Hellhole: An Anthology of Subterranean Terror

GUARD DUTY S.D. Perry

PFC Gaines was a horror nerd. The nerd thing, whatever, half the squad was nuts about video games or guns or football; everybody had their thing. Daniel “Robbie” Robb liked mixed martial arts, himself — Anderson Silva was the GOAT — and he enjoyed a good horror flick every now and again… but Gaines didn’t want to talk about Jigsaw or Leatherface, he was a book guy, and he’d read every story ever about caves and monsters and military experiments gone wrong, and he wanted to share. He wanted to talk about what was in the chamber behind them, and what it might mean.

Fucking Gaines. It was 0230 and they were nearly a mile into the side of a mountain, alone. The engineers had run a line of lights all along the roof of the main tunnel, but the lights weren’t that bright and parts of the tunnel were wide. Heavy shadows gathered to either side of the long slope in front of them, leading up from the crack they’d been set to guard. The few openings to dead-end side tunnels were as black as deep space.

Robbie leaned against the cold stone wall, half-listening to Gaines tell another stupid story, wishing he was down here with anyone else. The squad had been pulled off a base rotation in Afghanistan a week ago, flown to the Al Hajar mountains in Oman to set up camp support for a trio of military scientists, all officers. The brass joined a small group of civilians already working the “dig,” a tunnel system uncovered in a spring landslide. The lead Army doc, Captain Pruitt, had locked things down tight. No access to the BFD room that had everyone spazzing out without permission and an escort. The civilians were pissed, but they were working on Federal grant money and couldn’t say shit. Sarge said the only reason they weren’t already locked out was because they’d agreed to help Captain Pruitt. Although why the Captain thought he’d get anything useful from a couple of academic gray-hairs and a half dozen sloppy grad students, Robbie couldn’t figure.

Robbie had initially been happy about getting pulled out of the boiling, deadly desert to babysit scientists in an insurgent-free zone, but this was his first shift watching the Rosetta Room and he fucking hated it. A million tons of rock were balanced over his head and the cold was bone-chilling and Gaines wouldn’t shut the fuck up with his creepy shit. Robbie was only letting him talk because the silence of the tunnels was worse. Except for a few bats and bugs right at the jagged opening, the system was totally dead. No moss, no spiders or whatever, nothing. All the guys who’d pulled watches had talked about the unnatural quiet and Robbie had nodded along, but he hadn’t really understood. It was like being buried alive.

“… so the narrator and the pilot go down into the ice caves and find all these murals that tell about how these creatures had their own civilization, millions of years before mankind even existed,” Gaines said. “And they learn that those monsters they found, that they thought were dead? They’re actually immortal. And then they start hearing all these sounds coming out of the dark, and that’s when they realize they’re not alone down there in the tunnels.”

“What the fuck?” Robbie snapped. “Are you kidding me? Can you talk about anything else?”

Gaines pushed his glasses up his nose. “I can’t think about anything else. Have you looked in there?”

He nodded at the crack between them. Three feet across at the middle, and tapering slightly at the top and bottom, it ran all the way up the eight-foot wall at the very end of the tunnel system. It reminded Robbie of a cunt, but not in a good way. Absolute blackness lay on the other side. They were calling it the Rosetta Room because it had a bunch of languages carved on the walls, like that one famous stone.

“Yeah, and?” Robbie asked. “Writing on the walls, a rock in the middle.”

“There are drawings, too,” Gaines said. “Of things, with claws. And it’s not just a rock, it’s some kind of altar. With an inscription, and when the translation programs are done running—”

“Yeah, they’re going to figure it out and then somebody will read the inscription,” Robbie said. “You said already. Here’s the thing, though — you really think anything’s going to happen? Do you actually believe in magic occult shit? Really?”

“Actually, I don’t,” Gaines said. “I mean, I never have before. But dude, if it’s all bullshit, why are we down here guarding it? The university team only got here two weeks ago. When they saw what they had, they sent an urgent request for extra funding, right? With pictures. And within days, we’re here to back up Pruitt, who also got pulled out of some active shit to take this thing over. Since when does the military give a crap about ancient runes? Somebody high up on the chain doesn’t think it’s bullshit, at all.”

“So? Lot of people believe in angels, doesn’t make ‘em real. And you’re overthinking it, dude. Isn’t it way more likely that the pictures got flagged because it’s some kind of code? Sarge says maybe terrorists have been using it to pass messages, or something.”

“I don’t think so,” Gaines began, but before he could get going, they heard sounds. Voices, but distorted by distance, unintelligible. A woman was talking, her voice rising and falling, an edge of desperation to her tone. The sound swelled through the tunnel, carrying through the barely contained blackness.

Had to be Datlow. One of the gray-hairs, an American archaeologist in her fifties. Total lez, probably, unless she was banging the equally unappealing language prof, the Arab with the nose hair problem.

Robbie and Gaines straightened up and unslung their M4s. Someone spoke, a brisk, male response. Captain Pruitt? Another voice took up, deep and rasping. The Arab professor, Safar. He sounded even more agitated than Datlow.

