The Cavern Read online

  Mia had created a rough splint for his fractured wrist with an aluminium strip taken from the back of Ellie’s rucksack, and then cut up a spare coverall suit, using the tough fabric to wrap around his forearms and legs for added protection against the beast’s teeth. He burped a sour taste of nausea at the thought and distracted himself by inspecting the rope around his waist, nodding with satisfaction at the quality of knots. Sam had ensured he couldn’t be dragged back into the water by anchoring the other end of the climbing rope around the base of a large stalagmite.

  He clenched his combat knife in his non-dominant hand, knuckles white over the handle. Jack would have preferred a gun in his hand, but couldn’t afford to kill the juvenile before the matriarch was enticed into action. He had his old service pistol holstered and ready if it all went to shit. He took a deep breath, then eased it out over a count of ten.

  Don’t think, just do it. “Turn off the lights!”

  First one, then another, and finally the third and final lamp was switched off at the back of the cavern, plunging the room into pitch black. Jack waved a hand before his eyes, but could see nothing. The dark was absolute.

  “Come, on you little bastard,” he muttered under his breath. “Come for a feed.”

  A soft movement of water sounded off shore, like a fish rising to snatch an insect at the surface.

  His heart hammered, ache doubling in his chest. Jesus, that was fast. Jack strained his ears for another sound, found himself inching back out of the water by a metre before forcing himself to stop.

  There it was again, a soft lap of water, a tiny ripple. Something was definitely in the water, out somewhere in the middle. Jack fished a pen torch from his pocket with his bad hand, teeth gritted against the pain of the injured wrist. He wouldn’t run, but he needed to see the thing attack once it was committed.

  In the space of a heartbeat, the soft water movements altered to a furious splashing. Jack switched on the torch, a feeble beam trained out over the water. About eight metres off shore, a black humped shape in the water charged at him, muscular tail powering it forward with broad sweeps. Jack’s breath caught in the back of his throat, god how he wanted to piss.

  Five metres away now. He clenched the knife, point outwards.

  Two metres. Fuck, Fuck, Fuck.

  It rushed out of the water, onto the shore at a sprint on all fours like a salt water crocodile. Jaws wide, lips retracted to expose needle teeth. Instead of biting onto his leg, it launched straight at his face with a metallic snarl.

  Jack punched his knife out, any thought of restraining the creature now gone, replaced just by the need to stay alive. The point scored the side of its face, missing to bury into the beast’s shoulder instead as it knocked him flat onto his back. It screamed high pitched rageful pain, and twisted aside with the blade still sticking from its shoulder, ripping the handle out of Jack’s hand.

  Jack rolled to the side and up onto his knees, gasping for breath. He’d lost his torch in the impact, and now couldn’t see anything at all. A low growl sounded to the right of him. So much for needing to hold onto the damn creature. It wasn’t giving up the fight any time soon.

  “Lights! Get the damn lights on!” he shouted.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Sam trotted back behind the ring of lamps and took up a position alongside Mia. She glanced at him briefly, then back to searching the far reaches where light faded to black, her right upper eyelid twitching slightly every few seconds as tension mounted.

  “Can’t believe the old bastard’s actually going through with it. I’d rather swim with a Great White than go in that water again.”

  “He’s brave, I’ll give him that,” said Mia.

  “I’m just worried he’s not in any shape to tackle one of those creatures, juvenile or not.”

  “I guess there’s a reason why he called himself bait. I think he sees his own survival as less important than killing the Miner’s Mother.”

  “Well, I disagree,” muttered Sam as he chambered a round. “They’ve eaten enough of my mates, I don’t plan on giving him up that easy.”

  Jack’s voice echoed up from the lake, rough as gravel with an order to turn off the lights.

  Sam’s hand had a slight tremor as he reached out for the closest lamp. “Time to get this show on the road.” He flicked off its switch, then Mia took care of the other two lights, plunging them into black.

  “The dark’s starting to freak me out down here,” said Mia under her breath. “Makes me feel like I’ve been buried alive.”

