Beneath the Dark Ice

Twenty-two

The group huddled at the back of the cave. It was only about twenty feet deep but narrowed considerably so the creature could not hope to wedge itself inside. Unfortunately for the group, it didn’t need to get its entire body into the cave and Alex knew too well what sort of power it could use to drag them out when it determined its lure wasn’t working.

The cave was dark, and when the faint glow from the cold bioluminal light was blanketed by the creature’s huge bulk the darkness was almost total. Even in the near complete darkness Alex could still see the leviathan and was glad only Tank could see what he could — just outside the cave, an enormous eye began to peer into the gloom where the group had taken refuge. This was a monster of legend, perhaps the grounding of all the tales of sea monsters. Maybe every hundred generations a movement of the earth’s crust opened a rift that allowed one or more of these things to be released into the surface ocean to steal sailors from the decks of their great ships — the mythical kraken incarnate.

The Silex lure stood silently at the cave mouth just off to one side, seemingly imploring them to come closer. Because of their enhanced vision the HAWCs could see the other club snaking along the opposite wall of the cave as it hoped to catch them off guard while they had their attention focused on the human form.

“Aim for the area of the club attaching itself to the tentacle, see if you can cut it off. I’ll take a body shot and try to blind it.” Alex sighted at the giant eye.

“Roger that.” Tank aimed at the tentacle snaking its way towards them like a giant, wet-looking slug. The air in the cave was becoming an eye-watering ammonia soup and the only sound was the terrified breathing from the team behind them. The creature started to move faster and Alex barked, “Fire!”

The sound inside the cave from the gas projectile rifles was like soft clapping, but outside there was a sudden pounding commotion as hundreds of tons of flesh moved to cover itself. Tank didn’t manage to sever the club from its base but ensured it was a ragged mess when it was quickly withdrawn. Alex aimed for the eye but a moment before he fired the creature moved, turning part of its armour-shell casing towards them. Though his projectiles could punch a hole through solid steel, the biological armour plating could easily be several feet thick.

“Cease fire.” Alex waited to see the result of the push back, hoping it would discourage the creature from any further attempts to get at them if it thought it was going to be too much trouble or more pain than it was worth. However, several of the shorter, stronger tentacles reached into the mouth of the cave and began to pull the rocks away from the walls as it attempted to enlarge the cavity. They were far from safe. It was going to dig them out; it would peel open the cave like a tin of food to reach the tasty humans inside.

Again the HAWCs fired but the creature moved faster than anything that size should have been able to. Once again it withdrew its thick tentacles and turned its shell to block the cave. The HAWCs needed to keep firing into the same place on the giant beast to cause any real damage. The creature would soon re-emerge and resume tearing rock away from the mouth of the cave. At this rate within the hour they would be torn out like oysters from their shells.

Matt inched his way along the cave wall to Aimee. “Hunahpu must have had some weapon other than his spear and knife to drive these things off. Could it have been some form of natural toxin?”

Aimee shook her head. “Maybe, but probably not enough to worry something that big. I’m not sure what this thing would fear.”

“Damn, he must have used something we haven’t thought of. How could he have made it all this way and perhaps even escaped with just a gold knife and short spear? Think, think. His army is gone, his brother is dead, he’d be running, holding the torch… Hang on — of course. Fire. He had fire! Kinich Ahau wasn’t just the god of the sun, he was the god of fire as well — why didn’t I think of that before? He must have used the flaming torch to keep it away.”

Matt darted forward, keeping a hand up over his face to shield himself from the flying debris. He crouched down behind Alex. “Fire. I think they must have used fire to drive the creature off.”

Alex stopped shooting and thought for a few seconds. While Tank kept up rapid firing to try to slow the creature’s demolition of their hiding place, Alex moved to the rear of the cave. From his backpack he removed his portable propane canister and broke open the back of his rifle.

“What’s the plan?” Aimee had scurried over to Alex in the dark and put her hand on his forearm. He looked down at her. She looked tired and frightened and he wanted to give her a reassuring hug, but now was not the time.

“Whoever designed the gas projectile M98 never expected the adversary to be a giant squid, especially one that has its own armour plating. We might as well be throwing rocks at that thing.”

“That thing looks like an orthocone.” Aimee hugged herself as if from the cold even though it was over seventy-five degrees in the cave. “I knew this deep biosphere had been cut off for millions of years, but it must have been in isolation for more like hundreds of millions. That creature attacking us is an orthocone squid, the giant ancestor of all squid and octopus. It was the top of the food chain for millions of years, until it got knocked off by things like the megalodon shark. Down here it has been shielded from competition, from potential predators, from meteor impacts and any other mass extinction events in history and has been allowed to grow to an immense size.”