The voices went back and forth, and there were footsteps, lots of them. Robbie held the M4 across his chest and stared up the tunnel’s throat, waiting for the visitors to come into view. The lights along the passage’s roof were dull and yellow, illuminating only a narrow trail in the deep darkness. The thin, glowing line stretched all the way to where the tunnel branched, nearly a quarter mile ahead of them. There were a couple of battery lamps at their feet, but they were small and didn’t keep the shadows from creeping.

Their helmet radios crackled, even as the first shafts of light swung into the tunnel from the west, tiny sparks floating in front of shadowy walking figures. Five, six people.

“This is Washington,” the voice in Robb’s ear crackled. “Captain Pruitt and Lieutenant Barr are with me an’ Young, and the professors. Uh, Dr. Datlow and Dr. Safar.”

“Copy,” Robbie said, looking at his watch. 0250. He wasn’t sorry that there were more people in the tunnels, but why so many? Why so late?

Gaines looked stricken. “They figured it out,” he breathed, covering the helmet’s mic. “Oh, this is bad, I’m telling you.”

“Shut up,” Robbie said. The woman was talking again, Robbie picking out a few words as the party approached. “…can’t… responsible… wait—”

Captain Pruitt said something Robbie didn’t catch. He was in the middle of the group; Robbie could tell by his height and the way he walked, a long stride, shoulders back, head up. The two profs were on either side of him, yammering away. Barr was carrying a laptop case, hurrying to keep up on his short legs. PFCs Washington and Young were on either end, the only ones wearing helmets, their M4s slung. As they got closer, Robbie could see that the captain wore his sidearm, a Sig P320.

The conversation got louder, but not much clearer.

“It says what will happen,” Safar said. “Please, you have to consider how long ago these things were written! How could they have known about specific wars, or space travel, or genetic engineering?”

“Another Nostradamus,” Pruitt said, dismissively. “Science fiction from the past.”

“If you don’t believe any of it, then why bother with this?” Datlow asked. “There’s so much to digest here, we should study this further. There’s no reason to do this now.”

“There’s no reason not to,” Pruitt said. “I said I would listen to you, but you’re both talking nonsense. Nothing’s going to happen.”

“Then why go through with it?” Datlow asked again. She had sharp blue eyes and the thin lips of a maiden aunt. “You read the translation. It says that a man of war will secure the end by his ignorance. How can you just ignore such specificity?”

“Because my orders are to see if there’s anything to this, and that’s what I’m going to do,” Pruitt said. “You’re doctors, both of you. Honestly, I’m surprised at this… this reticence to debunk a prophecy in the simplest way possible. Your superstitions are not at all compatible with science. I’m not the one demonstrating ignorance here.”

The group reached Robbie and Gaines and salutes were exchanged. Washington and Young were antsy, shoulders up, jaws tight. Young was high-strung in general, but Declan Washington was usually as cool as shade. Robbie wondered what they’d heard, walking in.

“In other circumstances I would agree,” Datlow said. “But we translated the words in the very year the prophecy names, a prophecy thousands of years old. Do you understand how astronomically small the chance of that is?”

“That’s assuming we’ve got all of the numbers correct, and I’m not convinced of that,” Pruitt said.

“You’ve touched the stone,” Safar said. “You must have felt it. Its power.”

Pruitt looked at him with disdain. “Lieutenant Barr and I are going into the chamber now. Washington, Young, please escort the doctors back to camp.”

The relief on the guys’ faces was almost comical.

“Yes, sir,” Young said, nodding so rapidly that his helmet shifted.

“Doctors?” Washington said, and he gestured at the long ascent.

Lucky fuckers. Robbie didn’t like how this was sounding at all, and Gaines was dancing around like he had to pee, his mouth a pinched line.

“Captain, please,” Safar said. “Please, it costs nothing to wait another day, to talk about this!”

“This is a US military operation,” Pruitt said. “It costs a lot, actually, and we’ve all got other places to be.”

He nodded at Barr, who sidestepped into the chamber. A second later the lieutenant threw the switch that lit up the room, a metal clatter of sound. The tunnel’s lights dimmed slightly as the generator took on the additional load. The tunnel seemed to grow wider, like the dark had suddenly gained strength, readying itself to swallow them.

A yellow glow spilled from the crack. The captain turned and slid into the opening after the lieutenant, jacket scuffing against the dry rock.

“Doctors?” Washington repeated.

“We have to go,” Datlow said, her voice strangely inflectionless. “Now. We have to go now.” She turned and started walking quickly back up the slope. Young hurried to catch up, shooting an anxious look back at Washington.

“We can’t let him do this,” Safar called after her, and Robbie stepped in front of the crack, ready in case the Arab tried anything. He almost hoped that he would, that something would break the incredible tension that had gathered in the tunnel, thicker than the shadows. What was this crazy shit?

Datlow looked back at them, at Safar, and Robbie saw how scared she was, her eyes bright with it.

