Arcadian genesis, p.8
Arcadian Genesis, page 8
Then it was over.
Borshov shrugged and glanced up at the swinging woman. ‘Too bad – she looked like good fuck.’ One of the Spetsnaz tossed him his large GSh-18, and he checked it as he strode toward Alex, sprawled on the ground. The Spetsnaz laughed and jeered.
I failed, Alex thought miserably. He looked at Stozer’s lifeless body, then turned away as her face swung toward him. ‘Get it over with!’ he yelled.
But the big Russian shook his head. ‘Patience, comrade. First I blow off left foot, then the right. Then left hand . . . ’ He grinned. ‘You ever seen man crawl without his hands and feet? Very funny thing.’
Alex gritted his teeth. In one hand he still held his K-bar; his other hand edged toward the lead canister lying on the ground beside him.
Borshov, satisfied with his gun, raised it and pointed it at Alex’s face.
A sound from the forest made the big Russian frown. It was like a breeze kicking up, but localized in one small area behind the tree line. One of the Spetsnaz shouted something, and Borshov turned. Alex took this last opportunity and threw his knife – it buried itself several inches deep into the meat of the giant’s thigh. Borshov cried out in pain and surprise, but his gun barrel remained steady. He squeezed the trigger.
With his last ounce of strength, Alex grabbed up the canister and held it out in front of him. The bullet tore through its inches of lead, splintering on the glowing disk inside. When a much smaller bullet fragment burst through the other side, it was now coated with a fine powder of luminescent fragments.
A bullet from the massively powerful gun, fired at such short range, would normally have shattered a man’s skull. Now, it retained just enough mass and velocity to punch a hole just above Alex’s left eye, into his brain.
***
Blue sky, crashing waves, salt drying on warm skin. And a girl with long brown hair that smelled of green apples . . .
. . . Then a whirlpool of darkness.
CHAPTER 12
The almost invisible black chopper came up over the tree line and its rotating cannon sprayed the street below. Spetsnaz agents flew in every direction, fist-sized holes opening in their bodies. In a matter of seconds, the street was cleared.
The chopper landed and a figure jumped out, his suit dappling as he passed under streetlights, through pools of darkness. Another remained with the cannon, watching.
The one on the street cut down Stozer’s body. After a quick examination, he simply slid back the tiny cover plate on her chest and let the suit take care of her remains. Bruda and Kolchek went the same way. Checking Johnson, he gave a thumbs-up, and dragged him back to the chopper.
He sprinted over to Alex. The HAWC lay still, and a pool of blood surrounded his head like a dark, glistening halo. The figure laid two fingers lightly against his neck.
With his other hand, he pressed the stud in his ear. ‘It’s Hunter . . . I’ve got a weak pulse. Probably won’t make it, though – head shot.’
He waited. After a few moments, the instructions came back.
‘It’s Hammerson: he wants him – dead or alive.’
CHAPTER 13
Jack Hammerson sat in his darkened office, the only illumination coming from the screen on the desk in front of him. The display showed only two weak life-sign signatures, one almost nonexistent – vegetative. Its blinking lights whispered: mission failure, over and over. Deleting the project files, he switched off the computer.
He remained, unmoving, in the dark. His body could have been carved from stone. As if finally remembering he needed to, he drew in a long, slow breath, then switched on his desk lamp. He picked up the folder and flipped it open.
Arcadian Project – human trials not yet authorized.
Closing his eyes, he sorted through his options. He thought of his promise to Jim Hunter all those years ago. But if he could have brought him back, then . . . Who knows how things might have turned out?
Sorry, Hunter – some of us were made for war. He’d decided. Hammerson picked up the phone.
‘It’s me . . . Ready the lab. I’ve got someone for you.’
About the Author
Greig Beck grew up across the road from Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. His early days were spent surfing, sunbaking and reading science fiction on the sand. He then went on to study computer science, immersed himself in the financial software industry and later received an MBA. Greig is the director of a software company but still finds time to write and surf. He lives in Sydney, with his wife, son and an enormous black German shepherd.
Also by Greig Beck
Alex Hunter Series
Beneath the Dark Ice
Dark Rising
This Green Hell
Black Mountain (coming December 2012)
The Valkeryn Chronicles
Return of the Ancients
PUBLISHED DECEMBER 2012 BY PAN MACMILLAN
BLACK MOUNTAIN BY GREIG BECK
Southern Appalachians, 11,000 BCE
The creature screamed as the arrow punched into its neck. Ripping it free, it turned to roar in frustration. The wound was deep and bled heavily, but the sticky blood quickly froze on its coarse, blunt fingers. The small ones were coming fast, sending more of their arrows flying through the air. The creature roared again, wanting to rush back and fight, to crush those small, loud man-things down to nothing. But that would mean its own death, and then the end of all of them. There were now barely forty members of the group remaining, and some with young; they would be slaughtered. The leader snorted and drew its clan higher, moving quickly now. When it looked back briefly, the man-things were a crawling multitude that whooped and ran and hurled their sharp sticks.
