SNAFU: Survival of the Fittest

IN VAULTED HALLS ENTOMBED Alan Baxter

The high, dim caves continued on into blackness.

Sergeant Coulthard paused, shook his heavy, grizzled head. “We’re going to lose comms soon. Have you mapped this far?” he asked Dillman.

“Yes, Sarge.”

Coulthard looked back the way they had come, where daylight still leaked through to weakly illuminate the squad. “Radio it in, Spencer. See what they say.”

“Yes, Sarge.” Corporal Spencer shucked his pack and set an antenna, pointing back towards the cave entrance. “Base, this is Team Epsilon. Base, Team Epsilon.”

The radio crackled and hissed, then, “Go ahead, Epsilon.”

“We’ve followed the insurgents across open ground to foothills about eighty clicks north-north-east of Kandahar, to a cave system at... Hang on.” Spencer pulled out a map and read aloud a set of co-ordinates. “They’ve gone to ground, about eighty minutes ahead of us. We’ll lose comms if we head deeper in. Orders?”

“Stand by.”

The radio crackled again.

“They’ll tell us to go in,” Sergeant Coulthard said.

Lance Corporal Paul Brown watched from one side, nerves tickling the back of his neck. They were working by the book, but this showed every sign of a trap, perfect for an ambush. It would be dark soon, and was already cold. It would only get colder. Though perhaps the temperature farther in remained pretty constant.

He stepped forward. “Sarge, maybe we should set camp here and wait til morning.”

“Always night in a fucking cave, Brown,” Coulthard said without looking at him.

“You tired, possum?” Private Sam Gladstone asked with a sneer.

The new boy, Beaumont, grinned.

“You always a dick?” Brown said.

“Can it!” Coulthard barked. “We wait for orders.”

“I just think everyone’s tired,” Brown said. He shifted one shoulder to flash the red cross on the side of his pack. “Your welfare is my job after all.”

“Noted,” Coulthard said.

Silence descended on the six of them. They’d followed this band of extremists for three days, picking up and losing their trail half a dozen times. He was tired even if the others were too hardass to admit it. Young Beaumont was like a puppy, on his first tour and desperate for a fight, but the others should know better. They’d all seen action to some degree. Coulthard more than most; the kind of guy who seemed like he’d been born in the middle of a firefight and come out carrying a weapon.

“Epsilon, this is Base. You’re sure this is where the insurgents went?”

“Affirmative. Dillman had them on long range scope. Trying to shake us off, I guess, going to ground.”

“Received. Proceed on your own initiative. Take ‘em if you can. They’ve got a lot of our blood on their hands. Can you confirm their numbers?”

“Eight of them, Base.”

“Received. Good luck.”

Spencer winked at the squad. “Received, Base. Over and out.” He unhooked his antenna and slung his pack.

“Okay, then,” Dillman said. He shifted grip on his rifle and dug around in his webbing, came up with a night sight and fitted it.

Brown sighed. No one was as good a shot as Dillman, even when he was tired and in the dark. But it didn’t give much comfort. “We’re not going to wait, are we?” he said.

Coulthard ignored him. “Pick it up, children. As there are no tracks in here,” he kicked at the hard stone floor, “we move slow and silent. Spencer, you’re mapping. I want markers deployed along the way.”

“Sarge.”

“Let’s go. Beaumont, you’re on point.”

“Yes, Sarge!”

“Slow and steady, Beaumont. And lower that weapon. No firing until I say so unless you’re fired on first.”

“Yes, Sarge.”

The kid sounded a little deflated and Brown was glad. Youth needed deflating. They fell into order and moved forward. Spencer placed an electronic marker and tapped the tablet he carried. It began to ping a location to help them find their way back.

It became cooler and the darkness almost absolute. The light that leaked through from outside couldn’t reach and blackness wrapped them up like an over-zealous lover.

“Night vision will be useless down here,” Coulthard said. “We’re going to have to risk torchlight. One beam, from point. Dillman, go infrared.”

“Way ahead of you,” Dillman said, and tapped his goggles. He moved up to stand almost beside Beaumont.

The young private clicked on his helmet lamp and light swept the space as he looked around. The passage was about five metres in an irregular diameter and as dry and cold as everything else they’d seen over the last few days. Dust motes danced in the torch beam, the scuff and crunch of their boots strangely loud in the confined space.

“All quiet from here on,” Coulthard said and waved Beaumont forward.

They fell into practised unison; moved with determined caution.

“I’m a glowing target up here,” Beaumont whispered nervously.

“That’s why the new boy takes point,” Coulthard said. A soft wave of giggles passed through the squad before the sergeant hushed them.

Dillman patted Beaumont on one shoulder. “I got your back, Donkey.”

Beaumont’s torch beam shot back into the group as he looked around. “Don’t call me that!”

Laughter rippled again. Brown grinned. Poor sap. Caught petting a donkey back in Kandahar, just a lonely kid far from home taking some comfort by hugging the soft, furry creature’s neck. Of course, he’d been spotted, photographed and by the time he got back to barracks the story had him balls deep in the poor animal.

“Enough!” Coulthard snapped. “Are we fucking professionals or not?”

Their mirth stilled and they crept forward again. The ground sloped downwards and Spencer paused every fifty yards or so to place a marker. After about three hundred yards the passage opened out into a wider cavern. Something was rucked up and definitely man-made on the far side.

Weapons instantly trained on it and Beaumont moved cautiously forward. “False alarm,” he called back after a moment, his voice relaxed and light. Relieved. “Someone’s been here, there are blankets, signs of a fire, an empty canteen. But it looks months old, at least.”

The squad relaxed slightly as Beaumont shone his torch in a wide arc, illuminating the cave. Nothing but rough, curved rock. A few small fissures striated the walls on one side, black gaps into the unknown, but nothing big enough for even a child to get through. On the far side, a larger gap yawned darkly, a tunnel leading away and down. Large rocks were scattered around the opening.