  Sam strained his hearing, trying to detect any noise coming from the lake. A moment later he was rewarded by the sound of splashing, then he saw Jack turn on a weak hand torch. He tightened his fingers around the hand grip of his Glock and got up into a crouch. “When he gives the call, turn on the lights and I’ll go help him restrain it, okay?”

  A series of low clicks sounded, and this time he almost felt the noise in his chest as much as he heard it. Sam froze. The call of the Miner’s Mother had been close, almost sounding like it was… above him. Something wet dripped onto his forehead, the fluid carrying a smell of rancid meat.

  Sam slowly looked up, swearing silently to himself. This wasn’t part of the plan.

  Noise erupted at the foreshore. Splashing. Snarling. Jack’s cry of pain. Sam ignored it all, raising one hand to the torch on his head, he clicked it one rotation to the right, flooding light up to the roof.

  The Miner’s Mother was less than an arm’s length above him, head down and fangs bared, crawling down the cavern wall like a demonic spider. Bony toes and fingers used minute cracks in the rock to support its weight. Mia screamed. Sam swung up his arm to bring his pistol to bear, the movement feeling sluggish and surreal.

  It launched, coiled muscles adding force to gravity’s pull. It twisted the Glock from Sam’s fingers and flung it into the shadows, then drove him to the ground, the back of his head cracking against stone, setting off a burst of stars behind his eyes.

  Light flooded the area as Mia switched on one of the lamps, bringing the monster into sharp detail. It crouched on top of Sam’s chest and thighs, elliptical pupils narrowed against the light as it roared in his face, rancid spit flying, little grots of meat torn from its previous meals spattering against his cheek. Sam arched his back, shoving up against it with all his strength, but the beast’s grip might as well have been steel. In response, it merely tightened its hold, thumb talons cruelly puncturing the muscles at the front of each shoulder and tearing a cry of agony from his throat. It started to lunge at his neck, then flinched to the side as a gunshot cracked.

  Sam’s eardrums whined, stunned by the noise of the firearm. Mia knelt less than two metres away with her Glock in a double handed grip. A bullet graze wept green blood from a shallow furrow along the creature’s neck. The Miner’s Mother emitted a shriek and abandoned Sam, using his body as a springboard, talons puncturing his thighs as it launched at Mia.

  She fired again, bullet twitching the beast’s shoulder as it hit, and then it was on her. The creature’s tail coiled about her legs, binding them together as it pinned the hand holding the pistol to the ground. Mia screamed as it took a fist full of her hair, yanked her head forward, then slammed it back on the rock. Once. Twice. Her body went limp, Glock falling from her fingers. The Miner’s Mother snatched the weapon off the dirt and threw it toward the lake, far out of reach.

  Sam rolled onto his side, forcing himself to get up. His head felt like a burning hot poker was being shoved through the centre of his brain. Sour nausea escalated with the movement, and suddenly he vomited, the contents of his guts emptying in three convulsive eruptions.

  The beast circled to him again. Dropping to all fours, its movement was measured and controlled this time, nasal slits flaring at the vomit smell. A low snarl issued from its throat as it locked eyes with Sam, and suddenly the flaps at each side of its neck sprung out, opening the cobra-hood to double the size of its head. Sam’s brain was blu
nted by concussion, felt like it was full of cotton wool. He couldn’t see straight. Three images swayed and blurred where he knew there should be only one. But he couldn’t just allow it to kill him, knew he had to fight back somehow. Sam fumbled at his belt, extracted his dive knife from its sheath and held the blade before him, point out ready.

  A metallic shriek of pain from the juvenile echoed up from the shore. The matriarch’s hood faltered, deflating as her attention was torn to the other conflict. Her gaze flicked back to Sam again. She hissed at him, a promise of violence to come, then she was gone, streaking to join the battle against the old soldier.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Jack climbed to his feet and stared about himself wide-eyed, blind as he searched the darkness in vain. He could hear Sam and Mia were under attack, knew that meant the matriarch had entered the fray as well. Jack prayed that they could hold her off long enough for him to finish the juvenile. If he was able to.

