The Chimera Secret

71

‘Keep moving.’

Ethan hurried along at a crouch as he followed the winding path of the access tunnel, Lopez following close behind him.

He knew that they were close now, could smell the fresh air flowing down the tunnel as though the earth itself was breathing. Moments later he saw the faint outline of the entrance, a ragged hole hewn into the living rock that looked up at the night sky, clouds drifting across star fields.

A metal grating was fixed in place across the entrance, thick mesh wire with a steel border and ‘X’ crossbeam. Ethan crouched down alongside the grating and illuminated the fixing bolts with the light from his cell.

The aged bolts were freshly scraped, bright metal glinting in the light. Ethan smiled as he gripped one of the bolts tightly between his forefinger and thumb and turned them. The bolt squeaked as it rotated. Duran and Mary had come through here, and the ever cautious Duran would have sealed the grating loosely back in place.

‘This is how Mary and Duran got out,’ Lopez said.

‘And how Cletus MacCarthy got in,’ Ethan confirmed. ‘He must have found the sasquatch being held inside. Maybe he was a staunch conservationist or something, either way he didn’t like what he saw. I found a sabotaged junction box that controlled power to the cages in the rear of the facility.’

‘So Cletus gets in here and frees the imprisoned sasquatch,’ Lopez said. ‘But he leaves a trail enough afterward that he’s followed.’

‘Probably by a CIA team,’ Ethan nodded as he twisted the bolts from their sockets, ‘who then took down Randy instead of Cletus, thinking that he was the infiltrator when they found the files on his computer, the images that Cletus took.’

‘Jesus,’ Lopez said. ‘Cletus then gets killed by the same damned creatures he probably liberated.’

‘Ironic,’ Ethan said.

He removed the rest of the bolts and lifted the grating out. He pushed himself forward and burst out into the fresh air, pocketing his cell as Lopez hurried out behind him.

They were on the same flank of the mountain, no more than fifty yards from the main entrance to the mine. As Ethan stood and got his breath back he saw that the access tunnel was completely hidden from view of the mine’s main entrance by the thick foliage and trees that stood between the two excavations, the access tunnel slightly higher on the hillside than the main entrance.

‘They could be out here,’ Lopez whispered as Ethan carefully set the grating back in place, just as Duran had done.

Ethan nodded and looked up into the night sky. The clouds were breaking up, their edges glowing blue-white in the light of a full moon blazing low over the mountainous horizon. The glow illuminated the forests brightly enough for the trees to cast ghostly shadows that could conceal any number of murderous sasquatch, but right now some visibility was far better than none.

‘We’ll have to take the chance,’ Ethan whispered back as he stood. ‘Come on, let’s move.’

He led the way down the hillside and ran out across the open ground near the mine entrance, trying to move as lightly as he could to avoid attracting attention to himself. As he ran, the sound of muted screams drifted ghoulishly from the mine entrance and out into the night air, competing with low growls and whining screeches that sent a shiver down his spine.

‘Ethan,’ Lopez said, slowing.

‘There’s nothing we can do for them now,’ he replied, knowing damn well that Kurt Agry and his men would not have hesitated to abandon either himself or Lopez to their deaths in the air strike now only moments away.

All of a sudden the screeches and growls became louder, echoing and bellowing from the mine entrance in a tumult of what sounded frighteningly like dialect, a babbling, rumbling noise that echoed out across the lonely forest.

‘Shit, they’re coming out,’ Lopez said, and turned to sprint for the treeline.

Ethan turned away from the mine entrance, and then froze as his eye caught upon a metallic object standing unobtrusively near the trees beside the mine. A narrow tripod stood with a camera affixed to the top, pointed out toward the narrow animal trail that they had followed up to the mine hours previously.

Lopez was already past him as she ran in front of the camera toward the treeline. Ethan raised a hand in sudden panic.

‘Nicola, wait!’

Lopez turned as she ran, looking over her shoulder in surprise. Almost instantly she tripped and tumbled onto the rocky ground. Her head cracked against rocks and she slumped face down on the cold earth. As Ethan stepped forward to help he saw the shadows at the treeline change shape, and felt his guts plunge as from the darkness emerged an immense sasquatch. The creature lumbered toward Lopez and loomed over her, its eyes glowing with that horrific red haze as it looked down at her crumpled body and then up at the camera mount in front of it.

In the strange blue glow of the moon Ethan saw its features change to anger as it recognized a piece of technology belonging to man, and it lumbered two paces toward the tripod and reached out to swipe one gigantic arm across it.

The camera smashed off the tripod and flew through the air toward Ethan, who ducked to avoid the missile as it clattered down onto the ground behind him. The sasquatch turned and grabbed the tripod, then hurled it away into the darkness of the trees before it turned and looked directly at Ethan.

