Black Mountain

THIRTY-FOUR

Franks hid behind the trunk of a large spruce, and blinked back and forth between light sensor and thermal vision. She smiled and then whispered, ‘I love hot, naked bodies.’ About 200 feet further up the slope, an outcrop of stone showed a warm patch — something had just been leaning against it, something large.

Franks sprinted between some trees to improve her position, and flattened herself behind one of the trunks. She and the thing she was tracking had been playing cat and mouse for a while. It was leaving traces for her, moving heavily just out of her field of vision, then disappearing like smoke. She knew it was large, fast and feral, but was starting to doubt it was just a dumb animal. In fact, it was displaying all the traits of a hunter, and that made her feel this was becoming less a hunt and more a contest.

She leaned around the trunk — and something enormous rushed at her, its body heat and size making her thermal lens flare bright orange. She had time to raise her gun and deliver two rounds, then dive, before she was caught by the ankle. She screamed as the creature’s grip crushed most of her lower leg.

It dragged her from the ground, but she managed to twist in its huge hand and fire another few rounds. It spun her and slammed her to the ground. Her partially armoured suit protected her from the worst, but her head swam. The next time it lifted her, the gun that had been in her hand… wasn’t.

The animal’s rank stink filled her nose, and her head throbbed as it held her upside down like some giant ragdoll. She tried to hang on to a passing tree trunk, but the attempt was futile; the thing’s strength seemed to exceed hers a hundredfold. She guessed she was being hauled eastward, as she caught sight of a pale moon when the low clouds broke apart for a moment.

The giant hand swung her again, and this time she went with it, using the momentum to bend her body and reach up to her thighs and her knife sheaths. She pulled both blades free, one in each hand, and on the next swing she used the pendulum action to bring both blades together and into each side of the mighty arm that held her.

A bellow of pain roared from the monster’s mouth.

‘How’s that, motherfucker?’ Franks yelled into the darkness, and changed her lens from thermal to infrared. The colossal figure that held her immediately went from a flaring orange to nightshade green.

‘Shit!’

The creature hadn’t released its grip. It bent its head towards her and she saw its huge broad face, the heavy ridged brow, and teeth that looked as long as a tiger’s. She bared her own teeth at the grotesque features. It continued to stare at her, and she saw intelligence in those glaring black orbs, and experienced a moment of self-doubt.

She swore her defiance at it again, and it snorted and pulled away, seeming to lose interest in her. She took the opportunity to examine its torso — its anatomy was very similar to a human’s.

A single deep liver strike and Kong’s gonna bleed out, she thought.

She coiled her muscles in preparation for the strike, but the beast seemed to anticipate her move. It shook her and then slammed her into a tree. The night-vision lens in her left eye cracked but didn’t dislodge. However, she felt warmth and wetness on her face — blood.

They stopped. It had gone eerily quiet. Franks felt a sensation of… openness. Like they were in a clearing, or…

She was flung out into space.

As she fell, she looked up to see the giant figure standing on a cliff edge, watching as she plummeted to the forest below.

Aw, fuck it, she thought.

The creature watched the small animal fall away into the void. If it had more time it would have taken the head and carried the meat back to the caves. But it sensed too many threats on the mountain and all close to its lair. This was its territory now, and it was being invaded.

It lifted its huge head and sniffed. There was the smell of fresh blood on the air, and other strange scents. In the distance, it saw a flare of brightness and knew that its enemies were gathered there. They could not be allowed to stay. Never again would it allow those beings to push it back into the deep, dark world inside the mountain.

They would all be meat before the sun came up again.

Ollie Markenson crouched beside the small circle of stones, feeding twigs into the tongues of orange flame that lifted off the fire they’d started with the ball of toilet paper Parsons always carried in his pack. He half-turned to wink at the grinning men standing around him.

‘Don’t forget, when the boss asks, it was everyone’s idea.’

The cloud cover was gradually breaking up, but the overhang at the start of the long green tunnel they were huddled in didn’t benefit from the occasional moonlight. Markenson figured that if they were going to be stuck here for a while, he’d be damned if he was going to do it in the pitch dark, or risk freezing while they waited for those two bullshit FBI pricks to come back down.

He blinked away the floating retinal images of the flames that ruined his night vision and moved his hand a little closer to the warmth. ‘Hey, Pete, bring anything to cook?’ he asked Parsons. ‘I’m starving.’

There was a small cough from out of the dark and a tiny red hole appeared in Officer Parsons’ forehead. His large body fell sideways and landed heavily.

There was another cough and Oakleigh, their youngest officer, fell across the small fire. His body didn’t put it out; instead, his cheap stuffed jacket began to melt and then ignited.

Williams’s forehead exploded outwards, covering the horrified Markenson in a spray of red.

‘What the fuck!’

The only man still alive, Markenson dived for his rifle and the cover of a boulder. As he did, a bullet caught him and mule-kicked him back onto the snow. He managed to scrabble back amongst some rocks and peered around to see where the shots had come from.

The flames were higher now, feeding on Oakleigh’s burning body, and their glow extended up and along the ravine. In their light, Markenson saw three pale ghosts come down the crevasse’s steep side. All were completely white, save for the large guns they carried and the black slits where their eyes should have been. To Markenson, they looked like a squad of futuristic robots coming to send him to his death.

He tried to lift his gun, but the bullet had smashed through the muscle and bone on his left shoulder and his arm refused to work. Shit, no.

He raised the gun with his other arm and balanced it on his knee, using his leg to aim the barrel. He held his breath and fired, but in the time it took him to rebalance the gun for a second shot, one of the white ghosts was ripping the rifle from his hands and jerking him upright.

Up close, its eyes were soulless.