Coulthard nodded the squad forward.

“Looks like these have recently been moved,” Gladstone said.

Brown moved in to see better. “Looks like this passage was blocked up and those fuckers cleared the way.”

Dillman kicked at a couple of broken stones. “I guess they weren’t so keen to ambush us here and are looking for a better option.”

Brown shook his head. “Why would this passage have been blocked? And by who?”

“Emergency bolt hole they knew about?” Coulthard mused. “Move on.”

The tunnel beyond was around three metres in diameter, sloping down again. Beaumont’s was the only light, but in the otherwise total blackness it made the tunnel bright. Shadows flickered off the irregular surface.

Beaumont took his flashlight from his helmet and held it at arm’s length to one side. “If they do ambush and shoot at the light…”

After a couple of hundred metres, Brown, bringing up the rear, paused and looked back. “Hold up,” he said quietly.

Coulthard glanced over his shoulder. “What’s up, Doc?”

“Kill the light, Beaumont.”

“Gladly!”

There was a soft click and the tunnel sank into blackness. Within seconds, their eyes began to adjust to something other than the dark. In crevices on the walls and ceiling of the passage, even here and there on the floor, a soft blue glow emanated. Almost imperceptible, easier to see from their peripheral vision, a pale luminescence. No, Brown thought. Phosphorescence. He crouched and looked closely into one crack. He pulled out a pocket knife, flicked open the blade and dug inside the crevice. The blade came out with a sickly blue smudge on it.

“Some kind of lichen,” he said. “I’ve heard of this kind of stuff, but always thought it was green.”

Gladstone pulled his googles down and flicked the adjustment. “Doesn’t matter what colour it is, it’s giving enough light for night vision.”

“Lucky us,” Coulthard said. “Goggles on, people. Keep that light off, Beaumont.”

“Thank fuck, Sarge.”

Brown pulled his own goggles down and watched the squad move forward in green monochrome. He was glad they didn’t need harsh torchlight any more, but the glowing blue lichen gave him the creeps. He stood and followed before they got too far ahead, shifting his heavy medical pack as he moved.

They continued silently for several minutes, Spencer periodically dropping markers. At a fork they tried the left hand path and quickly met a dead end. Backtracking to the main passage, they travelled further and found a small cave off to one side, too low to stand upright. No passages led from it.

“Looks like this one tunnel is gonna keep heading down,” Beaumont said. His voice had lost some of its excitement.

Coulthard raised a fist bringing them to a halt. “How far?”

Spencer checked the tablet that shone in their night vision even though its brightness was down to minimum. “Seven hundred and eighty-three metres.”

“Three quarters of a k in, really?” Dillman whispered.

He sounded as nervous as Brown felt. The strange lichen continued, scattered randomly in cracks and fissures. Occasionally a larger patch would glow like a bright light, but for the most part it was soft streaks like veins in the rocks.

“Move on,” Coulthard said.

After another couple of minutes, Spencer whispered, “That’s one kilometre.”

Before any discussion could be had about that fact, Beaumont hissed and cursed. “Sarge, got something here.”

The squad sank into fighting readiness and crept apart to cover the width of the tunnel.

“Bones,” Beaumont said. “Just a skeleton.”

Coulthard turned. “Doc, go check.”

Brown went to Beaumont and looked down on the bones scattered at the curve of the tunnel wall. Streaks of the blue lichen wrapped the skeleton here and there, like snail trails. He crouched for a closer look. “Male, adult. No discerning marks of trauma that I can see at first glance.”

He took a penlight torch from his pocket and lifted his goggles. “Mind your eyes.”

The squad looked away as he clicked on the light and had a closer look. The bones had no flesh or connecting tissue remained to hold them together. “There’s a kind of residue,” Brown said quietly. “Like a gel or something.” He took a pen from his pocket and dragged the tip along one femur. It gathered a small wave of clear, viscous ichor. It was odourless.

He put one index finger to the same bone and gently touched the stuff. It seemed inert. As he brought it close to his face to inspect he frowned, then pressed his finger to the bone again. “This is warm.”

Tension tightened the squad behind him.

“What’s that?” Coulthard asked.

Brown swallowed, heart hammering. He looked at his fingertip then gripped the bone, felt the heat in his palm. “This skeleton is warm. And too clean to have rotted here.”

“What the hell?” Beaumont demanded, his voice quavering.

“You shitting us?” Gladstone asked. His voice was stronger than Beaumont’s but with fear still evident.

Brown held one palm over the skeleton, only an inch or so away from touching, moved it back and forth. “It’s warm all over,” he said weakly. His mind tried to process the information, but kept hitting dead ends. The cold rock under his knee seemed to mock him.

“Warm?” Coulthard asked.

Brown’s heart skipped and doubled-timed again as he spotted something beneath the bony corpse. “Hey, Dillman.”

“What?”

“When you scoped those fucks we were following, what did you see that you thought was funny?”

A tense silence filled the space for a moment. Then Dillman said, “One of them had a big fucking gold dollar sign on a chain around his neck. Fancied himself a rapper or some shit.”

Brown used his pocket knife to hook up a chain from where it hung inside the stark white ribcage. With a toothy clicking, he hauled it up link by link. Eventually a metal dollar sign emerged from between the bones, its surface no longer gold but a tarnished, blackened alloy.

“What the actual fuck?” Beaumont asked in a high voice. He shifted from foot to foot, looked wildly around himself.

“These bones are too clean and white to have decayed to this state,” Brown said. He shone his penlight among the bones to show coins, a cigarette lighter, the half-melted remains of a cell phone, belt buckles. Two automatic pistols, both with traces of the gel-like slime, were wedged under the pelvis.

Coulthard stepped forward, leaned down to stare at the corpse like it was a personal insult. “You trying to tell me this is one of the guys we’re chasing.”

Brown shrugged, hefted the pen to make the dollar sign swing.

