From hell, p.30
From Hell, page 30
part #8 of Alex Hunter Series
The last thing Matt saw was the tendrils freezing and then blackening like new shoots after an overnight frost.
The vehicle crashed down on the slope and bounced several times, and Matt yelled as he skidded the machine to a stop. He craned to look out the front screen.
Magma was being catapulted from every fissure on the mountainside and from the caldera above. In among the molten rock was a shimmer of silver. The jets shot out and upward, but it was as if the bomb was a cork in a champagne bottle, in that the initial eruption pressure was spent quickly, and no major eruption occurred.
Matt slumped back and then looked around, breathing like he’d just run a marathon. Objects that looked like a forest of stunted, limbless trees studded the slope. On closer inspection, he saw that they were the frozen tendrils of the massive thing that had lived at the heart of the volcano.
As he watched, the petrified tendrils blackened and flaked, and then they turned to dust. It seemed that the massive creature had tried everything in its power to stop them, perhaps finally realizing that the insignificant beings had brought something with them that threatened even an immortal’s existence. Maybe it was able to absorb some of the memories of the hundreds, thousands, or maybe even millions of creatures it had consumed over the countless millennia, and when it took Janus, it finally saw what was in store for it.
While Matt continued to stare, the temperature plummetted.
“Is it over?” Casey asked. She crouched as Aimee roused herself. The woman sat up and held her head for a moment, then Joshua went to her.
“Mom.” He hugged her, and she hugged him back.
“Where are we?” Aimee blinked. “We got out?”
“Yes. But …”
“Where’s Alex?” She moved Joshua aside. “Oh god.” She rushed to her husband’s side and grabbed him, and Matt bet that even the pain of her grip must have been intolerable for the man who was literally an open burn from head to toe.
Alex nodded, and carefully lifted blackened arms to try and hold her. Matt felt his eyes moisten as he noticed one of Alex’s armored gloves had been burned right through and there were sticks of bone where his fingers used to be.
Alex tilted his head forward so Aimee could bring herself close, and she wept into him.
Casey pulled a shotgun from the gun rack and punched the button so the door slid back.
“Gonna take a look. Give me a couple of minutes. If I’m not back …” She held Matt’s eyes until he nodded. She stuck her head out and then leaped free. “Shut it.”
Joshua did as she asked, and Casey sprinted back up toward the fissure, paused for a moment, then disappeared inside.
Matt turned. “Josh.” He looked from the boy to Alex. “Is it – is he …?”
Joshua nodded. “It’s okay, it’s Dad.”
Aimee eased back, unfastened the helmet at Alex’s neck, grabbed each side of the remains of the armored shielding and lifted it free. To her credit, she kept her composure a lot better than Matt would have. He swung back in his seat to face forward after seeing what the volcanic heat had done to Alex.
The man’s face was a mess of blistered flesh, and places were charred black. There was burned bone showing at one cheek and on his forehead where the skin had been totally seared away. All his hair was gone, and one eye was swollen shut.
Aimee held his head. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
Matt eased back around in time to see Alex squeeze her hand and then shake his head carefully. Joshua reached up to touch his arm.
“Tell me,” the boy said.
Alex stared at Aimee, and Joshua looked into the blistered face of the man who couldn’t hope to speak with his mouth so badly burned.
“Okay, okay.” Joshua nodded and turned to Aimee. “He said not to be sorry. He won, because we’re alive.”
Matt turned in his seat again. “He saved us all.”
Joshua turned to the dog. Most of its fur was burned away, and even its face was covered in wounds and melted hair. The huge, dark nose was still seared pink and raw. It lay still, but, oddly, the nose seemed a little less raw than just minutes ago, and the wet patches of weeping skin on its body had stopped oozing and looked pink at the edges where new skin was already forming.
Matt frowned. He knew Alex Hunter’s metabolism had been altered by the Arcadian treatment; had the dog ingesting some of the HAWC leader’s blood somehow changed its own physiology?
