collapse onto his chest again. Tries once more. When he looks into the light, she catches a glimpse of Tim’s face behind the reflection on his mask. His features are awash with blood. He makes a high-pitched keening sound and manages to crawl several feet closer before his arms give out.
“Oh, God,” she gasps, and runs to his aid.
The back of his suit is punctured in countless places. She struggles to roll him over. The inside of his mask is freckled with expiratory spatter, through which she can barely see his pallid features, contorted into an expression of sheer terror.
“Please—” he sputters. “Help… me.”
His eyes lock onto hers a split-second before the tiny veins burst and they flood with blood.
He screams and his face vanishes behind the expulsion of crimson that strikes his visor from the inside. His chest deflates and his body becomes still.
She shakes him.
“Tim?”
Shakes him hard enough to rattle his teeth, but his body remains limp.
Rana scuttles backward, swings the light in a wide arc. Sees another man from the HAZMAT team, sprawled on his side with his facemask shattered and blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.
The pain in her head intensifies and her stomach clenches. If the heat doesn’t kill her, the pressure at this depth eventually will. Assuming the chemical fumes didn’t finish her off first. Maybe if she closes her eyes and tries to reserve what little strength she has left, she’ll be able to last—
“Oh, no you don’t.”
Someone grabs her by the back of her suit and jerks her upright. She glances over her shoulder to see Stephens towering over her. While his suit appears largely intact, his left arm hangs at his side and he’s bleeding heavily from a laceration along his hairline.
“Get up,” he whispers. “Right now.”
He offers his hand and pulls her to her feet.
“The others—” she starts to say.
“Listen to me. There’s only one way out of here and we’d better find it before they come back.”
“Before who—?”
“Shh! Keep your voice down!”
She knows there’s no way in hell they’re climbing two miles straight up, but if even a small amount of fresh air—
The shadows shift ahead of them. Just beyond the farthest reaches of the flashlight beam.
“This way,” Stephens whispers.
“I saw something. Right over—”
Her words trail off as her light limns what looks like another bramble of fungal growth.
Until it moves.
RANDALL CLOSES HIS eyes as tightly as he can and tries to imagine himself somewhere else. Anywhere else. Unlike his men, he’s unaccustomed to being wedged into such tight confines. He thought he’d be better able to deal with the psychological effects of claustrophobia, from the crippling feeling of suffocation to the complete and utter inability to move.
He risks opening his eyes. Sees the eroded concrete passing mere inches in front of him, spotlighted by the narrow beam from the light mounted on his tactical helmet. And quickly closes them again. He concentrates on the sensation of descent, picturing himself inside an elevator, one moving much too slowly for his tastes, and cradles the specially designed, pneumatic-pressure powered assault rifle against his chest. While less powerful than its traditional counterparts and largely untested in battle, it still has enough force to punch a .45-caliber hole through a car door, should the need arise. More importantly, its discharge won’t ignite the combustible chemicals. Each of his men carries one, but only he carries the coup de gras, the incendiary grenade he wishes to God he’d used all those years ago.