Beneath the Dark Ice

Twenty-one

They came to the end of the beach and stared fearfully into the small bay that blocked their path. As expected, no one wanted to wade into the water to test its depth. Monica cracked her last glow stick and threw it out towards the centre. The water was crystal clear but the stick sank until it was just a dim, glowing dot some fifty feet down. There could be no wading; they would have to swim.

Aimee had also been looking into the water, but at something that looked like rice washed up onto the black sand. She walked quickly down to the water’s edge and scooped up a handful, sorting through it and squeezing some between her fingers as she brought it back to show Alex. “This is strange. These look like abyssal shrimp. They’re still quite fresh, but all dead. These things only exist in deep water, and I mean deep; down to the hadal zone, twenty thousand feet plus. You see them all the time when they’re drilling in the ocean trenches. Strange, the water’s far too warm for them down here. These guys are from our world, not this one.” Aimee looked down into her hand. “Hmm, how did you guys get here?”

“Could they have been washed in somehow?” Alex looked quickly into her palm at the small crustaceans and then turned to focus again on the dark water in front of them.

“Washed in?” Aimee seemed to ponder the question as she walked back up to where Matt was standing.

Alex noticed the team was standing well back from the small inlet. After what he suspected lurked in those depths even he was against taking to the water. Looking up, all Alex could see was an almost vertical rock face covered in some odd-looking plants and mosses. He knew his great strength could carry him across the cliff with minimal handholds but wasn’t sure about the rest of his group.

Monica, who had also been looking up at the rock face, moved down the beach to Alex. “There are plenty of choices. How high do you want us to go before dropping back down?”

“I don’t know how far up we need to be to feel safe, so I’ll take the route that’s quickest and anything above the water line,” he said.

“OK, the safest wall traversal I can see starts at the sharp rock just there and goes vertical for twenty feet, then travels across to that reddish-looking bush, and then continues up again for another ten feet.” Monica continued to map out the cliff trail for Alex; he admired her expertise as handholds and ledges he missed in his quick scan were now visible once they’d been pointed out by a rock climbing expert.

“It’s only about a hundred fifty feet or thereabouts, but we’ll need to climb vertically in some areas and given our level of fatigue that’s going to be extremely taxing. I’ll hammer in a guide rope, but whoever is bringing up the rear will need to unhook the line so I can draw it forward and re-use the tether.”

“I’ll do that.” Alex volunteered as he knew he was the only one other than Monica who could get across the wall without any guidelines.

“I’m going next to Monica.” Matt was quick to offer to keep close to her so he could do his best to keep her safe, and Monica was happy for him to be there so she in turn could keep watch over him.

“OK, Dr. Silex, you go next, followed by Tank, and then Dr. Weir.” Alex wanted either himself or Tank to be close to Silex at all times. He was becoming more remote from the group by the hour and Alex now considered him another potential danger that must be contended with.

The climb was not quick and, as Monica said, it was very tiring on already exhausted muscles. Though the fingertips of their caving gloves afforded an excellent grip, it was slippery, and every inch of the way was covered in moss or greasy, moist lichens. Startled cave lice like armoured many-legged rats scuttled out from handholds or leaped past their faces to the water below. Monica guided them along the easiest path she could have found and, true to her word, every ten feet she inserted a cam and threaded a guide rope for handholds. She hitched the rope at chest level so the team could stay flattened to the wall — a height that proved very useful as some of the ledges they inched their way along were less than a foot wide.

After climbing, crawling and inching their way forward for over an hour, they stopped to catch their breath. They were over halfway across the stretch of dark water and they found themselves on a slightly wider shelf. The small resting ledge afforded them space to crouch or sit down carefully as its two-foot width was perhaps the widest place they were likely to encounter on the climb. If not for their fatigue and concern for their predicament, they would have said the view was almost magical. In some places they still could not quite make out the ceiling of the giant underground cavern as it was indistinct in the heights and obscured by a light mist. The enormous black sea stretched away into the distance and they could see hundreds of beaches like their own — some barren, others moving with the sea scorpions they had previously encountered, and some with other strange animals that would have been a paleobiologist’s dream. While they watched, high up in the mist something with the wingspan of a small plane looped down and back up to disappear again into the primeval fog.

