Beneath the Dark Ice

Twenty-three

“Let’s keep moving, everyone.” Alex ordered.

No one needed to be told twice; everyone wanted to feel the sun on their face again and avoid becoming part of the local food chain. They shouldered backpacks and prepared to climb up into the large cave. Inside the cave the walls and floor seemed to have been ground smooth by something continually coming out or going in to this part of the cave system — not a good sign.

Aimee helped Tank get to his feet. His entire shoulder and arm were now numb and there were bluish, threadlike tendrils blooming up around his neck. Under his armoured cave suit his body was a mass of darkened lumps and veins as the ancient bacteria converted his body for its own use. Aimee had done all she could; she had loaded his giant frame with penicillin and changed the dressing on the wound. However, it was clear that whatever was invading his body was winning the battle.

Tank ground his teeth from the pain and cursed to himself. The hair from his head and eyebrow on the wound side was falling out. This was not the way a HAWC should meet his end, brought down by something too small to even be seen by the naked eye. He masked the excruciating pain from Alex — if the boss saw he was badly wounded, he would feel obligated to help at a time he needed all his energy focused on getting them out. He unwound Aimee’s arm, thanked her and when she wasn’t looking he brought his clenched fist down hard onto his thigh. The new pain brought a flood of adrenaline and some clarity. Just a little more time, just a little more.

Alex could smell it now; the creature had been in here. This cave was not going to be a sanctuary and he only hoped that the beast was behind them. He didn’t relish the idea of having a giant carnivorous creature between him and their potential escape route. He looked back towards Aimee and Tank.

Alex’s unique senses detected a pressure change. There was danger approaching in the near dark, and this was not the place to be caught out. He quickly scanned left and right. Out of the mouth of the cave in the distance he could make out an enormous V-shaped wave pointed directly at them and closing fast across the sea. Something very big was coming at them at about eight knots under the water.

“Time to move, people. Now!”

There was a booming crash as something hit the shallow water like an aircraft carrier running aground. Everyone jumped and, as if on cue, the lights went out again. This time the noise continued as something gigantic was heaving itself up and out of the water with a sound like a hundred waterfalls. There were no guesses as to what its goal was or who it was after, and the continuing noise meant the lights were not going to come on any time soon.

Alex no longer had his night vision scope equipment and he no longer needed it. He turned to the source of the noise as images started to appear. He remembered the discussions and endless reports from the medical teams when his eyesight started to change. He knew normal human beings had a poor ability for night vision in near total darkness. In some animals, like dogs and cats, biological night vision is ten times more sensitive than in humans, and other animals can perceive heat and cold changes in thermal density. They could build up an image that is not quite seeing at all. The scientists had called it “sensing.”

The changes to Alex’s brain were again delivering to the limit of human physical capacity for light and heat vision sensitivity, and the images that were displayed to his brain were alarming indeed. A cold mountain was heaving itself from the warmer water and dragging itself up the beach with a scrunching squeal of crushed sand. It had just under a mile of open ground to reach them, but it confirmed to Alex why there was little large debris around and inside the mouth of the cave — this creature had been up and in here before, and this time the cave was large enough for it to follow them.

Torches flicked on in the cave and though Alex would have preferred the darkness, the team needed the light for comfort. With Alex leading the way, they all moved quickly back and along the side of the cave — all except Tank.

Alex turned to Aimee and yelled over the crushing of stone, “Keep ’em going.”

He took a few steps down towards Tank. “Move it soldier.” When there was no reply, Alex started to bound across the rocks just as Tank pinged him on his mike.

“I’m staying, sir. I can’t keep up and I’m too big even for you to carry for long. I can at least give you some more lead time — but you’ve gotta go now. Please don’t make me disobey an order.” There was a pause as Alex thought about how to respond before Tank pinged him again. “It’s been an honour serving with you.” The comm unit pinged one last time signalling the conversation had been terminated. In the distance, Alex saw Tank pull the device off his head and fling it away into the dark.

