The Cavern Read online

  Sam hung in space, unwilling to believe what had happened. The woman he loved was gone. Dead. He knew there was no way that she could survive such a wound. And with her death, it felt like a hole had been carved out of his chest.

  He took the regulator from his mouth, stared at it for a moment and considered dropping it. Considered taking a lungful of water. He closed his eyes, ground his teeth together. No. That would be the easy way out. Sam clenched the regulator back between his teeth and took a breath of air.

  He might not be able to save Ellie’s life, but he could exact vengeance for her death. After one last look into the depths, Sam forced himself to start swimming. In the void carved out of his chest by grief, he planted an ember. An ember of rage that caught fire, and burned brighter with every stroke closer to the shore.

  He would see the Miner’s Mother and her offspring dead, or die in the trying.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Sam breached the surface back in the main cavern. He spat out the regulator and gulped a breath of air between chattering teeth. Despite the wet suit, he was freezing. The few torches stationed around Jack’s base seemed bright as day compared to the absolute darkness of the underwater tunnels. He forced himself to take the final strokes to shore, stumbling as his numb feet connected with the sloping gravel beach. He walked unsteadily from the water, unable to feel the ground beneath, so cold were his feet.

  Sam dumped his tank and harness, and clumsily kicked off his flippers, leaving them all at the water’s edge. Shielding his eyes against the outward facing lights, he walked toward the base on the rear wall.

  “Jack? Mia?”

  Silence.

  His heart dropped as he found the base empty, fearing the worst. First things first though, he needed to warm up. His fingers refused to cooperate, but he finally managed to strip off his damaged wet suit, and undo the clips on his pack to access dry clothes. Sam roughly dried himself with a cotton t-shirt, then pulled on thermals, a pair of coveralls, then his boots. He stamped his feet on the ground and blew into his hands, trying to generate some blood flow. After a few minutes, he felt sweet, prickling pain in his fingers and toes as circulation began to return.

  A cry of frustration caught his attention, echoing from deeper within the cavern to set his heart racing again. Please let them be still alive. He leant down and scooped one of Jack’s Glocks off the tarp where the barman had left all the weapons for easy access. He ejected the magazine to ensure it was fully loaded, before ramming it home and chambering a round. Sam took a few steps outside the ring of lights and paused.

  “Mia? Jack? Is that you?” he shouted, cringing at the volume of his voice as his words bounced about the cavern walls.

  “Sam? Quick, I need your help!”

  His feet were running before he’d even thought, making for the direction he’d first heard her voice before it began to echo. He raced along the back wall of the cavern to the left, rounding a bend to find Mia kneeling over the old barman. Jack was flat on his back, arms splayed while the young paramedic gave CPR. She had both hands planted in the middle of his breast bone, one on top of the other, compressing his chest repeatedly.

  She must have heard Sam’s approach, because she suddenly spun around, and snatched her hand gun off the ground.

  “Don’t shoot!” Sam skidded to a halt, holding his hands up in front of him.

  Mia’s face was beetroot red, sweat streaming. “Jesus Sam, you gave me a fright.” She dumped the gun in the dust again, turned back to her charge and restarted CPR, breathing heavily. “I need my medic pack,” she panted, not giving him a chance for response. “It’s back with the other equipment.”

  Sam saw the corpse of an adult Miner’s Mother a few paces away, its chest a pin cushion of stab wounds. “Jesus, did one of you…”

  “There’s a defibrillator and adrenaline in my pack,” she panted between gritted teeth. “If you don’t get it back here in the next few minutes, he’s going to fucking die!”

  Sam tore his eyes away from the creature, and bolted back to the equipment pile. Mia’s red pack stood out clearly from the others. She’d taken some equipment from her ambulance with them, and part of the stash including an Automated External Defibrillator (AED). Paramedics usually used a manual defib, but as she’d been left on her own, she’d borrowed the AED from the local sports club to make it easier in the event of managing an advanced life support situation while solo.