  A snarl came from behind. Jack spun toward the sound, but it had already moved, clawed feet rushing past him. It was trying to get him from behind. He turned again, each movement a twisting knife of agony in his fractured ribs. His right foot caught on a rock. On instinct, Jack threw out his right hand to stop himself and fell with his full weight onto the already fractured wrist. The spiked ends of his fractured radius and ulna tore through the skin, poking out like a bloody toasting fork. This time, he screamed.

  Light blinked on from behind, one of the lanterns flooding the area between lake and rear cavern wall in light. Crouching ahead of him was the juvenile, its serpent’s tail sweeping back and forth with excitement. Light glinted off the steel blade still partially buried in its right shoulder. It kept this limb off the ground, but otherwise appeared undeterred by the wound.

  Blood from his partially severed wrist pattered into the dust, the cyanosed hand unhinged at an unnatural angle to the side. The beast, attracted to the blood lunged forward, bit onto the hand and wrenched its head back. With a sound of tearing fabric, the hand ripped off. Jack’s breath caught, the white hot agony from his wrist all-consuming as he listened to the beast’s teeth crunch through his fingers and gag down its prize.

  A long pink tongue licked his blood off its lips and then it began circling him again, looking for its next point of attack. Jack tried to get out his gun, cursing himself that he’d left it holstered on the right side of his waist. He was feeling faint, pain in his chest redoubling with the loss of blood and exertion.

  He didn’t have long.

  It darted in again, using the force of its attack to knock him backward yet again. Jack managed to get his left hand up between them, dug his fingers into a hold at the front of the beast’s neck. It lunged at him, back feet tearing runnels down his belly and thighs. He couldn’t hold it much longer, his vision was greying. With the last of his strength, Jack used the only weapon he had left. He stabbed the exposed shards of his wrist bones into the monster’s abdomen. The sharp ends punctured through the slimy black skin, and with a second thrust, his wrist disappeared inside the cavity. It thrashed, and yet somehow he managed to keep hold of its neck as he changed angle with his right arm, and stabbed upward into the chest, decimating its heart and major vessels. It gave a single scream of agony, then slumped limp onto him.

  Jack lay underneath the dead weight of the creature, barely able to summon the energy to breathe, let alone move it off him. Green blood mixed with gastric juices oozed out of its mouth and onto his face from above, while his arm was still buried up to the elbow inside. Suddenly the juvenile was dragged off him, his arm exiting the abdominal cavity with a wet slurp.

  It was the matriarch.

  She slapped her offspring on the side of the face, trying to wake it, then touched a single talon to the rent torn in its abdomen, and roared with anger. Jack’s innards felt like they’d turned to water. Such implacable rage and grief as he’d never heard. The Miner’s Mother stood over him holding her offspring’s corpse in one hand. With the other she indicated the wound in its abdomen, then knelt beside Jack and ripped up his shirt. She straightened the fingers of her hand, razor talons touching his skin in the same location she’d shown.

  Eye for an eye.

  There was no mistaking her meaning, nor was there a chance of escape, not when his body was broken and failing. Jack screwed his eyes shut and waited.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Sam started after the beast, felt the whole world tilt and nearly crashed back to the ground. He could see that the Miner’s Mother was already leaning over Jack. With only a knife, there was no way he’d make it in time. Desperate for another weapon, he knelt at the remains of the small arsenal they’d brought down.

  Both his and Mia’s hand guns were gone. Jack’s SLR was loaded and ready to go, but he’d never fired it, the old soldier never getting around to teaching any of them how to use it, and as simple as the weapon was, he had no time to work it out. Instead, he snatched up the only other weapon with which he was familiar. The spear gun.

