Queen of wands

CHAPTER NINE

“Well now, this is interesting,” Barb said as she emerged from the mudhole.

The immediate area around the opening to the mudhole was more or less triangular and about thirty feet high. The room continued onwards into the cave through a very odd passage.

The passage was high but narrow with a smooth, flat floor. It opened outwards, broadly at the top and again, slightly, near the floor. And it clearly twisted like a snake. The walls were irregular with spines of limestone sticking out. As she shone her light on the wall she could pick out the outlines of fossilized sea creatures from ancient aeons.

“Keyhole passage,” Master Sergeant Attie said, pouring a bottle of water over the Kriss to get some of the mud off. They were both covered in the thick, sticky mud, as was all of their equipment. “Called that ’cause it looks sort of like an old-time skeleton keyhole.”

Barb did a rough clean on the weapon, ensured that it was still cycling well, then shone her gun-light up. She quickly realized that it didn’t reach all the way into the sides of the spread-out upper portion.

“There could be anything up there,” she noted, sweeping the Kriss around.

“Yep,” Attie replied as the rest of the team dragged themselves out. “I’ve been thinking on that.”

“That was just unpleasant as anything I’ve ever done,” Janea said. “Except this one guy in Los Angeles…”

“Let’s do a gear check,” Attie said. “That could have been pretty rough on our systems.”

The team, in pairs, spent a couple of minutes checking out all their gear. Surprisingly, with the exception of having to change a battery in Randell’s radio, it was all functioning.

“Good stuff,” Barb said, happily. “I do so appreciate good gear.”

“I got most of it off of Navy SPECWAR,” Attie admitted. “Salt water is worse than mud, and the SEALS can break anything. So their stuff has to be really robust. And the radios are designed with obstructions in mind. They’ve actually got about the best gear around for caving, just most cavers can’t afford it. Or don’t have the clearance to get it. Let’s stay sharp. There’s not only limited visibility at the top, there could be passages off of it.”

“Master Sergeant?” Struletz said. “I could probably chimbley to the top and work my way along through there. That way we’d have top cover.”

“And if you had to get down in the middle of a firefight you’d be vulnerable as hell,” Attie said.

“I’ll do it,” Barb said, releasing the Kriss to draw back on its three-point harness. She jumped up and got both feet onto small projections on the wall, and then started climbing the passage like a spread-out spider. Fast. She was rarely in even three points of contact, and it looked most of the time like she wasn’t in contact at all. She hardly used her hands.

“That was just…bizarre,” Attie said when she reached the top.

“Benefits of a lifetime of martial arts study, Master Sergeant,” Barb said, not even winded. “I had this instructor in…Malaysia? Yeah, Malaysia. He loved really bad martial arts movies. But he took some of the stuff from them, some of the stuff you’re looking at and going ‘Yeah, right,’ and added it to his art. Stuff like fighting off of balconies and walls. He believed that the essence of martial arts was grace. It wasn’t a really great combat art, unless you were fighting on a ledge, but it was good for learning balance.”

“ Kung Pow?” Struletz asked.

“Oh, that was minor,” Barb said, laughing. “The original was worse. And there are much, much worse martial arts movies than that.”

She shone her light down the passage and was pleasantly surprised to find that from the top, she could see for nearly sixty feet. The passage, viewed from her lofty vantage, was a series of domes covering the serpentine lower portion. There were still bends, and there were spots that the light didn’t illuminate; indeed, there were small nooks and crannies that were going to be hard to check out, but she could cover the team very well from up here. The only problem being that the irregular oval top portion she currently was standing in was short enough she was having to bend nearly double. But she’d be able to stand up in the next dome. At least if she did the whole thing with her legs spread across the passage. That was going to be unpleasant.

“I won’t say what you look like from down here,” Janea said. “But you’d better be glad you’re not wearing a skirt.”

Barb pulled both legs to one side of the passage, bracing on the far side with one hand, and held out her right.

“Toss me Lazarus,” she said.

“You’re joking,” Janea said.

“He can make his way through up here,” Barb said. “And he’s better at spotting these things than we are.”

“Okay,” Janea said, coaxing the cat over then standing up with him in her arms. “I’m not very good at throwing.”

“Let me,” Randell said, taking the cat. Lazarus was looking notably worried but he allowed himself to be manhandled. “Catch.”

Randell tossed the cat vertically, eliciting a startled “Rrow?!” but he tossed him high enough and accurately enough that Barb was able to make a fair catch.

“You’ve got point,” she said, setting Lazarus on a more-or-less flat spot. “Head on out.”

Where the domes were, the passage became, from her position, an oval tube, slightly serpentine, with a very wide crevasse in the middle. Most of the time she could make her way along in a crouch to the side of the lower passage on the slightly slanted floor. Other times she braced with one hand and moved from one side of the lower passage to the other. Sometimes she had to spread and duck-walk, especially in the short lower portions between domed areas. Those would have been the unfun portions where she couldn’t see what was awaiting her in the dark nooks to either side. But then there was Lazarus.