“They’ve got guns, Ahmed,” she said. “And he’s probably right. Undoubtedly. It’s — I need to call my daughter.”

She turned back toward the exit and broke into a jog, Young at her side.

“Let’s go.” Washington put his hand on Safar’s shoulder, trying to pull him away.

“You have to stop him,” Safar said, looking at Washington, then at Gaines and Robbie. His dark gaze was feverish and bleak. His nose hair quivered. “It’s the end of the world in there, don’t you understand? You can’t let him recite the inscription in that room. Please, please stop him before he—”

Washington yanked the babbling professor’s arm hard enough to back him up a step. “I said, let’s go. Don’t make me keep asking.”

“What is it?” Gaines asked, looking at Safar. “A curse? Another dimension?”

Safar’s miserable gaze had fixed on the crack in the wall. He didn’t answer.

“Ahmed!” Datlow’s shout echoed through the long tunnel. Washington yanked the Arab’s arm again and the man stumbled but didn’t look away from the crack. He’d started muttering under his breath, reciting a prayer or some shit.

Robbie pointed his rifle at Safar. Whatever else was going on, the Arab had been asked and then ordered to leave. He could get the fuck out of Robbie’s face, pronto.

Safar turned abruptly and started after Young and the woman, Washington on his heels, hurrying him along with a few more pushes. Within seconds, Safar started to run, too. The echo of boots on rock filled the corridor as all of them fled for the exit. In spite of the cold, Robbie prickled with sweat. The fuck was going on? Had everyone gone insane?

Gaines turned and looked at Robbie. His voice was a harsh whisper. “We need to get out of here.”

“You need to calm the fuck down,” Robbie whispered back, darting a look through the crack in the wall. There were five lamps in the big room, spaced out in a rough circle. Shadows pooled between them, the lights casting a yellow pall over the intricate carvings that covered the walls, extending to the domed ceiling fifteen feet overhead. The lieutenant had a laptop propped on the big rock in the middle of the room, Pruitt looking over Barr’s shoulder at whatever was on the screen.

“Didn’t you hear what they were saying?” Gaines asked. “It’s some kind of prophecy about the end of the world. If the captain says whatever the words are, something’s going to happen.”

“Don’t even start.”

Gaines pointed up the tunnel. “The experts are fucking running, man.”

The four had already made it most of the way up the slope, the lights dwindling quickly. Seeing the dimly lit figures recede made Robbie feel really shitty, like he was on a sinking ship watching the last lifeboat sail away. Like he’d cut the line himself.

Pussy. You’re scared because of some woo-woo college professors and fucking Gaines?

“Robbie!” Lieutenant Barr called from inside the chamber, his voice echoing, sounds overlapping. “Bring one of those lanterns in here!”

Robbie grabbed one of the lamps, shaking his head firmly at Gaines, who looked poised to bolt. He mouthed the word no and then turned sideways and sidled into the chamber.

The captain looked up and pointed to the south side of the room. “Put it over there, about five feet from the wall. In front of that big divot.”

“Yes, sir.” Robbie hurried to comply, trying not to look at any of the drawings Gaines had talked about and failing totally. They weren’t obvious within the long lines of glyphs and pictograms etched into the reddish tan stone, but they were there, leaning in at the corners, reaching up through cracks in the steep walls. No two were alike, but none of them made sense — long shapes that were more negative space than actual lines, the bodies defined by limbs that curled like tentacles or ended in hooks. Jagged teeth depicted mouths too big for narrow bodies. Holes had been gouged that might have been eyes, blank and misshapen. The creatures were mostly fluid, like octopi or amoebas, but there were several with insectile legs sticking off. In short, they were disturbing AF.

Robbie put the lamp on the floor in front of the divot — a roughly chiseled depression as big as a backyard pool, surrounded by extending rings of etched symbols. Who the fuck had carved that shit out? What kind of lunatics had carried ladders a mile into a black tunnel to decorate a room? Did they even have ladders back then?

He turned to the captain, who nodded. “Good. No one else comes in. You boys keep us locked up tight. This won’t take long, then you can walk out with us.”

“Yes, sir,” Robbie said, and hurried back to the crack, glancing sidelong at the room’s single feature, a rectangular rock about four feet high, three wide, and slanted at the top. Symbols were etched all over it, dots and lines and curves like waves. The captain looked like he was getting ready to make a speech to the big divot, Barr’s laptop open on the stone. The lieu was messing with his phone close by, holding it up as if to film.

Robbie squeezed back through the crack, stepping back into the tunnel just in time to see the tiny lights far ahead disappear west.

Gaines leaned in, talking fast. “We should get out of here, man, I’ve seen this fucking movie and it doesn’t turn out good for anybody. Let’s just go. We can catch up to the guys and—”

“And what?” Robbie whispered. “Go tell Sarge we got scared? Captain says no one else gets in and we’re on watch, this is our job. We’re going to stand here and do our fucking jobs.”