“Fuck this,” Spencer said. “What the hell can do that to a person?”

Brown shook his head. “Who knows?” He played his torchlight around the walls and ceiling of the tunnel.

“And where did it go?” Gladstone asked weakly.

“Go?” Coulthard asked.

“I think it’s pretty clear someone or something did that to him and is no longer here, right?” Gladstone said.

“Some kind of weapon?” Beaumont asked, still agitated.

“What kind of weapon does this?” Brown countered.

Coulthard stood up straight. “Can it, all of you. We have a mission and we’ll keep to it. We’ll find answers on the way.”

“It’s still warm,” Brown reminded him. “This happened very recently, I think.”

“Then we move extra fucking carefully,” Coulthard said.

A burst of gunfire and distant shouting echoed up the tunnel. Epsilon squad froze and listened. A scream, another burst of gunfire then a deep, concussive boom.

“Grenade?” Dillman asked quietly.

Silence descended again.

“Lights off, mouths shut,” Coulthard said. “Brown, up front with me in case we come across any more bodies. Beaumont, rear guard. Move out.”

Brown nodded as he pocketed his knife. He wasn’t happy about it, but that was a smart move by the sergeant. Beaumont had sounded very spooked by this encounter and understandably so. His nerves were like an electric current through the squad. Best he go to the back and have a chance to calm down. Reluctantly the squad fell into place. Brown glanced once more at the skeleton on the tunnel floor and shivered as they moved almost silently away.

They travelled in silence for another ten minutes before Spencer whispered, “Two clicks.”

A distant scream rang out, cut off equally fast. Several bursts of gunfire. They froze and listened, but heard nothing more.

“Move on,” Coulthard said tightly.

“Are you sure, Sarge?” Brown asked, but the sergeant’s only answer was a shove in the back.

Several minutes later, Spencer said, “Three clicks.”

Brown pointed and Coulthard nodded. Two more skeletons were lying on the tunnel floor. Brown crouched and felt the warmth rising off them, stark against the cold rock all around. Two AK-47s and a variety of other metallic objects littered the ground.

“What the fuck, man?” Beaumont said, his voice still high and stretched. “What can do that?”

“Should we go back?” Brown asked.

“There’s still five more of them somewhere ahead,” Coulthard said. “And whatever is doing this is ahead as well. We’ll go a bit further.”

“We gotta go, Sarge!” Beaumont said. “Seriously, how can we fight this fucking—”

“Pull it together, soldier!” Coulthard barked. “Get your shit in order. We go forward for another little while and see. This tunnel has to change at some point, branch off or open out or something. I want to see what happens. If nothing happens by five kays in, we turn around.”

“Five kays?” Beaumont sounded like a child. “Fuck man, five kays?”

“Move out,” Coulthard said softly, his voice and demeanour a perfect example of calm.

Brown wondered if the sergeant felt anything like as calm as he acted. It seemed Beaumont was the one having a far more sensible reaction to all this. Brown bit his teeth together to stem his own trembling and walked on.

The way was still lit by the strange veins of lichen, the tunnel remained a three metre or so diameter throat down into the foothills of the mountain range beyond. They heard nothing more for several minutes.

“Stay alert,” Coulthard said. “How you doing, Donkey? Feeling okay?”

Beaumont didn’t answer.

The sergeant laughed softly. “Sorry, Josh, I’m only ragging ya. Seriously, you feeling okay? You were a little rattled back there.”

No answer.

Sam Gladstone said, “There’s no one behind me, Sarge.”

“What?”

“He was bringing up the rear, but he’s not there.”

Coulthard spat a curse. “Beaumont!” he called out in a harsh whisper. “Fuck, surely he hasn’t panicked and run back.”

“Wouldn’t I have heard, Sarge?” Gladstone asked.

“I don’t know. Would you? Spencer, leave your tablet here and double time back up the tunnel. If you don’t catch up to him in a few hundred yards, we’ll have to let him go and I’ll kick his fucking ass when we get back.”

“Righto, Sarge.”

Spencer put down his gear and jogged away. They stood in uncomfortable silence for a few minutes.

“Nervous kid,” Brown said eventually. “First tour.”

“Don’t make excuses for him,” Coulthard said. “He’s a fucking soldier.”

Spencer walked back towards them, holding something out. “We need to get the fuck out of here,” he said. Hanging from his fingers was a chain with two dog tags.

“The fuck?” Dillman whispered.

“Beaumont’s?” Coulthard asked in a tight voice.

“He’s a fucking skeleton just like the insurgent fuckers we found. Nothing left but buckles and weapons and shit. He’s just fucking bones, Sarge!”

Dillman began muttering and shone his helmet lamp frantically in every direction. The mood of the squad began to fracture.

Coulthard swatted Dillman’s lamp off. “Stow that shit! Everyone stay calm.”

“Calm, Sarge?” Gladstone asked. “Seriously, we’re in deep shit here.”

“Stay. Calm. Spencer, did you recover Beaumont’s weapon.”

Spencer shook his head. “Left it there. The strap is gone, too hard to carry. But I took his clips.”

“Fair enough. Now, we need to reassess what we’re doing here.”

“I think we should leave, Sarge,” Brown said. He tried to keep his voice calm, but heard and felt the quaver in it.

“It ain’t that simple.”

“It must be,” Dillman said. “Fuck those guys, if they’re even still alive down there. Whatever got Beaumont can get them. We’ll wait outside the caves and pick off any who comes out.”

Coulthard held up a hand, a pale green wave in their night vision goggles. “Chill, everyone. It ain’t as simple as leaving. I’m with you. In any other circumstances I would absolutely call an abort. But whatever took Beaumont, it took him from the back.”

“Which means it’s behind us,” Brown said, realisation like an icy wave through his gut. “Or there’s more than one, ahead and behind.”

“Exactly.”

