Dark Rising

THIRTY-FIVE

Ahmad Al Janaddi buzzed around the command room shouting instructions into various microphones and snapping at any technicians not quick enough to get out of his way. The president’s helicopter was only about an hour out and there was a risk they wouldn’t be ready to conduct a complete test in his presence. That would be a humiliating experience, and one the president would not forgive quickly.

Moshaddam had ordered the scientist to present an overview of the devastating potential of the sphere, and then he wished to witness another run, with the inclusion of an additional lead capsule. Al Janaddi wondered who the lucky person would be this time. He shuddered at the thought of what had happened to the last poor soul who had entered one of those capsules – perhaps he was now at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, or even deeper – at the very core of the Earth. Achhh, it is a terrible waste of life, he thought, and also a distraction. Here he was harnessing one of the greatest energy sources known to the universe, and the president wanted to play at human experiments.

Al Janaddi sighed and leaned on his knuckles on the desk. He had achieved the equivalent of splitting the atom yet it seemed to mean so little. In any other country, he thought. Why was I not born in any other country?

The creature halted at the base of the steep incline below the mouth of the cave. The large flat carapace plates on its back were a greasy, mottled green in the dawn sun. Sensory hairs running over its head bristled as it tested its surroundings for danger or prey.

The stone giant standing at the mouth of the cave was discarded as a threat. Even though its form was menacing, it gave off no life energy. The creature’s complex arthropodic eyes could see the warmth emanating from the pebbles O’Riordan had tossed from his sentry position and blurred footprints in the sand. Though the sand had been wiped clear, residual thermal energy remained just below the surface and presented a glowing pathway for the creature to follow all the way into the cave.

It shot into the opening at a startling speed, staying close to the ground as if it were inhaling the scent of the prey it followed.

‘Bingo,’ said Sam. ‘I’ve got various densities thinning into a large hollow, which stretches hundreds of feet in all directions. Deeper in, I also read multiple alloy signatures in a plated structure – that’s got to be metal sheeting, man-made. Here’s your door, boss. Irish, do your thing.’ Sam turned off the GPR, fitted it snugly into a pouch on his suit and nodded to O’Riordan.

The redheaded HAWC withdrew a long Ka-Bar blade and knelt up against the wall, closed his eyes and placed his ear to the cold, dry stone. He gave the rock a single tap with the knife’s steel pommel. Satisfied, he stood up and resheathed the blade. ‘’Bout a foot of crystalline granite. Gimme six minutes.’

Alex took off his pack and the KBELT and laid them on the ground. ‘You got three,’ he said, and nodded to the others to take a brief rest too.

O’Riordan gave a grim smile. ‘Thought you’d say that. Three it is.’

He removed his pack, withdrew several small tubes and canisters and placed them carefully on the cave floor. From one the size of a toothpaste tube he squeezed a two-foot ‘X’ on the wall. He turned and looked at Adira with a blank stare while he waited for the explosive to dry. She rested her hands on the butt of each of her guns and smiled. O’Riordan shrugged, turned back to the explosive and stuck a small metal spike into the centre of the ‘X’. He fiddled with some pin-sized dials on the spike, then lifted a canister from the ground and sprayed the wall. Pillows of foam grew to cover the entire two-foot section of the wall he’d been working on. He repacked, stood up and turned to the team.

‘Gel-based C4 – twice the boom for half the bucks. I’ve coated it in military styrocrete, which should muffle the noise and direct more of the blast wave into the stone. In case I’m wrong, it’s best if you don’t stand there – ya got ten seconds.’ He laughed and ran towards the mouth of the cave.

‘Shit!’ Lagudi ran after him and disappeared around a bend in the stone tunnel.

Adira and the others followed, with Alex jogging at the rear, shaking his head. From behind them came a sound like dry wood cracking, followed by tumbling rocks.

Alex rounded the bend into a frozen silence and a scene from one of his worst nightmares.