The time for peaceful coexistence had long since passed. The creature looked to the sky – cold, iron grey with heavy cloud down to the peak – then it grunted, calling the group. There was one place they could go, where they could defend themselves and save their young. The deep, wintering cave that they used for hibernation when the season was unusually long and cold. Down there, deep inside the mountain, where the lichens glowed green and things slid and wormed their way in the darkness, there was safety. Deeper still there was a black river, with pale, sightless things swimming within it – food. The leader urged the group to greater speed, forcing them on, higher up the mountain, along the old pathways, steep and narrow tracks on the cliff edge that fell away to a depth so great its end was invisible in the heavy mist. Up, up, and into the cave, through the small and narrow opening, into the inner world of the mountain. There was no way out, but they could wait. If the man-things followed them in, then they would have to fight; they’d done it before. The small ones wanted their heads as trophies. If they came into the dark, then their heads would be taken.
Deep in the dark they waited, the large adult bodies pressed to the front, the young behind, all breathing heavily, fear sharp and acrid in the air around them. And then the man-things came, but just to the mouth of the cave, throwing fire inside. The great beasts waited still, but instead of an attack, there came a scraping, grinding and pounding noise, over and over. Then, to the creatures’ horror, the light from outside began to diminish. A mighty wall rose up before them, stone by stone. The adults screamed in rage and surged forward, but were answered with more fire and stinging arrows. They fell back, pounding the ground, their rage loud but impotent as large, interlocking blocks continued to be piled and fixed in place, until the last square of light was blotted out. Still the sounds continued as many more layers were added.
Finally, there was silence, save for the heavy breaths of the creatures themselves. The leader shuffled forward and rested a large and bloody hand against the stone – it could sense the many thick layers and doubted they could break through. It also sensed the man-things on the other side, waiting for them to try. It turned back to its clan, a decision forming in its mind. There was food, and there would be weak light from the lichens in the deeper caves below. They could survive. They would wait, and eventually their world would be given back to them. They had walked its surface before the man-things had arrived, and they would walk it again.
Kowloon, Hong Kong, 1935
Charles Albert Schroder paused at the bustling intersection. He knew the main streets were too easily picked over, and it was down the secretive side alleys that he had navigated this day. Being a head taller than the milling crowd, he should be able to spot the type of shop he was searching for without too much trouble. There – the double Chinese symbols for medicine hung from a shingle out the front of a dark cramped space that emanated the mixed odours of a thousand exotic herbs, fungi and dried animal carcasses.
Schroder watched the doorway for a while. The clientele were a mix of older men, presumably seeking remedies for ailing potency, or young women looking for an elixir to turn a rich man’s head. Each left with a small package wrapped in rice paper and stamped with the shop owner’s symbol.
Schroder ducked his head as he stepped inside, and blinked a few times to try to adjust his eyes to the gloom of the interior. An ancient Chinese man stood behind a counter, staring at him with a rheumy gaze and resting a pair of reptilian hands on the counter top. Behind him, the wall was completely covered in wooden slots holding powder-filled jars or tiny drawers that were undoubtedly filled with exotic wares. Schroder quickly looked left and right, making sure he was alone with the man. The only other gaze he detected belonged to milky eyes of a monkey’s head suspended in a jar of yellow fluid.
Schroder nodded – he didn’t need to look around the shop any further. What he searched for was never on display. He cleared his throat. He didn’t know much of the language but had taken pains to memorise a few phrases. His greeting was delivered with a bow, and on receiving a small nod in return he was encouraged to continue.
‘Nıˇ yoˇu lóng de yáchıˇ?’
The man didn’t move, perhaps pretending not to understand. Schroder repeated the sentence, confident his words and pronunciation were correct. Still nothing more than the flat gaze in return. He lifted his billfold from his breast pocket and slowly removed a single note and placed it on the counter. He bowed and tried again.
‘Nıˇ yoˇu lóng de yáchıˇ?’
The man’s eyes flicked down briefly to look at the purple and yellow bill. After a few seconds he nodded and disappeared behind a string curtain, emerging with a wooden tray covered in a soft cloth. He laid it down on the counter and pulled back two-thirds of the material. He waved his small wrinkled hand over the tray’s contents and said in a surprisingly deep voice, ‘Lóng de yáchıˇ.’