“But what if it’s true, what if—”

“Seriously, if you don’t shut up, I’m going to clock you,” Robbie said. “You’re as crazy as they are, getting riled up over King Tut’s curse or whatever. This isn’t a fucking movie—”

Barr was talking, and Robbie shut up so he could hear. Gaines cocked his head toward the crack, his eyes too big behind his smudgy glasses.

“…was very specific, but obviously the phonetics are a crap shoot,” the lieutenant said. “There are alternates for every sound, these are just ranked by probability.”

“What’s this part?” Pruitt asked.

“Let’s see… ah-nee-suh ay-yah ook, c’thy oth sai nah-ee oh kuh.”

The k sounds were thick, like Barr was clearing his throat. The captain repeated the nonsense several times, smoothing the syllables into words. “Anisaiauk, c’thioth sinaio’k.”

They went through the process a couple of times, the captain apparently pointing at words, Barr sounding them out, Pruitt repeating them. The language sounded primitive and weird… And were the shadows in the cave growing? No, of course not. Although, if the generator went out suddenly, Robbie thought he might shit himself.

Gaines was making little groaning, anxious panting noises, like he was about to hurl. Robbie stared straight ahead, getting more and more irritated with Gaines because now he had a bad feeling, and it was Gaines’ fault, and being annoyed was infinitely better than the deep dread that was sitting in his guts like a rotten meal.

“All right, let’s do this,” Pruitt said, finally.

“Recording at 0304.”

The captain started to speak, his voice clear and calm, powering through the foreign language. Gaines had taken a few steps back from the crack and seemed to be trying not to hyperventilate as the ugly sounds of the ancient words whispered up the dead corridor.

A hoarse cry echoed through the tunnels.

For a second Robbie thought horrible things, but the shout turned into words, stop, you have to stop! Safar. Running footsteps filled the tunnel, the man’s hysterical cries getting louder, Washington shouting after him to halt or he was going to fire.

Goddamn, the Arab lost his shit! Had he gotten hold of a weapon? Robbie raised his M4, gaze straining at the dark, his heart pounding. The captain’s voice was getting louder, too, belting out the words like he’d been born speaking them.

“Sethiu’k’atas, esa naiu’shu t’na’k, aiu hath iutho—”

“Captain Pruitt!” Gaines shouted at the crack, voice high and desperate. “Sirs, we might have a situation, maybe you should stop now!”

The captain raised his voice to shout over Gaines, the words thundering, too loud, like a bullhorn had suddenly come into play. Safar was still coming, still yelling, but his shouts were lost beneath the captain’s booming incantation.

Safar ran into the top of the tunnel, a smudge of shadow barreling down the slope, no flashlight but clear enough to make out. Robbie trained for center mass—

— and a beam swept into the tunnel behind the running professor.

Fuck!

“Washington, get back!” Robbie called, but the soldier was gaining on the Arab, had slung his rifle and was going in for a tackle.

“Anaiu thi’k’thi lu esa—” The Captain’s words were impossibly louder.

“Stop him!” Safar shrieked, close enough that Robbie could make out the black hole of his open mouth and then Washington dove and they both crashed to the tunnel floor. Safar flailed and kicked, punching wildly.

Robbie ran toward them, their struggle drowned out by the captain’s recitation. Gaines ran at Robbie’s side, deathly pale, his M4 hugged to his chest.

Washington was on top of Safar, delivering a beat down, spitting curses. Safar had stopped fighting back, only tried to cover his head, shouting weakly, incoherently.

“Hey, hey!” Robbie called, and Washington looked up, panting.

“As ethiu’k ah na! Ak na!” Pruitt screamed the final words almost triumphantly, and then Barr cried out, a shriek of absolute terror—

— and the ground shook and rumbled and shifted, and then Robbie was going sideways, plowing into Gaines who crashed to the tunnel floor. Dust rained down, the motes brilliantly lit by a deep, sickly purple light that suddenly poured into the tunnel from the crack at the bottom.

“Run!” Gaines shrieked, stumbling to his feet and then tearing up the slope. Robbie took off after him.

The captain’s Sig fired and something screamed, drowning out the blast of the nine millimeter.

Fuckfuckfuck!

Robbie was running flat out, but that scream got him running faster. It was a massive, guttural bellow that shook his bones and made his guts turn to water, the roar of a bull gator the size of a Cadillac. He outpaced Gaines, but Washington had joined them and was faster, pounding past Robbie, kicking up dust.

Captain Pruitt’s shriek of agony was cut off cold, the echo chased by an unearthly trumpeting, like an elephant with a wet bone in its throat. Rocks shattered in an explosion of sound and the tunnel in front of them lit up with alien light.

Washington looked back, his bared teeth and the whites of his eyes glowing purple. Whatever he saw sent him diving sideways, toward the unlit dead-end with the covered cess bucket on the tunnel’s east side.

Robbie didn’t look back. He ran into the narrow passage after Washington, Gaines piling in behind him. Gaines tripped and crashed to his knees, knocking Robbie off balance.