In a similar way, but easier because he was shorter, four-legged, and, well, a cat, Lazarus was more or less trotting down the passage, his tail flicking from side to side for balance and occasionally jumping across the crevasse when one side or the other became nonnegotiable. He was, in fact, getting very near the limit of Barb’s light.

“Slow down, Laz,” Barb said.

“Tell him to slow down?” Attie said. “ You slow down. We’re barely keeping up and we’re walking.”

“It’s clear,” Barb said, squatting on one foot and bracing across the passage with the other. She was in one of the narrower entries to a dome, and the crack to the lower passage was barely six inches wide. “This is a really strange formation.”

“The upper passage is formed when an underground river finds a portion of softer rock,” Attie said, taking a pause under her position. “That’s the upper tube. Over time, it wears away at the lower rock, again finding channels through it, until it either dies, goes to easier rock to wear away, or whatever. Generally it forms something like this. They’re fairly common.”

“First one I’ve seen,” Barb said. “Everybody good?”

“Except for the drying mud caked in my hair, ears and nose?” Janea asked. “Peachy.”

“Good,” Barb said, shining her light towards Lazarus. The cat had gone to full “Halloween cat” mode, back arched, tail straight up and bristled into a bush. “We’ve got company! IR mode!”

The Sure-Fire built into the end of the boxy weapon had a flipped-down cover. Flipping it up, the light apparently disappeared. In fact, it was now filtered entirely for infrared. As the whole team followed suit, the light in the passage disappeared entirely.

Dropping her FLIR down, Barb regained sight of the passage, the gun-light now acting as an infrared spotlight.

“Laz!” Barb yelled. “Get out of there!”

Her connection to the cat was something she barely understood. As far as she could comprehend it, they weren’t even two different individuals. The type of soul that was necessary for Barb to resurrect the cat was an indivisible part of a human being. To bring Lazarus back to life had required sharing the soul. They were now one being in two separate bodies.

She wasn’t sure what would happen if Lazarus was ever killed. But she was pretty sure it wouldn’t be pleasant. The highest probability was that she would also die.

Cats rarely obey orders but they do have a certain amount of common sense. As a tide of blackness roiled down the passageway, the cat turned and bolted for the rear, jumping lithely from side to side of the passage. However, as he passed Barb, he yowled a warning.

“We’ve got company at the rear,” Barb said, flicking the light around to look over her shoulder. More of the Old Ones were clambering down the upper passageway behind her. “Could use some help here.”

“On my way,” Randell said, starting to chimbley up the passage.

“ No time,” Barb said, opening fire on the group to the front.

The. 45-caliber frangible rounds poured into the mass of Old One spawn, blasting the two in the lead into a pile of ichor and goo. Unfortunately, that had forced her to clock out her magazine.

She dropped the mag, not even bothering to catch it for a reload, and slid another in, fumbling the replacement slightly due to the unfamiliar weapon.

The Old Ones had gotten into the domed area by then, spreading out to either side, with a couple coming across the roof. She took those out, and one of the ones on the walls then backed up so that they would have to come through the narrow portion to get her.

She could hear Randell firing from behind her and just hoped he could keep the mass to the rear off her back.

Master Sergeant Attie had moved to the opening below her and engaged the Old Ones above him in the domed area. His fire was solid and precise, the. 45-caliber rounds shredding every Old One in sight. With the narrowness of the passage overhead, there was no way that they could get to the party from above. They had to either come at them on the floor or get past Barb to the wider portion behind her.

“I’m good,” Randell said. “No more this way.” He was actually perched with his back braced to either side of the passage in a domed section, so he had a pretty good view.

“And we’re clear here,” Master Sergeant Attie said as the last Old One dropped in a splatter to the floor.

“Shamblers,” Janea said, reloading her weapon. She’d been covering the floor below Randell. “They’re easy enough with the right weapons. I’m not looking forward to running into another skru-gnon.”

“Anybody get a count?” Attie asked.

“About seven your way,” Struletz said. “Three to the rear.”

“How many of these things are there?” Randell asked angrily. He’d slid down the passage to the floor again and reloaded. He also reloaded his expended magazines.

“At a guess, it depends how long the Gar has been manifested and how much it’s had to eat,” Janea said, shrugging and starting to reload her magazines from the stores they’d brought with them. “The Gar spins these things off of its essence. If it’s been manifested for a short time and the food is limited, a few dozen. If it’s been a long time and pretty much unlimited food? Thousands?”

“We don’t have enough ammo for thousands,” Struletz pointed out.

“Catch,” Attie said, tossing Barb’s refilled magazine to her. “That hit me in the helmet, by the way.”

“Sorry,” Barb said, shrugging. “I wasn’t exactly going to try to reholster it under the circumstances.”

“Nope, we’re good,” Attie said. “Move out?”

“Let’s take an alert break,” Barb said, thoughtfully. “That little firefight is bound to have attracted some attention. If somebody takes the other side of this dome, we’re in a good, defensible position. Let’s see what thing wicked this way comes.”

“Any progress on finding where the Gar might be?” Janea asked, taking out a bottle of water.