Schroder smiled flatly. His eyes quickly sorted through the tray’s contents, mentally cataloguing the species that the pieces had come from – cave bear, giant deer, a boar the size of a rhinoceros. All excellent fossils, but nothing of real interest to him. He went to pull back the cloth that still covered a portion of the tray, but the shopkeeper made a sharp noise in his throat and held his hand up. With the other hand, he pushed the single bill back across the table. His meaning was clear: the covered side of the tray was more expensive.
Schroder knew the real thing would be. What he sought was unique, and rarely placed in the hands of unappreciative foreigners .He bowed again and pulled another two bills from his wallet and laid them on the pile. He made a flat gesture indicating that was all he was going to pay. The shopkeeper’s eyes narrowed briefly, then with a flourish that would have impressed a stage conjuror he lifted the cloth to reveal several more specimens.
Schroder felt his heart thump in his chest. It wouldn’t have mattered if there were a hundred relics laid before him, his paleoanthropologist eyes were immediately drawn to just one. A canine tooth, broken at its base but still easily four inches long from its root to curved tip. With a shaking hand he held it up before him, the breath locked in his chest.
‘Lóng de yáchıˇ – ga¯o pıˇnzhí.’ The small man pointed one long fingernail at the specimen, obviously satisfied with Schroder’s response.
‘Yes, yes . . . dragon’s teeth.’ He used English without thinking as he brought the fossil close to his face, studying it, mentally calculating, estimating, extrapolating. In his mind, he turned the fragment of a long dead creature into something living – he could see it in all its terrible glory. He held the relic above his head, standing on his toes to reach up above his six-foot-plus frame, adding another four feet to where the mouth would have been.
He heard the shopkeeper’s voice again. ‘Lóng de yáchıˇ. Guàiwù lóng de yáchıˇ!’
Schroder exhaled and lowered his arm. ‘Yes, best quality, but not a dragon. Something just as fantastic.’ He emptied his wallet onto the counter and leaned in towards the man.‘Zài naˇlıˇ?’ he asked. ‘Where?’
Present day
Alex was miles beneath the surface. He stared up at a shimmering mirage of blue light. He clamped his lips shut. Panic was a heartbeat away, and the more he tried to break free, the tighter he was trapped by the black coils of slimy rope that bound his
arms and legs, wrapped around his chest and coated his face. He was aware his burning lungs would soon give out, but he dared not open his mouth even to scream, as he knew the mucous-covered strands would find their way inside. He was dragged deeper down; his feet sinking into the primordial ooze of the lightless depths. With his last fragments of energy he sprang towards the surface. Last time, last chance – he needed to breathe; he wanted to live…
Alex Hunter, code named Arcadian, wakes up with no knowledge of who he is, in the care of a woman he doesn’t recognise, in a country not his own. But there is a calling deep within him, to return home to Black Mountain.
Formed a billion years ago, the Appalachian’s Black Mountain hosts a terrible legend. Only one elder remains to guard its long-forgotten, deadly secret and there is a fear that there is evil lurking again. Some hikers have gone missing, and the rescue team sent to search for them has not returned. Meanwhile, in nearby Ashville, Professor Matt Kearns is drawn into the mystery of an ancient artefact recovered from the mountainside, and an image too grotesque to be real.
A survivor is then found half-alive, covered in blood – blood revealed to be not quite human.
Alex must confront an age-old enemy of man and discover the truth about his past, and confront the horror that stalks the frozen mountain, and also the one haunting his very soul.
First published by Momentum in 2012
Pan Macmillan Australia Pty Ltd
1 Market Street, Sydney 2000
Copyright © Greig Beck 2012
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. This publication (or any part of it) may not be reproduced or transmitted, copied, stored, distributed or otherwise made available by any person or entity (including Google, Amazon or similar organisations), in any form (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical) or by any means (photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise) without prior written permission from the publisher.
A CIP record for this book is available at the National Library of Australia
Arcadian Genesis
EPUB format: 9781743340820
Mobi format: 9781743340837
Cover design by Patrick Naoum
Edited by Gareth Beal
Proofread by Vanessa Lanaway
Macmillan Digital Australia: www.macmillandigital.com.au
To report a typographical error, please email errors@momentumbooks.com.au
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Table of Contents
About Arcadian Genesis
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
About the Author
Also by Greig Beck
Black Mountain
Copyright
Greig Beck, Arcadian Genesis
