Indeed, directly in front of the wave generator, a hole about three feet in diameter had appeared. Sloping away from the hole was a pile of what looked like fine sand. Barron shrugged out of his rucksack, unceremoniously dumped out the contents, and began scooping handfuls of the dust into the bag.
Dodge poked his light into the hole and saw that it went clean through — a depth of at least five feet — and opened into the darkness beyond. “Gates let you in,” he muttered. If Fiona and the myths she followed were right, on the other side of that hole was the legendary land of the dead.
He turned his attention back to where Hurricane and Barron’s crewmen were cautiously making their way down the tunnel. The conductive properties of the adamantine might have conducted the wave generator’s energy back at them, but it was not the source of the shrieking they had heard. Not directly at least.
“What do you think that noise was?” he asked Newcombe.
“An animal of some kind—”
Another scream cut off the scientist’s speculations, but this one was all too human. The flashlight beams from the lights held by Hurricane and the other scout suddenly began dancing crazily, illuminating random spots on the walls and ceiling. Dodge shot his light down the tunnel, and even though he knew that something was dreadfully wrong, what he saw beggared belief.
The tunnel was filled with pale, vaguely humanoid shapes. They were small — though they were hunched over, even the tallest of them was only about waist high — and moved quickly, making it almost impossible to get a good look at their faces. Dodge saw no eyes; only rat-like teeth and claws, and ghostly white, naked bodies. The creatures seemed to ooze from the rock, slipping through cracks in the walls and ceiling that had gone unnoticed when the explorers had passed through only a few moments before.
Hurricane was still on his feet, but just barely. Dozens of the creatures were swarming over him, gripping his arms and legs. Though individually they could not hope to budge him, their collective mass was driving him closer to the acidified river.
Barron’s crewman had already succumbed to that fate. The lone scream they had heard at the onset of the attack had been his last outcry. He lay unmoving in the toxic flow, his flesh already boiling off his bones.
Hurricane struggled mightily against the assault, stripping his assailants off, but for every one that he flung away, three more moved in to take its place. With every passing second, their victory became more certain.
Even as Dodge racked his brain to come up with some way to help his friend, he saw some of the creatures advancing past the struggle, sniffing the air as they caught the scent of more intruders in their midst.
In a rush of inspiration, Dodge turned the wave projector toward another section of the wall. “Brace yourselves,” he shouted. “This is going to hurt.”
He flipped the switch.
The vibration instantly permeated every square inch of the cavern, and Dodge felt his nerve endings come alive with pain. The creatures screamed again, and this time their howl was deafening. They fell to the cave floor, writhing in agony, and in their midst, Hurricane also fell to his knees.
Dodge switched the device off and hastened to help his friend, but the big man waved him off. “I’m fine!”
He struggled to his feet, half-stumbling back to the rejoin the rest of the group. The creatures were recovering almost as quickly however, and the vibrations had only served to further amplify their mindless rage.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Barron shouted.
Vaughn shook his head grimly. “We’re not getting out that way.”
Dodge thought the general was being optimistic. A wave of pale flesh — dozens of demonic shapes, driven by primal rage — rolled toward them, blocking the only avenue of escape.
Chapter 16—Land of the Dead
“Everyone! Go through that hole,” Dodge shouted.
“We don’t know what’s on the other side.”
In the urgency of the moment, Dodge couldn’t tell who had lodged that protest. “We know what’s on this side. Go! Now!”
He spun the wave projector around, aiming it into the mass of approaching creatures, and turned it on.
The vibrations filled the cavern once more, but this time the sensation was marginally more tolerable. Although they were surrounded by adamantine ore, most of the wave energy was expended on the flesh of the bestial swarm. Several of the creatures in the center of the group simply dropped as their bones were pulverized. The rest peeled away, shrieking like the damned, but were nevertheless momentarily rendered helpless as the invisible waves reverberated through the metal walls of the cavern and permeated their bodies.
Dodge did not linger to survey his handiwork, but turned to see Vaughn squirming through the hole in the “gate.” Nora, Fiona and Barron had apparently already gone through. Hurricane was at Dodge’s side, his pistols drawn and ready.
“Your turn,” Dodge said, turning the wave device to sweep the tunnel with its invisible energy. “I’m right behind you.”
Hurricane holstered the guns and clapped Dodge on the shoulder. “You’d better be.”
As soon as the big man stuck his head and shoulders into the opening, Dodge made one final adjustment to the projector, tilting it back so that its energy pounded into the rock overhead. The vibrations immediately increased to a fever pitch and fine particles of sand began to pour down from the ceiling, but Dodge had no intention of turning it off now. He gritted his teeth against the near-paralyzing agony, and thrust himself into the hole with such force that he shot out the other side and tumbled into the darkness.
Before Dodge could even raise his head to take stock of his surroundings, the earth groaned and a different kind of tremor shuddered through the stone beneath his feet as the ceiling above the abandoned wave projector collapsed in a thunderous cave in. The vibrations ceased instantly, as did the screams of the enraged creatures.
Hurricane aimed a flashlight and one of his pistols into the hole, but the only thing that came through after them was sand, pouring through the opening like water from a pipe. The flow trickled to a stop within seconds, but there was little doubt that the other end was completely covered in debris.
Dodge sagged back against the wall, struggling to shake off the effects of the vibrations and the post-adrenaline fatigue. It’s not over, he reminded himself. “Is everyone okay?”
“Where’s Erik?” Barron asked.
Erik. The crewman from Majestic. Dodge felt sick as an image of the man’s horrible demise flashed in his mind’s eye. “He didn’t make it.”
“Dodge. Look.” Nora stood nearby, shining her light away from the wall, into the darkness of the cavern, and Dodge groaned as the expectation of some new and probably much worse threat sent a new surge of adrenaline coursing through his veins.
What now?
He took in his immediate surroundings first: the huddled group of explorers; Hurricane with flashlight and pistol, bracing for another attack; Barron, clutching his rucksack full of adamantine ore; Newcombe, Fiona, Vaughn… unhurt, confused, with just one electric lamp between them. Nora was closer to Dodge, but he now saw her wrapped in a strange mist that shimmered in the diffuse light. The cloud was thickest near the cavern floor, which was almost completely obscured, but whorls of vapor filled the rest of the vast chamber. The beam from Nora’s lamp looked like a solid glowing shaft as it stabbed out through the misty darkness.
His other senses began transmitting a rush of information as well. His skin registered a strange tingling, like the mild burn of mentholatum oil or a freshly sliced onion. He tasted and smelled it too; the sharp odor of sulfur, but something else that he couldn’t quite pin down. After only a few breaths, he realized that he was starting to feel lightheaded.