“Does that mean we should carry on though?” Gladstone asked. “Maybe it’s only gonna get worse.”

“Maybe. Or maybe there’s another way out.” Coulthard picked up Spencer’s tablet, checked the display. “We’ve still got a bunch of sensors, yeah?”

Spencer dropped Beaumont’s tags into a pocket. “Yeah, plenty.”

“Okay. We carry on for another kilometre and see if it leads to any branches in the tunnel, any other way out. If it does, we can maybe go around whatever’s in here. If not, we turn around and risk facing it. Spencer, it’s unlikely but do we have any signal down here?”

The corporal pulled out his gear and spent a moment trying to get a response from Base. Then he went wide band, looking for any transmissions. He found none and no one responded to open hails. “Nothing, Sarge.”

“I didn’t think so. Okay, Brown, you stay in the middle. Me and Spencer will take point. I want Gladstone and Dillman on rear guard, but you two walk backwards. We move slow and you don’t take your eyes off the tunnel behind us. Let’s go.”

They moved slowly on again. Brown felt more than a little useless in the middle of the group, but he knew what Coulthard was doing. Protect the guy with the best chance of helping any wounded. Except it looked like whatever was in these caves didn’t leave any wounded. He heard a gasp from Gladstone and turned to look.

“See that?” Gladstone whispered to Dillman.

“Yeah. There!”

Brown saw it too. He lifted his goggles to see with unfiltered eyes. A movement, more a shift of light across the darkness, like a ripple of wan blue luminescence. He caught part of a smooth, glassy sphere, a glimpse of something globular, but it pressed into the wall and vanished.

The others had stopped to watch. All five of them stared hard, but the tunnel was black as death and still.

“Keep moving,” Coulthard said.

Brown walked backwards as well, eyes trying to scan every inch of the tunnel behind them.

“There!” Gladstone said sharply.

He’d seen it too. A glassy flex of movement on the ceiling about thirty metres back. Closer than before. Almost as if a giant water droplet had begun to swell and hang, only to be quickly sucked back up.

“It’s fucking following us,” Dillman hissed and snapped on his helmet light again.

“But what is it?” Spencer demanded. “Is it even alive? Doc?”

Brown jumped as he was directly addressed. “I’m no expert here,” he said. “Whatever it is…”

His words were drowned out by Gladstone’s screams and Dillman’s shouts of fright as the torchlight reflected back off a huge slithering mass across the ceiling right above them. It ran and undulated like an upside down river across the rock then expanded, long and pendulous, extruding from the tunnel roof like a clear jelly waterfall. The huge, gelatinous blob unfurled itself and dropped.

Dillman leapt to one side, the deafening bark and muzzle flash of his weapon filling the tunnel as Gladstone tried to run backwards, but skidded and fell. He knocked Brown back, who dropped onto his rump in surprise and scrambled away, scrabbling for his weapon as Coulthard and Spencer aimed theirs above his head and let rip.

Gladstone’s screams were bloodcurdling as the thing landed across his legs. Brown tried to see through the bursts of muzzle fire and caught staccato images like through a strobe light. Gladstone’s legs, clothing and flesh alike, melted away inside the transparent blob in an instant, leaving only bones. He tried to batter it off with his hands only to raise fleshless, stark white fingerbones in horror that fell and scattered across his lap. The meat of his arms was gone to his elbows in a second. Tenticular appendages lashed forward from the globular mass and retracted like a frantic sea anemone as it filled the tunnel with its bulk. Hails of bullets from Dillman, Spencer and Coulthard slapped and sputtered into the thing with little effect. It seemed to flinch and flex away from the bullets, then surge forward again, relentless. Only Dillman’s torch beam seemed to really hold it up. Gladstone’s screams cut abruptly short as it reached his torso and then Brown was up and running.

He pounded down the tunnel and realised the others were with him. At least, Spencer and Coulthard were. They panted as they ran, intent only on putting distance between themselves and that foetid horror. He didn’t dare look back for fear the thing was bulging along behind them, for fear he’d see Gladstone finished off or Dillman caught. He stumbled and nearly fell sprawling at one point as the tunnel floor became broken rock and one wall half-fallen, almost blocking the way. The result of the grenade they had heard earlier. Bones scattered as he kicked unwittingly through another skeleton.

A brighter glow began to fill the tunnel ahead and he pounded for it, heedless to any danger before them compared to the certain death behind.

They burst out into a dizzyingly huge cavern, skidding to a halt on a rock ledge that protruded into space hundreds of metres above the cave floor. The ceiling was lost in swirling mists far above, but a soft blue glow leaked through. The walls of the gigantic space were streaked with the strange lichen and the entire place swam in a surreal glow, almost like wan daylight leaking through tropical waters, incongruous several kilometres underground. Filling the floor and rising high into the wisps of mist was a structure clearly constructed by intelligent design – a huge spiralling tower, hundreds of metres high, with a base at least a kilometre across. Curving buttresses met smaller towers in a circle around it. Monumental, the organic-looking structure appeared to have been painstakingly carved from the rock itself. From their ledge, a mammoth stairway led down to the building’s lowest levels and the cave floor. Each stair was around two-metres high and a similar width; hundreds of the giant steps leading down into haze. The air was colder and damp, smelled metallic and ancient. Everything about the sight emanated age beyond any span of history. Geological age.

“Fuck me,” Spencer said, lifting his goggles. His voice held the taint of madness.

They jumped and spun at a scuffing, puffing sound from behind. Dillman staggered from the tunnel mouth, moaning in agony. His left arm was nothing but useless, dangling bone, his hand gone. Half his face was missing, teeth grinning from the exposed skull where the bubbling, bleeding skin still retracted. “Saaarrrge,” he slurred, reaching out with his good hand as he fell to one knee.