Aimee looked at Alex and anger flashed in her eyes as she went on. “I know it wasn’t Tom, but for a minute back there I thought it was. Tom, Dr. Silex and who knows how many others are now nothing more than some form of lower-order memory in the brain of a creature that shouldn’t even exist.”

Alex reached out and put his hand on her arm but remained silent. He let Aimee speak, knowing she had more to say.

“This is not just a little by-road on the evolutionary path; this is like a whole new world, as alien to us as another planet. We don’t belong here, Alex.”

“I’ll get us home, don’t worry.” Alex was glad it was dark as he didn’t want her to see his eyes in case he betrayed some self-doubt at the chances of their escaping. He filled the projectile compression chamber with the propane gas and quickly shut the casing.

“I’ll need your help.” He removed his lighter from his pocket and handed it to her. “All you need to do is hold that under the muzzle of the rifle so the flame is just floating in front of the barrel. I’ll do the rest.”

He was impressed; she didn’t flinch when he asked her to move closer to the giant creature. They moved into position as close to the cave mouth as they dared. Though Tank had succeeded in shooting through and amputating several of the tips of some of the tentacles, the cave was now much wider than it was only minutes before. Alex nodded to Aimee who ignited the small lighter flame.

“Show time.” Alex depressed the trigger.

The result exceeded his expectations and made him smile grimly. The compressed balls of air now had a high proportion of propane gas in their makeup and ignited when they passed through the naked flame. The range would have been severely restricted as the gas was causing the compressed ball of air to expand and the flame slowed the projectile, but still it was a spectacular result. A stream of flaming balls shot rapidly from the gun muzzle. Even slowed down, they moved faster than the eye could see to give the same effect as a thin-beam flamethrower. It looked like a burning laser that spread its gas innards on contact with the beast.

There was an explosion of activity at the cave mouth. The orthocone extracted its tentacles in a boiling mass of confused and seared flesh. As the final hooked club was being withdrawn, the image of Silex appeared, followed immediately by Tom Hendsen, then another man in a jacket with the word “Buck” across the chest, and finally the visage of a young woman holding a baby before it retreated back to the water leaving a stink of charred meat and ammonia.

There was silence in the cave before Tank yelled. “Wow, I gotta get me one of those.”

Alex walked cautiously to the mouth of the cave. The sand was deeply furrowed and large chunks of pale, mottled-green flesh littered the area. He was soon joined by the rest of the group. Monica clamped her hand over her nose and mouth.

“I get the feeling you don’t think we’ve seen the last of our multi-armed friend.” Matt was looking up and down the beach for signs of the giant predator.

“Aimee, could that thing grow its arms back?” Alex asked, without turning around.

“Yes, cephalopods have enormous regenerative powers. In a few months that thing will be as good as new. It’ll be back, Alex. Squid and octopus are smart; it won’t keep making the same mistakes.”

Alex turned to her. “Neither will we. In the military there’s something we call conflict education. In battle you want one of two things: to win outright, or to survive with greater knowledge. Every encounter with a new foe is an opportunity to be better educated for next time. We actually learned a lot today: its body is soft and vulnerable, it feels pain and shies from heat, it has an armoured body that reduces its manoeuvrability. We don’t have to kill it, Aimee; we only have to stay out in front of it.”

“Adapt or die — sounds like survival of the fittest.”

Alex nodded slowly, “That it is, Aimee, and speaking of adapting, you said that thing could regenerate in a few months — what about days? Do you remember in the upper caves we severed one of those long tentacles it’s using to try to lure us closer to it? This thing had two fully functioning clubs. I’ve got to assume it’s not the only one of its kind down here. One was a big enough problem; more than one and we might not be leaving.”

Alex also didn’t think that they had seen everything that made up the food chain, but kept that to himself as he needed everyone to stay positive about their chances of escape to the surface. Alex looked across at Tank and realised that the big soldier was still going strong with a 10,000-year-old knife sticking out of his neck.

“All right, big fella, time for some minor surgery on that neck. And no tears, OK?”

After Alex closed the last stitch in Tank’s neck, he called them all together to repack and continue on to their destination cave. No one believed that they had seen the last of the giant beast and they remembered what Aimee said about it learning from its mistakes — next time they might not be so lucky.

The rest of the trek across the wide dark beach was slow and made in either rapid sprints between potential defendable positions, hunkering down to check for sudden movement from any direction, before sprinting off once again. It took them well over an hour to reach the mouth of the large cave that was set back from the shore line in what looked to be the widest part of the beach. The mouth was paved with a floor of crushed debris, giving it the look of a gravel driveway with pieces of quartz reflecting the blue glow from the ceiling far above them. Even though the cave was dark and its size meant that they could be followed by any number of large creatures, the slight breeze rushing past their faces filled them with hope.