  He ripped open the top, scattering a handful of dressings before finding the AED underneath. Sam grabbed it, along with a handful of pre-packaged adrenaline injections and her first aid kit. He sprinted back again, torch beam ahead bobbing with every step, an oasis of light in the surrounding darkness. Sam felt like a kid on a ghost train, waiting for the jump scare to burst forth, ready for talons to latch onto an ankle, or teeth to his throat. Mia and Jack had obviously been attacked, but he still had no idea if there was another Miner’s Mother prowling the dark.

  Sam skidded to a halt next to Mia and dumped the first aid kit and defib on the ground. From the kit, he extracted a pocket mask and knelt next to Jack’s head, forcing himself to transition into his work role as a paramedic. That he was deep underground being hunted by a sadistic family of monsters, would have to be ignored. While Mia continued compressions, he tipped the barman’s head to the side and completed a rough finger sweep to make sure his mouth and throat were empty, then inserted a short Guedel’s airway, a curved plastic tube which prevented the tongue falling back to obstruct breathing. As Mia paused compressions for a moment, he leant down and delivered two breaths of air. A subsequent check for a pulse at his neck yielded nothing, not even a flicker.

  Fuck.

  Mia re-commenced chest compressions as he tore open Jack’s shirt and applied the pads from the defibrillator and turned it on. Sam next injected a dose of adrenaline directly into the vein on the inner aspect of his elbow.

  Mia’s compressions were becoming more and more shallow as she tired, and Sam took over, compressing the old man’s rib cage one third of its width, one hundred times a minute.

  “What happened?” asked Sam. “How long’s he been down for?”

  Mia provided a quick run-down of their ambush, her gaze continually flicking up to the black gap above the rock fall. “The one that mimicked Frida’s still alive. I tried shooting her, but missed.” She touched a finger to the back of her head where blood oozed out from beneath a mass of clot-soaked hair and winced. “I was too groggy after hitting my head. I didn’t see any open wounds on Jack though, so my best bet is he’s had a heart attack.”

  Sam felt a rib crack under his hands, grimaced as a misting of blood came out of the old guy’s mouth on the next compression. If he made it through, the poor bastard would feel like he’d been kicked by a mule.

  “That should be long enough after the adrenaline, let’s do a rhythm check.” He paused compressions while Mia hit a button to make the AED check what type of rhythm the heart was in. Unlike the fallacy played out on countless television shows, there were only a few heart rhythms that could be shocked, and a flat line was not one of them.

  The AED voice spoke with an authoritative female English accent. “Analyzing rhythm...”

  “Shock advised.”

  Sam gave a small hard smile. That meant Jack’s heart was either in ventricular tachycardia or ventricular fibrillation, and his chances of surviving had just increased.

  “Charging… Everyone stand clear.” There was a loud beep to signify the shock was ready to be delivered, and Mia depressed the yellow flashing shock button.

  Jack’s body convulsed as the electric charge deployed. Sam immediately recommenced CPR. There was no point checking for a pulse as yet, even if the heart had been shocked back into an appropriate rhythm, a further two minutes of CPR would improve oxygen flow to the cardiac muscle and increase the chance he wouldn’t arrest again a few minutes later.

  “I think that’s enough, Sam.”

  As he rocked back on
his heels, Mia felt for a carotid pulse on his neck. She glanced up at Sam, triumph on her face. “He’s got an output!”

  Sam climbed back to his feet. “Okay, let’s get him back to base while we have a chance then.” He leant down, lifted Jack beneath both armpits so that only his heels were on the ground and began to drag him away from the rockfall.

  Mia scooped up the AED and hand guns, then paused, face stricken as she stared at Sam. “Where’s Ellie and Max?”

  Sam swallowed, a lump in his throat. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out.

  “They didn’t make it?”

  Sam shook his head. “If only we’d listened to Jack and walked away days ago. None of this would have happened,” he muttered.