Spencer staggered backwards and turned; vomited noisily. Brown hurried forward, his medical training taking over, pushing shock and horror aside for the moment. But he didn’t dare touch the poor bastard. He looked closely, trying to ascertain where the damage ended. Dillman’s shoulder was eaten away and still melting. The cartilage holding the whole joint together disintegrated as Brown watched and Dillman’s arm bones fell to the rock with a clatter. The flesh of his neck liquefied and blood pulsed from the exposed carotid artery.

Dillman scrabbled at Brown one-handed as the medic gaped, at a total loss, even as the creep of disintegration slowed to a stop. But the damage was irreversibly done and Dillman’s lifeblood pumped out. Coulthard’s barrel slid into Brown’s vision, pressed up against Dillman’s forehead, and barked. The poor bastard flew backwards as the back of his head exploded out across the cave wall.

Spencer continued to empty the contents of his stomach as Brown sank to his knees and shook, mind flat-lining. Coulthard moved to the mouth of the tunnel from which they’d emerged and stared into the darkness. He flicked on his helmet torch and the beam pierced the black. He played it over the walls and ceiling.

As Spencer finally stopped puking, gasping short, shuddering breaths, Coulthard said, “Doesn’t seem to be following us. Maybe it just guards the tunnels.”

“Guards?” Brown managed.

Coulthard gestured at the impossible subterranean structure. “I don’t think anyone is supposed to find that, do you?”

“But what is it?” Brown asked. “What manner of creature…?”

“Best not try to figure it out,” Coulthard said. “Ours are soldier minds. That kind of question is for scientists.”

“I can’t believe it didn’t get all of us,” Spencer said.

“Out of practice maybe,” Brown wondered. “It’s not that quick, for all its deadliness. We only saw four insurgent bodies too. So four more got past it. It didn’t like our lights, though they only slowed it.”

“The flashlights were more use than the gunfire,” Spencer said.

“Maybe too bright out here,” Coulthard said, staring out into the wan blue glow of the cavern.

“Look.”

Coulthard and Brown turned to see where Spencer pointed. Several giant staircases like the one in front of them led from the cavern floor up to various ledges around the walls. Their ledge covered a hundred metres with another staircase leading down from the far end. On that stairway, four tiny figures were clambering resolutely down. They moved as if exhausted, sitting on the edge of each high step before slipping onto the one below. One of them was being helped by the others, clearly wounded.

“Fuckers,” Coulthard said. He went to Dillman’s corpse, unslung the man’s sniper rifle and fitted a telescopic sight. Moving to the edge of their own top stair he dropped onto his belly and unfolded the supports beneath the rifle’s barrel to aim across and down.

“Seriously, Sarge?” Brown asked, incredulous.

“We have a fucking job to do, gentlemen. I’ll see that done properly, at least.”

He squeezed the trigger and one insurgent’s head burst with a spray of blood they could see from afar, even with the naked eye. The others became frantic, scrambling like frightened ants. Coulthard fired again and a second man went down as his chest burst open. Another shot and the wounded insurgent was hit in the shoulder and spun around to drop to the rock and crawl into the lee of a huge step out of sight. They had finally realised where the fire was coming from and the other man scrambled into cover as well.

“Fuckers,” Coulthard said again. He kept his eye to the sight and lay still, breathing gently.

Spencer sank to curl up against the wall at the back of the rock shelf. His arms wrapped around his head as he rocked gently.

“Spencer’s lost it,” Brown whispered to Coulthard.

“I know,” the sergeant said without taking his eye away from the telescopic sight. “Give him some time and see if he comes around.”

“How much time do we have?”

“Who knows? Right now, that fucking thing isn’t coming out of the tunnel and I’m certainly not going back in. There’s one unhurt insurgent bastard down there and one with a shoulder wound of unknown severity. For now, I plan to wait them out and give Spencer a chance to get his shit together. I suggest you have a rest.”

His tone brooked no further discussion. Brown moved well away from the tunnel mouth and sat down against the stone. It was cold on his back. Clearly Coulthard had lost it too, only he was dealing with it in a typically old-school military way. The big, musclebound sergeant had seen more action than the rest of them put together and he let all that training take over. Maybe it was a good strategy. If the man could divorce himself from his emotion and let his experience run him like a robot, perhaps that would actually see him out of this alive.

Time ticked by. Brown began to worry about more mundane matters like where they might sleep, how much they had left in the way of rations and water, whether there was any way out other than the way they had come in. And he certainly wasn’t keen to go back up the tunnel either.

He jumped as Coulthard’s rifle boomed.

“I knew I could outwait him,” the sergeant said with a smile in his voice.

“Did you get him?”

“Yep. He didn’t think I’d wait on a scope all that time. I’ve sat for longer than ten minutes, you murderous insurgent motherfucker. You’re a fucking amateur, you had to peek. A dead fucking amateur now.” He stood and slung the rifle over his shoulder. “All dead except the shoulder wound and I reckon he’ll bleed out if nothing else. Let’s go and see.”

Brown stood, brow knitted in confusion. “Go and see?”

“Yep. What else is there to do?”

Brown thought hard but came up empty. The sergeant had a point. They at least needed to look around if they didn’t plan to go back up the tunnel, so they might as well finish the job while they searched. It was pragmatism taken to the max, but it made a cold sense.

Coulthard went and crouched beside Spencer. “How you doing, soldier?”

“Not good, Sarge.”

“Me either. But we gotta move, okay?”

Spencer looked up, his narrow face white as bone under his brown crewcut. “I got a little boy at home, Sarge. He’s gonna be two next month. I’m due home in time for his birthday. I missed his first.”

Coulthard patted Spencer’s shoulder. “We’ll get out and get you on a transport home just when you’re supposed to be.”

“We won’t, Sarge. None of us are getting out.” He pointed at the spires and tower filling the cavern. “What the fuck even is that, Sarge? We’re gonna die here.” He sounded perfectly calm about it.

“We’re getting out,” Coulthard said firmly.