“Help me!” Safar screamed. Robbie swung his rifle up and stepped around Gaines. He darted a look around the edge of the passage.

Safar was stumbling up the slope, blood pouring from his nose — and behind him, a fast-moving wall of slick gray flesh puckered with circles of thick, translucent hooks, curved like claws. The misshapen wall pulsed, morphing appendages at the edges pulling it up the tunnel.

The silent mass swept over Safar, dropping on him like a heavy wet blanket, and Robbie saw a dozen slits in the monster’s back, black and shining, the smallest the size of a man’s fist. They opened and closed as the thing clenched itself, and Safar’s muffled shriek faded to nothing.

Eyes.

The thing’s skin started to bubble like mud and change color, darkening. Robbie pulled his head back inside — but not before an entirely different monstrosity crawled through the smashed rocks at the bottom, something with too many legs. More alien screams and howls poured up from the broken chamber.

“I told you, I fucking told you,” Gaines said.

“It’s what they were saying,” Washington gasped. “The end of the world!”

“Shut up,” Robbie said, because he couldn’t call bullshit. Fucking Christ, what the fuck?

Horrible noises swelled from the chamber, thumps and slithers and wet slaps, moving into the wide tunnel. Robbie backed up, Gaines and Washington making room, all of them crammed behind the chemical bucket at the short passage’s dead end. The shadows of their narrow shelter were smudged by that sickly purple, the light flickering as things moved in front of it. Something chuckled, a deep, humorless clatter that rose and fell.

The light was blocked out completely as the first thing moved past their hiding hole, a smell like gangrene and blood washing over them. It moved quickly for something so big, blocking the light completely for the space of a breath before it was past. Robbie only got a vague sense of its form, a giant, bubbling slab of meat.

Robbie didn’t fire, nor did Washington or Gaines. Maybe, like him, they weren’t so sure it was a good idea to attract any attention. A second creature the size of a young bull ran after the first on spiders’ legs as thick as tree trunks, set wide in its heavy body. It was headless, its yawning mouth on its back, long needles of pale teeth cross-hatched along the spine. The mouth, if that’s what it was, was big enough to chomp a man in half, easy. Three bulbous eye-stalks or antennae stuck up from its stumpy rear, the appendages ducking and swiveling as it skittered past, grit crunching beneath its wide, stick-like feet.

The chuckling monster rolled past behind the spider-thing on a trail of glistening slime, a warty, black slug as big as a walrus with thick, wiry hairs protruding from its back. It smelled like old puke, the odor so bad that Robbie felt spit curdle in the back of his throat. He thought he heard Gaines make a choking noise, but it was hard to tell over the clatter of the monster’s undulating chuckle, or the deep bellow that spilled up from the shattered Rosetta Room. Robbie pictured a giant alligator down there, but it was probably way worse.

“They’re heading for camp,” Washington whispered, his voice crackling in Robbie’s helmet.

“No shit,” Robbie whispered back. He froze as a fourth monster wriggled past, sliding tendrils of flesh hissing over the rocks at their hideout’s entrance. It looked like a rolling knot of eels, hundreds of them. The limbs that snaked into their small tunnel were close enough that Robbie could have taken a single step forward and touched the crepey, murky-green of pocked flesh. It smelled like meat dropped in a fire.

It slithered past them, following the others.

“What do we do?” Gaines asked.

The M4s each held thirty. “Anyone got extra rounds, second mag?” Robbie asked.

Unhappy negatives all around. They were on guard duty where the biggest threat was supposed to be pissy college students.

Ninety rounds between them, and a fifth monster stalked past their hiding place, a membranous mass of bizarre angles that hurt to look at. It reminded Robbie of layers of bat wings, and it crawled like a bat, on bony joints draped with stretched skin. The thing slipped on the mucilaginous slime left by the slug and trumpeted from an unseen orifice, its high bray so loud that Robbie’s ears went numb.

“We gotta get out of here,” Washington said, as the thing moved past.

“Yeah, how?” Robbie asked. “Join the parade? We wait here; we shoot anything that tries to come in.”

“What the fuck are we waiting for?” Washington said.

“For these things to clear out,” Robbie said. “We leave when they stop coming through.”

“What makes you think they’re going to stop?” Gaines said. “We don’t even know where they’re coming from. There could be hundreds. Thousands.”

“Everyone’s asleep,” Washington said. “They’re gonna get slaughtered.”

“No way,” Robbie said. “We got grenade launchers out there. Sarge’ll kick these things asses.” Assuming he woke up. Assuming everyone woke up and didn’t freak the fuck out.

Assuming these things can die.

“If they fire at the tunnel, it’s going to cave in,” Gaines said. “We’ll be trapped down here in the dark, with them.”

“Jesus, will you shut up?” Robbie wished he could see to smack Gaines, but the other men were only blurs in the purple-tinged dark. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Listen!” Gaines whispered.

There was something moving below in the room, something wet but maybe not that big… And there was a hum, a thin, reedy pitch, high, wavering. Distant. What was that? It sounded like… Robbie didn’t know.

