It’s a pity the same couldn’t be said of the Alma.
I wasn’t looking forward to the hunt in the morning.
I was glad to get away from the open door when it came time to wake Davies. I bedded down in the spot where he had been but this time sleep wouldn’t come. It wasn’t bad dreams as such, it was my conscience bothering me about Jennings. I spent a long time going over all my actions and commands since bearding him back at base. Yes, he’d been a loudmouthed tosser right from the get go, but so was I when I first joined the squad. I’d learned the hard way that respect has to be earned, that the squad comes first in all matters and that friends are hard to come by and harder to lose. Jennings never got that chance and the wee voice of the devil on my shoulder reminded me of it for what was left of the night.
When I noticed the thin light of dawn at the windows, I was more than happy to rise first and get the coffee pot on. While the brew was going, I spotted that there was blue sky and some fluffy scudding clouds outside; the snow had stopped and although it was windy it was nowt worse than a bank holiday Monday at Largs beach.
Once we were all awake and had taken turns popping out for a welcome morning slash against the back tires of the truck, Davies handed out the wee black boxes.
“Should work the same as the last time,” he said. “One press of a button and the big dug does the boogie.”
“And if we all press the switch at once?” the cap asked.
“I doubt if the effect is accumulative,” Wilko interrupted.
“But it’s probably worth a try?”
“Hell, yeah,” Davies said. “Anything that gets yon big bastard dancing is worth a try.”
He’d handed out the boxes to the guys of the squad. Sheriff Sue raised an eyebrow.
“Boys and their toys, eh?” She patted her rifle. “I’ll stick to my own hardware if you don’t mind.”
We all made sure we were fully loaded with ammo, zipped up our parkas and jumped down into what proved to be almost a foot of fresh fluffy snow. The cap addressed the sheriff.
“It’s your show for now, Sheriff. Lead on.”
She led us out, heading north to where the beasts had gone under the canopy the night before.
As I said, the snow was the light fluffy stuff we rarely get in Scotland, and easy enough to plough through once I got my rhythm. All the tracks from the night before were obliterated under a virgin white carpet but the sheriff led us straight to the spot where the beasts had vanished, then instead of going under the canopy followed the treeline north. The climbing got steeper and I began to feel it in my calves. She stopped us when the trees crept round the hillside and blocked our path northward and upward apart from another deer trail through them that was no wider than the breadth of her shoulders.
“We’ll need to go single file from here,” she said. “I’m happy to take the lead, but it might be best if somebody with more firepower is at the front?”
The cap agreed, I volunteered—an old habit that promotion hadn’t yet ironed out of me—and with a fresh smoke lit between my lips led us off into the wilds.
It might have been fine for deer but it wasn’t a walk I’d have taken by choice. The trees pressed in close around me, cold needles knitting icy patterns on my face as I pushed through. It was dim despite the blue sky far overhead and the snow was thicker and wetter under the canopy so that it was much more of a trudge than a walk. The only sound was the footsteps behind me and the rustle of the branches as I pushed them aside. We were still climbing, still getting steeper, and my every sense was tingling in anticipation of an attack.
We went on that way for a good fifteen minutes, my smoke long since extinguished, my calves aching with the climb and my feet feeling like blocks of ice, a cold that was seeping up to my knees and heading for my bollocks. I hoped we got where we were going before that.
There appeared to be more sunlight up ahead. I raised a hand to get the lads behind me to stop and moved forward more slowly. I had to get low to avoid giving myself away, and the cold did indeed creep to places it wasn’t welcome, but I tuned it out; we had reached our destination; the track opened out in front of a rocky outcrop above a dark mine entrance shored up with old wood. The snow in front of the entrance was disturbed, stamped down by several pairs of large feet, and there was a distinct tinge of red among the white where blood had been spilled.
I crept back slowly to make my report.
“How do you want to handle it, Cap?”
“I can’t see any other way apart from going in and trying to flush them out,” he said.
“What about the wolf?” the sheriff asked.
“One beastie at a time,” I replied. “We’ve got the wee black boxes to deal with that.”
“Aye,” the cap added, “what Wiggo said. Splitting our resources isn’t going to work for us here. We go in, quietly, and we take them down hard and fast when we find them; we’ve run out of any other options.”
When we made our way out of the woods and over towards the mine entrance, I was once again in the lead.
At least my balls weren’t cold, although they felt like they were trying to retract back up into my body as we approached the dark mouth of the mine and the old primeval fears from my hindbrain rose up to remind me that this was a bad idea.
- 16 -
It was as dark and uninviting as you might expect, but at least it was a tad warmer than being out on the hill. It smelled, the same rank meaty odor that had come up out of the cells in the vault earlier, so we knew we were on the right track. The daylight only reached ten paces in so I had to switch on my gun light. It showed a dry, rocky floor underfoot below timber-lined walls and a ceiling festooned with hanging tendrils of cobweb and lichen. The only noise was the pad of our feet and the whisper of our breath. After another ten paces the tunnel began to descend into the hill.
We went down.
The smell got stronger with every step, thick and cloying now and a constant reminder that we weren’t alone in here. The only good thing was the lack of side passages; the mine was a simple one, a single shaft cut deep into the hill. We’d long since passed the region where the walls were shored with timber. Now my light showed only bare rock on all sides, and we no longer had webs and lichen for company, just dry walls all the way down.
I brought the squad to a halt as a new sound wafted up from somewhere below. It took me a second to recognise it but once I did it was unmistakable. We hadn’t noted the instrument’s absence from the cabin above the vault but the mournful air of a slow tune being played on a bone flute filled the air around us.
We went down, even more carefully now.
When it happened it happened quickly, a blur of action and mayhem I only partially sorted out in my mind later. As far as I can tell, it went down like this. The order of events might be off here and there, but the end result was the same.
First off, the sound of the flute cut off in mid-melody. I think I knew in that instant that trouble was on the way. I raised my light from where it shone at my feet to wash it down the shaft ahead. I was just in time to light up a view of a wide-open mouth of teeth and a pair of eyes that looked silver in the reflected beam. I got off two shots, don’t know if I hit anything at all, then went down as what felt like a block of stone fell on me. I think my parka saved me; a taloned arm raked at my belly but got only the inner lining although I felt nails scrape on my flak jacket below that. Then I couldn’t breathe due to a stinking carpet of warm hair covering my nose and mouth. I squeezed off two more shots, heard another two from somewhere distant. Above me the beast let out a roar of rage and pain then it went limp on me.