“My wife always worried I’d come home with no legs from an IED. ‘You won’t get killed,’ she said one night when we’d been drinking. ‘I can feel that.’ She was always what she called spiritual. Thought she was fucking psychic, you know? But it was harmless. ‘You won’t get killed,’ she said, ‘but I have a terrible feeling you’re going to be maimed by a mine.’ Great fucking prophecy, eh, Sarge? For all her spirituality, she certainly didn’t foresee this shit!”

Coulthard laughed. “I don’t think anyone foresaw this shit.”

“I was supposed to go home in two weeks, Sarge.” Spencer’s eyes brimmed with tears.

Brown gaped as Coulthard did something he would never have anticipated. The sergeant gathered Spencer into a tight hug and held the man against his chest.

“Let it out, solider,” Coulthard said, and Spencer sobbed.

Brown stood uncomfortably off to one side for a good minute while Spencer bawled. The medic wondered why he felt so calm, so cold inside, and realised he had his terror, his panic, locked up in his chest. His true self and all the emotions it harboured was in a sealed box inside him and at some point he would have to unlock that box. It frightened him to think what might happen when he did, but for now, it stopped him falling to pieces. Did that make him a better soldier than Spencer? A worse human being? For all the atrocities he’d seen, all the wounds and trauma he’d become accustomed to, surely this day’s experiences should break him. He had no wife or kids like Spencer to yearn for. But the sergeant did and he was holding it together too. Maybe Spencer had just lost control of his locked box for now.

Coulthard pushed the man away. “Right. Now on your feet, son. Feel better.”

“Sorry, Sarge, I just…”

“Fuck sorry, Spencer, it’s all done. You ready to move out?”

“Yes, Sarge.” Spencer’s voice still quavered, but there was some confidence back in it.

“Brown?”

The medic nodded, shook himself. “Yes, Sarge.” At least, he thought, as ready as I possibly can be.

Coulthard sniffed and settled his pack. “Well, I am certainly not going back the way we came. That thing in the tunnel, whatever it is, seems to want to stay there, so we’ll leave it well alone. There must be another way out. Nothing that size,” he pointed at the monumental structure filling the cave, “can possibly only have one tiny tunnel leading in. Let’s go.”

“Sarge,” Brown said, finally ready to give voice to a nagging worry that had tickled his hindbrain since they had emerged onto the rocky ledge.

“What?”

“The thing in the tunnel hasn’t followed us out. Maybe you’re right and it’s too bright in here.”

“Yeah. And?”

“Well, if it’s meant to guard this place, but hasn’t followed us out, that must mean something.”

The Sergeant narrowed his eyes. “Like maybe there’s something else in here to do the same job and that thing only worries about its tunnel?”

“Something like that.”

“You have a point. Better keep your weapon ready. Let’s go.”

They moved along the ledge, heading for the giant stairway the insurgents had used. Brown whistled softly as they came abreast of a massive bronze plate pressed into the wall, ten metres high and five wide, inscribed with strange cursive symbols and patterns that made him dizzy to look upon. His eyes kept sliding away as he tried to make sense of them and nausea began to stir his guts.

“Over there,” Spencer said. “And there.”

They followed his pointing finger and saw other plaques on other ledges dotted around the cave. Small tunnel openings here and there accompanied them just like the one they had entered through.

“Any of those tunnels could have a fucking monster like the one that attacked us,” Brown said.

“We have to assume each one does,” Coulthard said. “We have to keep looking for something else. Move on.”

Another twenty metres along their ledge gave them a vantage point past the monumental structure and they all saw it at once. On the far side of the vast cave, at the top of another giant staircase that went even higher than where they currently stood, a huge tunnel mouth yawned.

“That must be fifty metres wide,” Coulthard said. “We have a fighting chance in a space like that.”

“Probably where the insurgents were heading too,” Brown said. “Means going through that structure though.”

“Or around it on ground level.”

A scream ripped through the air. High pitched and horrified, it was the voice of a man staring into hideous death and it cut suddenly short.

“Came from down there.” Spencer pointed down the stairway they had nearly reached, where the insurgents had died under Coulthard’s fire.

“Seems like old Shoulder Wound survived after all,” the sergeant said.

“Until just then.” Brown felt the lock on the box in his chest loosening.

“All right. Silence.” Coulthard raised his weapon and headed for the stairs. “We have no choice but to go through, so let’s fight our way through.”

He moved to the first stair and jumped down. The riser was a few inches above his head, but he walked forward and jumped down the next. Brown and Spencer followed.

Brown’s knees jarred with every drop and he wondered how long they would hold out. How long could any of them last with this kind of exertion? The insurgents were about two thirds of the way down and had looked spent, sliding off each step, staggering around.

And assuming they made it down, they would have to climb up even more stairs to get to the wide tunnel they had seen. And all the while fighting past whatever had triggered that scream. Basic training or advanced combatives, nothing prepared a soldier for this. Ready for anything? No one had ever listed this place under the heading of ‘anything’.

His lock loosened a little more, so Brown stopped thinking and kept moving.

He stopped counting the drops at fifty, but after a few more Coulthard paused and raised one fist. They froze, crouched in readiness. Coulthard tapped his ear. Straining to listen, Brown heard a scratching, scrabbling noise. Distant, but getting quickly nearer. Coulthard crept to the edge of the step they were on to look down and immediately burst into action. He raked his assault rifle left to right, the reports of his short bursts shattering the quiet and bouncing back from the distant walls all around. Brown and Spencer joined him at the edge. Spencer added his ordnance to Coulthard’s straight away, but Brown paused momentarily, stunned.

A flood of creatures flowed up the steps towards them like roiling black water. Only twenty or so steps below and fast getting closer, they scrambled on too many legs, black bodies like scorpions, but where the stinger should be on the end of the waving tails was a leering face, almost human though twisted somehow into something hideously uncanny, eyes too wide, mouths too deep. Those mouths stretched silently open or gaped like fish as the creatures chittered over the stone edges. Each was a metre or more long, two vicious mandibles at the front of the thorax snapping at the air as they came.