The primordial gator-thing roared again from down in the room. The sound was so deep it was a vibration, so loud that the tunnels roared back. As the echoes died, Robbie heard the high sound again. It had thickened, lower sounds joining the swelling noise.

“We have to destroy the altar,” Gaines said.

“What? No! Why?” Robbie asked.

“Can’t you hear them?” Gaines asked. “They’re all coming.”

Robbie’s terror spiked at Gaines’ desolate pronouncement. It sounded exactly like a million screaming monsters at the end of a long, empty valley, charging across. He could see them, broken lines of lurching, leaping horrors running through a vast dark, running toward a pinpoint of purple light far ahead. Toward us.

“The fuck,” Washington said, miserably.

“Pruitt opened a door,” Gaines said. He sounded breathless. “We don’t close it, there’s nowhere to run. You think twenty guys with small artillery are gonna stop an army of these things?”

Robbie’s whole body clenched. He wanted out, bad, but Gaines wasn’t wrong about what good the squad would be against a thousand actual monsters.

What could anybody do? How fucked is everything, if they get out?

“Breaking the rock, that’ll close it?” Robbie asked.

“It has to,” Gaines said. “The invocation or whatever is written on the altar, right? Safar said it had power. We break it, maybe we end this.”

Shit fuck!

The wet whatever-it-was slopped closer to their tunnel. Two, three, bird-things zipped past: dark, winged blurs as big as eagles that trailed long, whipping tails. One of them went high and slammed a light on the tunnel’s roof. It hissed like a snake and Robbie saw its long, toothy snout and hooded black eyes, feathers that looked like charcoal cobwebs before it flapped out of sight.

Something screamed from the west, a howl that wound into the tunnels from outside, high and alien and malicious. The bull-spider? The living wall of hooks? Shots fired, scattered bursts of M4s and for an instant he felt hope, but the thing screamed again and was joined by the hellish cries of two others, the trumpeter and a new voice like nails on a chalkboard. They kept screaming, a hellish, feral harmony that was dropping in pitch.

That the rounds aren’t stopping.

From the Rosetta Room something grunted, an impossibly deep, animal noise. Beneath it, the sound of the encroaching army grew, screeches and roars rising out of the clamor.

“We gotta do this now,” Gaines said.

“Okay,” Robbie said.

“You’re fucking crazy,” Washington said. “You hear what’s in that room? It’s a fucking dinosaur or something!”

“We can’t stay here if there’s more coming,” Robbie said. “You want to run for the exit with a hundred more of those things behind you?”

“Oh, fuck this shit in the fucking ass,” Washington said.

“I’m in front,” Robbie said. “You’re right behind me, watching the west side of the tunnel. Gaines, cover our six. Short bursts, we go fast and stick together. We blast whatever’s in the room and break the rock, then we are fucking out of here. That’s the plan, okay?”

“Good, okay,” Gaines said.

“Motherfuckers,” Washington said, and exhaled. “Okay.”

Robbie edged toward the entrance, the other two lining up behind him. The wet-sounding thing was close, maybe twenty feet south and low to the ground. Whatever it was crept across the rocks in uneven, moist slaps, like fat fish being whacked on river stones.

Robbie ducked to look. The creature was like a thick, pale flatworm, five feet long, maybe, and two across, but barely a foot thick. More than a dozen stumpy legs stuck out of its weird body and it slapped half of them down and rolled over itself, humping its long, muscular form into an arch, more of its legs slapping down, edging the thing up the shadowy tunnel. Its corpse-skin glowed wet in the purple light.

The crack at the bottom of the slope had become a wide, jagged hole littered with rocks, the eerie light blasting from inside, staining the sane light of the tunnel’s roof strip with its otherworldly hue.

The screaming of the running horde grew louder.

Fucking do it, go!

Robbie stepped into the tunnel and pointed the short weapon at the humping flatworm, finger light on the trigger. He fired twice, two bursts of three, catching it as it reared up. The steel-topped copper slugs smacked into the strange flesh, ripping off one of the stumpy legs. The monster spasmed silently as dark ichor splattered from the curling, trembling body, flowing like chocolate syrup over its pale skin.

It flopped over and stopped moving, but there were more things coming, three dark shapes emerging from the glowing hole, loping toward them. They were four-legged and the size of large dogs, but their bodies looked flayed, all sinew and bone and dark muscle, with plates of bone rising from the front shoulders. Their heads were flat like a lizard’s, their jaws as wide as their heads, hanging open, revealing teeth like knives. As they charged up the slope, Robbie saw that they had insect eyes, rounded clusters of glistening black orbs high on their earless skulls.

Robbie targeted the closest and strode forward, firing.

The first took three shots to its barrel chest and issued a shriek like somebody stomping on a parrot. Holes opened in its body, but no blood came out, only dust or smoke. It staggered but kept coming, still making that horrible noise.

Robbie fired again, aiming for those wide jaws. The grouping went low, tore into the thing’s short, thick neck.