Ethan carefully took a pace backward from it and glanced at Lopez. She was still lying motionless on the ground, her long black hair snaking away from her head and a trickle of dark blood staining her forehead.

The sasquatch stood up from its crouch and towered into the night sky, nine feet tall and as broad as a barn door. With measured, controlled strides that thumped down heavily onto the earth at its feet it moved toward Ethan.

Ethan backed up as behind him he heard a terrible screech, like the cry of an eagle the size of a car. He turned as three sasquatch burst from the mine entrance. One of them carried something in its giant hand and it tossed the object out into the air with what sounded like a cry of jubilation.

The round object span in a graceful arc and landed ten feet from where Ethan stood with a weighty thud. He looked down at Kurt Agry’s head, the features twisted with agony and one side of the skull crushed inward.

Two more sasquatch followed the first three out of the mine and came to a halt, watching Ethan in silence.

Ethan stepped back another pace and his boot hit the edge of the video camera. He looked down, and saw that it was no longer recording. But a tiny orange power light still glowed in the darkness.

The sasquatch advanced further toward Ethan, towering over him like a pine tree. He stared up at it just as a voice whispered urgently in the darkness.

‘Don’t move.’

Ethan swiveled his gaze to his right, and saw Duran Wilkes hurry across to him and pick up the camera. The viewing screen flopped open in front of him, glowing in his face and showing files with the videos they had recorded during the expedition. Ethan stared at the screen in desperation, as though wanting to look at anything other than the huge beast bearing down upon him.

Duran selected one of the files and pressed play.

In the silence of the forest, an audio track began playing. The camera’s internal speaker was not loud, even as Ethan saw Duran nudge the volume up to maximum, but in the relative silence it carried far enough. A long, low, mournful howl echoed out into the night, rising in pitch with each passing second until it wailed like a banshee into the sky.

The awful cry rang in Ethan’s ears as Duran held the camera toward the sasquatch, as if willing the sound to cut them all down.

The big sasquatch stopped in mid-stride and stared at them in silence. The long howl faded away into the silence as the camera’s video ended.

Duran punched the screen again and the same horrible cry rose up out of the camera and soared into the heavens once more.

Above the sound of the recorded howl, Ethan heard a distant sound, a bizarre humming, buzzing noise that echoed faintly as it chased through the mountains somewhere to the south. The sasquatch heard it too, their heads turning to listen to the distant noise, their noses quivering as they sniffed the air.

‘This isn’t working,’ Ethan whispered anxiously.

‘No, but this will,’ Duran replied, and called out. ‘Mary, now!’

From the pitch blackness, Mary ran out into the open. Ethan glanced at her just as she held up something in her hands and pointed it at the enormous sasquatch as it turned to look at her.

A blaze of blinding light flashed into existence, a bright blue-white beam that cut through the night and hit the sasquatch square in the face. The huge beast cried out and turned aside from the searing light, flinging one giant arm up across its face as it stumbled away. Mary turned the powerful flashlight on the faces of the other sasquatch, and they ducked away from its glare. A soft gabbling exchange shot between them, and then in utter silence they turned as one and strode off the hillside, the alpha-male passing with its arm up to protect its vision from the glaring light no more than ten feet away from where Ethan and Duran stood.

He watched the animals stride into the forest to the east and vanish from sight, and then Ethan turned and dashed to Lopez’s side.

‘Get up!’

Lopez groaned and struggled to her feet, blinking wearily at Ethan. She saw Duran Wilkes already running away toward the treeline.

‘What happened?’

‘Run!’

The whining, buzzing noise grew louder as Ethan pushed Lopez in front of him and began running for the cover of the trees. He knew exactly what the sound was, having heard it many times with the marines in Iraq. The buzz of turbofan engines were some of the most distinctive of any aircraft, and powered the A-10 Thunderbolt II ground-attack fighter.

Above the whine of the engines Ethan heard a sudden series of whooshing noises as though somebody had let off a box of massive fireworks.

‘Hit the deck!’

Ethan’s last word was drowned out by the rocket propelled roar of eight Maverick air-to-ground missiles that roared overhead and plowed not just into the mountainside but directly down the open mine entrance with precision, laser-guided accuracy.

Before Ethan and Lopez had even hit the ground the side of the mountain exploded in a supersonic cloud of fragmented rock and superheated gas as the powerful missiles sliced into the facility and then detonated deep within the hillside.

Ethan hit the ground and felt his back being hammered by chunks of shrapnel and debris, and then his vision blurred and his consciousness was ripped brutally away from him.