“This place makes the Galapagos Islands seem boring. Imagine a biological expedition here to map and study the environment. How many new species would they find, or old species we haven’t seen for millions of years? And what secrets are beneath that water.” Aimee seemed to be musing to herself. “There may even be ancient species that have followed some completely different evolutionary path and turned into something totally new by now.”

“After what we’ve seen, I’m thinking they should bring a harpoon cannon,” offered Matt.

Under Tank’s enormous weight the ledge silently cracked and was held to the rock face only by tendrils of the strange ferns that grew all along the cliff walls. It just held as he passed, but when Aimee set her foot firmly with all her weight on the weakened rock it gave way. At that precise moment she also took both her hands off the rope so she was tipped outward as the ledge disappeared from under her. She flailed her hands back at the rope but she had already moved too far out from the rock face and was beginning to fall.

Alex flew towards her and caught her by the wrist, managing to swing her down and back up to the ledge. Alex watched as her pistol flipped up and out of her belt and pinwheeled towards the water. “Grab on,” he hissed through clenched teeth. It wasn’t that Aimee was heavy, but the angle he held her at while precariously holding the rock ledge with one hand made it a very difficult manoeuvre. To make matters worse, loose rock was falling around them and a fist-sized chunk struck Alex on the side of his head. Luckily the damage to his skull was minimal due to his cave helmet but his infra-red scope was knocked off and fell slowly to the water nearly fifty feet below.

Aimee couldn’t stop shivering. She felt her reserves were almost gone now. She hated heights, she hated small places and she hated the dark. She kept her face pressed against the cold stone wall for a second until her heart rate slowed and then looked up at Alex. He immediately made her feel calm. Who was he? How could he be so quick and never seem to fatigue or falter?

Monica clambered back across the rock face, passing over Matt and Silex as she scaled nimbly down to hold Aimee close to the wall. “OK, I’ve got you.” Monica had Aimee round the waist and both of them were able to rest and slow their breathing against the cliff; however, they now found themselves about ten feet below the main group.

After Alex had released his grip and let Aimee drop into Monica’s hands, he was about to lower himself down to their ledge when he noticed the wave — it wasn’t large, no more than a foot high, but it shouldn’t have been there. There were no winds or moon to pull any tides down here. Something large was coming at them under the water.

Matt had clambered down as well and brought the end of the rope with him. Aimee had settled enough to begin climbing again, and Monica was planning her new climb path now that she, Matt and Aimee had to take a different route across the rock face.

It was at that moment that Silex decided to act — Tank was preoccupied with watching the group beneath him and Alex was looking down at the water below. Silex edged himself closer to Tank and in one swift movement he unclipped and withdrew his sidearm. The polymer-framed 9 mm was a light, lethal-looking pistol and was a no — gas compression model. Tank reacted instinctively and reached for his holster; it was a mistake. Silex had been hoping he would do this and responded by swinging his other hand at Tank’s now exposed neck. In the scientist’s hand was the golden dagger from the fallen Aztlan warrior and he struck with the speed of a snake. Tank managed to bring his shoulder up slightly and avoid a death strike into his carotid artery but the knife still plunged several inches into the trapezium muscle bunch between his shoulder and throat — painful and potentially debilitating but not lethal, especially for someone with Tank’s enormous muscle mass. However, it threw Tank off balance and he started to slip. He fell to his knee but managed to keep his other hand clamped around the rope. Silex took off across the rock face, throwing all caution to the wind, or perhaps with the carelessness of the insane.