Framed in the mouth of the cave, gently lit by the creeping dawn sunlight, was a scorpion, spider, crab – all of them, and none. Its shape was everything that made you pull your hand from beneath the log, when you felt the touch of many unseen legs on the backs of your fingers. But now standing before Alex that horror was amplified in both its size and grotesqueness.

The creature stood like a living pillar of mottled green shell and bristling insectoid hairs. Its upper body was thrown open to reveal two powerful spiked limbs and dozens of smaller appendages that moved and clicked as if in mad anticipation of some feast to come.

Eyestalks like ropey tentacles swivelled towards Alex, and black bulbs delivered a soulless, unblinking stare that was all the more hideous for their lack of life or emotion.

There was a blinding pain in Alex’s head as a scream tore through his mind. It was an attack cry and it hadn’t come from anyone on his team.

‘Fire!’ Alex ordered.

He was first to pull his gun, followed by Adira, Sam and then Rocky. Bullets sprayed towards the creature, the impacts sounding like heavy hail on a tiled roof. Its cartilage plates clamped together in defence and the gunfire did little damage to its body.

Irish ran to squeeze between the tumble of rocks and the creature that was blocking the middle of the cave. Perhaps he was trying to draw the thing out into the open where they stood a better chance. But it moved quickly, beyond anything they had ever encountered, its hardened legs clacking as it raced towards the running man.

Only Alex saw the large serrated claw fire out at Irish – the movement was too fast for normal human vision. The blow lifted the HAWC off his feet and smashed him into the wall. His pack went bouncing off his body and skidded in the sand of the cave floor.

‘Damnit.’ Alex fired again and again at different angles, but with the same lack of result – the creature just compressed itself down behind its thick carapace plating. He could see there was little damage and the monster wasn’t going to retreat.

It moved sideways across the cave mouth, staying low against their fire, only fully opening its thorax to display its grasping claws when it was close to Irish’s fallen body. The thing had started to drag Irish towards it when Adira ran forward with both her guns held out together, firing a stream of jacketed lead bullets in an accurate but ineffective attack. At least the creature had stopped its attempt to spear the HAWC.

‘We’re hurting it, but not enough,’ Alex yelled over the gunfire. He guessed they were little more than an annoyance to the large arthropod. It swung back towards them and he saw its body compress slightly – like the way a spring coiled before it was unleashed.

‘Sam, get Irish and pull him back. That’s an order,’ Alex shouted.

He heard Adira’s guns click on empty chambers and saw her step back to reload. As she moved, the creature’s eyestalks swivelled in her direction. Alex heard the unearthly scream in his head again as the thing shivered in preparation to attack.

‘Oh, no, you don’t.’

Alex dived and grabbed Adira, rolling her away from the creature, then he physically threw her out of the way. She hit the sand near Sam who grabbed her and yelled into her ear, ‘We gotta get Irish.’

Alex came up firing again, moving in front of the creature to distract it, betting on his own speed to keep out of its killing range. He looked quickly over his shoulder and saw Adira pull her arm free from Sam. A brief spasm of anger crossed her face. For a split second Alex met her eyes and he knew she understood what he needed her to do. She and Rocky grabbed the fallen HAWC, while Sam took Zach by the upper arm and pulled him back deeper into the cave.

‘Okay, ugly, let’s see what you’ve got.’ Alex pulled his helmet visor down and reached over his shoulder for the KBELT. His hand came back empty. ‘Oh yeah, that’s right.’ It was back near the place where O’Riordan had punched through into the new cave.

The creature moved and Alex dived. He felt an impact to the back of his head and something warm on his neck. He kept rolling and wedged himself into a small crevice, barely wide enough for his body, and kept moving back into the narrow passage. He felt up to his helmet casing and it came away in two pieces. The creature’s claw had sliced the hardened ceramic in two, but only just managed to graze the back of his head. Already the trickle of blood had dried and the wound was scabbing over.