  Sam severed the cord at the back of the spear shaft with his knife to increase its range, then held it up and aimed. For a moment, the image of Jack and the Miner’s Mother wavered and blurred. He blinked rapidly, held his breath and fired. The steel shaft shot across the cavern, a glint of silver in the torch light.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  A dull thud sounded from above. Jack opened his eyes and saw that the Miner’s Mother no longer had her talons at his abdomen, instead, they fingered something bright at its own chest. A steel point and barb streaked with green stuck out of her breast bone, transfixing her back to front. The beast swayed, then collapsed on the ground. Muscles twitched, then it exhaled and was still.

  Jack stared up at the roof of the cavern far above, eyes unfocused. His chest ached, and despite the removal of the juvenile’s carcass, it felt like an elephant sat in its place. Sam appeared above him in his line of sight. Blood soaked the right side of his face, oozing from his hairline.

  The paramedic sat down heavily beside him and took his remaining hand in a gentle grip. It took Jack a moment to form the question, his lips feeling rubbery and numb.

  “Are they all dead?” The words emerged no louder than a whisper of dry grass.

  Sam didn’t respond for a moment, instead, looked back to the rear wall of the cavern where the equipment and Mia lay. As he turned back, his eyes were exhausted and desolate.

  “I think so.”

  “Good.”

  Jack closed his eyes again, finally knowing that he’d earnt his rest.

  ***

  Sam held the old soldier’s hand, watching as his breathing slowed, then ceased. Jack’s features softened in death, muscles relaxing in his face and body, a man finally free of pain. Sam leant forward and gently closed his eyes before pushing himself to standing.

  His whole head ached, a banding migraine like someone tightened a vice about his skull with every beat of his heart. Blood wept slowly from the talon wounds on shoulder and thighs, but although they hurt, he didn’t think they were deep enough to cause lasting damage. Sam took Jack’s pistol and holster and fed them onto his own belt, an insurance policy for his journey back to the surface.

  Sam went to assess Mia, fearing the worst. He remembered the sound of bone striking rock as the creature smashed her skull. It had been the type of blow to kill. As he knelt beside her, she took a snoring breath, and Sam felt a kernel of hope flicker into life.

  “Mia, open your eyes, mate.”

  Sam gave her shoulder a shake, then when there was no reaction, pinched the trapezius muscle firmly at the angle between neck and shoulder. The pain stimulus was enough to bring her around, eyes narrowing in distress. Blood soaked the back of her head, turning the underlying hair into one massive clot. After a few moments, she opened her eyes, her gaze centring on Sam.

  “My head, it hurts so bad. Sam, what happened?”

  That she could remember his name was another good sign.

  “We�
��re still down in the cave. You’re safe now, but we need to get going while the lights still work. Do you think you can walk?”

  Mia gave a barely perceptible nod. She rolled onto her side, pushed up to her hands and knees, grim determination cutting a deep scowl on her forehead until she stood on two shaking legs. “Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

  Sam scooped up a lamp off the ground, then with one of Mia’s arms across his shoulders for support, started a slow ascent back to the surface.

  Epilogue

  Captain Starling had to fight the instinctive urge not to flinch away from the creature, his skin crawling at the proximity. Instead, he forced himself to lean closer to the clear Perspex enclosure. The chameleon slug was unnatural, a foul aberration, or worse, something alien to every other life form on the planet. In the space of three days since it was captured in the cave system, it had grown to the size of his fist, and was able to visually mimic the mice it was fed.

  He stood up and pushed a palm into the base of his back, trying to ease an aching muscle as he finally spotted the scientist he was after. The Captain stood within a mobile laboratory located outside Pintalba, erected at blinding speed with no cost spared by a wary government. He edged between steel tables covered by expensive machinery, test tubes and other apparatus that made little to no sense to him, until he came to Dr. Nichol’s side.

  “Are you going to ask a question, or just stare over my shoulder all afternoon?”

  Starling forced himself to conceal his irritation at the scientist’s tone as he watched the doctor straighten from her microscope. The woman might be at the top of her field, but it was no excuse for poor manners.

  “I’ve been sent by the boss. He wants advice on when the civilians will be safe for release? All their visible injuries have healed.”