Brown brought his weapon up and added his fire to the fray. Their bullets tore into the things, shattering hard shells and causing gouts of glowing blue blood. As one fell, its fellows swarmed over it. Some staggered from shots striking their many limbs and fell from the sides of the staircase. Brown realised the things were screaming, in fear or pain or triumph he didn’t know, but they had no voice and just hissed thick streams of air from those stretched and awful faces that wavered atop their segmented tails as they ran.

There was no way Brown and his colleagues would be able to scramble up the stairs ahead of these horrors, so here they had to make their stand. Coulthard plucked a grenade from his belt and lobbed it past the first wave. It detonated in a cloud of shining black carapaces and stone chunks. Spencer emptied his clip and expertly switched in a new one. He resumed firing as Brown switched in new ammo. Coulthard threw two more grenades and switched clips to resume firing. Brown threw a grenade of his own and switched in his last clip. Their automatic fire stuttered and roared, controlled bursts as training took over.

The creatures were only five steps away, then four, and ammo was running out. Brown, Spencer and Coulthard yelled incoherent defiance and raked fire across their advance. Spencer lobbed a grenade then the things were too close for any more explosives.

Three steps and their numbers finally began to thin, two steps, almost close enough to touch.

Suddenly the men were stumbling left and right, firing in short bursts as the last of the things breached their step and tried to clamber onto them, heavy, sharp mandibles snapping rapidly for limbs. Spencer screamed as one drew close, his weapon clicking absurdly loudly, empty. Brown fired three short bursts and then there were no more creatures coming. Coulthard blew two away right at his feet, turned and killed the last one right before it leapt onto Spencer.

Everything was suddenly still; their ears rang.

Dave Spencer looked up at his sergeant with a smile of relief just as Brown raised one hand and shouted, “Stop!”

But Spencer finished taking a step away from the corpse at his feet and his foot vanished over the edge of the stairway. As his face opened into an O of utter surprise, he dropped from sight.

Brown and Coulthard rushed to the edge, but Spencer was lost in shadow. He found his voice a second later, his howl drifting up before cutting off with a wet thud. Silence descended heavily throughout the enormous cavern.

Brown, on his hands and knees, began to tremble uncontrollably. “So much for his psychic fucking wife,” he muttered.

Coulthard was beside him, breathing heavily from exertion, as Brown was, but there was anger in the sergeant’s demeanour too. “Took the fucking radio with him,” Coulthard said eventually.

He stood and yelled and screamed, kicked at the corpses of the horrible scorpion monsters all around. Brown turned to sit and watch, glad in a way that the man was finally letting some emotion out. Like a pressure cooker, he had surely been close to blowing for a long time.

Eventually the sergeant slumped back against the step above and slid down to sit. “So all we have is what we’re carrying and no comms.”

Brown nodded. “I’ve got what’s left in here,” he hefted his weapon, “and that’s it. You?”

“Same.”

“I still have two grenades.”

“I got none. But we each have pistols,” Coulthard said.

“Might save that for myself,” Brown said quietly, and he meant it. At some point, sticking the barrel of the .45 against his temple and pulling the trigger seemed like a good option. He looked at the chitinous corpses all around. “Think we got them all?”

“Hope so. These ancient fuckers were no match for the tools of modern warfare.”

“Tools which will be empty very soon if we need to use them again.”

Coulthard just nodded, staring at the ground between his feet. Eventually he sniffed decisively, stood. “Right, let’s go.”

Brown looked up at him, stark against the backdrop of shadowy mist and the wan blue glow of the lichen. “Yeah. Okay.”

They began to drop down the steps again, picking their way through the broken bodies, blue blood and shattered rock of their battle. In places, their grenades had sheered the steps into gravel slides they carefully surfed on their butts. Here and there some of the creatures still twitched, but they avoided them and preserved their ammo. After a dozen or so stairs the corpses ended. Another couple and they came across red smears on the stones and a few lumps of flesh and ragged clothing.

“A lot of blood,” Brown noted. “Those things clearly enjoyed the dead as well as the one who survived. I sure hope that was all of them we killed.”

Coulthard nodded and continued down in silence. Eventually, gasping, with legs like jelly and bruised feet, they reached the bottom to stand in swirls of mist.

A low moan rose, vibrating the air all around them. The stone floor thrummed. Then it faded away. As Brown and Coulthard turned to look at each other, it rose again, louder, stronger. Then again. And again. Each time, it vibrated more deeply, sounding more strained and desperate, accompanied by a heavy metallic clattering. Then silence fell and pressed in on them for a long time.

Eventually Brown said, “What the fuck was that?”

Coulthard looked towards the tall structure in the centre of the cave. From ground level it punched up high above them, wreathed in tendrils of blue-tinged mist. Brown began to dizzy as he stared up at it. The smaller towers surrounding the base, connected with curving buttresses, were each some thirty-metres high. In the base of each smaller tower was a hollowed-out circular space and in that space sat a statue. From the few he could see, Brown realised that each statue was turned to face the centre tower. They were almost human-like in form, seated cross-legged, but each had four arms with eight-fingered hands, held out to either side as though awaiting an embrace. Their bellies were distended and rolled with fat, their faces wide with four eyes – two above two. Brown moved to better examine the nearest one and the level of detail was phenomenal, disturbing. Not so much carved, as real living things turned instantly to stone. He wondered if in fact that’s exactly what they were. Each was at least three metres tall and corpulent.

Coulthard’s gaze was still fixed on the main tower. Brown moved to stand beside him and realised he was looking at a doorway, a dark opening in the rock wall several metres high and a couple wide. “The moaning came from inside, don’t you think?” the sergeant asked.

“Who cares?” Brown said, stunned.

“I have to know.” Coulthard walked towards the door.