While Matt was mulling the concept over, there came a pounding on the side of the vehicle, and his head snapped around as his heart leaped to his throat.
Then he exhaled with relief. “It’s Casey.”
Joshua pressed the door button, and it slid back so she could jump in.
She racked her gun. “The sacks of people are still there, and still all unconscious. But everything else is gone. Where that big blob thing was is now all buried.”
“Did we do that?” Matt asked. “Or did the thing bury itself?”
Joshua turned. “I can still feel it in there. It’s hurt, and it’s fleeing.” He closed his eyes. “So much deeper; it’s getting ready to slumber again.”
“Is it dying?” Casey asked.
“Weakened.” Joshua frowned. “And smaller now.”
“We didn’t kill it,” Matt said.
“Maybe we never could,” Casey said. “It’s had its fill … for now.”
“Until next time.” Matt started the engine, turned the vehicle around and drove down the slope.
Alex lay down, and Aimee lay next to him, one arm across his chest. She rested her chin on his shoulder.
On his other side, Joshua held his hand. “Heal,” he said softly.
Alex closed his eyes.
CHAPTER 48
The slopes of Mount Etna – cleanup
Matt and Maria watched as the massive rescue, retrieval, and cleanup operation got under way.
Mount Etna had returned to its dormant state, and workers with excavation equipment moved in to dig into the side of the volcano. Hundreds of people were retrieved. And thankfully, no sign of the grotesque amoeba thing was found. Further, the rescued people seemed uninfected.
But of the massive creatures woven or melted together from the body parts of poor souls, only rotting limbs were found. Whether the force that bound them together was spent, dying, or now back in hibernation, it meant the bonds holding the laboring beasts had been broken, and their souls freed.
Internally, no sign of the archaean strands were present. Even the forest of tendrils was now so blackened, it already seemed thousands of years old, the state of decay turning it to an ash-like substance. There was no living DNA inside the tendrils – it was as if the creature’s final act was to remove all trace of itself.
Matt watched as the workers brought out sealed bags from the caves. He wondered if the thing was ever really sentient, or just acting on a purely animalistic behaviors. In his heart, he believed it was intelligent. After all, how could it not be? Even bacteria have been known to learn about their environment, competitors, and food. If this thing was near immortal, how could it not learn over all the time it had lived?
To it, humans must have seemed nothing more than the tiny things that briefly lived on the planet’s surface. Not really different to any of the other beasts on four legs. Humans just grew to be more abundant.
The other inexplicable thing was that the human minders not killed by Sam, Aiko and Maria, with their eyes sewn shut and their strange ability to commune with the beasts, had all vanished. Either they, too, fell away to nothing after the massive beast below was defeated, or they retreated back to where they came from. Perhaps to wait until the next time they were called.
Maria brought him a strong cup of coffee and leaned up against him. She held up her cup. “Cin cin; it’s not every day you beat the devil.”
He tapped her cup with his. “And send it back to Hell. For now.” He smiled down at her, and she returned the smile. He noticed the dark rings under her eyes – she still looked haunted.
Aiko and Sam also remained behind to ensure that Gray and his laboratory were safely evacuated. Lucas Velez and Adam Brice had recovered as if nothing had ever happened to them. Both thought they’d had some sort of pleasant dream, and had no recollection of the thing that tried to devour them.
A good ending, except Matt remembered seeing the tortured form of Alex with Aimee, Joshua, and the huge dog as they headed to the helicopter to be evacuated. The dog was bandaged like a four-legged mummy, but its fur was already growing thick again. Joshua walked beside it, one arm draped over its back, talking to it the entire time.
A few of the local Italian Special Forces had joined them, but had shrunk back when they’d seen the man who was literally an animated charred corpse. Alex had refused all treatment and, amazingly, was already walking.
The medevac helicopter pilot, a woman, had taken control of Alex and pointed Aimee, Joshua, and the dog to the next inbound helicopter. On her uniform she had the red cross of the medical unit and also had a hood pulled up over her head and mask over her lower face.