Seeing Silex’s attempted murder of his HAWC, Alex almost screamed with rage. He felt as though his chest was about to burst as the furies demanded he go after the scientist; he wanted to tear the man limb from limb, to utterly obliterate him. They should have gone another way, he should have been watching the man; but then he would have lost Aimee, he would have lost them all. He couldn’t be everywhere. He held on to the cave sill and brought his fingers together; some of the rock broke off and exploded to dust in his fist. Not now, he thought. He breathed deeply and the rage began to settle again.

Monica went to go after him but Alex yelled to her. “No, leave him. We’ve got enough problems. Tank, can you make it?” Alex held his position as the giant HAWC got back to his feet.

“I’m OK, just feel stupid for letting that little weasel ambush me.” He went to pull the knife out and Alex called for him to stop. Though the knife embedded in his shoulder would be painful as hell and would be even more so with movement, if he withdrew it now and couldn’t pack the wound he would lose a lot of blood before it could be closed. Losing blood meant two things down here: with the loss of blood so went your strength; and more important, it rang the dinner bell for every strange monstrosity that inhabited this world.

Alex doubted Silex was going to be able to get very far, and he preferred to have him in front of them rather than at his back. He looked down to see if Aimee, Matt and Monica were ready to proceed when his eyes were drawn to movement below them. The water only seemed like ink because there was no sun to give it colour or depth and the sand beneath it was also black; in reality it was almost totally clear. Now Alex could see the outline of an enormous moving mass just below the surface, and what was more disturbing was that the mass had focused an intelligent eye the size of a car on the small group.

“Everyone freeze, we’ve got company.” Alex quickly weighed up his options; they still had about ten minutes of climbing before they would be down on the opposite beach. He knew he could clamber higher and out of reach easily, but he doubted anyone other than Monica could keep up with him. Tank was wounded and wasn’t going anywhere quickly, and without ropes Aimee and Matt would certainly fall. They could either stand and fight or get across the cliff face, and given the size of the thing coiling itself for an attack below them, standing and fighting would mean a very short battle indeed.

Alex spoke to Tank. “Soldier, hold fast but prepare to engage on my order.” Alex knew Tank might not have seen what he had and he needed the big HAWC to be mentally preparing for battle. Even with the knife in his shoulder and the dozens of bruises and scrapes all over his body, Alex saw Tank’s jaw set and his eyes darken; Tank had entered combat mode.

As Tank was checking his armaments and Alex was looking down again towards the water, Aimee screamed. Seemingly floating up toward them was Tom Hendsen.

Despite the danger, Alex marvelled at the creature’s ability to mimic a human form. In the sub-light environment it really did look like a person, right down to the colours in the clothing. He could now understand how it so easily lured people to its embrace in the dark.

The Tom Hendsen figure seemed to hang there in space, waiting for something, for some sign. He remembered the encounter that Mike had with the creature in the upper caves, and how it had only leaped at him when he moved. As an ambush creature and one of the few down here with sight, it was probably keyed to attack on movement.

“Nobody move a muscle.” Only Alex’s eyes moved as he watched the human form glide close to him, then down to pass over Aimee and Monica.

Silex reached the beach and looked back up to where his former team members were still stranded high on the rock face. He blinked a couple of times to remove the sweat from his eyes and also to clear his vision of what had to be a hellish hallucination. Reaching up out of the water was a tentacle whip as thick at the base as a redwood tree, but tapering at the tip to what looked to be a human body. The owner of the massive appendage was still hidden beneath the water but by its size the creature had to be enormous.

Silex looked back at his colleagues and giggled. “Can’t let that tricky Captain Hunter evade his fate this time, can we?”

He raised the handgun and fired at Alex twice, then turned to run along the sand.

The twin boom of the handgun was like thunder in the cave. This was no silent gas projectile being fired but a hard round with explosive chemical propulsion. Two things happened almost simultaneously — the creature snapped its lure away from the team on the cliff face, and the lights went out.

