The Void

CHAPTER 18

Ivan Zlatan halted his men for a break. Though none were fatigued, he needed to get his bearings as he felt they were going in circles. Their tracking equipment was only working sporadically now, and coupled with the heavy snow-like mist, it made navigating by landmarks impossible — it had strained even his iron nerves.

His men milled around, none talking, all impatient and sullen. All had bleeding noses and gums, headaches and a few of them also exhibited strange, lumpy rashes. But there was nothing he saw that would impede their combat readiness.

He couldn’t tell if it was the altitude, the strange-smelling air that coated the inside of their noses and mouths, or a combination of both. But at least his lungs didn’t feel hot and tight like they had when they first entered the mountaintop basin. Perhaps we’re acclimatizing now.

He inhaled, smelling the high-methane content. It added further frustration, as the gas was extremely flammable and even explosive in high concentrations. It meant it would be too risky to use anything incendiary or even small arms. He cursed that bureaucrat Viktor Dubkin for not anticipating this when he sent them on the mission with standard weaponry. But he remembered the initial briefing and images displayed — the fog just wasn’t there when the shuttle first came down.

It’s spreading. What will it be like in another hour, a day? They needed to complete their mission and get out.

He joined his men, who all stood, none sitting or lying down. He could understand why; everywhere you looked was coated in a greasy slime that stuck to their boots, and seemed to work its way up their lower legs. His men could deal with any hardships, but why lie in stinking mud if you didn’t have to.

Zlatan looked at each of them — four remaining — they had lost Valentin on the climb, but he still had Naryshkin, Russlin, Stroyev, and Torshin, all with eyes still burning with military obedience and a desire to fight. None would even think of complaining.

He drew in a deep breath, filling his lungs, before letting it out slowly. There was no discomfort this time; yes, they were acclimatizing, he knew it. Zlatan turned slowly; looming from the mist were strange growths rising to about twenty feet in the air, and some with what could have been trunks ten feet around. It was if they pushed up until they came to the limits of the atmosphere bubble and stopped, knowing that beyond that meant death.

Though it reminded him of some sort of macabre, dead land, he knew there was life out there. They had grown used to the constant background sound that could have been an insect’s thrumming coupled with an underlying soft whine, and he was sure there were other larger movements obscured by the shadows and hanging fog. It was strange, either the things that were making the noise were experts at camouflage, or they were invisible. When he stared at where he thought the noises were coming from, they stopped, and then began again somewhere else.

Zlatan was about to lead his team onward, when suddenly all surrounding sounds fell away. He held his hand up slowly, pointed at his eyes then ears, and then motioned to the bank of gloom. His Kurgan drew their daggers, alert and waiting.

They stayed frozen for many minutes in the absolute silence that was like the vacuum of space. Zlatan finally waved them on, and in just a few more seconds he heard it again, the heavy sliding, as if someone was dragging a wet sack over the ground — slide, stop, slide, stop — always keeping pace with them, moving when they did, stopping when they stopped.

Zlatan felt the ground gently vibrate beneath his feet. He was sure it was coming closer. And then, it stopped again.

“Ach.” Behind him, Naryshkin stumbled.

Zlatan turned, about to curse his man’s clumsiness, when he saw that his soldier had been stopped dead, one foot in the front of the other, and the rear one snagged by something.

Naryshkin went to lift it free but couldn’t. “Is stuck.” He tugged on his foot, and then looked back at it. He recoiled.

“Po’shyol!” His voice became more urgent. “Something on it.”

Zlatan clicked his fingers and pointed. Russlin and Stroyev nodded and jogged toward the stuck man and gripped his arms.

Russlin looked up. “Looks like, maybe a snare.”

Zlatan crossed quickly to Naryshkin who was now tugging on his leg even harder without being able to set it free. Closer now, Zlatan could see that there was what looked like glistening, dark cables over the toe of his boot. At first, he thought it might have been metallic, perhaps even space debris, but as he watched the cables climbed higher up past his ankle.

He felt it then, the grinding slide again, and he realized why he could never see it — it was underneath them the whole time, burrowing and sliding along.

He spun, looking at the ground at their feet. The thing had been listening to their footsteps, following them, and just waiting for an opportunity to shoot up to snatch at them when it was ready. Like it had with Naryshkin.

“It’s below us.” Zlatan dove toward his trapped man, and reached down to tug at the cords around Naryshkin’s boot. As he did, even more of the glossy cables burst from the greasy mud, and encircled more and more of his soldier’s leg.

“It hurts.” Naryshkin groaned and threw his head back.

Zlatan pulled with all his strength, but he couldn’t lift free from what was below them. Whatever held the man was either enormously strong or much bigger than he expected.

The slimy soil around Naryshkin’s boots began to churn, and the Kurgan quickly pulled his blade and hacked at the cables that were now around his leg to the thighs. But for every strand he severed another two seemed to take their place.

The soil started to erupt around Naryshkin. Whatever was below the ground was beginning to surface, undoubtedly to claim its prize. Naryshkin began to panic, and pulled his gun, but Zlatan grabbed his arm and ripped it free, and then ordered his men to attack the ground. All of them started to hack and stab at the cords, the ground, and anything that looked to be surfacing.

In a five-foot circle around the stricken man, the ground boiled like water and then up rose a ring of tusks. Naryshkin’s curses became incendiary in their intensity and it was then that Zlatan realized that they weren’t tusks at all, but teeth.

The creature started to appear, a bulbous giant worm, with the cable things that had enmeshed his soldier’s legs extending from its end like a thick beard of tentacles. What held him was the feeding end, open now like a colossal lamprey; a deep-sea creature that had a circular mouth lined with rasp-like teeth for gripping onto flesh and bone.

Naryshkin was dragged down at the same time as the circle of foot-long teeth began to close.

Zlatan and his men fell upon the monstrous worm, stabbing and hacking, but it was like trying to do damage to an armored truck, and their blades refused to penetrate the scaling.

Naryshkin had sunk now to his waist, his arms flailing, and he reached out, holding onto his comrades, Torshin grabbed an arm, but the sleeve came away in his hands just as the massive teeth came together.

Zlatan gritted his teeth at the sound of crunching bones. The Kurgan warriors’ bodies were a wonder of massive armor-plated bone growths, but they stood little chance against something that was the size of a killer whale, and whose ocean was the slick mud below them.

His soldier’s screams turned wet as dark blood spewed from his lips. In a couple of mighty tugs, his body vanished below the greasy surface.

For several minutes afterwards, they heard dragging and sliding beneath them as the monstrous creature slid back to its lair to enjoy its meal in peace.

Zlatan got to his feet, and wiped hands, slick with greasy slime and blood, on his trouser legs, leaving long streaks in their wake.

None spoke, but just stared at the churned ground that quickly seemed to knit together, the weird mud sliding and meshing like a wound closing over.

“What was that thing?” Torshin asked.

Zlatan shook his head. “Who knows; but from now on, I suggest we watch where we walk.”

Torshin balled Naryshkin’s sleeve up and tossed it to the ground where the man had disappeared. “It seems hell reaches up to us even on the mountaintops.”

“Have you not heard?” Zlatan turned back to stare briefly at the ground. “When you are going through hell, there is only one thing to do.” He looked up to smile grimly at Torshin. “Keep going.”

Zlatan waved his men on, and they vanished in the swirling mist.