“Sarge? Seriously, let’s just go. What if more of those…” Brown’s voice trailed off as Coulthard approached the opening.

Soft blue light pulsed from inside as the sergeant drew near. The moan rose again, shaking everything. Brown put a hand to his chest as the deep moan sounded a second time and made his heart stutter. His feet were frozen to the spot as he watched Coulthard step through the high entrance.

The sergeant stopped just inside and his gaze rose slowly upwards. He was framed in the blue light that pulsed more and more rapidly. The groaning became a wail and Coulthard’s weapon dropped from lax fingers to hang by its shoulder strap. “Chains,” Coulthard stammered. He looked left and right, up and down, his sight exploring a vast area. “Giant chains right through its flesh. Through all those eyes!” He dropped to his knees, head tilted back as he looked far above himself. “This is a prison. An eternal prison!” He began to laugh, a high, broken sound that came from the root of no sound mind.

The moan stirred into a deep, encompassing voice that reverberated through the cavern. “Release me!”

Chains rang as they were snapped taut and relaxed again. Whatever slumbering monstrosity that filled the tower and split the edges of Coulthard’s mind thrashed and its voice boomed again. “RELEASE ME!”

“Sarge!” Brown yelled, his stomach curdled with terror. “We have to go!”

He wanted to drag his sergeant away, but had no desire to risk seeing what the man saw. “Sarge!” he screamed.

Coulthard’s face tipped slightly towards him and Brown took in the sagging cheeks, drooling mouth, wild, glassy eyes, and knew that Coulthard was lost. No humanity remained in that shell of a body. With a sob, Brown ran.

He raced around the tower and leaped for the first step of the stairway on the far side. He hauled himself up as the voice burst out, over and over, “Release me! Release me! Release me!”

Brown scrambled up stair after stair, rubbing his hands raw on the rough surface. He sobbed and gasped, his shoulder and back muscles burned, but he hauled on and on. He couldn’t shake the image of all those swarming scorpion things from his mind and imagined them racing up behind him, but didn’t dare to look. The voice of whatever was imprisoned below cried out again and again.

At some point, more than fifty steps up, Brown collapsed, exhausted, and blackness took over. He assumed he was dying and let himself go.

He had no idea how much time had passed when he woke again, unmolested. The massive cavern was still.

Brown dragged himself to his feet and began the shattering climb once more, step after step after step. Time blurred, his mind was an empty darkness, until he pulled himself over the top of one more step and saw a flat expanse of rock stretching out before him. On the far side, some hundred metres away, the huge yawning tunnel stood, threatening to suck him in.

Brown laughed, dangerously close to hysterical, and gained his feet, stumbled forward into the gloom. He didn’t care what might be there, he just needed to leave the hideous monument and its prisoner behind.

More of the softly glowing lichen striated the walls and he dropped his night vision goggles into place. The sight before him stopped him dead, confused. A grid, some kind of lattice. He looked up and down as realisation dawned. A giant portcullis-like gate filled the tunnel, thirty metres high, fifty metres across, fixed deeply into the rock. He walked up to it and found it made of cast metal like the huge plaques they had seen, the criss-crossed straps of bronze at least twenty centimetres thick. Each square hole of the lattice was perhaps half a metre or a little more across. If he stripped off his gear, he might be able to squeeze through. Or he might very well get stuck halfway.

But it didn’t matter. Beyond the gate, beyond the weak glow of the cavern behind him, uncountable numbers of clear, globular shapes moved and writhed, tentacles gently questing out and retracting again, waiting, hungry. Hundreds of them.

Brown fell to his butt and sat laughing softly. He checked his rations and canteen, tried to estimate how long he might survive, and gave up when his brain refused to cooperate. He looked back across towards the tunnel from which they had emerged. Compared to the swarm waiting beyond the gate, the one or two in that tunnel seemed like far better odds. Assuming it was only one or two. And assuming he had the strength to get back down and up again. And that there were no more guardians waiting for him in the cavern. And that whatever was imprisoned below didn’t thrash free in its rage.

Lance Corporal Paul Brown, experienced medic and decorated solider, lay down and pulled his knees up to his chest. His brain couldn’t work out what to do, so perhaps he would just have a sleep and, refreshed, maybe then decide which suicidal option for escape might be the best one to try.

ATTN: COLONEL ADAM LEONARD – DIRECTOR, UNEXPLAINED OCCURRENCE DIVISION.

YOUR EYES ONLY

SUBJECT – DISAPPEARANCE OF EPSILON TEAM, NORTH OF KANDAHAR, AFTER TRACKING ENEMY INSURGENTS TO UNDERGROUND HIDEOUT.

SURVIVORS – 1: LANCE CORPORAL PAUL BROWN, MEDIC.

REPORT: After non-response from Epsilon Team for thirty six (36) hours after their last communique, a second squad was sent to investigate. They found Lance Corporal Paul Brown of Epsilon stumbling through foothills some seven (7) kilometres south of Epsilon Team’s last known whereabouts. Brown was wearing nothing but ragged underwear and his helmet, raving and largely incoherent, his left arm below the elbow was just bone, no hand, the flesh stripped away presumably by acid or a similar agent. His body was covered in various other wounds, some similar to his arm (though none as severe) and others clearly made from impacts, falls, scrapes, etc. He carried no gear except a flashlight, which he pointedly refused to relinquish. He made almost no sense except one phrase, repeated over and over: “Never let it out! Never let it out!” Current assessment by psychologists suggests Brown may never recover his faculties, but therapy has been started. His extensive injuries are being treated and are responding satisfactorily.

We’re still trying to establish further facts but are preparing an incursion squad to Epsilon’s last known whereabouts. Due to your standing request to be informed of any unusual occurrences, I am sending this wire. Our squad will be entering the cave at the last known location of Epsilon Team at 0800 tomorrow, the 14^th, should you wish to accompany them.

Please advise.

END