“Graham’s got a team coming up with lists of buyers in the area,” Randell said. “We figure it has to be cattle or pigs or something, from the description of how much this thing eats. There are several animal auctions in the area and they’ve gotten lists of all the purchases from them. So far, nothing’s standing out.”

“Who buys the animals?” Struletz asked.

“You want the short class on animal husbandry?” Randell asked with a chuckle. “My dad had a small farm. Cattle, it works like this. Farmer has a bunch of cows. The cows have babies, male and female. The females he keeps. The males he sells at auction. Other farmers, that don’t want to bother with breeding, buy the males and deball them. Those sit out on grass and feed up for a few years as steers. Feed-lots buy the steers and feed them up. Slaughterhouses buy the steers. From time to time the breeding farmer takes his bull to auction, sells it and gets a different one. Then he puts it to the cows, some of which are the daughters of the former bull. Which is why you’ve got to change bulls from time to time. So there’s some minor sales of cows when a farmer has too many or needs to raise cash, a few bulls change hands, but mostly it’s steers that get moved around. It’s all carefully tracked because of mad-cow and other stuff. So there’s plenty of records.”

“So what are you looking for?” Janea asked.

“Anomalies,” Randell said. “Farmers who are buying a lot of mature steers, mostly. Or a lot of cows. If you’re talking at least a head a day, that’s thirty head a month. Farmers don’t buy thirty head in a month. They don’t buy thirty calves a month, generally. Not in this area.”

“Be back,” Barb said, sliding off her perch and moving forward.

“Problems?” Attie asked.

“Just an idea,” Barb said.

She clambered down the passage to the next domed area, keeping a careful eye out in case any Old Ones had lingered, then paused at the next narrow section of the upper passage.

Juggling her pack out was a bit awkward, but she removed a spool of wire from it and then put it back on her back.

She used the wire first to attach one of her fragmentation grenades to the wall, then ran a section of wire across the passageway. Last, she straightened the cotter pin on the grenade, and then carefully tied the wire into the pin.

“Set a little present for our friends in case they come back,” Barb said as she settled back into her perch. “Grenade IED. Give us some warning that doesn’t involve Laz spitting and hissing.” She stroked the cat gratefully. “Thanks, Laz.”

“That’s the sort of thing I’m supposed to be thinking of,” Attie said. “Want me to set one to the rear?”

“Trail seemed to go this way,” Barb said. “The only thing to the rear is however Laz got in, and he got through presumably without running into any of them. Most of them should be to our front. Up to you, but it would just be a booby trap I’d have to get past. Not to mention Laz, who I don’t think understands tripwires.”

“Point,” Attie said. “We don’t have any movement yet.”

“Think I’m taking counsel of my fears?” Barb asked.

“No, ma’am,” Attie said. “Just pointing out that we’re in here to see if we can find the lair of this Gar thing. Which we’re not doing.”

“I’d like to see what responds to the fire,” Barb said. “Give it thirty minutes.”

She dropped her pack again and pulled out a ration bar.

“Besides, I’m hungry.”

She was on her third ration bar, and the thirty minutes were nearly up, when there was the crack and szting of a grenade going off down the passageway.

“Heads up!” she shouted, dropping her FLIR and going to IR.

She braced against the side, pointed at the narrow opening to the domed area, and waited. And waited.

“Just a scout?” Attie said.

“No,” Barb said a moment later. “Not just a scout!”

This time the things attacked from every level. They were pouring down the upper passage in a mass but more were clambering along the sides and the ground. There seemed to be hundreds.

“I’ve got ground,” Struletz said, taking a knee next to the standing master sergeant.

“Middle,” Attie said, triggering a burst into the mass coming down the passage.

“Top,” Barb said, firing into the mass. Targeting any one of the Old Ones was nearly impossible. The tentacled monstrosities were writhing into and across each other, and the small bodies were nearly impossible to make out between the FLIR and the way that they chaotically moved. Chopping them apart with. 45 was the only way to go.

“Take left,” Randell said, appearing to her side. “I’ll fire across to right.”

“Got it,” Barb said, retargeting to the left of the domed area. The Old Ones were soaking up the fire to get to the party, pouring through the opening on the far side of the dome.

She had nine magazines in ready pouches. She’d laid three of those out on the rocks, ready to hand. She ran through those in less than a minute, then scrabbled for more in her pouches.

The only thing that kept them alive was that the Old Ones were choked by the opening to the dome, the narrowness of the passage and the two shooters on the top. None of them even got across the domed area. But the entire area was covered in ichor and deliquescing Old Ones by the time she slid in her last magazine.

“We don’t have the ammo for this,” Attie said. “I’ve only got two hundred more rounds of forty-five.” With thirty rounds per magazine, that was only eight and a half mags. One more heavy firefight.

“We’ve reduced their numbers, at least,” Barb said, her face tight. “But you’re right. We don’t have any clue how many more of these things there are. We need to pull out and regroup. If we’re going to do it this way, we need more people and more ammo.”

“That means we have to go back in that damned mud,” Janea said. She’d been unhappily covering the back door alone during the fight.

“Would you rather be eaten?” Barb asked.