Monica stood in the huge opening and inhaled deeply. The cave was enormous and made the giant Deer Cave in Borneo look like a mousehole. Most importantly, it tilted upwards at a fifteen-degree angle — not much, but at least it was heading in the right direction. The faint breeze blowing past meant no smells could be detected and small sounds hidden in the darkness were muffled or disguised in the updraught — however, the very movement of air meant that the warmth was being dragged towards a cooler air pocket. It was as good as they hoped to find.

The final piece of comforting evidence to indicate they were heading in the right direction were more flaking glyphs carved into some broken stone at the edge of the cave. Thousands of years ago they had been carved into the wall, but had since crumbled to the cave floor. They paused for a break while Matt set to putting all the pieces together so they could hear the stone talk once again of the small warrior whose footsteps they were following.

“He’s still being chased. It says Qwotoan still taunts him by showing him the spirits of his lost kin. OK, this looks like… the moving, or could be… shaking ground has opened a door to the sun land, that could mean Aztlan or the surface, and now Qwotoan will find them and devour them all. There’s some more but I can’t make it out. This was meant to be a warning.” Matt sat back on his haunches and ran his hand over the ancient glyphs.

“Do you think he made it?” Monica had hunched down beside him and was looking at the broken stone as well.

“Not sure. Someone made it back to carve the story in the first cave. But it could have been anyone. We may never know whether he made it home or the creatures caught up with him; or even if they followed him all the way to the city. This area must’ve been undergoing shallow earth tremors around that time and one or more quakes opened the cave system that allowed the creatures to start to attack Aztlan and its people. Then, just as suddenly, another earth movement sealed them in or destroyed their city.” Matt rocked his head from side to side. “Of course, Aztlan could still be on the surface, but buried beneath a mile of ice. I still think the ‘sinking’ could be a reference to the ancient city disappearing below the ice as opposed to beneath the sea. At this point it doesn’t matter; at least we know we’re headed in the right direction.”

Aimee peeled back the dressing to check on Tank’s wound — though she could tell he was trying to mask the pain, he must have been in agony from the deep laceration. There was also an odd yellowish colour starting to spread around the gash that worried her. After replacing the dressing and dispensing some all-purpose antibiotics she walked over to Alex.

“I’ve been doing some thinking. Did you see the last lure the creature showed us in the cave — the girl with the baby? Her clothes were old-fashioned… I mean really old England or something.”

Alex looked at her, knitted his brows and hmmd at her to go on.

“These things copy what they’ve digested. Well, she obviously wasn’t one of the recent teams that came here. I think they have been able to get out in the past, and I think I know how.” Aimee looked over her shoulder at Matt and Monica and lowered her voice. “Those abyssal shrimp I found can only live in the deepest ocean areas in the world. The Antarctic Sandwich Trench is over 25 000 feet deep and is just off the coast. Remember you asked if they could have been washed in? I think you might be right. I think there is, or was, an open vent, a deep ocean well-spring that flushes water in from the trench.” Aimee folded her arms across her chest as though cold.

“You think there’s another way out, under the water?” Alex looked intently into her face.

“Maybe not anymore, maybe only sometimes, and not for us. These giant cephalopods can take crushing depths and freezing temperatures. Matt mentioned earth tremors. I think when the Antarctic plates shift, a vent may be opened allowing these things out, or back in. That girl was probably taken a long way away, and a long time ago.”

“Aimee, you said yourself they’re cave dwellers now. We’ve never encountered anything like these things.”

“I think they always return here, but we might never see them anyway if they stay in the deep sea trenches or seek out other underwater cave systems.” Aimee looked over her shoulder at Tank.

“Oh great. Well, let’s hope the vent is closed or only wide enough for shrimp now.” Alex wondered what the Hammer would make of all this.

“There’s something else that’s worrying me. That wound of Tank’s.”

“Deep?” asked Alex.

“Yes, but that’s not what worries me. I think it’s a type of infection, but nothing I’ve seen before. The chances are extremely high that there are microscopic life forms down here that we’ve never encountered. There’s also the chance that the knife had some sort of toxin on it. The poisons shouldn’t still be viable now, but whatever was on that knife stayed in there after we extracted the blade and it certainly isn’t getting any better with the antibiotics we’ve got. At the rapid rate the wound seems to be degrading, I think he’ll need professional medical care within twelve hours.”

“Great. Keep a look out for ladders or black cats, will you? I don’t think we need any more bad luck.”

Tank knew Aimee and the boss were talking about his wound. It took all his great strength and a warrior’s force of will to keep his focus away from the thumping ache that was spreading from his neck and down his side. It wouldn’t be long until his arm was useless and then he would be a liability to the group when they needed to be moving quickly. He would not let that happen.