Black Mountain

FORTY-THREE

Hammerson went over to Matt and Sarah. He noticed Matt rubbing something small on his shirt, which he then held out for Sarah to see. As Hammerson got closer, he saw it was a broken canine tooth; a small yellow tusk about as long as Sarah’s finger.

Matt snorted. ‘Dragon’s tooth — fresh. But who’s gonna believe us, right?’

Sarah looked around at the human carnage. ‘What are we going to say about any of it? About Bill Logan being dead — all the officers, these other soldiers? How are we going to explain why we were even up here in the first place?’

‘Bear attack,’ Hammerson said. ‘Still get a few big ones wandering around this time of year.’

‘But they were damned well shot!’ Sarah said, pointing to Officer Markenson’s body and the head wound that had clearly killed him.

Hammerson shrugged. ‘Big rogue bear attacked in the dark… there was a firefight. Add in some gun-happy survivalists — they all shot each other in the confusion. Believe me, it happens.’ He looked at the bodies. ‘Don’t worry about the mess, we’ll clean it up. There’s a car coming for you. You’ve got to get to the eastern car park… and hurry.’

He waited a few minutes to make sure they’d left, then turned to look up at the ridge. He reached into his pocket for the last foil of stimulants and ripped it open, inhaling deeply. Energy flooded his limbs, but the excruciating pain in every joint and muscle remained.

He started up the side of the ridge.

Alex didn’t know how long he’d sat on the cold damp stone in the dark, alone with his thoughts. The only sounds were his slow breathing and the metronomic drip of mineralised water somewhere off in the distance. Not even his acute hearing could detect any sounds of the creatures anymore. They were gone, back to their nether world of darkness.

Good, he thought. They weren’t suited to this modern, brutal world; it would have killed them. He would have killed them, all of them if he could. He understood why the beast had severed the link between their worlds. Perhaps we seem even more monstrous to them than they are to us.

They would have ended up in the hands of the scientists, and what type of life would they have known then? One of confinement and experimentation. Alex laughed out loud in the darkness. He was describing himself and his own future. Adira had told him that his own military had wanted to cut him to pieces to see how he worked. Hers wanted to do the same. He wasn’t perceived as human anymore; he was some sort of extraordinary science experiment or advanced weapon.

‘I should be going with you!’ he shouted, and his words bounced around the cavern’s walls and into the void.

Earth has enough monsters. Who had said that to him? A young woman, years ago; she had dark hair and blue eyes, but her face refused to take shape in his mind. He let the memory slide away and looked back into the dark void.

‘You can’t hide forever, you know,’ he told the creatures. ‘They’ll find you somehow.’

Then he rose to his feet. ‘But only if they can get to you.’

He turned and jogged back the way he’d come. Now that he wasn’t focused on pursuit, he spent more time surveying his surroundings and saw that many of the alcoves he had passed without a glance on his way down were littered with debris. Not natural scree, but the rusted remains of helmets and shields and swords with jewelled handles, all now swollen with rust. There were yellowing bones everywhere too. He wondered whether these long-ago soldiers had been a last stand in the war against the giants, holding out in these tiny pockets of rock and then left behind by their generals. Such was the fate of all warriors: to be dispensable tools of war.

Alex closed his eyes as he passed the row of heads on display like trophies on a wall. Back in the main cave, he pulled from his pockets the two hand grenades he had taken from the Mossad agents’ SUV after the border-crossing ambush.

Earth has enough monsters, he thought again, and popped both pins and pressed the caps down. For a second, he contemplated just opening his hands and letting the blast carry him away too.

Not yet, he told himself. That’s too easy.

He dropped the explosives in a spot where the cave walls narrowed and the ceiling was significantly cracked from the previous earthquake. Then he sprinted to the exit and leaped out, just as a boiling orange thunderclap blew rocks out of the cave mouth like an enormous cannon.

He hit the snow-covered ground, rolled and then ran. As he’d expected, the mountain was starting to slide. In a few seconds, any evidence of the cave mouth would be gone, perhaps for another 10,000 years. The build-up of debris on the slip path below the cave caused it to loosen and fall with a thunderous rolling echo down the mountainside.

Where Alex stood there was now a sheer rock face and a drop into nothingness.

Earth has enough monsters.

He took a step closer to the edge.

After more than an hour of climbing, Hammerson reached the remains of the slip path. The enormous full moon had turned the peaks almost to daylight, and he immediately saw the source of the explosion and the freshly scraped mountainside. He laughed softly. The Arcadian always does a thorough job, he thought.

The HAWC commander examined the heavily churned pathway leading to the new drop that fell away into a mile or so of dead space. When he didn’t immediately see what he was searching for, he double-blinked the lenses over his eyes to switch them to thermal vision. All around him, footprints glowed with the last vestiges of body heat. He ignored the gigantic prints of the bipeds and focused on another set — smaller and wearing a man’s hiking boot. Their toe direction headed towards him, away from the precipice, but then they turned back on themselves.

Hammerson followed the prints right to the edge of the cliff. They didn’t look like they’d stopped at the edge.

He changed his vision back to normal and stared up at the moon for a minute, before looking around at his surroundings. He chuckled softly.

‘Not a chance, Alex. You’ve already been dead once.’