Alex could see the creature drawing closer. Trying to drag the giant soldier out against his will would be difficult, especially when he knew that what Tank had chosen to do was exactly what he would have decided to do in his position. Alex gave a half smile and spoke softly to the HAWC’s back.

“Good luck, soldier. It’s been my honour to have a man like you on my team.” He drew in a deep breath and shouted with all his strength, “Go HAWC!” It was his unit’s battle cry; and with that Alex turned and sprinted to catch up with the remaining team members.

Tank didn’t feel fear; Alex’s shout still reverberated around the cave and once again he felt strong. He had injected several CCs of pure adrenaline into his leg from his backpack med-kit and his body was drawing on its final energy reserves in anticipation of the coming combat. He alone had a night vision scope and, like Alex, could see the approaching leviathan and knew what that meant to the group. His whole upper body under his suit was strangely lumpy and his skin crawled to the touch. The side of his face near the wound was slack as the muscles had atrophied under the foreign bacterial attack. His strength had been leaving him and he knew it was only a matter of time before he needed to either lie down or be carried — neither was an option as far as he was concerned. He didn’t have a chance of winning this fight, but if he could give Alex a few more minutes’ head start, then he would have done his job.

He took his position against the side of the cave and filled his rifle with some of the liquefied propane. In one hand he held his lighter close to the end of the barrel and the other rested lightly on the trigger. Without taking his eyes from the advancing creature he whispered to himself, “See you soon, little brother.” He took careful aim at the large sticky eye now filling the cave mouth and simultaneously lit his flame and pulled the trigger.

The small team had stopped and were waiting for both HAWCs when Alex appeared out of the dark. “Let’s go.”

“Where’s Tank?” Monica was looking over Alex’s shoulder as she asked the question.

“He’s giving us a chance, Ms. Jennings. Let’s make it worthwhile.” Alex went to turn away but she stopped him.

“Will he be able to catch up to us? He was hurt.”

Alex just stared at her. It was Matt who spoke first. “Ah, shit. Tank, too? Shit, shit, shit.” Matt rubbed the back of his neck and walked away into the darkness shaking his head.

Monica was about to speak again when Alex cut her off.

“He knows what he’s doing, he’s—”

There was an explosive whump that made Monica cringe, followed by darkness and silence. Aimee looked at Alex, then dropped her eyes.

Alex turned back down the cave, his face a mask of stone. He knew that the small war Tank had been waging had been decided; he could already sense the outcome. “Let’s go.”

Matt walked close to Monica, whispering to her continuously. After many minutes he was rewarded with a smile, then a small laugh. It was many more minutes before they noticed the difference in the cave. It was almost sterile compared to the scuttling and crawling abundance of life they had seen in the outer subterranean world. The dripping mosses and glistening lichen ferns had disappeared. Not only was the cave devoid of life but it was unexpectedly dry and smooth.

“No moisture; that could be a good sign — means we’re headed for a drier atmosphere and hopefully the surface.” Monica was determined to remain optimistic.

“Excellent, now if we can just keep up this sprint pace for the next eight hours or so, in the dark, and stay ahead of the monster chasing us, we’ll be just fine.” Matt kept a good-humoured lilt to his voice in between his ragged breaths. But he, like the others, knew that at any moment they could reach another choke or find that the end of the tunnel had long since been iced over.

Alex was also formulating alternatives in the event they got to an impassable blockage. His major concern at present was the lack of cover afforded by the worn, smooth cave. If they were run down by the giant creature now, he didn’t like their chances of surviving in a stand-up fight when their only firepower was what he carried and a couple of grenades.

The grinding, pulverising noise was continuing from the way they had come, which meant they were still being pursued. Up ahead there was a slight narrowing of the cave and Aimee turned to Alex. “It’s bottlenecking, it can’t pursue us if the cave gets any narrower.”