Alex raised his gun as the thing moved slowly towards the gap in the rock. Its foot-long eyestalks extended into the crack – hanging there like a shark’s dead eyes. It was dark, but Alex knew the creature saw him clearly. The sickening smell of sweet vinegar filled the crevice. Night bugs, Alex thought, remembering Zach’s description of the smell. Slowly, almost gently, the monster extended one of its claws. It telescoped on a double hinge and the large serrated blade hooked forward, falling just inches short of Alex face. The long eyestalks reappeared and shivered for a moment.

Alex lowered his gun and exhaled. ‘This ain’t gonna end well, is it?’

The stalks withdrew and the creature repositioned itself to try again. This time the claw came further, and as the serrated blade started to unfold Alex grabbed it and held on.

Visual images punched into his mind: once again he saw a heavily forested landscape – its strange colours rendered even more incredible by the orange hue of the sky and a low blazing sun of the deepest blue. The images vanished as the thing tugged against his grip. This time it was the creature’s emotions that Alex sensed – they were raw and primeval – all about anger, killing and dominance.

It pulled harder and Alex skidded forward a step. The thick bristles and large inward-curving teeth on the claw gave him a good grip and he wedged his shoulders sideways to further cement himself into the crack in the rock. But the strength of the thing was unbelievable. Alex exerted all his own strength and pulled, but the creature pulled back even harder. Thoughts of snapping off the claw evaporated as he analysed the extraordinary density of the waxy, chitinous material. The monster had obviously evolved to combat things a lot more formidable than Alex.

Alex tightened his grip and decided on one last almighty twist. Before he could move, the creature drew back its entire body and pulled him out of the crevice like a cork from a bottle. Alex had no time to react; he was whipped free and flung against the cave’s wall. Without his helmet, the side of his head impacted with the cold stone and he crumpled to the floor of the cave unconscious.

O’Riordan had done his job well – there was an almost perfect hole in the tunnel wall, three feet around and so clean that it could have been cut by machinery. The HAWCs stepped through, Rocky and Sam dragging Irish between them, but Adira held back.

‘I’m not a HAWC,’she said. ‘You must follow your captain’s orders, Sam Reid, but I don’t have to. I shall be back shortly.’

Adira picked up speed as she raced back down the tunnel, pulling both her reloaded Baraks from the front holsters. She rounded the bend and cursed when she saw what lay before her.

The creature had Alex’s body pinned to the ground. One of its large jointed legs was digging into his back, only the armadillo plating stopping it from piercing him completely. Its twin eyestalks swivelled around to peer at Adira then back to Alex. The creature leaned forward. Its mandibles opened and a spike like an oily black spear slid out towards Alex’s exposed neck. Adira had a pretty good idea what was about to happen.

She screamed at the beast as she raised both her guns and charged. The Baraks were loud and the impacts hard. She aimed for the creature’s head and was momentarily rewarded when it pulled the tube back into what passed for its face and stepped off Alex’s body.

Adira knew that if the creature could best a warrior like Alex, then she would not stand for long if it attacked her front on. She looked around and saw Alex’s destroyed helmet… and O’Riordan’s backpack. She dived for the backpack.

The creature remained immobile. Perhaps it knew that she couldn’t do it much harm, or perhaps it was hungry and wanted to stay close to its next meal. Whatever the reason, it gave Adira the few seconds she needed to dig around in the backpack and pull out the tube of C4 gel. She holstered one of her guns, thought for a second, then simply pulled the top of the tube open and squeezed a large lump of the sticky gel into her hand until she had a mound the size of a pool ball. She sucked in a breath, gritted her teeth, and sprinted at the creature, flinging the sticky ball at its back. She had no time to be careful of Alex; she just hoped the thing would shield him. And if it didn’t work, they were both as good as dead anyway.

The ball stuck; the creature didn’t even bother turning. It was once again lowering its head towards Alex’s neck.

Adira slowed, aimed at the blob and fired.

The result was more than she’d hoped for. The high-energy explosion kicked the creature twenty feet down the tunnel. It immediately righted itself, but seemed disorientated. Staying low to the ground, it scuttled away towards the mouth of the cave.

It was the only chance she was going to get. She sprinted for Alex, grabbed him under the arms and dragged him back towards the team.