The air around the monster was getting thicker, darker, as smoke or dust poured from the new wounds. Its scream turned into a choking rasp. It stumbled a few steps and then pitched forward, still jetting streams of dark gas.

Washington was firing at the one on the right. Its scream picked up where the others had died. Robbie targeted the third.

He aimed for the hanging jaw, but it jumped. The rounds snapped into the thing’s left foreleg near the shoulder and it crashed to the tunnel floor, squawking furiously, thrashing against the rocks as it tried to get up.

Washington’s target was down, smoking, the gas flowering like ink in water. Robbie walked quickly ahead and fired another burst at his target’s sleek, horrible skull. One of its compound eyes ruptured, dark slime spraying, and its stringy body went limp.

Robbie hurried past the bloody flatworm, breaking into a jog. The longer it took them to get to that altar, the more things that could come out. Washington stayed on his heels, cursing softly in a steady stream. Gaines shuffle-stepped after them, breathing heavily.

They had to go through the fog of the dog-lizards’ impossible blood, a choking, noxious smoke that burned Robbie’s nose and eyes and put a taste in his mouth like fish oil. They were all gagging before they got through the miasma. Robbie’s eyes watered, but he kept them fixed on the glowing hole, closer now. His ears rang from the stutter of the M4s.

Something spilled out of the hole, something big.

It came out in a humped crouch but unfolded itself into the tunnel, another wall of flesh like the thing that had gotten Safar — a thing that stretched its pulsing parts to the tunnel’s ceiling and one wall, pulling its unlikely body forward. Thick crescents of talon or tooth stuck out of the gray flesh, hooked like claws. It rippled toward them like some giant manta ray, shapeless blobs of flesh at its edges forming into rough clumps that shot off and grabbed the rocks of the ceiling and the west wall.

Robbie and Washington both opened fire, rounds ripping into the pulsing center of whatever it was. Its scream was the bright pitch of a tea kettle, coming from its back, echoing into the glowing chamber behind it. Black sludge oozed from the holes. The claws spasmed and hooked at the air, and they both fired again.

“Ah, shit!” Gaines fired at something behind them.

The shrieking wall of claws was collapsing, folding forward. Robbie let off a burst at a handful of the winking eyes on its back as it slouched to the floor, then turned to see one of the “birds” flying at them. Gaines fired again and punched through one of its wings. Bloodless, shredded tatters trailed the thing’s erratic path. It hissed like a bucket of water on a roaring fire but didn’t slow down.

Robbie fired but missed as the thing arrowed its body and dove at Gaines, still hissing. It slammed into his face, knocking him backwards, wrapping its dark wings around his head. Its tail curled like a scorpion’s stinger and needled into Gaines’ throat, fast, stinging again and again.

Robbie swung the M4 down and tried to rake the creature off while Gaines flailed. He’d dropped his rifle, both hands pulling at the monster as the tail kept stinging, jabbing.

Robbie jammed the barrel under its lean body, pushed up and fired. The burst knocked the thing off Gaines’ face, leaving scraps of web and some sticky, whitish liquid behind, like it had cum on him. The monster’s wings fluttered and twitched all over, and it went still.

Gaines clapped his hands to his throat. Robbie could see the skin swelling beneath his fingers, going purple.

“The altar,” Gaines gasped, and then he was choking, neck puffing into infected lumps, inflating like a handful of water balloons. Dark threads of poison raced beneath the skin of his face, his eyes turning red and then drifting. The swellings went shiny and then split, blood pouring from the rupturing flesh. Gaines was dead before the first streams of blood hit the tunnel floor.

Washington was firing again.

Robbie scooped up Gaines’ M4 and turned. Another of the coiling eel monsters had come out of the chamber and was slithering towards them, limbs curling and flexing. It had to be six feet at its girth, but its tentacles stretched to the ceiling.

They both fired into it and dark fluids splashed, running down its limbs. Soundless, it came faster, coiling toward them like living, swirling smoke, like a bad fucking dream.

“Die, bitch!” Washington screamed, and emptied his mag, rounds stitching through the undulating monster’s dancing limbs, shredding them, chunks of greenish flesh hitting the rocks.

The thing stopped, collapsing. The gore smell was gagging, burnt meat and tangy metal. Washington was still trying to fire, finger white on the locked trigger.

“Take it,” Robbie said, holding out Gaines’ M4, looking back up the tunnel. Weird dead bodies and blood smoke, Gaines and purple shadows. Nothing moved.

The gator monster down in the room let out another guttural cry. Robbie could feel it more than he could hear it, his ears ringing too much for him to discern how close the army was getting. How many shots did he have left? Twelve? Nine?

The lights that ran the roof of the tunnel went out, flickering and then dying. There was only the ugly purple now to light their way, a venomous light that the shadows embraced, plunging the tunnel to near blackness.