At first Silex could not see what was coming. The creature propelled itself so silently and smoothly along under the water that it would have been invisible even in the twilight of the glow-worms. He continued to run across the black sand in the dark, oblivious to the danger. The first he became aware of a change in his circumstances was when he suddenly became engulfed in a marine-ammonia smell that made his eyes water and his nasal passages sting. Slowly the lights winked on and with them a clearer image of what now stood before him — Tom Hendsen.

“No, no, no, you don’t want me; there are more people back there. I already wounded one for you, Tom. You know I hoped that one day we could work together. I always admired your work; your research was always impeccable.”

Silex slowly raised the gun until he had it pointed at the face of the figure.

“You know, you really should watch that Captain Hunter and that co-worker of yours. There’s something going on there.” Silex grinned and blood spotted his chin from his cracked lips. He double-gripped the gun and pulled the trigger.

The boom of the gun’s report made Silex’s hand jerk upwards and the bullet slammed into the facial area of the human form in front of him. A small hole had been punched into the flesh, but no blood flowed and no pain showed on the placid, wet-looking face. The Tom form rushed forward and slammed into him. He wasn’t knocked from his feet as the tentacle club was exuding its sticky paste. In addition, large hooks embedded themselves into his flesh. He was snared as effectively as a rabbit in a steel-toothed trap. Silex was pulled from his feet as the horror from the deep dragged itself free from the dark water.

For the first time the group saw the creature clearly — it looked like a squid but was different. Two long, whip-like tentacles and eight thick muscular arms extended from its head. From just behind its enormous eyes it was encased in cone-shaped armour plating that was dragged behind it. Nearly the size of a 747 jet plane, it looked to be easily 160 feet in length and a sick, mottled green colour. It lifted the screaming scientist towards it, briefly holding his wriggling form up to the emotionless disc of an eye and then used the longer tentacle to hand him to the shortened feeding appendages. These commenced to strip him of as many of the inedible pieces as could come away easily; his backpack and belt and his caving suit were roughly torn free and with them probably a good deal of his skin. He looked raw by the time his still struggling form was passed towards the centre of the tentacle mass. The thick arms opened to reveal hundreds of inward-pointing teeth like some sort of gigantic rasp. Silex screamed as he was gently lowered into this jagged maw. Mercifully, the tentacles closed over the disappearing form of the scientist so the others would be spared watching him be ground up and devoured.

Matt and Monica both moaned and Aimee kept her forehead pressed against the cliff wall. Alex heard Monica praying softly, hushed words calling for deliverance from damnation. Both HAWCs remained impassive, only their eyes moving quickly over the large beast, probing, searching for tactical weaknesses. The diversion also gave Alex the opportunity to get the team off the cliff face while the creature was occupied with the scientist. Up here they were as good as dead as they couldn’t stay motionless forever; at least on the sand they had a slim chance. His destination was a small cave right at the base of the cliff on the dry beach. It was only half a mile away, and it looked defendable and much too small to accommodate the large hell-snail. Monica was the first to land on the sand and it took all her willpower to stay focused on getting Aimee and Matt down and not look over her shoulder at what was happening to Silex. Tank and Alex arrived next, and Alex had to yell to stop them all either freezing or collapsing to the sand in terror. He pointed to the small opening in the rock face and yelled again for them to put their heads down and head for the cave. Aimee was too slow; Matt, Monica and Tank were already shooting along the dark metallic sand while Aimee was only just climbing to her feet on wobbling legs. In a fluid motion Alex closed the distance between them and scooped her up under his arm; his legs were pumping hard, throwing glittering black sand out behind him in a plume.

The creature detected the movement and shot its long whip-like ambush tentacle forward again. This time, just as Alex dived into the cave, he turned to see the figure of Dr. Adrian Silex presented to try to entice them from the cave. Considering they had just witnessed the scientist being peeled like a grape and devoured, looking at him now was like seeing a returned soul that had been condemned to hell. Silex was now trapped forever, united with some terrifying creature miles below the earth. Perhaps this was his punishment after all.