“What the actual fuck?” Beaumont asked in a high voice. He shifted from foot to foot, looked wildly around himself.
“These bones are too clean and white to have decayed to this state,” Brown said. He shone his penlight among the bones to show coins, a cigarette lighter, the half-melted remains of a cell phone, belt buckles. Two automatic pistols, both with traces of the gel-like slime, were wedged under the pelvis.
Coulthard stepped forward, leaned down to stare at the corpse like it was a personal insult. “You trying to tell me this is one of the guys we’re chasing?”
Brown shrugged, hefted the pen to make the dollar sign swing.
“Fuck this,” Spencer said. “What the hell can do that to a person?”
Brown shook his head. “Who knows?” He played his torchlight around the walls and ceiling of the tunnel.
“And where did it go?” Gladstone asked weakly.
“Go?” Coulthard asked.
“I think it’s pretty clear someone or something did that to him and is no longer here, right?” Gladstone said.
“Some kind of weapon?” Beaumont asked, still agitated.
“What kind of weapon does this?” Brown countered.
Coulthard stood up straight. “Can it, all of you. We have a mission and we’ll keep to it. We’ll find answers on the way.”
“It’s still warm,” Brown reminded him. “This happened very recently, I think.”
“Then we move extra fucking carefully,” Coulthard said.
A burst of gunfire and distant shouting echoed up the tunnel. Epsilon squad froze and listened. A scream, another burst of gunfire then a deep, concussive boom.
“Grenade?” Dillman asked quietly.
Silence descended again.
“Lights off, mouths shut,” Coulthard said. “Brown, up front with me in case we come across any more bodies. Beaumont, rear guard. Move out.”
Brown nodded as he pocketed his knife. He wasn’t happy about it, but that was a smart move by the sergeant. Beaumont had sounded very spooked by this encounter and understandably so. His nerves were like an electric current through the squad. Best he go to the back and have a chance to calm down. Reluctantly, the squad fell into place. Brown glanced once more at the skeleton on the tunnel floor and shivered as they moved almost silently away.
They travelled in silence for another ten minutes before Spencer whispered, “Two clicks.”
A distant scream rang out, cut off equally fast. Several bursts of gunfire. They froze and listened, but heard nothing more.
“Move on,” Coulthard said tightly.
“Are you sure, Sarge?” Brown asked, but the sergeant’s only answer was a shove in the back.
Several minutes later, Spencer said, “Three clicks.”
Brown pointed, and Coulthard nodded. Two more skeletons lay on the tunnel floor. Brown crouched and felt the warmth rising off them, stark against the cold rock all around. Two AK-47s and a variety of other metallic objects littered the ground.
“What the fuck, man?” Beaumont said, his voice still high and stretched. “What can do that?”
“Should we go back?” Brown asked.
“There’s still five more of them somewhere ahead,” Coulthard said. “And whatever is doing this is ahead as well. We’ll go a bit further.”
“We gotta go, Sarge!” Beaumont said. “Seriously, how can we fight this fucking—”
“Pull it together, soldier!” Coulthard barked. “Get your shit in order. We go forward for another little while and see. This tunnel has to change at some point, branch off or open out or something. I want to see what happens. If nothing happens by five kays in, we turn around.”
“Five kays?” Beaumont sounded like a child. “Fuck man, five kays?”
“Move out,” Coulthard said softly, his voice and demeanour a perfect example of calm.
Brown wondered if the sergeant felt anything like as calm as he acted. It seemed Beaumont was the one having a far more sensible reaction to all this. Brown bit his teeth together to stem his own trembling and walked on.
The way was still lit by the strange veins of lichen, the tunnel remained a three metre or so diameter throat down into the foothills of the mountain range beyond. They heard nothing more for several minutes.
“Stay alert,” Coulthard said. “How you doing, Donkey? Feeling okay?”
Beaumont didn’t answer.
The sergeant laughed softly. “Sorry, Josh, I’m only ragging ya. Seriously, you feeling okay? You were a little rattled back there.”
No answer.
Sam Gladstone said, “There’s no one behind me, Sarge.”
“What?”
“He was bringing up the rear, but he’s not there.”
Coulthard spat a curse. “Beaumont!” he called out in a harsh whisper. “Fuck, surely he hasn’t panicked and run back.”
“Wouldn’t I have heard, Sarge?” Gladstone asked.
“I don’t know. Would you? Spencer, leave your tablet here and double time back up the tunnel. If you don’t catch up to him in a few hundred yards, we’ll have to let him go and I’ll kick his fucking ass when we get back.”
“Righto, Sarge.”
Spencer put down his gear and jogged away. They stood in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes.
“Nervous kid,” Brown said eventually. “First tour.”
“Don’t make excuses for him,” Coulthard said. “He’s a fucking soldier.”
Spencer walked back towards them, holding something out. “We need to get the fuck out of here,” he said. Hanging from his fingers was a chain with two dog tags.
“The fuck?” Dillman whispered.
“Beaumont’s?” Coulthard asked in a tight voice.
“He’s a fucking skeleton just like the insurgent fuckers we found. Nothing left but buckles and weapons and shit. He’s just fucking bones, Sarge!”
Dillman began muttering and shone his helmet lamp frantically in every direction. The mood of the squad began to fracture.
Coulthard swatted Dillman’s lamp off. “Stow that shit! Everyone stay calm.”
“Calm, Sarge?” Gladstone asked. “Seriously, we’re in deep shit here.”
“Stay. Calm. Spencer, did you recover Beaumont’s weapon.”
Spencer shook his head. “Left it there. The strap is gone, too hard to carry. But I took his clips.”
“Fair enough. Now, we need to reassess what we’re doing here.”
“I think we should leave, Sarge,” Brown said. He tried to keep his voice calm but heard and felt the quaver in it.
“It ain’t that simple.”
“It must be,” Dillman said. “Fuck those guys, if they’re even still alive down there. Whatever got Beaumont can get them. We’ll wait outside the caves and pick off any who come out.”
Coulthard held up a hand, a pale green wave in their night vision goggles. “Chill, everyone. It ain’t as simple as leaving. I’m with you. In any other circumstances I would absolutely call an abort. But whatever took Beaumont, it took him from the back.”
“Which means it’s behind us,” Brown said, realisation like an icy wave through his gut. “Or there’s more than one, ahead and behind.”
“Exactly.”
“Does that mean we should carry on though?” Gladstone asked. “Maybe it’s only gonna get worse.”
“Maybe. Or maybe there’s another way out.” Coulthard picked up Spencer’s tablet, checked the display. “We’ve still got a bunch of sensors, yeah?”
Spencer dropped Beaumont’s tags into a pocket. “Yeah, plenty.”
“Okay. We carry on for another kilometre and see if it leads to any branches in the tunnel, any other way out. If it does, we can maybe go around whatever’s in here. If not, we turn around and risk facing it. Spencer, it’s unlikely but do we have any signal down here?”