  “No point in self-pity,” croaked an ancient voice. Sam stared down and saw a crack showing between the old soldier’s eyelids. “Time to play the hand we’ve been dealt.”

  Sam nodded, the barman was right. ‘What ifs’ and ‘maybes’ were a waste of time. Right now they needed to fight tooth and nail to scrape out a sliver of hope. He grit his teeth and dragged the barman back to camp.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Sam passed a water bottle to Jack. The old guy was propped up on Ellie’s pack. He took a small sip, then coughed, a spasm of pain crossing his features. Jack was pale and looked like shit, the skin of his face a sickly grey tinge. He touched a hand to his sternum and winced.

  “Feels like you busted some ribs,” he muttered.

  “Yeah. I felt a few crunch,” Sam shrugged unapologetically, then turned his attention back to the surrounding area. “It happens, mate. Just shows we did it properly. If you don’t compress the chest deeply enough, the brain won’t be adequately perfused with oxygen. Defeats the purpose if the patient wakes up to a hypoxic brain injury, in my book.”

  Jack grunted dubiously, but didn’t argue further as he accepted a couple of Ibuprofen tablets from Mia. “You see anything out there?”

  Sam knelt behind one of the outward facing lamps, eyes searching the illuminated area within the cavern. At the far margins, where light graduated in shades of grey to pitch black, shapes seemed to morph and twist, playing with his imagination and stoking his fears. “I don’t think so, nothing worth wasting ammunition on at any rate.”

  “I’m sorry to hear about Ellie and Max,” said Jack.

  Sam glanced back at the man, accepting the sincerity in his voice and expression.

  “You did find Max, though?”

  Sam nodded. “Yeah, you were right. She’s breeding. He was laid out in some fucked up nursery as a meal for her young. There were three massive egg sacs tucked in around him. Unfortunately, two had already hatched before we got to him and started to feed.”

  Jack winced. “Poor bastard.”

  “How big were they?” asked Mia.

  “Around the size of a Pitbull, and they’re strong. We got two of them, but the third escaped to attack us on the swim back.

  “I had the lead, but it barrelled past me and attacked Ellie instead.” Sam’s eyes fell to the ground. “It slit her throat from ear to ear, there was no way she could have survived.”

  “It would have been quick at least. Better than her brother’s fate,” said Jack. “That girl was a fighter. She willingly gambled her life to go after her brother, just like you. Grieve for her, but don’t blame yourself for her death, that would be doing her bravery a disservice.”

  “The two beasts we fought were bigger, standing at least head height with us. They must have been the breeding pair?” said Mia.

  “Yeah, I think the matriarch survived. The one I killed seemed subservient for some reason. Instead of going in for the kill when it had me, it paused as if waiting for instruction,” said Jack.

  “Or maybe it was offering the pack leader the right to eat first?” suggested Mia.

  Hearing it put that way made Sam’s gut squirm, and drove home their place on another species’ menu.

  “She seems quite wary of guns,” said Mia. “That could play into our hands.”

  A warrior’s pride flashed across Jack’s face. “She learnt a hard lesson back in the Seventies, and just copped a refresher course.”

  Mia shook her head. “No, what I mean is, surely we should take advantage of her new wariness, and make a bolt for the surface while we can.”

  Sam shook his head. “I’m not going anywhere until I’ve paid her back in blood for Ellie and Max.”

  “And Frida,” said Jack. “If she was able to mimic her form, that means...”

  “She’s been eaten. Thanks for clarifying,” muttered Mia. “All the more reason to run before we end up on the menu as well.”

  “I allowed her to survive once before,” said Jack. “And look what happened. Not only did my mate and his kid die, now there’s a whole new generation paying the price of my decision. I’m not leaving these tunnels until her corpse is dead and cold.”

  “You guys have got to be fucking kidding. I came down here to help rescue people – people that we now know are dead,” said Mia. “Sam, we’re paramedics, not hunters. This should be left to the army, people that are trained for shit like this.”

  “What if they don’t believe us?”