Matt thought it had looked like Alex had weakly tried to pull away, but the woman administered some sort of painkilling sedative, and then held him tightly as they both vanished inside the chopper. The door shut and the helicopter took off.
Joshua stood staring, looking a little confused. “Heal,” Matt had heard the boy keep saying to Alex.
Matt had heard Alex Hunter, the Arcadian, referred to once as Jack Hammerson’s Frankenstein monster. But without that monster, they’d all be dead right now. He hoped Alex healed quickly, because there were real monsters in this world. They lived in caves, and under ice, and below the ocean in its inky depths. Sometimes they surfaced, and that’s when you needed a monster of your own in the game.
“Heal,” Matt whispered and turned away.
CHAPTER 49
The worst was yet to come.
Walter Gray shut his eyes in the back of the helicopter and cupped a hand over his earpiece as the HAWC commander, Colonel Jack Hammerson, exploded into his ear.
His secure laboratory at USSTRATCOM had been breached; not through an external intrusion, but from the inside. Added to that his multimillion-dollar android was missing, and one of his scientists was still in hospital with fractured ribs, plus a bruised heart – one guess who was responsible.
“It must have self-activated,” Gray said softly, now wondering if SOPHIA had ever been deactivated, or had just let him think that it was.
He felt his heart sink as he listened. There were more and worse details to come. One of their SR-71 Blackbird stealth jets had been stolen, and had just been found ditched off the coast of Italy. Further, a medivac chopper had been taken from a southern Italian base.
SOPHIA had planned it all, he knew. And it must have been doing the planning for a long while. He squeezed his eyes shut even tighter, almost wishing the revelations would go away as Hammerson dropped the killer piece of the tale: someone had picked up Alex Hunter in that stolen medivac chopper. Jack Hammerson was without doubt who it was. Gray knew as well.
SOPHIA had somehow retained its, her, emotion programs, hidden them away, and was still drawing on all their complexities and volatility.
“The things we do for love,” the scientist whispered.
He ground his teeth and squeezed more pressure into his eyelids, trying to think, but with Hammerson yelling so loudly, everything was scrambled. The commander’s voice was starting to make the side of Gray’s face ache.
Gray tried to anticipate what SOPHIA would do and where she would take Alex, all the while dreading standing in front of ‘the Hammer’ if he didn’t have good answers.
“We’ll find them and we’ll get them back, sir,” he said softly. The only problem was, what happened if she didn’t want to come back? Then they’d be both lost.
The call ended and Gray closed his eyes and leaned his head back in his seat. A tear of frustration and loss ran down his cheek. They’d both be lost and he had no way to find them.
Suddenly, Gray’s eyes shot open: Joshua.
EPILOGUE
Kilauea, Hawaiian Islands, southern shore – 200 feet down
“It’s an old lava tube.” Mick Reynolds squatted as he ran a gloved hand over the glass-smooth wall of the cave. He was a volcanologist, and he, accompanied by his buddy, Steve Chambers, and Jemma Kono, a local spelunker, had been tasked with investigating the recent shimmying of the volcano. They needed to get up close and personal, see if the old boy was planning something dangerous or just had another of its usual bellyaches. It was sheer luck that they had managed to break into an ancient lava tube.
Jemma and Steve came and squatted beside Mick. Jemma took off her helmet and wiped her brow. “Still hot, even though it’s been dormant now for years.” She took off her glove and ran it over the wall. “Yeah, residual heat, or maybe a magma bed getting ready for another surge to the surface.”
Steve crouched, forearms on his thighs. “This tube is old, maybe a few thousand years. You can see how it’s started to flake. The volcano has erupted since then, but didn’t use this route. May have gone another way.”
“Lucky to find this place.” Mick shone his flashlight around. “And we’re not the first ones in here – look.” He lifted his light. On the wall there were images, and also some sort of picture-style writing.
“Okay, Jem, you’re the local expert here; what does it say?”