“We gotta hurry!” Robbie called, and started running. Cursing, Washington ran after him. They steered around the mass of tentacles, Robbie in the lead, shooting glances back when he could, letting the slope carry him down. They had to get to the rock and have enough rounds to destroy it, that was what mattered. Maybe they could outrun whatever else had gotten out, but they had to close that door.

The purple hole bounced closer in front of them, flickering as dark shapes moved in front of the light source. As they stumbled downward, Robbie saw that the light was coming from the altar itself, the whole thing glowing like a black-light lamp.

A hulking creature tore out of the room and ran for them. It was built like an ape but was scaled with heavy spines running down its broad back, all of it a matte dun color. It let out a liquid shriek, a furious sound, from a head almost like a jackal’s, but with a shark’s dead black eyes, too big on its narrow, demonic face.

Robbie fired into its scaled chest, Washington coming in a beat later. Where the rounds hit the scales turned dark, but there was no blood and it was fast, too fast—

Robbie fell back a step and fired again, aiming for center mass and the thing leapt forward on thick, muscular legs, nearly halving the distance between them, landing on its overlong arms and bounding again, straight at Washington.

Robbie emptied his mag into the monster, but it tackled Washington and bit into the screaming soldier’s throat, clawing at the tunnel and at Washington’s body with its hands and feet, ripping grooves into the rock and through Washington’s side, gutting him as it shook its head. Its teeth tore away the front half of Washington’s throat. It raised its head to swallow and then clamped down again.

Washington had dropped Gaines’ M4. Robbie didn’t let himself think about it, he dropped his own empty rifle and stepped closer to the feeding demon to scoop up the weapon, the last weapon with rounds. He was close enough to the monster to hear the whistle of air through its slit nostrils, smell its musky, bitter scent.

He pointed the barrel at its head and fired into one shining black eye, two rounds slamming into its long skull, exiting in a blast of scales from the back of its head.

The thing collapsed onto Washington, shuddered, and died.

Robbie ran ahead. He could see the glowing altar clearly, see part of the hulking, monstrous gator-creature on the chamber’s east side, dark and crouched — and he could see Gaines’ door, finally, straight ahead of him. A massive hole had opened up where that big divot had been, where he’d put the lantern only minutes ago. The hole was ten feet across and ten high and utterly black, but the edges of it weren’t steady. They flickered and wavered like an old movie out of frame.

The monster roared, and turned toward Robbie just as he reached the broken rocks at the entrance. It had eight legs and a long, muscular body, like a big cat’s but heavy through the belly. The top of its head was almost bovine, horned and square, but instead of eyes there were a dozen random, empty-looking holes. Its jaw bulged outward like a hippo’s, and its bone-shaking cry revealed pointed, blood-stained teeth. There was no sign of the officers, only a slick of blood on the floor, and shreds of meat hanging from the creature’s lipless jaws.

Robbie ran into the room, firing at the monster as it stomped toward him, aiming for its fugly head. It roared again, shaking its giant, screaming face, and Robbie put three rounds into its big mouth.

The thing’s roar gurgled and it retreated a few steps, legs moving like a spider’s, shifting it quickly. It shook its head, watery dark blood streaming from its terrible mouth.

Howls emerged from the black of the flickering-edged hole, screams and shrieks and sounds he couldn’t understand, all of it close, echoing into the glowing room, loud enough now to hear even over his busted ears.

The altar.

Robbie aimed at the glowing purple rock and fired, rounds skipping across the top of the stone, small chips of stone flying.

The altar’s glow dimmed slightly. The portal flickered, and for a beat Robbie could see etched rock beneath it, but then it was back again, a yawning doorway to some black world of impossible monsters.

The creature started for him again, bellowing, blood dripping from its huge jaws, breath like carrion on a hot day.

Robbie dodged around the altar, fired again at the monster, getting two more rounds into its mouth. It swung away from him tripping sideways, stuttering another gurgling cry. It would have to be enough. They were coming; Robbie could feel the cold air rushing toward him through the door, smell the waves of stink, feel the ground trembling beneath his feet.

Robbie emptied the rest of the mag across the surface of the glowing stone. The rounds cracked the inscription, splinters of rock spinning off—

— and the stone split in half with a rending crunch that shook the chamber, just as the trigger locked out. Both jagged sides fell to the floor and the purple light died, leaving Robbie in the dark, and he felt a second of pure triumph—

— before he realized that he could still see, by the very dim light coming from the open portal. The open, solid portal, no longer flickering at the edges. The abyss was lit by an alien moon, perhaps; Robbie could see the first shadowy shapes running toward the black chamber, the faintest outlines of the opening ranks. Thankfully, he couldn’t hear much of anything anymore.

A man of war will bring about the end by his ignorance. It appeared that destroying the altar had made things permanent.

The first of the monstrosities swept through the door, drooling, covered in matted fur. A giant tentacle curled into the room after it, and a dozen stinging birds followed, diving into the cold black of the dead cavern, stingers whipping behind them.

Fucking Gaines, Robbie thought, hating the dead nerd deeply for the rest of his life, which turned out to be not very long at all.