The silurian bridge, p.29
The Silurian Bridge, page 29
Gonzalez laughed. “The Arcadian don’t need all that fancy tech. He can see round corners.”
The tunnel they were in was constricting, and Alex slowed, and then stopped.
The HAWCs waited behind him.
“It’s in there. The other intelligence. It knows us.” He closed his eyes. “And it can see us.”
CHAPTER 43
As Casey and Brandt watched, a shape began to appear in the dark water. It seemed to fill the lake, and as they stared, a pair of large red eyes opened in its center. Then more eyes opened around those, dozens of them, hellishly red, and they seemed to burn with an evil intelligence.
“Ho-l-y shit,” Casey breathed.
The thing broke the surface. Its twenty-foot-wide head was a mass of bristles and scales. Dangling from under the clusters of eyes were tentacles, not eight or ten but dozens of them that curled and writhed, with oily convolutions, never remaining still.
It kept coming, and they saw that folded down hard on its back were wings, and it had hugely muscled shoulders and tree-trunk arms ending in three-taloned hands ten feet across.
The crustacean people pulled back in awe, reverence, or perhaps fear.
“They were calling to it. That’s what they were doing.” Casey stared.
“And it came,” Brandt whispered.
The tethered animals, numbering about a dozen, were going mad with fear, and the two humans scrabbled at the rope around their necks and screeched even louder to Casey and Brandt. The naked woman held up her hands to them, pressed together, beseeching.
The massive beast towered over them, showering them with water and looking like it was reveling in their fear. Almost at once, the entire group of roped beasts silenced. Even the two people dropped their arms and stood calmly as if in a trance.
“What just happened?” Brandt asked. “Why did they . . .?”
And that was when it took them – the huge tentacled face leaned forward, and the ropy coils opened to display a massive, toothed mouth that enveloped the entire group, pulled them from the ropes, and with an audible crunching of meat, bone, and shell, devoured them all, including the people.
“It ate them. All of them,” Brandt said blankly, his eyes wide. “And they just fucking let it.”
“It somehow shut them up. They had no choice.” Casey Franks frowned at the thought. “It somehow got in their heads. And then, the danger dawned on her. “Oh, fuck no. We gotta get the hell out of here.”
Before they could move, the beast lifted its multiple red eyes toward where the two HAWCs hid, and Casey felt the screech in her brain. It locked her muscles, froze her, and like a mental ice pick, dug into her mind, peeled back her resistance, and then took control.
Both of the HAWCs got to their feet and slowly made their way along the narrow path in the cave wall toward the water.
And the waiting ropes.
***
Alex stopped and placed his hand against the wall – something had changed. Where before he had felt the impressions of his missing HAWCs in his mind, plus another more alien presence, now he only felt the alien. It was if somehow his missing team members had been eclipsed or absorbed by the thing.
He had an agonizing thought: absorbed . . . or consumed by the thing.
Alex began to run, quickly outpacing his team. That macabre thought alone made him accelerate, moving along the narrowing cave at an impossible velocity. He dimly heard Gonzalez, Cooper, and Ito, a way back now, calling after him and sprinting hard to try and keep up.
His team only had their flashlights, some pistols, and a range of knives, and he knew that those weren’t going to be nearly enough to win a battle with what he imagined they would encounter.
He was close now, he could feel it. The tunnel he was in became filled with the smell of brackish seawater, and in his mind’s eye Alex saw the desolate dark shorelines, and the hide of a leviathan that dwelled in the sunless depths.
He was just about to give another burst of acceleration when he came out into nothingness as the tunnel ended.
He spun in the air and shot out an arm to catch the lip of the cliff edge and hang on. He swung toward the rock wall and quickly pulled himself back up, then stood in the center of the tunnel, blocking his team members from going over like he had.
As his team arrived, even the toughened HAWCs were struck dumb by the jarring scene before them. Brandt and Casey were tethered by the neck with a thick rope to an iron ring set into the ground. The pair stood motionless. But the worst of it was the monstrous being that towered over them.
“Oh God, the monster carving from the temple,” Cooper whispered.
“Dagon,” Alex said. “It’s real.”
He looked quickly about, taking in the steps, the spacecraft, the deep pool – and spotted a narrow path in the cliff leading down, but knew they wouldn’t have time to rescue the pair of lost HAWCs. The colossal horror was already reaching over them, its bloom of tentacles opening like the petals of a ghastly flower, ready to take them in.
“Fire at will,” Alex yelled, and together the four of them hailed bullets down at the thing.
Alex knew the rounds would be as effective as throwing peas at that monstrous hide, but all he hoped to do was distract it long enough to buy his colleagues some time. He wasn’t even sure the monstrosity would react.
But it did. And not in a way Alex expected.
A searing bolt of pain blasted through his head. Gonzalez, Cooper, and Ito collapsed to the ground, holding their heads and moaning in agony.
The pain felt like someone had set his brain on fire. But buried within the attack was a command – stop – and a demand: join with me.
Alex’s unique physical makeup allowed him to weather the agony of the intrusion, and instead of buckling, he not only fought back, he also reached out to probe the mind of the colossal being that had risen from the bottomless pool in the buried grotto.
