“Passing the ten-thousand-foot mark,” Omega says through his in-helmet speaker. Each of his men has assumed a Greek letter based on position rather than rank, with Alpha serving as the tip of the spear and Omega manning the vehicle on the surface. “Not much farther now.”
Randall nods to himself. The airflow from the slender tank designed to attach to his thigh has done an amazing job of staving off the worst of the effects of the pressure change, although his forehead still throbs as though the vessels have swollen nearly to the point of aneurysm.
“I can see the opening underneath me,” Alpha says.
The point man is a good thirty feet below Randall and separated from him by three other men. Two more are harnessed above him, although he can’t tilt his head far enough back to see the boots hanging above the crown of his head.
“Slow descent by half,” Randall says.
“Slowing descent by half, sir,” Omega says.
“Tell me what you see, Alpha.”
“The chemicals have eroded through the rock, creating a vast cavernous space of indeterminate size.”
“Activate LiDAR.”
A faint reddish glow blossoms below Randall as a pulsed laser shoots out of the remote sensing device, which will create a three-dimensional digital elevation model of the cavern. It’s just bright enough to see through his closed eyelids.
The cable snags and Omega is forced to retract the line just far enough for the man who became stuck to work himself through the narrowing, before resuming once more.
“It’s roughly circular in shape,” Alpha says. “Just over a quarter mile in diameter with a domed roof approximately twenty feet high at its apex.”
Randall silently curses himself. The scientists had been wrong about the reaction of the chemical waste and metamorphic rock. They’d been wrong about so much…
“There are formations on the ceiling and floor reminiscent of helictites,” Alpha says. “Only they don’t appear to be speleothemic in origin.”
“What else could they be?” Beta asks.
“They appear to be biological.”
“Fungal,” Randall says.
A pause.
“What aren’t you telling us, Colonel?”
“Just keep your eyes open, Alpha.”
The sinking sensation slows, and then ceases altogether. A hint of slack ripples through the cable.
“I’m on the ground,” Alpha says. “It’s riddled with fissures, but feels stable enough. Just be careful where you—”
A sharp intake of breath and a gurgle of fluid.
The cable whips to the side, causing Randall to strike his head against the concrete chute. It jerks the other way and they all drop several feet.
“What’s going on down there?” Omega asks from the surface.
“We’re fish in a barrel inside this tube, Colonel,” Gamma says.
“Damn it,” Randall says. “Omega, release the brake.”
“Sir?”
“That’s an ord—” The line suddenly goes slack and they plummet into the depths. Randall presses outward with his upper arms to slow his momentum. Waits as long as he dares. “Reengage!”
He abruptly halts right after he passes through the ceiling of the cavern. His headlamp spins wildly as he twirls in his harness.
“Jesus Christ!” Beta shouts. “What the hell happened to—?”
The cable jerks again. The men below Randall disengage their harnesses and drop into the darkness, where twin beams of light lying on the ground highlight swatches of bare stone and rapidly expanding pools of blood.
Two more headlamps take up position between them. Gamma and Delta stand back-to-back, pivoting to examine their surroundings down the barrels of their rifles.
While all around them, the darkness begins to writhe.
THE CREATURE STEPS from the shadows into Rana’s light and she realizes that it’s at least partly human. It’s skeletal, as though little more than a being of desiccated skin mummified to a framework of bones. Its veins are like serpents trapped beneath translucent tissue, its muscles braided wires. Tatters of clothing remain, befouled by bodily functions and dissolution. Its ribcage stands apart from its breast and its head juts forward on a neck bowed like a vulture’s, a consequence of the long protuberances reminiscent of wires growing from its back.
“Jesus Christ,” Stephens whispers. “What the hell is that thing?”
The monstrosity lowers its head and cocks it from one side to the other in a predatory manner. Its lips have shrunken from its bared teeth, which have grown long from its receded gums, and its nose has collapsed to the triangular formation of cartilage and bone. The vessels in its forehead throb with the sluggish flow of blood. Where once there were eyes, the sockets are now lined with wispy, filamentous hyphae.
Rana stumbles backward.
It matches her retreat and snaps at the air. Its teeth make an awful clicking sound.
She detects movement in her peripheral vision, but can’t bring herself to tear her eyes from the creature advancing toward her on legs that tremble as though unaccustomed to movement.
Again, it strikes at her with its jaws. It’s all she can do to keep from screaming, especially when she hears the sound of snapping teeth to her right.
She turns to see Sydney approaching in halting movements, her face covered with a shimmering mask of blood. Her eyelids have peeled all the way back to accommodate the hyphae sprouting from her irises. She bares her teeth and snaps them.
“Run!” Rana yells.
“KEEP GOING, OMEGA,” Randall says, and their descent immediately recommences.
A shout echoes from the cavern below them.
It’s not one of his men.
The voice is undeniably female.
Dear God, the people who were attacked on the surface…
They were still alive down here.
Both of the lights below him swivel in the direction from which the sound originated, but reveal nothing beyond the crevice-riddled stone and several oddly shaped stones from which long fungal appendages grow.
“Any sign of Alpha or Beta?” he asks.
“No, sir,” Gamma replies.
“There’s an awful lot of blood down here,” Delta says.
“Focus on the mission,” Randall says.
“It would help if you told us what we were up against.”
Randall knows his man is right, but the truth of the matter is that he simply doesn’t know.
The moment his feet hit the ground, he disconnects from the cable and picks his way over the coils. If he trips, he’ll become more of a liability than he already is. His cane is bound to his left leg, effectively immobilizing it. In the process of unstrapping it, he loses his balance and feels himself falling, but Delta grabs him by the back of his suit and rights him. They can all clearly see that he’s not physically fit enough for the field op, but he has to know what’s down here. Not only is this his fault, it’s his responsibility to make sure that whatever managed to survive down here never reaches the surface.