This time he was brought out of it, not by a slap in the face, but by Lieutenant Mitchell shouting in his ear.
“For God’s sake, man, pull up!”
As Noble disengaged from the hold on his mind he felt a pang of disappointment, then a sudden burst of adrenaline and fear as he looked forward.
The chopper spun wildly. The pilot tried to right it, but he looked dazed, almost sleepy. Blood dripped from both his nostrils, but he did not have time to wipe it away, having to focus his whole attention on the bucking craft.
“Hold on to something,” the pilot said. “I’ll have to put her down and it’s not going to be pretty.”
Suzie grabbed Noble by the arm and dragged him back to his seat, where they tried frantically to buckle themselves in. The soldiers opposite didn’t look quite so sanguine about the situation now, but there was still no panic and one young marine even managed to give Noble a thumbs-up when he finally clicked the buckle in place.
And not a second too soon. The chopper bucked and spun and Noble felt like a sock in a tumble dryer.
But only for two seconds.
“We’re going in,” the pilot screamed in his ear.
There was a shattering crash and everything went away again. This time there were no dreams, no visions, just a deep, unending blackness.
He came back out of it into a chaotic world of screaming and gunfire. Someone had him by the shoulders and he was being dragged bodily across cold metal. He tried to stand.
“Stay down,” somebody shouted at him, a tone that brooked no argument.
More shots were fired, almost deafening. His back hit what felt like a lip, then he fell into open air, arms flailing.
The fall was short and his landing, surprisingly soft. He found out why when he finally got his legs under him and stood. He was on a sheet of what felt like soft plastic. In some places it was clear, with dark water visible many feet below, and in other places the plastic was punctuated with pictures, or pieces of paper, labels from whatever piece of refuse had been used in the construction. The closest piece to his feet advertised a well-known brand of lemonade. But he had little time for study. The gunfire started up again and when he turned towards it, he saw what had happened. The chopper had crashed, embedding itself partially in the plastic material of the ground. It looked like the crew were all out safely, but even now, they were being forced to back away from the crashed craft as the black forms of the kelp-covered Shoggoths tried to crawl over it, intent on assimilating whatever pieces of it they could eat.
The soldiers poured volley after volley into the vegetation, to no effect.
“Break out the acid,” Noble heard Mitchell shout.
He felt a hand on his shoulder. Suzie stood there, her face pale, which only accentuated the redness of the line of blood that ran from her hairline down the left side as far as her earlobe.
Three of the marines strapped on what looked like oxygen tanks attached to short, almost pistol-like hand-held hoses.
“Fire at will,” Mitchell shouted.
Like firemen hosing flames, the marines sent a spray of acid over the Shoggoths nearest the chopper. The result was immediate. The vegetation retreated fast, pulling away from the falling fluid, leaving bubbling and hissing fragments behind where the acid hit its target.
Noble let out a small involuntary yelp of triumph, but he had celebrated too soon. The ground buckled beneath them, like a beast in the throes of pain. The marine nearest Noble, one with an acid tank on his back, fell heavily. The plastic beneath him opened like a mouth and closed again, tight, around the soldier’s waist. The man immediately started to scream. That, too, was short lived. Blood ran from his lips. He coughed, once, and the blood became a fountain. The plastic snipped –and the marine’s upper torso fell forward, cleanly cut away from the part that was embedded in the surface underfoot.
Suzie stepped forward. At first, Noble thought she was intent on trying to help the man, but he soon saw what she meant to do.
She means to take the acid tank.
Noble moved to get there first. The ground buckled again as he tried to un-strap the tank from the dead weight of the torso. Suzie steadied him and helped him strap the tank on, the weight of it threatening to overbalance him until he found the trick of redistributing his centre of balance by leaning slightly forward.
The ground bucked again, a series of mouths appearing around them, as if something was fishing—fishing for men.
Mitchell called out.
“To me. Fall back.”
Noble didn’t have to be told twice. He followed as Mitchell led the team away from the chopper and the opening mouths. The Shoggoths wasted no time in slithering over the chopper. In seconds, it had disappeared under a mound of kelp.
Noble saw Mitchell look back and caught the brief, but obvious, despair that showed on his face. Just as obvious, was the way the young officer pushed it away to focus on the survival of his team.
“In here,” the Lieutenant said and stood to one side, motioning at a semicircular opening in one of the buildings. Noble and Suzie held back, at first, but the marines, used to obeying first and asking questions later, showed no hesitation, filing through and taking positions so that each man was covered by another. Noble was last in.
By the time he turned and looked outside, he could no longer even see where the chopper had been. Several Shoggoths crawled lazily over what was once again a smooth, even surface. They seemed to have lost all interest in the occupants of the craft and were now dispersing to different parts of the city.
Noble turned to Mitchell and motioned at the backpack he carried.
“Tell me we’ve got a radio?”
Mitchell shook his head.
“I’m carrying enough C4 to blow a hole in the planet. But the only radio with the range needed to get a message to the mainland was on the chopper. We’re on our own.”
“What about a rescue?”
Mitchell looked Noble in the eye and said nothing. He didn’t have to.
Looks like this was a one way trip.
He looked around the room. They seemed to have come in the only thing that might resemble an entrance or exit. In fact, Noble thought the whole chamber might be no more than an artefact of the way the structure had been built by the Shoggoths, rather than any attempt to make a room, as such. The place was built out of more of the recycled plastics, the walls looking like a patchwork of stained glass windows of different coloured materials and papers, with thin sunlight and scudding clouds laying multi-fractal patterns all around them. It was strangely beautiful, but at the same time terrifying in its sheer strangeness.
Suzie seemed rapt and had turned on her full-on science geek mode. The eight marines, on the other hand, were all business.
“What’s the plan, Lieutenant?” Noble asked, as one of the marines helped him out of the harness and took the tank from him.
Mitchell was still looking out over where the chopper –and the dead marine—had disappeared from view.
“We came here to do a job. That hasn’t changed.”
He turned to Noble.
“How’s your sense of direction? You said the boat was on the edge of a large park?”
Noble nodded and pointed to where he hoped was West.
“That way. But it’s a bit of a walk, if I’m right. At least a mile.”
Mitchell grinned.
“This team walked more than that through hostile territory in Tehran. I think we can handle it.”