Alex saw into the thing’s head, and visions of its home world crowded in. It was a water planet where the seas were black and corrupted. Rotting bodies floated on the surface as their flesh turned to sludge and their skeletons sank to the bottom, where they would disintegrate into the fetid ooze.
Its kind had consumed their world entirely, and it was now a celestial wanderer seeking a new home. It had arrived here a billion years ago. With its fuel exhausted, it had been unable to land and had crashed here.
It had found a primitive world, the Hadean period on Earth, devoid of life, but it knew that when living creatures evolved and rose from the primordial ooze, it would rule them for an eternity. It wasn’t immortal but lived at a different rate from anything on the planet. It could live for another million years, or a billion.
And then Alex saw its plans for his species. When evolution lifted human beings to domination, it would be there, waiting for them. And it would harvest them as both food and slaves.
Eventually our world would become like its world: corrupted and lifeless. But before then, the human slaves would build it another ship, and when the Earth became that toxic swamp, it would leave and continue its search for another world to dominate, consume, and destroy. It would take the remaining humans with it to serve as food on its voyage.
He also saw that the creature wasn’t fully grown and would eventually be the size of a mountain. Now he understood why there had been five mass extinctions on Earth. This creature had gorged itself, and then had needed to hibernate for millions of years so its feeding ground could restock.
Behind Alex his team had risen, zombie-like, to their feet, and were making their way down the steep path in the cliff wall to join Franks and Brandt, who stood with slumped shoulders awaiting their fate.
Alex knew what was going to happen – the thing was a consumer – it was going to eat them, and in doing so it would not only absorb their flesh, but also their minds and memories. That’s what it meant by join with me.
With every fibre of his being he knew this creature needed to be destroyed. And if it couldn’t be destroyed, it needed to somehow be restrained or imprisoned. Forever.
Alex saw the crab-creatures waiting for his HAWCs. Perhaps the arthropod race were slaves the monster had brought with it on the craft that had crashed. Maybe they had been the custodians of the previous planet this thing had subjugated before traveling to Earth.
It didn’t matter now; they too needed to be destroyed or entombed.
As his last three team members joined Casey and Brandt on the platform, Alex managed to keep resisting the maddening siren call. And this frustrated the great monster. So it sent its minions after him, and more appeared, and they began climbing the sheer walls in their hundreds looking like giant lice clambering up a body in search of a drop of blood.
As the crab-creatures rose, the beast loomed up over Alex’s HAWCs, and Alex felt its desire for the food, and for their memories.
He fired again and again, and then the mind-tearing screech got louder in his head. The more he resisted and fought back, the more insistent and painful it got.
In another few seconds, his eyes began to blur, and the dagger of pain finally reached the center of his mind – the deep, dark place where a different sort of beast strained against its mental chains and roared its own anger at the intrusion.
Alex knew he was losing the battle; his walls of resistance were coming down. Soon he, too, would be standing on the rock platform, waiting for the monstrous creature to slam down on top of him and his team and devour them alive.
As Alex was brought to his knees, he knew there was one last thing he needed to do. He sent a mental message to Tor.
And then he collapsed as his mind shut down.
CHAPTER 44
420 million years into the future, the giant German shepherd Torben sprang to its feet. It hadn’t eaten in days, or moved an inch, but now it stood staring straight ahead.
If Jack Hammerson had looked into the bone-white eyes that were fixed on a place in the Earth’s distant history, he might have seen something there that froze his blood.
Or he might not have approached at all. Because Torben’s gums were pulled back from his huge, white teeth, and a rumbling growl emanated from deep within his chest. There was frustration and barely contained fury there.
***
The android canine’s sensors became fully alert.
It immediately saw the danger its leader was in and understood the message. Then, like a blur of gunmetal-hued steel, it gathered up all the nuclear packages, all of them, and sped toward Alex Hunter’s location.
***
Almost immediately the body of Alex Hunter got to its feet.
But it wasn’t Alex anymore. It was the Other, and where the blinding pain and mind-tearing intrusion had overwhelmed Alex, the Other was born from pain and agony and absorbed it. And was fueled by it.
It balled its fists, threw its head back and roared long and loud in the cave. Its face was a contorted mask of rage as it stared down at the monster.
“You dare?” it seethed.
The Other drew both of the tanto-edge HAWC blades, one long and one short, and stepped to the edge of the cliff. He saw the rising beast, its clutch of red eyes now fixed on the humans as its huge maw lowered over them.
Alex could only watch now through The Other’s eyes and scream his frustration at his own helplessness.
He had not been able to act.
But the Other could.
It lifted both blades. And leaped.
***
The massive beast, the slumberer from below, the invader of dreams, only became aware of Alex Hunter’s body at the last moment, and its huge head lifted, bunches of red eyes staring at the small human plummeting toward it.
Alex was a hostage inside the Other who now controlled his body, and he could only watch as he flew down to land on the face of the monstrous being, his arms outstretched and a blade in each fist, and dug in. One blade sank into one of the manhole-sized central eyes, deep, which immediately gushed a burning red fluid.
