Heights of the Depths

The Hidden Earth

Book two

Heights of the Depths

Peter David 

The colonel had never expected
that humanity would survive. He had not anticipated that he would be proven correct in quite this manner.

He takes no pleasure in the imminent extermination of mankind. His foresight
offers neither satisfaction nor solace. After all, who in his right mind desires bragging rights about the end of his race?

But the colonel could never have guessed the manner in which this tragedy would come about. Who could have? Who could have imagined
such an insane, nightmarish turn of events that even now, at the end, he cannot comprehend.

All around him there is smoke, blinding him to his surroundings. He stumbles, falls to his knees, and mutters a string of profanities. It is the exact sort of reac
tion for which he would have excoriated his troops. He has trained them to be focused at all times. To expect nothing while anticipating everything. The colonel would have expected them to remain focused rather than wasting energy in shouting imprecations
or demanding that an uncaring God damn this, that or the other thing. Yet now he falls prey to the same weakness of will and spirit that he would have found so unacceptable in his soldiers.

Perhaps it stems from the fact that all his soldiers are dead.

All
his superiors are dead.

Everyone. Everything. Dead, dead, dead.

They are all dead, and he is in hell, consigned there because he was unable to lead them to victory.

There is no reason for the colonel to take the failure of his forces onto himself. Four br
anches of military service, hundreds, thousands of officers who outranked him, governments worldwide that acted with confusion or bewilderment or denial when confronted with an enemy beyond any measure of human understanding.

And yet he does, because that
is simply the way the colonel’s mind is wired. He cannot help but feel personally responsible for the outcome of everything in which he is involved, even when nothing he could have done would have changed the way things turned out.

In the thick underbrush
of the jungle through which he is running, he lies in the moist dirt, sweat streaming from under his helmet and down his face. His breath is rattling in his lungs, despite his best efforts to rein in his gasping lest he alert those pursing him of his wher
eabouts. He is clutching his machete, the only weapon that he has left available to him.

The weapons.

What the hell had they done to the weapons?

When those creatures of myth had intruded so forcefully, so insanely, into the colonel’s world, they should h
ave been easily dispatched despite their considerable number. And dispatching them had been the only option available since their immediate actions upon arrival had left no question as to their purpose or priorities.

It had been an indelible image, seared
into the consciousness of every man, woman and child on the planet. That moment when, all over the world, the skies had turned purple and swirled as if vast whirlpools had opened in the heavens. There had been cries that the Rapture was occurring, that Je
sus was about to descend upon a golden chariot, or that it was heralding the arrival of the Prophet. Scientists attempted to analyze it and some were pointing accusing figures at a new superconducting supercollider that had been activated underground and y
et supposedly had managed to open up a spate of black holes in the upper atmosphere.

They had swirled above the Earth, appearing in succession, one every hour until there were twelve of them. People huddled in churches, or in laboratories, or in their home
s or home made bomb shelters, while others set up camps so that they could gaze upon the phenomenon and watch and wait and see the glory that they were sure was to unfold.

The colonel was on alert at Fort Bragg with the rest of his squadron when the moment
came, the moment that would be referred to subsequently as the Burst.

The holes had been churning in the skies, and suddenly every single one of them came to a halt. It was a sight to see, all those energy whirlpools slowing, slowing and then stopping. It
was as if nature itself was holding its breath.

Then there was an explosion that was without noise. The first thought was that the light would be visible and the sound would follow shortly, like thunder after lightning. It never happened. The Burst was, a
s some wags dubbed it, silent but deadly.

No one was laughing minutes later, however.

Astronomers watching through telescopes were the first ones to see the vast containers hurtling through the holes. At first glance they appeared to be vessels of some so
rt, but they did not seem to have any manner of propulsion or guidance. They were just gigantic shells, ejected from the vortices like bullets from a gun. They hurtled toward the ground, and there was not just one or two of them, but thousands upon thousan
ds. All over the world they spiraled down, at which point the sound finally came. It was the whistling sound typically associated with bombs dropping.

“We’re under attack!” came the screams from some, while others brushed off such sentiments as alarmist.

The whirlpools in the sky collapsed in on themselves and vanished moments after their contents had been disgorged. Down came the vessels, and although the world was three quarters water and thus random chance would have dictated that most of them would hav
e had water landings, in fact only a relatively small percentage of them did. All the “bullets” that had erupted from one hole plummeted into the Atlantic
O
cean. The remainder came to rest on land. In every instance they managed miraculously to avoid major
cities. Instead, without exception, they hit on deserts or forests or other areas that were unpopulated by human beings.

They came in at angles, not smashing straight down but instead skidding to a stop, leaving trenches dug up behind them that were miles
long, crisscrossing each other like a gigantic hatchwork.

The first contact was made in the Nevada desert. The sun had set, the last fingers of orange light disappearing from the horizon. Army troops moved in, of which the colonel was still not a part. T
he gigantic shells lay there, smoke still wafting from them, and frost covering their surfaces. There was no hint of movement, no sound of engines powering down, no nothing. The soldiers approached carefully, their rifles out, believing they were ready for
anything. Attempts to take readings of anything within the shells were thwarted by the vessels’ exteriors. It was as if they weren’t even there.