  Mia stood and took a step outside the circle of lights. While Sam had carried Jack back to their camp, Mia had the foresight to drag back the lighter corpse of the Miner’s Mother. “With a body of one of the creatures as evidence, how could they not?” She flicked back the blanket that was covering its face. “What the...”

  Sam moved to her side and shined his torch down on the body. It had changed. Almost as if deflated, the limbs, torso and head had lost form, flattening. Sam touched a toe of his boot against it, and the skin tore, coming away in a slimy mass of green goo.

  “Shit, looks like they decompose faster than we do. At this rate, there’d be nothing more than a bucket of slime to show the authorities, and that’s if we leave now,” said Sam.

  Mia kicked the toe of her boot at the ground in frustration. “Ah, this is fucked!” she muttered.

  “I hear you,” said Sam. “But, thinking rationally, if we’ve got nothing to show to back up our story, no one’s going to believe we were hunted by a shape-shifting monster. Put yourself in someone else’s shoes, would you believe a story like that?”

  Mia sighed. “No. I’d say they’d had a psychotic episode – and that’s if I was being kind.”

  “And that leaves the job to us. I don’t want that creature feeding on other kids in the future. I mean, what if it decided it could live above ground, or enter the sewers of a city. With its ability to camouflage and change appearances, there’d be no way to catch it.”

  Mia’s opposition crumbled. She sat down in the dirt next to Jack, dejected resignation on her face. “I hope you guys have a plan then, because we don’t have much time. Once the torch batteries fail, we’ll be good as dead.”

  Sam rubbed at his chin, eyes closed as he thought. “If the older one is gun shy, we could use the juvenile to draw her out. It hasn’t come in contact with a firearm, only the spear guns. If we capture it, we could use it as bait to attract the mother. As the last survivor of her clutch, she might be willing to risk more to ensure it survives.”

  “All right,” said Mia. “But what sort of trap are you thinking of?”

  Jack emitted a slight groan as he sat forward. “The Viet-Cong used to create man-traps in the jungles. Brutal, but effective. I pulled enough mates out of them to know how a few types work. Don’t need much to create them, only a few sharpened bits of wood.”

  Sam frowned. “That would be easy enough if we were anywhere above ground. We’ve only got what we carried down here with us.”

  “True, but we did bring the most important bit of any hunting trap. We brought bait.”

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Mia blanched and the old barman barked a short laugh at her expression before the pain of his ribs pulled him up short. “My heart ain’t going to last much longer anyway.
You can use me as bait to lure the younger one in.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I wanted to create some sort of snare for the beast, not present you as a meat buffet,” said Sam.

  “Mia was right about one thing before,” said Jack. “We don’t have a whole lot of time. I’ve been stuck down here once before when the lights go out, and it wasn’t much fun. Unless you can come up with a better plan, I say we get moving.”

  Sam ground his teeth together, wracking his mind for any other option without success.

  “Then the decision’s made.” Jack slowly got to his feet and began walking in the water’s direction.

  ***

  “You still sure about this?” asked Sam as he checked the rope knotted about the older man’s waist for the third time in as many minutes.

  “Yes. Keep your end of the bargain and we’ll all be fine.”

  Jack didn’t want to talk any more. His exterior might have been stoic, but just under the surface, fear-fuelled adrenaline pumped through his veins. A dull ache resided in the left side of his chest, sweat prickling on his grey forehead that had nothing to do with the temperature.

  He listened to Sam’s quiet padding footsteps until he reached the rear wall, then leant forward and nicked the skin of his injured wrist with his knife. Jack held it out over the edge of the shore, and watched as dark venous blood dripped into the water. He knew the Miner’s Mother was a semi-aquatic creature, and figured there was a chance it could smell blood in water like a shark. He was sitting with feet and legs submerged, as close to the exit of the underwater passage as he could get on the lake shore. Jack kicked his feet in the water, doing his best to mimic a wounded animal, anything to help spark the juvenile’s predatory instinct.