The screech into Alex’s mind reached him even where he was locked away, bringing with it a furious tornado of pain and anger, but Alex’s body ignored it and held on.
He drew one blade out and plunged it again into the center of one of the smaller eyes, which was still a foot across. He immediately dragged the other blade out and crawled across the leathery face, seeking another of the vulnerable eyes.
The tentacles that had been hanging like a mottled, coiling beard exploded in activity, trying to reach him, and one monstrous arm lifted to swipe down over the being’s face, seeking to wipe him away.
But the Other was ready for it, and while he battled the beast, Alex saw that the thing was now only focused on him and had forgotten the other humans. And that meant his HAWCs were released from their mental chains.
Casey was the first to regain her full senses. She saw the threat coming and grabbed the thick ropes binding the HAWCs that was attached to the metal ring set in the stone. She pulled with her robotic arm, straining, screaming her fury, as the ring was slowly tugged free like a bad tooth.
She fell back but was quickly on her feet. “HAW-WWWCs.” Casey’s war cry filled the cavern. “Free fire.”
Casey, Brandt, Gonzalez, Ito, and Cooper drew their remaining weapons and fired continually into the monster. Though their bullets were individually insignificant, together they were an added torment and distraction.
As soon as they noticed that the humans were no longer docile, the huge crustaceans in the side caves and crawling down the walls attacked.
Casey’s robotic arm easily broke the rope around her neck and Brandt’s, and then she used it like a battering ram on the crustacean monstrosities, shattering their carapaces as if they were made of porcelain. The huge Brandt joined her, but even with his great size and strength, without his HAWC armor he could not match the power of the nine-foot-tall beings.
Behind them the Other avoided another of the monster’s car-sized claws, and scurried further over its face, using the blades in its hands to hook on as the creature roared and thrashed. He soon made it back to another of the biggest central eyes.
The Other stared into it, his face a death’s head rictus, and this time just used one of his fists to batter at the membrane covering the eye, twice, three times, and then he punctured it. And this time he must have reached a nerve center, because he got a massive response as the monster pulled back and smashed into a wall, shaking down huge stones.
It swung again into another of the walls, catching the Other between its bulk and the rock face. Alex’s body was crushed and shaken off. But the massive creature withdrew, submerging into the dark lake.
Alex fell and landed in the water. He came to the surface and screamed in agony as his bones began to pop back into place, his ribs re-knitting inside his bruised and battered body. He swam to the dark water’s edge and when he emerged, it was him again, released from the Other’s hold over his mind after the battle had been decided.
He dragged himself out and rolled, coughing, onto his back, gasping for air. He felt drained, broken, and just wanted to lie there and regain his strength. But turning on his side, he saw his team being overwhelmed.
Alex got slowly to his feet, then picked up speed, sprinting into their center to join the fight.
CHAPTER 45
They were coming for him.
Sam faced straight ahead, with the dirty rag still tied over his eye sockets. His great frame was ripped with scars, bruises, and dried blood, but he cared not.
The festival for their great deity, Dagon, had been running for days and was set to culminate this evening with his sacrifice as the ultimate gift to their decrepit god.
Animals had been slaughtered and hundreds of slaves brutalized, thrown to wild animals, or torn apart, and he had heard their cries, heard them begging for freedom, forgiveness, or mercy. All had gone unanswered. He imagined the Saran and his vile cadre of elite, sipping wine, smiling as they savored the cruel spectacle.
And then he would be sacrificed. He had found out he was to be bound between the pillars underpinning the giant god statue, and which the entire stone stadium rested. He was to be stabbed, burned, and then dismembered, slowly, in front of the roaring crowd, and beneath the gaze of the brutal, false god.
Sam half-smiled in his darkness. If his jailers saw him doing it, they would have whipped him mercilessly. But he knew now he would get what he desired – there was one thing that all HAWCs wanted, and that was to go out fighting and on their own terms.
His bearded mouth curved up at the corners. That’s what he would do.
When it was his time to die, the colosseum would be crowded with all the barbaric Philistines – their royalty, their rich and elite, and their generals. They would be hoping to break him, and make him beg, and all the time they’d be screaming for his blood and for his torment and suffering.
Well, he would give them blood – rivers of it – but it would be their own.
***
Hammerson paced in the background, stopping occasionally to watch the scientists and the young woman before pacing on.
“He’ll be confused and may not recognize you at first,” Quartermain said softly.
Alyssa’s large brown eyes were wide as she listened. Her mouth was pressed into a tight, colorless line, her nervousness warranted.
“Alyssa. Alyssa.” Quartermain waited until her eyes slid to him. “Remember, he’s been trapped there for over ten years.”
She crushed her eyes shut, but after a moment opened them and stared straight ahead. “It doesn’t matter, he’ll know me.”
Hanley stepped forward. “I hope he does. But we don’t know what state he is in, mentally or physically. We think he might have been lost in the twelfth century BC, 3200 years ago, and for ten years, eight months and two days.”
Hammerson felt fury boil away in his gut and clenched his jaws to stop cursing the scientists out loud.
“Oh God,” she said in a tiny breath. Her brown skin seemed to pale and her eyes watered.