Suddenly there were sounds like guns going off, except none of the soldiers had fired at
anyone. They were the sounds of the shells cracking apart, gigantic gleaming metal oblongs as if laid by an enormous mutated chicken. As one the troops stepped back, leveling their weapons. From the back, the commanding officers observed carefully, constan
tly reporting progress to the White House.

The shells broke wide, and a creature emerged from within that seemed to be stepping out, not from some manner of spaceship, but instead a book on mythology and legend.

It was a Cyclops.

It was gigantic, well ove
r ten feet tall, shielding its eye and blinking against the fading light. Another Cyclops stepped out from behind it, and then more of them. There were audible gasps from behind the squad leader, a battle-hardened master sergeant. He told his men to shut t
he hell up and then, slinging his rifle, slowly advanced upon the foremost of the Cyclops. The creature looked down upon him with a single brown eye and a brow that seemed arched in mild curiosity.

There was someone of more normal, human proportions standi
ng just behind the Cyclops, but it was also clearly not human. The master sergeant hadn’t noticed it at first, which was odd because it was standing right there. Its skin was sallow, its face triangular in shape, its ears long and tapered, and shoulder-len
gth, purple hair fluttered around it in the breeze. The being fixed its gaze upon the master sergeant and there was nothing but contempt in its eyes, which should have been the master sergeant’s first warning.

He willfully ignored it.

“Welcome,” said the
master sergeant, “to—”

The Cyclops stepped on him without hesitation. Before the master sergeant could react, the Cyclops simply took two vast strides forward, the ground thundering beneath him, and then it slammed its foot down on the master sergeant, cru
shing him with a sound that was oddly like a balloon popping. Blood spread from beneath the Cyclops’ foot. It lifted his foot and scraped it on the dirt as if it had just entered someone’s home and was availing itself of the welcome mat.

There was no hesit
ation as the assembled armed forces opened fire.

The Cyclops, looking positively stunned, went down in a hail of bullets. So did several behind it. Then the purple haired being waved its arms, gesturing widely, and just like that the weaponry ceased to fun
ction. More specifically, it functioned in reverse, as the rifles proceeded to backfire, exploding in the hands of the young men and women aiming them. Faces were ripped off, bodies blown backwards. Those that had mouths left went down screaming; the rest
just went down. Any who attempted to throw hand grenades had them explode in their hands. Mortar shells detonated within the launchers.

As the human beings staggered around, bewildered, disoriented, unable to comprehend what was happening and how this amaz
ing first contact scenario had gone so wrong, so quickly, the Cyclops charged. They came pouring out of the ship, a vast wave of them. Scientists who would later study video of the event would conclude that the number of Cyclops emerging from the ships far
exceeded anything that the ship should reasonably have been able to contain. It was like watching a real life version of a clown car, except no one was laughing.

They continued to pour out by the tens of thousands, and then the hundreds of thousands, all
from those same fallen shells of ships. And when the planes came swooping in with bombs, a goodly number of the monsters were blown to hell, indicating to most observers that there seemed to be a range involved in what the obvious magic-wielding creature c
ould accomplish. (The scientists disliked the term “magic” intensely, preferring to substitute the phrase “Arcane physics.” None of this mattered as, over the long period of annihilation that followed, almost all the scientists were killed.) But many more
of the creatures were not killed at all, and they swarmed across the face of the United States, up into Canada, down into Mexico.

Had that been the only arrival, humanity might have been able to cope. But there were eleven others, and all around the globe
humanity found itself under assault. Minotaurs, satyrs, vampires, two-legged dragons and more. The attack was relentless, and merciless, and eventually, it was successful.

The colonel was witness to it all.

Now he runs and stumbles through a jungle, the br
anches tearing at his uniform, bites from random insects pock marking his skin. He falls back as something hisses directly in front of him. For a heartbeat he thinks it’s one of those dragon creatures—Mandraques, he believes they call themselves—and then h
e realizes it’s a homegrown snake. He whips his machete around and severs its head from its body in one clean slice. Then he keeps going.

He hears pursuit.

The speech is gutteral and booming, and the trees are crashing down behind him. It is unquestionably
the creatures.

They are coming for him. Not enough that his entire squad had been wiped out; they want to be sure to take them out to the last man.

He wonders if he is indeed the last man.

He has lost contact with headquarters. He has seen no other huma
ns in days. For all he knows, the entirety of humanity has been destroyed and he is the last man standing. The final and only defender of the human race.

Your race is run, he thinks bleakly.

Suddenly there is a triumphant roar directly in front of him. It
is a Mandraque, looming before him like a miniature dinosaur. It says something incomprehensible, and its forked tongue snaps out. It wields a double bladed sword that is as big as the colonel’s arm. The Mandraque whips the sword around, and the colonel du
cks under it, slamming forward with the machete. It drives home, and the colonel has the opportunity to see close-up what a Mandraque looks like when it is startled. The Mandraque reflexively tries to lunge toward the colonel, but the action only serves to
drive the machete deeper into its own chest. The sword slips from the creature’s now nerveless hand and it falls over. The colonel yanks out his machete, spits on the carcass, and then tries to lift the creature’s sword. It is impossibly unwieldy. The col
onel is not a weak man, but he can barely clear it from the ground. It is useless to him.

He hears more snarling, more shouting. He knows that he is doomed, but he is not going to go quietly. Leaving the sword and his enemy’s body behind, he continues to r
un.