“Pictoglyphs, or actually, petroglyphs,” she said, shining her light on them. “Ancient Hawaiians. These guys have been here 800 years, and when they first arrived they had no written language. They used symbolism, pictures, and totems.”
“I can see that,” Mick said and grinned. “But can you read it?”
She frowned, ignoring him. “Strange.” She edged closer. “I think this is the symbol for Kanaloa.”
“The god Kanaloa?” Steve asked.
“The one and only.” She was shining her light on an image of something that looked like an octopus, but with a single eye.
“Yikes,” Mick said. “I’m guessing he was the god of seafood, huh?”
“No, but god of a lot of other things, actually, and one of the most powerful of the ancient beings. He was the god of the underworld, god of evil, fire, death, destruction; generally, everything that went wrong in our world was caused by him. Kinda like our version of the devil.”
“Nice guy,” Steve said.
“Not always depicted as a guy,” Jemma whispered. “Sometimes as a he, sometimes as a she.”
“Whatever.” Steve studied the images. “So why would they worship it in a lava tube 200 feet below ground?”
“You got that bit about being god of the underworld, right?” Mick nudged him.
“Yeah, I get that, but down here in this small pipe? Not a lot of room.”
“Who knows? Maybe it was invitation only. And they sure as hell aren’t around to ask. Let’s mark it down for the university to look into.” Mick turned back to the dark cave. “Anyway, we’re down for a job, not ancient Hawaiian devil worship. Let’s go.”
They slid a little more along the smooth tube, until it opened out into a larger space roughly the shape of good-sized room.
“Dead end,” Mick said, standing straight. He put his fists in his back and stretched, feeling good after the cramped tube. “That’s better.”
Steve and Jemma lifted their lights and walked the edge of the room in opposite directions while Mick stood in the center.
“Hey, over here; more glyphs.’ Jemma had stopped and shone her light over a section of the wall. “Hmm, what am I looking at here?”
“Are they wrestling?” Steve asked.
Mick joined them. “Who can tell? They weren’t exactly the best artists known to history.”
The ground shimmied beneath them.
“Ooh.” Jemma put a hand out to brace herself, and her eyes flicked to Mick. “That was a big one; maybe we should wrap it up for today.”
Mick sighed, trying to maintain his cool, and looked at his wristwatch. “Yeah, okay.” He half-turned. “Steve, gonna head back up. Hey …” He frowned. “Where are you?”
There was silence, which he found odd, seeing the dark cavern was large, but enclosed so his voice reached every corner. He turned about, and moved his light along the wall.
“There you are.”
In the darkness Steve was standing up close to one of the walls – real close.
“What are you doing in there? You found something?” Mick got to his feet and held out a hand to Jemma.
“Steve?” Jemma asked. “You okay?”
Mick felt the hairs on his neck prickle as the room filled with a smell like burning sugar. Steve stood in a large natural alcove, and the man was so close to the wall he looked like he was pressing himself up against it.
It took Mick a few seconds to make his legs move, and then he went to his friend, grabbed his shoulder and tugged.
‘Steve?”
Steve didn’t budge, and in fact was so close to the wall now, it looked weirdly as if he was actually forcing himself onto it. And what was with his perspiration? It looked like molasses, rather than normal sweat.
“Hey.” Mick tugged harder, and then tried to get a better grip. But he couldn’t. Because when he tried to readjust his hands, he found they were stuck to the man. “What the fuck?”
And Steve felt hot. Not hot like a fever, but hot like he was cooking. There was also an odd sensation starting up, like an electric shock running up his arms.
“Jesus, there’s something …” Mick tugged madly, but couldn’t get free.
“What is it?” Jemma asked, her eyes wide now. “What’s happening?” Her voice was becoming shrill.
“Stay back.” He grimaced. “I’m stuck – something’s – wrong.”
Suddenly long tendrils started to whip free from all over Steve’s body and from the wall surrounding him. To Mick’s horror, a massive blind eye wetly opened in the wall beside his friend.