Alex didn’t get it. How could the creature have first attacked them in much smaller caves, or for that matter, have made it all the way to the surface to attack Aztlan when it was of such an enormous size. There was no way it could get that hard shell into smaller caves. “Ms. Jennings, please scout ahead and everyone continue with the pace as is. I’m just going back to check on our friend and perhaps see if I can slow him down a bit.”

“I’ll come with you.” Alex could see a look of alarm on Aimee’s face.

“Not this time. I can move at twice the speed of all of you, and I can rejoin you very quickly, but only by myself.” He moved nearer to Aimee, removed his cracked and dented helmet and wiped sweat from his forehead before whispering to her, “I’ll be OK; they’ll need you to lead them.” Alex pulled his comm unit and headset from the helmet and stuffed it into a pocket. He dropped the helmet to the ground and disappeared into the dark like a wraith.

In the darkness Alex moved swiftly and lightly; he could hear and see almost everything around him, and what he couldn’t see, he could sense. The grinding was continuing and he needed to see how the creature was going to force its way through the first narrowing it was about to encounter. He also wanted to place one of his last grenades in its path and perhaps encourage it to change its mind and stop following them.

Alex blended back into a tiny alcove in the wall of the cave and watched the leviathan approach. He was astounded at how it laboriously pulled itself forward, dragging its giant shell behind it. It was colder than its surroundings and gave off a slight green glow. Its two tentacle clubs waved out in front of it like insect feelers probing the way ahead and maybe even tasting the air for chemical traces of the small humans it hoped to devour.

At the first junction, Alex could see that it was going to have trouble forcing its gigantic form into the slightly smaller cave. Though the cave itself was still large enough to drive a couple of eighteen-wheel rigs through, it was going to be an impossible squeeze for the giant cephalopod.

The two waving tentacle clubs were feeling the junction and assessing its size. The creature halted and seemed to be ruminating over its next step. Good, thought Alex, it’s too small, isn’t it? If it tried to drag its way into the smaller cave it may at the least slow down its progress so much that they could leave the creature long behind them.

Then there came a liquid sucking sound from the creature and Alex watched in dismay as the giant slowly pulled itself free from its shell. Mucous flooded down around it and Alex could smell sea salt, decayed meat and dozens of other unidentifiable odours that emanated from the beast’s soft body. Just like a hermit crab it could obviously move in and out of the shell at will — that explained how it was able to pursue them into smaller caves.

Now free from its shell, the creature gathered its smaller tentacles underneath it and lifted its mottled, bulbous frame upwards. It now looked more like a giant pulsating spider than a sea creature; freed from its shell it was much more agile and moved rapidly forward. Its speed had more than doubled and with its boneless body it could no doubt squeeze into very small crevices and would be able to send its attacking clubs forward to scoop his team out of the forward caves.

OK, at least it will be without its armour plating and should be more vulnerable. Alex planted his timed grenade pack on the cave floor and set it for just three minutes, then turned and sped into the dark after his small team. He doubted the grenade would do much more than cause the creature to hesitate for a minute — he needed more explosives to do any real damage to something that size, but decided to preserve his other charges for more strategic attacks or any demolition work that may be required.

A thousand feet farther into the cave Alex stopped and turned. The muffled explosion told him that his charge had gone off at the right time, perhaps even right underneath the creature and he hoped it would give them a few more minutes’ lead. Their pace was going to have to double now if they wanted to escape their pursuer, and Alex needed to devise some further ways of slowing or stopping the creature. He had the feeling that they would tire long before it did.

The creature could sense the movement of the tiny warm bloods far ahead, and also the presence of one of them close by. It could not yet see or hear the small creature, but knew it was near. As the giant pushed quickly forward, now free of its shell, the anticipation of the kill and of the feeding made it reckless; the detonation caught it right over the top of the grenade. The small but powerful explosion blew a ten-foot, thousand-pound chunk of flesh from the end of one of its muscular tentacles. It curled the tentacle stump and folded it close to its body. It registered pain but also knew that the wound was not lethal and it would regenerate quickly. It continued its advance but was more watchful for the small creature that waited by itself. This one was dangerous and needed to be taken first and quickly.